Quirky Cosmic Queries

Aliens, the multiverse, immortality, ʻOumuamua, and more – Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Paul Mecurio answer the quirkiest fan-submitted Cosmic Queries on topics from all across the universe. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons and All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/quirky-cosmic-queries/ Thanks to this week’s Patrons for supporting us: Daniel Kulikowski, Natalia Lalicata, Scott Eisen, Jeffrey David Marraccini, Sunil Ingle. Photo Credit: StarTalk.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I've got Paul Mecurio, co-host.

• 0:20Paul Mecurio?

  Great to be here.

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Paul, welcome back.

• 0:22Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, always fun.

• 0:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn near old-timer now with us. That's good. This episode is a Cosmic Queries, and they named it for me. I had nothing to do with it. Quirky questions. Cosmic quirky queries. Quirky queries. Sounds like grab bag to me, so I don't know where they're coming from, but Paul, you got the question.

• 0:42Paul Mecurio?

  All right.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So bring it on.

• 0:44Paul Mecurio?

  All right. Uh, let's see. We'll start with the last King's Guard on Instagram. Is it possible that humans are the most intelligent species in the universe?

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. Next question.

• 0:54Paul Mecurio?

  I agree with you. You want to know why?

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there not sufficient evidence collected?

• 0:58Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, Siri, well, I'll give you one reason, because people review plungers on Amazon.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 1:05Paul Mecurio?

  I went to buy a plunger, and there was 567 reviews of one plunger. I go, "Gather your belongings and move to the woods, people. It's over." I'm not joking.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:17Paul Mecurio?

  Most intelligent species.

• 1:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, finish the question. Just give them a chance.

• 1:21Paul Mecurio?

  Okay. Uh, is it possible that most intelligent species in the universe, and there is no intelligent species out there other than us?

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so if there's no other life in the universe, I think it's fair for us to say that we're the most intelligent species that ever existed on Earth and ever existed in the universe, if there's no other life out there. However, who defines humans as being intelligent?

• 1:48Paul Mecurio?

  And what does intelligent?

• 1:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm asking you. What's the answer to that question?

• 1:54Paul Mecurio?

  Humans.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Humans, thank you.

• 1:57Paul Mecurio?

  You can see I'm not intelligent, I am. Man, you're just blowing my mind again.

• 2:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Humans.

• 2:04Paul Mecurio?

  If I'm here and not here, where am I? I don't know, just answer the question and leave me alone, will you? Humans, you're right, humans.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who defines humans as intelligent? Humans do. Okay? Now, what's our DNA difference from chimps?

• 2:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You would've learned this in biology class. How much, it's like 1 or 2%? Like 1% difference? Do we count chimps as intelligent? Well, sure, if you're a chimp fan. But not intelligent on the level of humans. Chimps are not building airplanes and flying to chimp cities, right?

• 2:36Paul Mecurio?

  Right, and humans aren't throwing their poop.

• 2:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do chimps really throw their poop, or is that just a thing?

• 2:47Paul Mecurio?

  No, I've seen it.

• 2:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 2:49Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, if they have a delivery and it comes late, they go crazy. You know, FedEx is late.

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What if it's good, I wonder if you can get them in the major leagues?

• 3:00Paul Mecurio?

  We have teams. You be the commissioner of the poop throwing league.

• 3:06Paul Mecurio?

  Strike.

• 3:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  90 mile an hour fastball, fast poop. So, so they, so, what am I saying? So, what does the smartest chimp do? And the primatologists will bring them forward and they say, oh, I've said this before, by the way, I'm on the internet probably multiple times saying exactly this, but I'll do it for you.

• 3:26Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. That, the smart chimp will stack boxes and reach a banana, right? Will get a stick that's just right, that can go inside the termite hole and get the termites out. This takes some...

• 3:39Paul Mecurio?

  And there was Koko, the sign language?

• 3:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think Koko was a gorilla, but that's fine, but same, the primates, the greater apes. And I wanted to make a joke about that. You know, he wasn't just a good gorilla, he was a great ape.

• 3:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm trying to get the right lead into that, but that's my punchline, alright? We'll work on it later, you help me out.

• 4:02Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, we'll get you there.

• 4:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get me there, you helped get me there. So, so if there's only 1% that separates us, yet they stack boxes and we have a Hubble telescope and poetry and philosophy and art and comedians, then that they were listed last in that.

• 4:22Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, thanks for, that was really just...

• 4:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Afterthought, English comedian.

• 4:27Paul Mecurio?

  You didn't have to do that fake, like, oh, you know, make me feel intelligent.

• 4:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got a comedian at my desk, at my table, let me add that to the list, real quick.

• 4:34Paul Mecurio?

  Exactly. Yeah, that's...

• 4:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you can say, "Well, what a difference that 1% makes," you might say.

• 4:42Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 4:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But let's take a cosmic perspective on it. If there's only 1% difference between us, maybe there's only really a 1% intelligence difference as well. Maybe stacking boxes to reach a banana is only 1% intelligence away from the Hubble telescope and poetry and philosophy and music and art.

• 5:03Paul Mecurio?

  That seems like a stretch, though. That's, that's, it seems like it should be more than 1%.

• 5:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're human, and human ego knows no bounds. So let's do the experiment. Let's go out in the universe and find some other creature that's 1% smarter than us, in the same way that we're 1% smarter than chimps. What would we look like to them?

• 5:27Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 5:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What does a chimp look like to us? So, our smartest human, because the smartest chimp does things that toddlers can do. Toddlers can figure out how to stack boxes. Toddlers can figure that out.

• 5:42Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 5:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We say, "Ooh, it's a smart chimp." Our toddlers do it. Bring in this other species. Show them the smartest human. Stephen Haw- roll Stephen Hawking out.

• 5:53Paul Mecurio?

  You?

• 5:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, roll Stephen Hawking out. There he is. They would say of Stephen Hawking, "This one is slightly smarter than the rest." But only slightly smarter because he can do astrophysics calculations in his head. Like little Timmy over here who just came home from preschool. And he's, "Oh, how cute, Tim. Oh, you just derived the principles of calculus. Put it under refrigerator door. Oh, that's so cute. Oh, you just composed a sonnet. Oh, isn't that cute? Show grandma."

