Extended Classic – Cosmic Queries: Colonizing Mars

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice answer your Cosmic Queries about colonizing Mars. Now extended with more questions on militarizing space, the wild frontier of space law, planetary orbits, gravity, Pluto, the heliosphere, the Drake equation, Panspermia, and more. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio. Before we start this Cosmic Query episode, I'm going to answer one question from a Patreon supporter. If you haven't heard of it yet, Patreon is a crowdfunding platform where our fans can support us through monthly pledges. You can choose to pledge as little or as much as you want, and in return, you get access to things like VIP seats at StarTalk Live and meet and greets with the panel after the show. Also, exclusive interview footage, and in this case, our team selected one Cosmic Query question from a Patreon patron. I've not seen this question yet. It's waiting for me in my email on my computer. And when I open it, I'll answer it right here, right now. So here I go. Here comes the email.

• 1:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here it is, from Patreon supporter Brad O'Brien in Ottawa, Canada. Here it goes. "There are some obvious things to overcome when thinking about colonizing Mars or any planet with little or no atmosphere. I have some experience with remote mining operations, and mental health of being isolated is always a big issue. How important do you feel it would be to have a psychologist among the first settlers to deal with the emotional changes necessary for living apart from humanity?" Brett, that's a great question. I used to think that would be a big deal. And of course, yes, go ahead, send a psychologist. But I'm old enough to remember these episodes of The Twilight Zone,

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and many of these episodes came out right at the dawn of space travel or when people were talking about it. And there were multiple episodes that addressed the issue of loneliness, being alone in a capsule and possibly going crazy for having no contact with the rest of humanity. And I said, wow, this is gonna be a big challenge for these long voyages through space. And when I became an adult, I met people who'd be perfectly happy never talking to another human being for months and even years on end. Perfectly happy. All right? We call them hermits, or the people who just don't care about other people. You give them their book, give them a Netflix account, whatever. And so, so the isolation might not

• 2:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  be the problem for specially selected people. But perhaps the getting along with one another is where you would really need the psychologist. And by the way, NASA has an entire branch of itself at Johnson Space Center in Houston, where they concern themselves with the mental health of the astronauts. And so in support of that, the astronauts get, we learn what their comfort food is in advance, and they try to make that work in the menu. They also get a free access to, well, of course, it's free. They get to email someone that's on the ground. In fact, one of the American astronauts who was spending a long time on the space station, requested that I be his pen pal when he was up in space. And so they gave him my email address, and I had sort of private exchanges with, with one of the

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  astronauts, and he'd ask me questions about the universe. It was fun. So, yes, definitely send along a psychologist. But then, do the psychologists need psychologists? Thanks, Brad, for that question.

• 3:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And I'm here with my co-host, Chuck Nice. Yes. Hey, Neil. Chuck Nice Comic. That's right. At Chuck Nice Comic. Tweeting. Tweeting away. Love having you as my co-host. Love being here. I feel like I'm, I'm like in the hood when you come in. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

• 4:00Chuck Nice?

  I hope that hood has a zip code of nine oh two one oh. No.

• 4:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're different hoods, of course.

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So today, we're doing one of our many installments of Cosmic Queries.

• 4:14Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 4:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and as usual, I don't know anything about the question.

• 4:17Chuck Nice?

  No, you have not seen them.

• 4:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're called from our social media.

• 4:20Chuck Nice?

  That is correct.

• 4:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalkRadio.net and.

• 4:23Chuck Nice?

  Facebook and Twitter.

• 4:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Twitter. And so you just pluck them as you see them and put them on the table. If I don't know an answer, I will tell you.

• 4:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 4:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But actually, there hasn't yet been a question where I didn't know the answer.

• 4:35Chuck Nice?

  To be honest, there has not. You know, you and I have had this conversation where I said that I don't think, uh, I don't think anyone has ever stumped you.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's not the point.

• 4:45Chuck Nice?

  That is not the point.

• 4:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. It's not the point to stump me. But of course, we are soliciting questions on the universe.

• 4:51Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 4:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that is my expertise. So we shouldn't be surprised. However, maybe what I'm doing for some of the questions is answering a question that I know and sidestepping the one that was asked.

• 5:01Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 5:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you think I'm doing that?

• 5:02Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 5:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like politicians do that.

• 5:03Chuck Nice?

  Like, well, politicians do. Well, no, they, they don't even answer the question. They just actually make an entirely new question and then answer that.

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At least mine has got some relevance to it.

• 5:14Chuck Nice?

  At least yours is relevant. Uh, no, I don't think you're doing that, uh, because, uh, sometimes the answer is, we don't know yet.

• 5:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the answer.

• 5:22Chuck Nice?

  Right. So you're still, you're still like, you still know the answer because the answer is, we don't know yet.

• 5:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. It's not, so it's a we rather than an I.

• 5:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Okay.

• 5:30Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 5:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Let's, let's rock it. All right.

• 5:33Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there a theme? Is there?

• 5:35Chuck Nice?

  Let's see. This one is.

• 5:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I mean, it's a theme for all the questions today?

• 5:38Chuck Nice?

  Today, yes.

• 5:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. What's the theme?

• 5:39Chuck Nice?

  Uh, Mars.

• 5:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mars? Okay.

• 5:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 5:45Chuck Nice?

  Living. Living on Mars. So it's not just Mars, but there's something, some, some questions about the planet.

• 5:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's because we have all this data on what it is to live on Mars.

• 5:52Chuck Nice?

  That's right. Exactly.

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get dispatches from the colony that's there who'll give you full info on this.

• 5:59Chuck Nice?

  People watching too many red planet movies. That's what it is.

• 6:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, let's go for it.

• 6:03Chuck Nice?

  So here we go. All right. Um. This is, this is kind of, uh, this is from Nancy Lilling on Facebook who wants to know.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do we know where they're from? I love knowing where they're from.

• 6:14Chuck Nice?

  Um.

• 6:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No?

• 6:16Chuck Nice?

  Let me see here. Some of them say.

• 6:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 6:18Chuck Nice?

  A lot of them say not.

• 6:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, if you write in, I always like knowing where you're from.

• 6:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, just remember that, cuz.

• 6:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That way Chuck can make fun of your hometown.

• 6:25Chuck Nice?

  That is, absolutely.

• 6:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what comedians do, right?

• 6:28Chuck Nice?

  That's what we do. That's why comedians, people don't know this, but that's why comedians say, hey, so where you from? You know, that and the fact that I am out of material.

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's code for I'm out of material.

• 6:41Chuck Nice?

  I am done with material, or my material is not working. So hey, where you from? Okay. Alright, so Nancy Lilling comes to us from Facebook and she wants to know about garbage disposal in space.

• 6:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 6:55Chuck Nice?

  Because we clearly have a problem with garbage disposal here on Earth.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:01Chuck Nice?

  So what, how would trash or garbage be disposed of? And if not, what would it do?

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so here's the problem on Mars. If Mars is sterile, meaning it's got no life anywhere.

• 7:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not even microbes. If that's the case, and we go live on Mars, uh, normally, what do you do on Earth with your garbage?

• 7:19Chuck Nice?

  You throw it?

• 7:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we don't, we don't burn it anymore. What do we do?

• 7:21Chuck Nice?

  We put it in a landfill.

• 7:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we bury it. Alright, so you bury the, you bury it and eventually it decomposes. Okay?

• 7:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, now, what's doing the decomposing?

• 7:29Chuck Nice?

  Microbes, organisms.

• 7:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Organisms. And so, to be biodegradable means there's some biological action on your garbage that's turning it back into the soils from which it came. Okay, so if you are on Mars and you bury the garbage, it will stay that way forever.

• 7:47Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 7:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nothing decomposes.

• 7:48Chuck Nice?

  Nothing will decompose or break down because.

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, not from biological, I mean, it, there are certain molecules that won't last forever.

