Cosmic Queries – Total Darkness

Are all the galaxies orbiting a superstructure in the middle of the universe? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice are reaching into the grab bag to cover questions from absolute zero to the nature of gravity, and much much more.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, we just rolled out another Grab Bag Cosmic Queries.

• 0:02Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 0:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And people grabbed all parts of the bag on that one. Black holes, personal questions about me.

• 0:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And my telescope.

• 0:10Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's up with that?

• 0:11Chuck Nice?

  We got it all.

• 0:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll come it up on StarTalk.

• 0:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, Chuck Nice over here.

• 0:36Chuck Nice?

  What's up?

• 0:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. We're gonna do another Cosmic Query.

• 0:40Chuck Nice?

  A Grab a Bag.

• 0:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all we're doing lately, our Grab Bags.

• 0:44Chuck Nice?

  It's the fan favorite, man.

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like you close your eye, reach in the bin.

• 0:47Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 0:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And pull it out.

• 0:49Chuck Nice?

  Pull out a snake.

• 0:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I actually have a black hole bag over there. Did I ever show you that?

• 0:52Chuck Nice?

  Wait, I thought it was the black hole lunchbox.

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can I only have one black hole thing? Is this what you're?

• 0:59Chuck Nice?

  I know, who am I talking to?

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can show you. Wait, hey, I'm sorry.

• 1:01Chuck Nice?

  You might have shown me this a long time ago. This is a black hole bag. Oh, Lord, Lord Jesus.

• 1:10Chuck Nice?

  What the hell?

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a?

• 1:12Chuck Nice?

  What the?

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:15Chuck Nice?

  I love it. And then there's the eyes.

• 1:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no, I forgot what I put in here.

• 1:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 1:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I put a hole in here.

• 1:20Chuck Nice?

  You put a hole in the hole?

• 1:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. What a place to put a hole.

• 1:26Chuck Nice?

  Doesn't?

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't you remember the hole?

• 1:28Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I remember the hole now.

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You remember the hole? This is a hole.

• 1:31Chuck Nice?

  We did that whole thing where we cut the square. And then you could walk through it.

• 1:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What I said was like, here's a sheet of paper. I'm gonna cut a hole in this sheet of paper that you can walk through.

• 1:40Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 1:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you said, no.

• 1:42Chuck Nice?

  And I said, no, you can't.

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you can't.

• 1:43Chuck Nice?

  But you did.

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I still in here.

• 1:44Chuck Nice?

  That's a very cool thing.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 1:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, what you got for me?

• 1:47Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 1:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A Grab Bag.

• 1:49Chuck Nice?

  This is the Grab Bag, and I will pull it out of this black hole made by Apple Computers.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Galactic gumbo.

• 1:56Chuck Nice?

  The Galactic, Galactic gumbo.

• 2:00Chuck Nice?

  This is Dalton. Hey, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice, greetings from Huntsville, Alabama. I was watching an old-

• 2:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Huntsville Rocket City.

• 2:06Chuck Nice?

  Rocket City.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which Trump officially named. Well, by the way, it was always named Rocket City.

• 2:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then Trump decided to-

• 2:13Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna officially name it Rocket City, not to be confused with Little Rocket Man.

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why coming to New York is I'm gonna rename New York. The Big Apple.

• 2:25Chuck Nice?

  Which he would do that. Anyway, that's so funny. Uh, greetings from Huntsville, Alabama. I was watching an old explainer on absolute zero and why it's impossible to reach it. If it is impossible by quantum physics to have a particle become completely stationary, then would it not be possible to extract infinite energy from it in the form of heat? In doing so, violating the first and second laws of thermodynamics, it seems a bit paradoxical to never be able to reach absolute zero, since you seemingly can always have something colder. But that, I don't know why you would say you seemingly could have something colder.

• 3:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it's, he's, he's, what this is Dalton, he's merging a classical brain with a, a quantum brain.

• 3:15Chuck Nice?

  Brain, okay.

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. In terms of his, his, his interest in answering the question.

• 3:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, just let me talk you through this.

• 3:24Chuck Nice?

