Cosmic Queries – Proving Einstein Right

Albert Einstein was, well, Albert Einstein. But was he right? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice investigate what it took to prove Einstein right, with theoretical physicist Dr. Jim Gates. Originally Aired October 19, 2020.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey StarTalkians, Neil here. You're about to listen to an episode specially drawn from our archives to serve your cosmic curiosities. The archives run deep. If you enjoy this, take a peek at the full catalog on your favorite podcast platform. There's a lot there to tickle your geek underbelly. Check it out.

• 0:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and today's topic is proving Einstein right. Chuck, I needed you for this one because you're the man.

• 0:54Chuck Nice?

  I don't know how you need me because I never knew Einstein was wrong. So I'm trying to figure out where's the controversy.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where's the controversy? Well, to talk about that controversy, I'm bringing a friend and longtime colleague, Jim Gates. Jim, welcome to StarTalk.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  Well, Neil, it's good to be back at the presence of a star.

• 1:18Chuck Nice?

  James, please. It's okay. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you.

• 1:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I will leave that one at that.

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jim, you've been at this for a long time. Well, you've been an Einstein fan for sure, but a theoretical physicist and you're director for the Center for Theoretical Physics at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. And that's a title. How long have you been doing that?

• 1:44Speaker 02

  So when I was 66, Neil, I was recruited from the University of Maryland to Brown. I went around telling my friends, uh, asking friends, why, why do you think you want an old car?

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's not the age, it's the mileage, okay?

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We know this.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Well, uh, one of my friends said, Jim, you're not an old car, you're an antique car.

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, there you go, a preservable antique. They, they hold their value.

• 2:11Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna go one better than your friend, uh, James, you are vintage, my friend, you are vintage. Vintage is, vintage gives you even more money than antique, as they say.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Okay, well, well, I, I, I, I switched after thirty-three years at my previous, uh, university, came here and...

• 2:28Chuck Nice?

  Where, where was the previous university?

• 2:30Speaker 02

  University of Maryland College Park.

• 2:32Chuck Nice?

  Wow, and today, are you still on speaking terms? Because I, I would be kinda angry after thirty-three years that you just up and leave me, just leave our marriage after thirty-three years.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know if marriage is the right analogy.

• 2:47Speaker 02

  But, in the, independent of debating that particular...

• 2:53Speaker 02

  We did, we did part of the term.

• 2:55Chuck Nice?

  Excellent.

• 2:57Speaker 02

  In fact, I'm an emeritus professor there, and as an emeritus professor, I have taught, uh, two consecutive years' courses on public policy.

• 3:06Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Evening courses, yep, so I'm on good terms.

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so if I remember correctly, you were on Obama's, um, advisory council for science and technology, right?

• 3:17Speaker 02

  That's exactly right, Neil, uh, served seven years on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, PCAS, the acronym.

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  PCAS, that's right, that's right. So, um, but you were, in the current administration, they, they didn't invite you to back in there, huh?

• 3:32Speaker 02

  I thought we were gonna try to keep...

• 3:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I just want... All right.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Up and up here.

• 3:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll leave it at that, so also...

• 3:41Chuck Nice?

  That's all right, I, I was invited to be on this current administration's advisory council on writing jokes about technology.

• 3:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. Um, so if you're director of the center, that's not necessarily an academic title, that's, that's a job title, so you're also professor of physics?

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Indeed, I, I'm a, an endowed professor here at Brown University, the endowment is before, uh, I'm the so-called Ford Professor of Physics. I'm also an affiliate mathematics, uh, professor, and on top of that, I'm a faculty fellow at the Watson... Institute for Public Affairs and International Affairs.

• 4:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, excellent, excellent, okay.

• 4:20Chuck Nice?

  Nice stuff.

• 4:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you'd like, we should, we should bring you back for seven other excuses. Seven other reasons. Forget the theoretical physics. We've got some policy we got to figure out here.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what we're going to do is, we're going to structure this program. We're going to spend the first segment just, you know, talking about why was Einstein proved right? Or why did he need to be proved right? And then we'll go to Q and A. We go to, go to our cosmic queries. And Chuck, you got cosmic queries for section two and three?

• 4:47Chuck Nice?

  I have the questions right here, and I have to say, these are some, man, people are excited that you're here, Professor. They are excited that you're here.

• 4:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent.

• 4:56Chuck Nice?

  We've got some great questions.

• 4:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no one that triggers more questions than Einstein and relativity. And we've got the man for it.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Well, I would say Einstein, relativity, and Tyson.

• 5:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what?

• 5:06Speaker 02

  And Tyson.

• 5:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay, right on.

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so Jim, you published a book in 2019 called Proving Einstein Right? And let me get the full title, The Daring Expeditions That Changed How We Look at the Universe.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And do you have a co-author who was there?

• 5:25Speaker 02

  I do have a wonderful co-author. Her name is Kathy Pelletier. She lives in Alagash, Maine, which is just right across walking to Canada. And this book is not what people expected. Usually, you know, Neil, your first book, as I recall, was partly autobiographical, right?

• 5:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that was one of my first, my, my, uh, fourth book, yeah.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Okay, fourth. So what I wanted to do with this was to do something I had never seen done before with physicists. Usually, people talk about the wonder and the majesty of looking at nature and the struggle and what have you. But what I wanted to do, and I had wanted to do this for a decade, is to write a book about the interior lives of the people who do the science. And so this book is actually dedicated to eight astronomers and Albert Einstein. And we, yes, we tell the scientific story, but what we really want to do is get inside of their heads and tell the story of what they were feeling as they went through this almost decade-long struggle. So the book surprises people.