• 6:21Paul Mecurio?

  They're so intelligent, why do they still have refrigerators?

• 6:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Boom. Boom. Boom. No, no, they don't have refrigerated doors. They don't have refriger- they just have refrigerated doors. Okay? Because they gotta put the kid art somewhere.

• 6:38Paul Mecurio?

  It's just floating in-

• 6:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With a magnet.

• 6:40Paul Mecurio?

  It's floating in the kitchen. You think they have a mudroom?

• 6:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta put the- you gotta put the- So, they're so smart why they have refrigerators. That's such a brilliant non sequitur. Smart people don't need refrigerators.

• 6:55Paul Mecurio?

  I'm here to point out the obvious stuff that the unintelligent species- I'm representing the unintelligent.

• 7:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, my point is, what would their simplest thoughts look like to us? Here's a simple thought that is inconceivable to a chimp. Paul, I'll meet you tomorrow at Starbucks. We'll have a latte and we'll get on the plane together, go to Washington and have that meeting in Congress. Okay? What does any of that mean? Is it comprehensible at all to a chimp? What is a latte? That could be just a definition, but we're gonna fly to- Fly? What are you- fly? Are you a bird? No. How do you fly? Well, we invented it. How did you invent it? It required technology. It required metal and engines and fuel and understanding Bernoulli's principle.

• 7:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is our thoughts that we all take for granted that is inconceivable to a chimp.

• 7:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I fear the simplest thoughts from this other species, that we would, they would lay down the simplest thought and we would be poring over it with our most brilliant humans for centuries, not understanding it. And they'll just laugh at us and put us in a zoo and we'll be their entertainment. So we figuring out calculus and spaceflight and the Hubble telescope is to them, what chimps throwing poop is to us.

• 8:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 8:23Paul Mecurio?

  You hear that, scientists at MIT? You're just throwing poop, you poop throwers. But here's the thing.

• 8:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 8:33Paul Mecurio?

  Do you think there is life out there?

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not given reason to doubt that there is, given how old the universe is, how big it is, and how prevalent the ingredients for life on Earth are across the universe.

• 8:47Paul Mecurio?

  And why do you use the word fear, no joke, why do you use the word fear, for that proposition that there may be a species out there that's 1% more intelligent than we are?

• 8:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, the fear is, they give us their simplest sentence.

• 9:02Paul Mecurio?

  You can't.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we just have no idea what they're talking about. So I don't want to be that stupid.

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want to say-

• 9:13Paul Mecurio?

  Look at me, I know how you feel.

• 9:16Paul Mecurio?

  I am totally with you on that. That's why when I'm around you-

• 9:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not your fault.

• 9:20Paul Mecurio?

  This is why I don't hang out with you a lot. Cause you are that species from another planet-

• 9:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No!

• 9:24Paul Mecurio?

  That doesn't throw its poop.

• 9:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No!

• 9:26Paul Mecurio?

  And you're, but the problem is you're like 20% smarter than I am.

• 9:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I'm-

• 9:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want to believe that the human intellect is sufficient to solve any problem, given enough time and enough people and enough cleverness. But the proposition that such a species exists, knowing that their simplest sentence may be incomprehensible to us, I fear it only because I don't want to be that dumb. I want to believe that all problems in the universe, in the universe are tractable by the human mind. And this would be an example that clearly it's not.

• 10:05Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 10:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it could be the best evidence for why we've never been visited by aliens. Because they've scoured the universe for other intelligent species and they saw no sign of it on Earth.

• 10:18Paul Mecurio?

  Well put.

• 10:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question.

• 10:21Paul Mecurio?

  And you wanna know why they know that? Because people are reviewing plungers on Amazon. Right, you know, this is related.

• 10:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, my other hypothesis for why they never visited. They actually have visited, but they accidentally came during Comic Con. And nobody noticed. And they said, "Oh, there are other aliens here already." You know, "Damn, let's go find somewhere else where we're the first visitor." You know.

• 10:45Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, that is perfect. Um, okay. This is somewhat related, so I think this is a good next question. Mohammed Khan, Facebook. When do you think it will be possible to achieve immortality?

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think, it has been suggested, and I'm not given reason to doubt this, that the first person to live forever is already alive.

• 11:02Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, it's Beyonce.

• 11:07Paul Mecurio?

  Everybody knows that.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That answer came way too quickly off of your tongue.

• 11:12Paul Mecurio?

  No, I was just thinking, I don't know.

• 11:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the notion, what enables that sentence to possibly be true, is that, get someone who's just born today. So, we're working on the genome. We're isolating the aging gene, whatever that is, if it even is such a thing. And we say, "Okay, we can now, that newborn person, when they're 20, they will, we take this potion and they can now live to be 150. That would be a major advance on our longevity. By the time they're 40, that we've improved the potion, now they can live to 300. By the time they're 60, now they can live to 500. By the time they're 80, now they can live to 1,000. By the time they're 100, they can live for a million years."

• 11:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the notion, that we'll make incremental improvements that will continue to accrue for the person who's just born today.

• 12:03Paul Mecurio?

  And what do scientists or people in this field working on it or thinking about it see as a potential hazard of that?

• 12:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean, what could go wrong?

• 12:14Paul Mecurio?

  Yes, exactly.

• 12:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, a couple of things, very important. One of two things has to happen. Either we colonize other planets, or you stop making babies.

• 12:24Paul Mecurio?

  Hmm, that's a good point.

• 12:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? Because if you don't die, and you keep making babies, that ups the population growth rate.

• 12:31Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 12:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The population growth rate relies on the fact that some people die.

• 12:35Paul Mecurio?

  And food sources.

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And resources in general, that's correct. So, you need other planets. If you're not smart enough to have technology to get to other planets, living forever is not a good idea.

• 12:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I have a rebuttal to living forever.

• 12:48Paul Mecurio?

  What's that?

• 12:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What motivation would you have to even wake up tomorrow morning? And get anything accomplished at all?

• 12:54Paul Mecurio?