  Alright. Talk you off the ledge Dalton. It's gonna be okay.

• 3:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Talk you off the absolute zero ledge.

• 3:29Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, let me just remind people that there's no such thing as cold.

• 3:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't like put cold in something.

• 3:38Chuck Nice?

  That's where I was going when I said it's.

• 3:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you could do that.

• 3:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you can make something like infinitely cold.

• 3:43Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 3:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Add more cold.

• 3:44Chuck Nice?

  More cold.

• 3:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what we sense as cold is just the absence of heat.

• 3:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you start pulling heat out.

• 3:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is what your refrigerator does.

• 3:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It pulls heat out of your food.

• 3:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't think of it that way.

• 3:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You put in something that's room temperature, it takes the heat out.

• 3:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you take heat out of something, what happens to its temperature?

• 4:02Chuck Nice?

  It goes down.

• 4:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you take it out, where does that heat go?

• 4:06Chuck Nice?

  It's gotta go somewhere.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's gotta go somewhere. You ever go around back of a refrigerator?

• 4:09Chuck Nice?

  Goes out the back of your refrigerator.

• 4:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ever go around back?

• 4:11Chuck Nice?

  It's hot as hell back there.

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ever go around back?

• 4:13Chuck Nice?

  Uh, yeah.

• 4:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those coils are dissipating coils to, to send out the heat.

• 4:17Chuck Nice?

  Send out the heat.

• 4:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It not only radiates the heat, but it's in touch with air.

• 4:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the air will conduct heat away as well.

• 4:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. But this is a major issue with spacecraft.

• 4:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 4:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if you're in space and you have machines that generate heat.

• 4:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you get rid of the heat? You gotta dump the heat somehow.

• 4:33Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 4:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you can't just have. Well, you can have radiators, yes, but each radiator radiator has to be pointing away into space. They can't point to each other. You can't have a battery of radiators, right? Not a literal battery, but like An array, an alignment. An array of radiators that are like if they point to each other, nothing, it just feeds each other the same heat. I'll heat you, you heat me. Exactly. So they all have to face space, but it doesn't have the benefit of air whisking away the heat. It can only radiate it away. Whereas on Earth, you can release heat both ways. It can radiate away and you can you can convect air around it and it just takes it takes it away. Very efficient. Right.

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you have a medium such as an atmosphere to do that. Right. So Cool breeze. Yeah, a cool breeze will cool you down faster than just you radiating You're radiating it anyway, your whole heat. Okay, that is slightly different. The cool breeze is forcing your sweat to evaporate. Right. And the evaporation takes energy out of you. But so let's get back to the absolute zero. So I keep taking heat out and the temperature gets lower and lower and lower. You reach a point where quantum phenomena dominates and you can no longer use classical reasoning. This, by the way, Dalton was not alone in this in this intersection, this troubled paradoxical

• 6:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  intersection between classical physics and what we call modern physics. Okay. So you get down there and you try to take more heat out and you can't because the and by the way, taking heat out means that particles are moving slower and slower. Right. Okay. The heat is vibrational energy typically. Okay. So you take that out and there's a regime where

• 6:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The quantum fluctuations prevent it from ever stopping its motion. Alright.

• 6:34Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 6:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you're saying, let me, that means there's energy there.

• 6:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me pull that energy out.

• 6:40Chuck Nice?

  Let me pull that energy, let me utilize that energy.

• 6:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think, I'd have to confirm this with our cosmology trio.

• 6:46Chuck Nice?

  Brian and Brian and Jana.

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jana, Brian Cox, Brian Green, and Brian Cox, of course, is in the UK.

• 6:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But he comes through and he's a good friend.

• 6:54Chuck Nice?

  And then sometimes Sean.

• 6:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sean Carroll.

• 6:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh yeah, yeah, he's a good guy too. When we speak of zero-point energy of the vacuum of space.

• 7:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think that's what they're referring to. The energy below which you cannot go.

• 7:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause it's zero point, but it's not really zero.

