Cosmic Queries – Proving Einstein Right

Was Albert Einstein right? Neil deGrasse Tyson, comic co-host Chuck Nice, and theoretical physicist Jim Gates, PhD, investigate general relativity, special relativity, the process of proving equations right, and answer fan-submitted Cosmic Queries!

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And today's topic is proving Einstein right. Chuck, I needed you for this one because you're the man.

• 0:31Chuck Nice?

  I don't know how you need me because I never knew Einstein was wrong. So I'm trying to figure out where's the controversy.

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where is the controversy? Well, to talk about that controversy, I'm bringing a friend and longtime colleague Jim Gates. Jim, welcome to StarTalk.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  Well, Neil, it's good to be back at the presence of a star.

• 0:56Chuck Nice?

  James, please, it's okay. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, we'll leave that one at that.

• 1:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jim, you've been at this for a long time. Well, you've been an Einstein fan for sure, but a theoretical physicist and you're director for the Center for Theoretical Physics at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. And that's a title. How long have you been doing that?

• 1:22Speaker 02

  So when I was 66, Neil, I was recruited from the University of Maryland to Brown. I went around telling my friends, asking friends, why do you think you want an old car?

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's not the age, it's the mileage, okay?

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We know this.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Well, one of my friends said, Jim, you're not an old car, you're an antique car.

• 1:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, there you go, a preservable antique.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  They hold their value.

• 1:49Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna go one better than your friend, James. You are vintage, my friend. You are vintage. Vintage gives you even more money than antique.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Okay, well, I switched after 33 years at my previous university, came here and...

• 2:06Chuck Nice?

  Where was the previous university?

• 2:08Speaker 02

  University of Maryland, College Park.

• 2:10Chuck Nice?

  Wow. And are you still on speaking terms? Because I would be kind of angry after 33 years that you just up and leave me. Just leave our marriage after 33 years.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know if marriage is the right analogy.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  But independent of debating that particular

• 2:30Speaker 02

  we did, we did part of the term.

• 2:32Chuck Nice?

  Excellent.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  In fact, in fact, I'm an emeritus professor there. And as an emeritus professor, I have taught two consecutive years courses on public policy.

• 2:44Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Evening courses. Yep. So I'm of good terms.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if I remember correctly, you were on Obama's Advisory Council for Science and Technology, right?

• 2:55Speaker 02

  That's exactly right, Neil. I served seven years on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. PCAS, the Acanet.

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  PCAS, that's right. That's right. So, but you were in the current administration, they didn't invite you to back in there, huh?

• 3:10Speaker 02

  I thought we were gonna try to keep.

• 3:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I just want to.

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Up enough here.

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll leave it at that. So also.

• 3:19Chuck Nice?

  That's all right. I was invited to be on this current administration's Advisory Council on writing jokes about technology.

• 3:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. So if you're Director of the Center, that's not necessarily an academic title, that's a job title. So you're also Professor of Physics.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Indeed. I'm an endowed professor here at Brown University. The endowment is before, I'm the so-called Ford Professor of Physics. I'm also an affiliate mathematics professor. And on top of that, I'm a faculty fellow at the Watson Institute for Public Affairs and International Affairs.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Excellent. Excellent. Okay.

• 3:57Chuck Nice?

  Nice stuff.

• 3:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're like, we should, we should bring you back for seven other excuses. Seven other reasons. Forget the theoretical physics. We got some policy we gotta figure out here. So what we're gonna do is, we're gonna structure this program. We're gonna spend the first segment just, you know, talking about why was Einstein proved right, or why did he need to be proved right? And then we'll go to Q and A. We go to go to our cosmic queries. And Chuck, you got cosmic queries for six, two and three?

• 4:25Chuck Nice?

  I have the questions right here, and I have to say, these are some, man, people are excited that you're here, Professor. They are excited that you're here. We got, we got some great questions.

• 4:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no one that triggers more questions than Einstein and relativity. And we got the man for it.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  Well, I would say Einstein, relativity and Tyson.

• 4:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what?

• 4:44Speaker 02

  And Tyson.

• 4:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay, right on.

• 4:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so Jim, you published a book in 2019 called Proving Einstein Right, and let me get the full title, The Daring Expeditions That Changed How We Look at the Universe.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 5:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And do you have a co-author? Who was that?

• 5:03Speaker 02

  I do have a wonderful co-author. Her name is Cathy Pelletier. She lives in Alagash, Maine, which is just right across walking to Canada. And this book is not what people expected. Usually, you know, Neil, your first book, as I recall, was partly autobiographical, right?

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that was one of my first, my fourth book, yeah.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Okay, fourth. So what I wanted to do with this was to do something I had never seen done before with physicists. Usually, people talk about the wonder and the majesty of looking at nature, the struggle and what have you. But what I wanted to do, and I had wanted to do this for a decade, is to write a book about the interior lives of the people who do the science. And so this book is actually dedicated to eight astronomers and Albert Einstein. And we, yes, we tell the scientific story, but what we really want to do is get inside of their heads and tell the story of what they were feeling as they went through this almost decade-long struggle. So the book surprises me.

• 6:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the book is published in 2019, and if I remember my history, that's basically the centennial of this big experiment that showed that Einstein was right.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But let me back up a little bit. So most people, I mean physicists know Einstein for both, for many things, of course, but for special relativity and general relativity. I think often when people think of Einstein, they think of the effects of sort of ordinary relativity, like time dilation and this sort of thing. So that would all happen in 1905.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 6:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So why, if that's all happened, and it worked, and it was, you know, it was smoking effective at explaining our understanding of the universe, why didn't everybody say, "Yeah, Einstein is the man"? Why did it have to wait another 10 years for them to prove some other thing that he did?