• 6:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the book is published in 2019, and if I remember my history, that's basically the centennial of this big experiment that showed that Einstein was right.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But let me back up a little bit. So, most people, I mean physicists, know Einstein for both, for many things, of course, but for special relativity and general relativity. I think, often when people think of Einstein, they think of the effects of sort of ordinary relativity, like time dilation and this sort of thing. So that would all happen in 1905.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  That's correct.

• 7:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So why, if that's all happened and it worked and it was, you know, it was smoking effective at explaining our understanding of the universe, why didn't everybody say, "Yeah, Einstein is the man"? Why did it have to wait another 10 years for them to prove some other thing that he did?

• 7:20Speaker 02

  So let me talk about Einstein in 1905, and thank you for giving me this opening. As you know, Neil, in 2005, there was this so-called Einstein Year of Physics, and there were celebrations all over the world. I gave 37 talks on six continents on Einstein in that year.

• 7:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I thought there were only five continents. No, I guess there were seven. I get my numbers confused.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you.

• 7:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You left out Antarctica. Yeah, okay.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Because that's the one I've never been to.

• 7:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The penguins will welcome you with open arms.

• 7:51Chuck Nice?

  And happy feet, yes.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  But the point was, yes, you're right, Neil. In 1905, he came up with some amazing things about space and time and how they bend and warp and what have you. But do you know that in 1907, he was still in the patent office? People think that as soon as he came up with his wonderful theories, the world beat a path to his door, saying, "Josea, Josea", you know, whatever. But no, no, no, that's not what happened.

• 8:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Hosanna. No, wait, Jose.

• 8:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Jose is the prophet, but Hosanna is the praise, but we knew what you meant.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  Well, this is what happens when you go off-script, guys. But anyhow.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  No, no, but you're right. But the point was that he did this great piece of work, but it took two years for the physics community to recognize what he had done. Well, he was in that patent office still trying to figure out how to get a job as a physics professor. He looked out the window one day and he saw some workmen on a roof. And he had this sort of story coming to him that if the guy, one of the guys fell, he wouldn't feel his weight. And so that started Einstein thinking about gravity.

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's thinking of the death of someone working on a roof next door. I did not know this.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Well, not the actual death, but the process that would lead to it.

• 9:09Chuck Nice?

  Just, just his fault, an imminent death.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. That's just an imminent fall.

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I did know Einstein had this morbid side of him.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Yes, and so.

• 9:18Chuck Nice?

  However, let me just say, I totally get it because I think about the death of the guy that blows that leaf blower outside my bedroom window every Saturday morning, so.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  And so Einstein started thinking about gravity and I, so this is like, in fact, he calls this the happiest thought of his life.

• 9:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so, so wait, so Jim, this is like Newton's apple moment.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He sees the apple falling and then he sees the moon and then there's a, there's a, there's a eureka moment in there.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  And that's what happened with Einstein in 1907. So the thing is curious about Einstein is although people think about him as this mathematical genius, every time he did something, he actually had to learn more mathematics. So he didn't actually have the mathematics to realize what his intuition was. And he didn't get it right until 1915 or 16.

• 10:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, Jim, that happens to me all the time. I have thoughts, I have to invent new math to, you know, that's just a, that's just a thing.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  Well, you know, some of us actually do that, Neil.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  That's, that's a whole, that's another whole story and I'll tell you about that one later.

• 10:26Speaker 02

  But anyhow, so he had this idea that took him almost a decade to get it down to the mathematics. And when he finished it, it was the theory of general relativity. It's the piece of thing that tells us that there was a big bang. It's the piece of mathematics that lets us know we live in a universe that is 13.8 billion years old. And so that came from that 1917 epiphany.

• 10:51Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 10:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, no, I mean 1907.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  1907.

• 10:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right.

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Now, now, remember, it's all math. It's all math. So if it's all math, how do you know he got it right?

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, just because the math works doesn't mean it has to correspond to any objective reality.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  Exactly. And so, when he finally gets his discussion together, in fact, even before he gets the right answer, he starts talking about it. He starts giving talks about it. And so, very early on, astronomers realize, well, he realizes first, that astronomers would be critical to try to prove that his math is actually, as you said, Neil, something that happens in the real world. And he begins it by talking to this German astronomer named Erwin Finlay-Foinlich.

• 11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'd never heard of the guy.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  No one's ever heard of the guy.

• 11:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I'd ever met someone named Irving Finlay-Foinlich,

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'd remember that, I'm pretty sure.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Well, I have sent, for your program, I've sent some photographs of all the people that we're talking about. That's the first guy that Einstein starts talking to seriously as, you know, I have a way to prove my math. And he first starts saying, if you look at starlights, could you show that starlight bends when it passes near Jupiter? And the astronomer says, you know, nah, that doesn't quite work. Then he starts asking questions about, but suppose we were looking at the night sky in the morning, or early morning or late afternoon, could we see bending starlight around perhaps Venus or something? The guy says, you know, the astronomers go back, nah, nah, that won't work. And so, finally, by this set of discussions with Finlay, he hits upon the idea that if you could watch starlight during an eclipse,

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 12:39Speaker 02

  You might be able to see the light being bent by the sun.

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you can't otherwise see a star in broad daylight.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Exactly. So, you know, it's very special circumstance. And so, that's the race.

• 12:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, this bending of starlight would have been the first experimental verification of his general theory of relativity?

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 13:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, okay, and so, now, so what year did that happen? Was that conversation?

• 13:06Speaker 02

  This is, these conversations around 1912 or so, that he starts telling other people about these ideas.

• 13:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and that's how you get the creativity of other people to help you figure out how to make it work.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Bingo, and that's what our book is about, is about the other people, it's not really about Einstein.

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what's all this we hear about his wife possibly being a big engine to his creativity?

