Superhero Science: StarTalk Live! With Charles Liu

Why can’t we run through walls if atoms are mostly empty space? Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, Gary O’Reilly, and astrophysicist Charles Liu explore force fields, warp drive, invisibility, and quantum physics behind superhero powers.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next up on StarTalk, we've got a StarTalk special edition filmed live at Guild Hall. We have our geek in chief, Charles Liu, with us. We needed him for this one because we explore the role of the quantum and other exotic scientific elements that have appeared in the powers of superheroes. Coming right up. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome.

• 0:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a live recording of the StarTalk podcast here in East Hampton in Guild Hall. Thanks for coming out on a Sunday night. Tonight, you probably came and didn't know what the subject would be. Is that correct? So I feel the love because you come no matter what. That's a good fact. The subject tonight is superhero science. Ooh. Ooh. And we got the expertise for that because we found it. But let me introduce the rest of our panel up here. First of all, Gary O'Reilly. Gary, come on out. Gary. Thank you. Gary, former soccer pro.

• 1:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a Wiki page on him, actually. You gonna go there again? Yeah, we gotta, yeah, we gotta, I gotta say it every time. A former soccer pro in the UK, soccer announcer, and he's with us for this branch of StarTalk that we call special edition, which focuses on how science and technology come together to enhance, augment, or adjust human performance. And when we speak of the science of superheroes, some of that might reach us one day in terms of what may lie in our future. So who else we have? We have Chuck Nice. Come on out, Chuck Nice.

• 2:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's an actor, a professional comedian, and my long-term co-host for the series. I love him because he's scientifically literate and...

• 2:18Gary O'Reilly?

  And, and cute.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They'll be the judge of that. Okay. So we have an empty seat there because that's our special guest this evening. I don't know if you know this. Perhaps you attended this evening because you have a little bit of geek in you. But there's something you should know. That no matter, no matter how geeky you think you are, there's someone geekier than you. Okay? So, I carry strong street cred in the geekiverse. But our guest tonight is geekier than I am. Please welcome my friend and colleague, Dr. Charles Liu. Charles, come on out.

• 2:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, a professor of astrophysics at the College of Staten Island and City University of New York. And he's also recently the author, check this out, here's the title, oh my gosh. "The Handy Quantum Physics Answer Book."

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that geeky enough for you? Because you know you have these burning quantum questions that must be answered. So, Charles, welcome to the show. Thank you. This is not your first rodeo with us. That's right. But anytime we want to reach out to the, to the geekdom, or the geek universe, you are our prime person for that. I don't know what to say. All right. Thanks. I hope not later on because we got, we need you to say stuff. So, so Gary, you conceived this show, so what, you set it up?

• 3:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, well, as you said, we, we always try to consider the human condition. And superhero movies aren't strictly sort of science fiction, but they kind of are. And they've been long part of our pop culture. We've idolized them, we've scrutinized them, and we've wondered. And they've been riding the wave of quantum theory. That golden age of quantum theory. I think tonight we'll kind of explore the pillars of science fiction and superhero science. Let's start off with a classic scenario. I'm going to you, Charles.

• 4:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 4:22Gary O'Reilly?

  It's the OG Superman.

• 4:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Superman.

• 4:25Gary O'Reilly?

  Right?

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 4:26Gary O'Reilly?

  The damsel, once again.

• 4:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to be clear, Superman was not the first superhero.

• 4:31Gary O'Reilly?

  No, he's one of the OGs.

• 4:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, I think you go back, I mean, we had Hercules.

• 4:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, okay, we're going that far back.

• 4:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In terms of legendary storytelling, is Hercules any different to that world of Hercules? Hercules? No, I mean, Superman is our version of Hercules.

• 4:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Every culture has their own superhero that they've thrown forward. So, as I was saying.

• 4:54Charles Liu?

  Superman's origins is from comic books.

• 4:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 4:56Charles Liu?

  Hercules was not in a comic book first.

• 4:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I thought he was in a comic book, okay.

• 5:00Charles Liu?

  Yeah. It's chiseled into stone.

• 5:03Gary O'Reilly?

  We've got that settled. So, as I was saying, the damsel's been pushed off the balcony of the 32nd floor again. She's hurtling. Ah! That's her. And so, then he comes in, he swoops in, and he grabs her. But, from a physics perspective, Charles, what would really happen?

• 5:20Charles Liu?

  Well, the problem is, of course, if Superman is a man of steel.

• 5:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh.

• 5:24Charles Liu?

  Thing is coming down, right? And you're coming up with a steel, it's like hitting the concrete ground, right? So, the poor damsel in distress would be quite rescued, but also quite squished.

• 5:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, quite dead.

• 5:38Charles Liu?

  Basically, he kills her.

• 5:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 5:40Charles Liu?

  This is...

• 5:41Gary O'Reilly?

  She's a bug on a windshield.

• 5:42Charles Liu?

  Well, the problem is, of course, that moment of impact, right? And so, it has been hypothesized that Superman actually has a way to absorb motion. In other words, the momentum and the energy, he actually not only can get there and stop the person from hitting the ground, but also can absorb the impact, so that he himself, who is invulnerable, is unharmed. But, the person who is falling is also unharmed, it's because it's as if they had fallen and just stopped in midair.

• 6:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it's like airbags.

• 6:16Charles Liu?

  Like airbags.

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, but that's Superman flying up. He wouldn't have to do that, he could just wait until they fall. But typically, you see Superman flying horizontally. So, that's quite a calculation, to fly horizontally and perfectly intersect

• 6:29Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 6:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  when the person is where you are.

• 6:31Charles Liu?

  Yes, Superman's brain has to be at least as good as your average computer.

• 6:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. So, Superman... I, he's, everything about him is super. Yes. Right? And I wondered, we actually got a question, a branch of our podcast that goes online, are questions open to the public, our fanbase. And one of them just simply asked, would Superman's physiology be the same as humans, even if he's sort of steel on the outside? And it got me thinking, if he's got super everything, but he does eat food, we've seen him eat. Right. So the food would be digested in some super way, perhaps. Okay, so what would that mean? And then I thought, so everything that's going on in you would happen in a super way in Superman.

• 7:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it would digest faster, the, it goes into your intestines, and a lot of the action is in your lower intestines, where the microbial action happens anaerobically? Uh oh. Here we go.

• 7:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, and anaerobic gases. Uh huh. Methane, sulfur compound. Yes, sulf- yes, sulf-

• 7:42Chuck Nice?

  Super Taco Tuesday.

• 7:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so hydrogen sulfide, that's the smell of rotten eggs. You have methane, which, I didn't know this when I was in camp, when I was 10, but the, my fellow campers were right, when they said, have you ever ignited?

• 8:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 8:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That thing which must not be ignited.

• 8:05Chuck Nice?

  Come on, I mean, I know we're in the Hamptons, but everybody knows what a fart is. Come on, come on.

• 8:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but so, okay, so fine, but no, so, so you can ask, what is the gaseous composition of that? Okay. And in Superman, it would be super, right? And methane, of course, is highly flammable. Yes. And in cities, it's the gas of choice for your stove, if you still have a gas stove. Suburbs tend to have propane. These are varieties of flammable gases that you get from crude oil. So, so methane is flammable. Yeah. So, so it occurred to me that this is another tool Superman would have in crime fighting, because, because he, he would just sort of load it up, okay?

• 8:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm pointing at me. Roll down his pants and just let one out and he's got the vision. Laser vision. Laser vision. X-ray vision. Then, then he, well, no, we can get to X-rays, yeah. Alright. He's got, he can, he got laser vision. Laser vision. He could just ignite it and so it would be a new kind of flamethrower.

• 9:13Chuck Nice?

  Oh, what a terrible death for those villains.

• 9:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, that would be a, it's, it's, it's physiological. Yeah. It's. It works. Yeah, I think it would work. Yeah.

• 9:22Charles Liu?

  You could never sneak up on Superman with kryptonite.

• 9:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 9:26Charles Liu?

  Because there'd be a rear guard defense.

• 9:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yes. Yes. You couldn't get close to them.

• 9:31Chuck Nice?

  Couldn't take him from behind, yeah.

• 9:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It literally would be a fireball.

• 9:34Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 9:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, fireball.

• 9:35Charles Liu?

  The only problem with this very reasonable reasoning is that when Superman came to the world from Krypton, he did not have gut bacteria yet. He was still like pre-colonoscopy, okay? So, any gut bacteria he has achieved from eating here on Earth has come from Earth. So, this is a fascinating question, which I would love for your opinions, okay? Does Superman have super gut bacteria or just ordinary gut bacteria? In which case, right, if he has super digestion, which you said earlier, which would be great, it might be so good as to eliminate all gaseous emission.

• 10:19Charles Liu?

  In which case Superman never passes gas.

