Deadliest Cosmic Queries

Could humankind outlive the Earth? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice are ready to get spooky. We’ve gathered your fan-submitted Cosmic Queries that explore all things death, from the death of humanity to the death of the universe.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, personal astrophysicist. Recording now from my office at the Hayden Planetarium, part of the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City. Chuck Nice.

• 0:29Chuck Nice?

  Yo, what's up Neil?

• 0:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  ChuckNiceComic on Twitter. And this is a Cosmic Queries edition.

• 0:34Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it is.

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's what we did.

• 0:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. We didn't specifically solicit these.

• 0:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 0:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These trickle in.

• 0:41Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Over time.

• 0:43Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 0:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is Cosmic Queries Morbid Edition.

• 0:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh my.

• 0:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:51Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The death of things.

• 0:53Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 1:01Chuck Nice?

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

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 1:14Chuck Nice?

  They're thinking about...

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Other than an undertaker.

• 1:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 1:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, okay. So, let's try it.

• 1:21Chuck Nice?

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

• 1:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a category.

• 1:23Chuck Nice?

  As a category.

• 1:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 1:29Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 1:31Chuck Nice?

  All right, so let's start with Will J., uh, who says, "What one or two skills would you learn now to be useful and productive in a post-apocalyptic world?" This is, of course, if you survive the meteor strike.

• 1:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 1:50Chuck Nice?

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

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:56Chuck Nice?

  So...

• 1:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 1:59Chuck Nice?

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

• 2:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, regionally, yes.

• 2:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, or A Boy and His Dog style.

• 2:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now you go way back.

• 2:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go back to the seventies on that one.

• 2:11Chuck Nice?

  Wait, wait, wait.

• 2:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Don Johnson.

• 2:13Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 2:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of his first movies, Don Johnson.

• 2:15Chuck Nice?

  I didn't know that.

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 2:16Chuck Nice?

  Oh, right on.

• 2:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's the boy.

• 2:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 2:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the, I think all the men became sterile.

• 2:30Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 2:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 2:37Chuck Nice?

  Luckiest boy ever.

• 2:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 3:00Chuck Nice?

  Survival smarts.

• 3:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, Boy Scout level survival smarts.

• 3:04Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, probably Eagle Scout level.

• 3:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they all have some kind of weapon.

• 3:09Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 3:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 3:14Chuck Nice?

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

• 3:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 3:36Chuck Nice?

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

• 3:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Laser bullets.

• 3:41Chuck Nice?

  Laser bullets, yeah.

• 3:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 3:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could just duck.

• 3:53Chuck Nice?

  That is true.

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 4:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I forgot about Peabody and Sherman.

• 4:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 5:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who? And I think about this every time. It's the person who controls the hardware store.

• 6:18Chuck Nice?

  Makes sense.

• 6:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 6:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 6:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything.

• 6:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah, including weaponry.

• 6:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything.

• 6:27Chuck Nice?

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

• 6:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's right there for the apocalypse.

• 6:30Chuck Nice?

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

• 6:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If they shoot your ass first.

• 6:41Chuck Nice?

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

• 6:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 6:54Chuck Nice?

  I thought you were gonna say comedy.

• 7:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 7:05Chuck Nice?

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

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 7:10Chuck Nice?

  Well, true. End of your life, right?

• 7:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 7:17Chuck Nice?

  What's that?

• 7:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 7:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The danger is how people respond to each other.

• 7:28Chuck Nice?

  Right. So the interpersonal relationships become most important?

• 7:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 7:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  After like the fifth episode.

• 7:53Chuck Nice?

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

• 7:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 8:00Chuck Nice?

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

• 8:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it is, exactly.

• 8:09Chuck Nice?

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

• 8:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 8:23Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 8:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 8:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 8:41Chuck Nice?

  I'm trying to think of, like, will there be a nightclub on the ark?

• 8:45Chuck Nice?

  Cause if there's a nightclub on the ark, I'm in good shape.

• 8:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

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

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, next question.

• 9:14Chuck Nice?

  Alright, here we go. This is.

• 9:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Custom queries on the ends of things. Okay, go.

• 9:20Chuck Nice?

  Sala, madi, madi, um, wants to know this. Wow.

• 9:28Chuck Nice?

  Wow. What if?

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're gonna share it with us?

• 9:32Chuck Nice?