• 6:57Speaker 02

  So let me talk about Einstein in 1905, and thank you for giving me this opening. As you know, Neil, in 2005, there was this so-called Einstein Year of Physics, and there were celebrations all over the world. I gave 37 talks on six continents on Einstein in that year.

• 7:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought there were only five continents.

• 7:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I guess there were seven. I get my numbers confused.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  I, yeah, thank you.

• 7:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You left out Antarctica. Yeah, okay.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  That because that's the one I've never been to.

• 7:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the Penguins will, will welcome you with open arms.

• 7:28Chuck Nice?

  And happy feet, yes.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  But the, but the point was, yes, you're right, Neil. In 1905, he came up with some amazing things about space and time and how they bend and warp and what have you. But do you know that in 1907, he was still in the patent office? People think that as soon as he came up with his one world theories, the world beat a path to his door saying Hosea, Hosea, you know, whatever. But no, no, no, that's not what happened.

• 7:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Hosanna. Wait, Hosea.

• 7:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Hosea is the prophet, but Hosanna, Hosanna is the praise, but we knew what you meant.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  Well, this is what happens when you go off script, guys. But anyhow.

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  No, no, but you're right. Uh, but, but the point was that he did this great, this work, but it took two years for physics community to recognize what he had done.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  While he was in that patent office, still trying to figure out how to get a job as a physics professor, he looked out the window one day and he saw some workmen on a roof. And he had this sort of story coming to him that if the guy, one of the guys fell, he wouldn't feel his weight. And so that started Einstein thinking about gravity.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's thinking of the death of someone working on a roof next door. I did not know this.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  Well, not the actual death, but the process that would lead to it.

• 8:46Chuck Nice?

  Just, just his fall to imminent death.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. That's just an imminent fall.

• 8:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. I, I did know Einstein had this morbid side of him.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Yes. And so.

• 8:55Chuck Nice?

  However, I, let me just say, I totally get it because I think about the death of the guy that blows that leaf blower outside my bedroom window every Saturday morning. So.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  And so Einstein started thinking about gravity. And I, so this is like in. In fact, he calls this the happiest thought of his life.

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so Jim, this is like Newton's apple moment.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He sees the apple falling, and then he sees the moon, and then there's a, there's a, there's a eureka moment in there.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  And that's what happened with Einstein in 1907. So the thing is curious about Einstein is although people think about him as this mathematical genius, every time he did something, he actually had to learn more mathematics. So he didn't actually have the mathematics to realize what his intuition was. And he didn't get it right until 1915 or 16.

• 9:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, Jim, that happens to me all the time. I have thoughts, I have to invent new math to, you know, that's just a, that's just a thing.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  Well, you know, some of us actually do that, Neil. That's, that's another whole story, and I'll tell you about that one later.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  But anyhow, so he had this idea that took him almost a decade to get it down to the mathematics. And when he finished it, it was the theory of general relativity. It's the piece of thing that tells us that there was a big bang. It's the piece of mathematics that lets us know we live in a universe that is 13.8 billion years old. And so that came from that 1917 epiphany.

• 10:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Wait, I mean, 1907?

• 10:31Speaker 02

  1907.

• 10:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Right, right, right.

• 10:33Speaker 02

  Now, now, remember, it's all math. It's all math. So if it's all math, how do you know he got it right?

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, just because the math works doesn't mean it has to correspond to any objective reality.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Exactly. And so when he finally gets his discussion together, in fact, even before he gets the right answer, he starts talking about it. He starts giving talks about it. And so very early on, astronomers realized, well, he realizes first, that astronomers would be critical to try to prove that his math is actually, as you said, Neil, something that happens in the real world. And he begins it by talking to this German astronomer named Erwin Finde Foinde.

• 11:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I never heard of it again.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  No one's ever heard of it.

• 11:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I'd ever met someone named Irving Fenley-Foyd.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'd remember that, I'm pretty sure.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Well, I have sent, for your program, I've sent some photographs of all the people that we're talking about. That's the first guy that Einstein starts talking to seriously as, you know, I have a way to prove my math. And he first starts saying, if you look at starlights, could you show that starlight bends when it passes near Jupiter? And the astronomer says, you know, nah, that doesn't quite work. Then he starts asking questions about, but suppose we were looking at the night sky in the morning, or early morning or late afternoon, could we see bending starlight around perhaps Venus or something? The guy says, you know, the astronomers go back, no, no, that won't work. And so finally, by this set of discussions with Freihlitz, he hits upon the idea that if you could watch starlight during an eclipse,

• 12:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  that might be able to see the light being bent by the sun.

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you can't otherwise see a star in broad daylight.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  Exactly. So, you know, it's very special circumstance. And so that's the race.

• 12:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so this bending of starlight would have been the first experimental verification of his general theory of relativity.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 12:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, okay, and so, so now, so what year did that happen? Was that?

• 12:43Speaker 02

  This is, this is, these conversations around 1912 or so that he starts telling other people about this idea.

• 12:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and that's how you get the creativity of other people to help you figure out how to make it work.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Bingo. And that's what our book is about. It's about the other people. It's not really about Einstein.

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what's all this we hear about his wife possibly being a big engine to his creativity?

• 13:05Speaker 02

  A lot of people have, well, this is one book, Einstein's Wife, I think is the title. There are a lot of people who have posited that as, as having been important. But from my reading of the history, she was certainly his partner as he was working through in Bern as a poor patent examiner trying to do physics. She was certainly a partner that he-

• 13:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Bern, this city in Germany?

