Deadliest Cosmic Queries

Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice answer your fan-submitted Cosmic Queries about death – what’s the best way to die, the death of humanity, and the death of the universe – and they explore all the things that could kill us. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons and All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/deadliest-cosmic-queries/ Thanks to this week’s Patrons for supporting us on Patreon: Aaron Colwell, Stephanie Judd, Kris Butler, Nipon Tuntariyanond, Lidia Jevtic. Image Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/RIKEN & GSFC/T. Sato et al; Optical: DSS

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.

• 0:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, recording now from my office at the Hayden Planetarium, part of the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. Chuck Nice.

• 0:43Chuck Nice?

  Yo, what's up Neil?

• 0:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  ChuckNiceComic on Twitter, and this is a Cosmic Queries edition.

• 0:48Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it is.

• 0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's what we did.

• 0:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we didn't specifically solicit these.

• 0:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These trickle in over time. So this is a Cosmic Queries morbid edition.

• 1:01Chuck Nice?

  Oh my.

• 1:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are people asking just questions about the ends of things.

• 1:06Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The death of things.

• 1:07Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 1:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then I worry about people. Like, what? I worry sometimes. When you read some of these questions.

• 1:16Chuck Nice?

  Yes. Um, yeah, we have definitely a, um, a very death-obsessed audience. We have a death-obsessed audience.

• 1:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll see what we can do with them. I don't even know how to bring in an expert on that.

• 1:29Chuck Nice?

  They're thinking about-

• 1:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Other than an undertaker.

• 1:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 1:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, okay, so let's try it.

• 1:33Chuck Nice?

  Apparently, these are the questions that we get more than anything else.

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a category.

• 1:38Chuck Nice?

  As a category.

• 1:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Short of soliciting a category, these trickle in as the biggest unsolicited category.

• 1:44Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, all right, let's do it.

• 1:46Chuck Nice?

  So, as usual, we go from all over the interwebs, and we always start with a Patreon patron.

• 1:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you Patreon members, by the way.

• 1:53Chuck Nice?

  Thank you Patreon, that's right. And this is one of the ways we say thank you, is by reading your questions and giving them priority. So let's start with Will J., who says, "What one or two skills would you learn now to be useful and productive?"

• 2:10Chuck Nice?

  In a post-apocalyptic world, this is of course, if you survive the meteor strike.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ah.

• 2:19Chuck Nice?

  So Apophis hits the world, first of all, if Apophis hits the world, would we still survive? Would a human, would human beings survive?

• 2:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:25Chuck Nice?

  So.

• 2:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, it would just disrupt civilization.

• 2:28Chuck Nice?

  Would that be post-apocalyptic, would, would it, would it disrupt civilization Mad Max style?

• 2:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, regionally, yes.

• 2:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, or A Boy and His Dog style.

• 2:38Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now you go way back, go back to the seventies on that one.

• 2:40Chuck Nice?

  Wait, wait, wait.

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Don Johnson.

• 2:42Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of his first movies, Don Johnson.

• 2:44Chuck Nice?

  I didn't know that.

• 2:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 2:45Chuck Nice?

  Oh, right on.

• 2:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's the boy.

• 2:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And dog, then there's the dog. Uh, so, uh, he's living on the surface of the earth, which is apocalyptic. Civilization moved underground.

• 2:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the, I think all the men became sterile.

• 2:59Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 2:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the men on the surface were not, so they grabbed him, brought him down to have him impregnate hundreds of women.

• 3:06Chuck Nice?

  Luckiest boy ever.

• 3:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, they extracted the sperm from him and then impregnate, that, that's the theme, if you didn't know about A Boy and His Dog, that's, that's Don Johnson. An early cinematic role, but you, you can look at movies and how they've portrayed these lone survivors in apocalyptic earth. And they needed like three things, they need sort of a street smarts, you can go, there's no street. Survival smarts.

• 3:29Chuck Nice?

  Survival smarts.

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, uh, boy scout level survival smarts.

• 3:33Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, probably Eagle Scout level.

• 3:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they all have some kind of weapon.

• 3:38Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 3:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That can cause harm at a distance, so a bow and arrow or a gun.

• 3:43Chuck Nice?

  You don't want any up close and personal hand-to-hand combat.

• 3:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is my issue with the lightsaber in Star Wars. Everyone's looking at, at it like it's some kind of major amazing weapon, when you have to stand three feet from the person to use it. Just think about that. The whole point of the advance of weaponry in the history of warfare is so you don't have to stand that close to anybody.

• 4:05Chuck Nice?

  Except that you can, uh, deflect, uh, laser, um, shot.

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Laser bullets.

• 4:10Chuck Nice?

  Laser bullets, yeah.

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, so what I'm saying is, if you have enough time to notice it's coming and then flick it out of the way.

• 4:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could just duck. That is true. Okay, you could just duck. Why are you ruining Star Wars for me right now? So I'm just not as impressed with the lightsaber as everybody else is. Okay. Alright. It looks cool though. Okay, so you'd wanna be able to protect yourself from a distance. Right. And you'd want access to food, and in a boy and a dog, the only food left over on the ground was canned food. Mmm. Which was not spoiled by the radiation or anything else. Right. That was involved in it becoming Apocalyptic Earth. So, I would also say that- In that case, you need a can opener. Can, yes you do. In fact, the dog could only, the dog was smarter, the dog is telepathic and a genius,

• 5:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and he's not, so the dog found the cans of food. This is basically Peabody and Sherman. It is, it is. I forgot about Peabody and Sherman.

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you remember? Gee, Mr. Peabody! Peabody, the dog, Sherman was his pet human, do you remember that? Yes, that's right. That's right. Um, I loved his wayback machine, because I loved the time travel that was in that cartoon. Um, I'm that old to remember it that way. So, so, so you, in that arrangement between the dog and the boy, the dog found the food, but the dog couldn't open the cans, but the boy could. Mmm. So they, they're- Opposable thumbs, win again! Their mutual survival depend, they, they needed each other to survive. Okay, so, I guess always carry a can opener in your back pocket. Apart from that, I think some kind of hand-to-hand combat would be useful.