  Okay, sorry. I'm sorry.

• 9:37Chuck Nice?

  What if Wolverine, with his regeneration power, was thrown into a black hole? Would he still get spaghettified? Or would he just continually regenerate? Interesting. That's a weird question. I like it.

• 9:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 10:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  splits you into pieces.

• 10:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 10:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 10:14Chuck Nice?

  Right, because he's.

• 10:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not really an injury.

• 10:15Chuck Nice?

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

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 10:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you can't.

• 10:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because there's a gap.

• 10:35Chuck Nice?

  In between.

• 10:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 10:47Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it fills in from where you already had flesh.

• 10:50Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 10:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 10:56Chuck Nice?

  That's adamantium.

• 10:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. A black hole will overcome any physical substance.

• 11:00Chuck Nice?

  Physical substance?

• 11:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 11:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 11:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. No matter what it is.

• 11:04Chuck Nice?

  So he's still.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even if it's fictional and magical.

• 11:06Chuck Nice?

  Right. It's still gonna, right.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 11:08Chuck Nice?

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

• 11:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 11:11Chuck Nice?

  Now, do the atoms actually get spaghettified too?

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes!

• 11:14Chuck Nice?

  Wow!

• 11:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is my point. The nuclei get spaghettified.

• 11:19Chuck Nice?

  Wow!

• 11:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is why I'm saying. So.

• 11:21Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 11:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 11:36Chuck Nice?

  Period.

• 11:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Period.

• 11:37Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 11:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 11:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 11:48Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow. Okay.

• 11:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why gravity wins.

• 11:50Chuck Nice?

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

• 11:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Join the club.

• 11:54Chuck Nice?

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

• 11:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 12:00Chuck Nice?

  Um, um.

• 12:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hugh Jackman. Join the club, Hugh Jackman.

• 12:04Chuck Nice?

  Sorry Hugh.

• 12:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You in the club?

• 12:05Chuck Nice?

  Yep, exactly.

• 12:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spaghettify club.

• 12:07Chuck Nice?

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

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:22Chuck Nice?

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

• 12:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 12:31Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:33Chuck Nice?

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

• 12:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 12:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so let's say for instance.

• 12:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The answer is no. If Earth is destroyed.

• 12:54Chuck Nice?

  No, let's say, I mean, the Earth is gonna, how long is the Earth gonna be around?

• 12:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Five billion years.

• 12:57Chuck Nice?

  No, we're here now.

• 12:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 12:58Chuck Nice?

  So we're 4.8 billion now, right?

• 13:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, four and a half billion.

• 13:02Chuck Nice?

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

• 13:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Until when?

• 13:07Chuck Nice?

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

• 13:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, how far away?

• 13:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 13:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How far do we have to go?

• 13:11Chuck Nice?

  Oh, oh, that's what you're saying. How far forward into the future? Oh, I didn't understand that. Yeah.

• 13:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 13:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need some ability to planet hop.

• 13:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 13:34Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 13:41Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 13:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 13:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 13:52Chuck Nice?

  So how, how long would that?

• 13:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That all happened in five billion years.

• 13:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so we got another five billion years.

• 13:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have to worry.

• 13:59Chuck Nice?

  I am worried about it.

• 14:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, shoot.

• 14:00Chuck Nice?

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

• 14:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have it on mine. October 12th.

• 14:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Five billion.

• 14:11Chuck Nice?

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

• 14:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh-huh.

• 14:16Chuck Nice?

  Okay?

• 14:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our social, cultural problems.

• 14:17Chuck Nice?

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

• 14:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If we're not gonna kill ourselves?

• 14:22Chuck Nice?

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

• 14:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 14:32Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 14:43Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 14:48Chuck Nice?

  We got a long way to go.

• 14:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got a long way to go.

• 14:50Chuck Nice?

  If we don't kill ourselves.

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 15:01Chuck Nice?

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

• 15:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 15:08Chuck Nice?

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

• 15:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 15:17Chuck Nice?

  Damn.

• 15:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I think it was, was, uh-

• 15:20Chuck Nice?

  That sucks.

• 15:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 15:24Chuck Nice?

  Oh, Kurt Vonnegut?

• 15:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 15:43Chuck Nice?

  Oh, God, yeah. That's funny.

• 15:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 15:46Chuck Nice?

  That makes sense.