• 13:28Speaker 02

  A lot of people have, well, there's this one book, Einstein's Wife, I think is the title. There are a lot of people who have posited that as, as having been important. But from my reading of the history, she was certainly his partner as he was working through, in Bern as a poor patent examiner, trying to do physics. She was certainly a partner that he-

• 13:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Bern, this city in Germany?

• 13:54Speaker 02

  This city in Switzerland.

• 13:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, Switzerland, excuse me, right, right.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  He was, so she certainly was his partner there. But in the actual settling of the special theory of relativity from, and I've, I've read over a dozen books trying to get this straight in my own head. The preponderance of evidence is that he worked it out with a friend of his on a train, on a tram ride, thinking about the clock tower in the city of Bern. So, I mean, it's a fantastic story. So I-

• 14:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What you're saying here, Jim, is had Einstein been a loner and not traveled anywhere, he wouldn't have come up with any of his ideas.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  That's actually true.

• 14:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How much life exposure is the right amount to fully realize your, your, your creativity that can be expressed?

• 14:46Speaker 02

  I tell people all the time that being a scientist means that you swim in a sea of information, and that information comes from your colleagues. And so you cannot be, I, I mean, I know the archetype and stereotyped view is that as a scientist, you go off in the corner and you sort of think big thoughts. But that's not what actually happens. I've lived this life for almost, for over 30 years, and you are constantly in conversation with your colleagues. And you use them to hone and to refine your thoughts and distill your thoughts and curate your thoughts.

• 15:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Jim, the, the active word there is that you are swimming in these influences, not drowning in the influence. I was gonna say, yeah.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that's where, that's why we're, with Kathy Pelletier, we wanted to talk about these people that basically were using what Einstein inspired them to do, but to swim towards this discovery of whether his math was an accurate description of nature.

• 15:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Do you think Einstein had any doubts about whether- It was all true?

• 15:54Speaker 02

  From my reading, no. He sort of says, you know, he sort of says things like, if the theory of general relativity had failed to receive experimental and observation support, that he would have felt sorry for the good Lord.

• 16:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that was a really brilliant idea.

• 16:14Chuck Nice?

  Which is, which is kind of say, a kind of way of saying like, I'm smarter than God, so.

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It definitely says that.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  No, it doesn't.

• 16:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, Jim, Jim, you're lying, Jim.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  No, I'm not lying.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  If you read a lot about Einstein, you find out he's a very, very complicated character. And with, and Chuck, since you brought up the issue of God.

• 16:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  And you did bring it up.

• 16:38Chuck Nice?

  I did, yeah. I mean, to me, when somebody says that statement, it kind of sounds like, you know, I'm smarter than God.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  No, no, but you see, Einstein, although you can interpret that statement that way, that's not really what Einstein felt, because in fact, he talks also about the illimitable spirit. That is a spirit without limits. So it's clear that if you can use a phrase like that, you're not putting yourself above such an entity.

• 17:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 17:08Chuck Nice?

  All right, that's a very good point.

• 17:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He didn't use that phrase in that sentence, though, but okay.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Not in that sentence.

• 17:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In that moment, he felt badass, is all I'm saying.

• 17:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not, yeah.

• 17:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it, because it is, you know, Jim, before we go into the second segment and solicit our, our cosmic queries, just give me a minute or two, I know it should be hours or two, but give me a minute or two on the idea that math is just something we invented as humans.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it, and it works. What's up with that? There's no reason that it should work at all.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  You know, Neil, this is one of the most. This is the only piece of magic that I've ever experienced and seen in reality.

• 17:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'd love that. I'd love that. It's magic.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  It's a piece of magic, but it happens to be a part of our reality. I don't know of any other form of magic for which I can say this.

• 18:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is human-created magic. We create something and it magically describes reality. And enables you to predict and understand and extend.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  It acts like a third eye for those of us who are scientists. It lets us see things that are not seeable otherwise. I was, I made a presentation at the New York Academy of Sciences about three years ago, two years ago, and it's precisely on this point of the magic ability of mathematics. It's an hour-long interview, so I'm not going to bore you with it, but I would...

• 18:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, is it on YouTube or something?

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's available on YouTube.

• 18:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, forgive me, I'll go find it. I'm gonna find it. Okay, the New York Academy of Sciences, a long-venerated institution.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Absolutely, and I was there with Margaret Worktime, and we discussed this magical thing, this thing about mathematics. And at the end of the day, what I, one of the things I said about it is that mathematics, as people like me use it, it's the only human language that we know accurately allows us to describe nature. However, other conscious, any other conscious being that could produce mathematics will have access to this knowledge.

• 19:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So hence the idea that if we meet up with aliens, we might start with this symbolic representation of what is and is not.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 19:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And math could be the only way we can prevent ourselves from getting our brains sucked out by the evil ways.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Many of us think that that's right.

• 19:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when we come back, more of this edition of StarTalk, where we're talking about proving Einstein right. And we're gonna go straight to our Cosmic Queries version of that when we return.

• 20:02Speaker 03

  I'm Joel Cherico and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 20:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk, proving Einstein right. Ooh. Chuck, thanks for being there, as always.

• 20:28Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure, always a pleasure.

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we got Sylvester "Jim" Gates, a longtime friend and colleague, who's an Einstein expert, a theoretical physics expert. He's all the kind of expert you need for this.

• 20:42Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 20:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For this incarnation of StarTalk. And we're going to devote this segment to cosmic queries. Jim, your presence on our show was announced to our fanbase, and they got completely excited by this prospect.

• 20:57Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 20:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I have 5%, no, I have 3% overlap with Jim's expertise in the subject. So, if I can find a 3% way to add, I will. But basically, this is all going to Jim. So, Chuck.