• 13:31Speaker 02

  The city in Switzerland.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, Switzerland, excuse me, right, right.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  He was, so she certainly was his partner there. But in the actual settling of the special theory of relativity from, and I've read over a dozen books trying to get this straight in my own head, the preponderance of evidence is that he worked it out with the friend of his on a train, on a tram ride, thinking about the clock tower in the city of Bern. So, I mean, it's a fantastic story. So-

• 14:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you're saying here, Jim, is had Einstein been a loner and not traveled anywhere, he wouldn't have come up with any of his ideas.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  That's actually-

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, how much life exposure is the right amount to fully realize your creativity that can be expressed?

• 14:23Speaker 02

  I tell people all the time that being a scientist means that you swim in a sea of information, and that information comes from your colleagues. And so you cannot be, I mean, I know the archetype, stereotyped view is that as a scientist, you go off in the corner and you sort of think big thoughts. But that's not what actually happens. I've lived this life for almost, for over thirty years, and you are constantly in conversation with your colleagues. And you use them to hone and to refine your thoughts and distill your thoughts and curate your thoughts.

• 14:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jim, the active word there is that you are swimming in these influences, not drowning in the influence. I was gonna say, yeah.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that's where, that's why we're, with Kathy Pelletier, we wanted to talk about these people that basically were using what Einstein inspired them to do, but to swim towards this discovery of whether his math was an accurate description of nature.

• 15:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Do you think Einstein had any doubts about whether it was all true?

• 15:31Speaker 02

  From my reading, no. He sort of says, you know, he sort of says things like, if the theory of general relativity had failed to receive experimental and observation support, that he would have felt sorry for the good Lord.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that was a really brilliant idea.

• 15:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:52Chuck Nice?

  Which is, which is kind of say, a kind of way of saying like, I'm smarter than God, so.

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It definitely says that.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  No, it doesn't. It really doesn't.

• 16:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, Jim, Jim, you're lying. Jim.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  No, I'm not lying. If you read a lot about Einstein, you find out he's a very, very complicated character. And with, and Chuck, since you brought up the issue of God.

• 16:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  And you did bring it up.

• 16:15Chuck Nice?

  I did, yeah. I mean, to me, when somebody says that statement, it kind of sounds like, you know, I'm smarter than God.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  No, no, but you see, Einstein's, although you can interpret that statement that way, that's not really what Einstein felt. Because in fact, he talks also about the illimitable spirit. That is a spirit without limits. So it's clear that if you can use a phrase like that, you're not putting yourself above such an entity.

• 16:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:45Chuck Nice?

  All right, that's a very good point.

• 16:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He didn't use that phrase in that sentence, though, but okay.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  Not in that sentence.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In that moment, he felt badass, is all I'm saying.

• 16:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not, yeah.

• 16:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it is, you know, Jim, before we go into the second segment and solicit our, our cosmic queries, just give me a minute or two, I know it should be hours or two, but give me a minute or two on the idea that math is just something we invented as humans.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it, and it works. What's up with that? There's no reason that it should work at all.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  You know, Neil, this is one of the most. This is the only piece of magic that I've ever experienced and seen in reality.

• 17:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'd love that. I'd love that. It's magic.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  It's a piece of magic, but it happens to be a part of our reality. I don't know of any other form of magic for which I can say this.

• 17:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is human-created magic. We create something and it magically describes reality. And enables you to predict and understand and extend.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  It acts like a third eye for those of us who are scientists. It lets us see things that are not seeable otherwise. I made a presentation at the New York Academy of Sciences about three years ago, two years ago. And it's precisely on this point of the magic ability of mathematics. It's an hour-long interview, so I'm not going to bore you with it, but I would...

• 18:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, is it on YouTube or something?

• 18:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's available on YouTube.

• 18:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, forgive me. I'll go find it. I'm gonna find it. Okay, the New York Academy of Sciences, a long-venerated institution.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And I was there with Margaret Worktime. And we discussed this magical thing, this thing about mathematics. And at the end of the day, one of the things I said about it is that mathematics, as people like me use it, it's the only human language that we know accurately allows us to describe nature. However, any other conscious being that could produce mathematics will have access to this knowledge.

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So hence the idea that if we meet up with aliens, we might start with this symbolic representation of what is and is not.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 19:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And math could be the only way we can prevent ourselves from getting our brains sucked out by the evil ways.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Many of us think that that's right.

• 19:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when we come back, more of this edition of StarTalk, where we're talking about proving Einstein right. And we're gonna go straight to our Cosmic Queries version of that, where we return.

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk, proving Einstein right.

• 19:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, thanks for being there.

• 19:57Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 19:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we got Sylvester Jim Gates, a longtime friend and colleague, who's an Einstein expert, a theoretical physics expert. He's all the kind of expert you need for this.

• 20:12Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 20:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For this incarnation of StarTalk. And we're going to devote this segment to cosmic queries. Jim, your presence on our show was announced to our fanbase, and they got completely excited by this prospect. And so, so I have 5%, no, I have 3% overlap with Jim's expertise in the subject. If I can find a 3% way to add, I will. But basically, this is all going to Jim. So Chuck.

• 20:41Chuck Nice?

  Excellent.

• 20:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do it.

• 20:43Chuck Nice?

  Not that it needs to be said, but I have 0% overlap with Jim, which is why I'm reading the question. So here we go.

• 20:53Chuck Nice?

  Let's start, you know what? Before we start, let me just quickly, can you, Professor, give us a quick breakdown between the special and the general? When it comes to relatively? I think that might be a nice framework for anybody who didn't ask a question to be a part.

• 21:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good.

• 21:11Speaker 02

  Thank you, Chuck. So let me start with special because it's simpler. You know, if you were standing by a road, and there was a car that was speeding towards you with its horn blaring, what would you actually hear? It would go something like, "Ohhh."

• 21:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Right, because you hear that dip in the tone.

• 21:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It sounded like you were dying.

• 21:33Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say.

