Cosmic Queries – Science Epiphany

What would a wormhole actually look like? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice break down a grab bag of questions about nothingness, the nature of miracles, the role of AI in scientific discovery and more!

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's emerging research to suggest that the virtual particles that pop in and out of existence, they're entangled, the quantum entangled. And if we think of that entanglement as with their connectivity being provided by mini wormholes, it may be that these mini wormholes is the literal fabric of spacetime itself.

• 0:28Chuck Nice?

  Damn.

• 0:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk, Cosmic Queries Edition, fan favorite. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Chuck Nice, of course, is right across the way.

• 0:55Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck, you're

• 0:57Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're dialing in from your hometown of where, you live in Hoboken, where you live?

• 1:02Chuck Nice?

  I'm in Hoboken, New Jersey, right here. I'm the Sarah Palin of New York. I can see it from my house.

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you can see New York from here.

• 1:12Chuck Nice?

  I can see New York from my house, and I literally can see New York from my house. So I call myself the Sarah Palin of New York City.

• 1:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you have it. We got Cosmic Queries today, and it's a grab bag. So I don't know, and I haven't seen the questions yet, so if you get a question I can't answer, I'll just say, I can't answer it. There it is.

• 1:33Chuck Nice?

  Well, well, that's not gonna happen.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stop.

• 1:39Chuck Nice?

  Well, you're gonna answer something.

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I don't know, I'm gonna still say something, okay?

• 1:46Chuck Nice?

  We're gonna answer something. It may not be the answer that we want, but you're gonna get an answer, so.

• 1:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 1:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so let's jump right into this. This is Corey Allen, and Corey Allen says, or is it Alan? Corey Alan, because it's just A-L-A-N.

• 2:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 2:06Chuck Nice?

  So I think Corey's playing with my head. Uh, he says, hey.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's two people, Corey and Alan.

• 2:12Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 2:16Chuck Nice?

  Uh, hailing here from the Twin Cities, Minnesota. Uh, what would a wormhole actually look like? Would you just see through it to the other side? Would it be completely void of light? Would it be extremely bright? Would love to get your take and love, love, love the show.

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, thank you, thank you. So let's back up a little. So in the nineteen sixties, when we were more fully exploring the mathematics of spacetime, and you get a black hole out of that. It turns out there's another solution that would come out of the equations that was the mathematical opposite of a black hole. And so we would call that a, a white hole. Okay. So a white hole would be the opposite. So a black hole absorbs everything, nothing comes out. A white hole, everything only comes out. So one, people hypothesized that these are two solutions in the equations. Maybe they're connected. Maybe a black hole connects to a white hole. Cause where is it going if it's going in a black hole? In a white hole, where is it coming from if it's coming out?

• 3:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if they're connected, what might connect them? It's a, we'll call it a wormhole. All right. So some of the earliest ideas about wormholes started that way. In modern times, however, we can make on paper, we can make wormholes on paper that don't require a black hole or a white hole for them to exist. So in order to make a, a wormhole, you're prying open the fabric of space and time.

• 3:42Chuck Nice?

  Spacetime.

• 3:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when, when you do that, you're doing the opposite of what gravity would normally do, which would compress it back. So to pry it open, you can do this mathematically, but you need a substance that would pry it open. You need some anti-gravity magic substance that will do this. And when you do that, then you gotta pack it right so that it pries open the hole. And it would be a hole between where you are and some other place in spacetime. Okay. And because it's a three-dimensional hole, a brain doesn't have, has a hard time conceiving of three-dimensional holes. You think of a hole, it's like a circle and you jump in and fall through.

• 4:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, like a utility hole cover, you fall through. This is a hole, no matter which direction you approach it.

• 4:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's a little weird. That's awesome, right? Right, you go around the side, it's the same hole coming through. Right, right, right, right. So if you pride a hole to some other space and time, then every direct, as far as I can tell, every direction you look at it would get, would see exactly the same thing. Because it's the same hole that you're looking through. And, and they try to represent this in Rick and Morty. And in who's the dude that does this in, with his fingers, the magic.

• 5:08Chuck Nice?

  Doctor Strange.

• 5:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wand, Doctor Strange, not Doctor Strange Love, Doctor Strange. So Doctor Strange uses magic to open up a hole through the space-time continuum. But Rick uses actual science. I just want to make that important distinction between the two.

• 5:26Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yeah. The guy with trash cans for engines on his spaceship is using actual science.

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm just saying, I'm just, I don't want to, you know, overstate the obvious, but okay. So, so yeah, it would be quite fascinating to accomplish this. And we say that it's through space-time, not just through space. Because, for example, Superman, when he was launched from his home planet just before it was destroyed, he was launched Moses style, right? Basically in some kind of a basket. And then he arrives on Earth and he's the same age. All right, now you know this, because babies, you know, two months or one, you know, at baby's age, you know it, okay? It's the same baby.

• 6:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it traveled this vast distance, basically instantly. Whereas where we are is not available to Krypton in that same timeframe, because it takes light time to get there. So it beat the light beam to get here. Okay? And in fact, in, in Action Comics, what's the number, is that? Action Comics?

• 6:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, here it is. Action Comics number fourteen. Okay.

• 6:50Chuck Nice?

  Fifteen.

• 6:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Action Comics number fourteen.

• 6:54Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 6:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know about this? You don't know about this comic?

• 6:57Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 6:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't know about this one?