  Well, it's ego, don't you think?

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you could all, that's in there too, but what I'm asking is, isn't the

• 13:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't the knowledge that you're going to die? Give focus and meaning to your life?

• 13:08Paul Mecurio?

  Yes, I have a child and like if you

• 13:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All of this?

• 13:12Paul Mecurio?

  And I'm being serious, I have a child, I think, you know, you have a limited amount of time in on this earth. You want to make sure you spend time with it, whereas if it's open-ended, it's like, you know, we'll see you in 20 years.

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I was wrong? The following wouldn't be true. Okay?

• 13:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you ever given your loved ones? Plastic flowers?

• 13:35Paul Mecurio?

  My wife's

• 13:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's shaking her head, no.

• 13:37Paul Mecurio?

  No.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's do better than plastic. Have you ever given your loved ones silk flowers?

• 13:41Paul Mecurio?

  No, I've stolen them from a funeral.

• 13:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, why not? Why are you giving her flowers? That you know in advance will die?

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know the answer. Because knowledge that the flowers will die? Magnify the meaning and the attention you give it while they're alive.

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the meaning Of limited longevity.

• 14:09Paul Mecurio?

  You live a different way.

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You live a completely

• 14:12Paul Mecurio?

  You approach things from a different perspective.

• 14:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, let me now pull something out of my ass.

• 14:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why is the dog so excited to see you when you come home?

• 14:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The dog only lives 14 years.

• 14:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever's your excitement that spends seven times that amount of years alive?

• 14:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just imagine your entire life you now have to experience in 14 years.

• 14:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What would you do? You would, you would, every day outside, we'd go, "Oh my gosh, there's a sun, there's this, oh my gosh, oh, someone's butt I can smell, another butt, let me smell as many butts as I can, oh my gosh." Okay? There's, there's, everything they do has such intensity.

• 14:54Paul Mecurio?

  You're right. I always say my dog is too optimistic. I'm not a big fan of it.

• 14:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they're not optimistic if you only live 14 years. They're just right.

• 15:02Paul Mecurio?

  So...

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I don't mean to psychologically analyze dogs. What I'm suggesting to you is that what they look like to us is as though they're packing life's intensity in a concentrated way.

• 15:15Paul Mecurio?

  Of 14 years?

• 15:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 15:17Paul Mecurio?

  But seriously, why is it excited? Because like they think I wasn't gonna come back?

• 15:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't have a why, I'm just, like I said, I'm pulling this out of my ass. I'm, I'm suggesting that we question the enthusiasm dogs exhibit. Like, this was wholly unjustified. Look, I just came home. Look, I just went out to get a quart of milk, you know?

• 15:38Paul Mecurio?

  I think it's because they had an accident on the couch and they're trying to get on your good side.

• 15:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That too.

• 15:43Paul Mecurio?

  I know, I did a stain, but come on.

• 15:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's in the list, that's in the list. But, um, if you went out for an hour, to them, it's 14 hours, maybe. Or you've gone for a day, to them, it's two weeks. In our lifespan, that's what it is.

• 15:57Paul Mecurio?

  Well, what just hit me with this conversation is there is such an interrelation between science and psychology and human beings and the human, uh, the human condition. And that you have to take all of that into account in doing what you do.

• 16:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I try to every day of my life. So knowledge that I will die gives focus and meaning to what I do in life. So if I live forever, it's like, what am I doing? What? What? So that's why.

• 16:26Paul Mecurio?

  That means, just, the on-demand choices would be terrible. You'll have seen every single thing on your cable system.

• 16:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, they'll make, if everyone else is living forever, they'll still make movies faster than you can watch them. You're not, you're not gaining on this one, Paul.

• 16:41Paul Mecurio?

  Wait, that means we can get more Police Academy movies? Um, all right, here's one from, uh, this is Kenyon Reed, Instagram. What science fiction concept would you most like to see in a real-world application?

• 16:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very clear, warp drives. I want to visit the other side of the galaxy.

• 16:57Paul Mecurio?

  X-ray vision, man.

• 16:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We already have x-ray vision. They're called x-ray. We can already see through things.

• 17:02Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, but I want it like in glasses and I could see what I'm, you know.

• 17:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You read too many comics as a kid. We have x-ray specs at the back where you can buy them. The x-ray vision, why do you want to see through? Good score around it and you have a much better view of it.

• 17:14Paul Mecurio?

  Under the clothes?

• 17:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you want to be, that's a different, that's a different issue. Have you spoken about this with your counselor?

• 17:23Paul Mecurio?

  All right, so you're saying it's easy. What's the answer?

• 17:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, any vision that sees through clothes also sees through flesh.

• 17:29Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, you gotta ruin everything.

• 17:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just giving you the reality of it.

• 17:31Paul Mecurio?

  I'm so psyched for this.

• 17:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm getting, I'm just, I'm just saying.

• 17:35Paul Mecurio?

  All right, okay.

• 17:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what it is. So, so you don't see through clothes and then just see the body of the person. You're seeing through the body of the person. You see their bones and rings they're wearing and other, their metal hip that got replaced five years ago. That's what you're seeing with x-rays.

• 17:51Paul Mecurio?

  I got it.

• 17:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, no, you, we have much better power of longing than just, do you want to see an x-ray?

• 17:57Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Warp drive, you get anywhere you want in the universe.

• 18:00Paul Mecurio?

  And you think that will be something at some point?

• 18:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not what the question was. Just what would I most want to see? Not that I think what was the most likely.

• 18:07Paul Mecurio?

  Is it likely that that would happen, you think?

• 18:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm skeptical.

• 18:10Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah. Well, you're prescient because we have Mel Powell at Mel Powell.

• 18:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question, go. What is it?

• 18:15Paul Mecurio?

  Asked warp, warp drive someday, yes or no? That's the question and you just answered it. So, there you go.

• 18:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I will go out on a limb and say no, so that in 300 years you can go back and play the tape of me saying no, as you whiz by me at warp speed. We've got to take a break. When we come back, more Cosmic Queries Quirky Questions Edition. When we return.

• 18:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Cosmic Queries, Quirky Queries Edition. Paul.