• 10:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh. Alright, so Superman has X-ray vision. Alright, yeah. Right? There's a scene in one of the movies where Lois Lane walks behind a lead planter. Cause he asked, oh, if you have X-ray vision in, in her first interview, then what color panties am I wearing? And he says, I, I don't know. And he said, well, why? Oh, cause you're standing behind a lead planter. Cause everyone knows lead. Absorbs X-rays. Absorbs X-rays. And then she steps down and then he says, pink or red or something. But X-rays should not be able to tell color of clothing.

• 10:54Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 10:55Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 10:56Charles Liu?

  It's true.

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would just go through the clothing.

• 10:58Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 10:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 10:59Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 11:00Gary O'Reilly?

  So you're not accepting poetic license, are you?

• 11:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not at all.

• 11:03Gary O'Reilly?

  None.

• 11:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 11:04Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. If you're gonna use X-rays, then stay in the X-ray world. Otherwise, invent N-rays or something. Invent some other rays that he had. If you're gonna stay X-rays, you better stick with what we know.

• 11:13Gary O'Reilly?

  So what you want is an upgrade for Superman, just X-ray vision, and then a whole load of different

• 11:19Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 11:20Gary O'Reilly?

  dial-up vision that he could use.

• 11:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be interesting.

• 11:22Charles Liu?

  See?

• 11:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See, they didn't think of that.

• 11:24Charles Liu?

  Well, if you think about-

• 11:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They've got a whole alphabet.

• 11:26Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 11:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 11:26Charles Liu?

  Y-rays, Z-rays.

• 11:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Z-rays, yeah, yeah.

• 11:28Charles Liu?

  Omega rays, yes. Well, X-rays, as many of you know, uh, they go right through our bodies, right? And they go through different materials and wind up with different colors. For example, our bones look different from our soft tissues and things like that. X-ray telescopes that we're familiar with, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, XMM Newton, things like that, they can look at the X-rays, but X-rays are also different colors. Some of them are what we call hard X-rays, some of them are soft X-rays. And in the same way that we can take pictures in red, green, and blue, and then mix them together to form a color photo, Superman could be able to detect or even emit X-rays and come back and forth in these different bands, and thus create a three-color image.

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is an undeveloped feature he could have expressed.

• 12:11Charles Liu?

  That's right. This is an evolutionary superiority that he has. But instead of us having rod and cone cells, he has some sort of X-ray rod and cone cells that allows him-

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we are limited to just the visible spectrum, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet.

• 12:24Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 12:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got X-rays as a whole accessible part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

• 12:29Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 12:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And all he does is just see through walls with it.

• 12:32Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 12:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's way more useful.

• 12:34Charles Liu?

  Highly underdeveloped.

• 12:35Chuck Nice?

  He's modest, man, you know what I mean? He probably could do all that, but he just doesn't wanna let you know, unless you're asking him about your parents.

• 12:54Speaker 04

  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.

• 13:04Speaker 05

  This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 13:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, this thing about his gut. Yes. Um, we know Superman came here as an infant. Yes. So, I once got a phone call from DC Comics. Oh. In my office. You're in trouble. Oh, I, I work at the Hayden Planetarium, in case anybody was dragged here by the person next to you and doesn't know anything else about me. That's where I work. And, I don't know, uh, 10, 15 years ago, I got a phone call, "Hello, is this Dr. Tyson?" I said, "Yes." "This is DC Comics. Can we ask you some questions?" I said, "Sure." "We have a new comic book we're illustrating, and we want to know if we can illustrate Superman visiting the Hayden Planetarium. Will you give permission for this?"

• 13:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I mean, wait, wait, who's gonna say no to that, right? So I said, "What's up?" And they said, "Oh, Superman, in this, in this story that they're telling, is gonna come to the planetarium to use our special tools of visualization, and telescopes and things, to see the destruction of Krypton, which is finally reaching Earth." Hmm. And I said, "Ooh, that's good. That's good." But I had to, I had to, I, I had to dig in. And I said, "All right, Superman was launched Moses-style in a basket as an infant, arrived on Earth in that same basket as an infant.

• 14:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And anyone who knows infants knows that a month, two months, you know the difference between the baby who's two months old and who's three months old. This baby did not age. So, there's only two ways, I'm telling this guy on the phone. Only two ways." And he's taking notes, right? He didn't argue with anything I was telling him. I said, "There are two ways he could have gotten here." If he traveled this, because they're aliens, so they could do what they want. If he traveled the speed of light to Earth, he would not age relative to Earth, because that's Einstein's relativity. However, if he's traveling the speed of light, so is the destruction of Krypton.

• 15:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That light, those light beams from the destruction, would be right alongside him, and he'd land on Earth. You'd see Krypton destroyed. He couldn't show up later and then observe the event. So, so you can't, you can't be the speed of light.

• 15:39Chuck Nice?

  It was at this point, the gentleman from DC Comics knew that he had made a mistake.

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So then I said, "The only way you can get him here and have all his work is through a wormhole." Okay? A wormhole. They put him through a wormhole. He gets here instantly, long before the light beam.

• 16:02Chuck Nice?

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

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:05Chuck Nice?

  To be honest, that's really cool.

• 16:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now, hang on. So then I said, Yeah, hang on. "How, how old is Superman?" And he said, "Oh, he's eternally in his late twenties." So I said, "Okay, I can find you a star that's like twenty-six, twenty-seven light years away, and I can make sure it's red, because there are plenty of red stars in the galaxy, because the Krypton star is red."

• 16:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we, we can make that the star he came from. "I can find an actual star?" He said, "Yeah." So, I, I went back to my tablet.

• 16:40Chuck Nice?

  But is there an exoplanet around that star that could actually be Krypton?

• 16:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, most stars will have exoplanets, we knew at this time. So I wasn't worried about that.

• 16:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 16:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I, I gave him a choice of two or three stars.

• 16:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 16:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? And they said, "We'll take this one." Well, I said, "Why?" "Oh, because it's in the constellation Corvus, one of the eighty-eight constellations of the night sky." Corvus is a crow. And I said, "Well, why?" He said, "Oh, the mascot of Smallville High is the crow." I said, "Whoa, that's good." Whoa. So there it is, it's now Superman canon, this conversation. And so, yeah, they drew him, and then they called me back and said, "Do you mind if we have him meet you?" And I said, Yeah, let's do it, okay? So, in this comic, I am meeting Superman. And there's a tender moment, because he sees the destruction of Krypton. And it's sad.

• 17:36Chuck Nice?

  He's crying super tears.

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it's just sad, and I never, I realized at that moment, I'd never seen Superman emotionally sad.

• 17:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Angry, sure, but not, not just genuinely sad.

• 17:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, I know a little more than usual about how Superman got here, because of that conversation.

• 17:53Chuck Nice?

  So here's the takeaway, people. Neil deGrasse Tyson made Superman cry.

• 18:01Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, you did.

• 18:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now they didn't show him opening up a wormhole, they just sent him here.

• 18:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that was, that, yeah.

• 18:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so, you've touched on wormholes.

• 18:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 18:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Faster than light travel.

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 18:11Gary O'Reilly?

  And I think everybody in the room, me included, wants to know, what are we going to be traveling by in the future, if we actually get to do that? Is it going to be a warp drive? Is it gonna be a wormhole? Is it gonna be a transporter? What is it gonna be?

• 18:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I, I was hanging out with William Shatner.

• 18:29Gary O'Reilly?

  As you do.

• 18:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you know, who doesn't?

• 18:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I, I told him, and I said, "The day we have wormholes, you won't need transporters."

• 18:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you just pop a wormhole, and where you and the planet's surface, and step through, and there you are. You don't need the, the, the, the lights, and the sounds, and the room, and the Scotty, on the, on the switch. So, so, so this is an important

• 18:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  choice here. So, so, Charles, can we make a wormhole?

• 18:54Charles Liu?

  No.

• 18:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Why not?

• 18:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, alright, next.

• 18:56Chuck Nice?

  Oh, well, there you have it.

• 18:58Gary O'Reilly?

  No, no, no.

• 18:58Chuck Nice?

  Bill Shatner's gonna be so disappointed.

• 19:01Charles Liu?

  Actually, in the original Star Trek motion picture, the Enterprise almost got sucked into a wormhole, because there was a warp drive malfunction, and they were forced to be pulled out. You guys all remember that? Yeah. Yeah. Now, the story is with wormholes, is it requires a great deal of energy to have happen. Okay, a transporter supposedly, they could draw the energy from some sort of mythical slash mystical, uh, warp drive engine or something. Right? And so that was something that you could do, person to person. A wormhole requires something much more supernatural, more powerful. A black hole, for example. Or some sort of mystical creature, someone who could master magic and dimensional travel.

• 19:43Charles Liu?

  So in that sense, the wormhole strategy is less likely to be our strategy than a warp drive type strategy, where we can somehow move faster than the speed of light through space through our controlled engines.