• 7:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But on the time scale that, just because of the, the, the, the quantum physics of molecular vibrations. I mean, it's a whole, it's their, their, right, that's a whole other.

• 8:06Chuck Nice?

  That's a whole nother thing.

• 8:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a whole nother thing. We can get, right.

• 8:08Chuck Nice?

  So, so the, my, actual molecular vibrations may cause the dissolution of some molecules.

• 8:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. And it's why, and the most stable form of an atom or molecule is when it's in the form of a crystal. And that's stable, and then it's not gonna, it, it.

• 8:23Chuck Nice?

  That's why diamonds don't forever.

• 8:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck picked up on that.

• 8:27Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, um, yeah, so unless every, unless all of your garbage is in crystalline form.

• 8:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, uh, it, it, the larger molecules could ultimately decay. But what you're really banking on is biodegradable, which would happen on a relatively short time scale. You know, years or decades, but not thousands of years. So you, you need another way to dispose of your garbage.

• 8:53Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. So it's basically you would just turn, so us living there would eventually turn Mars into a dump.

• 9:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Into a complete dump. That's correct.

• 9:03Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly right. And, and, and what does it mean for there to be fertilizer in the ground? It means, you know, there are microbes interacting. You'd have to create a whole biota.

• 9:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There. And you'd have to terraform Mars in advance before you did it.

• 9:16Chuck Nice?

  Before you could actually do that.

• 9:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, that's why.

• 9:17Chuck Nice?

  Or you could just dump your stuff on Pluto. It's not even a planet anymore, right? So we just take our trash from Mars and shoot it to Pluto.

• 9:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dump it on Pluto.

• 9:28Chuck Nice?

  Dump on Pluto.

• 9:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now here's, uh, now you might ask, I don't know if they did, but you could ask, why not just send all the garbage to the sun? That'd be the ideal disposal.

• 9:37Chuck Nice?

  Now, I can't believe you just said that.

• 9:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 9:39Chuck Nice?

  Because when I was a kid.

• 9:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 9:41Chuck Nice?

  And I was very disturbed by the commercials that I saw where there was an Indian who shed one single tear for all the trash that was polluting our earth.

• 9:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remember that commercial.

• 9:52Chuck Nice?

  Yes, and I would get so.

• 9:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Polluting the United States.

• 9:54Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly. Cause it, right. There are no Indians, except for in India, but they're different Indians.

• 10:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And back then, not that we're being, uh, insensitive, back then, the concept of Native American didn't quite kick in yet.

• 10:07Chuck Nice?

  No, not at all.

• 10:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was an Indian guy with a headdress.

• 10:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he saw humans, like Americans, gringos.

• 10:14Chuck Nice?

  Gringos, right.

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gringos throwing garbage out their window. And then he turned.

• 10:18Chuck Nice?

  He returned the camera.

• 10:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it was a tear.

• 10:20Chuck Nice?

  Right. Just one single tear streaming down his, his face.

• 10:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remember that.

• 10:23Chuck Nice?

  His non-Indian actor face.

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that what it was?

• 10:27Chuck Nice?

  Basically, yeah.

• 10:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, wasn't?

• 10:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, he wasn't an Indian. That guy was Italian.

• 10:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, don't tell me that.

• 10:33Chuck Nice?

  I'm not lying. I saw a whole, like, little mini documentary on how he was not an Indian.

• 10:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not even Indian.

• 10:39Chuck Nice?

  Or Native American. Not at all. He was an Italian guy that actually took on the entire persona. But anyway, I used to see that commercial and I would get...

• 10:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. The Clint Eastwood movies were all Italians, right? The spaghetti westerns?

• 10:53Chuck Nice?

  Spaghetti westerns.

• 10:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Playing Mexicans?

• 10:55Chuck Nice?

  Playing Mexicans.

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Italians, they got a thing going?

• 10:57Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah. You know what it is? Because they're white enough to be white, but yet somehow olive enough to play somebody else.

• 11:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, because from northern to southern Italy, you got the whole spectrum.

• 11:07Chuck Nice?

  They got the spectrum.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, to the Mediterranean ones, to the northern ones?

• 11:11Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, so, you know, Hollywood was just like, hmm, we can't actually use a Native American. Get me an Italian guy.

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so your point was about this commercial?

• 11:24Chuck Nice?

  I would fantasize as a kid from seeing this commercial about putting all the trash in the world in a rocket and shooting it into the sun and it would burn up before it ever even reached the sun.

• 11:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, that's what would happen. That's correct. You lose your rocket too, yeah. So, so, yeah, if it's close enough to burn the trash, you're burning the rocket.

• 11:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so this, this great brilliant geeky idea you had as a kid, the problem is it costs a lot of energy.

• 11:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Money and energy and rocket fuel just to do that.

• 12:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's not quite, you know, no.

• 12:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not cost effective.

• 12:05Chuck Nice?

  Because first of all, it takes so much fuel just to get the rocket off the ground.

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to get it the hell off of Earth.

• 12:10Chuck Nice?

  Right, so let alone all the garbage that would have to be in the rocket.

• 12:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right now, it's $10,000 a pound and if we, to put anything just into orbit, forget about even leaving Earth. So, is your garbage worth $10,000?

• 12:25Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 12:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think not.

• 12:27Chuck Nice?

  Yes, and that is why you ended up being an astrophysicist and I ended up being a comic. All right. Well, that was great. Fascinating stuff. Who knew we would get all that out of some trash?

• 12:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't mean to beat up the whole segment here, but.

• 12:42Chuck Nice?

  Awesome.

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 12:43Chuck Nice?

  Okay. All right, here we go. Uh, this is from Tanner Thompson. Tanner doesn't tell us where he's coming from, but uh.

• 12:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, are you pronouncing these people's names right?

• 12:50Chuck Nice?

  Uh, well, I don't think I'm screwing up Tanner Thompson.

• 12:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did I tell you where I was when someone said, I love it when Chuck mispronounces the names? Did I hear it? Somebody said that?

• 12:58Chuck Nice?

  Somebody said that. Well, I'm glad somebody loves it, because believe me, it is not gonna stop happening. It will continue to happen. I'm awful at it. But then I saw that Bob Schiefer is bad at it too, so I feel better about it. All right, so Tanner Thompson says this, "We should already be jettisoning garbage into the sun." Oh, I'm sorry. You know what? Forget this question. Sorry Tanner, we just answered your question.

• 13:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, well, how did he word it?

• 13:24Chuck Nice?

  He put like this, he was like, "I'm sure we can streamline the process." He was talking about cost effectiveness. "I'm sure we can streamline the process, given some experimentation to make it cost effective." I think you just told us that that's not the case.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there'll be another reason, just what I didn't make clear.

• 13:39Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 13:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Earth is in orbit around the sun. We are not, we are not falling straight towards the sun. We are in orbit around the sun.

• 13:47Chuck Nice?

  An elliptical orbit too.

• 13:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Indeed. Okay, you're showing off now.

• 13:52Chuck Nice?

  Don't do that while I'm drinking.

• 13:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, don't do any spit laughs while you're there. And so you, in order to send something towards the sun, you have to undo Earth's orbital speed, so that it has no orbital speed at all, and then it falls straight in.

• 14:09Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have to reverse move it against the orbit of the Earth.

• 14:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're going around the sun, uh, what is it, 18 miles per second, something like that?

• 14:20Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Last I checked.

• 14:21Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty fast.

• 14:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's fast. 18 miles a second. So take your garbage, launch it 18 miles a second backwards.

• 14:26Chuck Nice?

  Backwards.

• 14:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it'll just fall into the sun.

• 14:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh my God. So the answer is, this is never gonna happen.

• 14:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have to value your garbage so much to wanna do this to it.

• 14:37Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 14:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 14:38Chuck Nice?

  Oh, well, then, hey, Tanner, I take it back. That was actually, um, a useful question. We got a little more insight, so we appreciate it.