• 15:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 15:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 15:59Chuck Nice?

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

• 16:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mmm.

• 16:23Chuck Nice?

  Because-

• 16:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 16:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  -to drink.

• 16:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 16:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 16:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 16:57Chuck Nice?

  If that's how you want to do it.

• 16:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You feel that strongly about nature, do it.

• 17:00Chuck Nice?

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

• 17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, next question.

• 17:05Chuck Nice?

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

• 17:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 17:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 17:36Chuck Nice?

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

• 17:55Speaker 02

  I'm Jasmine Wilson, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 18:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, what do you have?

• 18:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let's move on.

• 18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic queries.

• 18:14Chuck Nice?

  Some more cosmic queries. Our morbid addition.

• 18:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Morbid addition, yes, go.

• 18:17Chuck Nice?

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

• 18:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, just to be clear, we left off the previous segment, somebody asking simply,

• 18:29Chuck Nice?

  Will it end with a bang or a whimper?

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I gave like a poetic, poeticized answer, but let me just give a little more, put a little more flesh on that bone.

• 18:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 18:42Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the universe could be expanding or contracting.

• 18:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 18:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Observation showed we're expanding.

• 18:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 18:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 18:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 19:17Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 19:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spacetime expands.

• 19:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 19:23Chuck Nice?

  So it eventually dissipates.

• 19:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it dissipates, a good way to say, the intensity of energy dissipates. The temperature of the universe drops.

• 19:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 19:39Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 19:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 19:53Chuck Nice?

  With the wind.

• 19:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 19:57Chuck Nice?

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

• 20:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just did.

• 20:05Chuck Nice?

  Ah, I feel bad for the universe now.

• 20:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe that's a good way to go.

• 20:10Chuck Nice?

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

• 20:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 20:12Chuck Nice?

  You know, which brings us to our next question. What a great segue you just made. DJ Mas 2006 on Instagram says, Neil, how do you wanna die?

• 20:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, this is public knowledge.

• 20:25Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:26Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 20:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 20:29Chuck Nice?

  Hold on.

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 20:31Chuck Nice?

  Nah, I'm gonna do it.

• 20:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're gonna test it?

• 20:33Chuck Nice?

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

• 20:44Chuck Nice?

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

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 21:10Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 21:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 21:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow!

• 21:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 21:36Chuck Nice?

  To be spaghettified.

• 21:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spaghettified, yeah.

• 21:39Chuck Nice?

  Nice!

• 21:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would totally go that way.

• 21:41Chuck Nice?

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

• 21:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get a sauce.

• 21:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so now-

• 21:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spaghettified sauce.

• 21:47Chuck Nice?

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

• 21:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 21:53Chuck Nice?

  I mean, I'm being-

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but it'd be, it'll be- Yeah, and your point is? What do you mean, you're saying? Do you think it'll hurt being stretched and ripped apart? Like, to that of worth?

• 22:04Chuck Nice?

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

• 22:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 22:18Chuck Nice?

  No, absolutely.

• 22:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 22:22Chuck Nice?

  No, sorry.

• 22:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not how we play that.

• 22:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 22:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 22:36Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 22:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 22:42Chuck Nice?

  That you

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can still see.

• 22:43Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah.

• 22:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so they get blinked, you know, for a few seconds.

• 22:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 22:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that's how I would do it.

• 22:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want my death to have some value to science.

• 22:53Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 22:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's how you do that.

• 22:55Chuck Nice?

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

• 23:01Chuck Nice?

  Feeling nothing, you know? Alright, well, that's cool, man. There you go. Spaghetti-ification. Alright.

• 23:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, this concept of feeling nothing by dying in your sleep, I don't know if it was just my immaturity or my literalism of

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  'cause I was a geek kid.

• 23:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 23:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And everything was literal to me. I could not think figuratively about anything. And I would like rethink things like six of one half a dozen of the other.

• 23:27Chuck Nice?

  Right, yes.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought, is that six of one half? A dozen of the other? Well, that would be three and 12.

• 23:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 23:43Chuck Nice?

  If they're the same thing, right.

• 23:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 24:03Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 24:14Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah.

• 24:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 24:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 24:40Chuck Nice?

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

• 24:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just wanna go to sleep and not wake up?

• 24:46Chuck Nice?

  I just wanna go to sleep and not wake up.

