Alien Sightings with David Spergel

Are alien spacecraft here on Earth? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice discuss the UAP hearings, unexplained cosmic phenomena, dark matter, and more with astrophysicist and NASA UAP chair David Spergel.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, I'm worried about you because we blew your mind today.

• 0:03Chuck Nice?

  Um, yeah.

• 0:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And your voice went up three octaves in reaction.

• 0:07Chuck Nice?

  Um, actually, we, uh, we discovered things that, uh, basically gave me a small stroke.

• 0:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, I don't mean to laugh at that fact, but, deep physics mixed with the universe, we call that astrophysics.

• 0:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, without a doubt.

• 0:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's nothing like it in the universe.

• 0:21Chuck Nice?

  Smoke some weed for this one.

• 0:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Check it out, coming up.

• 0:30Neil 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, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Chuck Nice, right here with me.

• 0:49Chuck Nice?

  Hey Neil.

• 0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, man. You know who we're gonna do today?

• 0:52Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh.

• 0:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 0:55Chuck Nice?

  We got a good one.

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got a good one.

• 0:56Chuck Nice?

  We got a good one.

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got a good one. You remember what happened to UFOs? They got rebranded by the government to UAPs. Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, yeah, yeah. And I, I had an inside guy on that operation. Let me introduce all of you to my friend and colleague David Spiegel. David? Pleasure to be here. Welcome to StarTalk. Thank you. Dude, we came up together in graduate school and we intersected more thoroughly, uh, when I was a postdoc at Princeton. And he was on the faculty there and then became chairman. And I knew him when he was just a scientist. Now, now he's running everything.

• 1:36Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I'm looking, looking what my boy is running, what, so you chaired NASA's UAP, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, Independent Study Team, you chaired that. But that's not, you're president of the Simons Foundation. We'll get more into that later. You chaired the science definition team for the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, okay? We'll, more about that, if we have time. And you're also on the Board, the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Institute for Science. Carnegie, isn't that the same group where Edwin Hubble worked for them? Yup. This is a long legacy. Long and a really impressive tradition. So David, how did you morph from Mr. Head Honcho Scientist, Big Man on Campus?

• 2:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To alien UFO guy for Congress.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Approached it the way we approach scientific questions.

• 2:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Approach it the way things we don't understand. So you look at the data you have.

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  And you realize much of the data could be explained. Balloons, drones, anything with flashing lights is an airplane. You know, aliens who are coming here who want to be hidden? Don't put flashing lights on them.

• 2:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  On their UFOs.

• 2:52Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, like undercover cops. They don't like, you don't see an undercover cop in a marked police car.

• 2:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With sirens.

• 2:59Chuck Nice?

  With sirens blazing and lights flashing, right.

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. But, but that doesn't preclude the possibility that Ann Craft would have flashing lights. In fact, the mothership in Close Encounters of the Third Kind had tons of flashing lights.

• 3:12Chuck Nice?

  Was nothing but flashing lights.

• 3:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Flashing lights.

• 3:14Chuck Nice?

  It was like a dog on disco in the sky.

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was a disco ball in the sky.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not sure flashing lights really makes sense for a spaceship.

• 3:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  But anyway, there's a bunch of things that look, when you look at them carefully, their camera defects. I think we've all taken pictures of people where the sun glint got in and ruined the picture.

• 3:37Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  So there's some like that.

• 3:38Chuck Nice?

  Lens flare.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Lens flares, right? And then you go through all.

• 3:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If that's happening a million times a day.

• 3:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Something in there is going to be interesting.

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're going to find Jesus in one of the, in one of the lens flares.

• 3:49Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 3:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 3:50Chuck Nice?

  That's my religion.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  And then you look through that and then there were some things we don't understand.

• 3:55Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  Right, so there's some events.

• 3:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Approximately what fraction?

• 3:58Speaker 02

  About a percent.

• 3:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One percent?

• 4:00Chuck Nice?

  One percent.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  So about one percent of the events and the military had a study that went through this. We've used a lot of their work. About one percent are not understood.

• 4:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, can we back up for a sec? Who appointed this committee?

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Uh, NASA.

• 4:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  NASA, NASA, okay, gotcha.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  So this is to give advice to NASA on how they could help advance our understanding.

• 4:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was this requested by Congress?

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Uh, no, it was requested by the head of NASA.

• 4:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so NASA wanted to play in the sandbox.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Yup.

• 4:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, okay.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And NASA is among the most transparent agencies.

• 4:32Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 4:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And.

• 4:33Chuck Nice?

  And they have no reason to, they don't have an agenda.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  There was nothing about our study that was classified. I have no clearances.

• 4:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  So we can talk openly about everything we did. And we looked at the events that we didn't understand.

• 4:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, when you have the highest level of clearance, that's what you would say. You say, "I don't have any clearance."

• 4:54Speaker 02

  "I don't have any clearance."

• 4:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's exactly what a high clearance person would say. No, go on.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  The data was ambiguous. We didn't understand it, but it wasn't like it was something clear. And one of the points we made was a scientist.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Again, this is the 1% that we don't know what they are.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, okay.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  No, and when you don't understand something, you don't jump to the most exciting conclusion. Right. You don't say, "It's gotta be aliens," you know. You look at it and say, "Something I don't know." But you don't ignore it either, right? You should not ignore things you don't understand. If there are things you don't understand, what do you want to do? Get better data. And that really was our message to NASA. If they wanted to contribute to this, they should help get better data. Right now, everyone is carrying in their back pocket a device that takes really high-quality digital images. Yes. Accurately records the time. Yes. Measures GPS position. Correct.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Measures the local magnetic field. Measures the local gravitational field.

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It do all that?

• 6:03Speaker 02

  It does all that. It knows how you're orienting your phone. Clearly, that's not an Android.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  So, hey, I've got an iPhone.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  And there are billions of them around the planet.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you're saying, when I, when it knows which way is north, is it using the magnetic north, or is it correct? It's gotta correct for that.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  It's gotta correct.

• 6:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it knows where I am on Earth.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Corrects for the magnetic anomaly.