• 21:11Chuck Nice?

  Excellent.

• 21:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do it.

• 21:13Chuck Nice?

  Not that it needs to be said, but I have 0% overlap with Jim, which is why I'm reading the question. So, here we go.

• 21:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 21:24Chuck Nice?

  Let's start, you know what? Before we start, let me just quickly, can you, Professor, give us a quick breakdown between the special and the general? When it comes to relatively? I think that might be a nice framework for anybody who didn't ask a question to be a part.

• 21:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Thank you, Chuck. So, let me start with special, because it's simpler. You know, if you were standing by a road, and there was a car that was speeding towards you with its horn blaring, what would you actually hear? It would go something like, "Ooh."

• 21:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Right, because you would hear that dip in the tone.

• 22:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It sounded like you were dying.

• 22:04Chuck Nice?

  I was going to say, uh, yeah.

• 22:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I could do better than that. Here you go, ready?

• 22:07Chuck Nice?

  "Mew."

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Okay, so we'll go with-

• 22:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's work with that, nothing's dying.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  We'll work with the cat sound.

• 22:16Chuck Nice?

  By the way, in his spare time, Neil does sound effects for Warner Brothers.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  I can see. And so, but so the point is, that effect is because sound changes its frequency if you're, if it's moving towards you, that's when it's high pitched. Or, but if it's moving away from you, this pitch goes down.

• 22:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Exactly. So, so the, so the point is, so the point is, light actually does the same thing. When a light source is coming towards you, it appears to be bluer than it actually is. When it's moving away from you, it is appearing to be redder. And that is one of the primary effects of special relativity. It's about the relative motion of you and the source of the light. In my car analogy, it's this motion of the car either towards or with you. So that's what special relativity is all about is if I'm moving and you're not, how do I perceive things? How do you perceive things? That's the simplest, that's my five minute class on special relativity.

• 23:20Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  We good?

• 23:21Chuck Nice?

  And so, and then-

• 23:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No general, no general relativity.

• 23:23Chuck Nice?

  And you juxtapose that against the general and the distribution of mass and all that stuff.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  So the general theory of relativity is something very, very, very different. And what the general theory of relativity is about is, what is gravity? You see, in the special relativity, Einstein wasn't thinking about gravity. He was just thinking about how things would look if I'm moving. But in the general theory of relativity, theory of relativity, the question is, what actually is gravity? It's a very deep question that even Sir Isaac Newton didn't get the answer to. And the answer that Einstein teaches us through his mathematical wizardry is that gravity is the space which we move through and time which we experience durations in.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Our combines this like thing he called spacetime and gravity is the bending of this thing. So that's my short course of general relativity.

• 24:21Chuck Nice?

  Cool. There you go. All right. That was great. That was great. Okay, let's go to Izzy Rohr, who says, Izzy Rohr, Neil, Chuck, Jim, this is your friend Violetta, the astrophysics-loving kid here in Birmingham, Alabama. My mom, oh, you know her? Okay, cool.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  We've been in contact.

• 24:37Chuck Nice?

  Excellent. My mom and I have many discussions, have had many discussions about this. Scientists like to describe Einstein's general relativity as being incompatible with quantum mechanics. They say things like they mathematically don't work out or don't work together. So our question is, why the heck is that?

• 25:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, Jim. Yeah. What's up with that?

• 25:04Speaker 02

  Okay, so let me, give me a second here because I got to phrase this without the mathematics. So the idea-

• 25:12Chuck Nice?

  That is so funny, by the way. Okay, let me just say, that may have been the most physics thing I've heard in a very long time. I've, I've got to figure out a way to say this without the mathematics.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Well, you see, I don't know if you-

• 25:29Chuck Nice?

  It's like, I'm sorry, me no speak English, me speak mathematics.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  Well, Chuck, you, Chuck, you may not know this, but Neil can tell you this. Often at the end of my email messages, I ask forgiveness for spelling and punctuation errors because my first language is mathematics.

• 25:48Chuck Nice?

  Ooh. Oh, snap.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  English is my second language. So I'm at a disability when people ask me to talk.

• 25:58Chuck Nice?

  Listen, I've never heard a person admit a fault that makes you better than most people.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  I don't know about that, but it causes me difficulties, Chuck, on many, many occasions.

• 26:15Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Okay, but, okay, but-

• 26:17Chuck Nice?

  Back to quantum.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Back to quantum. Okay, so what essentially happens is-

• 26:24Speaker 02

  If you believe the universe is quantum mechanical, then it forces you to forget about things like electrons. Because electrons, we think about as little tiny balls. That's the classical picture that you're taught. And in fact, quantum mechanics says, no, that's not the way it works for electrons. You have to think of these things that are more like waves, except when they act like particles. So that's the first thing quantum. It gives you this really weird thing that you have to give up an idea, except sometimes, right?

• 26:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Okay, so now when you, so there's a piece of mathematics around this called Schrodinger's equation. So I gotta bring that in. And it tells you how to calculate.

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're gonna bring up Schrodinger, you can't leave out his cat. So just keep going.

• 27:04Chuck Nice?

  Or that litter box which hasn't been changed in God knows how long. Schrodinger's litter box. That's what I'm about, Schrodinger's litter box.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  We can also go back to Neil's, uh, Neil's rendition of a car horn as it approaches you. Meow. But anyhow, uh, so you have a piece of mathematics around giving up the idea of particles. And when you now give that piece of mathematics up and try to do gravity, you find out you just get into a total mess that you cannot calculate answers anymore that take into account the quantum behavior. And that's the mess.

• 27:42Chuck Nice?