• 19:57Gary O'Reilly?

  So do we borrow this energy from another dimension?

• 20:00Charles Liu?

  Ooh, good question.

• 20:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because how much energy, because if this is like the galaxy and you warp it.

• 20:06Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 20:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you travel through the little bridge and the warp and you unwarp, then you can cross the galaxy during the TV commercial.

• 20:13Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 20:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you can make it.

• 20:14Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 20:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 20:14Charles Liu?

  The problem is you have, in that scenario, you are warping space. That's a lot harder than warping ourselves.

• 20:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're warping the entire galaxy.

• 20:23Charles Liu?

  Right, the whole galaxy. That's what a wormhole would have to do.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 20:26Charles Liu?

  You see?

• 20:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, got it.

• 20:28Charles Liu?

  So what happens is with warp drive, this is all sort of retroactively created after the television show, right, was so successful. The idea is that you put the Enterprise, or your spaceship of choice, into a little bubble.

• 20:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A warp shell.

• 20:41Charles Liu?

  That is outside the regular spacetime that we live in. But it's inside in a little pocket, right? So it's almost in its own extradimensional travel. And what happens is that bubble can move faster than the speed of light, even though you yourself cannot. So while you're in the bubble, that's when your warp drive is working. It's not warping space. It's warping you into, out of, through, and otherwise bubbly, bubbly, bubbly in space.

• 21:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which would take much, much less energy than folding the whole universe around you.

• 21:14Charles Liu?

  Wow. In fact, a Mexican physicist named Miguel Acubiere used Einstein's general theory of relativity and actually came up with some mathematical equations that could make a warp bubble like that exist. So mathematically, you could do it. The problem is, once you've made the bubble, how do you move that thing so fast? And we still don't have anywhere near the technology to be able to do that. Okay. What do you do with it once you've got it? You go through spacetime at faster than time. Once you've done that. Once you've made the bubble? Yeah, and you've traveled, then what happens to the bubble? What you have to do is literally warp the bubble in such a shape that the space behind it is changing at a faster rate than the space in front of it.

• 21:58Charles Liu?

  And that's how you get it to move through space. You keep warping in this sort of continuous way so that the warp pushes you forward through space.

• 22:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not what he asked. How do you get out of the bubble?

• 22:07Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 22:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Once you get to your destination.

• 22:09Charles Liu?

  You get it.

• 22:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You pop it.

• 22:12Charles Liu?

  There's my answer. Quite, quite literally, your dilithium crystals in Star Trek, right? Your dilithium crystals are shut off and then the bubble just evaporates around you.

• 22:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay. So I, I have this dream of the future where wormholes, because now you're putting kibosh on it. Wormholes are how we get around, which means no one needs roads. Not only that, your back of your refrigerator could be connected via wormhole to your grocer. And they pop it open, oh, the milk is there, and they put in fresh milk and eggs. And you just have, you just have a contract to have that loaded and there's no truck, there's no, it would put Amazon out of business.

• 22:48Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where the trucks would, the drivers.

• 22:51Charles Liu?

  If we could move wormholes, one end here, the other end there, and just move them around at will, then your scenario is completely likely. The problem is it takes so much energy even to create a wormhole with two stable locations that even if it were physically possible, which we don't know yet. When that happens, it's station to station.

• 23:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but if we told the Wright brothers, one day, we're gonna fly 400 people at 600 miles an hour across the ocean. So that takes too much energy.

• 23:19Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 23:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you kidding me? We're flying a bicycle right now.

• 23:26Charles Liu?

  So, so that is the challenge.

• 23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where is your sense of time perspective in that declaration that you're making?

• 23:33Charles Liu?

  I would say that sometime within our lifetimes, we will be able to generate something that we have tried to do since the end of World War II. And that is controlled nuclear fusion.

• 23:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 23:45Charles Liu?

  We will, at the moment, there is some technology that's happening, being developed all over the world. Including in France, a site called.

• 23:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, that's a low bar. I'm talking about like the future.

• 23:54Chuck Nice?

  But wait a minute, I don't know if that's a low bar because when you think about it, what we're talking about here is the need for massive amounts of energy. So if we're able to control fusion, which I mean, we know what kind of energy is packed in the.

• 24:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I get it. I'm just saying, we should have had fusion decades ago.

• 24:12Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 24:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're not there yet.

• 24:13Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 24:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I don't want that to be the, I want that to be a given and now give me like extra cool stuff.

• 24:18Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 24:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all.

• 24:19Chuck Nice?

  So.

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry. So now, but let me, let me just shape the conversation a little differently.

• 24:24Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 24:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're talking warping space. All right. There's another feature that we've seen in different films. Uh, and that's becoming invisible, not disappearing.

• 24:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just. That's a different thing. It's something different.

• 24:37Chuck Nice?

  I know how you do that. Get older.

• 24:44Chuck Nice?

  And then try to talk to young people.

• 24:51Charles Liu?

  Yes. Visibility playing a very prominent role in Fantastic Four, the most recent superhero movie.

• 24:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 24:57Charles Liu?

  Featuring the invisible girl, now invisible woman.

• 24:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's the invisibility cloak in.

• 25:02Chuck Nice?

  Harry Potter.

• 25:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Potter. You got Star Trek, the Romulan.

• 25:05Chuck Nice?

  Cloaking device.

• 25:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Device. Yes. Right. So, um, and, oh, also in the original Predator movie.

• 25:11Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He had, he could go, he could go invisible. But in all those cases, there was a little bit of, little jittery.

• 25:18Chuck Nice?

  A shimmering.

• 25:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shimmering thing.

• 25:20Chuck Nice?

  Like silhouette.

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 25:21Chuck Nice?

  A see-through shimmering silhouette.

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'll tell you what I know about this and I, Charles, you might know more, that there is work on this. It is real. Uh, in fact, in the, there's a James Bond, I forgot which one, is it Quantum of Solace? What? One of those where his Aston Martin has an invisibility button and he presses it and it just becomes invisible, but it shimmers into invisibility, of course. You can still shoot it. You just can't see it. Okay. You don't know where to aim. And so there is research now, uh, because what does it mean to be invisible? It means light from behind you continues.

• 25:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To your sight line as though you're not there. So, so what you do is instead of blocking the light, they have a series of reflectors that coherently moves the light around your body and then sends it forward as though it didn't take this detour. And you're sitting on the other side of me. You just see the wall behind me and you don't even know that I'm there. Aye. There, there, there demos of this online. There are YouTube videos, you can see this. Authentic, it's not AI fake. The problem is now it works only if you're exactly aligned with it. If you go offline, Oh. then it, then it, the, the effect collapses.

• 26:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but it, that's a start. And you're functionally invisible when you can pull that off. Marvelous. Yeah. I was not aware the technology.

• 26:51Gary O'Reilly?

  But there's, there's different types of invisibility.

• 26:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 26:54Gary O'Reilly?

  If you look at a, a stealth bomber.

• 26:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 26:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Right? It's invisible on the right, but that's only in that particular area.

• 27:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very important fact. So the stealth bomber has a radar cross section of a bumblebee.

• 27:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? So it's a dangerous bumblebee right there.

• 27:11Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 27:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you imagine that radar like?

• 27:14Gary O'Reilly?

  A hell of a sting.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you are trying to detect planes with radar, so just, just at the risk of stating the obvious, the radar hits your, your intended object and it reflects back to you in the shape of what the thing is. And you can look at the blip and if it's got any kind of detail and you put some AI on it, it'll tell you what the plane is. The stealth bomber is designed very specially so that any incident radar reflects in a different direction than straight back.

• 27:52Charles Liu?

  Wow.

• 27:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 27:54Chuck Nice?

  And can we get a version for this for, um, speed traps? Cause.

• 28:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, cause to try to send it, then it doesn't go back.

• 28:03Chuck Nice?

  Doesn't go back.

• 28:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'll whiz by and it'll just say there's nothing there.

• 28:06Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So, so if you look at how the, the surfaces of the stealth bomber and other stealth technologies are shaped, take a line and hit it and it'll never send you back in the direction you came, on any surface. Okay.

• 28:21Gary O'Reilly?

  So it's all faceted and.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 28:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. And just a side fact, um, the earliest of the stealth bombers, I think it was the F-117, used now decades ago, had a flat surfaces on it. Okay. Take a look at it. Fascinating history of this. You know why it had flat surfaces? Because the computers were not powerful enough to perfectly solve the equation to have a continuously curving surface. So it had to approximate it with flat surfaces. So that still reduced the radar cross-section, but it didn't take it to as low as the bumblebee. Once we could fit it with high-performance computing, you can curve the surfaces so that hardly any signal goes back. So here's the problem.

• 29:06Charles Liu?

  Hmm.

• 29:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly your point. Its radar cross-section is a bumblebee. But if you just step out and look up, there it is. Okay. Its optical cross-section is the full plane. Okay. So where you are in the electromagnetic spectrum.