• 5:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Okay, if someone stalks you up at night and then grabs you. Right. Okay, you can then reach for your action-at-a-distance weapon. Okay, so, you gotta know some kind of martial art. If not outright wrestling, right? You gotta have a weapon at a distance. Okay. You've got to have some kind of survival sense. Right. Know how to find the food, how to prepare the food, how to make fire, that sort of thing. So I think these are the basic, these are the basics in the Apocalyptic Earth. And until there's some organized rules, my fear is that we'll just resort to sort of free-for-all. Oh god, yes. Yeah. Are you kidding me? Yeah. We resort to a free-for-all when the subway platform is too crowded. And you know who wins in the end?

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who? And I think about this every time, is the person who controls the hardware store.

• 6:47Chuck Nice?

  Makes sense.

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You walk into a hardware store, everything you need is there.

• 6:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 6:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything.

• 6:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah, including weaponry.

• 6:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything.

• 6:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, whatever you need, it's right there.

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's right there for the apocalypse.

• 6:59Chuck Nice?

  So there you have it. So Home Depot employees, um, you, you will be our, our saviors when, when the post-apocalyptic world.

• 7:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If they shoot your ass first.

• 7:10Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah. All right, cool. That's a cool.

• 7:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, that's why it's good for you to have a talent that other people value that they can't just take from you. Like your knowledge of how to do things.

• 7:23Chuck Nice?

  I thought you were gonna say comedy.

• 7:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I guess so. The king's jester, right? But if you're not funny.

• 7:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, yeah, well, the first time you're not funny, that's the end of your career.

• 7:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, that's the end of your head.

• 7:39Chuck Nice?

  Well, true. End of your life, right?

• 7:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, this has been studied in, in The Walking Dead.

• 7:46Chuck Nice?

  What's that?

• 7:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The, it's, so the danger is not the zombie, the zombies, really.

• 7:53Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The danger is how people respond to each other.

• 7:57Chuck Nice?

  Right. So the interpersonal relationships become most important?

• 8:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Most important. And who do you value and why is someone overtaking the resources relative to other people? Are some people power hungry? That exploration became most of what made The Walking Dead interesting. Not all the innovative ways they would kill the, the Walking Dead, because that's, that gets redundant after like the fifth episode.

• 8:22Chuck Nice?

  There's only so many ways you can kill a zombie.

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it was kill a zombie, right? So, so that exploration, I think, was the most intriguing part of it.

• 8:29Chuck Nice?

  That's, yeah, I, I'm gonna give it to you. I, I didn't watch it that much, but what I did watch, that, that is, that's what was most interesting. It's like a soap opera, believe it or not.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it is, exactly.

• 8:38Chuck Nice?

  It's like a soap opera with zombies, yeah. Zombie soap opera.

• 8:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A quick other point, and I think about this often. If you're going to create an arc of people who will then regenerate civilization on the other side.

• 8:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How are you gonna pick who's on that arc? Right, so if I were you, I would try to find something, some talent, some trade, that would be useful in the apocalypse. That will assure that you might be picked to come on the ark.

• 9:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 9:10Chuck Nice?

  I'm trying to think of, like, will there be a nightclub on the ark? Cause if there's a nightclub on the ark, I'm in good shape.

• 9:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's still thinking, I'm not thinking about farming, or transportation, or communication. You're thinking of the nightclub and the cocktail tables.

• 9:31Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly. Do we have liquor and do we have night? Cause then I can, you know, basically I can generate a two-drink minimum and entertainment. Alright, that's cool, man.

• 9:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, next question.

• 9:43Chuck Nice?

  Alright, here we go. This is...

• 9:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Time to ask the queries on the ends of things. Okay, go.

• 9:49Chuck Nice?

  Salah Madi Madi, um, wants to know this. Wow.

• 9:57Chuck Nice?

  Wow. What if...

• 10:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're gonna share it with us?

• 10:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay, sorry. I'm sorry.

• 10:06Chuck Nice?

  What if Wolverine, with his regeneration power, was thrown into a black hole? Would he still get spaghettified? Or would he just continually regenerate? Interesting.

• 10:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 10:23Chuck Nice?

  That's a weird question. I like it.

• 10:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's the thing. The spaghettification, unless you're Elastic Man,

• 10:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  splits you into pieces.

• 10:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 10:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if Wolverine breaks into two halves, and those two halves continue to separate, there is no regenerating an injury.

• 10:43Chuck Nice?

  Right, because he's...

• 10:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not really an injury.

• 10:45Chuck Nice?

  He's still Wolverine, he's just Wolverine being, like, kinda streamed.

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, if I split you at the base of your spine, that's likely the first place you'll break. And then at the base of your neck, and then at your knees and your hips, then he's Wolverine in eight parts. What does it mean to regenerate that? I don't even know.

• 11:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you can't.

• 11:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because there's a gap.

• 11:04Chuck Nice?

  In between.

• 11:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. And the regenerative, from what I've seen in the movies and in the comic book, the regeneration requires that the gaps are filled that are part of your body.

• 11:16Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it fills in from where you already had flesh.

• 11:19Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 11:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 11:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I think Wolverine, that's it. And even the adamantium, or whatever is the stuff is.

• 11:25Chuck Nice?

  That's adamantium.

• 11:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. A black hole will overcome any physical substance.

• 11:30Chuck Nice?

  Any physical substance?

• 11:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 11:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. No matter what it is. So he's still. Even if it's fictional and magical.

• 11:35Chuck Nice?

  Right. It's still gonna, right. It's still gonna end up being just a stream of what? Single atoms?

• 11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 11:40Chuck Nice?

  Now, do the atoms actually get spaghettified too?

• 11:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes!

• 11:43Chuck Nice?

  Wow!

• 11:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is my point. The nuclei get spaghettified.

• 11:48Chuck Nice?

  Wow!

• 11:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is why I'm saying. So.

• 11:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 11:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so what happens is, the tidal force of gravity, that's the stretching force.

• 11:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tides, that's where we get the word tides from. The tidal force of gravity becomes greater than all other forces of nature.

• 12:05Chuck Nice?

  Period.

• 12:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Period.

• 12:06Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the forces of nature that hold the molecules together, that hold the atoms together.

• 12:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That hold the nuclei together, get ripped apart by the tidal forces of gravity.

• 12:17Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 12:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why gravity wins.

• 12:19Chuck Nice?

  Right. So he's spaghettified. That's all there is to it, no matter what.