  So that's the, that's the disconnect there is that Schrodinger's equation, once you remove anything, does, none of the gravity stuff works.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Because the way that Einstein and Newton and all those folks thought about gravity has the idea of particles embedded in it. That's the problem.

• 27:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, right, so, all right, so, uh, who's, at the end of the day, who's gotta give? Is it, is, is gravity gonna bend to quantum physics?

• 28:08Chuck Nice?

  I see what you did there. I, I saw what you did there, Neil.

• 28:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With the gravity bends, yeah.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Oh, you know, Neil, this is actually a very deep question.

• 28:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or is there a third idea bigger than both of those that then encloses them under one umbrella?

• 28:26Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  There are variants of all, of everything that you've just said. There, well, first of all, who's gonna bend? There are people who will tell you that gravity is gonna be one that loses this discussion.

• 28:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I had to bet, I'd lean that way, too.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, and there are a lot of people who believe that that somehow gravity is going to have to give way in some manner. There are other people who have this third idea approach that you were talking about, Neil, and one of those, and sort of emblematic of that is a discussion that's underway about information and black holes. I know Neil is probably aware of this, but there's this whole discussion about whether information is conserved, like we say, energy is conserved, is information conserved? And if you have a universe with black holes, doesn't that mean that some of the energy disappear, I mean, some of the information disappears? And then you violate a conservation law? So there's a whole big discussion in theoretical physics that's been underway for over a decade about black holes and information.

• 29:25Chuck Nice?

  All right, so when you talk about information, are you referring to, because we just talked about this last week, give me one second, please, that when Neil was talking about virtual particles and the evaporation of a black hole, and if I'm not mistaken, then this particle actually materializes on the outside of the black hole, and then that is what escapes? And so then, if that were to happen, are you saying that that somehow messes up this whole idea of the conservation of information?

• 29:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you were really paying attention in that episode.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  It does seem like it.

• 29:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, Chuck.

• 29:59Chuck Nice?

  Neil, why you think I do this job, man? I'm getting a free education.

• 30:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn, Chuck.

• 30:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, okay, so that's what, okay, that's.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  So, but the point is that it's in a state of flux. We don't know what the final solution is gonna be. But many people like me actually think that string theory will have something to do with the resolution.

• 30:22Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the string people think this?

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Well, it's not just string people, I think. I don't consider myself a string person, for example. I am someone who's spent their life working on supersymmetry, and strings happen to intersect that.

• 30:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay, well, I consider myself a string cheese person, so.

• 30:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  String cheese, yes.

• 30:40Chuck Nice?

  That's about as close as I'm getting to it. All right, cool.

• 30:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, go on, next one.

• 30:44Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. This is Paul Vogel, who says, "Recently, between the detection of gravitational waves and a photo of an event horizon of a black hole, some significant predictions made by Einstein's general relativity have been verified." What's the next big prediction made by general relativity that scientists are testing? Thank you.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  So that's a great question, and it's a great question, and the answer is the following. In 1905, Einstein wrote four papers. Among those four papers is one that points out that energy has to be quantized. Now, we know that Einstein doesn't like quantum theory, but in fact, he's one of the fathers of quantum theory because of this 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect.

• 31:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, he didn't like it because he didn't think the universe should be probabilistic.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. He wanted determinism, as it's called, whereas quantum mechanics says, no, you can't have determinism. You have to go with probabilities. So the answer to your question, Chuck, is now that we have seen waves of gravity, we want to see the quantization of the energy carried by those waves. Because when we do that, we will have the Star Trek graviton

• 32:05Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  in our universe.

• 32:08Chuck Nice?

  So the same way we know light has a particle, are you saying that gravity has a particle? Or, wait a minute, it would have to be that we find this gravity particle?

• 32:18Speaker 02

  That's correct. That's the next big prediction that we want to find from the kind of experiments watching gravitons. You want to be able to see the quantization of the energy that the gravity waves hold. That tells you that gravitons, just like you hear in Star Trek, you know, all this talk about graviton waves. At that point, it is no longer science fiction. It's a piece of science.

• 32:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Chuck, just to follow your line, so a photon is a particle of light, but you can also speak of light as waves.

• 32:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So that is a proper analogy. We've measured gravitational waves. Now we want to measure the gravitational particle.

• 32:56Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God.

• 32:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have a photon, then you have the graviton. So I don't know any experiments out there to measure a graviton. Is there something in the works?

• 33:04Speaker 02

  No, nothing to my knowledge, Neil. I don't know. Anyone who's, this is gonna have to be an exquisite experiment. And we're just at the stage of just being able to see the gravity waves. So, you know, is it 50 years, is it 100 years? I don't know. But as our technology improves, someone is eventually gonna figure out how to do that detection. And then we can stop saying that Captain Kirk is the only, only guy who gets to talk about gravitons.

• 33:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if, just a quick question. If we have gravitons, then gravity being the curvature of space and time has no meaning in the presence of a graviton?

• 33:43Speaker 02

  Ah, you're following along here. For a lot of people, the detection of a graviton will likely necessitate a real rethinking of what, of what gravity is. I've already, I mean, some of us already are there. I don't actually think about gravity in terms of geometry. It's field theory. That's the tool for people like us.

• 34:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So what you're saying is Einstein's curved space happens to be a convenience in certain, under certain situations that gets you the right answer?

• 34:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 34:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're good with that, but it's not the total story?

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 34:17Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 34:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 34:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Yeah, that is.

• 34:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just let, let the record show, Chuck, that Jim Gates just said Einstein had his head up his ass.

• 34:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He just said that, just to make it clear.

• 34:33Chuck Nice?

  That's funny. Okay. James is like, I'm not saying that.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  I'm not saying that.

• 34:39Chuck Nice?

  I didn't say that. I'm not saying that.