• 14:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The solution is make biodegradable stuff or stuff that will degrade under ultraviolet light.

• 14:51Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and on Mars, there's a

• 14:53Chuck Nice?

  There's a

• 14:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  flow of ultraviolet light.

• 14:55Chuck Nice?

  There's a ton of that up there.

• 14:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't have an ozone layer to protect them.

• 14:57Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 14:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this ultraviolet light's coming from the sun. Ultraviolet light is higher energy than other kinds of light. Enough energy to break apart molecules if you make the molecules the right way.

• 15:06Chuck Nice?

  So if you were able to, you know, create a facility where you could mag- maybe magnify or just focus the ultraviolet light, you might be able to just break that

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could tear up the garbage, something good.

• 15:16Chuck Nice?

  Nice. All right.

• 15:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it'd be, uh, UV degradable rather than just

• 15:20Chuck Nice?

  Instead of biodegradable, UV degradable?

• 15:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:23Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yeah, that sounds almost like Ebonics. UV degradable.

• 15:30Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no, that's UB degradable? Excuse me?

• 15:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, correct that, Ebonics.

• 15:34Chuck Nice?

  Correct that, Ebonics? That's not UV degradable, UB degradable. All right, enough of that.

• 15:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here we go. I haven't heard Ebonics in like thirty years.

• 15:43Chuck Nice?

  I know. I'm bringing it back.

• 15:47Chuck Nice?

  All right. Uh, this is from, uh, John Huggins. John wants to know, in preparing to go to Mars, are there or will there be a need to be international treaties that dictate the governance of Mars? If yes, that would be the, what would be the key aspects of those treaties? In other words, uh, do we have a, first of all, we've been on the moon, so I'm sure there's something that governs that.

• 16:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not really, yeah.

• 16:15Chuck Nice?

  No, not really.

• 16:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, no, governs it, it says that you can't own cosmic objects. Yeah, so the inter space, the outer space treaty has provisions in it that says that the universe is a frontier.

• 16:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you can't own it, you can't, there's, there's no sovereign control over it. Now, at some point, that's gonna have to change.

• 16:33Chuck Nice?

  Right, because we have Vladimir Putin now.

• 16:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You go to Mars and people start pitching their flag and they build a home, well, you can't say that no one owns the home, I built the damn home.

• 16:43Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 16:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what is likely, or rather, what is, has been Proposed is that you put a homesteading kind of rule in place.

• 16:51Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 16:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The homesteading is if you paid the money to get there and you built your own damn house, that's your land.

• 16:57Chuck Nice?

  So Bill Gates will be owning Mars, basically is what you just told me.

• 17:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just the rich.

• 17:02Chuck Nice?

  Yes, Bill Gates and Richard Branson.

• 17:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, they kind of do that. Richard Branson owns his own island, right? They're kind of already doing that.

• 17:10Chuck Nice?

  Already do that.

• 17:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, but what it means is on that island, he hires servants and gardeners and everything. So there's a business case for people to do this.

• 17:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And why did the United States promote homesteading? To spread the frontier, to move the frontier and and this is how you grow cities and communities. And so it's it will, I'm thinking it'll go that route. Cause don't say, well, Earth, we own all little patches of this speck called Earth, but the whole universe, no one owns it. I I don't see that as the natural consequence of human exploration.

• 17:42Chuck Nice?

  Or human nature.

• 17:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or that's what I really meant to say.

• 17:46Chuck Nice?

  Cause the real deal is from the time that we are little teeny kids, the first, one of the first words we say or sentences is, that's mine. That's mine. That's mine.

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even when it's not yours, it's yours. Right. And and and especially in America, what's the the, one of the first games we learn how to play when we know how to play any good game? It's Monopoly.

• 18:07Chuck Nice?

  That's so true.

• 18:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And who wins? The one who has all the property.

• 18:12Chuck Nice?

  Game's not over until I win it all.

• 18:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, I own everything and you have nothing. Right.

• 18:17Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God.

• 18:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Talk about, talk about.

• 18:20Chuck Nice?

  We celebrate that. And we say, wow, you were good.

• 18:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is like the height of capitalism.

• 18:27Chuck Nice?

  God, you crushed me. I'm a complete and utter pauper now.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was.

• 18:32Chuck Nice?

  You're good.

• 18:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I was in graduate school, there was a fellow graduate student who was from Russia.

• 18:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I was describing Monopoly to him. And when I got to that point, and the winner has all the money and all the property. And I thought, wow, this is, this is like before the Cold War ended.

• 18:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And it was like, it was not playing well in his.

• 18:50Chuck Nice?

  No, cause he was looking at you like you're capitalist bitch.

• 18:55Chuck Nice?

  Cause that's basically, wow. I never looked at it that way, but that's a, whoa.

• 19:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, let me tell my favorite Monopoly joke. It was by, um, what's the dude's name from Boston who's kind of surreal?

• 19:08Chuck Nice?

  Steven Wright?

• 19:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Steven Wright, yeah. So he said.

• 19:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, I'm, I'm angry that only one company makes the game.

• 19:20Chuck Nice?

  That's a good joke.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not good.

• 19:22Chuck Nice?

  That's a good joke. That's, I love the irony of it. All right, let's move on to, okay, here we go. Joseph Magalanes.

• 19:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just keep, just keep trying.

• 19:33Chuck Nice?

  Joseph Magalanes.

• 19:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sure.

• 19:37Chuck Nice?

  Joseph says.

• 19:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anything you say, Chuck.

• 19:40Chuck Nice?

  Yes. Joseph says, greetings. Will we be able to one day grow vegetation outside the conventional greenhouse on Mars? If so, how long would it take and what would we need to do to make it so?

• 19:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I, I, I don't claim myself to be a botanist or an expert on this, but let me tell you what I know as a physicist.

• 19:59Chuck Nice?

  As a physicist.

• 20:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so plants require carbon dioxide. That's what they take in. And the carbon that's in there becomes fundamental to their, to their molecular structures.

• 20:10Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 20:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the lignin and all, it's what, that's why tree can grow.

• 20:13Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 20:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? It's not taking soil and turning soil into a tree.

• 20:17Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 20:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

• 20:19Chuck Nice?

  And using photosynthesis to turn it, and then releasing oxygen as the byproduct.

• 20:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the oxygen is its waste.

• 20:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we, and then other animals thrive on that waste.

• 20:29Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 20:30Chuck Nice?

  So basically, people, you're breathing in the earth's poop.

• 20:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, you're.

• 20:34Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that's what you're doing.

• 20:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're, you're breathing their, their belches.

• 20:37Chuck Nice?

  Their belches.

• 20:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, cuz it's gaseous.

• 20:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's true, cuz it's gases.

• 20:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's gas. We have solid, liquid, and gas.

• 20:41Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 20:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Effluences.

• 20:43Chuck Nice?

  So, yeah, you're breathing, the earth belches, you breathe it in.

• 20:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, just like honey is bee barf, I've heard it called.

• 20:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, so Mars, Mars's atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide.

• 20:55Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 20:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's got the carbon dioxide, very thin.

• 20:58Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's mostly carbon dioxide. So what you need is nutrients in the soil.

• 21:03Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 21:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it needs the nutrients to then enable all of its chemical processes to occur. So it might, oh, but we have to watch out because of the heavy duty ultraviolet light coming in.

• 21:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ultraviolet is hostile to molecular, to, to, to, to biochemistry.

• 21:20Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just hot. So in other words, the, the, the, the photon of ultraviolet light comes in and it sees a, a, an organic molecule. And it just zaps it.

• 21:27Chuck Nice?

  Zaps it.

• 21:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Breaks it apart.

• 21:28Chuck Nice?

  So, so you would need a filter for that?

• 21:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A filter, a UV filter and so, and toss in some nutrients.

• 21:35Chuck Nice?

  Some nutrients in the soil.

• 21:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I think the, the, the CO2 might be enough to keep, it won't go grow fast.

