StarTalk @ NY Comic Con: It’s About Time!

Neil deGrasse Tyson hosts a wibbly wobbly, timey wimey evening of time travel, quantum states, and wormholes recorded live at NY Comic Con 2018. Featuring Chuck Nice, theoretical physicist Brian Greene, and the Impractical Jokers’ James "Murr" Murray. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/startalk-ny-comic-con-its-about-time/ Photo Credit: NY Comic Con.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's five. Thanks for coming out at New York Comic Con, that's my hometown. Welcome, yes.

• 0:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna bring out my guests. First, you're gonna meet my co-host, the one, the only Chuck Nice. Chuck, comedian. Come on out.

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, who'd you bring with you today?

• 0:43Chuck Nice?

  Hey, so you may know this, uh, who is another comedian? And he is also extremely funny. You probably know him from Impractical Jokers on

• 0:54Chuck Nice?

  on True TV. It's James Murr- Murray!

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I don't belong here.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, let me bring out our fourth and final guest, a colleague and friend of mine, theoretical physicist Brian Greene. Brian!

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Brian, okay. Let me tell you why we brought out this firepower. Because tonight, we are going to handle three different topics. Very specific to this audience and our concerns. In part one, we are going to talk about time travel in Doctor Who.

• 1:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in part two, we're gonna talk about the quantum physics of Ant-Man.

• 1:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And part three, we're talking about parallel universes in Stranger Things.

• 1:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's do this, alright. So, thanks for coming, this is my first time I've met you.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  Likewise, I've been a fan of yours literally forever.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that would not be literally true.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Expect a lot more of that tonight.

• 2:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying. So, we know Doctor Who's the longest-running science fiction franchise ever on television.

• 2:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, the current Doctor, Jodie Whittaker, is that right? Yes, give it up!

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is anyone here dressed as Jodie Whittaker? We got...nobody, okay, fine. Okay, just checking. Wow, that is almost a statistical impossibility.

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so as you know, Doctor Who follows the adventures of a humanoid alien, basically. And that person travels through space and time in a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey way. Yes. And so, given these facts, what we really want to know, Brian, is travel through time theoretically possible? At least as imagined in Doctor Who?

• 3:09Brian Greene?

  So you have to think about time travel in really two stages. Because time travel to the future is very different from time travel to the past. So time travel to the future-

• 3:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have different consequences.

• 3:20Brian Greene?

  They have different consequences and they have a different standing within our understanding of the laws of physics. So as we know physics today, time travel to the future is not hypothetical, it's not some idea that people argue about. Time travel to the future is absolutely part of the way physics is constructed. There is nobody who knows anything about what they're talking about who would disagree with that.

• 3:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like the way you worded that.

• 3:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, but of course in Doctor Who, they go into the past. So what's going on there?

• 3:49Brian Greene?

  That's a trickier one, that's a trickier one.

• 3:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he's a time lord, so he figured it out. So, my question to you is, in this universe, how would you make it happen such as the way we see it in Doctor Who?

• 4:01Brian Greene?

  So if you want to travel to the past, there are a few proposals that are on the market. But I'd say the one that has attracted the greatest attention is to make use of wormholes.

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 4:10Brian Greene?

  So a wormhole is a tunnel- Through space. It's a shortcut, like any ordinary tunnel in the real world. It takes it from one point in space to another point in a more direct manner than going all around.

• 4:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rather than going over the mountain, you go through the mountain.

• 4:22Brian Greene?

  Go right through the mountain. Now, that is a tunnel from a point in space to another point in space. But here's the thing, if you take one of the openings of the wormhole, and you put it near a black hole, and you let it hang out there, according to Einstein, time will elapse more slowly near the edge of a black hole because of the powerful gravity.

• 4:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 4:38Brian Greene?

  And that means that time at this opening of the wormhole will be different from time at the other opening of the wormhole.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is farther away from the black hole.

• 4:46Brian Greene?

  Farther away from the black hole, feeling a different gravitational force.

• 4:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 4:49Brian Greene?

  Which means now, when you go through the wormhole, you're not just going from one point in space to another point in space, you're going from one moment in time to a different moment in time.

• 4:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why does that mean you're going backwards?

• 4:59Brian Greene?

  Well, one direction is forward, one direction is backward. So, it's depending on the direction that you go through the tunnel, it tells you the direction in time that you're traveling.

• 5:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  There is another way to travel back in time. Scrapbooking is a fantastic way. Facebook memories, you see those video collections they do? You go right back in time, you're transported there instantly.

• 5:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, what about the something conjecture, the...

• 5:26Brian Greene?

  Chronology protection conjecture.

• 5:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chronology protection conjecture. I believe I have a condom named that.

• 5:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chronology protection conjecture. So, what, so that sounds like time travel backwards should not be allowed.

• 5:48Brian Greene?

  Yeah, this is an idea that came from Stephen Hawking. And, and he asked the question, I think, all of us ask, which is if time travel to the past is possible, where are the time travelers?

• 6:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've heard it hypothesized that the reason why the Titanic sank is everyone want to go back to the Titanic the first day a time travel device was invented. And then there were millions of people crammed on the Titanic, and then it sank.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  Why would you go teleport to a sinking ship?

• 6:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, because they wanted to-

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Terrible idea!

• 6:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They wanted to experience a bit of history. So Brian, so, so give me an example of the problem.

• 6:25Brian Greene?

  Well-

• 6:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A demonstration of why that conjecture might be true.

• 6:29Brian Greene?