• 6:28Speaker 02

  Is what we call it. And then it gives you the true north.

• 6:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The true north.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  Okay. Yep, and it is really amazing. What that device measures, your phone. And if you can imagine if we had pictures of something we didn't understand, taken by citizens from a whole bunch of different perspectives.

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Different sightlines.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  Different sightlines, you'd be able to reconstruct the event.

• 6:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  To know how fast the object is moving, how far away it is.

• 6:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And not be susceptible to someone's capacity to interpret what they see.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  That's right. So it's not a single blurry image, but tens of high-quality images. And you don't have to worry about things like camera flares, because you've got multiple cameras.

• 7:11Chuck Nice?

  Multiple images.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  And multiple images. So our recommendation to NASA was to develop an app.

• 7:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's an app for that.

• 7:19Chuck Nice?

  Oh my gosh!

• 7:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, what's the app?

• 7:21Speaker 02

  It doesn't exist yet. So this was our recommendation, that they fund the development of something like this, and that they use this to collect more data.

• 7:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'd have the app on my phone, I'd see something I don't understand, I'd take a picture, and the metadata in that image, I just upload it to the app in some simple way, you want to simplify it as much as possible. And then that goes to a central place. And then you can have people there that can correlate the, and correlate the data.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  And we said, just try to make everything public.

• 7:51Chuck Nice?

  So you're crowdsourcing the data gathering itself?

• 7:54Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 7:55Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  So I, you know.

• 7:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People are everywhere.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  People are everywhere.

• 7:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  And I felt this was a teachable moment. A chance to say, what do we do as scientists? Do we collect data? We verify data? We check data quality? I did a bunch of TV interviews on this. Soon as I started talking about checking data quality, they ended the interview. They wanted to hear about aliens.

• 8:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, don't be so boring, dude.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  But it's like, you want to make sure that people didn't put in fake images.

• 8:27Chuck Nice?

  I just love it, he's just like, of course, we gather data, we check data quality. They were like, this guy has integrity. Get him the hell out of here.

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but what you're saying is, in an era where we have Photoshop, And and even more advan- and even AI generating images, you want to make sure you need some way to authenticate.

• 8:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 8:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What the camera caught.

• 8:49Chuck Nice?

  And that even occurred to me. See how I'm I'm I'm thinking, yeah, you take a picture, but the fact is that those Photoshop type programs, they exist on your phone. You don't have to actually go.

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

  It's like you could just hit a button on your phone and start manipulating an image right then and there. Yeah, you had to go take it and import it someplace.

• 9:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To your computer, mess with it and put it back on.

• 9:10Chuck Nice?

  No, now you can just do it right when you take the picture. So that makes sense.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  No, I mean, it's not hard to take a picture shaking the hand of a friend and replace the picture of the friend with, I don't know, Dr. Spock, whoever your your favorite alien is.

• 9:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that would be mine.

• 9:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spock was half alien, I think.

• 9:28Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Half Vulcan. The mother was.

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On this show, we have to be very accurate about that.

• 9:33Chuck Nice?

  Mom was human, dad was Sorek.

• 9:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, that's all I'm saying. So you presented your results more than a year ago. What has happened since then?

• 9:42Speaker 02

  You know, NASA is considering developing these things. To do that needs new money.

• 9:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, okay. A little pot of money.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  And last year was a very tough year for NASA's budget.

• 9:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  NASA took a huge budget cut.

• 9:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remember that.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they had to cancel programs.

• 9:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  So they were not about to start something new.

• 10:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  I mean, when we started, they thought there'd be some new monies from Congress. They'd be able to say, here's a program that would be, we would go to the community. And we thought about that as like, here's something NASA could do that would involve citizens.

• 10:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  And they just, at a time at which they were canceling missions, they just did not want to do anything.

• 10:25Chuck Nice?

  That's really a shame.

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But at least it's it's on the radar.

• 10:29Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 10:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That it's something to do if money then becomes available.

• 10:32Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 10:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 10:33Chuck Nice?

  In a way, don't you think that's a big mistake? Because here's what I'm picking up from what you're saying. You are immediately enlisting the public and getting people to focus on NASA. You're getting them excited about the one thing that everybody can agree is it is exciting, which is, are we being visited? And you're saying, okay, here's an app, get involved. Like, I would I would take money from someplace else and put it into that.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, but we also said, which I think is true, we did not see any convincing evidence for the existence of aliens. Okay. Now. See, there's your problem, you didn't lie. And, you know, not seeing convincing evidence doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but that means there's no convincing evidence. Absolutely.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Ernie Carducci from Columbus, Ohio. I'm here with my son Ernie because we listen to StarTalk every night and support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 11:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know you very well as not only a friend, but as a fellow astrophysicist. So we have a very strong overlap in our training and our brain wiring. You don't want everyone on the committee to have exactly that same brain wiring. So who else was on the committee? What was the nature of their expertise? And who selected them?

• 12:06Speaker 02

  I was selected by NASA. I was involved in advising as committee chair who was there. So we had a pretty diverse set of people coming from oceanography, atmospheric science, because there's a lot of atmospheric phenomena, and so experts on the ionosphere, some science policy people.

• 12:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The ionosphere, a layer of the upper atmosphere that is ionized.

• 12:29Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's where we get the northern lights? Does that happen in the ionosphere?

• 12:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, maybe higher.

• 12:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it does?

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it does.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  But it starts there and it goes. Ionosphere is usually above that.

• 12:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  So the northern lights are usually a bit lower, but it's, you know, connected phenomena.

• 12:44Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 12:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And certain radio frequencies or radio waves reflect off of the ionosphere. Interesting things can happen with the ionosphere that wouldn't happen in any other layer.

• 12:53Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 12:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's pretty wild. Okay, so go on.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  We had some people from the intelligence community, right? Because they have a lot of satellites looking down.

• 13:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so they would have had clearance even if you didn't?

• 13:03Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 13:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, okay.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  We had some.

• 13:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In their own business.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  In their own business. We had some people from technology companies.

• 13:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good. Right.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  Who were familiar with some of the technologies out there, some of the things we can use from space to look down and see what was going on.

