Cosmic Queries – Kitchen Sink Edition

What are your burning questions about the universe? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Chuck Nice answer Patrons’ flaming-hot questions about the universe, stars, black holes, gravity, philosophy... everything but the kitchen sink!

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.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Cosmic Queries Edition, the ever-popular Cosmic Queries. And that means I got Chuck Nice, right next to me, virtually that is.

• 0:26Chuck Nice?

  Virtually, yes. You don't even know it. Uh, the calls are coming from inside the house, Neil. I'm here. I'm here.

• 0:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's outside the back door. He's there? No, he's getting closer.

• 0:38Chuck Nice?

  I'm here!

• 0:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it. I saw that movie. I don't want that to happen. So Chuck, you got some questions for us here. Again, if you're unfamiliar, we solicit questions from, in this case, our Patreon members. They get their questions asked, one-on-one, and you got them, and I haven't seen them. And if I don't know the answer, I will tell you. Go on to the next question.

• 0:59Chuck Nice?

  That is not true. If you don't know the answer... That's not true. If you don't know the answer, you're gonna tell me something.

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna tell you something, whether or not it's the answer. That's true.

• 1:09Chuck Nice?

  You're gonna tell me something, but...

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll value-add to the question, in whatever small way.

• 1:15Chuck Nice?

  Look at you. I like it. Alright. Okay, let's, um, okay, so, uh, all of our questions come from Patreon now, people. So if you want...

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If someone says, like, "What does space smell like?", and I say, "I don't know. What do you smell like?"

• 1:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Their ways of still addressing the question.

• 1:35Chuck Nice?

  Neil deGrasse Tyson plays the dozens.

• 1:42Chuck Nice?

  Alright, here we go.

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 1:43Chuck Nice?

  So, by the way, people, all of our Cosmic Queries questions are drawn from Patreon now. We used to scour the internet and all of our incarnations to find out your burning questions. But now, we basically just go to one place, and that's Patreon. So go to Patreon, sign up, get the minimum thing for, you know, uh, being a Cosmic Queries submission, and we'll read your question. Also, just remember that when you do that, you're helping us put this show on, okay? So there you have it. All right, here's our first question. This is a-

• 2:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait Chuck, this is a grab bag, right?

• 2:23Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's right. It is a grab bag, which means, uh, there is no themed topic. Anything these people want to ask you, they can ask you. Anything.

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've been trying to find a name for this.

• 2:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Galactic gumbo was one. I like that one.

• 2:37Chuck Nice?

  Which is my favorite too, because now you know why.

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  God, no.

• 2:42Chuck Nice?

  Of course you know why, because now you know when you put it all together, you know, they add a little cay on pepper. And you're gonna, they end up with, they end up with a little galactic gumbo.

• 2:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do a little bit of everything.

• 2:54Chuck Nice?

  So, I don't know, maybe we'll call it kitchen sink. Who knows?

• 2:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kitchen sink. All right, give me some kitchen sink.

• 2:59Chuck Nice?

  Cosmic kitchen sink. So here we go. Jensen Smart wants to know this. What is your favorite star and why, apart from the sun?

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 3:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 3:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, he knew I was, that's what I was gonna give him. Yeah, so it'd have to be Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse, if you want to pronounce it.

• 3:20Chuck Nice?

  You know, I've heard people say Betelgeuse, and I'm just like, really?

• 3:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, it's Betelgeuse. Yeah, it's, it's actually Arabic. And maybe I'm not even pronouncing it right, but it's definitely not Betelgeuse. Okay?

• 3:31Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay. I thought, okay, I'mma, I'mma shut up there.

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just make sure you don't say it three times.

• 3:39Chuck Nice?

  Three times, right?

• 3:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, twice is okay. So, um, Betelgeuse is one of the two brightest stars of the constellation Orion. Um, Betelgeuse is Orion's upper left, um, armpit, basically. And I'm told that if you translate from the Arabic, it's like armpit of the great one. And so he variously draws, you can call it a shoulder if armpit grosses you out. But, so Orion is a hunter, and he's standing there, and he's defending himself against Taurus the bull, another constellation up there in the sky. And that star is a red super giant.

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we tell it like we see it in astrophysics. Why do we call it a red supergiant? I'm gonna guess that it's red. A, because it's red. B, because it's big. C, because it's super big. All right? If you put Betelgeuse where the sun is right now in our own solar system, the Earth would be orbiting inside its surface. Okay, so we wouldn't exist. Big enough for you? So, and Betelgeuse is a candidate for a supernova. As it ends its life, it will end stupendously in a titanic explosion. And this sucker will be visible in broad daylight. Yeah?