• 19:02Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give it to me.

• 19:03Paul Mecurio?

  I got you, here we go.

• 19:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Remember, just here tweeting at Paul

• 19:06Paul Mecurio?

  At Mecurio. M C U R I O, Facebook and Instagram. And you can check out my podcast, The Paul Mecurio Show.

• 19:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the name of the show?

• 19:14Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, I named, we had a big thing.

• 19:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Paul Mecurio's name of his show is called The Paul Mecurio Show.

• 19:18Paul Mecurio?

  We, we had, we sat around the table, 12 of us, and we spitballed names and that's what we came up with.

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For a day, and that's what you came out with. Now, you're in good hands, there was The Andy Griffith Show.

• 19:28Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 19:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, you know, Seinfeld, it's just Seinfeld, right?

• 19:32Paul Mecurio?

  I, well, I tried two chairs and a microphone for a while, which I kinda liked, but then that, whatever. But then.

• 19:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It wasn't as cool as Between the Ferns.

• 19:41Paul Mecurio?

  No, exactly. But the other thing you helped me with, you gave me a suggestion for a show name, which I'm using, so. All right, here we go. Sammy John Lennon, Instagram, "Do you believe a muamua was just an unusual space rock or an alien probe?"

• 19:59Paul Mecurio?

  I hope you say probe.

• 20:06Paul Mecurio?

  I wish I wrote that question.

• 20:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alien probe? Because it's long and slant, I mean, it's like, it's.

• 20:11Paul Mecurio?

  What is that all about, like, why do people jump to that when they start talking about aliens? Why?

• 20:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why, why is it always, yeah.

• 20:18Paul Mecurio?

  Anything that you could think of that they would do when you came, they came here, why?

• 20:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Probing your organs, right.

• 20:23Paul Mecurio?

  The obsession with my anus, what are, what are they all, are they all gastrointestinal doctors? Is that it?

• 20:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They all want to be proctologists.

• 20:30Paul Mecurio?

  They invent their own colonoscopy tests and they're trying to put it on us to make money? Come on, people, you're better than that. Okay, ready? The, the muamua question, right?

• 20:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have a, um.

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's this joke, you ever heard this one? What do you call an, an Italian suppository? Have you heard this one?

• 20:56Paul Mecurio?

  No.

• 20:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a uendo.

• 21:03Paul Mecurio?

  That's great.

• 21:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can't take credit for that one.

• 21:07Paul Mecurio?

  I'm telling every one of my Italian relatives.

• 21:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you gotta be in a UN though.

• 21:14Paul Mecurio?

  I wanna make a toast for Christmas. Ding ding ding, before we do that.

• 21:18Paul Mecurio?

  I have an Italian joke. I thought that was so funny.

• 21:24Paul Mecurio?

  That is hilarious. Oh my god, too funny.

• 21:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Omua Muua is the first confirmed interstellar visitor to our solar system.

• 21:36Paul Mecurio?

  It's a rock, right?

• 21:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can I be more poetic about it, please?

• 21:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Won't you let me ride this one? It's got a beautiful Hawaiian name, which means scout, basically, except it's repeated. And in some languages, Hawaiian included, if you repeat something, it's done for emphasis. So, Omua is a scout. Omua Muua, sorry. Muua is a scout. Omua Muua is a scout scout. So, it's the first visitor from interstellar space that we have ever confirmed moved through our solar system. And it is trivial to learn whether it belongs here or comes from elsewhere. You just look at how fast it's going.

• 22:18Paul Mecurio?

  How do we know that it was, that it's from another?

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm getting there. So you look how, you measure how fast it's going, and you say, at that speed, it is moving too fast for the sun to contain it. It is too fast for it to orbit the sun. It will come into the solar system in one side and come out the other side. Our gravity will alter its path, but it's not gonna wrap it around into orbit. So, so, there are four kinds of orbits you can have. You can have a circle, an ellipse, slightly flattened circle, a parabola, which is an ellipse that's so big it's open, that it's open on the other side, and the thing never closes back on itself. Okay?

• 23:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or a hyperbola, which is even greater than everything a parabola was. And if you find something that has a hyperbolic trajectory... It was born somewhere else and it's going somewhere where you're not. So

• 23:20Paul Mecurio?

  This rock is

• 23:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This had, we're not ready for rock yet, okay?

• 23:23Paul Mecurio?

  Sorry.

• 23:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This visitor.

• 23:24Paul Mecurio?

  This visitor.

• 23:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, so it, it, that told us it came from somewhere else outside of the solar system on a one-way visit. So now, you add up all the gravity that we have that could be affecting its trajectory. And you find out it's on a different trajectory.

• 23:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What are you gonna do about that?

• 23:46Paul Mecurio?

  Different than the one you calculate?

• 23:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. And we know how to calculate trajectories. We got this. We know Newton's laws of gravity.

• 23:54Paul Mecurio?

  So you, so the question becomes, when did it get altered and how did it get altered?

• 23:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct!

• 24:00Paul Mecurio?

  Finally.

• 24:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or is there somebody altering it consciously onboard? If something is moving non-gravitationally, something's in charge of it.

• 24:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not gravity.

• 24:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If something is moving through space and just all of a sudden starts slowing down, something's controlling it.

• 24:22Paul Mecurio?

  But then why wouldn't that?

• 24:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, that's the opening scene of the movie, the remake of the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. We detect some fast-moving thing in the solar system with hyperbolic speeds.

• 24:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Headed towards Earth and then it rapidly begins to slow down.

• 24:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's alien. It's being controlled by aliens.

• 24:45Paul Mecurio?

  But if that were true, why, in all seriousness, why would it not?

• 24:51Paul Mecurio?

  It surely is sophisticated enough to be able to sense that there are beings on this planet and not stop to explore or?

• 24:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean, okay, so now it's not just, am I controlling my orbit? Am I actually analyzing destinations? That's a whole, how much do you want out of this rock?

• 25:09Paul Mecurio?

  So you're saying it may not be a rock?