• 21:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause it's very thin, but it, it's gonna enjoy the CO2.

• 21:43Chuck Nice?

  Nice. So it is possible.

• 21:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you do that, then out comes the oxygen and then you wait long enough and this is the beginning of terraforming.

• 21:50Chuck Nice?

  Right. And then, then the cycle, then that's when the cycle happens.

• 21:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got it.

• 21:54Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that's sweet.

• 21:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, I blathered for that whole segment. We only got like two or three questions answered. I'm sorry.

• 21:59Chuck Nice?

  No, it's great.

• 22:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, maybe I'll speed up my answers and we'll get more of the questions coming through on StarTalk. Stay tuned.

• 22:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk.

• 22:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your personal astrophysicist. I don't know if you know, I serve as the director of the Hayden Planetarium right here in New York City, which is a wholly owned subdivision of the American Museum of Natural History. And Chuck is here with me in studio.

• 22:27Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I am.

• 22:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck Nice.

• 22:28Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 22:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're a cosmic queries edition of StarTalk.

• 22:31Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 22:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Going to Mars. And if I don't know an answer, I'll just say, I don't know, but.

• 22:36Chuck Nice?

  That's not gonna happen. Let's be for real.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, bring it on.

• 22:39Chuck Nice?

  Yes, that's not gonna happen.

• 22:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bring it on.

• 22:41Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Uh.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question.

• 22:44Chuck Nice?

  Next check. Okay. So this is somebody who wants to know about the atmosphere and the gravity on Mars. But I love the way that Steven Matlow, uh, phrases this question somewhat inventive.

• 22:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this came over which, which path?

• 22:58Chuck Nice?

  This came over Facebook.

• 23:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:00Chuck Nice?

  And he says, okay, Neil. When the New York Yankees play a road series against the Mars cosmos.

• 23:11Chuck Nice?

  How big will the outfield have to be to prevent everybody from hitting home runs? Also, will the pitcher throw faster in the atmosphere or slower? And will he or she, this guy's very liberal.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice.

• 23:27Chuck Nice?

  He's got a female pitcher in the major league. Interstellar.

• 23:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interplanetary.

• 23:34Chuck Nice?

  Interplanetary, not interstellar, interplanetary baseball league. Will, will he or she be able to throw a curve ball? And he, um, take it back, Steven is coming from Livingston, Montana.

• 23:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Livingston, Montana.

• 23:47Chuck Nice?

  Yes. Yes, flat country.

• 23:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, here's something.

• 23:50Chuck Nice?

  Guy never seen a mountain in his life.

• 23:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why it's called Montana.

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I was in Montana recently. I gave a talk in Bozeman, Montana.

• 24:03Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 24:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep. Six thousand people.

• 24:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 24:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Showed up for it.

• 24:07Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 24:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know that many people lived in Montana.

• 24:10Chuck Nice?

  I think you had the entire state there, to be honest. And by the way, I was joking about, uh, mountains, because there are mountains in Montana.

• 24:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why it's called Montana.

• 24:17Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, Mo.

• 24:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's big sky.

• 24:19Chuck Nice?

  Big sky.

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's big sky, but yeah, there are mountains in Montana.

• 24:21Chuck Nice?

  But, uh, go ahead. Uh, so here's this question.

• 24:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got the question. I remember it. You read it. I got it. I have good memory.

• 24:29Chuck Nice?

  Excuse me?

• 24:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have an awesome memory from three minutes ago.

• 24:32Chuck Nice?

  I know.

• 24:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, um, a couple of things don't change and other things do.

• 24:38Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 24:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The pitcher does not throw faster because that's just their musculoskeletal capacity to do so.

• 24:44Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 24:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The ball will not slow down as much between release of the fingertip and crossing home plate. Because the air is thinner. And there's air resistance to the ball.

• 24:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That slows it down. I don't know, maybe 10 miles an hour or five, whatever it is, five miles an hour. It's not traveling for very long, so it, but it will slow down a little bit. It does that in the majors. Uh, it will do that on Mars, but it'll slow down by a little bit less.

• 25:10Chuck Nice?

  A little bit less.

• 25:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's not the major thing going on here. The Martian atmosphere is very thin. It's like 1% of our thickness. And it's the air. The movement of the ball through the air that enables it to curve.

• 25:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So curve balls would be very hard on Mars.

• 25:27Chuck Nice?

  Because you don't have the air or the thickness of the air.

• 25:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The thickness of the air.

• 25:31Chuck Nice?

  For those, those, what do they call it, stitches?

• 25:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stitches, yes.

• 25:35Chuck Nice?

  Right, is that what they call?

• 25:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that what they call the stitches on a ball?

• 25:38Chuck Nice?

  The stitches?

• 25:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They call it stitches.

• 25:40Chuck Nice?

  The stitches? Do they call the stitches on the ball a stitches?

• 25:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 25:44Chuck Nice?

  But, you know, that's what's causing that rotation.

• 25:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it, it assists it. Even if it didn't have stitches, you still have some, you could still move it, right?

• 25:51Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really? Okay, but.

• 25:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The stitches help it, definitely.

• 25:54Chuck Nice?

  But without the, the thickness of the air, you can't get that movement?

• 25:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, you don't get as much movement.

• 25:59Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 25:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't get as much movement. Now, it is windy on Mars, so you could throw an awesome knuckleball.

• 26:06Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 26:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause knuckleballs don't rotate, and so they're not stable moving through the air.

• 26:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rotating things are stabilized.

• 26:12Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, you know, that's why football's, a rotating football is stable.

• 26:16Chuck Nice?

  Spinning.

• 26:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spinning, okay. So, uh, a knuckleball does not spin, therefore it is susceptible to any possible puff of air that comes across its path.

• 26:25Chuck Nice?

  So you could use a, a windy day knuckleball to create the, the, the effect of a curve ball?

• 26:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, yeah, but it, it'll, it'll curve in a way that you can't predict, and that's why catchers are always dropping knuckleballs. Cause they don't know where the hell the, the, you know, the ball's jiggling and wiggling and, and it comes in, and so, uh, the number of pass balls, pass knuckleballs by a, by a catcher is huge relative to other pitchers.

• 26:53Chuck Nice?

  Cause it's a surprise ball.

• 26:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a surprise ball for everybody.

• 26:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even the pitcher. A curve ball, the catcher calls for the curve ball, so they know where.

• 27:00Chuck Nice?

  He knows what he's doing.

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they know where it's coming. So, so those are.

• 27:03Chuck Nice?

  This is what I love, this is what I love about you, man. I mean this, I, I swear to God. See, th- this is what's great. We're talking about baseball on Mars, but yet you know all this crap about baseball. Well, cause how does this happen?

• 27:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you know what it is? It's not like, I mean, but I like, who does, I'm, I'm a red-blooded American. I like me some baseball and hot dogs, okay? And apple pie.

• 27:24Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 27:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just start there.

• 27:25Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now the rest of it is just cause I go to a baseball game and I'm curious about it. Like, I just ask questions of the game and of myself relevant to the game.

• 27:34Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 27:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, for example, I say to myself, suppose you're hit by a pitch on ball four.

• 27:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ought to be able to go to second base.