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  We had to.

• 13:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so some thought went into this.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, lots of different perspectives around the table.

• 13:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  It was actually a really good group of people that I learned a lot from.

• 13:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so you had your role in the hearings, but did you watch all the rest of the hearings?

• 13:35Speaker 02

  I watched some of it, not everything.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, do you have any thoughts or reflections?

• 13:40Speaker 02

  There were some amazing things that came out that were fun to watch.

• 13:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  I don't know if you remember these bodies that were of aliens that were shown to the Mexican Parliament.

• 13:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Mexican, the Mexican Parliament, yeah, the Mexican mummies, the Nasca mummies in Mexico put on display, they're like three feet tall.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 13:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's like two or three of them, yeah.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they were like.

• 14:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that came out while you.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  That came out while we were doing it.

• 14:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  And that was one of these things you look at and say, wait a second. If you actually have something that you think is interesting, what you should do with it is send samples around.

• 14:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Right, like, you know, send the samples to a hundred labs around the world. And if it's not human DNA, we'll find out quickly.

• 14:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Without the bias that might be inherent in who produced the bodies.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in addition, when I saw that, I said, that's exactly what we should be doing if we have crashed alien bodies. We should put them on display, but no one did that. In the testimony, everyone kept saying, those who claimed it existed, said it's in a locked box, and then you can't come and look at it. And I thought to myself, an alien in a locked box that you're not showing anybody is the same thing as no alien in a locked box. Scientifically, it's the same thing.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how would you.

• 14:54Chuck Nice?

  Can I ask something, I mean, to both of you?

• 14:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 14:57Chuck Nice?

  What would be the impetus for not showing the fact that these aliens exist? Why would the government hide this? If, you know, because conspiracy theorists have their own, you know, but why?

• 15:14Speaker 02

  I'll turn it around.

• 15:15Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  I've worked with government agencies for a long time. Government agencies leak, and if anyone's going to get more funding from the leak, it definitely leaks.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  So I'm running a lab.

• 15:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the answer right there.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  So like, I am running a lab that had some secret alien stuff. If it leaks, and there's lots of information, and the alien bodies are shown, I get more funding.

• 15:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of course.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  So, one of the reasons that I don't believe the conspiracy theorists is I trust people to look out for their own economic self-interest. And, you know, the government leaks everything all the time.

• 16:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My favorite quote is from Ben Franklin, from his Poor Richard's Almanac.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He said, "Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead." There it is.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The foundational documents of the country.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's it, right.

• 16:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but why didn't they bring forward?

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Because maybe they don't exist.

• 16:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, the big concern is, there could be some kind of alien technology that is so far beyond us that it could pose a security risk. And, you're saying, even in the 1% of the things you could not explain, there was nothing there that, whoa, this could be, uh, future technology? Because, think about what anything today that's flying through the air would look like to anybody 100 years ago. So it doesn't take much time, Delta, to possibly freak someone out.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 16:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  About how advanced you are.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  So that's part of the story of Area 51. Right? Which was, we were, our military was developing advanced technologies, and those were secrets.

• 17:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a Cold War.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Cold War. And, think about drones. Imagine you saw a drone 25, 30 years ago. Right. You'd never seen one.

• 17:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Just moving?

• 17:23Speaker 02

  Just moving in any direction that it wanted.

• 17:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Up and down.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Up and down, any, all along any axis.

• 17:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Any axis, instantly.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  Instantly.

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  You would think a dr- and with no human in control.

• 17:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  You would think a drone that we're totally used to? is an alien spaceship. Right, and you know, so there's technologies out there. If you look at a lot of the reported events, there are a number of them that were, of those events were associated with things seen by military pilots. And you have to ask yourself, who is going to be trying to see what our military pilots are doing? They fly all the way here from some other planet to study our planes deployed outside of Taiwan? Or is it the Chinese? And one of the things that came out during our study, may I remember this Chinese balloon?

• 18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we love the Chinese balloon.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  Right, so it is very clear that the United States-

• 18:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did we shoot it down? We shot it down.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  We shot it down. The United States is spying on the Chinese military. The Chinese are spying on the US military. This is like their job. Right.

• 18:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, we, part of the security value of monitoring and getting this information, as if I remember correctly, back in, was it the 60s? The government did not disavow UFO sightings. They wanted to promote people's awareness of them in case they saw something that Russia was sending over. And then we get firsthand knowledge because people are everywhere and the military isn't. And so, there were strategic value to this in, as far as the military is concerned. That's still the case.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  You know, you look at the war in Ukraine. And both the Ukrainians and the Russians are relying on citizens following drones. They've got apps on their phones- That's right. when you see a drone fly over, so they know to shoot it down.

• 19:29Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 19:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So where are we now in this? Why were there still hearings just a few weeks ago? A year after these other hearings when I thought everything got aired as much as it needed to be?

• 19:41Speaker 02

  You know, I think people like conspiracies. People want to believe.

• 19:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, they do.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  And people are not comfortable with ambiguity, right? To say, you know, we look at lots of data and there's a few things we don't understand. They'd rather jump to some exciting conclusion.

• 20:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Than just sit there in ignorance.

• 20:03Chuck Nice?

  It makes you feel better though, you know?

• 20:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every science, you hit something you don't understand, that excites us.

• 20:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't immediately come up with an explanation. We, we might have an hypothesis, but not without justifying it with more data or better data.

• 20:15Chuck Nice?

  I mean, let's be honest, most people are not scientists. Most people see a splotch on a piece of toast and they're like, it's Jesus! So let's be honest.

• 20:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've seen some pretty good Jesus renderings though. There's some good ones.

• 20:29Chuck Nice?

  There's been some good ones, you know?

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Renaissance Jesus though.

• 20:31Chuck Nice?

  Well, always, always.

• 20:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's when he was most painted probably.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, Jesus in most of those paintings looks like he's from the local town. There's a lot of, a lot of blonde Jesuses.

• 20:45Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah, that's so funny. Yeah, you never get Afro Jesus.