• 4:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it's just, it's a star that's got a lot going on. And I like stars that have a lot going on. And this past couple of years, mysteriously, Betelgeuse dimmed by two-thirds. Okay, what's that about? Within months. These are stars that live hundreds of thousands and, and, and millions of years. And it, the high-mass stars that blow up, they don't live billions of years. All right? They only live hundreds of thousands and millions of years. All right? So, if something happens within a short amount of time, it's like, whoa, what's happening? What's going on? And I took photos of Betelgeuse as part of the whole constellation. And then I, I looked at it and I almost lost my breath.

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I had never seen the constellation with the stars in that relative brightness. My whole life, Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the constellation. Then it had dimmed and became uninteresting. And it's like, oh my gosh, the sky is changing. I got a little spooked. I, I, I gotta give it to you. If you want, if you're wondering, just Google Betelgeuse and there are all manner of articles about it dimming. It's been slowly coming back. Point is, we did not understand why it dimmed. We don't have a model for why it should dim. And people were worried that maybe it's ready to, ready to blow.

• 6:17Chuck Nice?

  Right. Or, or that there's, somebody has a dimmer switch.

• 6:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, of course. Usually when there's something in the sky we don't understand, they're the alien explainers that run to the front of the line. I could explain it. There are aliens that were building a Dyson sphere to block the sunlight so that they can power their civilization. This would be a sphere that prevents the light from emptying into space and collects all of the energy for their own exploitations. So, there's always a person who wants to tell you aliens did it when, at that moment, we don't yet understand it. But it's, it's come back for most of its brightness. And so I'm, I'm sleeping well at nights now, but over that time, I was, I was a little uncomfortable.

• 7:00Chuck Nice?

  So now that's dimming, which I'm uncomfortable with now, is that, was there anything transiting to cause the dimming, or?

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, nobody had any, no.

• 7:09Chuck Nice?

  Jesus, that's creepy.

• 7:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. Yeah, it was completely creepy.

• 7:13Chuck Nice?

  Oh my.

• 7:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some mechanism was going on inside of it that we haven't modeled and we don't understand.

• 7:17Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that, that's cool, actually.

• 7:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's actually pretty cool. It's actually pretty cool. By the way, there are plenty of star, by the way, let me make this clear. Plenty of stars in the night sky are called variable stars. All right? And they're called variable stars because, Chuck.

• 7:31Chuck Nice?

  Their intensity raises and lowers.

• 7:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it varies, right.

• 7:36Chuck Nice?

  Right, right. It varies, thank you.

• 7:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's, like, like I said, that's how we roll. So, the, there are plenty of stars that do that, and we call them variable stars. Betelgeuse was not among them.

• 7:48Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 7:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? So that's why.

• 7:51Chuck Nice?

  Oh man, this is so interesting from one stupid question about what's your favorite star. It's like, what's your favorite color? And you turned it into something interesting.

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying. And you can look at old maps of the night sky from 500 years ago and earlier, and look at the maps that they drew of the constellations, and there's Orion, and Betelgeuse is this juicy, bright thing. I mean, how do you make something bright when you're drawing with a pencil? So they put stuff around it, just so that it shows up more visibly in the line drawing of the constellation.

• 8:21Chuck Nice?

  Unbelievable.

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you look at those maps and it's like, whoa.

• 8:24Chuck Nice?

  So now this supernova, visible by, in broad daylight. So I read somewhere that many people, many people, take it back. The person that I was, was writing this. Thought it's possible that the star of the three wise men was indeed a supernova that because the star was visible all the time, that's why they were able to follow it because it was always visible, including daytime. So is that possible that that's what it was?

• 8:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're talking about the star of Bethlehem?

• 8:57Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, the star of Bethlehem, because you know, I'm so good at religion.

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so this is the star that the three wise men, today we call them wise guys, maybe?

• 9:12Chuck Nice?

  Hey, how you doing, Jesus?

• 9:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't be a wise guy.

• 9:16Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Jesus, what's up? What's the problem, huh? No room at the inn?

• 9:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, anyway. Yeah, Louis will take care of it.

• 9:25Chuck Nice?

  Hey, who told you you couldn't sleep there, huh? We got, we know people, we know people. We know people, Jesus, it's okay.

• 9:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got a manger for you down the street. We'll make this happen, we'll make good on this. So the three wise guys, so yes, there was a lot written on the star of Bethlehem, could it have been a comet, a, a, and so when you look back to when Jesus was likely born, based on all information available, and that was around 4 B.C., anywhere between sort of 2 and 6 B.C., so people split the difference, around 4 B.C., so Jesus was not born in 0, in year 0, all right? Plus, there was no year 0, but that's a whole other, we'll do an explainer on that. We went directly from 1 B.C. to AD 1, all right? And there was no year 0.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because when the calendar that was set up to do that, the 0 had not yet been invented.

• 10:28Chuck Nice?

  Oh, thank you.