  Well, the, the, the puzzle is, if you go to the past and you change things that prevent, for instance, your own birth, how were you there in the first place to make that change? So the, the usual example we talk about, you see it in Back to the Future, many other incarnations of these ideas. You go back to the past and you prevent your parents from meeting, right? So how were you there to execute that action if your parents never met you or never born? So you run into this logical paradox if you allow certain kinds of changes to the past to take place. Now, there are ways out of this, so you don't need the chronology protection conjecture, which would say, "You can't travel to the past." You could simply have it that the laws of physics prevent you from ever changing anything that was in the past.

• 7:10Brian Greene?

  Namely, if you go to the past, you were always at that moment, there was never a version of that moment when you were not there. So it's always self-consistent, because moments of time just are, they can't change.

• 7:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that is the, so, no, so what you're saying is-

• 7:24Chuck Nice?

  You can't change-

• 7:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't change because no matter what, you were there, period.

• 7:29Brian Greene?

  That's right.

• 7:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever that moment in time was, you were already there.

• 7:31Brian Greene?

  Or the influence was there.

• 7:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or the influence was there.

• 7:33Brian Greene?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Is there another possibility that when you go back in time and if you change something, it splinters off to its own different universe?

• 7:39Brian Greene?

  That's the other possibility.

• 7:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  That's mind-blowing stuff.

• 7:42Brian Greene?

  Yeah. So you can change the past, but you can't change the past of your own universe. So if you go back into the past and say you prevent your parents from meeting, you're preventing them from meeting in a parallel copy of the universe within which you were born. So if they don't meet, that means you won't be born in that universe.

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In that universe.

• 8:00Brian Greene?

  But there's no mystery of where you came from, you were born in this universe your parents did meet.

• 8:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, one of the, uh, interesting features of Doctor Who is that this blue thingy, it's called a TARDIS.

• 8:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is an acronym for time and relative dimension in space.

• 8:22Chuck Nice?

  Okay, by the way.

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 8:24Chuck Nice?

  By the way, I gotta say that was pretty damn awesome what I just saw here. You just went, "By the way, it's an acronym, stands for..." And everybody else just said it right along with you.

• 8:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how we... Because that's how we roll at Comic Con.

• 8:38Chuck Nice?

  Right, without missing a beat.

• 8:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the... One of the fascinating elements of it, and they just treated this quite casually throughout the whole series, is that you walk into this police call box. It's a British police call box. And then inside is the entire ship. So, that you're accessing another dimension of space by entering in it. So this would be like a fourth dimension.

• 9:01Brian Greene?

  Yeah, so you're saying the inside is bigger than the outside?

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't say it right.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  That's what I keep telling her. Wait.

• 9:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just have to say...

• 9:09Speaker 02

  I don't know if it works. I don't know if the joke works.

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just have to say, "The phrase is, it's bigger on the inside." That's all you gotta say. Repeat that. Just repeat it.

• 9:19Brian Greene?

  I'm afraid to.

• 9:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Doctor Who has just been very smartly written in this regard. It's got good physics in it. And yes, it's fiction, but it's... It's got you thinking about how events can influence for past and future. And this is why they say, "Time is this wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey." It's not so rigid that's gonna follow what you think is a strict law of physics. It's got some more sort of chaotic elements to it.

• 9:50Brian Greene?

  But it has a single timeline or it has multiple timelines?

• 9:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I interpret it as multiple timelines. And then you can... And the Time Lord can access any timeline that is necessary for the task at hand. So that he can save the universe in every episode.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Can I ask a general question? Is time just a human construct? Do other species understand the concept of time, the passing of it, and the future versus the past? Yes, okay, yes, they do.

• 10:14Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  They do?

• 10:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, it's easy, it's all too easy for we humans to say what we do and think that other animals do not.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 10:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's, there's the human hubris deeply embedded in that assumption. Who are you to say that other animals don't think, or contemplate, or wonder about their fate? And, and maybe we are pitied by eagles because our vision sucks compared to that of eagles. And they look, those poor humans, they can't even fly.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I wonder if they dream about all those poor things. Do you know how much pity we might be garnering in, in the minds and bodies of other animals?

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Most animals look down on me, yes.

• 10:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I got another one. And, and here's another one, right? We can talk about and praise certain primates, other primates who maybe mimic sign language, okay? So these are animals that can speak to us using typically American sign language, but no one is asking, here, here, here, chimps speaking to us in our language, but at no time are we asked, can we speak to them in their language? So they're smart enough to speak our language, we're not smart enough to speak theirs. So, I don't know.

• 11:27Chuck Nice?

  All I know is, uh, what you said is beautiful and eloquent, but I doubt if there's a horse somewhere going, "I wonder about the fabric of time."

• 11:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, goldfish are not thinking about time. They're just doing circles in the bowl. They can't remember their ass from their elbow. They have neither of those.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Uh, so, one of Hawking's quotes, which is related to my Titanic comment, is, "If time travel were possible, where are the tourists from the future?"

• 11:59Brian Greene?

  Yeah, I think that's, that is the question. And, uh, one answer is, every time they come here, we just like put them in white coats and lock them up. I mean, that, that's one possibility, right?

• 12:10Chuck Nice?

  Or we put them in white coats and call them astrophysicists.

• 12:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but wait a minute. Isn't, isn't this quote from Hawking exactly what a time traveler would say?

• 12:27Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 12:28Brian Greene?

  On that one, we just gotta meditate.

• 12:30Chuck Nice?

  I see where you're going with this.

• 12:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see where I'm going with that. So the people who are way ahead of the rest of us at any given time and space, like Da Vinci, like Einstein, like Marie Curie, like Stephen Hawking.