• 7:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you try to get to zero, that's what you're stuck with. And that's quantum fluctuations. And you, you, I don't think you can extract energy out of that lowest energy fluctuation. Because it needs, to take energy out, you need a lower energy state to land on.

• 7:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you can't.

• 7:29Chuck Nice?

  Right, cause that's it.

• 7:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And who, who's that guest we had in another show? A biologist who said, "The universe is just electrons looking for a place to rest."

• 7:38Chuck Nice?

  That's it. Yeah, that was Bitul.

• 7:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bitul, yeah, Bitul, from University of Madison, Wisconsin.

• 7:44Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 7:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bitul.

• 7:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The universe, everything that happens in the universe is electron.

• 7:50Chuck Nice?

  Looking for a place to rest.

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Looking to hang its hat.

• 7:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 7:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so.

• 7:54Chuck Nice?

  Honey, I'm home.

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A hard day in the circuit.

• 8:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, but people are, imagine that you could tap the zero-point energy and make like rockets out of it and travel through space. And I don't have problems people imagining that. It doesn't seem likely to me though, based on what we know of the behavior of quantum physics.

• 8:21Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 8:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there you have it.

• 8:22Chuck Nice?

  Alright Dalton, way to go, brother.

• 8:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:23Chuck Nice?

  Uh, I hope that keeps you from, you know.

• 8:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Keep you on the ledge.

• 8:27Chuck Nice?

  From jumping off the ledge. Alright, this is Rachel Ambrose. Rachel says, Rachel here from Austin, Texas. Photons have to be literally. Everywhere all the time, even in a dark room. If I can see, then there's photons hitting my eyeballs. I feel like people don't talk about this enough. They are filling every inch of space all the time. They're everywhere. Furthermore, somehow photons from the big bang are still here right now in the form of cosmic microwave background radiation. Neil, can you please speak to this?

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. I think Muhammad Ali said it best. Okay.

• 9:09Chuck Nice?

  Hmm, I'm pretty. Hmm, that's right, Howard. Look at me, I'm pretty, Howard.

• 9:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Howard Cosell.

• 9:15Chuck Nice?

  Howard Cosell. I'm so fast. Hmm, I'm so fast. I turn off the lights and I'm in bed before the room get dark.

• 9:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the one I'm talking about.

• 9:23Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 9:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 9:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the one I'm talking about.

• 9:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 9:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he's, he knows that photons have to go, you know.

• 9:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he's thinking that dark is penetrating the room.

• 9:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But light is exiting the room.

• 9:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you turn off the light, there's no, the light gets absorbed and it's gone. That, your eyes are not the ultimate arbiter of whether there are photons in the room.

• 9:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because your eyes only see red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet.

• 9:50Chuck Nice?

  Roy G. Biv.

• 9:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, oh, sorry, indigo violet.

• 9:52Chuck Nice?

  Indigo violet.

• 9:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you gotta get the biv going there.

• 9:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 9:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, Isaac Newton put in the, the eye.

• 9:57Chuck Nice?

  Did he?

• 9:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Cause he was, he's fascinated, mystically fascinated by the number seven.

• 10:03Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 10:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A spectrum can't have six colors.

• 10:05Chuck Nice?

  Can't have six colors.

• 10:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta, but.

• 10:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Kind of animals.

• 10:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What a stupid universe would that be?

• 10:14Chuck Nice?

  Would that be? Throw some indigo in there. Yeah.

• 10:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but if he, if he got deeply religious, he could say, well, the universe was created in six days.

• 10:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, not seven days, six days.

• 10:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 10:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People forget, it was six days.

• 10:25Chuck Nice?

  Six days, seven day he rested.

• 10:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He rested.

• 10:27Chuck Nice?

  Which I'm just saying, what kind of God is this?

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He needs to take a break.

• 10:31Chuck Nice?

  God, God, me is so damn hard. Oh, me is hard.

• 10:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, me.

• 10:40Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my me.

• 10:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my me.

• 10:42Chuck Nice?

  It's so hard to make the universe. I need a rest. Oh, Lord, I can't do no more. Did I say Lord? Who am I talking to?

• 10:51Chuck Nice?

