Jack Black’s Cosmic Curiosity

Neil deGrasse Tyson and virtuoso comedian, musician, and actor Jack Black explore black holes, a simulation universe, quantum weirdness, Powers of Ten, Ant Man’s shrinking powers, and much more. With Chuck Nice, astrophysicist Charles Liu, climate scientist Kate Marvel, and Bill Nye. Photo Credit: Brandon Royal. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/jack-blacks-cosmic-curiosity/

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and beaming out across all of space and time, this is StarTalk, where science and pop culture collide.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to the Hall of the Universe. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And tonight, we're going to explore the cosmic curiosity of actor and musician, Jack Black. He's had questions for me on everything, from black holes to the size of the universe itself. So, let's do this.

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So my co-host tonight, Chuck Nice.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  Hey, hey, what's up, Neil?

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dana, coming through. Welcome back.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Always a pleasure, buddy.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back. Also joining us is my friend and astrophysicist, Charles Liu. Charles, welcome.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Excellent.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a professor at the City University of New York at Staten Island, and you are our StarTalk resident geek-in-chief. I am truly honored. Thank you so much. So we got our dream team here to discuss my recent interview with multi-dimensional actor and musician, Jack Black, best known for his lead roles in comedy films like "School of Rock",

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  like "Nacho Libre", like "Kung Fu Panda",

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I learned recently that he has genetic roots in math and science. Let's check it out.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  You know, my parents were both aerospace engineers.

• 1:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. My mother, she actually worked on one of the Apollo missions, but her calling card, her claim to fame, was working on the Hubble Space Telescope.

• 1:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what town were you in where this was happening?

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Hermosa Beach, California.

• 1:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  California, okay.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, my mom worked over at TRW for a time.

• 1:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, one of the contractors to NASA.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. And your father was?

• 2:04Speaker 01

  My father also worked at TRW, and they were both in the same field, and he was...

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You were primed to be a total geek kid.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  They were very worried about me, because I was not going in the direction of an aerospace engineer.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't have to make a face when you say... You don't have to put a...

• 2:26Speaker 01

  I'm fascinated by it, though. I'm interested in it. Yeah? It's just whenever I pick up a book on the subject, I can't get past the first page. Okay. And a half. But I am still drawn to the subject, not just because my parents were interested in it and were great at it, but also I'm just fascinated by the enormity of the universe.

• 2:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And who isn't? So Chuck, do you think he should have followed his parents' footsteps as a rocket scientist?

• 2:58Chuck Nice?

  You know, I think maybe in a different universe, he may have just been, you know, doing science-based comedies.

• 3:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 3:05Chuck Nice?

  That's all. Like, you know, School of Rocket Science.

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, you teach at a university.

• 3:14Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 3:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And science courses are typically required

• 3:17Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  for, in most liberal arts schools, and if you major in liberal arts in any school.

• 3:23Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 3:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They make you take some science.

• 3:25Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what do you do with students like Jack, who struggled to get past, what, page one and a half?

• 3:33Charles Liu?

  You get another book. You get another book. That book's fault. It's not Jack's fault. Jack is great because he has this innate sort of desire to learn and be interested, but if he's turned off by the book, get another book.

• 3:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, suppose he's turned off by the teacher?

• 3:48Charles Liu?

  Get another teacher.

• 3:50Charles Liu?

  It's our fault.

• 3:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 3:52Charles Liu?

  We gotta help him.

• 3:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that answer.

• 3:54Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, I like that answer.

• 3:56Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 3:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's too easy to blame the student.

• 3:58Charles Liu?

  That's right. And the most transformational figures in history in any field have always been those who've had interest in something or an innate, maybe parental, support for something, like aerospace, but gone on to do something else like performing arts. Yeah.

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got that. So Chuck, do you get bored reading science?

• 4:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're pretty science-literate as a...

• 4:18Chuck Nice?

  It doesn't stop me from being bored.

• 4:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 4:21Chuck Nice?

  You know what I mean? I enjoy it, but I am still bored.

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Jack Black is also the frontman in a rock band called Tenacious D.

• 4:32Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 4:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That just sounds badass. Tenacious D.

• 4:36Chuck Nice?

  Tenacious.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I asked him about this dual identity. Let's check it out.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  I just think of myself as a showman. I like to put on a show.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  It's, that's what, uh, I like to tell my kids, you know, don't think about what you wanna be when you grow up. I think that's a, it's a false, uh, uh, thing that we, we put on our kids. Think about what you wanna do when you grow up. Cause if you're trying to like be something, that suggests ego and like, I want the title. What do you really love to spend your time doing? And I love, I love putting on a show.

• 5:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Love to get up in front of a crowd.

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And all three of those, acting, music, comedy.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 5:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're all performing.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  And truth be told, I wouldn't have an acting career for one, for the music and vice versa. I needed to combine those to get it going. I met Kyle, my partner in my band, Tenacious D, in a theater company. We were in the Actors Gang Theater Company.

• 5:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, I love the word tenacious, it's very S A T, it's a very S A T word.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  It means to, you know, to doggedly go after your goal.

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it was in reference originally that came to us, to, uh, basketball players. There, there was a, a guy on TV who talked about the Lakers playing tenacious defense.