• 12:43Chuck Nice?

  Or Snooki.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Snooki.

• 12:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is...

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Isn't a temporal law that if you ask a time traveler, if they're a time traveler, they have to say they're a time traveler? Like a cop or vampire, right?

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have not heard that law, but...

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Temporal prime directive, no?

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, do you think one day we'll have a machine that'll just send us forward in time? We know it's possible, but why don't, why aren't we doing it actively?

• 13:06Brian Greene?

  Well, I think we do have a machine in principle, right? We just can't go very far forward in time. Because every time you go into a vehicle and you undertake a round trip journey, you are traveling into the future.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By some calculatable amount.

• 13:20Brian Greene?

  Yeah, now at ordinary speeds, you're only going, you know, a billionth of a billionth of a second or something like that.

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Into the future.

• 13:26Brian Greene?

  Into the future, but if you found yourself in a ship that was going near the speed of light, you go out for six months, you turn around, you come back for six months, you get off that ship, you will have aged one year, but depending on how close to the speed of light you got, when you step off the ship, Earth will be 10,000 years or a million years into the future. You will have jumped into Earth's future, and that is what we mean by time travel.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  How important in the future are the survival of humpback whales?

• 13:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Star Trek IV.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Right, because it seems like we've gotta solve the humpback whale problem.

• 13:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. You just need transparent aluminum, and then you can solve it.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  Is it?

• 14:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  But, uh, the faster you go to the speed of light, the slower time moves, correct? So somebody on a spaceship would age slower than somebody on Earth. They'd come back one year later, and the people on Earth have aged 10 years, 100 years, something like that. That's the basic idea?

• 14:20Brian Greene?

  That's the idea.

• 14:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and let me add, just to close out this segment, our GPS satellites, or... But high enough so that there's a measurable and important difference in its rate of time that it keeps compared to us here on the surface of the earth. They're farther away from the source of gravity, earth, so their time ticks faster than our clock time on the surface. And we know this, and it's Einstein's general theory of relativity. So they calculated how much faster their clocks would tick, and they back correct for that before it sends us the time that ends up on our smartphones.

• 14:52Chuck Nice?

  So if you accelerate towards the speed of light, time actually slows down?

• 14:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 14:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay, hold on.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Chuck!

• 15:03Chuck Nice?

  Sell Apple! Sell your Apple!

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Thanks, everybody, for coming to the 2019 Comic-Con. You've been gone a year!

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, we gotta bring time travel to a close. Thanks for that topic. Comic-Con, our next topic is the quantum realm of Ant-Man. Give it up for my panel for that.

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, are we ready for round two? Round two! I got with me theoretical physicist Brian Greene. Brian, that... You can... Oh, yes. Okay.

• 15:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got Chuck Nice, my co-host. Chuck?

• 15:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, who did you bring?

• 15:55Brian Greene?

  And of course, from Impractical Jokers, it's the Moe!

• 16:01Chuck Nice?

  Hello, everybody.

• 16:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Moe. Alright, so, in the recent movie The Ant-Man and the Wasp, okay? It's starring Paul Rudd, who we've had on StarTalk Live before.

• 16:15Brian Greene?

  He is delightful.

• 16:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Brian, what does physics say about shrinking things?

• 16:21Brian Greene?

  Well, it's tough to do, right? Because ultimately, things are made of molecules and atoms, and the quantum laws restrict the size of the individual atoms. So it's pretty tough to imagine changing them without changing the basic constants of nature.

• 16:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait. But Rutherford, 100 years ago, noticed that atoms are mostly empty space. Why can't you just squeeze that puppy down?

• 16:43Brian Greene?

  Yep. Yeah, in fact, if you were to squeeze down, if you could do it, the space in the atoms in every single human being that has ever lived on planet Earth, the resulting stuff would fit inside of a baseball.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 16:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  And that's even with, you know, obesity problem in America?

• 17:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, that's softball.

• 17:05Brian Greene?

  Softball, yeah.

• 17:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, why is there some challenge then to shrinking out that empty space?

• 17:14Brian Greene?

  It's very hard to get that empty space out because atoms have a certain amount of energy. And whereas we're used to being able to continuously change the energy in something, right? If I take this from down on the floor, this water bottle, and as I raise it up higher and higher, it looks like I'm continuously adding in energy.

• 17:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 17:31Brian Greene?

  Quantum mechanics says that is misleading. Energy comes in steps. You can't actually continuously change it. So for an atom, when you get down to the lowest step, the lowest energy, there is no lower step that is in existence. So if you have a minimum amount of energy, you can't actually squeeze things down to zero size.

• 17:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You tell me that we can't have Ant-Man, then?

• 17:51Brian Greene?

  Well, you can have Ant-Man.

• 17:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, let me ask you this. What constant of nature would need to be adjusted so that you could shrink down the atom? Is it Planck's constant?

• 18:02Brian Greene?

  Yeah, Planck's constant, one of them. So, you know, that's a, it could be a little bit technical, it's a dimensionful number, but the radius of an atom depends on Planck's constant, it depends on the mass of the electron, it depends on the electric charge of the electron.

• 18:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you can imagine a zone where you influence quantum constants, you could, in principle, make a much smaller version of what existed in a larger state?

• 18:24Brian Greene?

  You could. Now, you'd probably destroy the universe, but, yes.

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's alright, we'll take that risk.

• 18:28Brian Greene?

  But it'd be worth it, though.

• 18:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it would totally worth it.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  How would it destroy the universe?

• 18:33Brian Greene?

  What's that?