• 21:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I could do better than that. Here you go, ready?

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Okay, so we'll go with-

• 21:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's work with that, nothing's dying.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  We'll work with the cat sound.

• 21:46Chuck Nice?

  By the way, in his spare time, Neil does sound effects for Warner Brothers.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  I can see. And so, but, so the point is, that effect is because sound changes its frequency if you're, if it's moving towards you, that's when it's high pitched. Or, but if it's moving away from you, this pitch goes down.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  Meow.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Exactly. So, so the, so the point is, so the point is, light actually does the same thing. When a light source is coming towards you, it appears to be bluer than it actually is. When it's moving away from you, it is appearing to be redder. And that is one of the primary effects of special relativity. It's about the relative motion of you and the source of the light. In my car analogy, it's this motion of the car either towards or with you. So that's what special relativity is all about is, if I'm moving and you're not, how do I perceive things? How do you perceive things? That's the simplest, that's my five minute class on special relativity.

• 22:49Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  We good?

• 22:51Chuck Nice?

  And so, and then-

• 22:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, general, now, general relativity.

• 22:53Chuck Nice?

  And you juxtapose that against the general and the distribution of mass and all that stuff.

• 22:58Speaker 02

  So the general theory of relativity is something very, very, very different. And what the general theory of relativity is about is, what is gravity? You see, in the special relativity, Einstein wasn't thinking about gravity. He was just thinking about how things would look if I'm moving. But in the general theory of relativity, theory of relativity, the question is, what actually is gravity? It's a very deep question that even Sir Isaac Newton didn't get the answer to. And the answer that Einstein teaches us through his mathematical wizardry is that gravity is the space which we move through and time which we experience durations in.

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Our combines this like thing he called spacetime and gravity is the bending of this thing. So that's my short course of general relativity.

• 23:50Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 23:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, there you go.

• 23:52Chuck Nice?

  All right. That was great. That was great. Okay, let's go to Izzy Rohr, who says.

• 23:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, is this Patreon? Do we do Patreon people first?

• 23:58Chuck Nice?

  Yes, sir. Thank you. Um, yes, we always start with a Patreon question because Patreon people give us money. So, and, and for that we are grateful and we show our gratitude by giving you special preference.

• 24:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so wait, wait.

• 24:14Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we're just like Congress. We're just like your congressman.

• 24:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Chuck, this just in, apparently all your questions are Patreon questions. I have just learned.

• 24:22Chuck Nice?

  Oh, excellent.

• 24:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This just in, this just in.

• 24:25Chuck Nice?

  Every single one of them. So guess what? All of you.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Let's go.

• 24:28Chuck Nice?

  So thank you to all of you. Izzy Rohr, Neil, Chuck, Jim, this is your friend Violetta, the astrophysics-loving kid here in Birmingham, Alabama. My mom, oh, you know her? Okay, cool.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  We've been in contact.

• 24:39Chuck Nice?

  Excellent. My mom and I have many discussions, have had many discussions about this. Scientists like to describe Einstein's general relativity as being incompatible with quantum mechanics. They say things like they mathematically don't work out, uh, or don't work together. So our question is, why the heck is that?

• 25:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jim, yeah, what, what's up with that?

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Okay, so let, let me, give me a second here because I got to phrase this without the mathematics.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  So the idea.

• 25:14Chuck Nice?

  That is so funny, by the way. Okay, let me just say, that may have been the most physics thing I've heard in a very long time. I've, I've got to figure out a way to say this without the mathematics.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Well, you see, I don't know if you.

• 25:31Chuck Nice?

  It's like, I'm sorry, me no speak English, me speak mathematics.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Well, Chuck, you, Chuck, Chuck, you may not know this, but Neil can tell you this. Often at the end of my email messages, I ask forgiveness for spelling and punctuation errors because my first language is mathematics.

• 25:50Chuck Nice?

  Ooh. Oh, snap.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  English is my second language. So, so I'm at a disability when people ask me to talk.

• 25:59Chuck Nice?

  Listen, I've never heard a person admit a fault that makes you better than most people.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  I don't know about that, but it causes me difficulties Chuck on many, many occasions.

• 26:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Okay, but to, okay, but to.

• 26:20Chuck Nice?

  Back to quantum.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  Back to quantum. Okay, so what essentially happens is if you believe the universe is quantum mechanical, then it forces you to forget about things like electrons, because electrons we think about as little tiny balls. That's the classical picture that you're taught. And in fact, quantum mechanics says, no, that's not the way it works for electrons. You have to think of these things that are more like waves, except when they act like particles. So that's the first thing quantum. It gives you this really weird thing that you have to give up an idea, except sometimes, right?

• 26:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Okay, so now when you, so there's a piece of mathematics around this called Schrodinger's equation. So I gotta bring that in. And it tells you how to calculate.

• 27:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're gonna bring up Schrodinger, you can't leave out his cat. So just keep going.

• 27:06Chuck Nice?

  Or that litter box which hasn't been changed in God knows how long.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  Schrodinger's litter box.

• 27:13Chuck Nice?

  That's what I'm about. Schrodinger's litter box.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  We can also go back to Neil's, uh, Neil's rendition of a car horn as it approaches you.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  But anyhow, uh, so you have a piece of mathematics around giving up the idea of particles. And when you now give that piece of mathematics up and try to do gravity, you find out you just get into a total mess, that you cannot calculate answers anymore that take into account the quantum behavior. And that's the mess.

• 27:44Chuck Nice?

  So that's the, that's the disconnect there, is that Schrodinger's equation, once you remove anything, does, none of the gravity stuff works.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  Because the way that Einstein and Newton and all those folks thought about gravity has the idea of particles embedded in it. That's the problem.