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Afro Jesus?

• 20:50Chuck Nice?

  On the piece of toast. Pulled the toast out the toaster oven, I couldn't believe it, Afro Jesus.

• 20:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Since Jesus was Jewish, it'd be a Jewish Afro.

• 20:57Chuck Nice?

  It would be.

• 20:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, that's how that would have happened, definitely. Now, in our field, we, in science in general, we greatly devalue eyewitness testimony. If we have another way of obtaining the data. With UFOs, it's kind of only eyewitness testimony because it comes upon you, not when you're already with measuring equipment. And so apart from the smartphone, what else does someone have to offer you but the eyewitness testimony that they've experienced?

• 21:29Speaker 02

  You know, eyewitness testimony is just not very reliable. I mean, this is something that we've learned about.

• 21:35Chuck Nice?

  Talking to a black man here. Just saying.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's a lot, I mean, this isn't aliens, right? This is just a lot of court cases of people who were unjustly convicted.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Positively identified.

• 21:49Chuck Nice?

  Positively identified.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By eyewitness.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  By eyewitness, and then.

• 21:54Chuck Nice?

  And, and even without malicious intent, sometimes malicious, but most times not. Just people going, no, that's him, that's the one. Or because they were shown something, shown a picture.

• 22:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the lights on, no, actually.

• 22:04Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah. I was three blocks away.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  You know, and there's just lots of problems with eyewitness testimony.

• 22:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  And I think this is actually more important for understanding things in the context of our justice system. Than aliens.

• 22:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Than for UFOs, right, of course.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Right. But we have cameras. And we don't only have cameras, we have, um, early warning radar systems. I mean, when we step back and think about what data does the military have? What data does the scientific community have? We are monitoring space and the environment around us all the time.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I further add to that, I think I ran the numbers on this. There's a million people at any given moment who are airborne with a window right sitting next to them.

• 22:47Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 22:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so if the mothership is coming, we can totally crowdsource that.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  We also monitor everything coming into the solar system.

• 22:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  So if there is something big coming into the solar system.

• 23:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This guy's got more power than I knew.

• 23:01Speaker 02

  We'd see it.

• 23:02Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 23:02Speaker 02

  Well, we certainly, the military certainly monitors everything flying into the US.

• 23:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  You cannot fly a plane from, you know, Europe to the US without, uh, someone noticing.

• 23:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Right, so we're monitoring a lot around us. So we do know a lot about our environment. And as we go through all of that data, and, you know, lots of people have done this, there isn't any convincing evidence.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Of advanced technologies beyond what we have.

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what about the famous monochromatic tic-tac that everybody saw of the F-18 Navy pilots that reported and you hear them, "Oh, my gosh, what is that?"

• 23:46Speaker 02

  It's an orb and it's moving.

• 23:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is it?

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Right, so we don't know the distance to the object.

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm. Why not? Don't they have tools to get distances? They need a new airplane if they can't know. I'm sorry.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Well, no, they don't. You know, the data quality for those events were not terrific. You'd like to have more measurements. Those, you know, I said, there's a percent, you know, there's a percent or so that we don't understand. That is like absolutely part of that, right? That is.

• 24:16Chuck Nice?

  That one is, that's one of them.

• 24:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The centerpiece of the 1%.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  That's one of the centerpiece ones. And you look at and say, "That's strange." Next thing you think is, "Let's get some more data. How far away is that? How fast is it moving?"

• 24:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:33Speaker 02

  Right? Could that be explained by conventional technologies, by balloons far away? Is there something normative it could be? We don't know. We need better, you know, but the data we have is pretty unclear.

• 24:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I heard someone in the security space suggest that wouldn't this restricted airspace be an ideal place for the military to just put an anomalous object into the sensors? To just see how their pilots react?

• 25:10Chuck Nice?

  A scrimmage test.

• 25:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Scrimmage, oh, yes. Yes.

• 25:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. It's like, see what they do.

• 25:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do they try to shoot at it? Do they, are they puzzled by it? If that did happen, then they don't want to tell anybody that that's what they happened because part of the reaction is part of what they're looking to find out how it happened.

• 25:26Chuck Nice?

  Right. Yeah, the whole thing is to, it's a stress test. You're trying to figure out, okay, how are we going to respond? And so you create the circumstances where you can measure your own response to something.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, and one of the things to keep in mind about, actually both military and commercial pilots, their job is not to investigate funny things out their window.

• 25:48Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  If you're a United pilot flying from Newark to Chicago, you see something weird out your window? You go and announce to the, to the people on your plane, "We're gonna be an hour late going into Chicago. I'm gonna circle around and look at that weird object from some other side." That is your last day as a pilot. And if you're a military pilot, you are being timed constantly Right. on how fast you get from point A to point B. You are not trained and your sensors are not set up in a way to collect data.

• 26:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not Star Trek.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're like to, to boldly go, to, to seek out new life.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  To seek out new life, no.

• 26:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And new civilizations.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, cuz every minute you're up there, there's millions of dollars that cost. Millions of dollars to keep you up in the air. The military's job is to protect the country. Right. Their job is not to study unidentified scientific phenomena.

• 26:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Right, that's, that's NASA's job.

• 26:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell me about this new phenomenon that was identified by the crowdsourced, by crowdsourced observations of phenomena in the sky.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  So one really interesting phenomenon are sprites.

• 27:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell me about it.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  So lightning sprites are something that...

• 27:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a new flavor.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's, it's basically upward going lightning, 10 times more common than regular lightning. Pilots would report seeing this stuff, but they were so fast that people dismissed it. And it turns out to be a really common phenomenon. And go into Images Google, type in lightning sprites, S-P-R-I-R-T-E, like the old software. Like, mm, okay. You'll see amazing images. And these images were dismissed until we developed the technologies to get fast enough images that we can get lots of images of sprites. Wow.

• 27:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, because they're very transitory.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  They're really fast.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's very hard to, "Oh, what is that?" And you get your camera, it's gone.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  It's gone, right.