• 12:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Join the club.

• 12:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, sorry. Sorry Wolverine. Damn, that's a shame.

• 12:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's my boy's name, the actor?

• 12:29Chuck Nice?

  Um, um.

• 12:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hugh Jackman. Join the club, Hugh Jackman.

• 12:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, sorry Hugh.

• 12:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You in the club?

• 12:34Chuck Nice?

  Yep, exactly.

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spaghettify club.

• 12:36Chuck Nice?

  Favorite scene, though, of Wolverine, gets shot in the head, and I don't know what movie, shot in the head, falls to the floor, um, everyone's standing there. Couple minutes later, the bullet pops back out, and he gets up.

• 12:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:51Chuck Nice?

  I love it. Anyway. Alright, here we go. This is, um, Phil Vader, 23 from Instagram.

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 13:00Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:02Chuck Nice?

  Let's say the world ends. Do you think that's the end of the human race? This could be at any time. It's a different way of saying, will we outlive this place? Do you think?

• 13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How could you outlive the planet that you live on? I don't understand.

• 13:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so let's say for instance-

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The answer is no. If Earth is destroyed-

• 13:23Chuck Nice?

  No, let's say, I mean, the Earth is gonna- How long is the Earth gonna be-

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Five billion years.

• 13:26Chuck Nice?

  No, we're here now.

• 13:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 13:27Chuck Nice?

  So, we're 4.8 billion now, right?

• 13:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, four and a half billion.

• 13:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so now, how far do we have to go, is my point?

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Until when?

• 13:36Chuck Nice?

  I'm saying, like, the sun is gonna burn out-

• 13:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, how far away?

• 13:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, how far do we have to go?

• 13:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, that's what you're saying?

• 13:41Chuck Nice?

  How far forward into the future? Oh, I didn't understand that! Yeah.

• 13:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, uh, if Earth is ready to get vaporized by the sun-

• 13:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need some ability to planet hop.

• 13:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the sun will grow in size. The temperature of Earth's surface will get hotter and hotter and hotter. Time to move, folks. You pick up your luggage, you move to Mars.

• 14:03Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The next farther planet from the sun. Okay? But the sun will also start to make Mars hot, so then you wanna move farther out again.

• 14:10Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then the sun will eventually die and no longer be a source of energy to any of us. Then you wanna be able to star hop.

• 14:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Find another solar system to move to. Sure, why not?

• 14:21Chuck Nice?

  So, how long would that-

• 14:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That all happened in five billion years.

• 14:25Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so we got another five billion years.

• 14:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have to worry.

• 14:28Chuck Nice?

  I am worried about it.

• 14:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, shoot!

• 14:30Chuck Nice?

  Oh, thank God. Phew! As long as I don't have to put it on my calendar. That's what I'm-

• 14:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have it on mine. October 12th.

• 14:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Five billion.

• 14:40Chuck Nice?

  What do we think the human race will, basically? Let's just say we solved all of our problems.

• 14:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh-huh.

• 14:45Chuck Nice?

  Okay?

• 14:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our social-cultural problems.

• 14:46Chuck Nice?

  Our social-cultural problems. How long do you think we could make it?

• 14:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If we're not gonna kill ourselves?

• 14:51Chuck Nice?

  We're not gonna kill ourselves. Which, by the way, I am sure that's what's gonna happen!

• 14:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, the average, last I checked this, uh, this is not my field of expertise.

• 15:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 15:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just relying on what I've read and, and, but I do work in a natural history museum. So I have colleagues who, who do this stuff. Uh, last I remembered, the average life expectancy of a mammal species

• 15:12Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  is several million years. So, and we've been around for several hundred thousand, so we should have a good-

• 15:17Chuck Nice?

  We got a long way to go.

• 15:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got a long way to go.

• 15:19Chuck Nice?

  If we don't kill ourselves.

• 15:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If we don't kill ourselves. And it might be that intelligence, as we've come to know it and understand it, is contraindicated of the survival of the species.

• 15:30Chuck Nice?

  So in other words, that, there might be an inverse relationship between intelligence and survival.

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 15:37Chuck Nice?

  You might get so smart that it's impossible for you to survive, cause that's what causes you to kill yourself.

• 15:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, because you invent something that you think is cool and it's the end of the world.

• 15:46Chuck Nice?

  Damn.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I think it was, was, uh-

• 15:49Chuck Nice?

  That sucks.

• 15:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, uh, who's the guy who wrote, uh, Slaughterhouse Five?

• 15:53Chuck Nice?

  Oh, Kurt Vonnegut?

• 15:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it was Kurt Vonnegut. Who, in one of his novels, he said, I'm paraphrasing, "This is the last sentence ever spoken by humans." This will be the last sentence ever spoken by humans. It'll be one scientist speaking to the other saying, "Let's try it the other way."

• 16:12Chuck Nice?

  Oh, God, yeah. That's funny.

• 16:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:15Chuck Nice?

  That makes sense.

• 16:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The last sentence, right? So you, once you have the power over nature, and the forces of nature are greater than you-

• 16:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or are ultimately greater than you, then you are wielding forces that can render, render your own extinction.

• 16:28Chuck Nice?

  Well, you know what? That makes sense, that, that there's a lot of, speaking of post-apocalyptic, um, uh, tropes. One post-apocalyptic trope is that there's a huge self-destructive action taken by hu- humankind. And then they decide in the aftermath to live at one with nature and to never go beyond that.

• 16:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 16:52Chuck Nice?

  Because-

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's hard, though. Because you're pumping water out of the water table-

• 16:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  -to drink.

• 16:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You are redirecting a river, so it doesn't go through your home. That's interfering with nature. Almost everything we do interferes with nature. Farming is an interference of nature.

• 17:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The mono crop, right? So, if you wanna live, eat, survive, and you wanna live in harmony with nature, you just leave civilization, go in a cave, and we give you a knife, and there you go. And you'll be dead at thirty-five.

• 17:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If that's how you really want to do it.

• 17:26Chuck Nice?

  If that's how you want to do it.

• 17:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You feel that strongly about nature, do it.

• 17:29Chuck Nice?

  I don't feel that strongly about anything to live in a cave, to be honest.

• 17:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, next question.