• 24:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, alright.

• 24:48Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Many people in my family have died that way.

• 24:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 24:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 24:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 25:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but.

• 25:11Chuck Nice?

  Peacefully, that's, that's the comfort part.

• 25:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 25:24Chuck Nice?

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

• 25:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They did not go quietly into the night.

• 25:31Chuck Nice?

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

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 25:46Chuck Nice?

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

• 25:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw the light.

• 25:52Chuck Nice?

  I was dying. Oh, my God.

• 25:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw the light.

• 25:55Chuck Nice?

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

• 26:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are they laying?

• 26:17Chuck Nice?

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

• 26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To do what?

• 26:22Chuck Nice?

  To get rid of us.

• 26:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 26:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 26:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is a plot?

• 26:32Chuck Nice?

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

• 26:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 26:38Chuck Nice?

  Cause that could actually be the case.

• 26:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 26:40Chuck Nice?

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

• 26:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They could do that.

• 26:45Chuck Nice?

  And you knew.

• 26:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They could, they could.

• 26:47Chuck Nice?

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

• 27:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Before you unplug.

• 27:05Chuck Nice?

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

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 27:18Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 27:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 27:19Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 27:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the one, two thousand and four, Tom Cruise.

• 27:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 27:34Chuck Nice?

  That's right, damn it. I forgot about that part.

• 27:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 27:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, now that idea, which perhaps they thought was clever,

• 27:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  uh, it, it, it undermines the entire plot of the movie.

• 27:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay, which is?

• 27:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is?

• 27:54Chuck Nice?

  Alien invasion from another, from outside, right.

• 27:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 28:09Chuck Nice?

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

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, and now they're in the ground, they can be, they can develop an immunity to our germs.

• 28:19Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 28:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 28:26Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha, yeah.

• 28:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 28:29Chuck Nice?

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

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know that movie had a narrator?

• 28:39Chuck Nice?

  Wait, no.

• 28:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it did.

• 28:40Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 28:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it did.

• 28:41Chuck Nice?

  How?

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it did.

• 28:42Chuck Nice?

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

• 28:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 28:49Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm, Tim Robbins.

• 28:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Morgan Freeman.

• 28:55Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 28:57Chuck Nice?

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

• 29:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 29:02Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 29:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I carry it with me.

• 29:03Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I carry this narration with me.

• 29:06Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 29:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 29:47Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Translation: Whose house? My house. Anyway.

• 29:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 29:57Chuck Nice?

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

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But did you like my?

• 30:22Chuck Nice?

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

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 30:28Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 30:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, a quick aside.

• 30:30Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 30:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 30:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 30:42Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, because nobody today writes like that.

• 30:44Chuck Nice?

  Nope.

• 30:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 30:49Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 30:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 30:55Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 31:09Chuck Nice?

  Oh snap!

• 31:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Covering that part of what was used for the movie.

• 31:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ready?

• 31:15Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 31:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 32:21Chuck Nice?

  Woo! Hashtag Darwin rocks!

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 32:28Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 32:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 32:33Chuck Nice?

  Oh yeah.

• 32:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 32:58Chuck Nice?

  This is, um, Jay the Gator, I'm gonna say.

• 33:06Chuck Nice?

  Last name, last name, there you go. Jay the Gator, I'm going with.

• 33:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 33:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay!

• 33:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jay the Gator.

• 33:14Chuck Nice?

  Yes!

• 33:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was, I was, it's probably Jade the Gator.

• 33:17Chuck Nice?

  It might be, but, you know.

• 33:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 33:22Chuck Nice?

  Alright, good for you. Jay, why don't you change your last name to Jones? How about that?

• 33:31Chuck Nice?

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

• 34:01Chuck Nice?

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

• 34:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 34:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're not giant sucking machines.

• 34:13Chuck Nice?

  No, they're not.

• 34:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 34:18Chuck Nice?

  Go right around it?

• 34:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 34:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But orbitally, it would make no difference to us.

• 34:27Chuck Nice?

  So now...

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 34:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 34:34Chuck Nice?

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

• 34:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 34:42Chuck Nice?

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

• 34:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 34:47Chuck Nice?

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

• 34:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 34:58Chuck Nice?

  Ah!

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you fed the black hole top and bottom...

• 35:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 35:10Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 35:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 35:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 35:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 35:19Chuck Nice?

  To begin with, right.