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, okay. So the crowdsourcing or encouraging people to document what they see in whatever way they can. Whether or not we discover aliens, we might discover new science.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  I mean, there's some amazing things out there, like Saint Elmo's Fire.

• 28:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a movie, that's a movie.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  It's a good movie. A little nostalgic, you know, we're showing our age, but like, um.

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wait, so Saint Elmo's Fire is the discharge at the top of a ship's mast.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there was glow, and everyone said, oh, that's beautiful. No, dude, you're about to get hit by lightning.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  Lightning. Say goodbye.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Say goodbye.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  So, yeah.

• 28:31Chuck Nice?

  Can you explain ball lightning, please? I, I've heard of it. I've never even seen like pictures of it, but.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  So it's, it's a ball of ionized plasma, so like gas that's so hot that there's free electrons moving around.

• 28:44Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  It persists for a while. Like, one of the scary things that I've heard of is like you're, there was an incident on an airplane where this ball of lightning rolled down the aisle of the plane and then left.

• 28:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How'd it get in the plane?

• 29:00Speaker 02

  It came in a window or the side. I don't know.

• 29:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The plane is a closed.

• 29:04Chuck Nice?

  It has a travel agent.

• 29:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It wanted first class.

• 29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just understand something. The plane is made of metal. How are you gonna move ionized material through metal?

• 29:14Speaker 02

  I actually don't know how it got in. I mean, there's a report, and again, this is something where.

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because eyewitness.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  Eyewitness report. You work as you can.

• 29:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because a plane on some level is almost a Faraday cage.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 29:26Speaker 02

  And people have reproduced this phenomenon. It might be a tangled magnet, piece of magnetic field with a plasma on it.

• 29:34Chuck Nice?

  Holy moly.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  We don't quite, so ball lightning, I'm not expert on this. My understanding is it's still not well understood.

• 29:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 29:42Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  So there's, you know, there's stuff out there that, like that, that are just amazing things we don't fully understand.

• 29:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'm gonna paraphrase Hume, I think it was, in the, on the subject of miracles.

• 29:57Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where it was. The likelihood that it could be some new law of physics you're witnessing is greater than the fact that it's actually a miracle that is

• 30:10Chuck Nice?

  That transcends physics itself.

• 30:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That transcends the law of physics itself.

• 30:13Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 30:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in this case, if we're gonna see a phenomenon that is just completely weird, and we never had the way to capture it before, it's more likely a natural phenomenon that's new to us than visiting space aliens who are eavesdropping.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  I think as scientists, we should be guided by wonderful quote by Galileo. Measure what's measurable and figure out how to make measurable what you can't measure.

• 30:39Chuck Nice?

  Oh wow, look at that, that's a great, that's great.

• 30:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's not his best quote, though.

• 30:43Chuck Nice?

  Okay. You got one better?

• 30:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 30:46Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Bible tells you how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.

• 30:49Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He could wrap that.

• 30:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, let me tell you something, that's a mic drop right there.

• 30:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a mic drop.

• 30:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 30:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good one.

• 31:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so David, we got the smartphone. Is there some other ideal device you can imagine deploying for people that would get better data than the cellphone itself?

• 31:28Speaker 02

  I think I would really start with the cellphone, because we don't know what the phenomenon is.

• 31:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  So you don't invent some new expensive technology when everyone's carrying a cellphone around in their pocket?

• 31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But as astrophysicists, we invent new kind of telescopes all the time. They have new detectors, and so even if we don't know what the detector's gonna find, so why deny something similar to the public?

• 31:56Speaker 02

  Because how are you gonna put that in the hands of everybody? Because I think for me...

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't carry a 100-inch telescope on your back?

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, one of the big concerns I have right now is this issue of scientific trust.

• 32:09Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  People don't trust scientists, they think things are hidden.

• 32:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  I feel it's important to also address the question of like, the sense of conspiracy, the sense of something's hidden, and that by involving the public in acquiring data...

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Looking at data, understanding data.

• 32:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the most transparent thing you can do.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  You want to be transparent, you want to be open. Especially when there's a sense of, of hidden conspiracy.

• 32:38Chuck Nice?

  I think that's great.

• 32:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I have a very bad segue.

• 32:42Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Things that are hidden from us that we want to reveal. One of the longest unsolved problems in astrophysics is dark matter. And there's a telescope soon to be launched, the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, did I say that right? Remind me who she is?

• 33:00Chuck Nice?

  So Nancy was a lady on HLN. She talked a lot about crime. I'm sorry, go ahead. I couldn't help myself.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  So Nancy Grace Roman was the first head of astronomy at NASA.

• 33:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, cool.

• 33:13Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  So she was one of the really early pioneers.

• 33:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to remind people, NASA launches things into space and conducts science as a whole separate kind of avocation for the agency. So somebody can head the astronauts going to space and a different person is heading the science.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Right. So think about the person responsible for things like the Hubble telescope.

• 33:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In modern times.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  In modern times. You know, she did some of the first things that would the, the precursors to the Hubble telescope. The precursors to the James Webb Space Telescope. Right, so, you know, just like there were the Mercury astronauts. Right, at the time you're doing the Mercury astronauts, she is thinking about and leading NASA's efforts to start to do astronomy.

• 33:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm. And so, what is that telescope tuned to detect?

• 34:05Speaker 02

  So it is set.

• 34:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what's your role on that telescope?

• 34:07Speaker 02

  So I helped lead the science team for it when we started. I helped lead the design of it. I kind of was one of its early advocates to make the case first to the scientific community and then to NASA and Congress that we should build this.

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't do anything else, we have very good buy-in from the whole community. We're very, we're pretty tight in that way, I'm very proud of us.

• 34:27Chuck Nice?

  Is that to avoid infighting?

• 34:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. If we infight, it's only among ourselves. But when we have to. Beg for money.

• 34:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're pretty tight.

• 34:36Chuck Nice?

  You gotta be tight.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's going to basically map the entire sky with the resolution of the Hubble telescope.

• 34:45Chuck Nice?

  Holy crap.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  So you've seen these Hubble images and they're just amazing.