• 7:00Chuck Nice?

  No, I see Superman's on there.

• 7:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Superman's on. It's a Superman comic. You didn't know about this, Chuck? How could you not know about this? Okay, let me show you the page. I'm just showing you the page. It's in the back. Yeah, here it go.

• 7:17Chuck Nice?

  Let me see. Ah! Dude, that's insane.

• 7:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 7:24Chuck Nice?

  That's it. Well, first of all, anybody who's listening right now, if you're listening and you're not watching, then it is actual cartoon depiction of Neil deGrasse Tyson standing with Superman, and you know for a fact that it's Neil and no other black man on earth because he is wearing the Neil deGrasse Tyson vest with the stars on it and...

• 7:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm, then the moons and the planets.

• 7:50Chuck Nice?

  And the moons and the planets.

• 7:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's the thing. So when I say I've met Superman, people say, oh, which Superman did you meet? I said, I met Superman. Oh, which Superman? I met Superman, okay?

• 8:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly, right.

• 8:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In Action Comics fourteen, a Superman comes to the Hayden Planetarium to observe the destruction of Krypton.

• 8:10Chuck Nice?

  That's amazing.

• 8:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The light from which was only just then reaching Earth.

• 8:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yet he got here right after birth. So he beat the light beam. That's all I'm saying. That, so he... The only way he could have come here is via a wormhole. By the way, if he traveled at the speed of light, he would not age, okay? Because Einstein's equations stipulate that. However, he would have arrived with the light cone, okay, with the light beam. And then he would not be old enough to have seen his home planet destroyed. So, so I was happy to contribute to the Superman canon that way and identify what star in the night sky would be Krypton. We'd find Krypton. And it was a red dwarf star, that sort of thing. The star was in the constellation Corvus, a southern hemisphere constellation. And Corvus is a crow.

• 9:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Smallville's mascot is a crow.

• 9:05Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 9:07Chuck Nice?

  That by, is that by design? Or?

• 9:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, they didn't have, they hadn't picked, they don't, they didn't have a place. I gave them the place.

• 9:14Chuck Nice?

  Oh, you gave them the place?

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes!

• 9:16Chuck Nice?

  Oh, nice. Oh, sweet.

• 9:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I said, I said, the only way this can happen is if Superman arrived via wormhole.

• 9:24Chuck Nice?

  Via wormhole.

• 9:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To the writers. Right, I told this to them.

• 9:28Chuck Nice?

  That's really cool.

• 9:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay.

• 9:30Chuck Nice?

  Is that what you're doing? And is that what you're doing when you're standing next to Superman? Are you Neil Splaining to him?

• 9:39Chuck Nice?

  Are you Neil Splaining? The fact that he had to come here through a, through a wormhole?

• 9:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wow, what, he might not have known because he was a baby. I'm just saying.

• 9:48Chuck Nice?

  That's, that's so great.

• 9:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A wormhole would be fascinating to look at and to travel through and to go back and forth. Oh, by the way, I was on the trucker channel on Sirius XM to...

• 9:59Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 10:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a trucker channel. So, we were having fun with the fact that the day will come if we discover this mysterious substance that's the opposite of gravity to pry open wormholes. If wormholes become ubiquitous, then you would not need trucks. You would just open a wormhole from where you are to where the thing has to be and pass it through. You wouldn't need roads, you wouldn't need trucks, you wouldn't need drivers. The back of your refrigerator would connect to the grocer. The grocer would look through, oh, your milk is going bad, let me swap that out. You need another dozen eggs. Close up the back and you're done. So, we were joking.

• 10:37Chuck Nice?

  And thank you, uh, we, we appreciate having Neil deGrasse Tyson on the trucker channel. That'll be all. That'll be all for today on the trucker channel that Neil just destroyed along with Superman.

• 10:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, and, and then the phone rings five minutes later, oh, this is the head of the Teamsters Union?

• 10:54Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so, we, we joked, they were, they, he was good about it. He, he said, um, we should get ready for the future where there's picket lines saying, "Truckers against wormholes." See that?

• 11:10Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 11:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The picket sign of the millennium, right? So, anyhow.

• 11:16Chuck Nice?

  That's great, that's great. That's very cool, man.

• 11:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  More than our fellow wanted to know about wormholes, right there.

• 11:21Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no, yeah, all right. But there you go, at least you know it's gonna be a hole that no matter where you are, from every direction, you're looking into that hole. So, that's kinda cool.

• 11:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. What else you got Chuck? We spent a lot of time on that question. Okay, what else you got?

• 11:44Chuck Nice?

  Whatever. It was fun. This is Cherry's Jubilee who says,

• 11:52Chuck Nice?

  "Hello, Dr. Tyson. What's up Chuck? Autumn Rose here from York, Pennsylvania. My first guru, Jay Lakahani, started his journey in religion after his mastery of astrophysics. I had my own religious epiphanies during my studies of geology and botany. Have you ever had a moment in your studies that made you feel like you were having a religious experience?"

• 12:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 12:30Chuck Nice?

  And thank you for your question.

• 12:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I based that on the fact that I've had people who've had religious experiences describe them to me. And I can say I've never had them. I mean, I can say that pure and simple. Based on the accounts that I have heard. Okay, now, I grew up with a friend who was very religious, later in his life born again. Actually, he was Jehovah's Witness. And he's a witness, as they say. They don't even say Jehovah anymore. He's a witness.