• 18:33Speaker 02

  How would it destroy the universe?

• 18:35Brian Greene?

  Well, the universe depends on the values of the constants in a very specific and delicate way. You start playing this game...

• 18:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The speed of light, the gravitational constant...

• 18:45Brian Greene?

  Yeah, you change the ratio of the masses, you change the strengths of the forces, you change the fundamental speeds, and for instance, stars no longer have nuclear processes, and stars don't light up without... Stars, the universe is a very different place. So in that sense, you don't just change the constants and look at how a bottle of water changes. You see how the entire universe changes.

• 19:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's if you change the constants for the entire universe. I'm talking about changing the constants for just where Paul Rudd is standing.

• 19:09Brian Greene?

  Okay, well, yeah, yeah. In principle, you could imagine that in your wildest dreams, but yeah.

• 19:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's what we do here. We imagine our wildest dreams.

• 19:16Chuck Nice?

  That's not even my wildest dreams. I live in a world where a reality TV star is the president, okay?

• 19:26Speaker 02

  Well, he's, uh, he's overinflated, isn't he?

• 19:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, where am I here?

• 19:34Brian Greene?

  But yeah, in terms of shrinking, yes, if you could.

• 19:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now watch what happens. So if you shrink, now I made you smaller, but you still have the same mass.

• 19:42Brian Greene?

  Ooh.

• 19:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in, in the movie, uh, Ant-Man is like riding the back of an ant. Now, he would still weigh his 160 pounds, 170 pounds on the back of an ant, but he'd be this big. He's squashing the ant.

• 19:54Brian Greene?

  Yeah.

• 19:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is there any way in this universe to get rid of that mass? Because in, in the Ant-Man universe, I think there's something called a PIM particle that transfers your mass out into another dimension.

• 20:06Brian Greene?

  Yeah, well, I mean, the quick answer is Einstein taught us that energy and mass are actually two sides of the same coin. So if you want to change the mass of something, you just extract energy from it. So you could have, you know, you have Paul Rudd there and you just watch heat and light and radiation all flying off of him as you shrink him down to a smaller size.

• 20:25Chuck Nice?

  And then he's on the ant, but he's just really tired.

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so if they were to put a nuance in the Ant-Man storytelling, he would be highly radiant as he got smaller.

• 20:39Brian Greene?

  That would be one way of doing it, yes.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  Sounds like you're describing a Swanson chicken dinner, like in a microwave.

• 20:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  I'm just happy to be here, Neil.

• 20:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so then, so...

• 20:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does anyone still eat Swanson Chicken dinner?

• 21:00Speaker 02

  I don't know. I'm an old geek, I'm sorry.

• 21:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you have a girlfriend or something?

• 21:06Speaker 02

  No.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, yeah, that's what I'm saying, right, right. Somebody to eat with, you just, it's a TV dinner, you're still eating, that's the thing. So, so, but they described the quantum realm. And, just give me a couple of minutes reflection on the George Gamow series, where he changed the values of the constants.

• 21:23Brian Greene?

  Oh, you mean Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland?

• 21:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland.

• 21:25Brian Greene?

  Yeah, that was from, I think, the 1940s or something like that. And, yeah, it was a wonderful series of books, in which he imagined a universe in which somehow, human beings are the same, but the constants of nature have a different value. So, Mr. Tompkins is doing the kinds of things that Paul Rudd is doing, but with not quite the same special effects. You know, he's there playing pool, and he hits the pool ball, and the cue ball passes through one of the other balls on the table, and it bounces around in a chaotic manner that illustrates like the many worlds of quantum physics. And, I think he had a version where the speed of light was like 5 miles an hour. So then, as people are walking by, they're, they're shrunk and the rents contracted to be the size of a pancake as they're walking by you. So, yeah, that was the...

• 22:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this would be an early version of just imaginary worlds that you would easily fold into a superhero universe?

• 22:13Brian Greene?

  That's right.

• 22:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  So ironically, if you were shrunk down, you would have less energy, so you wouldn't be more powerful than you would be if at full size, right? You would be...

• 22:25Speaker 02

  That's true. For those who are counting, that's true.

• 22:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, think about it.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Jealous.

• 22:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, because if you, if you're, if you have power as a superhero, it's in your body somewhere. And if you've got to release all that energy to reduce your mass, to become smaller, you're, you're a weakling at that point. You don't have like the ant strength that people always want to talk about.

• 22:44Brian Greene?

  Yeah, I think it has to do with like the ratio of the, the size to the... I mean, have to really sort of work it out in detail. But yes, in principle, you could be right.

• 22:51Chuck Nice?

  Yes, unless you're Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in which case you have the, the power of 10 men, no matter what.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  True.

• 23:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, are you familiar with something called molecular disequilibrium?

• 23:09Brian Greene?

  Um, no, I don't think I am. You want to tell me?

• 23:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's because he just made it up.

• 23:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, let's, uh, can you give us a moment? Tell us about a quantum entanglement.

• 23:18Brian Greene?

  Oh, quantum entanglement, yeah.

• 23:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 23:20Brian Greene?

  So this is an idea that, again, came from Einstein, is all it is.

• 23:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it only an idea? I thought we're doing it.

• 23:24Brian Greene?

  Well, that's where it began, and Einstein brought it up because he didn't like quantum mechanics and thought this would be the death knell of quantum physics. He pointed out to all of the world's quantum mechanicians that their theory predicted that you could have a particle over here, another particle over here, distant from each other, but somehow, even though they're separated, and you do something to this particle, the math said that it will influence that particle, regardless of how far apart they are in space.