• 34:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Imagine you can map the whole sky that way. So it's a Hubble quality image, but a much bigger field of view. It could see much more and it's more advanced technologies. So it'll let us map the whole sky.

• 35:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's the difference between that and the Varoufian Telescope, which also has very wide field mapping of the sky?

• 35:07Speaker 02

  Right, so the Varoufian Telescope will operate in the optical. It'll do a

• 35:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So visible light.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Visible light. It will do amazing things, but it is still limited by our atmosphere.

• 35:19Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  So this will be in space, so it'll operate in the infrared. It'll be sensitive. It'll be a very nice compliment, actually, to the

• 35:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And as a reminder, infrared doesn't make it to Earth's surface very easily.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  Right, and it doesn't

• 35:34Chuck Nice?

  That's why it's better in space, right?

• 35:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, doesn't make it to the Earth's surface and lots of things in the Earth's atmosphere are glowing in the infrared. So you really gain a lot by going to space and you'll have much sharper images. And I think its legacy will be incredibly broad because you map the whole sky. We're going to discover stuff we hadn't expected. I mean, whenever you point your telescope in new directions and new ways, you are, nature surprises us.

• 36:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, I have to put something to rest here. There are many people who think that you miss something if you don't expect it.

• 36:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you only will see what you expect.

• 36:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a scientist, if there's something I don't expect, that's the

• 36:19Chuck Nice?

  That's the first thing you see.

• 36:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, oh my gosh, I don't know what that is.

• 36:23Chuck Nice?

  You don't have search bias.

• 36:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is something I've never seen before. Oh my gosh.

• 36:28Chuck Nice?

  Looking for your keys and you missed the $20.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  So I, an example I think of is you will come and visit New York City. You come to New York because you want to see the tree lighting at Rockefeller Center.

• 36:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  And that's like your plan. I'm going to go there and that experience is worthwhile. And you see it and that's like we designed the telescope to study dark matter. We designed it to study nature, dark energy. There's some particular things we're going after. But as you go to Rockefeller Center, the best part of that trip to New York might be someone rapping that you hear in the subway. It might be some person you happen to meet. It might be the bar you might be Elmo. Hopefully, it's well, might be Elmo in Times Square.

• 37:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cowboy.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  It might be some band you heard at a bar that you went to late at night. And yes, you went to go to Times Square. That like, you know, when you made your airplane reservations, you planned around getting to the lighting of the Christmas tree. But it's everything that happened.

• 37:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unexpected ended up being so much better.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  And that's.

• 37:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or interesting.

• 37:43Speaker 02

  You know, and in some ways, that's been the history of astronomy.

• 37:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  If you've never seen the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center and the lights on Fifth Avenue and the stores, go, it's worth going.

• 37:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even if you're Jewish, go.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. No, I say that as a Jew.

• 37:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And I was in one of the panels that was establishing scoping what the expected science would be from the Hubble telescope. Okay. Because we're old enough, we predate the telescope itself. And so you're not going to design a telescope unless you have a plan for what this sucker is going to look at and what it's going to, questions it's going to answer. If you look at that document today, most of why we remember the telescope has nothing to do with anything that was forecast for it. Right, right. Most of it. And that's the real testament to a fertile bit of scientific instruments, right?

• 38:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's a clear difference then, of course, between the Vera Rubin Telescope, which is ground-based, which means NASA has nothing to do with it. We just have ground-based money and ground-based people doing it. All over the world. And the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, spaceborne telescope, which is now, it's just amazing, we can just speak of that casually. Another space. Another space telescope. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Oh, my gosh. Very cool. Now, we're not the only players in town. We've got Europe, European Space Agency, ESA. What are they working on right now?

• 39:08Speaker 02

  So ESA launched Euclid, it's up there in space now.

• 39:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Euclid.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  It does many things. In some ways, it's a smaller version of the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope.

• 39:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  It's up there, it's not as sensitive, its resolution isn't as good, but it's still the most powerful thing we've had up to now.

• 39:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's operational right now?

• 39:28Speaker 02

  It's operational now, it's taking data now, they are still calibrating and understanding the data. They have not made most of the data they've taken available yet, they will.

• 39:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, when you have data, any data you have has to be calibrated. Without calibration, the numbers mean nothing.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, it's a, it's a very big part of what we do.

• 39:45Chuck Nice?

  It's like trying to weigh yourself.

• 39:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you don't know, if you just get a scale and just throw in some springs, you have no idea. What are you calibrating against?

• 39:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the press never talks about it, the public doesn't know anything about it, and it's half of our effort to calibrate and characterize data.

• 40:02Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 40:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not his, he was a theorist.

• 40:04Chuck Nice?

  Well, no, I.

• 40:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I invited him to the telescope in Chile.

• 40:07Chuck Nice?

  To notice an earthquake.

• 40:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I was doing my PhD thesis, and he's a theorist, there was an earthquake.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Not just a earthquake, a level six, Richter seven earthquake.

• 40:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it threw my spectrograph off the thing, I got data, I don't know what I was looking at, and I said, so these are the observer gods saying, we don't want theorists up here with us.

• 40:28Chuck Nice?

  You just blamed him for an earthquake.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Yes, I did. I'll take full responsibility.

• 40:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What the hell were you doing there anyway? I forgot.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  I went for fun.

• 40:39Chuck Nice?

  There you have it.

• 40:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 40:40Chuck Nice?

  You can't, you cannot, you cannot argue with that answer, ever.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Uh, Euclid is actually a collaboration between NASA and ESA.

• 40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's your, how you can get connected to Euclid as you are?

• 40:54Speaker 02

  And, you know, a lot of these things, NASA and ESA work together. So NASA built the infrared detectors that run Euclid.

• 41:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That ride on it, okay.

• 41:03Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  And with the James Webb Space Telescope, one of the most important instruments was built by the Europeans.

• 41:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  So we really do work together when we can.

• 41:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a science thing, because politicians haven't figured that out yet.

• 41:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, unfortunately.

• 41:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just saying.

• 41:20Chuck Nice?

  This is why you guys should be running the world, but you're too busy doing your science.