• 25:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so, so, because its orbit, its trajectory around the sun was not, quote, "following" Newton's laws, that meant something was affecting its trajectory. And some hypothesized, maybe it's an intelligent craft. If there's not actual aliens on it, maybe there are active navigational tools on it that go into autopilot as they near a star.

• 25:34Paul Mecurio?

  Or being controlled remotely.

• 25:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, because they would be too far.

• 25:38Paul Mecurio?

  How do you know that?

• 25:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the speed of light.

• 25:41Paul Mecurio?

  If you can't define that, what's on there?

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay, so if they're controlling it from afar, they'd have to use subspace communication systems, such as what they do on Star Trek. Because on Star Trek, if they're going warp speed, how are they gonna send a signal ahead of them if they're moving faster than the beam of light itself, that they would be sending to move ahead of them?

• 25:59Paul Mecurio?

  FedEx. It's amazing. They're amazing, I'm telling you. Always on time.

• 26:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you need is a FedEx that can deliver backwards in time.

• 26:08Paul Mecurio?

  Exactly.

• 26:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I needed to get this, this there yesterday. We've got it, here we go. It's the yesterday, sir. Cost you extra.

• 26:15Paul Mecurio?

  It's another $5, but boy, is it worth it. So that's why the alien reference?

• 26:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why there's a, it was hypo, maybe aliens did it, but there are other ways a trajectory can be influenced. As you near the sun, if you have ice content, the sun will evaporate that ice and the ice outgasses. Oh, now you have a little, you know, retro-rockets that can alter which way your object is moving. So there, there are other ways that it could be influenced. And I'm not gonna jump to conclusions and say it's aliens. I'm not gonna rule it out, but I'd rather not, that be my first suggestion.

• 26:52Paul Mecurio?

  But, and just to wrap this up on this subject, there is not, it, it's gone, so any analysis of it is done.

• 26:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever we've done, yeah, it's, it's left the solar system, correct.

• 27:02Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 27:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, sorry, it's, it's, it exited out the back door.

• 27:05Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 27:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, but it's still out there, but it's, it's no longer near enough to our sensors and detectors and telescopes to get any meaningful data, any further.

• 27:13Paul Mecurio?

  Got it.

• 27:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. And by the, so 'aua aua, Hawaiian for scout, that was discovered using telescopes on Mauna Kea, in Hawaii. Yeah, so just out of respect for the culture and things. It's not the only thing that has a Hawaiian name. A lot is discovered from that observing site.

• 27:28Paul Mecurio?

  And they say this thing, they speculate is between 300 and 3200 feet, something like that.

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I forgot the exact number. I forgot, but it's about that. It's about that.

• 27:38Paul Mecurio?

  And moving that fast, again, they can, they can do a fairly accurate measurement.

• 27:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. Well, well, yeah, fairly accurate. They know it's elongated. And one of my concerns is when you have elongated things in space, it's usually an asteroid that broke apart from the tide forces of whatever it last went close to. And it gets stretched in front and behind itself. And if it's a solid object, it breaks into pieces that extend in front and behind itself. And so that it's not a solid object, that it's just this, um, because it's a very long cigar-shaped object.

• 28:10Paul Mecurio?

  Okay. Uh, John Laird, at John Laird 87, Twitter. What is the most counterintuitive thing about the nature of the universe that's true despite seeming false at first glance?

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that question, and I've never been asked it before. Thank you. What's the guy's name?

• 28:26Paul Mecurio?

  Uh, John Laird.

• 28:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  John, thank you for that question. Beautiful question. Counterintuitive. Let me think. So, uh, counter...

• 28:38Paul Mecurio?

  That there's not a Chick-fil-A at more rest stops on the East Coast. That's counterintuitive to me.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, except that if you're traveling on Sunday, you can't buy from them because they're closed on Sundays.

• 28:50Paul Mecurio?

  That's right.

• 28:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And...

• 28:52Paul Mecurio?

  That makes sense.

• 28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's more travel traffic, you know, tourist, you know, um, trip traffic on the weekends than on, so half the time it's not going to be there.

• 28:59Paul Mecurio?

  Good point.

• 29:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just saying. Okay. Because on the seventh day, God rested.

• 29:04Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, and Sabaro opened.

• 29:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To fill in the gap.

• 29:08Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, you know, the actual seventh day was not Sunday, it was Saturday.

• 29:13Paul Mecurio?

  Really?

• 29:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's why Jewish Sabbath is Saturday.

• 29:17Paul Mecurio?

  And why do, why?

• 29:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what is, what is, what is Saturday in Romance languages? You know it in Spanish? What is it in, in Italian, Saturday? Aren't you Italian?

• 29:26Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, but I don't.

• 29:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, do you have Salim in? So I know what in Spanish, sábado. It's Saturday, so Sabbath, that's the seventh day.

• 29:33Paul Mecurio?

  Why did it get, why did Sunday become the?

• 29:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because Christians worked very hard to distinguish themselves from the Jews who preceded them. They said, "We can't celebrate the high, the high, the holy day, the same day as the Jews, because we're different." So they moved it, physically moved it to Sunday. So that is the holy day on the Christian calendar, Saturday is the holy day on the Jewish calendar, as you all know. And it begins at sunset the day before, on Friday.

• 30:00Paul Mecurio?

  Right, right.

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so it's sunset Friday to sunset Saturday. And plus, this sunset rule can only exist if you live between the Arctic circles. Because if you go north of the Arctic, the sun never sets.

• 30:12Paul Mecurio?

  Ah.

• 30:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or never rises.

• 30:13Paul Mecurio?

  That's why there's no, there are no, uh...

• 30:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jews in the Arctic, is that what you're saying?

• 30:18Paul Mecurio?

  Makes sense.

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, if you, when that was figured out, I mean, the Holy Land that, that no one knew about the Arctic back then...

• 30:24Paul Mecurio?

  I was north of the Arctic, I couldn't find a synagogue anywhere.

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anywhere, anywhere in the, in the Arctic Circle.

• 30:28Paul Mecurio?

  I went north of the Arctic Circle. I could not have found a synagogue anywhere.

• 30:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anywhere.

• 30:32Paul Mecurio?