• 13:00Chuck Nice?

  Can I get a witness?

• 13:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 13:04Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 13:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course, in science, eyewitness is the lowest form of evidence you can bring to the table. Just given how rife it is with with error and misinterpretation and and the susceptibility.

• 13:16Chuck Nice?

  You hear that, Jehovah's Witnesses?

• 13:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying. What they should, what they should, what they should instead say, "I need data."

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rather than, "I need a witness. I need some data."

• 13:27Chuck Nice?

  Can I get some data?

• 13:31Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 13:34Chuck Nice?

  Now, every once in a while, you gotta look up and you gotta trust the data. But is your data corrupt? Is your data corrupt? That's what you have to figure out.

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the preacher.

• 13:58Chuck Nice?

  The preaching scientist.

• 14:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's a whole TV series right there, right?

• 14:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I forgot what I was talking about.

• 14:19Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man. Anyway.

• 14:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we've talked about science and religion like our whole lives, my friend and I. And I would describe to him, I would go to a mountaintop to observe the universe. And back in the day, it was an ordeal. I mean, you would take trains, planes, automobiles. You would invert to live nocturnally. You would set up the telescope. Your sunset was the beginning of your day, when it was near the end of everyone else's day. And then it's you, the telescope and the cosmos. In the eerie silence of the night. But there's the din of the electronics driving the telescope juxtaposed with it.

• 15:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I would look up and I would feel very deeply connected to the cosmos. He was quick to say, that's like a religious experience. And so I said, okay, except I wasn't thinking God. I was thinking this is a magnificent glorious universe. That I have the privilege of studying.

• 15:22Chuck Nice?

  But you beheld that scene with awe. You were in awe of the universe.

• 15:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I started using all the same words, the awe and the majesty. And I was humbled in its presence. I wasn't prostrate in its presence, but I was humbled. So there's a lot of overlapping vocabulary. But when I've heard people say they were brought to tears or in that moment, they gave themselves to their religious figures, whoever that might have been. And so it's never been that. Now, here's what I have found, that people with religious experiences, typically there's something they experience that they cannot explain.

• 16:07Chuck Nice?

  Right. That's normally the case.

• 16:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's normally the case, correct? Of any kind, okay? An apparition or this or that and the other. So I have seen things that if I did not know.

• 16:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Astro physics, physics, geology, atmospheric sciences, and just basically the laws of physics, I probably would have rapidly called the police department to try to get somebody to investigate what I was looking at. Or I would be on my knees in awe, wondering what mysterious mythical forces were operating. So, so I don't know whether my knowledge of what is possible in this universe has precluded me from having some religious experiences that others might have.

• 16:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay, right. You know, I'm kind of thinking that...

• 17:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got one for you, I got one for you.

• 17:05Chuck Nice?

  I think rational investigation could kill pretty much any religious experience.

• 17:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would, it would stop.

• 17:15Chuck Nice?

  A rational questioning of what's going on in the moment would kind of...

• 17:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 17:21Chuck Nice?

  Would kind of squelch the experience.

• 17:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With methods and tools to investigate, right? You know, tools to make the measurements. So, so here's one, here's one. Seth MacFarlane, okay, potty mouth Seth MacFarlane, who's actually highly scientifically literate. And there's a lot of evidence for that. If you've seen Family Guy, there's a lot of science references in it. He's also a fan of Star Trek, and he's had the Star Trek crew as cast members in the cartoon. Also, he was co-executive producer of Cosmos. It is because of him that we brought it to Fox that got the distribution far greater than anything it would have gotten on PBS. Anyhow, okay.

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's out late one night. He lives in Boston at the time. He's out late one night.

• 18:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he wakes up in the morning and he might be hungover, I don't know, or he did whatever. And he missed his airplane. That was the airplane from Boston that flew into the World Trade Center.

• 18:28Chuck Nice?

  The towers?

• 18:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 18:30Chuck Nice?

  Wow, damn.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That morning, he missed his airplane. So every, everybody asked him, so did you feel closer to God? Did God, you feel like you were protected? And he says, no, because many a morning I've been hungover and missed the plane.

• 18:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, in that case, my new God would be Jack Daniels.

• 18:53Chuck Nice?

  That's my new God. Who do you worship? I don't know, Johnny Walker, Johnny Walker Black, I don't know. Saved my life, he saved my life, I'm telling you right now. Turned my life around.

• 19:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so, so Seth MacFarlane is a rational, a, a person who approaches life with rational interpretations of what goes on around him. So.

• 19:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, anyhow, what does that say for everyone else who died? What, well, God didn't save them? I mean, you, you're stuck with the moral, uh, conundrum of the people who did die versus those who didn't. So anyhow, so my answer is just no.

• 19:29Chuck Nice?

  Look at that. That's, I mean, listen, that's.

• 19:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe such, such a day will come. And oh, by the way, was it Hume? There was a philosopher commenting on miracles, and I'm gonna mangle the quote, but he said something like, miracles are so unlikely, bordering on impossible, that if you do encounter something that you cannot explain, not only from your own base of knowledge, but is unexplainable given any base of knowledge yet acquired on earth, it's more likely that you simply discovered a new law of physics than that there is a divine miracle that was performed in front of you.