• 29:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Exactly.

• 29:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Matters here.

• 29:25Charles Liu?

  Totally. Well, invisibility isn't all that great of a superpower by itself. Let's face it.

• 29:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 29:32Charles Liu?

  If you can just hide, that's great, but you gotta do something other than hide, right? And so in fact, with the superheroine, the invisible woman, the Marvel comics back in the sixties developed an extra power for her. Not only did she have the ability to turn invisible, she also could project invisible force fields. She could actually do things invisibly to you without even touching you. All she had to do was to envision a shape of something made of force that was invisible and then be able to lift you up as if you were sitting in a chair or to move you around or to push you back. It had the ability to protect and be invisible at the same time.

• 30:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's effective even if the force is not invisible.

• 30:17Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. It's a, it's a. It's a field around you.

• 30:20Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 30:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can do that. Now, we know in quantum physics, there's, there's an effect. Quantum is spooky weird stuff. It's, and that's why everyone, it attracts people because they want to understand it. And quantum physics is not there to understand. It's, Charles, go, crack me for it. You, no one comes out of a quantum physics class, oh, I understand that. No, you don't. Okay? It is just what the universe does. On the small scales, we can describe it, we can calculate, but we scratch our heads every single time. And one of the effects, fascinatingly, is if you take two very smooth, very flat metal plates and evacuate the space between them, so it's a vacuum.

• 31:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You start making them closer and closer to each other. There is a point where there's a whole new force that pulls them together. It's not electromagnetic, it's not gravitational, it's not the strong nuclear force. It's some new thing. Maybe they just really like each other. Good point. They pull each other together and that, that discovery won a Nobel Prize. And so, so.

• 31:37Charles Liu?

  The Casimir effect.

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. The Casimir effect. That's a Casimir force. The Casimir force. So what, tell, what, what causes that?

• 31:44Charles Liu?

  The Casimir effect is caused because there are things called quantum fluctuations in our universe. Even when things have apparently no energy or no change at all. At the quantum level, levels far smaller than atoms with energies far tinier than a single, say, electrical pulse. There is a little bit of this happening all the time, all around you. So if you are getting a smaller and smaller space between these two plates, you get to a small enough point where the quantum fluctuations are actually bouncing off of those plates. And so you create an attractive or sometimes a repulsive force.

• 32:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 32:24Charles Liu?

  That kicks in only just before they touch because the quantum effects. Small as they are, are definitely there. And so you can imagine actually influencing something without actually pushing on it or pulling on it. It's actually just the quantum work that's being done because the universe is shimmering.

• 32:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have to, you have to get really, really close.

• 32:45Charles Liu?

  Super close.

• 32:46Gary O'Reilly?

  So I'm a villain, just your average villain, but I want to upgrade to supervillain.

• 32:50Charles Liu?

  Ooh.

• 32:51Gary O'Reilly?

  How am I using?

• 32:52Charles Liu?

  The Casimir effect?

• 32:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Casimir effect.

• 32:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah. Is it, is it like your hair kind of stuff?

• 32:58Charles Liu?

  Yes, that's a great point. If you somehow were a superhero or supervillain.

• 33:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 33:04Charles Liu?

  That could take advantage of quantum fluctuations. You might be able to say, I hereby declare that the quantum fluctuations in this part of the universe are going to be reduced. In exchange, the puns in this part are going to be increased. All of a sudden, you have all this extra energy over here and much less over there. So you could imagine something literally being sucked from here to there due to quantum effects alone.

• 33:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the object naturally wants to go from high energy to low energy.

• 33:31Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 33:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 33:32Charles Liu?

  So you could move something without doing anything other than just changing the quantum fluctuation.

• 33:37Gary O'Reilly?

  You're creating a gradient.

• 33:38Charles Liu?

  You're creating that gradient.

• 33:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 33:40Charles Liu?

  And the problem, of course, is that this is a much larger space than the quantum fluctuation space is. Anytime you have a quantum fluctuation, we're talking things that are billionths of billionths of inches. Right? Going from this part of the room to that part of the room. If you wanted to carry me from here to there, that's many, many, many, many, many billions of inches. So by the time that happens, I think we're all going home.

• 34:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep, so there's, there's a.

• 34:03Gary O'Reilly?

  Not yet, not yet.

• 34:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a physicist, George Gammer. He's a hero of mine because he was an active physicist and he wrote for the public.

• 34:11Charles Liu?

  And, and he was one of the first people who hypothesized the hot big bang theory.

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's right, that's right. And so he had a series of books called Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland. And each book, it's fanciful and he illustrated it with cartoon illustrations. Each book was you living in a world where the universal constants have different values.

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So for example, instead of the speed of light being as fast as it is, speed of light is 60 miles an hour.

• 34:42Charles Liu?

  Oh, wow.

• 34:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you drive down the street, he's describing this.

• 34:46Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 34:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And as you go to 30 miles an hour, 40, he's describing how all your scenery changes. And so it was such a world to jump into, which has me wonder if you had real power over the universe and you could adjust the value of the physical constants that control quantum physics. Maybe you could dial that up so that we respond to quantum physics in the way particles do.

• 35:13Charles Liu?

  Yes. There is an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called Q Who, where this exactly happened.

• 35:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 35:20Charles Liu?

  Yes. The great creature named Q, who was being punished by his other fellow Qs, had been powered.

• 35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As one would happen.

• 35:27Charles Liu?

  Yes, right, because he was being too mischievous. So what happened was that they were having a problem on a planet and trying to solve that problem, and they couldn't figure it out. And so they asked Q, said, "What would you do?" He's like, "Oh, it's obvious. Change the gravitational constant of the universe." And all the rest of the humans are like, "We can't do that." Uh, but the engineer Geordi La Forge said, "Hey, maybe we could." Right? That's the superhero you're talking about. Somebody who could actually change the gravitational constant of the universe, and boom, suddenly your planet is as light as a feather. Yeah.

• 35:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just because you changed the force of gravity.

• 36:00Charles Liu?

  Just because you changed force of gravity in that.

• 36:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a badass power right there. Incredible.

• 36:03Gary O'Reilly?

  You're thinking like a supervillain now.

• 36:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm, I just, stop. Don't bring me into your category. So what intrigues me about, uh, I think most about what has happened in this, in this world is there are some writers who know that matter is mostly empty space.

• 36:23Charles Liu?

  Ooh.

• 36:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is mo-, we think we're solid.

• 36:26Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 36:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're objects, and we're just not. And you can say, "How empty are we?" Well, let, let me first, let's go back to Ernst Rutherford, who's a New Zealand physicist, uh, turn of the previous century, around there, I think, or a little later.

• 36:44Charles Liu?

  1900, 1901.

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, around, around there. And he did experiments. Where he hammered gold very thin. Gold is very malleable, so it's the most malleable substance on the periodic table. So you can hammer it, that's why gold makes very good, um. Leafing. Uh, leaf, gold leaf, yeah. On cakes. What is the word for it? Uh, gilding. Yeah. Oh, I wonder how, how that happened. Guild hall? Guild. Yeah, okay. So anyhow, if you gild a statue, you take gold leaf. And using very little gold, you can greatly shine something up. And that's why the Oval Office looks spectacular.

• 37:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gold leaf everywhere. Absolutely beautiful. So.

• 37:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Don't encourage him.

• 37:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, don't encourage that. Okay, so, so he hammered it really, really, really, really thin. Okay? So it's the, the gold leaf is just dangling there. And he fired particles into it. Ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent of the particles went through as though nothing was there. Oh. And occasionally one would bounce back the other way. And when he did the math on this, he realized that atoms are mostly empty space. And it is rumored that the next day, he alone on Earth knew this, that he was afraid to step onto the floor from his bed

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  out of fear he would fall through. Just like the, the nightmares of a classical physicist. Yeah. Transitioning into the world of the quantum. Believe me, I have been that high in.

• 38:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so if you want a physical example, the nucleus of an atom is to the size of an atom.

• 38:45Chuck Nice?

  As a Cracker Jack kernel of corn is to the entire stadium.

• 38:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Ooh.

• 38:51Chuck Nice?

  In which you may purchase it.

• 38:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Put it in.

• 38:54Chuck Nice?

  Are you sure we got the, the right analogy here? You said one Cracker Jack to the size of a stadium. Yes. Is the nucleus of an atom. To the atom, atom with the electron. The, the structure of an atom itself. Yes.

• 39:09Charles Liu?

  I'll give you another analogy, Chuck.

• 39:10Chuck Nice?

  Please do.

• 39:11Charles Liu?

  If we took all of the Hamptons.

• 39:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 39:14Charles Liu?

  Took the space out of it.

• 39:16Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:17Charles Liu?

  All of the Hamptons, including us, would fit in my fingernail.

• 39:21Chuck Nice?