• 5:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's where you got it from.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  And we shortened it to tenacious D. And it was something, and there was just something so funny about us naming ourselves after that. But, uh, I really got my career going once I started that band with Kyle. And we were writing our own material.

• 6:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And your guitar.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  The singing, the singing and telling stories through music.

• 6:19Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 6:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, you're, you're a dad. Yes. And so what do you think of Jack's parenting philosophy of having his kids pursue what they wanna do rather than what they wanna be? I think it's fantastic. Cause it's, um, I'm just thinking, if it's something you wanna be, that implies, like he said, it implies title. Mm-hmm. And some kind of achievement that everyone then looks at your title. Right. But if you wanna just do something, nobody's gonna pass judgment.

• 6:43Chuck Nice?

  Suppose your kids just wanna do nothing while laying on your couch and eating up your food and watching your TV?

• 6:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give them time. I didn't know the food in your family household was your food.

• 6:58Chuck Nice?

  Who bought it?

• 7:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it didn't, it didn't take long for Jack to turn the interview around on me. And he started asking me questions. This one about black holes. Check it out.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Is there a black hole in the middle of the Milky Way galaxy? Our galaxy?

• 7:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 7:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not a regular black hole, a supermassive black hole. For every galaxy we've ever had the precision of measurement to ask the question, they have revealed to us a black hole in their center. And so even galaxies we have yet to test, we just say it almost certainly has a black hole. We're done with that question. Now we're on to what is the black hole doing to its environment? Is it flitting stars that come too close? Was the black hole necessary for, to nucleate the galaxy in the first place? Was that the first thing that formed? Did it form later? These are all questions we ask.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Here's a question I'm gonna ask. You know when you take a bath and you pop the drain and the vortex happens? And there's a little tornado of water going down the drain? That's what the Milky Way looks like to me. Is that what the black hole is? Is it the drain? And are we all?

• 8:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Will that be our fate? No, we are safe from the black hole. We are in orbit around the black hole. We're safe.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  But is it the same phenomenon?

• 8:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you get too close, yes. If you get too close.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  But the Milky Way is spinning around.

• 8:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but all of that material is safe. It is not a vortex feeding the black hole.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Oh, good.

• 8:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so you can sleep.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Good to know.

• 8:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I know you were grappling with that.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Well, I was worried, yeah.

• 8:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we're not just a-

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Circling the drain.

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're not just a toilet bowl ready to go down the drain. That would be bad.

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

  I just love the fact that you put his mind at such ease. It was like you sold him homeowner's insurance. He did, he did feel calm about that.

• 9:08Charles Liu?

  Oh, okay.

• 9:08Chuck Nice?

  I'll do that, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

• 9:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, give me the latest on the evidence for black holes in the centers of galaxies.

• 9:15Charles Liu?

  Well, it's just as you said. Every time we look at the center of a galaxy with enough precision, we basically always find a black hole there. So that's settled science. Now we're looking for two black holes, or three black holes.

• 9:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So which came first, the black hole or the galaxy?

• 9:29Charles Liu?

  That's still uncertain.

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 9:30Charles Liu?

  It looks like the cosmological simulations will allow that to happen either way. But if you go from the very, very beginning, when the first stars form, it is true that the first black holes form before the first galaxies. So it most likely starts with the black hole. But that doesn't mean that the other way can also work. So the egg creating the chicken. So what is at the center of the black hole? Something called a singularity. It's a point with zero volume and infinite density. But we don't know what...

• 9:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Void those. Did you see one coming? Stay away.

• 10:00Charles Liu?

  Oh.

• 10:03Charles Liu?

  I feel like Jack Black now. I'm like, thank you.

• 10:07Charles Liu?

  We literally do not know the physics of those singularities. And we can't find out. Because we can't even get close enough to the singularity. There's a thing called the event horizon around the black hole. If you're standing on the event horizon and you shine a flashlight up, the light goes up and back down. It never escapes. So we can't even send radio signals. Let's say we send a space probe down to the black hole and we see this is what the singularity looks like. Still can't send signal out. We won't know unless we go ourselves. But then we can't tell anybody else beyond us. Wow. And as soon as you...

• 10:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a beautiful name.

• 10:38Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 10:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For a point of no return.

• 10:40Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 10:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The event horizon. You cross that sucker, you ain't never coming back.

• 10:45Charles Liu?

  I know, it sounds like where my grandmother went.

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, don't...

• 10:49Charles Liu?

  Don't worry, she's dead.

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we knew...

• 10:51Charles Liu?

  No, no. Oh, you got it.

• 10:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Up next, in my conversation with the Jack Black, we discuss the physics of shrinking as in Ant-Man when StarTalk returns.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  This is StarTalk.

• 11:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk from the American Museum of Natural History. We're featuring my conversation with cosmically curious actor, Jack Black. He asked me about the quantum realm, where the laws of physics get weird. Let's check it out.

• 11:33Chuck Nice?

  Is the quantum weirdness really just about, if you really break it down, is that when you look at a thing, it changes the thing? Is that what it's really about?

• 11:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's an important aspect of it.

• 11:48Chuck Nice?

  I mean, it's weird if it's true.