• 20:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I mangled that reasoning, but it's what I said is the bulk of what he was getting at. And I don't even remember if it was Hume. I think it was Hume. But philosophers have thought this through. And so, yeah, there are new laws of physics that are doing weird things. And do you pray to God or do you say, no, no, there's phenomena that you've never experienced. Do you pray to God for it or do you investigate it and find out you just made a scientific discovery? So that's the interesting frontier of this whole exercise. This science religion exercise as you go forward.

• 20:47Chuck Nice?

  Right. I mean, and then there are certain things that are just a violation of the laws of physics, like Jesus walking on water. There's no way around that. Either he walked on water and that's a miracle, or there's something else going on, whether it's the testimony is incorrect.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was behind water skis, right?

• 21:09Chuck Nice?

  That could have been it?

• 21:12Chuck Nice?

  That'd be so funny, barefoot water skiing.

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, there are people who are trying, like, for example, there's a Jesus spider. There's a spider or a Jesus lizard, Jesus lizard that can walk on water.

• 21:24Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I've seen that. It runs on the top of the water.

• 21:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the Jesus lizard is walking on water because of surface tension. Plus, it's propelling itself so that part of the effort gets it back out of the little bit of water that it's sunk into. It doesn't weigh very much. So I would say that's an insult to Jesus because the lizard is using laws of physics to do it.

• 21:44Chuck Nice?

  Right, right. Whereas Jesus had to violate the laws of physics.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, in order for that to be the miracle.

• 21:50Chuck Nice?

  In order for that to be the miracle, yeah, right.

• 21:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, correct, right.

• 21:54Chuck Nice?

  Either that or he had really cool sandals.

• 21:58Chuck Nice?

  Awesome sandals.

• 22:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Styrofoam sandals.

• 22:01Chuck Nice?

  Styrofoam sandals.

• 22:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so does the person, what's the person's name? Does he or she, who was it that asked the question?

• 22:09Chuck Nice?

  This, this was, um, Autumn Rose from York, PA.

• 22:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Autumn, yeah, so does Autumn actually describe her experience that she had?

• 22:19Chuck Nice?

  No, no, just.

• 22:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, so I can't, I can't reflect on it, yeah.

• 22:23Chuck Nice?

  Just says that somehow it was, uh, it was related though. So, you know, his guru actually was some, some, some form of astrophysicist.

• 22:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is Autumn a he? You said his guru.

• 22:35Chuck Nice?

  I don't, I don't know. Uh, oh, Autumn, probably a woman. I don't know.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Autumn didn't share with you the, the pronouns and so you assume it's a he. That's all I'm saying.

• 22:46Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna say they, I'm gonna call Autumn they. There you go.

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, there you go. That's settled.

• 22:51Chuck Nice?

  So they, there you go.

• 22:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would've been more fun to hear what that experience was. But I'll tell you something, in my book, Letters From An Astrophysicist, there's an entire chapter of me communicating with people who had religious experiences or deep thoughts at the intersection between religion and, and science. There's a whole chapter on that. And one of the people who wrote in is a niece of mine, a second cousin niece, however that works, or, or second cousin once removed, whatever, however that works, who, her father died, she went to, she went to identify the body in the funeral parlor and had an entire conversation with him.

• 23:37Chuck Nice?

  So, I mean, I'm gonna say that he wasn't dead if that happened and maybe...

• 23:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, yeah, but the man is flat on, on the slab. So she, knowing she has a cousin who's an astrophysicist, says, Neil, what do you think happened? And I said, either you had an acoustic hallucination, normally we think of hallucinations as sight, but any of, any, any of your senses can be hallucinated, right? You get the feeling that someone's touching you, uh, you can get the, you can taste something that really isn't there. There are a lot of things that can happen. You have an acoustic, so I think it was an acoustic hallucination.

• 24:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or he was actually communicating with you from the other side. So what I told her was, next time, don't have the perfunctory conversation you did. Oh, Dad, are you, how are you? Oh, I'm fine. Um, is everything okay? Yes. And how are you? No, no, this is, if, if this is actually happening as not a hallucination, do not lose the opportunity. Say, and I gave a list of questions. I said, Dad, where are you?

• 24:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you wearing clothes?

• 24:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, uh, is mom there? How old are the two of you? Are you in your 30s or 20s at your prime? Or are you old and shriveled and near dead? After your half stroke that you had a year ago, okay? Ask, do you eat? Where do you get your food? Is there a barbecue? Just ask stuff and then you get, try to get meaningful answers from the other side.

• 25:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, see, I'm skipping all that. I'm like, hey, Dad, uh, listen, I, I miss you already, but put Jesus on the phone. Put Jesus on right now.

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Talk to the man himself.

• 25:27Chuck Nice?

  I need to talk to Jesus right now. Okay? You put Jesus on this phone. Okay? I'll see you. Now that I'm talking to you, I know I'm gonna see you later. So let's get to what we need to get to. Put Jesus on the phone.

• 25:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just when you have these experiences, since we wanna know more about them, of course, try to, try to, try to get a, a, a checklist of things you might say or do when that's happening. In fact, the people who say they are dying in their hospital bed and they lift up and they see themselves, they look back on themselves from above.

• 26:01Chuck Nice?

  That's a very common experience.