• 41:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So David, we came of age where just before us, there were the observers and the theorists. And the theorists, you give them a pencil and a pad, and the observers would go off to telescopes. And then, the power of computing became manifest to both branches of our field. And the theorists started using computers, the observers started analyzing data more thoroughly, more quickly. And, so, does the phrase computational astrophysics mean something specific and different from how that evolved out of those two branches?

• 42:05Speaker 02

  It's basically those two branches. So when we did theoretical work and started from how we thought the universe began, worked it forward to predict what galaxies were like, we did what we could by pen and paper. And then you reach a point where things start to get complicated, and we couldn't carry out those calculations. So we started to rely-

• 42:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a idiot.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  You do what you can. You do what you can. And, so you start to rely on computers to let you do calculations that you couldn't do otherwise. And those computers have gotten more and more powerful. So we can now do detailed simulations of how stars form, how they evolve, how they explode.

• 42:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they're not just computing formulas, you are running simulations of the universe on timescales that we don't live long enough to see.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 43:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you can do it on the computer.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  That's amazing. That's awesome.

• 43:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it is. It is.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 43:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what happened in our lifetime? I gotta tell, let me tell the story. Just in the generation before us, there was a very important observer, Chip Arp was his name, Halton Arp is his full name. And he compiled a volume of galaxies that just looked weird. Okay? And it was called the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 43:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they were a trove of, if you wanted to study things that were just different-

• 43:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the, you'd pick objects out of that catalog and bring a different kind of telescope to it.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 43:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But no one knew- How they came to be. What are these things? Is this a new kind of formation process in the universe? Cause they're all just weird. Oddly shaped galaxies. Oddly shaped. And then there was a movement, once we could bring computers, and we noticed that some galaxies were far apart from each others, others were closer, others were like just touching. So now, wait a minute. Suppose we simulate two galaxies colliding. Oh. What would that look like? Galaxy set. All of a sudden, galaxies were train wrecks. And then, these objects in the catalog came to life. Right. So they weren't a different kind of object.

• 44:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They would just, so as, as one of my mentors Gerard de Volcker said, these, you know, a Lexus that's been in an accident is not a different kind of Lexus. It's still a Lexus. Very, very good. So that was an entire branch of our field that was resolved and, and burgeoning into a whole understanding of colliding galaxies because of computational astrophysics.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  I think the history of how stars evolve and the lifetime of stars was really the first big triumph of computational astrophysics.

• 44:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  This actually goes back to the 50s and 60s, the very first computers.

• 44:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  Were able to take a star.

• 44:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Military and scientists had the first computers. Makes sense.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  Take a star like the sun.

• 45:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  And the laws of physics we understood, but they were complicated laws, we couldn't do the full calculations.

• 45:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 45:08Speaker 02

  By hand. And evolve them forward and describe what happened. And then that matches the patterns we see in our galaxy.

• 45:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. And this gives you the confidence. Right, yeah. What's, because the laws of physics are everywhere. They're gonna be the same. They're gonna be the same, so you run, run it. So you run the simulations, they match up and you're like, okay, we're on to it. We got it. That's really cool.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  So that's the first part, is it takes theory. And supercharges it, lets you do calculations you couldn't do before.

• 45:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One, a quick add here, one of my colleagues in my department here, does computational astrophysics, but he specializes in gas. Like, it's one thing to have a star and a galaxy and this, but gas, an amorphous gas.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  Which is so much more weird to model.

• 45:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, cuz it's not discrete objects. It's a continuum of medium, and so that's a whole other thing.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  It's gas and it's filled with magnetic fields. And there's explosions propagating through it.

• 46:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shock waves.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  So it's really rich physics, and we're still struggling to understand it with our simulations. And of course, the other piece is observations.

• 46:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So David, what is the latest understanding of the dark matter problem, which has been with us for nearly a hundred years?

• 46:24Speaker 02

  So we don't know what makes up most of our universe.

• 46:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's it, we're done here. You heard it here first.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  Atoms make up about four or five percent of the universe.

• 46:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're made of atoms.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  And we're made of atoms. Everything we see is made of atoms. Dark matter, it's five times as much of it. It's something that's there, we sense its gravitational effects. We don't know what it is.

• 46:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I wanted to lobby to call it dark gravity, cuz that's what it literally is, cuz you don't know if it's matter, if you otherwise can't interact with it.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  We don't know if it's matter, it acts like matter. In the sense that when it experiences gravity, it clusters. So we see it cluster in galaxies. We see it behave.

• 47:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait. What do you mean, is clustering in galaxies, if it's five times the matter we see, it's the galaxies that are clustering in it?

• 47:18Speaker 02

  It makes up most of the mass of our galaxy. When we see its behavior in different ways, it's behaving, it experiences gravity, it falls, it generates gravity, but it also experiences gravity. So that's, everything's like that. The Earth experiences gravity.

• 47:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can see the Earth.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  The sun feels us. This has been the history of science. You know, we felt the gravitational effects of Neptune?

• 47:48Speaker 02

  We didn't know it was there yet. We then went out.

• 47:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We, this very royal we here, because he's talking about the planet Uranus. We felt the effects of that.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  We, Uranus.

• 47:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uranus felt the effects of that.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  And we, being astronomers in the 19th century, who did the calculations, realized it was there, saw it. And then Mercury, we also noticed it was experiencing something weird. And in fact, they thought maybe, hey, an idea worked once, let's try it again. They predicted the existence of the planet Vulcan.

• 48:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we've done a whole show on Vulcan. We're Vulcan fans here.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  And it turns out it's not Vulcan, it's general relativity. So we don't know what dark matter. Is it a name we're using to describe some new particle that we haven't seen yet? Right. Or is it a name that we're using to describe the fact that general relativity is breaking down? And we need something beyond that.

• 48:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We just don't know. So you were not very helpful in this question. I thought you had an answer.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  What we have learned is what dark matter isn't. Oh, that's a start. That's a start.

• 48:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  So, you know, this is kind of like Sherlock Holmes.

• 49:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not, it's not black holes?