• 28:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, right. So, alright, so, uh, who's, at the end of the day, who's gotta give? Is it, is, is gravity gonna bend to quantum physics?

• 28:11Chuck Nice?

  I see what you did there. I, I saw what you did there, Neil.

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the gravity bends, yeah.

• 28:15Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Oh, you know, Neil, this is actually a very deep question.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or is there a third idea, bigger than both of those, that then encloses them under one umbrella?

• 28:28Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  There are variants of all, of everything that you've just said. There, well, first of all, who's gonna bend? There are people who will tell you that gravity's gonna be one that loses this discussion.

• 28:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I had to bet, I'd lean that way, too, yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, and there are a lot of people who believe that, that somehow gravity is going to have to give way in, uh, in some manner. There are other people who have this, uh, third idea approach, uh, that you were talking about, Neil. And one of those, uh, and sort of emblematic of that is a discussion that's underway about information and black holes. Uh, I know Neil is probably aware of this, but there's this whole discussion about whether information is conserved, like we say, energy is conserved, is information conserved? And if you have a universe with black holes, doesn't that mean that some of the energy disappear, I mean, some of the information disappears? And then you violate a cons- uh, conservation law? So there's a whole big discussion in theoretical physics that's been away, underway for over a decade about black holes and information compromise.

• 29:27Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so when you talk about information, are, are you referring to, cause we just talked about this last week, give me one second, please? That when Neil was talking about virtual particles and the evaporation of a black hole, and if I'm not mistaken, then this particle actually materializes on the outside of the black hole, and then that is what escapes? And so then, if that were to happen, are you saying that that somehow messes up this whole idea of the comprom- conservation of information?

• 29:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you were really paying attention in that episode.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  It does seem like it.

• 30:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, Chuck!

• 30:02Chuck Nice?

  Neil, why you think I do this job, man? I'm getting a free education!

• 30:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, Chuck!

• 30:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, okay, so that's what, okay, that's.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  No, but the point is that it's in a state of flux. We don't know what the final solution is gonna be. But many people like me, uh, actually think that string theory will have something to do with the resolution.

• 30:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 30:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the string people think this, yeah?

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Well, it's not just string people, I think. Uh, I, I don't consider myself a string person, for example. I am someone who's spent their life working on supersymmetry and strings happen to intersect that.

• 30:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay, well, I consider myself a string cheese person, so.

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  String cheese, yes.

• 30:43Chuck Nice?

  That's about as close as I'm getting to it. All right, cool.

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, go on, next one.

• 30:47Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. This is Paul Vogel, who says, "Recently, between the detection of gravitational waves and a photo of an event horizon of a black hole, some significant predictions made by Einstein's general relativity have been verified. What's the next big prediction made by general relativity that scientists are testing?" Thank you.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  So that's a great question, and it's a great question, and the answer is the following. In 1905, one of, Einstein wrote four papers. Among those four papers is one that points out that energy has to be quantized. Now, we know that Einstein doesn't like quantum theory, but in fact, he's one of the fathers of quantum theory because of this 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect, that when you.

• 31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, he didn't like it because he didn't think the universe should be probabilistic, right?

• 31:46Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. He wanted determinism, as it's called, whereas as quantum mechanics says, no, you can't have determinism. You have to go with probabilities. So the answer to your question, Chuck, is now that we have seen waves of gravity, we want to see the quantization of the energy carried by those waves. Because when we do that, we will have the Star Trek graviton.

• 32:07Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 32:08Speaker 02

  In our universe.

• 32:10Chuck Nice?

  So the same way we know light has a particle, are you saying that gravity has particle? Or, wait a minute, it, it would, it would have to be that we find this gravity particle?

• 32:20Speaker 02

  That's correct. That's the next big prediction that. Want to find from the kind of experiments watching gravitoids. You want to be able to see the quantization of the energy that the gravity waves hold. That tells you that gravitons, just like you hear in Star Trek. You know, all this talk about graviton waves. At that point, it is no longer science fiction. It's a piece of science.

• 32:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, and Chuck, just to follow your line. So a photon is a particle of light, but you can also speak of light as waves.

• 32:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so that so that is a proper analogy. We've measured gravitational waves. Now we want to measure the gravitational particle.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 32:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have a photon, then you have the graviton. So so so I don't know any experiments out there to measure a graviton. Is there something in the works?

• 33:06Speaker 02

  No, nothing to my knowledge, Neil. I don't know anyone who's this is going to have to be an exquisite experiment. And we're just at the stage of just being able to see the gravity waves. So, you know, is it 50 years, is it 100 years? I don't know. But as our technology improves, someone is eventually going to figure out how to do that detection. And then we can stop saying that Captain Kirk is the only only guy who gets to talk about gravitons.

• 33:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if just a quick question. If we have gravitons, then gravity being the curvature of space and time has no meaning in the presence of a graviton.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Ah, you're following along here. For a lot of people, the detection of a graviton will likely necessitate a real rethinking of what of what gravity is. I've already, I mean, some of us already are there. I don't actually think about gravity in terms of geometry. It's field theory. That's the tool for people like us.

• 34:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So what you're saying is Einstein's curved space happens to be a convenience in certain under certain situations that gets you the right answer.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're good with that, but it's not the total story.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 34:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Wow. There you go. Okay. Yeah, that is. So just let let the record show Chuck that Jim Gates just said Einstein had his head up his ass.

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He just said that, just to make it clear.

• 34:35Chuck Nice?

  That's funny. Okay. James is like, "I'm not saying that."

• 34:40Speaker 02

  I'm not saying that.

• 34:41Chuck Nice?

  James is like, "I'm not saying that."

• 34:45Chuck Nice?

  He was like, "Send your letters to Neil."

• 34:50Chuck Nice?

  The professor's like, "Send your letters to Neil, because I did not say that." Okay.