• 26:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very common. So you got the experiment for that, okay? You got the experiment. You set up a ledge above the bed, okay? Okay, these are people who, who were, had near-death experiences, right? They saw themselves and then they went back. So you set a ledge up above the bed and then you write something, a simple saying like, roses are red or the sky is blue, okay? You put that on top. Don't tell the person who is dying. When they say they went up and saw themselves, they would see this thing that you wrote and get them to tell you what it said. That would be evidence. That's what I'm saying. That would be evidence that they actually came up and looked above their body.

• 26:45Chuck Nice?

  And they were looking down physically on their own body. Yes, yes.

• 26:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On their own body in the bed. That's right. So there are experiments you can do. And by the way, there's a history of this. Did you know that late 1890s, was it? At the turn of the century, Wilhelm Röntgen, you realize he discovered X-rays. We call them X-rays in Germany. He's German. They call them Röntgen rays. Okay, as you'd expect. Okay. They see through your body. What people were doing back then was, oh, my gosh, if it can see through the body, maybe if I X-ray you, the moment of your death, I will see the soul rise up out of your corporal existence. So they did these experiments. I mean, why not?

• 27:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got a new tool of physics.

• 27:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I mean, if the person's already dying, they don't have to worry about the radiation. That's for sure.

• 27:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, up the dose.

• 27:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Turn it up to 11, guys. Turn it up to 11.

• 27:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but no, they didn't see anything coming out of the body. So, there it is.

• 27:53Chuck Nice?

  There you have it. All right. Very cool.

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So thanks for that question.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Hey, I'm Roy Hill Percival, and I support Startalk on Patreon, Bringing the Universe Down to Earth. This is Startalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 28:21Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is Mahi. And Mahi says, hi, this is Mohammed from Columbus, Ohio. I wanted to know if it is possible to get to absolutely nothing. And I mean, like, eliminating every atom. So we, more than that, let's go down to it. If you can blow apart every atom, but then you got particles, because that's what atoms are made of, but then you blow apart all the particles, but then you got the bits that made up the particles, is it, at what point can we get to nothing? Like, literally, nothing?

• 29:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so in a book published just months ago called To Infinity and Beyond, which I co-authored with our senior producer Lindsey Nix Walker. All right, there's a whole conversation about the, the, the search for nothingness. Okay, and because there was a day when air is nothing, right? If there's something there, I wouldn't be able to see you. So clearly, air is nothing. Then you learn, no, air is not nothing. All right, they're like molecules. What's a molecule? We had to like, figure all this out. This is the search for our understanding of our place in the universe, reaching what at one time felt like infinity. Then you get there and then there's like more infinities beyond.

• 29:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so let's remove all the molecules and what's left? Well, there's space between the molecules. All right. Uh, well, is there nothing between the molecules? Well, no, because quantum physics tells us that even where there is nothing, there are fluctuations that introduce what we call virtual particles. You can Google virtual particles. They pop in and out of existence in the vacuum, in the vacuum. Okay? Right. So, so they're, they're particle, particle, antiparticle pairs. They pop into existence and then they recombine and there is an energy associated with this field.

• 30:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're thinking it might be the dark energy that everyone has been talking about, but it's, it's called the vacuum energy of the universe. You cannot escape that. By everything we know about all the laws of physics, it is inescapable. So. It's amazing. Wait, wait, wait. So now, let's get deep. Are you seated? You ready to get deep? Okay. All right. Let's say you could suspend the laws of quantum physics and not even have any particles there. Any virtual particles there, okay?

• 31:07Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's a question for you. If the laws of physics still apply,

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  does that area of nothingness contain nothing?

• 31:20Chuck Nice?

  So we, we're not accounting for virtual particles. We're just looking at the nothing.

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, looking at the nothing. Right. If, if laws of physics still apply in that nothing, is there nothing there?

• 31:35Chuck Nice?

  Right. So, but how could the laws of physics apply if there's absolutely nothing there? They have to apply to something.

• 31:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, they could apply to the fabric of spacetime. And by the way, recently told to me by my friend and colleague Brian Green up at Columbia, that there's emerging research to suggest that the virtual particles that pop in and out of existence are connected, they're, they're entangled, they're quantum entangled. And if we think of that entanglement as with their connectivity being provided by mini wormholes, it may be that these mini wormholes is the literal fabric of spacetime itself. Because it's happening everywhere where you don't otherwise have particles.

• 32:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that would be the substrate on which all particles and energies unfold. So if these, if these quantum entangled virtual particles, if there's the wormhole that connects them is the fabric, then it's meaningless to then think of empty space without it.

• 32:44Chuck Nice?

  Because there is no, there can't be. There is no such thing as empty space.

• 32:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the space is granted in existence because of it.

• 32:49Chuck Nice?

  It's exactly, right?

• 32:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that blew my mind. I'm having lunch with Brian Green, that blew my mind.

• 32:55Chuck Nice?

  That's, that's an insane thought.

• 32:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I hope I recounted it accurately. I think we might get to get Brian back on and get him to say it.

• 33:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's, that's incredible though. I mean, just to think about that, that's incredible. Yeah. Wow. Okay.

• 33:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, couple more.

• 33:10Chuck Nice?

  Well, there you go. There you go. Mahi, thanks. That was a great question. And the answer is no. So, um.

• 33:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Okay. Okay.

• 33:22Chuck Nice?

  Here we.

• 33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 33:23Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. My partner's Mike Parker, Parker, says, hi, Dr. Tyson. Hello, Chuck Nice. Mike Parker here from Richmond, Virginia. Do you think AI has?

• 33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just in Richmond, Virginia. I was just there visiting their fair town.