• 23:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have a twin brother just like that.

• 23:52Brian Greene?

  There you go. And Einstein called it spooky, that fact that you could do something here and affect something there, spooky action at a distance. And he thought it was nuts.

• 24:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in the, in the movie, there's, there are two characters that fuse together from a distance. So, so there's a quantum thing going on, but they're macroscopic objects. You're describing just subatomic particles.

• 24:11Brian Greene?

  Yeah, I'm talking about particles like electrons and photons, but in principle, there's nothing about the world that would prevent these kinds of entangled qualities to exist on arbitrarily scales, right?

• 24:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 24:21Brian Greene?

  Yeah. It's just hard to cause the particles to maintain those quantum properties, but it's just easier.

• 24:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you have ensembles of particles.

• 24:29Brian Greene?

  Yeah, because they're all banging into each other, knocking each other around, and diluting the cohesion of the system. But you can have it, in principle, on arbitrarily large scales.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  You know what's a crazy thing is that we, in our lifetimes, encryption will completely change, right? We are going to see it in the new, in the next 20, 30 years because of quantum entanglement, right? Of course, it'll revolutionize passwords and how to decrypt things like that, and, but the Russians will still find ways to hack it, I'm sure, so.

• 24:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it...

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Can you imagine?

• 25:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not fist bumping him on that one.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  You have a quantum entangled, uh, pass, password, but the password is like 12345. Still, still stupid passwords.

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um... So, so, so...

• 25:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Brian.

• 25:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we got, um, so, give me the, just the plausibility of Ant-Man as a stor- as a story mechanism.

• 25:40Brian Greene?

  Uh, you know, I've not, just repeating my answer to the doctor, who I've not actually seen Ant-Man. Uh, so I don't really know, but, um, I know it's like-

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give the man a break.

• 25:49Brian Greene?

  I've been working, I got things I gotta do.

• 25:52Chuck Nice?

  He's a theoretical physicist for god's sake.

• 25:55Brian Greene?

  Thank you.

• 25:56Chuck Nice?

  Doesn't have time to go see Ant-Man.

• 26:01Chuck Nice?

  Solving the problems of the universe, and you mad 'cause he not sitting in the theater going, "You know Ant-Man, this ain't half bad."

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, uh, Brian, we like, a couple more minutes in the segment. Brian, um, so, have we ever found a realm in which our understanding of quantum, where quantum physics actually breaks down?

• 26:23Brian Greene?

  We've never had a single piece of data, a single experiment, that has contradicted the predictions of quantum mechanics, it has never happened.

• 26:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a profound comment.

• 26:33Brian Greene?

  Yeah.

• 26:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Second, uh, we know that as you get smaller, the laws of physics manifest differently to you, because different other forces dominate relative to when you're big, alright? So one of my favorite scenes in the movie A Bug's Life is when the geek ant goes to, and by the way, the theme of Bugs Life was really just The Magnificent Seven, wasn't it? Think about it, think about it. So, the colony's being terrorized by grasshoppers, one of the, the geek ant goes to find a set of rough-necked other bugs to help protect them from these evil grasshoppers. And he goes to a bug bar, and at the bar, there's a mosquito who orders a drink. And what does the mosquito order? A Bloody Mary, of course. And so, not blood, it's a bar, of course, so it was a Bloody Mary.

• 27:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what does the bartender do? Puts a blob of Bloody Mary right in front of it.

• 27:23Brian Greene?

  Nice. That's surface tension.

• 27:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Surface tension, right!

• 27:27Brian Greene?

  It's here for surface tension.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, they knew, the writers of this script, even though they gave the ant only four legs, um, they, they, they knew way more physics in this movie than biology, but, they-

• 27:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's the drink, and then the mosquito sticks its thing in the, it sucks it out, and it, that's, it was a beautiful moment. So my question to you is, if you get really, really quantum small, is there a point where our tiniest organisms actually need to interact in a quantum way? Or is quantum so small, they're not even there yet?

• 28:03Brian Greene?

  No, absolutely. So, you know...

• 28:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Think of a tardigrade. Think of a tardigrade. We love these little buggers.

• 28:08Brian Greene?

  You're talking about those little...

• 28:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The little, the water bears.

• 28:11Brian Greene?

  You know who taught me about tardigrades?

• 28:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who?

• 28:12Brian Greene?

  The only other person in my life that's ever mentioned the word tardigrade, Paul Rudd. It all comes together, man.

• 28:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It comes together!

• 28:19Brian Greene?

  It all comes together.

• 28:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 28:20Brian Greene?

  Uh, but it's the case right now. So if you look at the molecular mechanisms that are in your body producing energy right now, right? Anybody in organic chemistry, they learn about ADP, ATP, the details don't matter, but those are all quantum processes where these particles are coming together and allowing your body to persist only because of the laws of quantum physics, acting themselves out trillions of times a second inside your body. So it's happening now.

• 28:49Chuck Nice?

  Wait, say that again. What about the big what?

• 28:51Brian Greene?

  The big crush.

• 28:52Chuck Nice?

  The big crush. What about it?

• 29:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Opposite of the Big Bang.

• 29:05Chuck Nice?

  She said it's the opposite of the Big Bang, for those of you in the back who cannot hear her.

• 29:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so, so we'll get a minute from Brian on this, but then we gotta get to our next segment. So, so Brian, at the Big Bang, I'm quoting you almost verbatim, "The large was small." And, and quantum physics commands the small, general relativity commands the large. When the large is small, you have two very different theoretical descriptions of the universe in a shotgun marriage with one another.

• 29:37Brian Greene?