• 35:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so it's not some giant sucking machine, first of all. Second...

• 35:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All evidence points that every red-blooded galaxy has a supermassive black hole in its center. Modern evidence shows that if not every galaxy, certainly most galaxies, red-blooded galaxies have supermassive black holes in them. When galaxies collide, it is highly likely that these black holes will find each other. Alright, because that's how the dynamics of colliding systems works. Right. And then they will consume each other, passing through each other's event horizon. Gotcha. Okay, so then you have a black hole twice as big now. Alright, fine, but then it's just still stuck in the middle of this, these two galaxies that have merged. Right. It's not reaching out to some other galaxy. Right. Alright, so now, now we have an accelerating, expanding universe.

• 36:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's a galaxy over there, and I'm a galaxy over here, and the expanding universe will forever take that black hole away from my black hole. Right. So. So you're all moving away from each other. There's no reason to think that all the matter in the universe is gonna land up as one black hole. Gotcha. Not only that, the universe is just gonna expand forever, and forever is a long time. It is. It's not long enough for the Bible, though. The Bible, it's forever and ever.

• 36:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ever notice that? Yeah, it is, forever and ever. And ever, right? Because forever, however big that infinity is, I want more infinity. One, plus one. Infinity plus one. Oh, you're the annoying kid, right?

• 36:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can count to a big number. I counted to a hundred billion. A hundred billion one. There you go.

• 36:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how to get an ass-whupping in the street. Hey, man. So, in the very distant future of the universe, the black holes that did eat whatever it was they were gonna eat Right. will ultimately evaporate in what's called Hawking radiation. Okay. So the black hole becomes undone, and all that matter that was in the black hole is now back scattered into the uni- scattered back into the universe. So, now, if you do the math and ask, "How much mass is there within the radius of the known universe?" And see how that compares to a black hole's mass and size. It turns out, the entire universe can be analogized to being a black hole unto itself.

• 37:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With a horizon beyond which you cannot see.

• 37:46Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 38:05Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 38:10Chuck Nice?

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

• 38:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 38:22Chuck Nice?

  Aha. Okay.

• 38:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So in Men in Black, the galaxy on the Belt of Orion, we remember this.

• 38:29Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 38:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 38:55Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 38:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 38:57Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Alright, well, the answer to your question is no.

• 39:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now pronounce his name again.

• 39:01Chuck Nice?

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

• 39:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jay Jones, alright.

• 39:08Chuck Nice?

  Alright, cool, cool, cool.

• 39:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said his name was probably Jay Degater.

• 39:12Chuck Nice?

  You said that, yes.

• 39:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll bet you. I'll bet you a dollar.

• 39:15Chuck Nice?

  Jay, we read your question. Hit us up on Twitter. Let us know how bad I mangled your name.

• 39:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 39:21Chuck Nice?

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

• 39:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Physics in the house.

• 39:30Chuck Nice?

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

• 39:45Chuck Nice?

  Tori? Really?

• 39:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 39:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The interesting thing about the universe that's not entirely obvious at first reckoning is that every electron we've ever found is identical to every other electron. Every atom of any species of atom, I say species loosely there, obviously, right? Any oxygen atom here is identical to any oxygen atom anywhere else in the universe.

• 40:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 40:24Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 40:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the naturally occurring elements is ninety-four, depending how you count it. The low nineties, naturally occurring elements. That is the recipe that makes everything there is in the universe. Everything natural in the universe. So, if you're made of these atoms, I put you in the earth and you decompose, these atoms are available to make something else.

• 40:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And to decompose is different from than to disintegrate.

• 40:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know the difference?

• 40:52Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 40:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To disintegrate is you break apart.

• 40:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To decompose is some other animal is eating you.

• 40:57Chuck Nice?

  Ill, is that really what the competition is?

• 41:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes! If I put you on-

• 41:01Chuck Nice?

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

• 41:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 41:22Chuck Nice?

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

• 41:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh!

• 41:40Chuck Nice?

  Yes!

• 41:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, with sunglasses looking up.

• 41:42Chuck Nice?

  Right! Looking at the sun!

• 41:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 41:46Chuck Nice?

  That would be awesome!

• 41:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Be a little dehydrated, but you'll still be there. Right.

• 41:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 41:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 41:54Chuck Nice?

  So basically, this-

• 41:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. There's a movie that ended that way.