• 11:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, I wrote a book recently. It's called Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. I have a quote in the front of the book, something that I want people to know. That is, "The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you." Because your senses are forged over, you know, a million years in this Serengeti, not wanting to be eaten by a tiger or a lion. Well, our senses are good for that. Oh, that's moving the speed, not faster, not slower. If I run, there's a day, sun rises, sun sets. Time, we're not honed on a billion-year timescale in our awareness.

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're not honed at the timescale of the vibration of an atom. In the 20th century, we started looking at the edge of the universe and down into the atom. We were seeing stuff that completely defied anything your five senses ever dreamt of, imagined, or could relate to. And we started saying to ourselves, "It is true simply because we measure it to be true, not because it makes any sense at all."

• 13:02Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Dude.

• 13:08Chuck Nice?

  That was awesome, man. Like, I was just waiting for you to just, like, go like straight Southern Baptist. You know, "And I will rain down on you." Like, it was, oh, that was pretty damn cool, man.

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me heal you of your questions.

• 13:28Chuck Nice?

  That's so cool.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, explain the observer effect to everybody. The quantum mechanics observer effect.

• 13:36Charles Liu?

  Yeah, the regular observer effect is very simple. Like, if you're taking, say, a tire pressure gauge, and you're just trying to measure a tire pressure, every time you push it in, a little air comes out. So you've already affected, right?

• 13:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Before it closes it off to get the measure.

• 13:49Charles Liu?

  That's right. So that's an observer effect on the non-quantum level. On the quantum level, you can just put a machine to look at a subatomic particle thing, and it will lock in a quantum state, and therefore, you've changed whatever that thing was doing just because you're trying to measure it.

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of my favorite observer effects is if there's a coin that falls in the car seat, between the bottom and the back, and you reach for it, the act of reaching for it spreads it more, and then it goes further away. Yeah, but if you're not doing it, it's happy just sitting right there.

• 14:22Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 14:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's, in effect, an observer phenomenon.

• 14:25Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 14:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're trying to interact with it, the act of interacting with it changes its state.

• 14:30Charles Liu?

  That's right. And the quantum mechanical level, the amounts of energy required to change the state of something is so tiny that just the act of measuring it will cause it to be completely different from what it was just a nanosecond before.

• 14:42Chuck Nice?

  So are you saying that we can never have an accurate measurement on the nanoscale?

• 14:46Charles Liu?

  On the nanoscale, right.

• 14:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 14:48Charles Liu?

  Quantum mechanics is so different from our daily existence that you can almost imagine doing anything, right? Schrodinger's cat, for example, very famous. You assume that the cat's in there, but you don't know whether the cat is alive or dead until you open the box. So that leads imagination wild.

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's always been true. Why is it gurgling up now? In new age philosophies and...

• 15:11Charles Liu?

  I think it's the latest new thing, right? A hundred years ago, regular physics, what we might consider regular physics, was the coolest thing, right? Now we have this quantum physics, and it's been, well, maybe 70 or 80 years or so since quantum mechanics was firmly established. And now it goes into the realm of the imagination in pop culture.

• 15:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Jack Black sings about a superhero named Wonder Boy. And when I asked him about it, the quantum realm came up again. Ooh, let's check it out.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Well, Wonder Boy, just between you and me, was actually stolen from my favorite comic book. There's a comic called Miracle Man by Alan Moore. Genius. He did The Watchmen, but before The Watchmen, there was-

• 15:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love The Watchmen.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  And there was a, there was a, a character in there, but it was, it was very much like The Matrix where he was inside. And in fact, I think Matrix stole a thing or two from Miracle Man, if you look back at that.

• 16:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like the way you whisper that to me in front of three cameras.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  And what is this bogus conspiratorial-

• 16:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just between you and me and the million, and the million people. But it won't go outside of that circle.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  But you know what I was thinking about, superpowers? And I was thinking that the best one is from Ant-Man. To be able to control your size and go down to the tiniest, tiniest subatomic level, and conversely, giant to, you know, the size of, I mean, although you would kill, you would destroy-

• 16:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you're saying is size matters.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, does it?

• 16:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, how realistic is it for Ant-Man's ability to shrink to the size of an ant?

• 16:56Charles Liu?

  Um, utterly unrealistic.

• 16:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:59Charles Liu?

  But-

• 16:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but how would it work?

• 17:01Charles Liu?

  Yes, okay. There is so much space, actually, between the subatomic parts of atoms and molecules.

• 17:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 17:07Charles Liu?

  That if you took, say, Manhattan, where we are now, and took all of Manhattan, all of its skyscrapers, taxicabs, people, took the space out from between the protons, neutrons, and electrons and squished them together-

• 17:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 17:18Charles Liu?

  It'd all fit inside Chuck's nose.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 17:22Charles Liu?

  Yeah. And Chuck's nose is perfectly ordinary size, by the way, just so you know.

• 17:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 17:25Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Well, thank you for that.

• 17:27Charles Liu?

  So, you could certainly imagine Ant-Man shrinking down, and there's still plenty of space left-

• 17:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you do that just by changing the physical constants of nature?

• 17:35Charles Liu?