  Man, you just messed up a lot of real estate values.

• 39:27Gary O'Reilly?

  That's true.

• 39:28Charles Liu?

  No, but it's true. The universe is ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine-nine-nine, nine-nine-nine-nine-nine, nine-nine-nine-nine-nine percent empty space. And that's just the atom's molecule.

• 39:38Gary O'Reilly?

  Why don't we, hit it, double edged question.

• 39:40Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 39:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Firstly, why don't we just keep falling through stuff or putting our hands through things? And.

• 39:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, exactly. Is this the serious probability? I mean, so, so having asked that question, I know the answer to it. So how is a superhero using this to their advantage to walk through? We've got the Flash can run through walls and.

• 40:06Chuck Nice?

  But the Flash can run through walls? I thought he just ran fast.

• 40:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Through walls.

• 40:09Chuck Nice?

  He can run fast. He vibrates through. He can vibrate.

• 40:12Gary O'Reilly?

  And you have Dr. Manhattan who can just move through things.

• 40:15Chuck Nice?

  Wait, wait.

• 40:15Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 40:16Chuck Nice?

  So the Flash can do what? He can, he's like, hey. And that can get him through a wall? And he can get through a wall by like shimmying, vibrating. Wait, wait, Charles, is he moving through the empty space of the atoms as he goes through?

• 40:29Charles Liu?

  Quantum tunneling, yeah.

• 40:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Quantum.

• 40:31Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 40:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Quantum tunneling, here we go.

• 40:33Charles Liu?

  Okay, here's the story.

• 40:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Don't leave me hanging.

• 40:35Charles Liu?

  See, because you have this ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine-nine-nine-nine-nine-nine percent emptiness, the reason we don't keep falling through the floor is because those itty bitty bits of material actually produce force fields.

• 40:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Uh-huh. I went back to force field.

• 40:50Charles Liu?

  There are fields of force, mostly electromagnetic, some nuclear. Some gravitational around the particles that make us up. So for example, when I'm clapping my hands together, it is the force fields of the atoms in my fingers that are touching each other. And that is what's creating the sensation in my hands. And that's why your hands don't pass through. That's right, because they just tap each other because the fields are there. But it was shown a hundred years ago that every once in a while, because there's all this empty space and there are fields involved that make this all not fall through, that every once in a while, something will go through just by accident. Because the shimmering quantum fluctuations, every once in a while will shimmer just right, so that a little particle will actually go right through.

• 41:35Charles Liu?

  That's called quantum tunneling. And this can happen, and in fact, happens all the time. And I was so surprised to find out when I was writing the Handy Quantum Physics Answer book, that there was part of electronics technology for decades. There's a thing called a quantum tunnel diode that was in many radios and other transiting products that were for sale in the 50s, 60s, 70s. They are now obsolete. This is quantum technology that's now older than our non-quantum technology, that's in our cell phones, for example. But quantum tunneling is a real phenomenon, and it happens all the time. But the flash is supposedly so good at this that he can vibrate his entire body, all of his trillions and trillions of molecules,

• 42:20Charles Liu?

  and go right through and figure out exactly the jigsaw puzzle way to get through the other side. Oh, it's like that game show where the wall comes at you. Yeah, uh huh. It's exactly that. But he's able to do it with every single atom in his body and every single atom in the wall. He doesn't leave the body hole through the wall.

• 42:37Gary O'Reilly?

  So is this that, is this basic probability that is continual working out of which molecule is gonna pass through?

• 42:43Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 42:43Gary O'Reilly?

  As opposed to which is?

• 42:44Charles Liu?

  That's right. The odds of any single molecule doing something like a quantum tunnel is tiny. Now you add it up and multiply it by every single probability of every single other quantum tunneling possibility, and you have a number that's so beyond anything that even our current supercomputers can't even computer for one tiny layer. But the flash can do it. But the flash can do it all. So is this the same thing as quantum teleportation? Yes. Oh, a little bit different. A little bit different, okay. Oh, do tell.

• 43:14Charles Liu?

  Quantum teleportation is not "Be Me Up Scotty", okay? The term "quantum teleportation" actually predates the idea of teleporting, uh, say, a human from one place to another using some sort of machine. But it was the idea of communicating information from one place to another. So, copying a message perfectly, and then sending that message perfectly to a different location, without any kind of degradation, would be what we used to call "teleportation", okay? I didn't know that. So, so you're saying material objects were not part of that original? That's right. It was an informational thing. So Morse code, for example, was actually a way of teleportation, because your dots and dashes here could be translated exactly as dots and dashes there. With low error.

• 43:59Charles Liu?

  With very low error. Ah. Quantum teleportation now is a little bit different. You want to move quantum information from one spot to the next. And then when you do that transportation, there is always a massive amount of noise and energy lost, and your information gets lost. But if you can quantum teleport, and you can get this information from one spot to another without losing, you literally have an unbreakable code, a way to transmit information that nobody else in the universe can actually ever intercept. And that's what quantum teleportation is really cool about. And that's its greatest value going forward? At this moment, that's right. It would be a perfectly secure internet, for example. That's right, yeah, that's right. So what's our energy source for this?

• 44:44Charles Liu?

  The energy source is merely the fluctuations that are caused by the quantum system itself. You're sending bits of information of, bits of quantum information, we call them qubits, and then you package them in whatever physical system you want, whether it's an ion, or an electron, or some other uh, set of particles. And then you send them either in a beam, or along a wire, or a fiber, or something like that, to another spot. And you want to preserve the coherence of information inside that qubit for as far as possible. All right. And Scott me. Is that happening tomorrow?

• 45:25Charles Liu?

  Right now, people are actually able to quantum teleport little bits of information for actually many miles. So you can do pretty well, like send just a few pieces of yes, no, up, down, so forth, without losing coherence. But the moment you have too much noise, moment the temperature goes up above a few degrees above absolute zero, you start losing information. Because things vibrate and they create a thermal. Those quantum fluctuations just overwhelm what you find.

• 45:52Chuck Nice?

  It's not good for texting.

• 45:53Charles Liu?

  Depends on what you're texting.

• 45:54Gary O'Reilly?

  Guinea pigs. You mentioned absolute zero.

• 45:58Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 45:59Gary O'Reilly?

  That comes up quite a lot in quantum, doesn't it?

• 46:01Charles Liu?

  That is true, it does.

• 46:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Do things actually have to take place at absolute zero? If it is, then we might just be out of the equation.

• 46:10Charles Liu?

  Yeah. Absolute zero is 459.16 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

• 46:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Ouch.

• 46:17Charles Liu?

  Give or take, okay? At that temperature, no motion of atoms or molecules happens above the quantum fluctuation. Okay, that means that the reason we are warm is because the different atoms and molecules in our body actually vibrate and move and rotate and things like that. When all of that stops, that's the temperature known as absolute zero.

• 46:39Chuck Nice?

  Well, can you blame them?

• 46:40Charles Liu?

  No.

• 46:41Chuck Nice?

  I mean, it's pretty doggone cold.

• 46:42Charles Liu?

  It is pretty doggone cold. And at that temperature, see, what's interesting is it has been shown physically that we can never make a machine that reaches that temperature. It is only a theoretical minimum, because you cannot create any kind of refrigerator that can get a temperature of absolute zero in a space.

• 47:01Chuck Nice?

  So what is the coldest spot in the darkness of space? What would that temperature be?

• 47:06Charles Liu?

  Ah, the coldest temperature we've been able to achieve is actually colder here in a laboratory than out in space. Here in a laboratory, we've been able to get down to a few millions of a degree above absolute zero. But out in space...

• 47:22Chuck Nice?

  Oh, what a failure!

• 47:24Charles Liu?

  Right, right, right. But out in space, we have the leftover heat from the Big Bang. It's all the cosmic microwave background radiation. Can't escape that. It's everywhere, and that's about three degrees above absolute zero. It's still damn cold. That, yeah. Yes, you don't want to go out there.

• 47:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Wear a jacket.

• 47:41Chuck Nice?

  So cool.

• 47:42Charles Liu?

  But it is very cool.

• 47:43Chuck Nice?

  So the big bang itself is hanging around in such a way that it's warming space to the point where we can't get to an absolute zero.

• 47:51Charles Liu?

  That's absolutely right. And that heat is actually very important in the universe because we have these cold clouds of hydrogen gas floating around in the universe. These clouds would be doing absolutely nothing and having no emission of energy or signal of any kind, except the cosmic microwave background warms them up just enough that once every 10 to 20 million years on average, the hydrogen atom floating around in space will do a spin flip and release one single photon of radio wave emission at a wavelength of

• 48:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  21 centimeters.

• 48:30Charles Liu?

  And so that

• 48:31Chuck Nice?

  And that means what?

• 48:34Chuck Nice?

  It's like, the two of them is just like, one photon.

• 48:39Chuck Nice?