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As I'm saying, it's a whole, we can explain her out of that one, okay? But here's the thing, here's the thing. So you can, there are a lot of things that happened in the sky that were never associated with good events, like comets, right? So could it have been a comet? No, because everyone says comets are bad at the time, and other sorts of phenomenon. So could it have been a supernova? Well, supernovas leave behind sort of remnants of their existence. We have what are called supernova remnants, and we've combed the sky for this, and there's no remnants. Plus, there's nobody else talking about it in the sky at the time. The Chinese were keeping really good records of their night sky. Astrologers were convinced that whatever happened in the night sky was directly affecting events on Earth.

• 11:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so you wanted to track such thing. No one has any other records of it. So, yeah, we can't really reconcile it with astronomical phenomena.

• 11:23Chuck Nice?

  Interesting, okay, wow.

• 11:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but, but, but, but why stop there? Most of what's in the Bible is not reconcil- reconcilable. Just call them all miracles and you're done, right?

• 11:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I mean, yeah.

• 11:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, maybe the star was only in the eyes of the three wise men, you know, I mean, or whoever saw it, but, and if you were a non-believer, you didn't see it, right? There are ways out of that, all right?

• 11:45Chuck Nice?

  That's called psychotropic drugs.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. If you are going to believe that the creator of the universe impregnated a virgin giving birth to his son, then you don't need to appeal to actual astronomical phenomenon as the star Bethlehem.

• 12:05Chuck Nice?

  You know, okay, that kind of makes sense, it's like...

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not a stretch to just say, this was in their, they saw this and it's in their mind.

• 12:15Chuck Nice?

  It's like a black, like a black stormtrooper. Like, how, how can you have a problem? Seriously. How are you gonna have a problem with a black stormtrooper? Okay, really? So...

• 12:25Chuck Nice?

  You can suspend disbelief in a galaxy far, far away, long, long ago. But when it comes to a black stormtrooper, that's too much. Okay, I got you. I got what you're saying. I got what you're saying.

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Only the Star Wars fans are gonna get that one. Okay.

• 12:40Chuck Nice?

  This is true. Alright, let's move on. Uh...

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, we only did one question so far?

• 12:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we did five questions wrapped in one. Okay, here you go.

• 12:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, alright, alright. We got like only a couple minutes left in the second.

• 12:50Chuck Nice?

  Alright, then a couple minutes, this is perfect. This is Kyle Marston, and he writes it just like this.

• 12:57Chuck Nice?

  How you know we only have eight planets?

• 13:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How you know? Man, that's starting to fire. Meet me outside.

• 13:06Chuck Nice?

  Let me just tell you, that's exactly how he wrote it. How you know we only have eight planets?

• 13:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How you know? And that's like, you need like someone pressing against your chest, right? How you know? How you know?

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, here you go. You ready?

• 13:22Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, we've sent spacecraft from Earth to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Spacecraft that have traveled through the asteroid belt and beyond. Let's get the order here again. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, the asteroid belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. Okay. That's eight. Get over it. So, how do we know there's only eight planets? Well, within the world of these eight planets, all gravity is accounted for.

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we know where all these objects are, and you can run your equations that calculate the force of gravity tugging on your spacecraft.

• 14:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So as they move among the planets and to orbit around Saturn and go out to Pluto, and wherever they're going, you factor in all because you wanna know where your spacecraft is and where it's headed and where it's been. And, and, and there's the initial thrust you gave it, but then there's everybody tugging on it. You wanna track that. So once you track it of the eight planets, and whatever other objects you think could be affecting it, some comets, maybe if there's one nearby, definitely the sun, once you do that, there's not some unexplainable force operating on your spacecraft.

• 14:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we don't need to appeal to some new ninth planet that we haven't discovered yet. It could be able to... Now, if you want to go really far out in the solar system and find an object that's so far away, it's not affecting anything nearby, okay, okay. And in fact, such work was done. There is an object suspected of being way the hell out there, far beyond any zone we would call our solar system historically. Like go like three, four, five times that size, and there might be a planet out there that's affecting some comets. All right? Again, we're looking at its effect on other objects.

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, so maybe, but is it... Let me, let me give you the, the, the street answer to that. If it's that far away, is it in the family? It's, it's, it's not in the family.

• 15:42Chuck Nice?

  Right, there you go.

• 15:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 15:44Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 15:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are, are you the ninth kid? If you're not in, if you're... No.

• 15:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you're sleeping in the, in the field, right? Not in the house. So it, we might need another vocabulary word to account for objects that are so far away, yet still part of the sun's family, that maybe there's just another word for them.

• 16:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know. You want to call them a planet? Fine.

• 16:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fine.

• 16:11Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Let's call it Fredo, since you, since you brought up the planet. I mean, the family, I mean, if I told you once, I'm telling you never going to tell you again, Fredo, don't ever go against the family.

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go against the family? Was that the guy's name Fredo?

• 16:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that was his brother. That was Fredo.

• 16:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I was confusing with Frodo. I'm mixing my stories.