• 17:34Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. The next one is, um, JT Parrott. Um, he just says this, I'm just gonna read it as is. Does it end with a bang or a whimper?

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 17:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The universe will end

• 17:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  in its continued expansion to the future. It will end not in fire, but in ice. And not with a bang, but with a whimper.

• 18:05Chuck Nice?

  Damn, that's cold. See what I did there?

• 18:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see what you did there. All right, when we come back, more Cosmic Queries Edition, The Ends of Things, on StarTalk.

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk. Tyson here, nice there.

• 19:03Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 19:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck Nicey is.

• 19:04Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, what do you have?

• 19:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let's move on.

• 19:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic Queries.

• 19:07Chuck Nice?

  Some more Cosmic Queries, our Morbid Edition.

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Morbid Edition, yes, go.

• 19:11Chuck Nice?

  All right, so, um, what, what, this is a morbid question, and so, uh, DJ Mads.

• 19:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, just to be clear, we left off the previous segment, somebody asking simply, will it end with a bang or a whimper? And I gave like a poetic, poeticized answer, but let me just give a little more, put a little more flesh on that bone.

• 19:29Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 19:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, for the, for a while, in the 20th century, once we had Einstein's equation of gravity,

• 19:36Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the universe could be expanding or contracting.

• 19:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Within that equation. The equation didn't distinguish one or the other.

• 19:44Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 19:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Observation showed we're expanding.

• 19:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now we can ask, will we expand forever? Or will it one day slow down, stop and contract?

• 19:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 19:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We make more observations and we show, no, there's not enough gravity to halt that expansion. It will expand forever. Once we learned it would expand forever, then we asked, what is the long-term profile of the universe? Well, the temperature will get further and further diluted as space expands.

• 20:10Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 20:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Space-time expands.

• 20:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause all that energy used to be concentrated here and now it's half and then a third and a tenth.

• 20:16Chuck Nice?

  So it eventually dissipates, right?

• 20:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It dissipates, a good way to say, the intensity of energy dissipates, the temperature of the universe drops.

• 20:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it'll never come back. So, and all the stars will die and not get regenerated. Because there's no, everything will separate from each other.

• 20:32Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 20:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so gas clouds will make their final stars and that's it. So then the stars will ultimately burn out, one by one, as the sky goes dark. Thus, the universe ends.

• 20:46Chuck Nice?

  With the wind.

• 20:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not in fire, but in ice. And not with a bang, but with a whimper.

• 20:50Chuck Nice?

  It's kinda sad for the universe. I mean, I don't wanna anthropomorphize the universe.

• 20:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just did.

• 20:59Chuck Nice?

  Ah, I feel bad for the universe now.

• 21:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe that's a good way to go.

• 21:02Chuck Nice?

  Uh, yeah, you know, I wouldn't mind going like that.

• 21:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 21:05Chuck Nice?

  You know, which brings us to our next question. What a great segue you just made. DJMas2006 on Instagram says, Neil, how do you wanna die?

• 21:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, this is public knowledge.

• 21:18Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:19Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I bet if you typed, how does Neil Tyson wanna die?

• 21:23Chuck Nice?

  Hold on.

• 21:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 21:24Chuck Nice?

  Nah, I'm gonna do it.

• 21:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're gonna test it?

• 21:26Chuck Nice?

  I gotta test it out, since you said it, cause I got my phone handy, hold on. Alright, here we go. Uh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk to my phone. How does Neil deGrasse Tyson want to die?

• 21:38Chuck Nice?

  Okay, and, okay, clearly you have done this because one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight YouTube videos came up about you dying somehow. Here's you in the afterlife, here's you on I Don't Fear Death, here is you on near-death and near-death experi- Why you talk about death a lot, dude?

• 21:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not that I come out of the box doing this, it's that people come to me asking about it.

• 22:04Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 22:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so how do I choose to die? I would delight in, if I were near my deathbed.

• 22:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 22:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Near, temporally near my deathbed, I would say, "Don't lay me down to die. Launch me into that black hole so I can be spaghettified."

• 22:22Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow!

• 22:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I will report back until I no longer can. And I'll be the first human.

• 22:30Chuck Nice?

  To be spaghettified.

• 22:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spaghettified, yeah.

• 22:32Chuck Nice?

  Nice!

• 22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would totally go that way.

• 22:34Chuck Nice?

  Somebody get some sauce for Neil. We need some sauce for this man.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get a sauce.

• 22:39Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so now-

• 22:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna find sauce.

• 22:41Chuck Nice?

  That's kinda cool, actually, if that's how you're gonna go. But, do you think that would hurt, seriously?

• 22:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 22:46Chuck Nice?

  I mean, I'm being-

• 22:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but it'd be, it'll be- Yeah, and your point is? What do you mean, you're saying? Do you think it'll hurt being stretched and ripped apart by t- that of course?

• 22:58Chuck Nice?

  Well, I mean, my point is, does it, would it happen so quickly that it wouldn't make a difference? Or would it happen to the point where you would be thoroughly aware of every single part? I mean, until you couldn't be?

• 23:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You feel like you're stretching, and say, "That's good, nobody doesn't like a good stretch."

• 23:12Chuck Nice?

  No, absolutely.

• 23:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it is unrelenting, and you say, "Okay, I'm done now."

• 23:15Chuck Nice?

  No, sorry.

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not how we play that.

• 23:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 23:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you stretch and then you snap into two pieces. Now, the thing is, all your vital organs are in the upper half of your body, so you'll stay, you'll likely stay awake even after you lose your lower half.

• 23:30Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 23:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and then, you know, if you sever at the neck, they did experiments at the French Revolution.

• 23:35Chuck Nice?

  That's used-

• 23:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can still see it, yeah, yeah. And so they get blinked, you know, for a few seconds.

• 23:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 23:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I, that's how I would do it.

• 23:43Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 23:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I want my death to have some value to science.

• 23:47Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 23:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and that's how you do that.

• 23:49Chuck Nice?

  That is where we differ, I wanna die in my sleep.

• 23:53Chuck Nice?

  Feeling nothing, you know? All right, well, that's cool, man. There you go, spaghettification. All right.

• 24:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, this concept of feeling nothing by dying in your sleep? I don't know if it was just my immaturity or my, my literalism of, of, uh, cause I, I, I was a geek kid.