• 34:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, we gotta take a break, and when we come back, we'll go through our third and final segment of Cosmic Queries, Proving Einstein Right on StarTalk.

• 35:16Chuck Nice?

  Hey, we'd like to give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons, Beverly Bellows and Christopher Mank. Guys, thank you so much. What would we do without you as we make our way across the cosmos and create this show for everyone to enjoy? And if you're listening would like your very own Patreon shout out, please go to patreon.com/startalkradio and support us.

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk, Proving Einstein Right. And Chuck is helping me, you know, in his, because he's, you're a big fan of Special and General Relativity, aren't you Chuck?

• 36:02Chuck Nice?

  Oh, without a doubt. Are you kidding me? Come on, man.

• 36:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, of course.

• 36:08Chuck Nice?

  I mean.

• 36:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But of course.

• 36:10Chuck Nice?

  Some people like reality TV. I like rela-TV. Okay, that didn't work.

• 36:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that just so did not work. But anyhow.

• 36:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you're on social media. What's your best place people can find you on social media?

• 36:23Chuck Nice?

  At Chuck Nice Comic. Thank you, sir. Appreciate that.

• 36:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck Nice Comic. And you even have a, I stumbled on this, you never told me this, I stumbled on one of your, you have a TED Talk. On technology in the future.

• 36:33Chuck Nice?

  I do, technology and the unintended consequences of human interactions.

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, or the absence of human interaction via technology. Yes, I stumbled on that. I'm angry with you for not telling me in advance about that. I have to find that on my own. We've got Jim Gates, an expert in theoretical physics. Jim, do you have a social media platform?

• 36:53Speaker 02

  I do. It's Dr. Jim Gates. You can see on, there's a Twitter version and a Facebook version.

• 36:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doctor, it's just D R, I presume?

• 37:02Speaker 02

  Just D R.

• 37:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, all right. We'll find you there. And you've got this book, Proving Einstein Right.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And co-authored with Kathy Pettier.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So we're continuing our cosmic queries. And just before we begin, and Chuck, before you read one in. Jim, you've got a background there that looks, it looks kind of spacey, actually, but then not quite.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could you give us a minute on that?

• 37:26Speaker 02

  Sure. So I'm in the odd position, Neil, where it looks like both of my twin children are going to become physicists. So this is, you know, this is not something I set out to do, but.

• 37:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, right. Yeah. Keep telling yourself that, okay?

• 37:42Speaker 02

  So my daughter works on black holes. And so she's actually, actually started publishing. And I actually had a chance to watch her give a talk this week. So, you know, big props to my daughter. Her name is Delilah. But I also got to give big props to my son. The background that you're looking at, these green little splotches are artificial neurons that he's been growing in the laboratory because it looks like he's going to be a biophysicist.

• 38:06Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 38:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Chuck, he's, he's, he's creating the next generation superhero or superhero villain.

• 38:12Chuck Nice?

  Without a doubt.

• 38:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Black holes and growing neurons?

• 38:16Chuck Nice?

  So that, so that. The daughter will harness the power of the black hole and the son will imbue some, some being with that, with that power to rule the world.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Have you ever heard of, have you ever worried about dark side?

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The dark side, there it is.

• 38:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  Who knows?

• 38:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jim is breeding the dark side. So this, so this, is it an actual photo? Or it looks like artwork?

• 38:40Speaker 02

  No, no, it looks like art. This is actual photo of some of the first successful cell lines that he's been growing that where you can see the evidence that they're developing a ganglia like real brain cells.

• 38:52Chuck Nice?

  Sweet, man.

• 38:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 38:54Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that's amazing.

• 38:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll watch that space.

• 38:56Chuck Nice?

  That's so important. Okay, cool.

• 38:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let's get to the next question. Chuck?

• 39:00Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, big brain stuff going on in that family.

• 39:04Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Let's, um, let's go to, uh, let's go to Lisa Hansen. And she says, hello to you all from the Bay Area. String theories are so involved and fascinating. I love trying to wrap my brain around them. I'm wondering what, if any, other scientific disciplines are involved in the research for evidence and proof of these theories? What those clues might be?

• 39:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well. Yeah, clues in this real universe, Jim, and not some imagined one.

• 39:35Chuck Nice?

  I know he was gonna say.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  It's very interesting that that question came up because just last summer, I did something for the first time in my life. Because I tell people, I exist at the boundary of mathematics and physics, so I'm a fallen mathematician in some sense. But last summer, I published a paper along with my colleague Stefan Alexander here at Brown University, Evan McDonough, who was one of our post-docs, and my post-doc, Konstantinos Koutourakis, as well as our graduate student, Leah Jinks. And in this paper, we set out a premise that strings might be able to write structures,

• 40:19Speaker 02

  create structures that could potentially be observed in the cosmic microwave background.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  We call these structures Susy Reels. They're like these funny patterns. I hope people are familiar with the CMB. It's this microwave radiation that you can detect by looking at the universe. And what we showed in our paper is if you take string, the ideas of string theory seriously, they have a way of writing a kind of signature in this structure. So what kind of science do you need? You need to be an astrophysicist, someone who could actually look in microwaves at how the universe gives us a perspective.

• 40:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Once again, it comes down to the astrophysicist.

• 40:59Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  Of course, absolutely. I start, look, Einstein.

• 41:03Chuck Nice?

  But now, wait.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Einstein needed astronomers.

• 41:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  String theory may well need astrophysicists.

• 41:09Chuck Nice?

  So that begs the question, in that collaboration, who was Batman and who was Robin?

• 41:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just a quick thing, if I remember, Stefan Alexander, isn't he, he's the jazz musician, isn't that correct?

• 41:27Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. Stefan is a professional level jazz musician, although he is a physicist on faculty here at Brown University.