  And it releases at, and Neil is just like, 21 centimeters.

• 48:46Chuck Nice?

  What the hell are you talking about?

• 48:48Charles Liu?

  It's the best inside joke in the universe.

• 48:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 48:50Charles Liu?

  Okay. See, we tried hard not to laugh during that time. But, but as Neil can explain better than I can, because this was actually part of the area of research he was doing more than I was. 21 centimeter radiation is what tells us where the hydrogen material is in the universe and how it's moving to make new stars, new planets and new galaxies in the universe.

• 49:13Chuck Nice?

  So the excitation of these clouds?

• 49:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the right word, too. Yeah.

• 49:17Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 49:20Chuck Nice?

  That alone, is it now a chain reaction?

• 49:24Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 49:25Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 49:25Charles Liu?

  You create that bath of 3D degree Kelvin cosmic microwave background photons, which in a turn causes these gas clouds to do something. And that allows us as astronomers to figure out how the universe is aging and what its processes are going on billions of light years away.

• 49:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to put this to bed, if absolute zero is the coldest possible temperature,

• 49:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you need something to draw the heat away from what's there. And as you do that, it's still kind of in contact with what's doing the drawing of the heat. So in principle, it may be physically impossible to reach absolute zero. Cause it's always, like you said, it will always be in contact with something that's not absolute zero.

• 50:17Charles Liu?

  Gotcha.

• 50:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because otherwise, everything is absolute zero, and it's not.

• 50:21Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 50:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, there's some enclosure. So no matter how good your yeti is, okay?

• 50:30Chuck Nice?

  Your Stanley Cup.

• 50:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, no matter how good it is, the ice in there eventually melts.

• 50:37Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 50:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, because there's heat transfer, however slow, it's not a perfectly, if it were perfectly insulated, it would never melt.

• 50:46Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 50:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's not how the actual world works.

• 50:48Charles Liu?

  That's right. So even without quantum effects, you will wind up with thermodynamic losses. But even at absolute zero, we're now pretty sure that there are quantum fluctuations.

• 51:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The quantum.

• 51:00Charles Liu?

  That, yes.

• 51:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but, so what about the superheroes that can, that breathe fire or something? Or whatever, they make fire.

• 51:07Charles Liu?

  They're cool dragons. You mean like Godzilla or something?

• 51:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I don't know, any of, any of the ones that.

• 51:12Charles Liu?

  Or when Superman burps.

• 51:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, we're back to that.

• 51:16Charles Liu?

  Back there with it. Yeah. Sorry, everybody.

• 51:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm, I'm just wondering, thermodynamically.

• 51:21Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 51:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The fire has energy, so the energy has to come from within.

• 51:24Chuck Nice?

  Torch, Fantastic Four.

• 51:26Charles Liu?

  Yes, the human torch in the Fantastic Four supposedly is able to convert chemically. Like fire is basically a chemical reaction, right? Uh, something like a nuclear detonation, or say the interior of the sun, that's a nuclear event. And so somehow that energy gets converted to heat, depending on what the processes are in the sun. Or in the person, or in the campfire.

• 51:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the fire superheroes don't need quantum effects?

• 51:54Charles Liu?

  They don't.

• 51:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a simple burning?

• 51:56Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 51:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 51:57Charles Liu?

  Even thermodynamics is extremely powerful. A lot of us don't understand just how powerful. But you know how there was this industrial evolution based on the steam engine, right?

• 52:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 52:05Charles Liu?

  Yeah, just the heat energy in this room right now.

• 52:10Chuck Nice?

  And it is hot, you people are hot, I'm telling you.

• 52:14Charles Liu?

  If you were to convert that into mechanical energy, you could take an 18-wheeler and drive it right through the wall, from that side to that side and all the way out. You have so much kinetic energy from the thermal motions in the air alone, that it's easy to see how you can have tremendous superpower, even if you don't have quantum power.

• 52:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So coming out of the industrial revolution?

• 52:36Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 52:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 52:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's keep this going with the fact that no, if most of matter is yes, most of the universe is empty space, and most of matter is empty space on top of that. If you had the power to collapse particles down and then restore them, okay?

• 53:15Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 53:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get

• 53:16Charles Liu?

  a smaller version of yourself, and then a bigger version of yourself.

• 53:20Chuck Nice?

  That's Ant-Man.

• 53:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Exactly.

• 53:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ant-Man.

• 53:23Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 53:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, worst name for a superhero. It is, it is. It is, really bad.

• 53:28Charles Liu?

  Well, but he's a pretty powerful guy.

• 53:29Gary O'Reilly?

  But that's the quantum mechanics.

• 53:31Charles Liu?

  That's exactly the quantum mechanics.

• 53:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Mystical Pym particle, right?

• 53:34Charles Liu?

  Yes, that's right.

• 53:35Gary O'Reilly?

  They are borrowed from another dimension. So are we looking at quantum mechanics being able to enlighten us and our understanding of higher dimension?

• 53:45Charles Liu?

  What a great question.

• 53:46Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you. It won't happen again, don't worry.

• 53:50Charles Liu?

  The so-called Pym particle is a fictional thing invented by Marvel Comics. There's a scientist named Henry Pym, P-Y-M. And by using these, harnessing these particles, which are sort of super-dimensional, you're able to make things big and small. You're literally, in a sense, taking something like this, making it small, and then making it big, or making it huge, because you're taking advantage of the space in between your molecules and your atoms that we were just talking about.

• 54:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this fictional particle is exploiting known physics?

• 54:22Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 54:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 54:23Charles Liu?

  Yeah, but this fictional

• 54:23Chuck Nice?

  But let me ask you, because what you just said, if you keep the same mass.

• 54:28Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 54:28Chuck Nice?

  And you make me super big, I'm this, I'm the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

• 54:33Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 54:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm a beach ball.

• 54:35Charles Liu?

  And so therein lies the, the extra dimensional part to which we refer. The only way that these particles can work in our world, you know, as if they were actually in our world, right? But if they were really working, you would have to add mass to things as you were growing them. And you would have to reduce the mass of the things that you were shrinking, right? Otherwise, if you shrunk down your, um, vehicle and put it in your pocket so that you could ride it later, you would not be running very fast.

• 55:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would still weigh thousands of pounds.

• 55:03Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 55:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In your pocket.

• 55:04Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 55:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So. Just because it fits in your pocket, doesn't mean it belongs in your pocket.

• 55:07Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 55:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 55:08Charles Liu?

  So somehow these PIM particles.

• 55:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's kind of deep actually.

• 55:13Charles Liu?

  Just because it, oh wow.

• 55:15Chuck Nice?

  So many problems in life, I tell you.

• 55:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doesn't mean it belongs there.

• 55:21Charles Liu?

  Yeah, I love it. Yeah. So this material, this matter had to either go into some dimension that doesn't weigh anything in our spacetime, or be drawn from somewhere that previously didn't have any weight in our spacetime and suddenly becomes having weight. So you're really shunting these things in and out of spacetime.

• 55:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Otherwise, you, you, your, your challenge would be the creation and destruction of mass.

• 55:49Charles Liu?

  Correct.

• 55:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In our own spacetime.

• 55:50Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 55:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we know what happens when that happens.

• 55:53Charles Liu?

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, those are nuclear bombs.

• 55:55Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 55:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you take mass and make it energy.

• 55:58Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 55:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the end of your situation.

• 55:59Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry, I don't know why I got all excited just then.

• 56:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's, that's worries me, Chuck.

• 56:04Charles Liu?

  No, no, no.

• 56:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 56:05Charles Liu?

  Because nuclear fusion also powers the sun.

• 56:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 56:08Charles Liu?

  Right? It's a very benign thing. We often think about on our, on our world as being dangerous. But in fact, without it, we wouldn't be here.

• 56:16Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay. We talked about quantum tunneling.

• 56:18Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 56:19Gary O'Reilly?

  There's another term that comes up, and if I think of a superhero, I go back to Dr. Manhattan. And that's the superposition. Where I am simultaneously in different parts, in any part of wherever I want to be.

• 56:34Chuck Nice?

  And Dr. Manhattan could be in many places at the same time. He would be on Mars and on the moon and in his laboratory and, you know, all, all at once.

• 56:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, is that correct that way?

• 56:47Charles Liu?

  Well, how many of you guys know Dr. Manhattan?

• 56:49Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, first of all.

• 56:50Charles Liu?

  Dr. Manhattan.

• 56:51Chuck Nice?

  I know, we're geeking out here. This has turned into four guys at a bar. But does everybody know who Dr. Manhattan is?

• 56:58Charles Liu?

  Yeah, Dr. Manhattan was created in the Watchmen universe by Alan Moore in the 1980s.

• 57:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 57:04Charles Liu?

  And this is a superhero which didn't really want to be a superhero. But he's essentially blue and he's played by Billy Crudup and he doesn't wear any clothes. And he just sits around in his blue.