• 16:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, no, I'm talking Godfather.

• 16:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry.

• 16:30Chuck Nice?

  Godfather, that kind of family, you know?

• 16:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Godfather, not Lord of the Rings. Okay, fine.

• 16:33Chuck Nice?

  Well, then we would have to call the planet Samwise Ganji.

• 16:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta take a quick break. When we come back, more cosmic queries. Grab bag.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Chris Cohen from Hallworth, New Jersey, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. Please enjoy this episode of StarTalk Radio with your and my favorite personal astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 17:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, Cosmic Queries. A galactic gumbo.

• 17:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's what we're doing right here.

• 17:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grab bag.

• 17:27Chuck Nice?

  A little grab bag.

• 17:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grab bag.

• 17:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we gotta check how many ingredients are in gumbo, just to make sure, because maybe we have more ingredients in this than are actually found in gumbo itself.

• 17:37Chuck Nice?

  I told you, that brings up the, I, I, I, Ivan Gagne's gumbo. I'm gonna have to, I keep forgetting.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, next time, we'll, we'll straighten this out. Because maybe we're insulting the gumbo by putting too much in, or it's insulting us that we don't live up to it. So, give me another, another question.

• 17:55Chuck Nice?

  Uh, this is a Velvet Dunlap. Velvet Dunlap, from...

• 17:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a, that's somebody's name?

• 18:00Chuck Nice?

  That's what they put, man, so, from...

• 18:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a movie star name?

• 18:03Chuck Nice?

  Is it really? From Velvet Dunlap, from, from Spokane, Washington.

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 18:08Chuck Nice?

  "I was wondering about the primary difference of a gas giant and a typical star during the formation from cosmic soup. Is it just that there were more metals or heavier gases in the formation of the gas giant that turned it into what it is?"

• 18:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I love that question.

• 18:29Chuck Nice?

  It's a really nice question.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it's an origins question.

• 18:32Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? And, so you go back to the gas cloud.

• 18:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, by the way, all stars are made of gas, and gas clouds are prevalent in the kinds of galaxies we live in, a flat spiral galaxy. So, it's, it's not a stretch to say maybe stars are born in these gas clouds. You look in the gas clouds, using special telescopes, because they're otherwise opaque. You need telescopes where the wavelengths of light can go deep inside, and when you do that, you can find stellar nurseries. Even today. New stars are being born. And so, so you look in there and you find out that most stars being born are not very massive. In fact, most stars are less massive than the sun. Alright, those stars will turn out to live for trillions of years. But as you sort of go up the mass scale,

• 19:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  there are fewer and fewer and fewer such stars. And the most massive of them, there might only be one or two of those made in any cluster of stars, in any sort of star family. And, but otherwise, there's no difference. It's made out of the same ingredients. And the difference is, it happened to start out with slightly more mass than everybody else. And if you have slightly more mass, you have more what?

• 19:50Chuck Nice?

  Jack? Gravity.

• 19:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gravity, thank you. You have mass and gra- you have more gravity. You have more gravity, you get in even more mass. And now you have even more mass, you have even more?

• 19:59Chuck Nice?

  Gravity.

• 20:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gravity, and so there you go. So it's kind of a runaway for you. And so you win, and everyone else gets the dregs. Alright, so this is how that works. It's, it's how, almost like capitalism, really.

• 20:11Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, look at that. The rich get richer. Take that! You poor bastards!

• 20:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I might, you know, rewrite Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations in terms of the formation of stars. The formation, life, death of stars.

• 20:27Chuck Nice?

  By the way, that's a brilliant concept. All joking aside. However, um, yeah, that makes perfect sense. So it really is just that, like many things in life, you start out with a little bit more.

• 20:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A little bit more?

• 20:43Chuck Nice?

  Just a little bit more makes you that much more successful in life. Look at that! And those stars that actually become big like that, they're called Beyonce stars.

• 20:56Chuck Nice?

  Alright, that was a great question. I liked it. Alright. I learned something there.

• 21:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, I heard David Koch, one of the now deceased Koch brothers, tell a story about-

• 21:06Chuck Nice?

  Billionaire Koch.

• 21:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah billionaire, billionaire. About how he started in life. And he tells the story, he said, "When I started out, I had a newspaper run on my bicycle, and I'd deliver newspapers every morning. And I got, you know, ten dollars a week, and I carefully put it in my bank account. And I kept doing this through middle school, and right up through high school. And then, um, when my father died, I inherited ten million dollars."

• 21:34Chuck Nice?

  Exactly!

• 21:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was the story.

• 21:38Chuck Nice?

  That's hilarious, because that is amazing, because that is, that's the origin story for many-

• 21:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was up with it. He just said, "Yep, there it is."

• 21:46Chuck Nice?