• 41:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I should have said that differently. He's also a jazz musician. So he wrote that book, The Jazz of Physics, or The Physics of Jazz, or something?

• 41:41Speaker 02

  That's not The Jazz, so Physics is his work.

• 41:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 41:43Chuck Nice?

  All right, cool, man. All right, great stuff. That's great stuff. Let's move on to Josh B., who says, who has more impressive mustache, Albert Einstein or Neil deGrasse Tyson?

• 41:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know, I gotta say, anytime I'm on, I gotta show up in a movie or in a documentary, and they put you in hair and makeup, you know, and so they do the makeup, fine. And then they get to the hair, and they say, can we trim your eyebrows a little? And can we get some of the loose hairs out of your mustache? And I'm saying, wait, this is my Einstein look. You want to be all trimmed and manscaped?

• 42:17Chuck Nice?

  You need a wiry, unkempt, just wild mustache.

• 42:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so what's with that look, Jim, that Einstein sported?

• 42:25Speaker 02

  So, I'm not sure what the question is.

• 42:32Chuck Nice?

  You know what? With that as the answer, we should just move on.

• 42:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We should just move on.

• 42:37Chuck Nice?

  That was hilarious. Let's just go to Sam O'Neill.

• 42:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 42:41Chuck Nice?

  Who says?

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wait, just about eight years ago, I just want you to know I was nominated for the Mustache Hall of Fame.

• 42:47Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 42:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just so you know. Okay. Just so you know.

• 42:49Chuck Nice?

  Right on.

• 42:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Well, I'm going to return that I was once inducted into the Luxuriant Hair Association.

• 42:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very nice. That's a thing?

• 42:58Speaker 02

  It was at the time.

• 42:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 43:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Okay, here we go. This is from Sam O'Neill. He says, hey, Dr. Tyson, hey, Dr. Gates, what's up, Chuck? My question is, what do you theorize that the strings in superstring theory are made of? Love you guys. I would give you money, and I do. Samantha from Earth.

• 43:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From Earth.

• 43:23Chuck Nice?

  I love that.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  Well, my question is PayPal?

• 43:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we don't. It's Patreon on this side of that.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  Oh, okay, okay. Well, someone's got to explain that to me, you know?

• 43:36Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  Well.

• 43:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all you, Jim, so go for it.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So the thing about string theory, which perhaps isn't completely understood, is that we don't think strings are made of anything. They are the fundamental thing if it's a correct picture of the universe.

• 43:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They are the thing everything else is made of.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 43:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So therefore you can't say what it's made of, because it is the thing that everything's made of.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  That's all we know.

• 44:02Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that.

• 44:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That feels like a cop-out.

• 44:04Chuck Nice?

  I was about to say, that's a little circular.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, but.

• 44:08Chuck Nice?

  That's slightly circular.

• 44:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just a little.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  No, no, Chuck, you're right. But you see, one of the weird things about mathematics is that you have to take some things on faith. There's actually a mathematical theorem that says this. It's called one of Göth's theorems. So this is one of the really weird things about math that people do not appreciate.

• 44:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, Jim, be fair. It's not that you have to take it on faith, it's that you have to assert that it's true. If you assert that it's true, then everything else works. It's assertion. It's not, gee, I hope it's the... No, you just declare that it's true and then take everything from there. But you can't prove, you can't prove the thing that you assert that's true. That's not fair.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  And therefore, it's an element of faith, Neil.

• 44:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't, I don't, I use faith in a different...

• 44:54Speaker 02

  I know, I know you do. We have to have another discussion about it.

• 44:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A whole faith. We'll get you, I said, we'll get you back seven other ways on this.

• 45:01Chuck Nice?

  Without a doubt.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  I'd love to talk to you about it.

• 45:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forget Einstein. We got other, we got other business to resolve here.

• 45:06Chuck Nice?

  If only George Michael were here to settle this debate. Okay. Sorry, pop culture reference project, shouldn't have brought it in. Here we go.

• 45:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From 1987.

• 45:13Chuck Nice?

  I know, I know.

• 45:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn, Chuck.

• 45:16Chuck Nice?

  I can't help it.

• 45:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How old are you? Damn.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  He looks young, doesn't he, Neil?

• 45:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He does. He's, he's, he uses that oil of old age.

• 45:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, oil of old age?

• 45:27Speaker 02

  That's exactly what he said.

• 45:29Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I never heard that before. I like that.

• 45:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I heard that from an old friend of mine said that.

• 45:33Chuck Nice?

  Oil of old age. I like it. All right, here we go. Uh, this is Woody. He says, after seeing Neil's enthusiastic response, what are Jim's thoughts on a cosmic gravitational background? And you just talked about the cosmic microwave background and string being able to be visible in that. What about a cosmic gravitational background? Do you have any thoughts?

• 45:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this would be, this would be the paw print of the birth of the universe expressed in gravitational way.

• 46:01Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  Would be, and I don't see, I've never actually heard a scientific discussion of this. But that idea, it really seems well grounded, that one could have met, no, that if one could, I mean, look, the cosmic microwave background is an electromagnetic background, is microwaves, right? Just like the microwaves you cook.

• 46:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's light, it's light.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  Right, it's a form of light.

• 46:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  But, uh, but a gravitational background, a gravitational signature from the Big Bang? I don't see any reason why that's not possible. I've not heard of any scientific discussions of the concept, how.