• 27:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 27:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. I'm just saying. Yeah, true. I'm just saying. No, that makes sense when you think about it. I'm just, these are the kind of questions I asked about the game. That's very funny, yeah. So, uh, now, uh. We gotta get that rule in baseball. That's awesome. Okay, so now, uh, how far, how big a stadium would you have to make? Martian gravity is about forty percent of Earth's gravity. Okay. So if you weigh a hundred pounds on Earth, you weigh forty pounds on, or thirty-eight pounds on Mars. Gotcha. So two hundred pounds, you weigh eighty pounds, which is great because the muscles that you have for carrying a two hundred pound body, uh, will now be operating in an eighty pound body. So you'd be able to jump higher. Okay? Yeah. You'd be able, yeah, so there's, so maybe you'd make the infield a little bigger because you'd be leaping,

• 28:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  uh, you know, you'd have to sort of adjust that. There'd be some trial and error on this to get the ideal field size. Now, when you hit a home run, the ball is doing two things. It's going forward and it's going upwards. Right. Okay? And then it finishes going upwards and then it starts coming downwards while it's still going forwards. Right. Each of those have a different effect, okay? How far you, how fast you can hit the thing going forward has nothing to do with being on Mars. Okay. That's just how, how fast did you swing it back? That's your, that's your swing strength. It's your swing strength. Now, the Mars, the ball going up, okay? The same force will have the ball go higher. Correct. Than on Earth, which means it will travel farther simply because it'll go higher. Right. All right, and so you gotta do the ma, I haven't done the math on that.

• 29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, yeah. I don't have, if I were to guess, uh, you know, make it forty percent bigger. I mean, just as. Oh, yeah, as a general rule. Just a first cut. Just a first cut. And probably if I do the math, there are some adjustments in there. Right. So a four hundred dead center field, a forty percent greater than that would be a hundred and sixty more feet. And, is that right? Yeah, four times, yeah, a hundred and sixty more feet. So it'd be five hundred and sixty feet dead center. Right. Just to recreate the same likelihood of a. Likelihood of a home run. Now, now, now, that means outfield is huge. Right. Which means you gotta have some fast outfielders. That is true. You might have to add two more outfielders to it. Yeah, that's. Because it, it fans out from home plate. Right.

• 29:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you, if it's, if it's five hundred and sixty dead center, you know, you're, you're gonna be missing a lot of balls. Yeah. Be like Little League, you add a fourth outfielder.

• 30:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You might need two more outfielders. Dude, that's amazing. And, and a shoestring catch would be awesome.

• 30:14Chuck Nice?

  Because you would jump and you just keep going.

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just keep going.

• 30:17Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Just out of the stadium.

• 30:21Chuck Nice?

  Into the locker room. What a catch and he's in the showers. That's fantastic, man. Hey, Steven, what a fascinating question.

• 30:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 30:30Chuck Nice?

  That was great. Great, great, great stuff. All right, let's, um...

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, I don't know if I'd call him the Martian Cosmos. Why not call him like the Martian... Uh, there's gotta be a better name for it than just Cosmos. Plus, uh, you know, finally, uh, the World Series would apply to something other than the United States.

• 30:50Chuck Nice?

  The Mars Reds.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Reds.

• 30:52Chuck Nice?

  We have the Cincinnati Reds.

• 30:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 30:54Chuck Nice?

  How about the Mars Reds?

• 30:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mars are much more justifiably called the Reds.

• 30:57Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 30:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. You know where the red color comes from? It comes from rust on the Martian surface.

• 31:02Chuck Nice?

  Is that just... Why is it iron oxidation?

• 31:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oxidized iron, yeah. Yeah, so the Mars Reds would be good.

• 31:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, the Mars Reds, there you go. Yeah, can't wait to buy tickets to that game.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bring oxygen, buddy.

• 31:15Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 31:18Chuck Nice?

  All right. All right, this is from Mike Drawz.

• 31:24Chuck Nice?

  Dude, don't ask me. Come on.

• 31:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go on, go on.

• 31:27Chuck Nice?

  My question pertains to the potential human offspring on Mars. Has there been any research done regarding a child's physical development in an environment so different than ours? Even if we managed to terraform Mars, we'd still be living in, uh, different gravitational conditions. What would that do?

• 31:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so our body ha- has evolved for Earth gravity.

• 31:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's interesting, and I don't think we have the answer to this, is if you're born in forty percent gravity and you spend your whole life in that gravity and you come back to Earth.

• 31:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Will the body say, "Oh, thanks, I'm back to my own one-g force." And, or will it say, "Whoa, this is not good."

• 32:07Chuck Nice?

  This is terrible.

• 32:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is terrible. Now, we ca-

• 32:09Chuck Nice?

  I'm crushing under my own weight.

• 32:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We kinda do that when you send an astronaut in zero g for a year and they come back to Earth.

• 32:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we already know the effects of lower gravity, your bone density drops and other things. And then they come back to earth and they don't die. On the spot, right, you know, so, so it might, might not be as bad as you think.

• 32:28Chuck Nice?

  But now with that change, I mean, this is a, a biological question.

• 32:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 32:33Chuck Nice?

  But with that change over time through adaptation, so that, so we come back to earth after being in zero G. And your body always seeks an equilibrium.

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 32:43Chuck Nice?

  So that's why we go back.

• 32:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, uh, I gotta straight something out. Right, right, right, straighten something out right here. Uh, life does not adapt.

• 32:53Chuck Nice?

  Uh-oh.

• 32:56Chuck Nice?

  Uh-oh. Wait a minute, hold on for a second.

• 32:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no life form ever adapted to anything.

• 33:02Chuck Nice?

  Okay, see, now I have to see, my whole mind is going blank because I gotta change the way I think about everything right now.

• 33:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Adaption implies that you're in one environment and then you go to another one and then you're physiologically adapt to it.

• 33:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 33:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That no, that so does not happen. What happens is, in the genetic variation of any generation.

• 33:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some people have certain properties that others don't, okay?

• 33:29Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 33:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. You go into a new environment and everyone does, who does not have the properties to survive, dies. They are summarily removed from the gene pool and the one person who had that property in advance.

• 33:44Chuck Nice?

  In advance.

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Survives.

• 33:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they, so therefore they did not adapt.

• 33:48Chuck Nice?

  Right, they were fit to survive.

• 33:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In that environment, correct.

• 33:52Chuck Nice?

  They were the fittest of survival.

• 33:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. And so when the word adaptation, it's true in the broad sense of a species.

• 34:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But there's no active adaptation ever going on, at all. So you go to Mars and, you know, you might grow accustomed to it, but you're not gonna come bi- biogenetically adapted to it.

• 34:13Chuck Nice?

  Right, you're not gonna come back with three fingers and antennae.

• 34:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you needed that on Mars.

• 34:17Chuck Nice?

  Right, unless you came there with that.

• 34:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you started out. Send, send the three fingered, antennated people to Mars, they'll be just fine.

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fantastic. Alright. Yeah. So, well, we got 10 seconds left here. So, let me add something else to this. Go ahead. So, it could be that on Mars, our kind of people fail. You don't mean black people? No, no. Thank God. Thank God. No, regular, quote, regular humans. Right. As we currently know ourselves, doesn't work out well on Mars, but someone gives birth to a kind of human that can breathe a different mixture of oxygen, or, you know, a variation that is just natural in what goes on. And then they become the dominant strain of the human species there. That's how you end up speciating. Right. Cause then they have a variation that's even better, and even better, and even better.

• 35:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, these are genetic mutations. It's not an adaptation. It's a genetic mutation. Correct. That happens to be able to be good for that environment. And then you run it through, and then others die off, and then you have just speciated the human race. Sweet. Yeah. And this is how you get all the weirdest frickin' creatures in Australia. Really? Yes. That's why you have like marsupials and pouches. I thought you were gonna say on Star Trek. No. In Australia, it's an, Australia is a continent island that hasn't touched mainland in, in, in millions of years. And the creatures just do their thing. That's so funny. So, you have a, a species that is a mammal where the baby is born outside of the womb, and then crawls up into the pouch.

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then, and then you have the duck-billed platypus that lays eggs, but it's a mammal. Right. That's how weird stuff happens. Sweet. We gotta, we'll come back to StarTalk. More Cosmic Questions with Chuck Nice.

• 36:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk.

• 36:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck Nice there. Yes, I am. You're helping with Cosmic Queries?

• 36:19Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we are.

• 36:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All our listeners send in questions and they get solicited and this topic this week is...

• 36:26Chuck Nice?

  Mars!