  Mmm.

• 29:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thus is born the string theorist.

• 29:41Brian Greene?

  There you go. All true.

• 29:46Chuck Nice?

  String theory.

• 29:47Brian Greene?

  Yeah, no.

• 29:48Chuck Nice?

  You gonna marry my daughter and make her an honest woman.

• 29:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, so, so just to affirm what our conclusions have been. That Ant-Man, there are ways you can imagine it happening. You just don't want to change the laws of physics for everyone. The quantum constants, you would do it just in the zone, in the quantum realm that Ant-Man occupies. Then Ant-Man can drop. Ant-Man, if he were to do it honoring known laws of physics, he'd have to release the energy of the mass that he loses, because mass and energy are equivalent. That would be an awesome, bright light, that could have made an interesting visual effect in the film. So then, he gets small, he's gotta get energy from somewhere, but he has sort of normal, sort of bug strength at that level. So that's fine, and that's still consistent.

• 30:35Brian Greene?

  That works.

• 30:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now he's gotta get back, he's gotta absorb the energy back into himself.

• 30:40Brian Greene?

  But first, he has to go save a colony of ants.

• 30:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that, some complicat-- he has to go back in some machine or something to come back to life, to back to his size, and that, so you can make that work.

• 30:53Brian Greene?

  I think we can make that work.

• 30:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good to know, I wanted that affirmation. Brian Greene.

• 31:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk at Comic-Con.

• 31:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna spend some time in the hit TV series on Netflix, Stranger Things.

• 31:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they talk about sort of an upside-down world, an upside-down, it's some parallel universe where people could disappear into it, and they're still looking for people who went there. So Brian, when we want to think about multiple universes, I've heard the term "brain" used, B-R-A-N-E. Could you explain what that is in your world?

• 31:40Brian Greene?

  Well, that's an idea that does come out of string theory, and the notion is that everything that we know about should be thought of as if it's one slice of space in a larger... Cosmos.

• 31:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Much higher dimension.

• 31:54Brian Greene?

  Higher dimensional cosmos. The analogy that I like to use is imagine everything we know about is one slice of bread in a big cosmic loaf. And the other slices of bread would be other realms, other universes, potentially like ours, but separated from us by a distance along the axis of the loaf. So our entire universe would be one slice of bread.

• 32:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One slice of this bread.

• 32:17Brian Greene?

  That's right.

• 32:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Okay, so, so if you left this universe, but you still existed, you, in principle, found some way to get to the next slice of bread?

• 32:26Brian Greene?

  Yes. And in fact, we know, according to the physics that we study, how one would do that, or how in principle, energy can leave one slice of bread to the other. If the energy is carried by gravity, gravitational waves. Or jelly. Then that can travel.

• 32:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So gravitational waves can leave our membrane and go to another membrane?

• 32:44Brian Greene?

  That's right. So if you want to communicate from one membrane to another, you could have like a gravity phone that would send out vibrations in spacetime as opposed to vibrations in air.

• 32:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay, so Brian, there's the gravity waves that can get, gravitational waves that can get across the membrane. But, uh, is there some way a wormhole could do it? Or is there, is there some access to these higher dimensions that we just haven't figured out how to invoke yet? So, uh, and in fact, in Stranger Things, this other dimension, it's got like monsters in it. I mean, it's not just another universe with me in it, it's a different place. And so, is there, can you imagine a way to do that? And the reason why I ask is, there's this great example I think you've given, which, is it the flea on the tightrope? Tell us that example.

• 33:32Brian Greene?

  Yeah, this is the idea that dimensions can be big and small, and if a dimension's curled up, like this circular dimension that's on a tightrope wire, from a disadvantage point, you and I won't see it, the tightrope just looks like a straight line, you only see that one dimension. But if you zoom in and take the perspective, a little flea that's walking along it, that little flea can go along the tightrope, but can also walk around it, revealing that curled up portion of space that we would miss because we're just too big.

• 33:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're too big. So if you're the tightrope walker, it's a one-dimensional line.

• 34:01Brian Greene?

  Yeah.

• 34:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your flea, it's a whole, it's a whole world to you.

• 34:04Brian Greene?

  It's like the book Flatland, right? It's a version of that, yes, exactly right.

• 34:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Brian, what I'm asking is, can we find some portal? In our own universe, we just step through it and you disappear. Why, what's preventing that?

• 34:18Brian Greene?

  Yeah, well in-

• 34:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want that.

• 34:19Brian Greene?

  Yeah, well in principle, these other slices of bread, these other brain universes, are governed by the very same laws of physics that we know about. And we know in our universe, you can bend the fabric of space by-

• 34:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can bend the bread.

• 34:30Brian Greene?

  You can bend the bread by having a lot of mass, a lot of energy. That's what a black hole does. It creates a tunnel, an indentation, if you will, in the fabric of space. So imagine you got a black hole in that realm, a black hole in this realm, and you indent the space in such a way that they join together into this wormhole structure. Yeah, I, you know, whether this could really work in this context, I don't know, but-

• 34:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not what I'm asking you. Is there law of physics that prevents it?

• 34:52Brian Greene?

  No, I don't think so.

• 34:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Is there, is there a world in which you could have two quantum entangled pieces of information?

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Across universes?

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Across universes?

• 35:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 35:01Brian Greene?

  Absolutely. So if you had two gravitons that were entangled, and one shot off our brain, because gravity can freely move through the entirety of this larger cosmos, then yeah, you could have two entangled gravitons, in principle, existing in different universes.

• 35:17Chuck Nice?