• 46:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so part of why the, the cosmic microwave background is so useful to us. Not only that it exists, but we have a map, a very detailed map of its structure. And right now, when we're detecting gravitational waves, oh, something happened, we think over in that direction of the sky. You know, we don't, we have nowhere near the, the mapping precision to possibly do anything interesting yet. And I don't know when it would come.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  Oh, I would give us about 20 to 30 years because what, in order to do what you're saying, Neil, first of all, we have to get a sufficient number of gravity wave detectors. Right now, there are about four in the world that are one, there's one, for example, in Europe, there's one in Australia, and there are two in the US. So that's the minimum number you need to do the mapping. And they're not all sort of up fully functional. So we got some time.

• 47:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And then you need, then you want to get gravitational waves of different wavelengths. Right? And so that, so it's not just this one that came through. Get the whole spectrum, if I can borrow that word from light. And then you have this two dimensions of information.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 47:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To interpret. So, yeah, so, yeah, so we're not there yet, but if we were there, it would tell us a whole lot about the very first moments of the.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  Exactly. And that's where science is pushing toward.

• 47:52Chuck Nice?

  Cool. That is super, super cool. All right. Roman Precup or Precop says this, is it possible that some of the stars observed in the night sky are duplicated or multiply duplicated due to light bending and gravitational fields of a massive object like super, like some super black hole?

• 48:15Speaker 02

  I should let Neil.

• 48:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I could, I could take that.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  Thank you. Go ahead, Neil.

• 48:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I, I could take that one. So the answer is yes. Uh, next, next question.

• 48:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so what happens is that the way this unfold, um, by the way, Einstein first predicted that you can make a ring. Einstein ring where the light would bend symmetrically in all directions around a single object and create a ring of light from that single object from behind. It turns out that's not realistic because that that requires exact lineup.

• 48:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that there's a perfect geometry of all sightlines that go around it. Most things don't line up exactly, but when we do find them sort of lineup, even if not exactly, you find distortions that resemble rings. They're arcs.

• 49:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't make a full ring, but they make arcs. Now, if you have one object behind, that object will make a minimum of three images. One that comes straight through, and then two that come around the side.

• 49:14Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 49:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And up from there, it can make three, five, or seven images. So yes.

• 49:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, we did something cool. It's something cool. You ready? Ready? Okay. So we found, we found objects, quasars, whose light bent around gravity, uh, uh, uh, galaxy clusters that were sort of midway.

• 49:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? From Einstein's gravity. And, but the path lengths were not the same.

• 49:39Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 49:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so this, this, the path on one side is a little longer than the path on the other. And you know how we know? Because quasars vary. They have explosions. The light varies. So we see it, and it varies up here, and then a scheduled time later, it varies over in exactly the same way. So you get to see the same event twice.

• 50:00Chuck Nice?

  That's because of the change in intensity of light due to the explosion? Is that what's happening?

• 50:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, there are things, yeah, the quasars can eat things episodically.

• 50:07Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 50:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A lot of weird things, episodic things that can happen in quasars. But the fact that you have two different path lengths is extraordinary testing of the shape of the curvature of space, and how much gravity is in the cluster, and how far away the, the quasar is. So it's, it's an amazing, it's an amazing thing.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  So it's funny, it's funny to me that you've come back to this because this is what my daughter works on. We talked about the cells behind me, but you, but when you have rings of matter around rotating black holes.

• 50:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, he's just giving equal time here.

• 50:36Chuck Nice?

  I know.

• 50:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because he didn't want to pick his children.

• 50:38Chuck Nice?

  He's a good dad.

• 50:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's a good dad, good dad. Go on, good dad.

• 50:42Speaker 02

  You know, so, but when you have rings of matter that glow around spinning black holes, you can actually see the backside of the ring because the gravity bends the light from the little growing black. That's what my daughter works on.

• 50:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's, that's very cool, man.

• 50:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, one, one last quick one and we'll, uh, and we gotta call, we, we, we're over time.

• 51:00Chuck Nice?

  We'll be done with it. Okay.

• 51:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Chuck, go ahead.

• 51:02Chuck Nice?

  Uh, this is from Glenn. He says, uh, Dr. Gates, do you think that white holes exist? Was Einstein observing gave, uh, what was Einstein observing that gave him the impression that they did? All right. Now I'm just going to answer this for you. No, there are no white holes. Einstein was racist like everybody else back at that time and just couldn't let it be just black.

• 51:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Started off Chuck.

• 51:29Chuck Nice?

  Couldn't just let it be a black hole, could you? Okay. Yeah. So, no, of course.

• 51:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck got it right off his chest.

• 51:35Chuck Nice?

  You know what? I love, here's what I love about the professor. He's sitting there like, I have nothing to do with this. Whatever Chuck is saying right now, that's his crazy business.

• 51:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I only just met Chuck.

• 51:44Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. He's like, I don't know this man. All right, go ahead. Sorry.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Okay, so what's

• 51:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, make it quick, Jim.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, so what's really quick, what's really interesting is that black holes aren't black. It turns out that because of Stephen Hawking, we know that they actually had this very slight radiation called Hawking radiation. So they're not exactly black. That went out a long time ago. So, you know, got to keep up with the news and physics.

• 52:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but the white hole concept.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  The white hole concept, I, I

• 52:18Speaker 02

  People who, look, I don't know any solid scientific arguments about the existence of such things. I have not encountered.

• 52:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And plus, we don't see anything in the universe that would resemble what a white hole would be predicted to be, which would be the mathematical opposite of a black hole, right? So everything is spewing out, and that should look like something in the signature of light.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  Be something spectacular. We don't see it.

• 52:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. But we really gotta cut it there. Jim, okay, we gotta get you back for nine other subjects.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  That's okay, Neil. I'm game.

• 52:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got you on the Rolodex.

• 52:48Speaker 02

  I got game.

• 52:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. And we'll get a picture from your other child's twin child behind you on the next program.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  Okay. Black holes, man. Black holes.

• 52:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, always good to have you. Always a pleasure. All right. This has been StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always. Keep looking up.