• 34:43Chuck Nice?

  It was like, send your letters to Neil.

• 34:48Chuck Nice?

  The professor's like, send your letters to Neil, because I did not say that. Okay.

• 34:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, we gotta, we gotta take a break. And when we come back, we'll go our, through our third and final segment of Cosmic Queries, proving Einstein right on Star Trek.

• 35:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk. Proving Einstein right. And Chuck is helping me, you know, in his, because he's, you're a big fan of special and general relativity, aren't you Chuck?

• 35:40Chuck Nice?

  Oh, without a doubt, are you kidding me? Come on, man.

• 35:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, of course, but of course.

• 35:47Chuck Nice?

  Some people like reality TV, I like rela-TV. Okay, that didn't work.

• 35:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that just so did not work. But anyhow, but you're on social media, what's your best place people can find you on social media?

• 36:01Chuck Nice?

  At Chuck Nice Comic, thank you, sir, appreciate that.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck Nice Comic, and you even have a, I stumbled on this, you never told me this, I stumbled on one of your, you have a TED Talk on technology and the future.

• 36:11Chuck Nice?

  I do, technology and the unintended consequences of human interactions.

• 36:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, or the absence of human interaction via technology. Yes, I stumbled on that, I'm angry with you for not telling me in advance about that, because I have to find that on my own. We've got Jim Gates, an expert in theoretical physics. Jim, do you have a social media platform?

• 36:30Speaker 02

  I do, it's Dr. Jim Gates. You can see, there's a Twitter version and a Facebook version.

• 36:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doctor, it's just D R, I presume?

• 36:39Speaker 02

  Yes, D R.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, all right, we'll find you there. And you've got this book, Proving Einstein Right.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And co-authored with Cathy Pelletier.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so we're continuing our cosmic queries. And just before we begin, and Chuck, before you read one in, Jim, you've got a background there that looks, it looks kind of spacey actually, but then not quite. Could you give us a minute on that?

• 37:04Speaker 02

  Sure, so I'm in the odd position, Neil, where it looks like both of my twin children are going to become physicists. So this is, you know, this is not something I set out to do, but...

• 37:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, right, yeah. Keep telling yourself that, okay?

• 37:19Speaker 02

  So my daughter works on a black hole. And so she's actually actually started publishing and I actually had a chance to watch her give a talk this week. So, you know, big props to my daughter. Her name is Delilah. But I also got to give big props to my son. Uh, the background that you're looking at, these green little splotches are artificial neurons that he's been growing in the laboratory because it looks like he's going to be a bio physicist.

• 37:43Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 37:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay Chuck, he's, he's, he's creating the next generation superhero or superhero villain.

• 37:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, without a doubt.

• 37:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The black holes and growing neurons. That's it. That's it, right there.

• 37:55Chuck Nice?

  The daughter will harness the power of the black hole and the son will imbue some, some being with that, with that power to rule the world.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  Have you ever heard of, have you ever worried about dark side?

• 38:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The dark side. There it is. There it is.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Who knows?

• 38:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jim is breeding the dark side. So this, so this, is it an actual photo or it looks like artwork?

• 38:18Speaker 02

  No, no, it looks like art. This is actual photo of, uh, some of the first successful cell lines that he's been growing that where you can see the evidence that they're developing a ganglia like a real brain.

• 38:29Chuck Nice?

  Sweet, man. Wow, that's amazing.

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll watch that space.

• 38:33Chuck Nice?

  That's so important. Okay, cool.

• 38:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let's get to the next question, Chuck.

• 38:37Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, big brain stuff going on in that family. All right, here we go. Let's, um, let's go to, uh, let's go to Lisa Hansen. And she says, hello to you all from the Bay Area. String theories are so involved and fascinating. I love trying to wrap my brain around them. I'm wondering what, if any, other scientific disciplines are involved in the research for as evidence and proof of these theories, what those clues might be?

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Well.

• 39:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, clues in this real universe, Jim, and not an imagined one.

• 39:12Chuck Nice?

  I know he was gonna say.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  It's very interesting that that question came up because. Just last summer, I did something for the first time in my life. Because I tell people, I exist at the boundary of mathematics and physics. So I'm a fallen mathematician in some sense. But last summer, I published a paper along with my colleague Stefan Alexander here at Brown University, Evan McDonough, who was one of our postdocs, and my postdoc Konstantinos Koutoulikis, as well as our graduate student, Lea Jinks. And in this paper, we set out a premise that strings might be able to write structures,

• 39:57Speaker 02

  create structures that could potentially be observed in the cosmic microwave background. We call these structures Susy Reals. They're like these funny patterns. I hope people are familiar with the CMB. It's this microwave radiation that you can detect by looking out at the universe. And what we showed in our paper is if you take the ideas of string theory seriously, they have a way of writing a kind of signature in the structure. So what kind of science do you need? You need to be an astrophysicist, someone who could actually look in microwaves at how the universe gives us a perspective.

• 40:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Once again, it comes down to the astrophysicist.

• 40:36Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Of course, absolutely. I start, look.

• 40:40Chuck Nice?

  But now, wait.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Einstein needed astronomers.

• 40:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  String theory may well need astrophysicists.

• 40:47Chuck Nice?

  So that begs the question. In that collaboration, who was Batman and who was Robin?

• 40:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What? Just a quick thing, if I remember, Stefan Alexander, isn't he, he's the jazz musician, isn't that correct?

• 41:05Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. Stefan is a professional level jazz musician, although he is a physicist on faculty here at Brown University.

• 41:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I should have said that differently. He's also a jazz musician. So he wrote that book, The Jazz of Physics, or the Physics of Jazz, or something?