  That is pretty awesome.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  That's mind blowing. But I still can't send a text from the Staten Island Ferry. I don't get it.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  No reception.

• 35:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what is this multi-worlds interpretation of quantum physics? Are those, do those count as parallel universes?

• 35:34Brian Greene?

  They do. I mean, the key idea is that multi-universes, multi-universe theories don't come in a single flavor. There are various versions, and the one that you're referring to now-

• 35:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are competing theoretical ideas.

• 35:45Brian Greene?

  Oh, actually, some people think they're the same theory in disguise. Uh, you know, so in quantum mechanics, you have this idea that the equations only predict the probability for one outcome or another. Like, an electron has a 40% chance of being here, and 60% chance of being here. And the question is, when you measure the electron, you find it over here, what happened to the other possibility? And one of the notions that came out of the 1950s is that that other possibility is just as real as the one that you witnessed. It's simply taking place in another world, another universe, parallel to yours, and there's a version of you in that world, measuring that electron and seeing it at that position, thinking there's a unique outcome from your experiment, but you're completely wrong, because there are two of you, each having that thought. There are multiple worlds.

• 36:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Calm down, calm down. Calm down.

• 36:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was about to blow a gasket there.

• 36:35Brian Greene?

  That was awesome. That was awesome. The only way that could have been better is at the end of that little diatribe, you just went, "I'm Pickle Rick!"

• 36:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, if he just... Alright, alright. So...

• 36:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, now, where did we leave off on that?

• 36:57Speaker 02

  It seemed like he was about to slap Chuck.

• 36:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  He was getting very worked up.

• 37:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we're just trying to understand that the idea that you can leave this universe and enter another one without any special arrangements, it's just, there's a place and you disappear there. Do I need special black holes and wormholes and warps in the fabric of spacetime? Or can I just pry open a hole?

• 37:21Brian Greene?

  No, I think you do need all those gadgets you're referring to because, for instance, in the many worlds approach, you would still be in this universe. There would just be another version of you in that other universe. If you really want to disappear...

• 37:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're saying Schrodinger's cat is still alive somewhere?

• 37:35Brian Greene?

  In one universe, in this approach, Schrodinger's cat is alive, and another universe, Schrodinger's cat is dead. So each of the outcomes happen, they just happen in different places.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Talk to me about Elvis. Alive, dead, and what...

• 37:49Speaker 02

  That did not work, that joke. I'm gonna move on.

• 37:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you undo a fist bump? Is that possible?

• 37:55Speaker 02

  No, I'm down to one. Back down to one.

• 37:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you got docked one fist bump on that one.

• 38:00Speaker 02

  There's another universe where I now have three fist bumps.

• 38:09Speaker 02

  Sadly, not this one.

• 38:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Brian, holding aside your loaf of bread, the multiverse, whether or not they're lined up as low as a bread, we can still think of an infinite number of universes. And a lot of talk about, there's another universe where we're all in stage, but we're seeding in a different order, or I have a goatee which makes me evil, you know. So...

• 38:31Brian Greene?

  I've seen that episode.

• 38:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so, so, um, is there, is it plausible to imagine that in an infinite number of universes, everything is possible? Or, and I kind of want to end on this thought, I happen to know, I learned this early in life, that there are orders of infinity. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. And is the infinity of multiverses a large enough infinity to accommodate all possible variations in all outcomes of all molecules assembled as all life?

• 39:08Brian Greene?

  The answer is yes, according to the traditional interpretation.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  That is mind-blowing. It's inconceivable, almost, for the human brain.

• 39:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know.

• 39:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Or any of us, yes.

• 39:23Brian Greene?

  Yeah.

• 39:24Chuck Nice?

  However, there's another universe where it is under that obligation.

• 39:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what are you saying here?

• 39:34Brian Greene?

  Yeah, so, when you actually look at the quantum equations, the idea is that any possible configuration of the particles that's allowed by the laws of physics, which means it has a non-zero probability of happening, is represented in one of these worlds.

• 39:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If there's an infinite number of worlds.

• 39:50Brian Greene?

  There has to be an infinite number, and indeed, there are enough of them.

• 39:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you mean, "has to be"?

• 39:55Brian Greene?

  Because there are so many configurations of the particles that we wouldn't be able to accommodate it otherwise.

• 40:01Chuck Nice?

  Because otherwise, you would limit the configurations.

• 40:04Brian Greene?

  Yeah, you would. I mean, imagine if the universe goes on infinitely far, that's a real possibility in terms of space going infinitely far.

• 40:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The extension of the universe goes infinite.

• 40:11Brian Greene?

  Yeah, so we could, so we could have an infinite number of particles in this infinite expanse of space, and each of them has some configuration that's evolving through time. So, you have to be able to accommodate that if this math is the right way of doing things. Woo! Man!

• 40:27Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna tell you one thing, I don't smoke weed, but I'm a star.

• 40:47Brian Greene?

  I'm just happy to be here.

• 40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And now I am too.

• 40:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Brian, could you offer us some parting thoughts on what you would like to see treated more seriously or more authentically in the imagination of science fiction writers based on the physics that you know? For example, we had the film Interstellar, which made great attempts to represent black holes and wormholes and time dilation and the like. So, do you see more of that, or should we leave a little extra room there for people to make up what the hell they want?

• 41:24Brian Greene?

  Yeah, I'm a big fan of make up part of what you want, because ultimately, at least when I, on the one time that I've seen a film, you know, I just like it to wash over me. I don't sit there like I think perhaps you do, or maybe you don't. Where you're actually, you know, constantly, you know, judging the accuracy of what you're seeing. Just take me away, that's all I want to happen in these things. So I'm a little bit different perspective, I think. Did you not know there's no sound in space?