• 33:38Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm. Very nice. He says, do you think AI has the ability in the near future to make a major scientific discovery? Ah, if so, what area do you foresee the AI having the greatest influence? So we're training AI. What happens when it looks at data and then says, I'm just going to come up with my own finding?

• 34:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so first of all, that's been happening in my field for decades. So let's just nip that in the bud right here. Okay.

• 34:12Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 34:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every bit of power the computer brings us, we say, bring it on. And we have the computer do stuff faster, better than we ever could. Uh, so for example, we had AI and with, um, uh, machine learning AI, learn how we extract the signa- the signal of planets orbiting other stars from the data. Okay.

• 34:39Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 34:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because what, there's something called the transit method where if you happen to see the, the star system edge on, then the planet could pass in front of the star, gently blocking out the light of the star. And then the light of the star recovers from that because it's just, it's just blotted out briefly. And then you wait long enough and you watch it repeat and say, got a planet on our hands. Okay. So this is very hard to find because the planet doesn't dim the star by very much. There's a lot of noisy data. We did the best we could. We trained AI to do this. We set it loose onto the data. It found another 51 planets that we could not have otherwise found. So.

• 35:19Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 35:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, so AI is most excellent in that way. Okay. Where I'm an AI skeptic, but I'm happy to be proved wrong one day, is whether AI will come up with a new idea.

• 35:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A new idea. Now, big AI fans are certain we'll get there, but I'm not. Okay? For example, Chuck, let's say we uploaded your brain into the internet and it's now it's powered by AI. All right?

• 35:54Chuck Nice?

  That's gonna be the end of the world.

• 35:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you gonna be a supervillain, Chuck?

• 36:00Chuck Nice?

  That's the end of the world, baby.

• 36:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now you go to the Bahamas and you meet someone new that you make good friends and you discover a new kind of mollusk on the seashore.

• 36:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 36:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you write a letter to a colleague of yours who's an expert in mollusk. Is this a new mollusk? Yes, that's a new species. We shall call it Lord Chuck Niceum. Okay. Or, no, that would be an element on the periodic table. Chuck Niceidie, whatever. They have ways that they specify names.

• 36:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it turns out that new shell opens up a whole new understanding of shellfish. Okay? Or mollusks, let's say. I'm making this up, but just imagine this. AI would know nothing about it because it only knows what's on the internet and you sent a paper letter handwritten to your colleague.

• 37:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You discovered a whole new branch of the tree of life and AI has no idea it even existed and it never will until you put it on the internet. And AI can't make that new friend you just made. Okay? AI knows nothing about that relationship because you didn't put it on Instagram. Okay? So, in fact, I think the only way to keep AI in check so that it doesn't become our overlords is to do shit we don't put on the internet.

• 37:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. That's all you gotta do. All we need is pen and paper, people. That's all we need.

• 37:40Chuck Nice?

  It's like millennials. All you have to do is write something in cursive. They have no idea what it is that you're talking about.

• 37:47Chuck Nice?

  What's that? A squiggle? I don't get the squiggles. Why is it all squiggly? I don't understand.

• 37:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Writing in code, secret code for the next world war.

• 38:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So anyhow, so I don't see them now, okay. AI found a new strategy when playing the game Go. That's that territorial board game that was

• 38:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's common and very popular in the Far East. But many people play it and I it found a new strategic way where it can win and it's something that no one had thought of before. Okay, but it still started with this game that we invented.

• 38:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and honestly, you would have to. It's just at that point, running a bunch of simulations and making associative comparisons. So it's

• 38:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the rules that we created.

• 38:54Chuck Nice?

  With the rules that you created, right.

• 38:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 38:56Chuck Nice?

  Now, what would be what would impress me is if it took the game Go and created an entirely new game. And said, here's the game I created. That would be amazing. That's

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if we all and it knows what we like about playing board games and then

• 39:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It becomes the most popular game there ever was.

• 39:15Chuck Nice?

  The game in the world, right.

• 39:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep.

• 39:16Chuck Nice?

  That that yeah.

• 39:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What else I wanted to do?

• 39:20Chuck Nice?

  Right now, Milton Bradley is like, get me AI.

• 39:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the phone right now.

• 39:25Chuck Nice?

  Get AI on the phone.

• 39:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that. So so we'll see, we'll see how AI shakes it. I want you to know and the world to know that in my field, we we use AI at any turn we can. To help us interpret, analyze and obtain data. Especially given the volume of data that comes about, there's no way we'd be able to do it otherwise. And there are different levels of AI. There's the AI that scares everybody, which is AGI, artificial general intelligence, where it just learns anything at all at all times. It can do anything. Cook your coffee and solve your calculus homework and write your term paper. Right.

• 40:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And like, okay. We'll see.

• 40:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 40:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll see.

• 40:12Chuck Nice?

  I mean, there you go. Um, however, we learned from our friend Michio Kaku, the last time we had him on the show, that the true potential of AI will be realized when we have a quantum computer.

• 40:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yes.

• 40:26Chuck Nice?

  And then.

• 40:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very good point.

• 40:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 40:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. He's all into the quantum, as am I. I, I, I'm, I'm delighted and terrified by what it will be able to compute for us. Yes. It's a, it's a new world.

• 40:36Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 40:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A new world order, I would even say. Right.

• 40:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Wow. That's, that's crazy. All right. Here's our, uh, our question.