• 41:19Speaker 02

  The Jazz of Physics is his work.

• 41:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 41:21Chuck Nice?

  Right, cool, man. All right, great stuff. That's great stuff. Let's move on to Josh B., who says, who has more impressive mustache, Albert Einstein or Neil deGrasse Tyson?

• 41:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know, I gotta say, anytime I'm on, I gotta show up in a movie or in a documentary, and they put you in hair and makeup, you know, and so they do the makeup, fine. Then they get to the hair and they say, um, can we trim your eyebrows a little? And can we get some of the loose hairs out of your mustache? And I'm saying, wait, this is my Einstein look. You did not, you wanna be all trimmed and manscaped?

• 41:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, no. You need a wiry unkempt, just wild mustache.

• 41:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so what's with that look, Jim, that Einstein sported?

• 42:03Speaker 02

  So, I'm not sure what the question is.

• 42:09Chuck Nice?

  You know what? With, with that as the answer, we should just move on.

• 42:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We should just move on.

• 42:14Chuck Nice?

  That was hilarious. Let's just go to Sam O'Neill.

• 42:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 42:19Chuck Nice?

  Who says?

• 42:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wait, just about eight years ago, I just want you to know, I was nominated for the Mustache Hall of Fame. Just so you know. Just so you know.

• 42:27Chuck Nice?

  Right on.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, I'm gonna return that. I was once inducted into the Luxuriant Hair Association.

• 42:34Chuck Nice?

  Very nice.

• 42:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a thing?

• 42:35Speaker 02

  It was at the time.

• 42:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 42:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 42:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. This is from Sam O'Neill. He says, hey, Dr. Tyson, hey, Dr. Gates, what's up, Chuck? My question is, what do you theorize that the strings in superstring theory are made of? Love you guys, I would give you money, and I do. Samantha from Earth.

• 43:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From Earth, asshole.

• 43:01Chuck Nice?

  I love that.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  Well, my question is PayPal?

• 43:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we don't, we're, it's Patreon on this side of that.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  Oh, okay, okay, well, someone's gotta explain that to me, you know?

• 43:13Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 43:14Speaker 02

  Well.

• 43:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all you, Jim, so go for it.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So, the thing about string theory, which perhaps isn't completely understood, is that we don't think strings are made of anything. They are the fundamental thing, if it's a correct picture of the universe.

• 43:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They are the thing everything else is made of.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 43:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, therefore, you can't say what it's made of, because it is the thing that everything's made of.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  That's all we know.

• 43:39Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that-

• 43:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That feels like a cop-out.

• 43:41Chuck Nice?

  I was about to say, that's a little circular.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, but-

• 43:46Chuck Nice?

  That's slightly circular.

• 43:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A little, just a little.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  No, no, Chuck, you're right, but you see, one of the weird things about mathematics is that you have to take some things on faith. There's actually a mathematical theorem that says this. It's called the, uh, one of Göth's theorems. And so this is one of the really weird things about math that people do not appreciate.

• 44:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, Jim, be fair. It's not that you have to take it on faith, it's that you have to assert that it's true. And if you assert that it's true, then everything else works. It's an assertion, it's not, gee, I hope it's the- No, you just declare that it's true and then take everything from there. But you can't prove, you can't prove the thing that you assert that's true. That's not-

• 44:28Speaker 02

  And therefore it's an element of faith, Neil.

• 44:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't, I don't, I use faith in a different-

• 44:32Speaker 02

  I know, I know you do. We have to have another discussion about it.

• 44:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A whole faith, we'll get you, I said, we'll get you back seven other ways on this-

• 44:39Chuck Nice?

  Without a doubt.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  I'd love to talk to you.

• 44:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forget Einstein, we got other, other business to resolve here.

• 44:43Chuck Nice?

  If only George Michael were here to settle this debate. Okay. Sorry, pop culture reference, shouldn't have brought it in. Here we go.

• 44:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From 1987.

• 44:51Chuck Nice?

  I know, I know.

• 44:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn, Chuck.

• 44:54Chuck Nice?

  I can't help it.

• 44:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How old are you?

• 44:56Chuck Nice?

  I-

• 44:57Speaker 02

  He looks young, doesn't he, Neil?

• 44:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He does, he's just, he uses that oil of old age.

• 45:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, oh, it's just that oil of old age?

• 45:05Speaker 02

  That's not exactly what he said.

• 45:07Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I've never heard that before, I like that.

• 45:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I heard that from an old friend of mine, said that.

• 45:11Chuck Nice?

  Oil of old age, I like it. All right, here we go. Uh, this is Woody, he says, after seeing Neil's enthusiastic response, what are Jim's thoughts on a cosmic gravitational background? You just talked about the cosmic microwave background and string being able to be visible in that, what about a cosmic gravitational background? Do you have any thoughts on it?

• 45:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This would be, this would be the paw print of the birth of the universe expressed in gravitational light.

• 45:38Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  Would be, and I don't see, I've never actually heard a scientific discussion of this, but that idea, it really seems well-grounded, that one could have ma- No, that if one could- I mean, look, the cosmic microwave background is an electromagnetic background. It's microwaves, right? Just like the microwaves you cook.

• 46:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's light.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  Right, it's a form of light.

• 46:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  But, uh, but a gravitational background, a gravitational signature from the Big Bang? I don't see any reason why that's not possible. I've not heard of any scientific discussions of the concept.