• 41:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, okay, so you can just, they can tell whatever.

• 41:59Brian Greene?

  Well, within reason.

• 42:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way-

• 42:01Brian Greene?

  No, no, let me qualify, let me qualify.

• 42:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, no.

• 42:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, I just want to say-

• 42:07Brian Greene?

  You're gonna let me qualify?

• 42:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I will. You were in a science fiction movie yourself, playing a professor.

• 42:12Brian Greene?

  That's true.

• 42:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you were in The Last Mimsy?

• 42:14Brian Greene?

  I was in The Last Mimsy.

• 42:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 42:17Brian Greene?

  Yes.

• 42:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't remember him in The Last Mimsy?

• 42:20Brian Greene?

  I'm trying, because I love-

• 42:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The little teddy bear had a chip in it that was very advanced, more advanced than anybody, and you went in and analyzed the chip. That was good. There's nobody who understands that.

• 42:30Brian Greene?

  Thank you.

• 42:34Brian Greene?

  But the actual way I would describe it is this: I'm willing to buy in to a fictional setting where whoever it is the writer makes up the rules. And if the rules are applied consistently and coherently, I'm willing to go along for the ride. What I can't stand is, when partway through, the rules change because it suits whatever narrative I'm holding.

• 42:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think we all agree on that. Right.

• 42:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll buy your rules, but stay consistent with them. Yeah, that works, that works. Let me see if I can offer some parting thoughts. I'll do so after. Do you have a final thought here?

• 43:09Speaker 02

  My final thought is, I'm not gonna say I'm just happy to be here. But thank you, seriously, for inviting me.

• 43:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not a final thought.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  No, it's not. My final thought is this, listening to a lot of the conversation and thinking about the multiverse and how inconceivable that is, it actually makes you appreciate how incredible and special this exact moment is and the exact life you're living is, because it is only here and is a trillion, trillion, trillion times other varieties of that in existence according to quantum physics. It just makes you really treasure and value how amazing your life is right now.

• 43:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 43:49Chuck Nice?

  Chuck?

• 43:52Chuck Nice?

  My, that was really cool, man.

• 43:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was beautiful.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  Except I'm not...

• 43:57Speaker 02

  It's the weed talking, yes.

• 43:59Chuck Nice?

  You know, my final thought on just the entire evening is the fact that isn't it wonderful to see that science and curiosity has reached a place where 3,000 people can convene in New York City in an arena to listen to two scientists talk about the possibilities and wonder that is indeed science, and because of people like you, I have faith that we may indeed be alright after all.

• 44:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Brian?

• 44:41Brian Greene?

  After that, I got nothing to add.

• 44:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got nothing? So, let me offer some brief reflections. It was the 1890s when Percival Lowell, a wealthy amateur astronomer who had enough money to build one of the finest telescopes ever in the world and put it on a mountaintop in Arizona, and his observatory is called Lowell Observatory. He, among other things, launched the search that discovered Pluto. Just so you know.

• 45:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's some Pluto lovers out there. Just get over it.

• 45:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't get me started. So, too soon? Too soon, okay. So, so, um, he believed he saw canals on Mars. And it's because he didn't understand Italian. There was an Italian astronomer who wrote that he may have seen channels on Mars with his telescope. And the word "channel" in Italian is "canale." So he reads this and says, "Oh, somebody sees canals on Mars, but I have the best telescope at the best location. Let me look, I bet I can see them better." And so he looks, and he thinks he sees canals on Mars. And if, a channel is different from a canal. Why?

• 46:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because a channel is just something that running water makes. A canal is something intelligently constructed. And he publishes books on this. First book was titled Mars. Next one, Mars and Its Canals. And he has maps of the surface of Mars with canals connecting nodes to the poles. We all know Mars has polar ice caps. Even when we will lose ours, Mars will still have its. So, these were canals, and he was imagining that these were cities that were losing their water supply. And they were melting the ice caps and bringing water in this huge irrigation system, redistributing water across its surface. This was published in the 1890s.

• 46:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Within a few years of this, H.G. Wells wrote War of the Worlds.

• 47:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Inspired by those observations, if there is life on Mars, I'm gonna write a story about it.

• 47:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna take our imagination to a new place. H.G. Wells was scientifically literate, and he had the imagination of any brilliant writer, that any brilliant writer should. So, when I see all of the storytelling that goes on, the stories that we celebrate here at Comic-Con, all dimensions of those stories, all the creativity from the writers, the producers. One of the most beautiful things for me about Comic-Con is, yes, you can bring in the actors, but the longest lines are gonna be the ones for the writers and the creative storytellers. Because you know, this audience knows that this is the source of that creativity. And so, so here we had, just within a couple of years,

• 47:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  a creative person, a creative person with the science literacy, create this terrifying story about Martians coming to Earth. I do not ever want to see an end to the creativity following the progress of science, giving us no end of stories to take us into the future so that we can have Comic-Cons until all the universes recollaps.

• 48:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that,

• 48:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like to, I like to think of that as a cosmic perspective. I wanna thank you all, New York Comic-Con, for coming out.

• 48:36Chuck Nice?

  Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson,

• 48:43Chuck Nice?

  and our panel. And give it up for the Murr, James Murr Murray,

• 48:51Chuck Nice?

  theoretical physicist Brian Greene.

• 48:57Chuck Nice?

  My name is Chuck Nice, thank you. And as always, we leave you with Dr. Tyson saying,

• 49:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Keep looking up.