• 36:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mars, going to Mars, hanging out on Mars.

• 36:29Chuck Nice?

  Living on Mars.

• 36:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got a few answers there, I think. Am I doing okay?

• 36:33Chuck Nice?

  I think you're doing great. I gotta tell you, this has been fascinating. The whole baseball thing. When I read the question, I was like, okay, maybe we'll get something. That was amazing.

• 36:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, but, okay, now someone who just tuned in now, now they can't go back.

• 36:45Chuck Nice?

  Well, you know what? That's why you should listen to the whole show.

• 36:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 36:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Make people feel bad about tuning in late.

• 36:51Chuck Nice?

  Don't tune in in the middle of the show. Stop that. Alright.

• 36:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We talked about baseball on Mars.

• 36:56Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we did. So back the show up and listen, okay?

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 37:00Chuck Nice?

  Alright, here's the deal. Let's go to Tony Williams, and the only reason I'm reading his question...

• 37:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you can pronounce the man's name, right?

• 37:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tony Williams.

• 37:10Chuck Nice?

  No, he starts it off this, "Hey Chuck, over here."

• 37:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He knew it was gonna be you.

• 37:15Chuck Nice?

  How funny is that?

• 37:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's good.

• 37:17Chuck Nice?

  "Hey Chuck, over here."

• 37:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pronounce my name, Chuck.

• 37:19Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Would it be more practical to send inflatable habitats, or artificial habitats, or send a large-scale 3D printer to make the habitats? In other words, how do you build your habitat on Mars?

• 37:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so I think initially you want to send the habitats ahead.

• 37:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you get people there who can, and then, you know, ship the ingredients for a 3D printer. And I think the 3D printer comes later. That's what I think.

• 37:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't want the first thing the 3D printer makes is your housing.

• 37:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't want to test it on your housing, right?

• 38:00Chuck Nice?

  You know, it's kinda drafty in here, in this Mars house.

• 38:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm thinking, you want to go there with a known hab module, habitat module.

• 38:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, later on, by the way, you could, I can't imagine life on another planet without a 3D printer. Suppose something breaks. A fan blade, or a circuit board, or... And you just dial it up on the 3D printer and you put... You pour in the right ingredients. Is it silicon dioxide? Is it... Um, is it's, you know, some other ingredient to make, is it metals of some kind, iron, steel, whatever. And then it prints it out and then you've got your tools.

• 38:35Chuck Nice?

  So then all you have to transport is your ingredients.

• 38:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ingredients.

• 38:38Chuck Nice?

  You don't have to transport the actual stuff.

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your raw ingredients. And I saw a, they didn't call it a 3D printer, but that's what it was. It's, it's called an In situ resource utilization machine at NASA.

• 38:49Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 38:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. It has more syllables. So the I S R U, right.

• 38:52Chuck Nice?

  Which means it's good.

• 38:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which means it's way better than stuff with fewer syllables.

• 38:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in that you pour in aluminum dust and it takes it and it fuses it by laser into the shape that the CAD drawing tells it to make.

• 39:07Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so they may, I, that's why I have examples of this at home. I have, I have a screen. I have a fan blade. I have all these shapes that are not even symmetric.

• 39:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there it is. So yeah, uh, that's, I think that's the future.

• 39:21Chuck Nice?

  So send the habitat and then make sure the next thing you bring is a 3D printer.

• 39:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With raw ingredients.

• 39:27Chuck Nice?

  With raw ingredients.

• 39:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 39:28Chuck Nice?

  So you can make every, who knew that we would actually have replicators like Star Trek? That Gene Roddenberry was a genius.

• 39:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On many levels. That's correct.

• 39:38Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 39:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In many dimensions.

• 39:39Chuck Nice?

  That is unbelievable. All right, man. Hey, Tony Williams, that was a very, very good question. All right. Uh, this is Nate Owens.

• 39:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you spell that?

• 39:49Chuck Nice?

  O W N S, uh, Z. O W N Z.

• 39:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Owens, yeah, yeah. Okay. All right.

• 39:54Chuck Nice?

  What do you own, Nate? Uh, my last name. So.

• 40:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where is he from anywhere? Where's he from?

• 40:02Chuck Nice?

  Uh, Nate is not.

• 40:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Here's what you do. If they don't see where they're from, say, this is from Earth.

• 40:07Chuck Nice?

  Okay. This is Nate Owens from Earth.

• 40:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 40:09Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Dr. Tyson, with the financial cost of going to Mars being so high, what are some of the advantages of this mission over sending, uh, a dozen other missions to find life on the moons of Jupiter or Saturn? Why is Mars more important or less important or equally important as Jupiter or Saturn, whose moons we think may have life?

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you're only going to explore, then we're sending robots and the robots to Mars are a couple. A couple hundred million dollars. That's actually cheap in the big scale of of space exploration. What when we say Mars is expensive, we're not talking about sending rovers. We're talking about sending people. That's what's expensive. You know why? Cause the people generally wanna come back.

• 40:48Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 40:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, and so and they wanna eat and not die while they're there.

• 40:53Chuck Nice?

  Those selfish bastards. Always thinking up. That's all you think about.

• 40:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's where the half a trillion dollar costs come out. So if you only quote only exploring the solar system, you take you get robots to do that. And yeah, the the mission to Mars with a large robot is about the same as a mission to Jupiter with a medium or small sized robot. To Europa or Io or Enceladus. Yeah, yeah. No, not celibate.

• 41:22Chuck Nice?

  Enceladus. That's the planet I'm on.

• 41:27Chuck Nice?

  Been married seventeen years.

• 41:30Chuck Nice?

  I'm in celibus. That's my planet. Go ahead.

• 41:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, so yeah, so that's not that's not the issue. Yeah. So if you wanna send people, theirs were the expenses.

• 41:45Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so now what is more important? Is it more important to to explore these moons that, you know, either through, you know, the gravitational pull or through, you know, the fact that they have these oceans?

• 41:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a great question.

• 41:59Chuck Nice?

  What's more important?

• 42:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you design a mission, you have to, you kind of need to know in advance what questions you want the robot to be asking.

• 42:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. When I say robots, I mean space probes, alright? And I don't mean like humanoid robots. In fact, why would anyone make a robot in the shape of a human? We're not the most efficient way to move, to think,

• 42:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  to, so give me something that works, right?

• 42:22Chuck Nice?

  Because you want it to look like you. It makes you feel better.

• 42:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, yeah, no. I never felt that way.

• 42:28Chuck Nice?

  No? Okay. You know, I mean, cause then it's like your child. It's like, you know, it's harder to dismantle your baby.

• 42:37Chuck Nice?

  At least it should be.

• 42:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Alright, I didn't finish that. Okay.

• 42:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so the real cost is sending humans and uh but with a robot if you want to uh explore the rings of Saturn or the magnetic field or the the radiation levels or the volcanoes that are on some of these moons, you gotta know in advance what package of experiments you're gonna put together on it. And I my colleagues, they they live for that.

• 43:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, cuz they're planetary astronomers. I'm I'm an extragalactic guy.

• 43:10Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 43:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I worry about galaxies.

• 43:11Chuck Nice?

  Galaxies, yeah.

• 43:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they do planets.

• 43:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, man, he's go ahead and do your planets.

• 43:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do your planets.

• 43:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm worried about bigger things, you know what I mean? Worried about galaxies, okay?

• 43:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, we're at the we're at the four minute mark.

• 43:23Chuck Nice?

  All right, you know what that means?

• 43:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me tell you. So Chuck, we're under five minutes, so you know what that means?

• 43:28Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 43:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The lightning round.

• 43:29Chuck Nice?

  Lightning round!

• 43:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I will give soundbite answers to every question you give me.

• 43:34Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 43:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ready, go.

• 43:35Chuck Nice?

  All right, Tyson McGone or McGowan wants to know, is there geolo- geological activity on Mars? And if so, what would its impact have on a station there?