  Alas, no. And the reason is, now you have a circumstance where you're beating up against these particles, pushing too close to one another, completely changing their quantum mechanical structures. And not to mention that even before you go quantum mechanical, let's say he is the size of an ant- Right, uh, his voice is gonna be the pitch of like a cricket. Because the air frame, the whatever's

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause it's the size of a cricket, right?

• 17:59Charles Liu?

  You don't have enough air to make a large enough tube to create those things. So, you know, he should be shrinking and be going

• 18:07Charles Liu?

  You know, that's the, that's the smallest, tiniest problem with shrinking down to create

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like your movie better.

• 18:15Charles Liu?

  Hi, I'm a man.

• 18:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so, so even if you did do that, what do you do with all the mass that was there? Cause there he is riding the backs of ants.

• 18:23Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 18:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For example, you would squash the ant.

• 18:25Charles Liu?

  The ant would totally collapse, uh, so which would mean that the mass is going somewhere. Right?

• 18:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 18:30Charles Liu?

  Which means that the mass would literally disappear from our universe. And that's totally not cool. Yeah, and that means you would have to turn into energy, whatever mass is there. The amount of mass turned into energy in both atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki was less than that of a Tic Tac. So you take a hundred pound human being or something and turn it to the size of an ant, you are wiping out the entire continent. And you know

• 18:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can calculate that.

• 18:59Charles Liu?

  Through E equals M C squared. That's right.

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would become a [BLEEP] ton of energy.

• 19:04Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 19:06Charles Liu?

  You've never heard of it? A [BLEEP] ton is just 2,000 [BLEEP] pounds.

• 19:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Up next.

• 19:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We contemplate whether reality is a cosmic video game when StarTalk returns.

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. We're featuring my interview with actor Jack Black. And I had to ask him, is he a sci-fi fan? Let's check it out.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I just did this movie Jumanji. That's got some sci-fi elements, kind of.

• 20:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I saw the original, scared me.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was just kind of, no, I don't want that to be possible.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Right, with Robin Williams.

• 20:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, with Robin Williams, right.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Well, this one's more like a, uh, the hologram, not hologram, but like a virtual reality game.

• 20:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  And I've heard, tell me if this is true, that there's a theory out there that this whole thing, this whole universe we're in, is actually some advanced alien technology virtual reality game?

• 20:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's hard to... It's hard to say no to that. It's hard for me to say, we have evidence that that's not so. We don't have evidence that that's not so.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  But would I be part of the game?

• 20:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So watch. I don't want to freak you out. Are you seated? See? All right. You know, you ever play Mario?

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Super Mario Brothers.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, watch.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Donkey Kong.

• 21:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, sure, okay. So there's, so they're the characters. They're collecting coins and they're jumping. Now, if you had the computing power to render that world so real that the characters believed they had free will, then who are you to say that they in that game are any different from we on Earth, in this universe, having been programmed by a more intelligent alien species? And we're just characters in their Mario game?

• 21:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, how likely is it that we're living in an alien version of The Sims game?

• 22:02Charles Liu?

  We have no idea.

• 22:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, you agree with me, we have no idea.

• 22:05Charles Liu?

  This question has been asked for centuries, starting with Rene Descartes from almost the 1500s.

• 22:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  True.

• 22:12Charles Liu?

  And all this time, there's still no real way to figure out whether we are brains in vats that are so carefully controlled, or whether actually we're living out of real life.

• 22:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the Matrix is real?

• 22:22Charles Liu?

  Well...

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Red pill, blue pill.

• 22:24Charles Liu?

  You don't have to imagine that it's a higher intelligence that's created the Matrix. Remember, we've had billions of years of evolution. We're programmed by DNA, by RNA, by our environment, by epigenetics. It could be that this video game just happened by chance. And therefore, we are the products of a video game, but not of a higher intelligence.

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does it even matter if we're in a simulation?

• 22:44Charles Liu?

  Almost not.

• 22:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 22:46Charles Liu?

  To some extent, it'd be nice to know.

• 22:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spooky and calming at the same time.

• 22:50Charles Liu?

  Right, exactly. It's really no big deal if you have a crappy day. You know, tomorrow, you just push A.

• 22:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, is this blowing your mind, this conversation?

• 22:58Chuck Nice?

  Um, I think, actually, in a way, it does. That brings me to something that I want to do.

• 23:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's that?

• 23:04Chuck Nice?

  It's a little game show I like.

• 23:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 23:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 23:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's that?

• 23:07Chuck Nice?

  Since we're talking about video games, it's called Blow Jack Mine!

• 23:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 23:14Chuck Nice?

  Here's how it works.

• 23:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 23:15Chuck Nice?

  I need you...

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah?

• 23:16Chuck Nice?

  ...to just list as many mind-blowing facts as you can.

• 23:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the spot, okay.

• 23:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you're on the spot, like, think of some... Wait, take a second.

• 23:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got, I got this.

• 23:26Chuck Nice?

  You good?

• 23:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm good.

• 23:27Chuck Nice?

  Oh, shit. You're blowing my mind!

• 23:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 23:29Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go.

• 23:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in one centimeter of your lower colon, lives and works more microbes than all humans who have ever been born.

• 23:40Chuck Nice?