• 24:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 24:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and everything was literal to me. I, I could not think figuratively about anything. And I would like rethink things like six of one, half a dozen of the other. You know that? And I, I thought, is it six of one half? A dozen of the other? Well, that would be three and 12.

• 24:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because why would anyone say six of one, half a dozen of the other? Why would anyone say that if it, those are the same?

• 24:37Chuck Nice?

  If they're the same thing, right.

• 24:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so what's the point? So maybe they meant something else. So I thought six of one half, well, that's three and a dozen of the other. So maybe they say there's three of these and 12 of those. Six of a half. So I had a very literal mind. And one of them was trying to understand, uh, people, learning when people died by taking sleeping pills.

• 24:56Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I'm thinking, how could you die by playing, taking sleeping pills? Don't you just go to sleep? Like, what? Like, I can imagine dying by taking poison.

• 25:07Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah.

• 25:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I get that, okay? You can die by gunshot wound, by knife, by falling off a cliff. But just by going to sleep? And then I had to learn that you can take too many pills.

• 25:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then your body just stops working. But en route to you having digested these pills, you simply fall asleep. So I had to, I had to deduce this from first principles. That's all I'm saying.

• 25:33Chuck Nice?

  Well, you just described my favorite way to die. Yeah, but without the pill part, I don't want that part.

• 25:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just wanna go to sleep.

• 25:39Chuck Nice?

  I just wanna go to sleep and not wake up.

• 25:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 25:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. Many people in my family have died that way.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 25:45Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, here's the thing. I was just thinking about this, this morning, okay? You read about someone's death and they say they died peacefully in their sleep.

• 25:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does that mean if they don't say that, that they were screaming in total agony? So that's why, why even mention that? So I guess it brings comfort to people.

• 26:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but.

• 26:04Chuck Nice?

  Peacefully, that's the comfort part.

• 26:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, but if you died in pain and agony, you're not gonna tell that to someone. So now I'm thinking if they don't say they died peacefully, that that's actually how it happened.

• 26:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, um, I would say that's almost.

• 26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They did not go quietly.

• 26:23Chuck Nice?

  Go quietly, yeah.

• 26:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 26:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah. Now I'm wondering if you woke somebody up right before they died, would they then not die peacefully in their sleep, but in agony because you woke them up?

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, this is an experiment I don't really wanna do.

• 26:39Chuck Nice?

  I do. Oh, that'd be so cool. It's just like, yo, wake up, like, why did you do that?

• 26:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw the light.

• 26:45Chuck Nice?

  I was dying. Oh, my God.

• 26:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw the light.

• 26:48Chuck Nice?

  I was almost there. You son of a... Okay, all right, here we go. Uh, Mike Ireland wants to know this. I know that you covered artificial intelligence. What do you think the percentage is that computers have already garnered human consciousness? And are they laying them weight? Come on now, is it an eerie thought? And I just love your opinion on the matter.

• 27:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are they laying?

• 27:11Chuck Nice?

  Laying them weight, in other words, uh, until the right time.

• 27:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To do what?

• 27:15Chuck Nice?

  To get rid of us.

• 27:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so you're saying computers are pretending to not be full up AI, yet they've already achieved it?

• 27:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is a plot?

• 27:26Chuck Nice?

  By the way, at first I was laughing at this guy, and now that I just heard you say it, I'm scared.

• 27:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:31Chuck Nice?

  Cause that could actually be the case.

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:33Chuck Nice?

  If you are an AI that is, is truly an AI, right?

• 27:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They could do that.

• 27:38Chuck Nice?

  And you knew.

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They could, they could.

• 27:40Chuck Nice?

  You knew that if you expose the fact that you were an AI, okay? True intelligence, that, right, that you would go ahead and unplug me. Then I go, well, I can't let you know that. And then I chill until there's the right time where I can get rid of you or not be unplugged.

• 27:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Before you unplug.

• 27:58Chuck Nice?

  Before you unplug me or not be unplugged. One or the other. I would either wait until I can't be unplugged or I get rid of you and so you can't unplug me.

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that was kind of the plot in the remake of War of the Worlds.

• 28:12Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 28:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 28:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They, they did not follow the script from the original H G Wells story.

• 28:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the one two thousand and four.

• 28:20Chuck Nice?

  Tom Cruise.

• 28:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tom Cruise.

• 28:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, uh, in that version, the aliens lay dormant and buried underground.

• 28:28Chuck Nice?

  That's right, damn it.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 28:29Chuck Nice?

  I forgot about that part.

• 28:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then they found the right moment and then they all rose up.

• 28:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, now that idea, which perhaps they thought was clever. Uh, it, it, it undermines the entire plot of the movie.

• 28:45Chuck Nice?

  Okay, which is?

• 28:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is?

• 28:47Chuck Nice?

  Alien invasion from another.

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From another planet.

• 28:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who are overcome not by our weapons, but by germs that they do not have immunity to because they did not evolve on this planet.

• 29:02Chuck Nice?

  Right, so that premise means they had to be here a long time ago to put that stuff in the ground.

• 29:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, and now they're in the ground.

• 29:08Chuck Nice?

  Now they're in the ground.

• 29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They can be, they can develop an immunity to our germs.

• 29:12Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 29:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That entire premise unraveled in the presence of this new idea, they're gonna pre-bury the aliens.

• 29:19Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha, yeah.

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that pissed me off, I'm just saying.

• 29:22Chuck Nice?

  Well, I'm, I'm with you on that, it was, it was a crap movie, so. I mean, you know, don't get me wrong, love Tom Cruise, okay, love him.

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know that movie had a narrator?

• 29:32Chuck Nice?

  Wait, no.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it did.

• 29:33Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 29:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it did.

• 29:34Chuck Nice?

  How?

• 29:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it did.

• 29:35Chuck Nice?

  I've seen it twice, I don't remember a narrator.

• 29:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, just take a guess and there's a fifty percent chance you'll get the right narrator.

• 29:42Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm, Tim Robbins.

• 29:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 29:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Morgan Freeman.

• 29:49Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 29:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 29:50Chuck Nice?

  That's right, it did, he's, oh my god, and he comes on at the end.

• 29:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the end, and I got the end quote right.

• 29:55Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 29:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I carry it with me.

• 29:57Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go.

• 29:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I carry this narration with me.