  There you have it, yeah. Other than, "I started off with a small loan of a million dollars." "And then, I got another bridge loan of one hundred million dollars. And then, before you know it, I'm a self-made man, it's a billionaire." Alright, here we go. Let's go to Howard Chang. Howard Chang says, "Hey, I have a question about Hawking radiation, and how black holes can theoretically lose mass by ejecting particles. How's this even possible if nothing can exceed the speed of light in order to escape the event horizon of the black hole? How fast-

• 22:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's slowing down!

• 22:25Chuck Nice?

  How fast is this supposed particle traveling?"

• 22:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's slowing down!

• 22:31Chuck Nice?

  Ooh!

• 22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My boy here is paying attention, and he's not letting anything go by.

• 22:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 22:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, now, what I'm about to tell you, when I first learned it, completely blew my mind.

• 22:44Chuck Nice?

  Alright, cool.

• 22:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Alright, you ready?

• 22:46Chuck Nice?

  I'm ready.

• 22:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The black hole-

• 22:48Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is not ejecting these particles, which have been called Hawking radiation. That's not what's actually happening.

• 22:57Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 22:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? What's actually happening is, just outside of the event horizon-

• 23:05Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 23:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Within which nothing escapes.

• 23:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, the black hole gravity is all throughout the space there. It's not only inside the event horizon, it's outside the event horizon, and it continues onward, alright. But just outside the event horizon, the gravitational energy-

• 23:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  is still sufficiently high that spontaneously matter is created from it.

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Because E equals M C. M C squared. So that's mass and energy back and forth. Back and forth. It's a two-way street. So if you have a high enough concentration of energy, you can start popping particles into existence. And it looks like they're coming out of thin air, but, or thin space. But the cost is that the energy budget, that the energy balance just dropped. Okay, it's not a balance. But so the cost of this is that the total amount of gravitational energy has diminished by that ever small amount. Ooh. And if you're gonna make particles out of thin air, you will always make a pair of particles.

• 24:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Somebody gotta pay something. Somebody's gotta pay. So you're always gonna make two. One is gonna be matter, the other is gonna be antimatter. And they're gonna be flying apart in the exact opposite directions. So that's just the physics of it. And it happens all the time, so don't sweat that. So watch what happens. This particle gets created right outside the event horizon. One direction goes back into the event horizon and the other, and the other direction goes out and it escapes the system. Mmm. That particle that escapes is taking mass away from the black hole itself. And you might say, but I thought the black hole is inside the event horizon. No, the black hole is the entire system, including the gravitational energy that manifests it.

• 25:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What? And the inventory of these particles that come out of the gravitational energy? Get, take your inventory. How many quarks, how many protons, neutrons, electrons? Take your inventory. It will exactly equal what the black hole had eaten and pulled into its event horizon originally. Damn. So the, the gravitational field has a memory of what the black hole ate.

• 25:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is profound.

• 25:39Chuck Nice?

  This is more than profound. That's some creepy trippy stuff right there, man.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's creepy. Yeah, yes. So the black hole is losing mass that it had long ago consumed out of the energy, the gravitational energy field that it has created in its environment. And for some reason, what's outside of that hole, outside of the, the

• 26:02Chuck Nice?

  Event horizon.

• 26:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Event horizon, has an inventory checklist of what had crossed the event horizon and it's taking them out one by one.

• 26:10Chuck Nice?

  Oh my gosh, that is, that's beyond amazing.

• 26:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and so it's, what it means is you don't lose information that had fallen into the black hole.

• 26:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The information content of what stuff is made of. And by the way, so you might say, well, how do I know this? Did I go to the black hole and check it? No, this is

• 26:29Chuck Nice?

  No, I met a particle and the particle told me. I would say, what kind of particle are you? He's like, yo, I escaped the system.

• 26:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I escaped the system and I never go back either.

• 26:39Chuck Nice?

  What's your name? I don't have no name no more, okay? That was my government name.

• 26:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got a new name.

• 26:46Chuck Nice?

  I got a new name.

• 26:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm a free man. I busted out.

• 26:54Chuck Nice?

  Oh snap.

• 26:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's kind of, I mean, it's sort of what happened there. That's sort of, so it's free and it goes off to, you know, having encounters with other objects in the universe. So this process is slow, so Hawking radiation, this evaporation of black holes, takes very, a very long time. And

• 27:13Chuck Nice?

  That's amazing.

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, longer than the current age of the universe. So you're not going to wait around for this, for it to completely evaporate. But, so Hawking showed this and later research showed that these particles do remember what was inside. And that's applying the very well-tested concepts of, of quantum physics.

• 27:34Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah.

• 27:36Chuck Nice?

  Dope. That's all I could say. That is, that's dope. Damn. So cool. Alright, let's move on.

• 27:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, speaking of dope, there's a movie called Dope. Did you go there? Yeah, yeah. There's a movie called Dope about a kid who's really nerdy.