  Damn! That was mind-blowing, that was a good one.

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 23:44Chuck Nice?

  Keep it coming, come on!

• 23:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay.

• 23:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, um, that means, when we think we are in charge of this world...

• 23:53Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 23:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  ...all we actually are, to those microbes, is a darkened vessel of anaerobic fecal matter.

• 24:01Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god! That's mind-blowing.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  All right, keep it going, keep it going.

• 24:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. All right, one more?

• 24:10Speaker 01

  One more.

• 24:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  And maybe.

• 24:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. "The universe will never recollaps. It is on a one-way expansion to oblivion as the temperature drops to absolute zero, and the density of space also goes to zero." So, the universe will end not with a bang, but with a whimper, not in fire, but in ice.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  What?

• 24:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Jack Black continued our mind-blowing conversation with a discussion about the concept of free will. Check it out.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Do you believe in free will? Or do you believe that we are, everything we say and do is the way it has to be?

• 25:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, free will doesn't mean that everything is exactly predetermined necessarily. It can simply mean that you don't have as many options as you think you do. You think you have unlimited options, but when you actually decide, you are picking among four things.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Now, if, now this is where I feel like I'm really smart. You tell me if I am smart. If there is no free will as I, that's kind of my belief, is that no, everything that we do, we had to do, because we're like computers. There is only one path in this, and if that's true, that everything is happening the way it has to happen, then in a way, time doesn't exist because it's already happened. If it has to happen a certain way, then in a way, it's already happened.

• 25:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, first, that's deep.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know what I'm saying.

• 25:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're officially deep.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  I'm, oh, thank you. That's what, I guess that's what I was looking for. You heard that.

• 26:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have it on, we got it on, on.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Okay, as long as we got that on the record.

• 26:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what you're saying is that, in the timeline of life, you were born, you live out your life, and then you die. And if that is predetermined, then the concept of the passage of time has no meaning.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the very question, "When were you born?" Well, I was always born, right here. Well, "When did you go to school?" I always went to school. It's right there. That's like saying, in the length of this room, this spot is always there. It's 12 feet from that spot. That's not a thing that is happening, it just is. So the intersection of all our lives, if there is no free will, you're right, time is an illusion. An illusion of being a prisoner of the present.

• 27:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm glad we cleared that up.

• 27:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sweet.

• 27:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, do you think physics has anything to say about free will?

• 27:14Charles Liu?

  Absolutely.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 27:15Charles Liu?

  You have a circumstance now where we know that we can make choices, right? For example, I can decide in 10 minutes that I'm gonna walk over there. However, in between that 10-minute period and now are literally thousands or millions of microdecisions. Individual chemical or physical reactions in the subatomic level, in our brains, in our bodies. And if each one of those is predetermined because there is no choice, let's say nature requires that you have this many of that molecule and that many of that molecule, they have to do this, then if every single step is predetermined, maybe my decision 10 minutes later has been predetermined because of all those individual steps.

• 27:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So you're saying that physics is telling us that free will might be an illusion?

• 27:58Charles Liu?

  Correct, but free will might not be an illusion if indeed, even under 1,000 to 1 odds, or 1,000,000 to 1 odds, those chemicals or those molecules can do things that are unexpected every once in a while. And that's what quantum mechanics allows in uncertainty.

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So quantum physics would disrupt any predeterminism of free will?

• 28:19Charles Liu?

  Correct. Yes.

• 28:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So maybe we want quantum mechanics, we need quantum mechanics.

• 28:23Charles Liu?

  That may well be exactly what physics is telling us about free will.

• 28:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what do you think of time being an illusion?

• 28:29Chuck Nice?

  What I think is that you always do this. No, seriously, you always like, everything comes down to time relatively with you. And Jack Black was like, "Oh my God," you know? But I've been there before, so.

• 28:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 28:44Chuck Nice?

  Seriously, we had lunch last week.

• 28:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:46Chuck Nice?

  All right, check this out, because listen to this.

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hello?

• 28:53Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Neil, I'm here at the restaurant. What's your timeline?

• 28:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the timeline of life.

• 29:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're born, you live out your life, and then you die.

• 29:04Chuck Nice?

  Right, so what time do you think you're gonna get here?

• 29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Time is an illusion.

• 29:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so you're in a cab or?

• 29:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An illusion of being a prisoner of the present.

• 29:19Chuck Nice?

  Got it, I'm hanging up now, Neil.

• 29:25Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 29:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Allow me to reaffirm, we are indeed prisoners of the present.

• 29:32Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 29:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forever transitioning from our inaccessible past into our unknowable future.

• 29:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So up next, in my conversation with Jack Black, we discuss the timeline of our own extinction when StarTalk returns.

• 30:12Speaker 04

  The future of space and the secrets of our planet revealed.

• 30:22Speaker 04

  This is StarTalk.

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. The Hall of the Universe of the American Museum of Natural History. We're featuring my recent conversation with lovable, curious, multi-talented Jack Black. Check it out. We actually acted in the same series.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  What?

• 30:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  What, what, what?

• 30:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 30:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I had a cameo as a little cartoon weasel in Ice Age 5.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think you were in the first one.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I played...