• 41:59Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 42:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 42:01Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 42:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 42:04Chuck Nice?

  Uh, Tommy Lee Jones.

• 42:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 42:13Chuck Nice?

  That's cool.

• 42:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Tommy Lee Jones.

• 42:15Chuck Nice?

  I don't know what movie that is.

• 42:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think it was Space Cowboys.

• 42:20Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 42:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think.

• 42:21Chuck Nice?

  Not bad.

• 42:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think we can check on that.

• 42:23Chuck Nice?

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

• 42:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 42:26Chuck Nice?

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

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we're ingredients.

• 42:33Chuck Nice?

  We're ingredients. That's what I mean.

• 42:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kitchen ingredients.

• 42:34Chuck Nice?

  We're kitchen ingredients, basically.

• 42:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 42:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 42:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 43:01Chuck Nice?

  Can't utilize them.

• 43:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 43:04Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 43:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you'll still exist as atoms.

• 43:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 43:16Chuck Nice?

  There you go. We're kitchen ingredients. That's it.

• 43:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it.

• 43:18Chuck Nice?

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

• 43:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good. One last question. Go, give it to me.

• 43:25Chuck Nice?

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

• 43:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 43:41Chuck Nice?

  Becomes an issue.

• 43:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 43:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Go ahead.

• 43:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck.

• 43:47Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 43:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 43:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 43:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like in the sixties. It went into the mid sixties.

• 43:59Chuck Nice?

  It's still on, so.

• 43:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right. You can catch it. Yeah, yeah. All right. So there were so many episodes about astronauts going crazy for lack of human interaction.

• 44:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 44:21Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 44:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is people going crazy in isolation in space. And then I realized.

• 44:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then I met people who don't like talking to other people. Who don't like anybody, who would be just fine, months, years at a time, never having human contact with anybody else. I've met these people and sometimes I feel that way too. Perfect astronauts. I say, I say, "Give me a, you know, a good video account, some books, some, give me Apple, Apple, you know, Apple Music." Mm-hmm. And I'm good. I don't have to talk to anybody. So this idea that you need human contact for your survival, people I have met undermine that claim that I have seen persistently made

• 45:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  in, uh, in, in, in storytelling. But apart from that. Okay.

• 45:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  NASA has never sent anybody up alone since Mercury, okay? Right. A, B, NASA's always yapping at you on the radio. That's true, yeah. They're there all the time. Mm-hmm. All the time they're talking to you. That's true. "How you feeling today? Did you, did you turn the knob to the left three times?" Right. "Did you do the hokey pokey, as you should have? Have you spacewalked? Did you do the thing? Did you, did you have a bowel movement?" Right. You know? And so, it ain't like they're not there. Right. So anyhow, I think there's enough range of people's interpersonal temperament that I, I, I don't see that it's gonna be a problem having somebody alone. Now, you wanna know who was the most isolated person there ever was?

• 46:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. Who was it? It was the command module pilots in the, in the nine Apollo missions to the moon, where, well, sorry, in the missions where two of them went down to the surface. Right. So that's seven of the missions, where, including Apollo 10, where they went down just above the surface, they say, "Okay, come back." Right. And they never actually landed. Because they're incrementally testing.

• 46:31Chuck Nice?

  God, those guys got ripped off.

• 46:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know.

• 46:33Chuck Nice?

  God.

• 46:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 46:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "Okay for landing?"

• 46:42Chuck Nice?

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

• 46:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 46:53Chuck Nice?

  "I gotta put her down."

• 46:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 46:56Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 46:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gotta put her down.

• 46:58Chuck Nice?

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

• 47:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 47:19Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 47:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 47:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 47:31Chuck Nice?

  That's the most solo person ever.

• 47:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That there ever was, correct.

• 47:34Chuck Nice?

  Right. Nice.

• 47:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 47:36Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty wild.

• 47:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all I'm saying.

• 47:39Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 47:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 47:42Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 47:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, thanks for these questions.

• 47:43Chuck Nice?

  These were great, yeah.

• 47:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 47:48Chuck Nice?

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

• 47:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 47:52Chuck Nice?

  People are really thick.

• 47:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was the inaugural.

• 47:55Chuck Nice?

  People have problems, okay?

• 47:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 48:05Chuck Nice?

  A pleasure.

• 48:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.