  Lord, me is hot in this. Oh, I'm so tired. Anyway. Okay.

• 11:00Chuck Nice?

  But.

• 11:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, I forgot what we were talking about.

• 11:02Chuck Nice?

  Photons everywhere.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so, anything that is at any temperature at all.

• 11:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is radiating photons.

• 11:10Chuck Nice?

  There you go, that's what I was gonna say, cuz if you're Predator, you see photons all the time.

• 11:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean the, the movie character?

• 11:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that, the little, yeah, the monster with the dreadlocks.

• 11:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, cuz he had dreads.

• 11:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He had dreadlocks.

• 11:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 11:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Predator.

• 11:22Chuck Nice?

  I didn't appreciate that.

• 11:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Could see in infrared.

• 11:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, now, you know what's interesting?

• 11:27Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 11:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a little fact.

• 11:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think about movies all the time.

• 11:30Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that was only cool because the infrared was the shadowy shape.

• 11:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That means he has low resolution infrared cameras.

• 11:42Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah.

• 11:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got better cameras than that today.

• 11:45Chuck Nice?

  We do.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  High resolution, you see the full person there. Depending on your temperature, it will determine what kind of light you're predominantly going to emit.

• 11:54Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 11:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, at our temperature, we emit primarily infrared, so we'll show up in infrared. We reflect visible light.

• 12:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we emit.

• 12:03Chuck Nice?

  Infrared.

• 12:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your walls are room temperature, so they'll emit a little less infrared.

• 12:10Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cuz they're not as warm as we are.

• 12:12Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 12:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You keep dropping the temperature. Uh, what's on the other side of infrared? Microwaves.

• 12:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 12:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then radio waves. So the colder it is, the further down the spectrum it shifts. So that when you're only three degrees Kelvin, three degrees above absolute, you're giving off microwave.

• 12:29Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 12:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's the cosmic microwave background.

• 12:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it.

• 12:33Chuck Nice?

  Cosmic microwave background.

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so yeah, and it could be dark for you, no problem.

• 12:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not many people have been in complete, total darkness in, in their life.

• 12:45Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 12:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know how to get it?

• 12:46Chuck Nice?

  Uh, I'm going to say, um, blindfold and, uh.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That could help.

• 12:52Chuck Nice?

  And then bury yourself alive.

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I was thinking of other ways for that. If, if you go, uh, spelunking.

• 13:02Chuck Nice?

  Oh, you mean to a cave, that's way.

• 13:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You go deep into a cave, make a few turns.

• 13:06Chuck Nice?

  So there's no light getting in at all.

• 13:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Turn off your flashlight.

• 13:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You cannot see the.

• 13:10Chuck Nice?

  Anything.

• 13:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anything.

• 13:11Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, see, now, and no disrespect to anybody, but that's some white people stuff.

• 13:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No black man ever died.

• 13:21Chuck Nice?

  You will never find a black man dead in a cave with no light at all. First of all, I'm not going in there because even with a flashlight, be like, where'd Chuck go? I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it. Okay? These are jokes. Don't write. Don't write. All right. We, I'm gonna stop. Let's move on. All right. So there you go. Uh, there you go, Rachel.

• 13:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, but I like the Muhammad, so give me the Muhammad Ali comment.

• 13:48Chuck Nice?

  That's right. I'm so, I'm so fast. I, I turn off the light. I'm in the bed before the room get dark.

• 13:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's good. That's a really good one.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Hello, I'm Thinky Marok Allen, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Nailed Grass Tyson.

• 14:28Chuck Nice?

  Uh, this is Max Wilburn, who says, hey Chuck, hey Neil, this is Maxwell from Lexington, Kentucky. And I know Neil thinks very highly of Newton, as he has accomplished so much, but recently I learned about Newton's Law of Cooling. Although it's not as fundamental and such a stepping stone for the world of physics, I just find it insane that as an aside, as a side quest, he did that. What a badass. What are your thoughts?

• 14:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I did not know about his law of cooling.

• 15:01Chuck Nice?

  I think his law of cooling was, don't you love my hair? Look how cool it is.