• 57:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that your most obvious fact about him?

• 57:17Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 57:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, the man is the most powerful entity ever created and he's gonna say he doesn't wear clothes?

• 57:21Chuck Nice?

  I gotta tell ya, uh, he looks pretty good naked.

• 57:27Charles Liu?

  Anyway, the idea is that he is, by himself, a kind of quantum particle. He has the powers of doing anything that quantum particles can do, but he is the size of a house. And therefore he has an unbelievably large amount of power because he can do all the things that can happen on microscopic scales, but out on the scale of us and, and our size.

• 57:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So for him, his personal quantum constants are just larger.

• 57:54Charles Liu?

  That's right. It's as if George Gamoff himself.

• 57:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Talking about earlier, he's got a, he's Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland.

• 58:00Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 58:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except he is the Wonderland.

• 58:02Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 58:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So I don't think it's that he was simultaneously in those places. He's just like a particle, has a probability it can be found in any one of the places in its, what should we call this?

• 58:14Charles Liu?

  The wave function?

• 58:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The wave function. Anywhere his wave function, he can say, my wave function includes Mars, I'm gonna be on Mars right now. So then he's on Mars.

• 58:21Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 58:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 58:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he was, he doesn't actually have to travel there.

• 58:23Chuck Nice?

  Doesn't travel there. He's already there all the time.

• 58:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the time.

• 58:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 58:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because he's entangled with himself. Yes.

• 58:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm. But is it entanglement or is it manipulation?

• 58:33Charles Liu?

  Great question. Let me try to break that down a little bit, okay? You guys might have heard of quantum entanglement lately. It's in the news, it's very exciting and so forth, but actually.

• 58:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not in the Hamptons news, that's the difference.

• 58:44Charles Liu?

  No?

• 58:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's summer.

• 58:48Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 58:49Chuck Nice?

  I heard some people on the beach the other day talking about it.

• 58:53Charles Liu?

  Quantum entanglement is the idea where you can take a particle and literally split it into two identical particles and they can be as far apart or as old or as new or as kept or as they want and they will still stay the same particle. Okay.

• 59:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And know about each other.

• 59:12Charles Liu?

  That's right. So you have something that could be the size of a solar system and yet if you got information on one particle, you would instantaneously get the information on the other particle as if they were entangled. When in fact, in the quantum way of thinking about it, they are still one particle. One particle. They just still happen to be connected as both a particle and a wave that keeps changing size and shape. So you have this particle and we in the classical world think of particles as like a piece of stone or a rock or a piece of metal or something, just a particle, right? But in fact, if you think quantumly, the particle and the wave are

• 59:56Charles Liu?

  interconnected and so the concept of size and the concepts of age are very, very different. And as long as you can keep that coherence and make sure that there isn't noise or static that interrupts the connection between these pieces, they are one particle, no matter how far apart they are.

• 1:00:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a contest, who can create the most distant particle pairs in this exercise? And the leaders in this, in the world is China. China has the farthest separated particles.

• 1:00:26Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 1:00:27Chuck Nice?

  Not for long.

• 1:00:30Chuck Nice?

  I'm here to say that I'm gonna take care of this. Two weeks, two weeks.

• 1:00:38Chuck Nice?

  And China, China will lose.

• 1:00:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so it's a contest, we don't know, like, it's like an arms race, but we don't know why we, what good is it?

• 1:00:49Charles Liu?

  Right. At this moment, physicists are still trying to figure out whether entanglement is a perfectly normal thing that happens all the time, we just never noticed it.

• 1:00:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 1:00:58Charles Liu?

  Or whether it's actually something profound that can be used in a way, for example, for instantaneous communications, or other kinds of storage of information and so on. What we do know is that if you entangle some things, you can create this thing called a qubit, which is a piece of information that's not just one or zero that we use in our current computers.

• 1:01:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which are called bits.

• 1:01:20Charles Liu?

  That's right, they're called bits. But these qubits can take positions between zero and one, doing strange things in between, until such time as you read them out as a zero or a one. Okay, this is a very odd concept in our heads, but what it is, it means that we, as particles, or conglomerations of particles, could in fact communicate, or otherwise interact, as waveforms of energy, in ways that we can't imagine now, but might be able, for example, to break computer codes instantaneously. Or allow us to do in kinds of computations or communications.

• 1:01:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The future of computing.

• 1:01:57Charles Liu?

  Very, very possible.

• 1:01:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're on the doorstep of this.

• 1:01:59Charles Liu?

  The doorstep of it. We're way, way, way, well, the door's very thick.

• 1:02:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:02:04Charles Liu?

  But, but we are at the doorstep, yes.

• 1:02:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what you're describing is that, I guess, in the lingo, the collapse of the wave function, because the particles are waves, the waves are particles, but when it's manifesting as a wave, the wave occupies all the space that you're describing. When we think of particles, it's here or there, the wave is, whatever you calculate the extent of the wave to be, the particle can manifest at any point within that volume. And so then you collapse the wave function.

• 1:02:34Charles Liu?

  There it is.

• 1:02:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then there's the particle over here. So this, so Dr. Manhattan would collapse his own wave function.

• 1:02:39Chuck Nice?

  And he'd be over there.

• 1:02:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the left.

• 1:02:41Chuck Nice?

  He laps it again, and he's back here.

• 1:02:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 1:02:44Chuck Nice?

  That's wild.

• 1:02:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 1:02:45Gary O'Reilly?

  That's the manipulation.

• 1:02:47Charles Liu?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Charles Liu?

  Yep. There you go.

• 1:02:49Gary O'Reilly?

  If we've gone through the collapse of a wave function, and we understand that there's a duality of particles and waves, where does it go when there's a many-worlds theory? Because you're not quite, are you certain about that one?

• 1:03:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The many-worlds, I'm...

• 1:03:02Chuck Nice?

  What is the many worlds theory? Ask Charles. Charles? Is it because you don't know? Enlighten us.

• 1:03:09Charles Liu?

  No, no, no. Neil knows, he just doesn't like it as much. We've had this conversation a little bit before, but maybe we can expound on it later. See, here's the deal. About half a century ago, some physicists noticed that the mathematical equations that describe wave functions and quantum physics and so forth don't necessarily have to reflect our universe alone. In fact, those equations are consistent with the picture that every time a quantum particle does something or doesn't do something, a whole new universe is spawned.

• 1:03:45Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 1:03:45Charles Liu?

  Okay? Imagine if, for example, I go out there and I get hit by the jitney.

• 1:03:50Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:50Charles Liu?

  Okay?

• 1:03:51Chuck Nice?

  All right. By the way, I have a good lawyer for that.

• 1:03:53Charles Liu?

  Thank you. Okay.

• 1:03:54Chuck Nice?

  As we determine.

• 1:03:55Charles Liu?

  In most cases, I would not be in good shape. But you could imagine a scenario in the universe where I'm hit by the jitney and I'm fine. Just that one tiny possibility. If that happens, then that universe has me in it just fine. And then, all the other universes, they continue to coexist, but I'm not fine. Now imagine, tomorrow I get hit again by the jitney. And then, that process happens all over again. There's a tiny little possibility that I'm fine. And that person survives. If I keep following the surviving me in front of the jitney, I am in a universe where I live forever.

• 1:04:37Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 1:04:38Charles Liu?

  Eh?

• 1:04:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but you all, you keep getting hit by the damn bus.

• 1:04:42Charles Liu?

  Yeah. Right.

• 1:04:43Chuck Nice?

  That sounds like hell.

• 1:04:45Charles Liu?

  That ain't so good. I agree. But you see, the vast majority of other universes that exist

• 1:04:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:04:51Charles Liu?

  in this, in this mathematical many worlds, I'm not fine. And that's the one that we are most likely going to share. Right? Because the chances of me being fine after being hit by the jitney a few thousand times.

• 1:05:02Chuck Nice?

  Are very, very small.

• 1:05:02Charles Liu?

  Very, very, very small.

• 1:05:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:05:04Charles Liu?

  But you can see the problem with this many worlds hypothesis of quantum physics. Right? You're generating essentially a nearly infinite number of new universes every single second that the universe is around. It's not quite infinite because the universe isn't infinitely old. But in every single circumstance, you can imagine literally anything happening.

• 1:05:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, isn't this kind of a cop out? What it's saying is, we have the wave function.

• 1:05:33Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 1:05:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the wave can collapse here or there. And we don't know until you poke it, or until it does collapse. But it might have collapsed over there. In fact, maybe it did collapse over there. And you're telling me, it did collapse over there, and that's a whole new universe?

• 1:05:48Charles Liu?

  It is a cop out.

• 1:05:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you're saying, you're taking our statistical ignorance and trying to step out the back door by making multiple universes so that we're no longer statistically

• 1:06:00Charles Liu?

  Significant, yeah.

• 1:06:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and why should I embrace that?

• 1:06:03Charles Liu?