  And I'm like, "How is this not possible? Even like a little one, it doesn't have to be like a big one."

• 30:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A short one, a little one.

• 30:37Paul Mecurio?

  Just a, just like a two-seater. Uh, you know, you just, you get disappointed in life. Uh, okay, John Laird, what is the most counterintuitive thing about the nature of the universe that is true despite seeming false at first glance?

• 30:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Counterintuitive. All right, you ready? Let's go way back on this one. That Earth is moving through space at 18 miles per second. And you have no knowledge of this. We had to measure this, we had to figure this out with telescopes, with smart people, with data, with calculations. We associate motion with, "Hey, I can feel I'm in motion, I can feel that." But the more pure motion becomes, the less you feel it. That's why on very large vessels, if they start moving, you don't even know they started moving. Because everything around you is moving, your chair, your window, everything. If you're on a bus, sometimes it looks like the other bus went backwards. No, you started going forward.

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, basically, the larger the vessel, the less aware you are of how much that vessel is moving. You could be on an ocean liner, and it can start leaving port, and you would, and oh my gosh, we left.

• 31:50Paul Mecurio?

  Because you're surrounded by so many things that are also moving.

• 31:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And everything is moving smoothly. If you're on bumpy roads, you would know.

• 31:58Paul Mecurio?

  Right, so if I'm on that boat, and it starts...

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But movement through space is smooth. Can't get smoother than that.

• 32:04Paul Mecurio?

  And so, the relevance of that in relation to this question is, you're saying that the Earth...

• 32:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not intuitive that Earth is moving anywhere, and this is why we went thousands of years, was people thinking Earth was stationary in the center of the known universe.

• 32:15Paul Mecurio?

  What is making it move?

• 32:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not what's making it move, it's that if it moved much slower, it would fall into the sun, and we would all die. And if it moved much faster, we would escape from the solar system, and we'd be a vagabond planet in interstellar space. So the only planets that survived the formation of the solar system are the ones that had the right speed at the right distance to sustain in orbit, and there's eight of them. Get over it.

• 32:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eight. So, for me, that's an old-school one. You want a modern one?

• 32:45Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not intuitive. Here we go. It's not intuitive that when tide waters come in and out on the shoreline, you are actually sitting on a rotating Earth, passing through a tide that is stationary in space.

• 33:04Paul Mecurio?

  Right, because when I sit there, I think, oh, the water's coming in, going out, coming in, going out.

• 33:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're on Earth that is rotating inside and out of high and low tides.

• 33:14Paul Mecurio?

  A tidal bulge?

• 33:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tidal bulge, that's right. So to me, now, we had another cosmic queries where we spent a lot of time on that topic, but I think that's a good one. Because it looks like water's moving in and out, but you're the one moving through the tide.

• 33:29Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, see, I didn't... That, to me, is counterintuitive, and I wouldn't believe you unless you were...

• 33:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I got another one. You ready?

• 33:35Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 33:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 33:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A lot of people want to know what happens after they die.

• 33:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Evidence shows, you put together all scientific evidence, biological and physics and thermodynamic.

• 33:50Paul Mecurio?

  People mock you.

• 33:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have no existence after you die. And you say, "Well, what does that feel like?" If you say, "I have no existence," what is that like?

• 34:00Paul Mecurio?

  Wait a minute. No existence as a physical body or just...

• 34:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything about you that says you exist now, that you tell yourself, "I exist, I think therefore I am."

• 34:11Paul Mecurio?

  In terms of my presence in the universe?

• 34:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 34:14Paul Mecurio?

  How I affect...

• 34:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is gone. You will have no existence.

• 34:16Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On death. Laws of physics and biology tell us that. You can believe what you want in a country where we have protection of religious expression, but if you want to ask science what science says about it, you go into a state of non-existence. You can say, "Well, why is that, what's that like?" I'll tell you exactly what it's like. It's what it was like before you were born. You're not asking yourself, "What was it like before I was born? I had to have some existence." You didn't. You have no existence, a state of non-existence before you were born. So I'm not given reason to think that your state of non-existence in death differs in any fundamental way from your state of non-existence before you're born. Giving that much more meaning

• 35:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  to what it is you can and should do while you're alive in this world.

• 35:07Paul Mecurio?

  That's a good point. And afterlife for you? No, that concept.

• 35:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not convinced. And because I'm not convinced, I'm doing as much as I can in my own life.

• 35:16Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 35:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 35:19Paul Mecurio?

  That's true.

• 35:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't want to say, "I'm looking forward to afterlife, so I'm going to chill on the beach."

• 35:22Paul Mecurio?

  No, but it's true. You're a greeter at Walmart on the side.

• 35:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In my spare time.

• 35:29Paul Mecurio?

  You're doing as much as you can.

• 35:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question.

• 35:32Paul Mecurio?

  All right, okay. Uh, let's see here. This is Sampan Gosal, Facebook. "Where does the line of limits lie in engineering? Science or creativity?"

• 35:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I love that. I will answer that question when we return from this next break. StarTalk, Cosmic Queries, Quirky Queries Edition.

• 36:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey, here's a shout out to the following Patreon patrons. Daniel Kulikowski and Natalia Lalacatta. Thanks, guys, so much for supporting us. Without you, we certainly couldn't do this. And if you would like your very own Patreon shout out, go to patreon.com/stargtorkradio and support us.

• 36:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries, quirky queries edition. Paul.

• 36:41Paul Mecurio?

  Nice to be here.

• 36:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give it to me.

• 36:42Paul Mecurio?

  Pick it right back up.

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who else do you have?

• 36:44Paul Mecurio?

  Uh, Sampon, Gosao, Facebook. Where does the line of limits lie in engineering? Science or creativity?

• 36:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, it's both. People ask questions and they assume it has to be one or the other.

• 36:58Paul Mecurio?

  That's a good point.

• 36:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We somehow, we don't allow blended solutions to things, and that's wrong. Sometimes the actual answer is in between the extremes. But we like arguing extremes because we like a fight.

• 37:10Paul Mecurio?

  Well, I think we're also tribal by nature and we want to be in one group or the other.

• 37:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, that's probably the deepest reason of them all.