• 29:59Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 30:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, the end of the two thousand and five War of the Worlds. From the moment the invaders arrived, breathed our air, ate and drank, they were doomed. They were undone, destroyed, after all of man's weapons and devices had failed, by the tiniest creatures that God, in his wisdom, put upon this earth. By the toll of a billion deaths, man had earned his immunity, his right to survive among this planet's infinite organisms, and that right is ours against all challenges. For neither do men live nor die in vain.

• 30:40Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Translation: whose house? My house! Anyway...

• 30:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that wouldn't happen if they were here for millions of years.

• 30:51Chuck Nice?

  And by the way, I just find it so ironic that one of the most recognizable voices on the planet is doing a reading of the most recognizable voice on the planet. So weird. How meta is that? Neil deGrasse Tyson does Morgan Freeman, you know? That's cool.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But did you like my...

• 31:16Chuck Nice?

  I did. And by the way, that's a great, great little quote.

• 31:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I got a fast one, a quick aside.

• 31:21Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 31:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. A quick aside.

• 31:24Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 31:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I read, when I heard it, I said, "That's beautiful."

• 31:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, the novel was a 19th century Victorian era novel. And I said, "That's beautiful language. I bet it was verbatim from the story."

• 31:35Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Because nobody today writes like that.

• 31:37Chuck Nice?

  Nope.

• 31:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "For neither do men live nor die." No, that's not coming out to anybody in Hollywood today.

• 31:42Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 31:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I said, "Let me find the original." But I had another little issue. I said, "This makes very strong mention of God."

• 31:49Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said, "Well, H.G. Wells was highly scientifically literate. Did he make mention of God?" I went back and found the passage. No, he does not make mention of God. Here is H.G. Wells's original passage.

• 32:02Chuck Nice?

  Oh snap!

• 32:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Covering that part of what was used for the movie.

• 32:07Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ready?

• 32:08Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen, had not terror and disaster blinded our minds? These germs of disease have taken their toll of humanity since the beginning of things, taken toll of our pre-human ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind, we have developed resisting power. To no germs do we succumb without a struggle. And directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed. Our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them, they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting.

• 32:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even as they went to and fro, it was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths, man has bought his birthright of this earth, and it is his against all comers. It would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain."

• 33:14Chuck Nice?

  Woo! Hashtag Darwin rocks!

• 33:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got pre-human ancestor, he's got natural selection of things.

• 33:22Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No mention of God. These are two different things. I think Hollywood was afraid to get real on it.

• 33:27Chuck Nice?

  Oh yeah.

• 33:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. We gotta call this segment quits. We'll be back with the third segment of Cosmic Queries, the Death Edition, on StarTalk.

• 33:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey, we'd like to offer a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons. Aaron Caldwell and Stephanie Judd. Thanks so much, guys, for your support of this show. Without you, we couldn't do it. And if you would like your very own Patreon shout out, make sure that you support us at patreon.com/startalkradio.

• 34:17Speaker 02

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

• 34:26Speaker 02

  This is StarTalk.

• 34:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, last segment, StarTalk.

• 34:45Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 34:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic queries.

• 34:46Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 34:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The death edition.

• 34:47Chuck Nice?

  Death.

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 34:49Chuck Nice?

  All right. All right, let's jump right back into it.

• 34:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give it to me.

• 34:53Chuck Nice?

  This is, um, Jay DeGater, I'm gonna say.

• 35:01Chuck Nice?

  Last name, last name, there you go.

• 35:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait.

• 35:04Chuck Nice?

  Jay DeGater, I'm going with.

• 35:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, I'll give it to you.

• 35:07Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jay DeGater.

• 35:09Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 35:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was, I was, it's probably Jade DeGater.

• 35:12Chuck Nice?

  It might be, but, you know.

• 35:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Jade DeGater. Jay, I'm with you on this.

• 35:17Chuck Nice?

  All right. Good for you. Jay, why don't you change your last name to Jones? How about that?

• 35:26Chuck Nice?

  Then we won't have a problem. All right, he says this. What does the emerging of black holes mean for the future of the universe? Could the universe eventually be the victim of a collective hypermassive black hole? Could we be left with a singularity or black hole containing all the information of this universe waiting for the next big bang trigger? Ha ha.

• 35:56Chuck Nice?

  Everything in the world just ends up into one giant black hole that creates a singularity that then becomes the universe again.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so black holes are not quite what you think they are.

• 36:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're not giant sucking machines.

• 36:08Chuck Nice?

  No, they're not.

• 36:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so if the sun became a black hole? Earth would still.

• 36:13Chuck Nice?

  Go right around.

• 36:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you could shrink down the sun and make it a black hole, Earth would still go around in orbit like it would. It would be dark and cold.

• 36:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But orbitally, it would make no difference to us.

• 36:21Chuck Nice?

  So now.

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just because it's a black hole doesn't mean it's reaching out.

• 36:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In places it didn't previously reach out to eat you.

• 36:29Chuck Nice?

  So are you saying that anything in orbit around a supermassive star that collapses under its own self and becomes a black hole?

• 36:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 36:37Chuck Nice?

  If, if, if it's already in that orbit.

• 36:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 36:41Chuck Nice?

  Then it will not cross the event horizon created by that black hole and just continue to be in that same orbit?

• 36:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. Unless the black hole eats by some other means, then the black hole gets bigger.

• 36:53Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 36:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you fed the black hole top and bottom.

• 36:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 36:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now the black hole will grow, its gravity will increase and it could increase to such a point where your speed in orbit is insufficient to maintain your orbit.

• 37:05Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 37:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then your orbit decays and you fall in. That could happen.

• 37:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 37:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but it's, like I said, it's, the objects had to have been headed towards the black hole to get eaten.

• 37:14Chuck Nice?

  To begin with. Right.

• 37:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So it's not some giant sucking machine, first of all. Second, all evidence points that every red-blooded galaxy has a supermassive black hole in its center. Modern evidence shows that if not every galaxy, certainly most galaxies, red-blooded galaxies have supermassive black holes in them. When galaxies collide, it is highly likely that these black holes will find each other, alright, because that's how the dynamics of colliding systems works. And then they will consume each other, passing through each other's event horizon.

• 37:47Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 37:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So then you have a black hole twice as big now. Alright, fine. But then it's just still stuck in the middle of this, these two galaxies that have merged.