• 46:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so part of why the, the cosmic microwave background is so useful to us, not only that it exists, but we have a map, a very detailed map of its structure. And right now, when we're detecting gravitational waves, oh, something happened, we think, over in that direction of the sky. You know, we don't, we have nowhere near the, the mapping precision to possibly do anything interesting yet. And I don't know when it would come.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Oh, I would give us about 20 to 30 years because what, in order to do what you're saying, Neil, first of all, we have to get a sufficient number of gravity wave detectors. Right now, there are about four in the world that are, one, there's one, for example, in Europe, there's one in, uh, Australia, and there are two in the US. So that's the minimum number you need to do the mapping. And they're not all sort of, uh, fully functional, so we got some time.

• 47:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and then you need, then you want to get, uh, gravitational waves of different wavelengths.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  That's.

• 47:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not just this one that came through. Get the whole spectrum, if I can borrow that word from light. And then you have this two dimensions of information.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 47:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To interpret. So, yeah, so, yeah, so we're not there yet, but if we were there, it would tell us a whole lot about the very first moments of the.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  Exactly. And that's where science is pushing toward.

• 47:29Chuck Nice?

  Cool. That is super, super cool. All right, Roman Prekop or Precop says this, "Is it possible that some of the stars observed in the night sky are duplicated or multiply duplicated due to light bending and gravitational fields of a massive object like super, like some super black hole?"

• 47:52Speaker 02

  I should let Neil.

• 47:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I could, I could take that.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Thank you, go ahead, Neil.

• 47:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I could take that one. So the answer is yes. Uh, next, next question.

• 48:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so what happens is that the way this unfolds. By the way, Einstein first predicted that you could make a ring. We call Einstein ring where the light would bend symmetrically in all directions around a single object and create a ring of light from that single object from behind. It turns out that's not realistic because that that requires exact lineup.

• 48:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that there's a perfect geometry of all sightlines that go around it. Most things don't line up exactly, but when we do find them sort of line up, even if not exactly, you find distortions that resemble rings. They're arcs.

• 48:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't make a full ring, but they make arcs. Now, if you have one object behind, that object will make a minimum of three images. One that comes straight through and then two that come around the side. And up from there, it can make three, five, or seven images. So, yes. In fact, when it's just something cool, it's something cool. You ready? Ready? Okay. So, we found, we found objects, quasars, whose light bent around gravity, uh, uh, galaxy clusters that were sort of midway.

• 49:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the, from Einstein's gravity. And, but the path lengths were not the same. Okay, so this, this, the path on one side is a little longer than the path on the other. And you know how we know? Because quasars vary. They have explosions. The, the light varies. So we see it and it varies up here. And then a scheduled time later, it varies over in exactly the same way. So you get to see the same event twice.

• 49:37Chuck Nice?

  That's because of the change in intensity of light due to the explosion? Is that what's happening?

• 49:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, there are things, yeah, the quasars can eat things episodically. A lot of weird things, episodic things that can happen in quasars. But the fact that you have two different path lengths is extraordinary. Testing of the shape of the curvature of space and how much gravity is in the cluster and how far away the quasar is. So it's an amazing, it's an amazing thing.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  So it's funny, it's funny to me that you've come back to this because this is what my daughter works on. We talked about the cells behind me, but you, but when you have rings of matter around rotating black holes.

• 50:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, he's just giving equal time here.

• 50:14Chuck Nice?

  I know.

• 50:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because he didn't want to pick his children.

• 50:16Chuck Nice?

  He's a good dad.

• 50:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's a good dad, good dad. Go on, good dad.

• 50:19Speaker 02

  You know, so, but when you have rings of matter that glow around spinning black holes, you can actually see their backside, the ring, because the gravity bends the light from the growing light. That's what my daughter works on.

• 50:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's, that's very cool, man.

• 50:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One, one last quick one, and we'll, uh, and we gotta call, we, we, we're over time.

• 50:37Chuck Nice?

  We'll be done with it. Okay.

• 50:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Chuck, go ahead.

• 50:39Chuck Nice?

  Uh, this is from Glenn. He says, Dr. Gates, do you think that white holes exist? Was Einstein observing gave, uh, what was Einstein observing that gave him the impression that they did? All right. Now I'm just going to answer this for you. No, there are no white holes. Einstein was racist like everybody else back at that time and just couldn't let it be just black.

• 51:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Started off Chuck.

• 51:06Chuck Nice?

  Couldn't just let it be a black hole, could you? Okay. Yeah. So, no, of course.

• 51:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck got it right off his chest.

• 51:12Chuck Nice?

  You know what? I love, here's what I love about the professor. He's sitting there like, I have nothing to do with this.

• 51:19Chuck Nice?

  Whatever Chuck is saying right now, that's his crazy business.

• 51:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I only just met Chuck.

• 51:23Chuck Nice?

  I don't know this man.

• 51:27Chuck Nice?

  All right, go ahead. Sorry.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  Okay, so what's.

• 51:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, make it quick, Jim.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, so what's really quick, what's really interesting is that black holes aren't black. It turns out that because of Stephen Hawking, we know that they actually had this very slight radiation called Hawking radiation. So they're not exactly black. That went out a long time ago. So, you know, got to keep up with the news and physics.

• 51:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but the white hole concept.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  The white hole concept, I, I.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  People who, look, I don't know any solid scientific arguments about the existence of such things. I have not encountered.

• 52:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And plus, we don't see anything in the universe that would resemble what a white hole would be predicted to be, which would be the mathematical opposite of a black hole, right? So everything is spewing out, and that should look like something in the signature of light.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  Be something spectacular. We don't see it.

• 52:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. But we really gotta cut it there. Jim, okay, we gotta get you back for nine other subjects.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  That's okay, Neil. I'm game.

• 52:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got you on the Rolodex.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  I got game.

• 52:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. And we'll get a picture from your other child's, your twin child behind you on the next program.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Okay. Black holes, man. Black holes.

• 52:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, always good to have you. Always a pleasure. All right. This has been StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always. Keep looking up.