• 37:18Paul Mecurio?

  Then I'm done right now.

• 37:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no, there's no.

• 37:21Paul Mecurio?

  I'm not gonna top that.

• 37:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so it's, are you in my camp or the other person's camp? So, I think it's both. For example, my physics professor in college discovered a new phenomenon in nature. It's that nuclei of atoms resonate with electromagnetic energy. Radiation, that's going, okay? Got a Nobel Prize for it. That phenomenon is called nuclear magnetic resonance. A clever engineer said, "If you can identify nuclei with this method, I can build a machine, put you in that machine, and make a map of the different nuclei that comprise your body."

• 38:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some nuclei is fat tissue, some nuclei is tumor tissue, other nuclei is muscle tissue. Thus was born the magnetic resonance imager.

• 38:21Paul Mecurio?

  MRI.

• 38:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. Now, they took, it's really a nuclear magnetic resonance imager, because that's what he discovered, but that's one of the forbidden N-words. You're not supposed to take away the nuclear magnetic resonance imager.

• 38:34Paul Mecurio?

  Let me tell you something. If this engineer is so smart, why am I sitting in that tube? And I, you can't pump, pump some music in or something?

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I, well, I'll, I'll take it up with them. Yes.

• 38:42Paul Mecurio?

  See, I feel you're being sarcastic.

• 38:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Were, were you in the tube that long?

• 38:45Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, a couple of days. My, my body's very stubborn. They were finding things in my body, keys.

• 38:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not supposed to eat keys.

• 38:54Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, geez, you know, since I was a kid.

• 38:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can I tell you my favorite MRI joke?

• 39:01Paul Mecurio?

  Please?

• 39:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. It was from...

• 39:06Paul Mecurio?

  Only you would have an MRI joke.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who's that, who's the comedian, uh, very deadpan?

• 39:11Paul Mecurio?

  Steven Wright?

• 39:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Steven Wright, Steven Wright, right. Like, if Salvador Dali's art were comedy, he would be it. Okay. So Steven Wright, he said, uh, "I'm gonna have an MRI to see if I'm claustrophobic."

• 39:31Paul Mecurio?

  That's great. It makes a lot of sense.

• 39:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. It's just, check the brain to see if the brain tells you if you're claustrophobic, and you're in a freaking mess. All right. Uh, so where, whoa, so that's an example of the science had to pre-exist the engineering application of it. There is no MRI without the science that got the Nobel Prize. Hang on. Okay. So, the best thing for an engineer is to have science laying around when no one did anything clever with it yet. That's the best kind of engineering solutions I've ever seen. But, how about creativity? That was the question, right? Where does creativity come from?

• 40:09Paul Mecurio?

  Well, that's what I was gonna say. Is that invention that your professor discovery made, is that considered creativity?

• 40:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, there's a difference. Creativity that is not science is unbounded.

• 40:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Creativity that is science,

• 40:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  if you don't come up with it, somebody else will.

• 40:30Paul Mecurio?

  Bounded by the laws of nature and the laws of science?

• 40:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, in science, nature is the ultimate judge, jury, and executioner of your idea. In art, I guess, public sentiment is the judge, jury, and executioner, but that can shift, and that could be anything.

• 40:46Paul Mecurio?

  Or not.

• 40:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or not, or whatever.

• 40:48Paul Mecurio?

  One person creates it and feels it's beautiful?

• 40:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, right, right. Nothing's preventing you from creating anything you want. But nature's preventing me from discovering anything I want. So that's why Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Van Gogh's Starry Night are unique creations in the human mind. Whereas Einstein's relativity, it's not unique. If he didn't do it, somebody else would have a few years later. Maybe several people stapled together, because to equal how smart as he was. So the nature of the creativity manifests differently.

• 41:24Paul Mecurio?

  But hang on a second. Regarding Einstein, I can't buy that there's not some creativity, some nuanced thought.

• 41:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not saying it's not creativity.

• 41:33Paul Mecurio?

  That you look at a problem differently than another astrophysicist and come at it in a different way. And isn't that by definition creativity or a form of it?

• 41:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not saying it's not creativity.

• 41:43Paul Mecurio?

  Well, I'm saying it is. And you're gonna listen to me. You gotta leave, because this is gonna get bad, fast.

• 41:50Paul Mecurio?

  No, I'm serious about that.

• 41:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I'm not saying it's not creative. I'm saying it's a different kind of creativity. I cannot pull anything out of my ass and say, "This is how nature works." You can pull anything out of your ass and say, "This is art."

• 42:07Paul Mecurio?

  And I have.

• 42:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In principle, you can do that.

• 42:09Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 42:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, not all art survives. Not all artists get famous. And there are reasons they're not somehow connecting to the human condition in ways that other artists do. I get that. I'm just saying, if Van Gogh didn't paint Starry Night, no one ever will paint it, ever, in the future history of the human species.

• 42:26Paul Mecurio?

  But are you saying a scientist can only apply laws a certain way? And can't do it in a creative way that's unique to that person?

• 42:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can, whatever your creativity is, it's bounded by the laws of nature.

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That enable the world as it is.

• 42:44Paul Mecurio?

  You can only do so much with the way things are in terms of the laws of nature.

• 42:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. There you go. So I like creativity. It's just manifest a little differently. That's all. And you need, definitely need and want creative engineers. You definitely want creative scientists. But the engineer can invent stuff with pre-existing laws of physics. They can improve on things that no one else saw. We've made major improvements on the internal combustion engine from the earliest days. These are engineers over the decades. Now we have electric cars. That's a whole jump into another place. Now they can benefit from another century of creative engineers perfecting the electric car.

• 43:25Paul Mecurio?

  And then driverless cars.

• 43:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the driverless cars and the like. So those are engineers perfecting on things that are not invoking new laws of physics. But I think the most fertile engineering ideas have a fresh law of physics ripe for the picking. They say, now let me create something on Earth that's never been here before. Some machine that exploits a law of physics that we just discovered. That's the coolest stuff out there.

• 43:48Paul Mecurio?

  And I consider that creativity.

• 43:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't say it wasn't creativity.