• 31:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A tiger, saber-toothed tiger.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I was starving and I was not a likable one.

• 31:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, all right, all right. Yeah, so I was a character helping them save the world. Because in Ice Age 5, there's an asteroid that's going to render them all extinct.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what was weird to me is here I am trying to help them not go extinct from an asteroid.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yet every single Ice Age mammal in Ice Age goes extinct after the Ice Age. Not from an asteroid. They're all gone. The saber-toothed tiger, the mastodon, the giant sloth.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're all gone. So I said, "What the hell am I saving them for? We're going through all this just to save..." No, they're dead.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Hey, while we're on the subject, I hope you don't mind me asking another question.

• 31:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  But you reminded me of something.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Are we gonna go extinct?

• 32:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's highly likely.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  Right. So we're in a race against time, kind of like...

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, the average life expectancy of a mammal species is about between 2 and 3 million years. We are early in that interval. So we can hope for much longer, but we have the power to do much better than that.

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So joining us now to discuss the possibility of our own extinction is climate scientist Kate Marble. Kate, welcome.

• 32:32Speaker 05

  Hey, thank you for having me.

• 32:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Associate Research Scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies up at Columbia University. So Kate, we were just talking about climate coming out of the Ice Age and they all died. And it leaves us to wonder, what right now do we think is the greatest threat to the survival of the human species? Is it climate or something else?

• 32:54Speaker 05

  So here's the thing. I actually don't think climate change is going to make humans go extinct anytime soon. But the thing is, I have higher standards than not going extinct.

• 33:10Speaker 05

  So I don't think we're doomed. But I do think that what climate change threatens is human civilization and human happiness. And I think that's something that's even more important to me. We're already starting to see some of the worst consequences of climate change.

• 33:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now that I think about it and the way you've described it, other threats that we consider, like asteroids, or supervolcanoes, or even nuclear exchange, they lead to climate change of their own. So that if you don't die where the explosion or where the event happened, this event still touches you because the atmosphere is different.

• 33:48Speaker 05

  Exactly, exactly. But here's the thing. I'm not an asteroid and you're not a supervolcano. And we are so sure, the scientific community, that the climate changes that we're seeing right now are due to human activities. So you can't negotiate with a supervolcano, right?

• 34:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not yet.

• 34:08Speaker 05

  Not yet. But we have the power to change our own actions. We have the power to make decisions to alter the course of climate change. And that's kind of amazing when you think about it.

• 34:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, how do you think we'll go extinct?

• 34:22Charles Liu?

  Well, we have free will, don't we? In this case.

• 34:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In this case.

• 34:27Charles Liu?

  What Kate is saying is that we have the free will to change our behaviors.

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The power to change our behavior.

• 34:31Charles Liu?

  So I think that we will go extinct by something over which we actually have no control. For example...

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have confidence that we will not render our own selves extinct from our own stupidity?

• 34:42Charles Liu?

  I believe that we'll be alright. Maybe a large percentage of us will succumb to our own stupidity. But the entire species will not go unless we have, say, a rogue black hole coming through the solar system ripping us away from our sun and thus freezing us out to nothing. Something that we don't have control over will eventually be our greatest threat.

• 35:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell me about the October 2018 UN report on climate.

• 35:04Speaker 05

  So that freaked a lot of people out, right? And I kind of feel like that's a good thing. Like, we should be freaked out about that. But I feel like a lot of the way that it's gotten reported is we have a cliff and we're gonna fall off the cliff.

• 35:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What did it say?

• 35:21Speaker 05

  So it said, basically, we have limited time to limit global warming to a degree and a half Celsius above pre-industrial. We are already at a degree.

• 35:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, a degree and a half above pre-industrial levels? So before we started pulling oil out of the ground?

• 35:40Speaker 05

  Exactly, before the Industrial Revolution.

• 35:43Chuck Nice?

  And can we change that to Fahrenheit so people in America can take it seriously? I mean, I just don't understand. What the hell is happening with the conversation around climate change? That, you know, we don't talk to people in ways that they can understand. We say aerosols instead of shit in the air, right? Like, seriously, why do we do that? We say Celsius. No one does anything in Celsius in America. Why do we do that?

• 36:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is America, Jack.

• 36:11Chuck Nice?

  This is America. I like my temperatures in Fahrenheit.

• 36:15Speaker 05

  I will pass your thoughts to the IPCC.

• 36:18Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 36:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it introduced the concept of a cliff?

• 36:23Speaker 05

  It did not introduce the concept of a cliff, because it's not a cliff. I feel like a lot of people are thinking, oh, we have 12 years.

• 36:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it got reported that way.

• 36:29Speaker 05

  It got reported that way. We have 12 years to limit warming. And if in 12 years we haven't done it, then boom, we're all gone. And it's not a cliff, it's a slope. And we are running down that slope.

• 36:41Chuck Nice?

  Is it slippery, that slope?

• 36:43Speaker 05

  It's pretty slippery.

• 36:45Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 36:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was very good.

• 36:48Chuck Nice?

  All of you can go to heaven.

• 36:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so, um, so, are there other species, if not us, whose survival is put at risk by our own, um, our own negligence?