• 27:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, in high school, but the gangs want him to join the gangs, but he's, you know, but he's getting like A's, straight A's, and he wants to go to like Harvard and, but there's all these forces operating on him and he's just trying to deal with it. And, and I get name checked, I get name checked in the movie.

• 28:09Chuck Nice?

  Get out of here.

• 28:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:11Chuck Nice?

  Are you like his buddy or something?

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 28:18Chuck Nice?

  I have another nerd friend. He's gonna be an astrophysicist.

• 28:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's, he writes some essay, I think it's for his English class, and the guy criticizes it. And he said, what did you write here? And he says, oh yeah, this is the story if it were written by Neil deGrasse Tyson. It was some funny, uh, cause the, the English teacher wasn't fully embracing his sci-fi creativity in, in the class or something. So, but anyhow, there's a movie called Dope.

• 28:44Chuck Nice?

  Cool. Alright, alright.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Part comedy, but part serious social commentary. Yeah.

• 28:49Chuck Nice?

  Excellent.

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, go on.

• 28:50Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. This is Eric Gross. Eric says this, "Hey, Stark Talk team, have a question I've always come back to that's worthy of deep thought, given that the energy and..."

• 29:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll be the judge of that.

• 29:02Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 29:06Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 29:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, cool.

• 29:07Chuck Nice?

  "Given that energy and matter are equivalent and all existence as we know it is a subjective interpretation of infinite interactions of matter and energy, do modern theorists believe that anything like free will or self-determination is likely to exist?"

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I have an answer for that.

• 29:31Chuck Nice?

  Oh, get out of, how the hell do you have an answer for that?

• 29:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  After the break, when we come back.

• 29:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back to Stark Talk, God's Aquarius.

• 29:53Chuck Nice?

  Hey, it's time to give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons: Sabrina Anderson, Adam Collins, and Jason Pretzliff. Hey, guys. Thanks so much for your support. Without you, we could not do this show. And for anyone else who would like their very own Patreon shout out, please go to patreon.com/startalkradio and support us.

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, Cosmic Queries, the Kitchen Sink Edition. Questions now called from our Patreon supporters. Thank you. I publicly thank you for that, your interest and your participation in making this highly successful variant of our StarTalk broadcast fun to do and happy to serve. So, Chuck.

• 30:43Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go.

• 30:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We left off with a deep question.

• 30:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what is it? If matter equals energy and all the world is a subjective perception?

• 30:53Chuck Nice?

  Interpretation of infinite interactions between matter and energy. Do modern theorists believe anything like free will or self-determination is likely to exist?

• 31:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who asked this question?

• 31:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, tell me about it. His name is-

• 31:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aristotle.

• 31:08Chuck Nice?

  His name is I Smoke Weed Every Day. No.

• 31:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I smoke weed.

• 31:14Chuck Nice?

  This is from I Smoke Weed Every Day.

• 31:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I smoke weed Jones.

• 31:18Chuck Nice?

  Right. I smoke weed Johnson.

• 31:24Chuck Nice?

  No, this is Eric Gross. What a great, great-

• 31:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eric Gross. That's a clean, simple name. But a name like that shouldn't be having thoughts this deep. You need a different name for that. Anyhow, so first of all, number one, it is true. So your first given is accurate, that matter and energy are equivalent as provided by E equals mc squared. Your second given, I'm not giving you. You're trying to say the whole world is an unfolding of subjectively interpreted events.

• 31:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could get away with that before science was invented. But we invented science to separate our sensory system from the thing that's doing the actual measurements of what's going on in the world. So instead of using your eyes, we use a telescope. Instead of using your eyes the other way, we use a microscope. And we take measurements of this. We no longer rely on your brain-eye-ear connection to either take data or report the data. Okay? When you do this, you can now establish objective realities

• 32:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that are not filtered through your subjective system, your subjective sensory system. So that's why science works. That's why the question, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, did it make sound?" Yeah, if you don't know anything about science, yeah, that's a really deep question.

• 33:02Chuck Nice?

  That's a great philosophical question.

• 33:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? But I can put chart recorders there. I can measure vibrations. I can do things that establish the existence of sound independent of your sensory system.

• 33:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. And by the way, the tree falling in a forest that no one is there to hear makes this sound. Woo! Okay, just go ahead. And it's only when no one's there to hear it.

• 33:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But one of my favorite Gary Larson comics was in The Barn. And there's a chicken, a horse, a pig, and, you know, the farmer's somewhere else. And they're all talking. And I forgot who said what, but... Was it the pig? One of them said, "But if you divide by the square root of mass, you get the same result." And then the chicken said, "But you're missing the basic premise of my theory." And then someone looks out the window and says, "Farmer!" And then the farmer says something.