• 40:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it'll be our last question. That's all we have time for. Last question.

• 40:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Well, Charles, you get the last word, Charles.

• 40:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:50Chuck Nice?

  He says, hey Neil, hey Chuck, Charles here from Houston, Texas.

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Planet Houston.

• 40:56Chuck Nice?

  Guys are, Planet Houston, uh, we have a problem.

• 40:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have to know I call it Planet Houston.

• 41:01Chuck Nice?

  No, I don't. No.

• 41:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. In the first Superman movie.

• 41:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Uh, was it, no, second Superman movie, the second one.

• 41:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 41:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where the criminals come back out of the Phantom Zone, which is a two dimensional prison floating through space. That Phantom Zone.

• 41:23Chuck Nice?

  Coolest things ever.

• 41:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got, got broken by a nuclear explosion that Superman cast into space to save Earth because terrorists were gonna blow up the Eiffel Tower. And so he takes it, throws it into space, the blast wave, which you can't have in the vacuum of space, but it's a cartoon. It's a movie. Uh, uh, it shatters the Phantom Zone, re-releasing these three criminals. There's Zod and the two others. Okay? All right.

• 41:50Chuck Nice?

  Neil or Zod?

• 41:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a meme with me, um, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm just in sequence to him, right? So I'm before Zod and Zod is after me. So it's Neil before Zod. It's a meme someone cooked up, you know, 10 years ago. Okay, so, uh, they come to the moon. They get closer to the, our sun, which is a yellow sun, which gives them powers. Okay? They get to the moon and they see astronauts there.

• 42:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? And they, and the astronauts are looking through their space suit and they just see these people, but they're like Superman type people, but they don't need suits, right? They're spaceird. And he asked them, what planet is this? And the astronaut said, Houston, Houston. And he said, oh, this is planet Houston.

• 42:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He thought the guy was answering his question, but he was just

• 42:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, right.

• 42:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  radioing back to Houston that we have a problem on the moon. So that's why I say planet Houston, all that.

• 42:59Chuck Nice?

  Planet Houston.

• 43:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Also, of course, Houston is the very first word ever spoken in comments from the moon.

• 43:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, the very first word is contact, but, uh, contact light. But th- those weren't comments yet, those were diagnostics. Then when they landed, Houston, comma, tranquility base here, comma, the eagle has landed. There it is.

• 43:20Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 43:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 43:21Chuck Nice?

  There you go. So, uh, he says, uh, you guys are my hero. My two-year-old daughter is obsessed with the solar system. Now, in the age of social media and constant distractions, despite having all the knowledge of our species in our pockets, what do you think is the best strategy to foster the love of science and curiosity in a young person? Ooh, there you go. Nice. What a nice question.

• 43:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get out of her wa- get out of her way.

• 43:51Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow. Look at that.

• 43:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 43:54Chuck Nice?

  Why you gotta be, why you gotta be so hard on the guy?

• 43:58Chuck Nice?

  He was just asking a question about his daughter, man. Like, get out of her way, that's what you could do.

• 44:06Chuck Nice?

  You're a lousy dad, Charles.

• 44:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We spend the first years of their life teaching them to walk and talk, and then we spend the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down. We, so, children are born curious, get out of their way, that curiosity will be maintained until the day arrives when you squash it.

• 44:25Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 44:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and so I'll give an example. We've all had toddlers or younger. They, you know, they discover the pots and pans in the cabinet. The pots and pans are usually low, they're not high up. So they drag them out onto the ground and they start banging on it with the wooden spoon and the, and the aluminum ladle and the steel spoon. And what do you say as a parent?

• 44:49Chuck Nice?

  Um.

• 44:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cut out, cut out the racket.

• 44:51Chuck Nice?

  Cook, cook me something. That's what I said.

• 44:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  While you're there.

• 44:55Chuck Nice?

  While you're down there.

• 45:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do, do something practical. So they're banging away, you just say, stop the racket and you're getting the dishes dirty. And you, you have squashed an entire experiment in acoustics.

• 45:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And.

• 45:14Chuck Nice?

  Cause that's what they're doing. They're, they're doing sonic experiments, yep.

• 45:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, and so children, yes, they make a mess of things, but you didn't have children. You didn't have your kids so that you maintain a neat house. That's not how this works.

• 45:26Chuck Nice?

  I had, I had them as a, basically a retirement, um, plan, that's.

• 45:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, your kids?

• 45:35Chuck Nice?

  My kids, I'm like, well, I got three, I got, I got hopes for maybe one of them, you know?

• 45:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 45:46Chuck Nice?

  I got three, but I got hopes, I got hopes for one.

• 45:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so anyhow, just watch what they do if they reach for a, an egg that you haven't cracked yet to make an omelet. It just can just barely reach the counter surface. What do you typically say at that point?

• 46:03Chuck Nice?

  No, no, no.

• 46:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, yeah, no, no, put the egg down, you might break it.

• 46:07Chuck Nice?

  Put the egg down.

• 46:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When, you could let the kid have the egg and you know it's gonna break. But then they're gonna see what's inside the egg. And there's like the albumen and the yolk and you, then you tell them that might have been a chicken.

• 46:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'll freak them out right there.

• 46:23Chuck Nice?

  And then, and then they become vegan and that's how you make a vegan. That's how you make a vegan.