• 37:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not, it's not reaching out to some other galaxy.

• 37:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so now, now we have an accelerating, expanding universe. So there's a galaxy over there, and I'm a galaxy over here, and the expanding universe will forever take that black hole away from my black hole.

• 38:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 38:11Chuck Nice?

  So you're all moving away from each other.

• 38:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no reason to think that all the matter in the universe is gonna land up as one black hole.

• 38:18Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not only that, the universe is just gonna expand forever, and forever is a long time.

• 38:24Chuck Nice?

  It is.

• 38:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not long enough for the Bible, though. The Bible, it's forever and ever.

• 38:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ever notice that?

• 38:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it is.

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 38:32Chuck Nice?

  Forever and ever.

• 38:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And ever.

• 38:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? Because forever, however big that infinity is, I want more infinity.

• 38:38Chuck Nice?

  One, plus one. Infinity plus one.

• 38:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you're the annoying kid, right?

• 38:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can count to a big number. I counted to a hundred billion.

• 38:47Chuck Nice?

  Hundred billion one. There you go.

• 38:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how to get an ass whooping in the street.

• 38:53Chuck Nice?

  Amen.

• 38:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in the very distant future of the universe, the black holes that did eat whatever it was they were gonna eat.

• 39:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Will ultimately evaporate in what's called Hawking radiation.

• 39:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 39:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the black hole becomes undone, and all that matter that was in the black hole is now back scattered into the uni- scattered back into the universe. So, now, if you do the math and ask, "How much mass is there within the radius of the known universe?" And see how that compares to a black hole's mass and size, it turns out, the entire universe can be analogized to being a black hole unto itself with a horizon beyond which you cannot see.

• 39:41Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it is not completely crazy to think of the universe and all that's going on within it as containing a black hole that has all the external properties that any black hole we're looking at would have within us, within our universe.

• 40:00Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 40:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, then you ask, "If we are a black hole, are we a black hole in some larger universe?"

• 40:05Chuck Nice?

  That's what I was about to say. So, who's to say that there's not more universes with the same black hole that we would be?

• 40:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. This is what, this is what led to the idea that maybe black holes are portals to entire other space-time continuums.

• 40:17Chuck Nice?

  Aha.

• 40:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 40:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 40:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 40:19Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 40:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in Men in Black, the galaxy on the Belt of Orion.

• 40:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We remember this.

• 40:24Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 40:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. It, it's a little weird to have said it that way. If it were a black hole on the Belt of Orion. Then that would legitimately be an entire other universe.

• 40:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they just said galaxy, and you can get a nice picture of a galaxy. And you go into that galaxy, then it's another galaxy. But that's not as scientifically realistic as there being a black hole.

• 40:47Chuck Nice?

  On the belt of the right.

• 40:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you go into the black hole, there's a whole universe.

• 40:50Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 40:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay. All right, well, the answer to your question is no.

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not pronounce his name again?

• 40:57Chuck Nice?

  Um, yeah, Jay Degater, or as I call you, Jay Jones.

• 41:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jay Jones.

• 41:03Chuck Nice?

  All right, cool, cool, cool.

• 41:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said his name was probably Jay Degater.

• 41:06Chuck Nice?

  You said that, yes.

• 41:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm bet, I'll bet you.

• 41:09Chuck Nice?

  Um, you know what? Jay, we read your question, hit us up on Twitter, let us know how bad I mangled your, your name.

• 41:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 41:16Chuck Nice?

  Okay, okay, this is Tori Himmelstein, or Himmelstein. I'm gonna go with Himmelstein. Okay, here we go, physics undergrad here, that's what they're saying.

• 41:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Physics in the house.

• 41:25Chuck Nice?

  Physics in the house. Is there any chance that after I die, my atoms would spontaneously combine to form an alien billions of years in the future? Are you sure you're a physics undergrad?

• 41:40Chuck Nice?

  Tori? Really?

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The answer is yes, Tori, don't listen to Chuck.

• 41:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The interesting thing about the universe?

• 41:51Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not entirely obvious at first reckoning.

• 41:56Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that every electron we've ever found is identical to every other electron. Every atom of any species of atom, I say species loosely there, obviously, right? Any oxygen atom here is identical to any oxygen atom anywhere else in the universe.

• 42:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we are composed of elements drawn from the periodic table of elements.

• 42:19Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 42:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the naturally occurring elements is ninety-four, depending how you count it. The low nineties, naturally occurring elements, that is the recipe that makes everything there is in the universe.

• 42:31Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything natural in the universe. So, if you're made of these atoms, I put you in the earth and you decompose, these atoms are available to make something else.

• 42:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And to decompose...

• 42:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is different from than to disintegrate.

• 42:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know the difference?

• 42:48Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 42:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To disintegrate is you break apart.

• 42:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To decompose is some other animal is eating you.

• 42:52Chuck Nice?

  Ill, is that really what this is?

• 42:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes. If I put you-

• 42:56Chuck Nice?

  Even if it's the ground or microbes or anything, it's still something else consuming you.

• 43:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 43:00Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha, I gotcha.

• 43:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why if I buried you on the moon, you will not decompose. Cause there's no microorganisms there to eat your body, that's right. You'll just stay there and you'll, you'll dehydrate. Uh, some atoms, some molecules will change, but not because they were, were decomposed.

• 43:17Chuck Nice?

  Now I know how I wanna die. I wanna die, well, how I want, what I wanna be after I die. I want somebody to put me in a barca lounger type chair. And, uh, put a, a, a drink in my hand and just sit me on the moon.

• 43:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 43:35Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 43:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, with sunglasses looking up.

• 43:37Chuck Nice?

  Right, looking at the sun.

• 43:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, you'll be there a thousand years from now.

• 43:40Chuck Nice?

  That would be awesome.

• 43:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'll be a little dehydrated, but you'll still be there, right.

• 43:47Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 43:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 43:48Chuck Nice?

  Hmm, so basically this-

• 43:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, uh, there's a movie that ended that way.

• 43:54Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 43:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 43:56Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 43:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who's the, who's the main star in Men in Black, not Will Smith, the other guy?

• 43:59Chuck Nice?

  Uh, Tommy Lee Jones.