• 33:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, as a scientist, I'm kind of hoping that's really going on in the barn, you know, even though I don't really believe it, I want it to be true. So, so, point is, I'm not giving you that. You can't have that. That the whole world is somehow subjectively unfolded. So now, how about free will? A lot of recent work on this, especially in the neuroscience community, alright? And they're finding things like, you're sitting in a room, and they got the electrodes on your head, and they, and, and they find electrical activity, and that perceives your conscious awareness of a thought that you then have,

• 34:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and then act on that thought. Okay? So you'll say things like, "I'm going to stand up, right now." And then you stand up. You think you came up with that thought at the moment you think you came up with that thought, but brain scans and sensors tell you that that was already a thought in progress. So, our conscious awareness of free will is not actually free will. Something else is going on subconsciously. Wow. Okay, so now you can ask, what is making the subconscious do its thing? If you're not aware of it, but you, after the fact, declare that you made this decision on your own,

• 35:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  then, then what does free will even mean? So, so that's the, that's a line of questioning that's coming back into that world. And the neuroscientists are right on top of it. Maybe we'll do a whole, a whole episode just on free will, to get to the bottom of that. That'd be very cool. Because I'm only sharing with you what I've heard and read and spoken with some experts on it. Um, so, but that being said, I, even if it's not real, I fully enjoy my illusion of free will.

• 35:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? You know, and, and, and take it all the way. Maybe we're in a simulation, and all of this is already sort of programmed in. And I'm going to thank the programmer for not telling me that I don't have free will. Because I like enjoying the, the idea that I do. And if everyone is operating on that assumption, uh, what, I, I'd wonder, of what value is it to even contemplate whether you don't?

• 36:22Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 36:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you could do it philosophically, legally.

• 36:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can say, oh, my gosh, this person robbed the bank, but they were not of their own free will.

• 36:31Chuck Nice?

  Well, in some respects, what you just said, there is, there are some examples of that, and I will say that drug addiction is one. So there are people who feel like, oh, well, you know, all you have to do is stop doing drugs. But what they don't realize is that when you do drugs, you break your brain so that the stopping part does not, it no longer works.

• 36:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Same with alcohol.

• 36:54Chuck Nice?

  Same with alcohol, right.

• 36:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and, and you dupe yourself. You start making excuses and your, your brain starts taking control over your own power of, of decision and action.

• 37:06Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 37:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's a whole, that's a whole future of the world that we need to analyze to try to resolve and understand and possibly cure. If, if in fact, that's how we're gonna get into our own brains. So, yeah. Does, did I, I don't know if I, did I fully answer?

• 37:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you did. I mean, the fact that, the real answer to the question is, uh, stop making assumptions about the infinite interactions between matter and energy that equate to a subjective interpret, interpretation of the entire universe. Cause that, that is not the case. That's, that's the real answer. That is not, that is not the case.

• 37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's also quantum physics where things are not deterministic, they're probabilistic.

• 37:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so you cannot know exactly what will happen. You will only know probabilistically what will happen. You, and, and what's interesting in quantum physics is even though there are these uncertainties that guide what's happening, we precisely quantify what those uncertainties are.

• 38:11Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 38:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so we can, we can quantify our uncertainty.

• 38:18Chuck Nice?

  That's a head trip right there.

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a head trip right there.

• 38:21Chuck Nice?

  That's a head trip right there.

• 38:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's primarily because these are systems of many, many particles and statistics come out basically perfectly, the bigger the system is.

• 38:29Chuck Nice?

  We are a hundred percent sure that we are unsure.

• 38:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not what I said, Jackson.

• 38:43Chuck Nice?

  Alright, alright, next one.

• 38:47Chuck Nice?

  Alright, here we go. Uh, let's go to Nathan Kane. What's up Nathan? He says this, "What's the possibility that we could one day use stars as an alchemy table of sorts to forge elements for ourselves and then extract them?"

• 39:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 39:05Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 39:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like where he's going with that. Ooh, so, so, we just, so, what we're saying is, "I need more gold." Alright, so, let's just churn the nuclear furnace and, and you could tap the star like you tap a keg, right? And you put it in the right spot where the gold was being made, take it out and you have your gold atoms. Uh, that's, that's fast, that would be a really cool sci-fi novel, I think.

• 39:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 39:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, it's just that so much of the rest of the star is doing things that you don't care about. So, the fusion is going on only deep down in the core.

• 39:41Chuck Nice?

  Core.

• 39:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it needs to be in the core because that's where the high pressures are from all the stuff that's not otherwise doing anything else.

• 39:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What I might imagine is, if you have the power enough to tap a star, you could just build some kind of particle machine, you know, in your backyard, if this is the future, and just have it churn out the gold by fusing enough atoms together. And that's its only job, is to do that, rather than be a star in addition to making heavy elements. So, in that future, that's what I would try to invent.

• 40:10Chuck Nice?

  Or, what you've talked about in the past, is you can just mine asteroids that

• 40:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 40:17Chuck Nice?