• 37:02Speaker 05

  Oh, absolutely. When we talk about the difference between a world that's a degree and a half warmer, Celsius, sorry, or a degree that's two, you know, a world that's two degrees warmer.

• 37:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Multiplied by nine fifths.

• 37:13Speaker 05

  Right, easy. We're talking about a world in which 90% of the coral reefs are gone versus a world in which 100% of the coral reefs are gone.

• 37:24Chuck Nice?

  And so what is the direct fallout of 90% of coral ecosystems being destroyed? What does that mean to me, sitting in my apartment in New York City or in the middle of the country in Kansas? What's that mean to me?

• 37:42Speaker 05

  I feel like that's actually a really good point, right? Because when we talk about climate change, we talk about polar bears. And most people are like, I like polar bears, but I don't really know any. And I feel like that's not the best way to talk about climate change. Because who is affected by climate change is people. So people working in the tourism industry around coral reefs really care about coral reefs. People who are fishermen, people who care about ocean health, they really care about coral reefs. But, you know, in New York City, we care about sea level rise. We care about changes to precipitation patterns. By 2100, the subway is projected to flood every year.

• 38:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The New York subway?

• 38:25Speaker 05

  The New York subway, under business as usual.

• 38:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But by 2100?

• 38:28Speaker 05

  By 2100, every single year.

• 38:29Chuck Nice?

  Well, at least I'll have an excuse for being late.

• 38:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll break out the canoes on that one. Is there a sequence of species that will go extinct in order?

• 38:38Speaker 05

  Um, I mean-

• 38:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like a checklist?

• 38:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An X-list, yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 05

  Um, what I will say is that there are some species that have proven very, very resistant to human activities. And these are the species that we really hate. Because we see them a lot. Pigeons.

• 38:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pigeons.

• 38:54Speaker 05

  Rats. Cockroaches. So there are some species that are incredibly resilient and may do really well under climate change. But the point is that warmer winters mean longer breeding seasons for rats. And so when people say, "Oh, climate change is gonna be good for some species," that's probably true. But I don't think humans are one of those species.

• 39:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, our StarTalk fans have their own questions on this very topic. And that brings us now to Cosmic Queries. Yes! Okay. We took your questions about the threat of climate change, and I've got climate scientist Kate Marvel here to help me out. So, Chuck, you got these questions?

• 39:39Chuck Nice?

  I have them here, and let's go right to it. From, uh, Akil in Philadelphia, he says this. "Is it true other planets in our solar system are going through a warming trend? If so, could that contribute to the rise of the temperature here on Earth?"

• 39:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kate.

• 39:57Speaker 05

  No.

• 39:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, next question.

• 39:59Chuck Nice?

  There we go.

• 40:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There were some reports that Mars was getting warmer as much as Earth was getting warmer.

• 40:05Speaker 05

  So I feel like if you take a picture of Mars when there's a dust storm, and then you take a picture of Mars a little bit later when the dust storm has dissipated, it looks like Mars has gotten warmer when the dust storm has just gone away. The only thing that could make all of the planets warmer at the same time is if the sun were getting stronger, if we were seeing changes in solar luminosity. And we're not. In fact, the sun's actually getting slightly, slightly weaker.

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 40:32Speaker 05

  So the sun getting stronger can't explain climate change that we're seeing on Earth.

• 40:38Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 40:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, next one.

• 40:40Chuck Nice?

  All right, from Michael in Atlanta, Georgia, in the Futurama episode Crimes of the Hot. Oh, that was a good one. That was a good one. Earth solves global warming by having every robot vent their exhaust upwards from a single point on Earth to push the planet slightly further from the Sun. How much cooling would Earth actually experience if our orbit increased just a bit? So if we were farther away from the Sun, would it help?

• 41:14Speaker 05

  I just feel like you can't say it's too hard to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if you say, "Let's move the Earth instead."

• 41:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So whatever effort it is to shift Earth out of its orbit, it's gotta be less effort to reduce greenhouse gases.

• 41:31Speaker 05

  That's my feeling. I mean, you guys are the astrophysicists.

• 41:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, no, I'm totally with you on that.

• 41:36Charles Liu?

  You make a quick calculation. Even if you push Earth out a million miles further, it only reduces the Sun's energy by 0.1%.

• 41:48Speaker 05

  But I feel like that does bring up a really good question that goes back to your discussion about the ice ages. So we know the Earth wobbles a little bit on its orbit over time spans of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years. And little tiny changes in those orbital parameters, which we call Milankovitch cycles, can actually lead to ice ages. And so we're pretty sure we know what caused the ice ages. And we're pretty sure that it's not the Earth's orbit that's causing climate change right now.

• 42:20Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 42:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One more question, Chuck.

• 42:22Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. From Russell Bailey in Abbotus Springs, Louisiana. He says, "Climate deniers are excited about the NASA report stating that the amount of sea ice in Antarctica has actually increased over the last few years. Please explain why this is happening in Antarctica as we lose ice in the Arctic."

• 42:41Speaker 05

  So the Arctic and Antarctica are two very different places on the planet. Antarctica is a giant continent that's very, very cold. And the Arctic, the North Pole, is mostly water. So we're talking about, it's not really, it's apples and oranges. The Arctic is one of the fastest warming places on Earth. One of the other fastest warming places on Earth is West Antarctica. So saying Antarctica is gaining ice is like saying America has really good bagels. That's true in New York, but if you go outside of New York, that's not true anymore.