• 43:52Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 43:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are in violent agreement.

• 43:56Paul Mecurio?

  Really?

• 43:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question.

• 43:58Paul Mecurio?

  Okay. This is Anzaman Sam A., Facebook. Is it possible to travel back in time by going to another universe that is exactly the same as ours, but different time zones?

• 44:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so in a multiverse, our current thinking is that if there's an infinite number of multiverses, there's another universe where all these same molecular configurations exist, except you have some evil goatee and mustache. It's the evil, and everything else is the same, right? Okay. Is that still a thing? Yeah, yeah, you need it. Yeah, if you're, evil people have to like, stroke something, you know? Is it the cat? What is it? They have like nervous whatever? The evil person has, needs a twitch. So...

• 44:51Paul Mecurio?

  And it can't be a toy cat. It can't, God forbid, it's like, just like a little furry.

• 44:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's gotta be real. So, so with that, you can imagine a universe shifted in time. I don't have a problem imagining that. Here's the difference. Even if your entire molecular configuration is reproduced in that other universe.

• 45:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not convinced it's you. I'm just not convinced of that.

• 45:17Paul Mecurio?

  Because of my DNA makeup?

• 45:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's identical to you. It's just not you.

• 45:21Paul Mecurio?

  Because of that entity's life experiences are different than mine?

• 45:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, because it's a parallel universe where all of that is the same.

• 45:29Paul Mecurio?

  Same mother, same upbringing?

• 45:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, no, sorry. The molecules configurations are all the same.

• 45:35Paul Mecurio?

  But does that entity, if I'm a five, fall off my bike and scrape my knee? That that experience happened to that entity?

• 45:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There'll be multiple universes where that happened when you were three, five, seven, nine, 11. Didn't happen, could have happened, happened bad, happened good. You died in this other one because a truck hit you. All those combinations would exist. So you find the one that's closest to ours, but shifted by 10 minutes. That's the question. So the one, can you go back in time into that life? And all I'm saying is, I'm not convinced that your consciousness is transportable in that way. I can make an exact replica of you over here, is your consciousness occupying this. The reason why I'm skeptical is, we already have examples of identical people. They're called twins. But they don't share each other's consciousness. They are separate people.

• 46:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They might finish each other's sentences because they're raised together and they do the same things together.

• 46:33Paul Mecurio?

  They think differently, they logic differently, they...

• 46:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're not the same people, even though they are genetically identical. That's my point. And so if you're not the same person... This is my fear of the transporter in Star Trek, right? Beam me up, Scotty. Your body and soul are down there and they beam you up into the ship. What they did was, they disassembled your atoms and reassembled them over here. Are you the same person? Or are you a photocopy of the same person? If you're just a photocopy, then do you share all of the consciousness? I think therefore I am. I think therefore am I you?

• 47:16Paul Mecurio?

  How do you define consciousness in this context?

• 47:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Consciousness is, I think it's a poorly defined thing. Where everybody's trying to define it.

• 47:23Paul Mecurio?

  It's a very amorphous word in this context.

• 47:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's amorphous in many contexts. There are whole books on consciousness? You know why they're still publishing books on consciousness? Because we don't know anything about consciousness. That's not true. We know something. But the fact that it is an active field of research? The evidence of this is that people keep publishing books on it. Consciousness Explained, Consciousness Re-Explained, My Version of Consciousness, Their Version of Consciousness. This will continue until we understand consciousness and then no more books will be written about it.

• 47:54Paul Mecurio?

  Why do you think it's so difficult to understand?

• 47:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're trying to understand the thing that is making you try to understand it.

• 48:01Paul Mecurio?

  It goes back to another episode where we were talking about the mind.

• 48:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The mind-brain.

• 48:05Paul Mecurio?

  Why only 10%?

• 48:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How can my consciousness understand itself? That is a challenge that we've yet to rise to.

• 48:14Paul Mecurio?

  Do you think it's worth pursuing or do you think it's futile?

• 48:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no, I think anything that we don't know is worth knowing. You're asking a scientist, is it worth knowing? No, definitely. Check it out. It may be that consciousness is just something else, some illusion of something else that's actually going on in our brain. But it's like on Earth, it looks like we're in the center of all motion. It looks that way and it feels that way. We feel like we have a consciousness. But go to the heart of it? No, we're in orbit around the sun. We're not in the center of anything. There's some other thing going on, perhaps. Just saying. Oh, we ran out of time.

• 48:51Paul Mecurio?

  I know.

• 48:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why do I take so much time to answer questions? Is that okay if I do that?

• 48:56Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, I'm fine. We know you like to hear yourself talk.

• 49:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I'll just shut up from now on. I don't have to say anything.

• 49:03Paul Mecurio?

  No, because this is why I keep saying it, you're great for people because you take things to places where you don't expect and you explain in one question, you get six answers to things you never expected.

• 49:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how my brain is wired because the whole world is connected. And you can just answer a question compartmentalized, but that's not where the fun thinking happens.

• 49:22Paul Mecurio?

  No, and then, so, you know, literally in every question that I've done with you over the last couple of shows, there have been six or five revelations per question for me.

• 49:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 49:32Paul Mecurio?

  That had nothing to do with the question.

• 49:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 49:34Paul Mecurio?

  Completely useless information that I'll never use.

• 49:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what useless means, I guess. You don't have to define useless.

• 49:39Paul Mecurio?

  See, this is why, this is why, this is why people are...

• 49:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Useless information that I will never use. What the hell kind of sentence is that?

• 49:46Paul Mecurio?

  This is why you don't get invited to more parties, right there. You just can't let it go.

• 49:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Useless information?

• 49:51Paul Mecurio?

  You can't let it go.

• 49:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what's true about this useless information? I never use it.

• 49:55Paul Mecurio?

  You got me.

• 49:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Paul, we gotta go.

• 49:57Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 49:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dude, love you, man.

• 49:58Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, you too.

• 49:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 49:59Paul Mecurio?

  So much fun.

• 50:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Keep it going. Paul Mecurio, that was, and will continue to be.

• 50:03Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 50:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, ending this episode of StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Quirky queries, it was. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.