• 46:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that could have been a chicken. Plus, they learn that something can be hard yet fragile. Not many things in a child's life are hard. But practically, anything that's hard is rugged. But an egg is hard yet fragile. So that's a new kind of concept for a kid. And you learn it might have been a chicken. Then you could take the clear liquid, heat it, and it turns white. There's a color change from transparent to white. Oh, my gosh. All of these are lessons that would have cost you 50 cents. How much the egg, a dozen eggs cost these days? Somewhere between.

• 47:11Chuck Nice?

  I have no idea.

• 47:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, they, the price went up for a while.

• 47:14Chuck Nice?

  It's three bucks.

• 47:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They can be six dollars a dozen or something. Between three and six dollars a dozen. At most, it's a 50 cents. It's 50 cents worth of learning in that. Now, if the kid just throws it against the wall and, and turns the other way, no, then you stop that experiment.

• 47:29Chuck Nice?

  You have a vandal on your hands. You got a vandal. You're raising a vandal. And he just takes the egg, throws it against the wall, and is like, yay! It's like, oh.

• 47:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and walks the other way, right. But if they throw it against the wall and then analyze it, let that go. Okay. So, point is, and then we got to wrap here. So, the point is, the, these are experiments. And as long as it doesn't kill the child, you should not worry that it makes your home messy. Because that's what, that is the consequence of a free, that's the consequence of a child performing experiments at every turn of curiosity that descends upon them. As long as you don't get in their way to that, they will, they will become scientists through and through their whole lives. There it is.

• 48:16Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 48:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So your home is their laboratory. Deal with it.

• 48:21Chuck Nice?

  Well, that, that sounds awful. I'm just saying.

• 48:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there you have it. That's why ki- kids who still have diapers, they play with their poop. This is, they're experimenting. This is all fascinating texture. You know, let it go.

• 48:42Chuck Nice?

  But yeah, don't, and don't scar them when they're playing with their poop. Cause that's gonna lead to some serious problems later on in life.

• 48:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Wait, well, one of the, there are things, experiments they might do that could harm them. So, watch out for those, that's all.

• 48:57Chuck Nice?

  See, those are the ones I say let them do, because they will learn the quickest.

• 49:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it depends if they lose fingers and stuff, or they die. Right, so, but my kids were playing in the doorway.

• 49:07Chuck Nice?

  Losing a finger in this, right?

• 49:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My kids were playing in the doorway, I said, let me put an end to this right now. Rather than tell them, don't do that, you could lose a finger. I took a pencil, put it in the doorway, slammed the door, and the pencil snapped. And then I showed them the two halves of the pencil. That was gangster. And then I showed them the mark in, the mark in the doorway remained there for the rest of their lives, where the pencil broke. They, they never played in a doorway again.

• 49:34Chuck Nice?

  That's, yeah, I would never use a pencil either. God, that was, that's traumatic.

• 49:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 49:39Chuck Nice?

  Uh, yeah. Yeah, me, I just let my kids stick, stick, I let my kids stick a fork, fork in the outlet, you know. They only did it once.

• 49:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that, that'll, that'll, uh, blow the circuit, and, and they'll never do that a second time.

• 49:54Chuck Nice?

  No, they'll never do it again, and they're totally fine. Yeah, they don't get electrocuted, you know, like you said, it trips the circuit, it pops.

• 50:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a big, it's a spark, it's a spark. It pops.

• 50:04Chuck Nice?

  It pops, they, they get blown back, and then they never, they never do it again in life.

• 50:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, there's an XKCD comic? This is, this is where your life splits between, will you become a scientist or not? Okay, so there's a wire, and the person connects the two wires, and they get a shock? And they say, oh, never do that again. And then, the other option is, you do it, and it makes a shock, and it shocks you, and you say, I wonder if that happens every time I do that?

• 50:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Scientists are checking for trends in nature, right?

• 50:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 50:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's the difference.

• 50:47Chuck Nice?

  There you go. That's great.

• 50:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is. And by the way, if I could just give it a shout out again, the book To Infinity and Beyond is all about the efforts and the trials and tribulations invested in experiments by scientists and engineers and just curious people trying to make discoveries that don't always work in the way they had imagined, but the next person that comes along now knows what not to do. So Icarus's wings melted trying to, you know, fly and we say, we laugh at him, but the next person, all they have to do is say, I want to try to fly too, but I know not to make my wings out of wax.

• 51:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 51:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. That's how you, that's how that works. Anyway, Chuck, it's all the time we have for it.

• 51:34Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man. Okay.

• 51:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 51:36Chuck Nice?

  It's good stuff.

• 51:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lot of wisdom in this, in this episode. Wow.

• 51:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Good questions, people.

• 51:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like the universe. Thanks for bringing those questions in and for the low price of.

• 51:46Chuck Nice?

  Uh, yeah, you know, just $5 a month. See us on Patreon.com. That's, that's what you get, man.

• 51:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get to write in your questions. I'm delighted to have you guys.

• 51:55Chuck Nice?

  Writing your questions.

• 51:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As our support, can I say that? As our support group? No, that's the wrong phrasing. As our support.

• 52:03Chuck Nice?

  I kind of like support group even better though.

• 52:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for being our support group in time of need.

• 52:12Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 52:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All good. All right, Chuck. Always good to have you.

• 52:15Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 52:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Neil deGrasse Tyson, finishing yet another episode of Start Off Cosmic Queries. As always, keep looking up.