  You shouldn't.

• 1:06:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:06:04Charles Liu?

  You don't have to. That, this is actually one of-

• 1:06:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's one of the universes, by the way.

• 1:06:08Charles Liu?

  That's right. In one universe-

• 1:06:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In another universe, you're just like, I love many worlds.

• 1:06:15Charles Liu?

  Chuck is exactly right. You can literally imagine any kind of universe, and it has just as good a chance of existing, assuming the laws of physics are the same in that universe as in your universe, as your universe. Our universe, the one that we share right now in this room, is a collective collapse of the wave function. Where all of our wave functions that make up who we are and where we are have all collapsed to this moment in this place. That makes our universe right now, unique. If we allow the existence of all those other universes, what does that make this universe? Right? Mathematically, those universes are just as valid as this one. But we're in this one.

• 1:06:58Charles Liu?

  Doesn't this one have some greater validity than those?

• 1:07:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Charles, you're dead in this unit we've established. You've been hit by the-

• 1:07:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you're, you're under the, you're under the bus, buddy.

• 1:07:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, then what about

• 1:07:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the Marvel universe where they keep going in and out of the multiverse?

• 1:07:16Charles Liu?

  Oh, yes, the quantum realm.

• 1:07:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, is this some of that?

• 1:07:21Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 1:07:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was that some of this?

• 1:07:22Charles Liu?

  Here's the point. If you get that small, right? Your wave function becomes pretty much melded with all the other wave functions in this many worlds universe.

• 1:07:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 1:07:33Charles Liu?

  As a result, if you figured out some way to navigate this quantum realm, which is far smaller than even what the Big Bang was just before it began to bang. This is a millionth of a billionth of a trillionth of a quadrillionth of an inch. You know, really, really, really tiny. This Marvel Universe fake quantum realm thing suggests that if you just, all you need to just be able to navigate this really weird quantum tiny space. And you can emerge in that universe where I am living forever, despite being hit day after day, right? Then you can come get me from that universe and say, here's the guy who can't be killed by the jitney. Bring him back navigating through the realm to here.

• 1:08:16Charles Liu?

  And then bring me over there. And then you can engage in the most amazing insurance fraud in history.

• 1:08:26Charles Liu?

  That's the quantum realm of Marvel Comics. Okay.

• 1:08:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 1:08:29Charles Liu?

  Should we believe it? Eh.

• 1:08:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wonder just what's possible.

• 1:08:33Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're not quantum sized. We can't play in Mr. Tompkins Wonderland. Fun to think about, though. But you said the math, math works. The actual math. Yeah. So the curious fact is mathematics as expressed by the physicist is a, is a representation of our models of how the universe works using symbols, which allow us to manipulate the ideas perfectly logically. Right? You can argue what's true or not, but once you've set it up mathematically, then manipulate the math. And that's tantamount to manipulating your understanding of the universe if it's the correct model of mathematics.

• 1:09:16Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So everything else about this math is working in our universe.

• 1:09:21Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 1:09:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I step lightly towards these other realities that are so mind blowing.

• 1:09:28Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 1:09:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But again, is it more mind blowing than?

• 1:09:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What quantum physics might have looked like to the original classical physicists. And but we live, there is no IT revolution without the exploitation of the quantum. There is no creation, storage and retrieval of digital information without quantum physics. It's not some other thing that other smart people worry about in the lab. It is with us, we are embedded in it. There is no modern industry without it.

• 1:10:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so. And if you were to go back to like 1910 and show somebody an iPhone, you know, they'd burn you at the stake.

• 1:10:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they resurrect the witch burning.

• 1:10:14Chuck Nice?

  Yes, they would. Yeah, they were like, we were wrong about witches and you know.

• 1:10:17Gary O'Reilly?

  So are we gradually inching towards the practical of quantum theory? Rather than it being able to be achieved with immediacy?

• 1:10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so I'm gonna say it and then I want to get Chuck's reaction. There's that, those parts of quantum physics that we need, that we want, that help us in our technologies and our computers and everything. Then there's the part of the quantum physics that's just kind of floating out there that we have to take seriously because it's the extensions of what we know works mathematically and conceptually. So now you go to the edge and you explore the edges of those equations. Oh, my gosh, you just gave me a whole new frickin' universe. And what does that mean? And what is that gonna take us? And I got entanglement and I got all of this. That's why people are taking it seriously, because the rest of it works.

• 1:11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, quantum physics is the most successful theory of physics ever put forth. It has never been shown to be wrong. And that's spooky.

• 1:11:17Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's because nobody understands it.

• 1:11:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let me try to land this plane here. Is what you're telling me? That this sort of probabilistic understanding of a particle, the wave-particle duality, when it's manifesting as a wave, we don't know where the particle is. The question doesn't even make sense. It's the wave that takes up the space. And depending on how you poke it, it will manifest the particle here, there, or somewhere else. Okay.

• 1:11:52Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 1:11:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now you want to create universes in which the particle can be in those places, turning what is probabilistic, statistical, and quantum into something that's deterministic.

• 1:12:04Charles Liu?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:12:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Einstein's quip, declaration even, because he was slow to adopt the weirdness of the quantum physics. He said, "God does not play dice with the universe." And if you're in our realm, it kind of looks that way. God is playing dice with the universe, but in your realm, God has loaded the dice and knows exactly what roll is gonna get. Because every roll is happening in a universe that's out there, spontaneously created in the act of the collapse of the wave function. Have I said that accurately?

• 1:12:42Charles Liu?

  You have. God is playing all of the dice, all at the same time. And that's why the house always wins. And it's just a matter... It's just a matter of which table you want to roll. That's all it is. Beautifully said, Neil. Beautifully said.

• 1:13:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so if the casino's, if it says "God's Casino",

• 1:13:05Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 1:13:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stay away.

• 1:13:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Charles, give us a thought to take us out.

• 1:13:13Charles Liu?

  When we first thought of quantum physics, heck, when I first took quantum physics in college, I was like, "This can't be right." But that's only because I didn't have a good sense yet of reality as a whole. Today, we understand, as I see more and more of reality happening, all the things that I don't understand is only what I don't understand, not... Not how the universe works. So I'm hoping that as I continue to go in my journey of discovery and studying things like galaxies and supermassive black holes and things like that, that I am open enough to see those things which I could never conceive of, things that in my gut I know are wrong, and yet be able over time to see that actually that is reality.

• 1:13:59Charles Liu?

  And that's what I love to do.

• 1:14:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're short there. It's not that in your gut you know it's wrong, it's that in your gut, your life experience is insufficient to absorb that which stands far outside of your life experience. So it's not that it's wrong, it's just it doesn't fit.

• 1:14:15Charles Liu?

  It doesn't fit.

• 1:14:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, don't be so hard on yourself, man. I know.

• 1:14:19Charles Liu?

  These guys are the most supportive friends I could ever ask for. If I can embrace that part of me which I don't understand and don't know and perhaps even fear, then I'm gonna be a better off in this world, and I hope all of us would share in that with me.

• 1:14:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, well, thank you for that.

• 1:14:37Charles Liu?

  Thank you for that.

• 1:14:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As I'd like to do at the end of our shows is offer a cosmic perspective, the summation of what we've discussed and perhaps a perspective on what it means for us today, tomorrow, and beyond. This as a scientist, it's, it's kinda your job to stand at the frontier. You put a foot in what is known and a foot in what is unknown, and you sort of work your way out there. Now, what we do know is that, of course, as the area of our knowledge grows, so too does the perimeter of your ignorance.

• 1:15:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we can feel good about what we do know, as Charles surely does, he's worked hard for his expertise, but as you, as you, as you walk the perimeter...

• 1:15:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh, there's so much more we don't know than what we do. And for me, I celebrate the ignorance. As the German poet Reinhard Maria Rilke noted, "One needs to learn to love the questions themselves." Because those questions are not just, "I don't know," and then walk the other way. They draw you towards paths of discovery. And what I enjoy about our world is that we have creative people who maybe took a few physics classes, maybe read your quantum handy question book, whatever it's called.

• 1:16:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry. Quantum handy that. And these are people who are creative storytellers, cinematographers, comic book illustrators, people who are not content with just the world. Let's reach out to all the places science can take us and stoke our imagination beyond what is otherwise visible, just looking at what we know today. And so I celebrate the fact that I, that we live in a world where science is accessible to enough other people who are not scientists that we can celebrate science

• 1:17:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  as a fundamental part of our culture, not just an activity conducted by pointy-headed intellectuals in laboratories. And that is a cosmic perspective. Thank you, Guild Hall.

• 1:17:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gary.

• 1:17:24Speaker 05

  Pleasure, my friend. Thank you so much.

• 1:17:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Keep it deep.

• 1:17:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look, Gary.

• 1:17:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was StarTalk Live, special edition at Guild Hall, East Hampton. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, wishing you to keep looking up.