  That, that will already have those elements inside of the pieces.

• 40:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you Chuck, I wouldn't even think to, to say that. You're coming, you, you're gonna get an honorary degree when, when this is all done. I just wanted you to say. Alright, so, it's exactly right, because landing on an asteroid, you don't risk vaporizing yourself as you would trying to get into a star. So, yes, all of those heavy ingredients were scattered back into the universe and have collected and been pre-sifted to make these metallic asteroids where you have the platinum, the iridium, the gold, the silver, the, the, the iron, the nickel, all of it's there.

• 40:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah Chuck.

• 40:56Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 40:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 40:57Chuck Nice?

  Alright, okay.

• 40:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just because you can do it that way doesn't mean you should, there might be other simpler ways. But it's, it's, I like the ways his brain is thinking.

• 41:04Chuck Nice?

  Yes. All right, let's go to Steven Spotted Horse. And Steven Spotted Horse says, "Hello, Dr. Tyson and Mr. Nice. Steven Spotted Horse here from Oklahoma. Why is gravity so weird of a force? We are also familiar with it. It keeps our feet on the ground. And yes, so much weaker than other forces. Is it possible that there are other dimensions? We cannot observe. And gravity, our gravity, could just be escaping into these other dimensions, therefore diluting the force of the gravity that we experience, making it so weak. But yet, it's really not. We would be able to receive gravitational forces

• 41:49Chuck Nice?

  from other dimensions in space."

• 41:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 41:53Chuck Nice?

  Wow, wow, man. These people today are really, man.

• 41:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Smoking something.

• 41:58Chuck Nice?

  They must have got together. They all got together just like, "Yo, man, you ever realized that maybe that we're dealing with an infinite number of possibilities that really make sure that we don't have any kind of true will or free will?" Nah, man, here's what I wanna know. Why is gravity so weak? I mean, seriously, it's like the strongest force in the universe, but yet at the same time, I can break it just by jumping off the ground.

• 42:29Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, awesome, deep, deep shit, man.

• 42:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let me see if I can answer that in the remaining 90 seconds.

• 42:41Chuck Nice?

  All right, Spotted Horse, here we go.

• 42:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gravity is the weirdest of the four basic forces. It's the weirdest because it is by far the weakest. All right, the weakest force. So, and just bend down and pick up a paper clip off the ground. You just resisted the gravity of the Earth by pulling it away from the Earth. The Earth could not hold it against just the strength of your muscles. So, so it's weak. And there's, because of how gravity behaves and how Einstein describes it, maybe we shouldn't think of it as a force at all.

• 43:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if gravity is only how you are responding to the curvature of space and time, as Einstein said, was it Einstein or one of his students, John Archibald Wheeler? One of the two of them said, "Matter tells space how to curve." And space tells matter how to move. So they've got this sort of two-way street there. And if you're just moving along a curved surface, is that really a force? Do you get, is that, should you call it a force of rank and privilege of the other forces that we know? So that's a legitimate question to ask. And if it's not a force, that would explain why it doesn't really play well in the sandbox with the rest of the other forces. Now, are there higher dimensions in which gravity manifests differently?

• 44:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there could be. And, you know, my favorite explanation for dark matter, which is really dark gravity, which is not what the professional physicist experts are betting on, but I just kind of like it because it's fun, that maybe this mysterious source of gravity in our universe that has no known source is actually ordinary matter in a parallel universe with its gravity spilling into ours. Right? And we see, oh, there's a mysterious force of gravity. Where is it from? I don't know. And it's a big mystery. And whereas in another universe, they just have ordinary objects with spillage. So, yeah, this is unknown. It's unknown.

• 44:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I think the more we can learn about parallel universes, the more we might be able to think about how universes may go bump in the night and possibly alert each other to their presence in one way or another.

• 45:03Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 45:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, I like the way he's thinking.

• 45:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. It's kind of cool. It's a cool thought, cool thought.

• 45:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Mr. Spotted Horse, invite Chuck and me to your next session.

• 45:14Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly. Next time you guys all get together. Oh, yeah.

• 45:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so Chuck, I think that's all we have time for. Damn.

• 45:24Chuck Nice?

  All right, well, let me just say hello.

• 45:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These were some deep questions this round.

• 45:26Chuck Nice?

  Deep questions. And we still didn't get to quite a few, so, but don't worry, guys, we're going to get to your questions, so you're on deck.

• 45:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, we're calling it there. Always good to have you, Chuck, tweeting at Chuck Nice Comic.

• 45:36Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, sir, yes.

• 45:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if anybody's looking, I hardly ever announce this, but I tweet at Neil Tyson.

• 45:43Chuck Nice?

  Really? Because you only have 15 million people on...

• 45:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry.

• 45:47Chuck Nice?

  I think they already knew that, bro.

• 45:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. All right. This has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries Kitchen Sink Edition. And I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.