• 43:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I I don't remember the latest. I know that Mars is more dead than it ever was in the past.

• 43:50Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 43:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And cuz it's when you cool down uh from your formation energy.

• 43:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then there's there's no turbulence under your crust.

• 43:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Earth still has energy deep within for from some leftover energy, a lot of energy from radioactive decay of elements and and so we have convection in our mantle that moves continents, that we have continental drift and volcanoes and every all kind of mountain building.

• 44:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Mars, not so much today.

• 44:17Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 44:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so uh you set up base camp there, you don't have to worry about coming back later and have it being flooded with volcanic lava or have it shifted in some new place. So don't worry about it for Mars.

• 44:27Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 44:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 44:28Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 44:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Largely cuz Mars is smaller than Earth and it cools faster because of that.

• 44:32Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 44:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 44:33Chuck Nice?

  Boom!

• 44:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, that's why small potatoes cool faster than large potatoes.

• 44:39Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 44:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even if they come out of the oven at the same temperature.

• 44:41Chuck Nice?

  Ah, well, that explains my career.

• 44:45Chuck Nice?

  Small potatoes.

• 44:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Two small potatoes.

• 44:47Chuck Nice?

  Small potatoes, baby. Small potatoes.

• 44:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, go.

• 44:51Chuck Nice?

  Alright, is there any way to revive Mars's magnetic field? This is from, uh, Powell, Powell, Powell.

• 44:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Powell.

• 44:59Chuck Nice?

  Powell. Karpicki.

• 45:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We could use half our time to listen to you pronounce people's names.

• 45:04Chuck Nice?

  Oh, God.

• 45:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, alright, so, um, the magnetic field on Earth is sustained.

• 45:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 45:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because Earth's, Earth's mantle and Earth's core is alive. And what I mean by alive is there's moving material. And in our iron core, if you move iron, which is itself conducts electricity.

• 45:22Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 45:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You drive what's called a dynamo and you create a magnetic field.

• 45:25Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 45:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so if, but if your, if your planet is like dead.

• 45:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not, is geologically dead. So you'd have to like go down to the core of Mars and heat it up and start moving that iron in a liquid, liquefied form again.

• 45:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so the answer is no.

• 45:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes, the answer is no.

• 45:45Chuck Nice?

  Yes, the answer is no.

• 45:48Chuck Nice?

  Boom, alright, I think we got time for one more, here we go. Brad Smith wants to know, once a colony were established, would it be possible to connect the computers and networks on both planets? In other words, could we have internet on Mars?

• 46:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this would be interplanet net.

• 46:02Chuck Nice?

  Interplanet net.

• 46:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so, uh, by all means, the problem is there'd be a time delay. When Mars is close, that, that internet signal would take maybe a few minutes. And when Mars is far, it could take up to 20 minutes or a half hour. I'd, I'd have to do the math, but it's many, many minutes. So you, you, you wouldn't be able to do like a massively parallel, uh, interplanetary war game.

• 46:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because you get shot before you even knew that you got shot.

• 46:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause the, by the time the information got to you to duck, it's too late. You got, you done got shot.

• 46:31Chuck Nice?

  Right, okay.

• 46:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so it would restrict what kinds of instantaneous communication internet may require, but other kinds it doesn't. If you're just watching a YouTube video, sure, go, go right ahead.

• 46:42Chuck Nice?

  So modern combat, no. Email, yes.

• 46:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes, and, and the, uh, there's talk of using pulsars in the galaxy as a kind of GPS for wherever you are in the solar system. No longer requiring on the GPS satellites of one planet or another. Because they are, the pulsars rotate very rapidly and they send out a pulse of radio waves. And so they are precision timing devices.

• 47:11Chuck Nice?

  Oh, oh.

• 47:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That sit outside of everybody's atmosphere. And so you could have an interplanetary timekeeping system that'll serve almost in the same capacity as GPS.

• 47:22Chuck Nice?

  Turn left at the brown dwarf.

• 47:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Bam! Bada, bam!

• 47:28Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 47:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bada bing. Uh, Chuck, thanks for, thanks for being, as always.

• 47:32Chuck Nice?

  Uh, it's always a pleasure, man.

• 47:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rocking these cosmic queries.

• 47:35Chuck Nice?

  Always fun.

• 47:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, you've been listening to StarTalk Radio and I've been your host Neil deGrasse Tyson. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.

• 47:47Chuck Nice?

  Hey Chuck Nice here. You're listening to an extended episode of StarTalk. When we come back, a brand new segment of Cosmic Queries about the universe with myself and your host, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 48:02Chuck Nice?

  What's up Neil?

• 48:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey Chuck, bring it on.

• 48:05Chuck Nice?

  Okay, Mike Maz wants to know if and when we colonize another planet, who has political rights over that body?

• 48:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to the wild frontier of space law. Uh, it's not clear, but the Outer Space Treaty stipulates that you can't own anything in space. So, like nations cannot declare it their own. So, if that holds up, the answer is nobody has jurisdiction. Uh, but I think laws imagined many decades ago may need to be updated and modified, given what we learn and know about the future of space exploration. So, uh, we're in need of some enlightened attorneys to think this through going forward.

• 48:50Chuck Nice?

  Oh God, more lawyers.

• 48:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, better lawyers.

• 48:54Chuck Nice?

  So you mentioned Space Treaty, what is that?

• 48:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Outer Space Treaty was a UN document drafted in the late 1960s ratified by today more than a hundred countries. And it's a guidelines for the peaceful use of outer space. And it's very kumbaya. You know, if you're astronauts in trouble, I come help you and I bring you food and water and, and it's, it's very beautiful. It's very future thinking, but it leaves open.

• 49:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The possibility that you might want to defend your assets in space with some form of weapon or another. Suppose you see a satellite coming towards you and you think it's going to hurt you. Can you preemptively take it out so that you don't get hurt? This is the fuzzy area in that document. But that doesn't subtract from the fact that it really is imagining a future, a very peaceful future of cooperation in space, which I think in the end is a good idea.

• 49:47Chuck Nice?

  Look at that, Gene Roddenberry couldn't have done a better job himself.

• 49:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep.

• 49:51Chuck Nice?

  Jen Schiffrin wants to know this. Don't we already use satellites for military action? What other ways will they militarize space?

• 50:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, when people think of the militarization of space, they're often thinking of Star Wars, weapons, missiles and things. Problem is, when you're in space and in orbit, you're going 18,000 miles an hour in low Earth orbit. If you start busting stuff up, now you have particles and bits and pieces of formerly operating satellites that are themselves projectiles, moving at 18,000 miles an hour. And so you make a mess of things. So space war would last a few hours and then you'd never have another space war again. So space has been the repository of spy satellites ever since we've had satellites. And in that sense, it has been militarized.

• 50:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, the Gulf War of 2003 was completely enabled by space assets with GPS satellites leading the way. Which we think of as just helping you get to grandma's house in your car. But it was conceived, launched and operated by the military and was later co-opted by business interests. So yeah, it'll find grandma's house. Uber, their entire business model depends on it. And if you want to find a mate within 1.5 miles of your current location. Swipe right.

• 51:18Chuck Nice?

  Interplanetary hookups. I like the way you think, Neil. All right, you ready for another one? Jay Tallis asks, what possible injuries or diseases will combat doctors in Space Force find themselves regularly treating?

• 51:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a great question. Well, that depends on how how much we invoke soldiers in space as opposed to remote controlled satellites in space. You start putting people in space and then they start fighting one another. You might ask, well, why would you do that? Just put a drone, a drone satellite in space. But if you put people in space, yeah, then there's a long term effects of zero G, the bone density loss, all the same things we currently know about from astronauts and their long term visits to the International Space Station. So that's the kind of, I wouldn't call them injuries, but they're workplace hazards, I would call them.