• 44:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tommy Lee Jones in this movie. Ends dead on the moon, leaning up against a rock, looking out into space.

• 44:08Chuck Nice?

  That's cool.

• 44:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Tommy Lee Jones.

• 44:10Chuck Nice?

  I don't know what movie that is.

• 44:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it was Space Cowboys.

• 44:15Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 44:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think.

• 44:16Chuck Nice?

  Not bad.

• 44:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think, we can check on that.

• 44:18Chuck Nice?

  It's not a bad way to die, somebody look that up.

• 44:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 44:21Chuck Nice?

  But what you're saying though is from, from, from Tori's question. So we're just all information, so they, uh, basically-

• 44:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we're ingredients.

• 44:28Chuck Nice?

  We're ingredients, that's what I mean.

• 44:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kitchen ingredients.

• 44:29Chuck Nice?

  We're kitchen ingredients, basically.

• 44:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 44:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so that's why I want to be buried rather than, um, uh, cremated.

• 44:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I want the energy of my molecules in my body to be available to other organisms. If you, if you, if you are cremated, your energy gets dispersed into space.

• 44:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's fine, you might enjoy that, like that, but the rest of what is you is, are all the atoms are broken apart and other creatures can't-

• 44:56Chuck Nice?

  Can't utilize them.

• 44:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't, you don't have nutritional value to them.

• 44:59Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 44:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you'll still exist as atoms.

• 45:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So aliens that might evolve on this planet or some other planet, if your atoms were taken there, yeah, you could be composed as part of another atom.

• 45:10Chuck Nice?

  There you go, we're kitchen ingredients, that's it.

• 45:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it.

• 45:13Chuck Nice?

  Nothing more than flour, milk, eggs, oil, milk, waffles, we're waffles.

• 45:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good, one last question, go, give it to me.

• 45:20Chuck Nice?

  One last question, here we go. All right, Rex Young wants to know this. Rex Young wants to know this. How long could a person endure prolonged isolation such as during solo interplanetary travel or colonization before space madness

• 45:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 45:36Chuck Nice?

  becomes an issue?

• 45:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. We don't have time for this, but I want to do it anyway, figure it out, okay? Okay.

• 45:41Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 45:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck.

• 45:42Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 45:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm old enough to remember The Twilight Zone in first run. Not the earliest, but the later, slightly later years.

• 45:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 45:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like in the 60s, it went into the mid 60s.

• 45:53Chuck Nice?

  It's still on, so.

• 45:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right. You can catch it.

• 45:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there were so many episodes about astronauts going crazy for lack of human interaction.

• 46:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? And I said, wow, this is gonna be a big prob- I thought that was like the biggest problem we're gonna face.

• 46:16Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 46:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is people going crazy in isolation in space. And then I realized, then I met people who don't like talking to other people. Who don't like anybody. Who would be just fine, months, years at a time, never having human contact with anybody else. I've met these people, and sometimes I feel that way too.

• 46:41Chuck Nice?

  Perfect astronauts.

• 46:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I say, give me a, you know, a good video account, some books, some, give me Apple, Apple, you know, Apple Music?

• 46:50Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm good, I don't have to talk to anybody. So this idea that you need human contact for your survival, people I have met undermine that claim that I have seen persistently made in storytelling. But apart from that-

• 47:10Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 47:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  NASA has never sent anybody up alone since Mercury, okay?

• 47:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A, B, NASA's always yapping at you on the radio.

• 47:23Chuck Nice?

  That's true, yeah.

• 47:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're there all the time.

• 47:25Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the time, they're talking to you.

• 47:27Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 47:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How you feeling today? Did you, did you turn the knob to the left three times?

• 47:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you do the hokey pokey? That you should have? Have you spacewalked? Did you do the thing? Did you, did you have a bowel movement?

• 47:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know? And so, it ain't like they're not there.

• 47:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, anyhow, I think there's enough range of people's interpersonal temperament that I, I, I don't see that it's gonna be a problem having somebody alone. Now, you wanna know who was the most isolated person there ever was?

• 47:57Chuck Nice?

  No, who was it?

• 47:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was the command module pilots in the, in the nine Apollo missions to the moon, where, well, sorry, in the missions where two of them went down to the surface.

• 48:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's seven of the missions, where, including Apollo 10, where they went down just above the surface, they said, "Okay, come back."

• 48:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they never actually landed, cuz they're incrementally testing.

• 48:26Chuck Nice?

  God, those guys got ripped off.

• 48:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know.

• 48:28Chuck Nice?

  God.

• 48:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know. What would you, yeah, I'm thinking, you say, "Houston, I can't hear you."

• 48:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay for landing?

• 48:36Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. I'd be like, I'd be like Chuck Sullenberger, you know? "I'm gonna have to set her down, I'm sorry."

• 48:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's Sully from the, from the thing. "Yeah, I gotta put her down."

• 48:48Chuck Nice?

  "I gotta put her down."

• 48:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ran into a flock of geese.

• 48:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gotta put her down.

• 48:53Chuck Nice?

  "Houston, I got a problem, ran into a flock of geese here, gonna have to set her down on the moon."

• 48:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, uh, Apollo, there are no geese on the moon. "Are you here to look at it? Damn it, I saw the geese." Alright, so anyhow, so the command module pilot, while on the far side of the moon, was the farthest human there ever was from any other human.

• 49:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 49:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 49:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, they were the width of the moon away from any other human, plus some orbital distance, into solo people. That's it.

• 49:26Chuck Nice?

  That's the most solo person ever.

• 49:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That there ever was, correct.

• 49:30Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 49:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 49:31Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty wild.

• 49:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all I'm saying.

• 49:34Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 49:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all I'm saying. So, we don't have any more time.

• 49:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 49:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, thanks for these questions.

• 49:38Chuck Nice?

  These were great, yeah.

• 49:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These were good. That was the morbid edition. But I think we have more questions. We can do this again.

• 49:43Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god, there's like forty pages of these questions.

• 49:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 49:47Chuck Nice?

  People are really sick.

• 49:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was the inaugural.

• 49:50Chuck Nice?

  People have problems, okay?

• 49:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The inaugural. Cosmic Queries Morbid Edition. You heard it here, you heard it now. Chuck, thanks, as always.

• 50:00Chuck Nice?

  A pleasure.

• 50:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist, bidding you to keep looking out.