• 49:04Speaker 02

  It's not black holes.

• 49:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I attended a lecture you gave one time, and you also gave evidence that it's not lost socks.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  It is not lost socks? Okay. It is not.

• 49:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On my drawer, I have like four or five socks that don't have.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  What's the deal with the one sock? It is not like a bunch of rocks. It's not, you know, we know, we've eliminated a whole bunch of things. It's not a massive neutrino. We've just kind of gone, working our way through the list of things we know. Well, it's good to eliminate, you know. That's how you figure stuff out. You eliminate possibilities until you figure out what's there. Right.

• 49:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As Sherlock Holmes did, right.

• 49:42Speaker 02

  Exactly. And then dark matter is just the beginning. There's also dark energy, which is energy associated with empty space. And it dominates the universe, will determine its fate, and we don't know what it is.

• 49:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it means space ain't all that empty.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  That's right. Look at that.

• 50:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what else has Simon's done with his money?

• 50:03Speaker 02

  So one of the things we're building in Chile, we just got first light.

• 50:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Chile is a country that happens to lay right on the Andes Mountains.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  So long and yes.

• 50:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Andes Mountains, so in Chile means it's up in the Andes Mountains.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  So it's at seventeen thousand feet.

• 50:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ouch.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  Great elevation. Really high dry site. We're studying.

• 50:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, Keck is at fourteen thousand feet.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 50:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is higher than the Keck telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  So we're using that to study the leftover heat for the Big Bang. Ooh. The microwave background. Excellent. And we'll be using this to, if we're lucky, we will detect gravitational waves. From the very beginning? Yeah. Wow. And learn more about how the universe began.

• 50:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but at seventy thousand feet, no one's breathing any air there, so it's all service observing?

• 50:51Speaker 02

  No, seventeen thousand, you go up and you bring an oxygen tank. Look at that. Everybody up there looks like they're in a nursing home.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  Oh, Doug, I gotta tell you. So one of the things of being at altitude is you're dumber and you don't know it. Wow. So people at altitude.

• 51:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is when there's, you have less oxygen.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  Because, yeah, you're oxygen deprived. Oxygen deprived. So you have these things where people are working at the telescope and they're telling you what you're doing, but they're communicating with people back at sea level. And they're like giving you really stupid suggestions. And you turn to them and say, can you add five and seven for me? And they're like, yeah. Yeah. It's cupcake.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  I think one of us is at altitude. Let's think about this some more.

• 51:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It took a hit on some oxygen.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it already has first light?

• 51:46Speaker 02

  So we got first light, we'll be starting to collect data, start the science run soon.

• 51:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  We will be looking for these gravitational waves. We will also measure in much more detail the patterns of polarization and temperature we see in the microwave background. That'll let us determine the age of the universe, its composition.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  Um, to a much higher position.

• 52:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you're not a LIGO type arrangement. So you're gonna detect a gravitational wave. Is this not the observatory where you're gonna look at the wave move across pulsars? And see the timing difference?

• 52:22Speaker 02

  Nope, that's yet another way of seeing gravitational.

• 52:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you imagine? Do you think of that?

• 52:26Chuck Nice?

  That's actually seeing the wave.

• 52:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, seeing the wave move from here to there. Affecting the data that comes back from pulsars.

• 52:33Chuck Nice?

  As opposed to LIGO, we detected it wash over, right?

• 52:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wash over, but here we're gonna wa-watch, watch.

• 52:38Chuck Nice?

  Watch it pass.

• 52:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's some clever people out there, dude.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  So what we're doing is we're using the early universe itself.

• 52:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  As a gravitational wave detector.

• 52:47Chuck Nice?

  That's amazing.

• 52:48Speaker 02

  So the gravitational wave comes along. It moved electrons 13.8 billion years ago. Those electrons, as they're moving, scatter light in a predicted polarized pattern. And we look, we look out in space, we look back in time. So we're looking back, seeing how gravitational waves move matter around 13.8 billion years ago.

• 53:18Chuck Nice?

  I don't understand how you cannot love science when you hear this kind of stuff. How can you sit and go, ah, you know, who cares? Like, what is your problem? Okay, that is unbelievable.

• 53:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a clever way that involves a completely different scheme to detect a gravitational wave.

• 53:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 53:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Than LIGO.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  It means we're detecting gravitational waves whose wavelengths are comparable to the size of the universe.

• 53:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  And that lets us know about the universe's beginnings.

• 53:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When Chuck, we got Chuck goes up three octaves, we know, we, he blew a gasket.

• 54:03Chuck Nice?

  Because it's always so simple. It's like, it's so profoundly and brilliantly simple, but yet like beautifully and elegantly complex at the same time. It's unbelievable.

• 54:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I think we have enough brain filling.

• 54:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, man.

• 54:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For a day.

• 54:21Chuck Nice?

  That was amazing.

• 54:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From aliens to wavelengths the size of the universe.

• 54:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 54:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think we're full for a while. When you think of science, of course, you think of scientists, sometimes burning the midnight oil, or even collaborating. Uh, coming up with a new idea, a new observation, a new measurement. And occasionally, if it's really different and groundbreaking, it makes the news. And this is our general understanding of what science is and how it unfolds. However, if you part the curtains, somewhere back there, there are agencies, there are organizations, there are funding streams that enable the science in the first place. When I say I'm a NASA scientist, if I were to say that, that means there's money back

• 55:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  there, voted on by Congress, members of Congress voted into office by the public, that is the point of origin of the funding that enables it in the first place. And so, when you hear about science funding agencies, I want you to think of them as fundamental as the science itself. Because without them, there is no science. Yeah, you can be in your garage, I suppose, but lately, not much happens in anybody's garage. Science, the greatest of science that unfolds today are major collaborations with telescopes and particle detectors, and collaborations that are not only domestic but international.

• 55:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, it's the juxtaposition of those two that makes science move. And that is a cosmic perspective. All right, David, it's a delight to see you again. Chuck, always good. Always a pleasure. All right. This is our talk, Neil deGrasse Tyson. As always, bidding you to keep looking up.