• 43:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is so not true.

• 43:17Speaker 05

  It's so not true. And so because Antarctica is large and varied, in the east, it's not losing ice as quickly as it is in the west. But the ice that it's losing in the west, that ice loss is accelerating, and that's got scientists really worried.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so...

• 43:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the cherry picking the locations to make that point.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  These are BS points that deniers use to actually further an argument that is specious to begin with.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  I know you can't say that because you're a scientist, right? How about that?

• 43:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, up next, my friend, Bill Nye the Science Guy, demonstrates the physics of size and scale when StarTalk returns.

• 44:05Speaker 04

  This is StarTalk.

• 44:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. Featuring my interview with actor Jack Black, who it turns out is a fountain of cosmic curiosity. Check it out.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Did you ever see that movie? When I was a kid in school, there was a movie that showed...

• 44:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Powers of Ten.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yes!

• 44:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles and Ray Eames.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Right. So if you go down to the...

• 44:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a zoom in from the atom all the way out to the edge of the universe and back.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  And then go Powers of Ten all the way to everything. Somewhere in between there...

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Where are we in those powers of 10? Are we smack dab in the middle? Are we closer to the smallest than we are to the largest?

• 44:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Great question. Oh my gosh. We are pretty close to the middle.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Pretty close to the middle?

• 44:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not the exact middle.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  It's probably a little bigger than us.

• 44:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the way to quantify that question is, how many powers of 10 bigger than us is the universe? And how many powers of 10 smaller than us is the nucleus of an atom? Is an atomic particle? That would be the two limits of what matters in the universe. We are a little closer to the big size than to the little size.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Really?

• 45:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  We're closer to the big size?

• 45:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  That's crazy to me.

• 45:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Charles, did I get that wrong?

• 45:34Charles Liu?

  Well, the answer is up in the hall of the universe itself.

• 45:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 45:38Charles Liu?

  We are 26 powers of 10 lower from the observable universe. And we're 15 powers of 10 higher up from the size of a proton.

• 45:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so I got that backwards?

• 45:46Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 45:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 45:46Charles Liu?

  But only by a little bit.

• 45:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 45:48Charles Liu?

  And if you go down below the size of protons, the subatomic particles, or even to, you know, the Big Bang itself, you are getting...

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Then we're right back in the middle.

• 45:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's where I was headed.

• 45:56Charles Liu?

  There you go.

• 45:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, we can measure from quarks on the smallest scale up to the size of the universe on the biggest scale. So I'm just curious, as colleagues and scientists here, what scale of the universe interests you the most? Charles?

• 46:13Charles Liu?

  I think the most interesting scale is the scale of DNA.

• 46:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice.

• 46:17Charles Liu?

  Whether or not we are alive, or whether we think, or whether we can reproduce is completely based on molecular scales where they're just at the border between quantum mechanical and classical physics. That's a really interesting boundary for me.

• 46:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice. Nice case.

• 46:33Speaker 05

  I think the most interesting scale is between 1 and 10 meters, because that's us, right? And I actually started my career as an astrophysicist until I realized that, really, this is the best place in the entire universe. The Earth is awesome, and it's great in large part because everybody I like lives here.

• 46:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And everybody you like is between 1 and 10 meters.

• 46:56Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 46:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In that power of ten. Well, my buddy Bill Nye the Science Guy sent in a dispatch on this topic, related to size and scale. Check it out.

• 47:07Bill Nye?

  Some people might say that these aren't real trains. Of course, they're real. It depends what you mean by real or even train. I mean, these are real miniature trains. Just that a foot out there where you are is only three and a half millimeters down here. It's one eighty-seventh scale. So whether a train is carrying a miniature circus to the next town or bringing you a crate of books in a boxcar, the same rules of nature apply. I mean, whether it's a supernova or a locomotive or the atoms that make it all up. Making trains of any size operate properly means acknowledging the rules of nature of scales and speeds.

• 47:52Bill Nye?

  I mean, we can't change the laws of physics. All aboard? Amtrak 91 leaving for Midway. Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats and have a safe journey. Back to you, Neil.

• 48:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill Nye. Before we wrap this up, we've got one final clip with the always curious Jack Black. Check it out.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  I like to just ponder the enormity of the universe. That's the thing that I like to do. It's my go-to meditation. When I'm alone and I'm just thinking about my place here and what is it all about? It's all just about the strange, incredible size of this place, you know?

• 48:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it doesn't disrupt your existential angst? It brings peace to it?

• 48:43Speaker 01

  There is a peace to it. Because when you think about the stresses and the worries and the problems and then you imagine the enormity of the universe, it all just seems so...

• 48:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It rescales.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  What am I worrying about?

• 48:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay. Let's call it cosmic perspective.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well.

• 49:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is. You don't need to be an astrophysicist to have a cosmic perspective. That's our show tonight. Thanks to Chuck Nice, Charles Liu, Kate Marvel. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. And as always, I bid you to keep looking up.