• 52:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Workplace conditions that are not always in the interest of your health or your longevity. You also have exposure to higher levels of radiation from the sun. So you want to be protected against that. But if a missile hits you and you're blown to bits, same medical needs you might have if that happened on Earth.

• 52:31Chuck Nice?

  Hmm, the difference is when you scream medic in space, no one can hear you.

• 52:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, Chuck, that is true. Not only in space can no one hear you scream, no one can hear you explode either.

• 52:44Chuck Nice?

  Man, bro, you went dark.

• 52:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just saying.

• 52:49Chuck Nice?

  Malik Maz wants to know this. Why does gravity produce elliptical orbits? Why aren't they perfectly circular? What's up, Neil?

• 52:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, all gravity really does is change the path that you would have otherwise taken through space. I'm trying to go in a straight line and something down here has got some extra gravity for me. I end up curving towards that object. But if I have high enough speed, yeah, my my my trajectory will curve, but it won't get pulled into orbit. It'll just sort of send it in a different direction. And if I don't have enough speed, it'll curve me so much, I'll come in and crash. It's only in between those two extremes that you end up having any kind of orbit at all. And you can have all kinds of orbits depending on what kind of speed you have and what your distance is. Comets typically have very elongated oval orbits like that.

• 53:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And planets, as we think of them, tend to have much more circular orbits, but they're still ellipses. But there's a little-known fact that over enough time, the interaction between the object and the host, it could be a moon and a planet, or a planet and a star. Over time, the orbit becomes more and more circular in their interactions. And depending on how close it started and what the thing is made of, that can happen quickly. And you can end up with a perfectly circular orbit eventually. But otherwise, gravity is just something that changes your direction. That's all.

• 54:16Chuck Nice?

  So maybe that's why Pluto's orbit is different than any other planet. Did I say planet, Neil? Oh, I'm sorry.

• 54:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Its orbit is so elongated, it crosses the orbit of Neptune. There ain't no kind of behavior for a planet. I'm just saying.

• 54:29Chuck Nice?

  I'm joking, Neil. I'm joking.

• 54:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't want to go there.

• 54:32Chuck Nice?

  Are you ready for another question?

• 54:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 54:34Chuck Nice?

  Matt Herefield wants to know, why do planets orbit in the direction that they do? Or is it a 50/50 chance?

• 54:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An answer to that question was first posed more than 250 years ago. In mid-1700s, Immanuel Kant, the philosopher, as well as Laplace, a French mathematician, physicist, proposed something called the nebular hypothesis. Because how else do you get all the planets orbiting in the same direction? Who ordered that? And it turns out, if you have a gas cloud that is the parent object that becomes the star and its orbiting planets, and this gas cloud rotates, as everything does in the universe, and it's out of that gas cloud that you make your planets and moons and

• 55:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  other objects, then anything you make out of that gas cloud is going to have an orbit in the same direction around the host star. And the star will be rotating in that same direction. So this was an idea 250 years ago. Later on, more thought invested in it, computer models bears this out. And so that's how you can have an entire family of objects, everybody going in the same direction. And in fact, that so strong is that concept and that idea, that if you find something orbiting the other way, you probably captured it later. And it did not have anything to do with the formation of the system itself. That's how you know who's got birthright to the system and who came in later.

• 56:06Chuck Nice?

  As usual, Neil, that was a little mind blow. That was just a little one. Aaron Kennedy wants to know this. Could you please explain the significance of the heliosphere and how it's made?

• 56:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the sun, as we know, is a ball of gas, but it's not just all stays that way. Some gas gets ejected. And so there's a stream of particles that come from the sun that we call the solar wind. And you might have heard of the solar wind because it makes aurora. The particles stream and collide with our atmosphere near the poles and it renders it a glow, very beautiful. Well, this solar wind moves completely through the solar system. And it goes beyond the planets, beyond the comets, and there is a point where this solar wind can no longer be distinguished from the medium that permeates between the stars of the galaxy.

• 56:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the actual edge of the sun's influence, the sun's sort of particle influence on its environment. And we call the size of that volume, the heliosphere, and the boundary of that volume, the heliopause. And on September 12th, 2013, Voyager 1, the intrepid Voyager 1, crossed the heliopause. And only then could you say it has left the solar system entirely. It's not just, oh, let's go beyond the last planet and now you've left the solar system. No, no. The sun reaches out far beyond. And there you have the heliosphere. And it's always there, by the way.

• 57:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And as we move through the galaxy, it can take on different shapes, depending on what's going on around us and depending on the strength of the wind at any given moment. So it could be a sphere, but it's usually a teardrop. As the solar system moves as we orbit the center of the galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy. There you have it Chuck.

• 57:59Chuck Nice?

  Okay, Pedro Duran Monteleone wants to know this. What can Drake's equation tell us about aliens?

• 58:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so Drake's equation was a way to organize our ignorance of the universe when we're trying to figure out if we can communicate with intelligent aliens in space. It's named after Frank Drake. He first wrote this equation. You start out with the number of stars in the galaxy. And then you say, well, what fraction of those have planets? What fraction of those that have planets have life? What fraction of those have intelligent life? What fraction of those have intelligent life with technology? What fraction of those might actually be listening for us at any given moment? You start hacking away at this number. And what's left at the end is an estimate for how many civilizations are out there that you might want to talk to.

• 58:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Each one of these terms is an astrophysical question. You can back it up further and say, what is the rate that stars are being born? Because that will tell you how many stars you have to search for. So when you put all these terms together, you get an estimate of how many intelligent civilizations might be out there. And right now, in my, one of my recent books, we actually give the very latest calculation for this. And there's like billions, so we're good.

• 59:14Chuck Nice?

  Do we really want to talk to billions of other people?

• 59:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I don't know if you, or tell them where you live, that would be bad. You don't give strangers who are your own species, your email address, much less sending the return address to Earth out to aliens across the galaxy.

• 59:30Chuck Nice?

  Who? Alien stranger danger. Alien stranger danger!

• 59:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Chuck, you know what the last term in the Drake equation is? It's how long the intelligent civilization might be around at all. It could be that achieving high intelligence, you now know enough how to render yourself extinct. So just because you became intelligent with technology doesn't mean you will keep that for all the rest of time. Maybe you have an expiration date.

• 59:58Chuck Nice?

  Well, hopefully, we don't push that date up further than it has to be. All right, let's move on, Neil.

• 1:00:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bring it on.

• 1:00:04Chuck Nice?

  Don Rim wants to know this. How likely is the theory of panspermia for the genesis of life on Earth?

• 1:00:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's really good. If you look at microbes, not all microbes, some microbes are just fine in the high radiation, low temperature, dehydrating conditions of space. And we have them here on Earth. And you say, why do you have this ability to resist this? That's not a natural force operating on your evolutionary history here. But you wouldn't need that getting through the vacuum of space. Asteroid impacts kick rocks into interplanetary space? And they travel and they land on other planets? There's some number of tonnage of rocks on Earth that actually came from Mars. Came from other planets in the solar system.

• 1:00:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So panspermia is the movement of microbes from one planet to the other in the nooks and crannies of the rocks.

• 1:01:05Chuck Nice?

  All right, you ready for another one? From Sanjeev Bhaskar. This is a question from my 10-year-old son. Considering the environmental conditions of Mars versus Europa, where are we most likely to find aliens?

• 1:01:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My bet is on Europa. Because that has an ocean of liquid water beneath a frozen layer of ice, maybe a kilometer thick. But that ocean's been liquid for billions of years. Billions of years. And on Earth's oceans, that's where all evidence points to life having begun. So if you want to find life as we know it, we're going to look for conditions as we know it. And that would be these oceans in Europa. And then the only thing left is if you do find life, what do you call it? And I think there's no choice but to call them Europeans.

• 1:01:55Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna have a moment of silence for that joke.

• 1:02:00Chuck Nice?

  Hehehehe

• 1:02:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hehehehe