• 15:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I think, I think that was a wig he was wearing.

• 15:07Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no.

• 15:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was so distraught upon learning this.

• 15:11Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 15:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 15:12Chuck Nice?

  So his hair notwithstanding, do you have anything to say about the law of cooling?

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I didn't know he came up with that, but it is a well-known means of calculating the rate of temperature change in physics class.

• 15:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So the way you do it is you have two. To materials at different temperatures. Alright. Okay, and you bring them in contact in some way. Either physically, so that atoms are touching each other, or have air molecules bouncing back and forth, or they're radiatively connected. Connect them in some way. Okay. Okay, and then you measure the rate at which the temperature changes so that they reach equilibrium to each other. Cool. Okay. Right. So it's not just that the hot, sorry, sorry. One of them might have a continual source of energy going in. So then the cool thing comes up to its temperature. Do you see what I'm saying?

• 16:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if they're two isolated objects at different temperatures, they will meet in the middle somewhere. Right. At a, at a temperature lower than the high one and higher than the low one. Gotcha. Alright, so you can calculate the rate at which the temperature changes. Oh, okay. Okay, and deduce, as Isaac Newton apparently did. I own everything that man's ever written, and I gotta go dig that up. You gotta go dig up the law of cool. That must be a chapter I missed. Yeah. Okay, so what it states is, the bigger the temperature difference, the faster the rate of change of temperature will be. Okay. Which kinda makes sense. It just kinda makes sense. Absolutely. Yes. Right. And if you do some measurements of that, you can actually represent it with an equation.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And you make a prediction. Right. This is the price, the, the, the temperature difference. They'll be the same temperature in 10 minutes. Right. By the way, you, this is happening every day. You get a glass of water, you put ice in it. Right. Eventually. It's gonna be water. It's good, the ice will melt. And then you have water that's cold, but it's still air temperature out here. That's right. Eventually that comes up. And that comes up. That was an assignment in physics class when I was in 8th grade.

• 17:22Chuck Nice?

  And what we had to do was plot the melting of the ice in a graph. To see whether or not it was linear. And it was.

• 17:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that would be a cooling cooling curve.

• 17:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's a cooling curve.

• 17:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's it's gaining heat from the outside.

• 17:35Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 17:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So.

• 17:37Chuck Nice?

  So there you go. Look at that. See, people, these are the things you can think of when you are not busy thinking about sex. Like Isaac Newton. This is what happens. You become a genius because you're just like, well, I ain't having sex, so I might as well think about how do things melt?

• 17:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he never married, had no children, had no known intimate relationships. And so we're pretty sure when he came up with his law of gravitation and motion and calculus.

• 18:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That he was a virgin.

• 18:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that they go, babe. That's it. Like a prizefighter. You know what I mean? You know what they say? You know, you gotta stay hungry. All right, here we go. Ben Grun says, hey, StarTalk.

• 18:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm.

• 18:19Chuck Nice?

  This is God here to bestow upon you the keys of limitless energy.

• 18:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 18:26Chuck Nice?

  What do you do?

• 18:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, well, first, I don't think it requires God.

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We we just have to tap the energy from the sun.

• 18:39Chuck Nice?

  There you go, bro. We got this thing.

• 18:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  God, we got, yeah, yeah. We're worried about somebody else. Take care of a homeless man in the street. We got the energy thing. We're kind of slow on the go here. But the sun has basically unlimited energy and the Chinese are now want to put up a solar array in orbit. Which where there's no clouds and if it's far enough away from Earth, it always sees the sun 24/7. Beam it down to Earth by microwaves. So then you have this column of microwave.

• 19:08Chuck Nice?

  Microwaves.

• 19:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What could go wrong?

• 19:11Chuck Nice?

  I don't want to cross that path for sure.

• 19:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, but unlimited energy. Here's what I would do. You ready?

• 19:20Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would do what they did in Iceland.

• 19:22Chuck Nice?

  What's that?

• 19:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Iceland is sitting on top of volcanoes. You know this.

• 19:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 19:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, there's it's volcano land. It's not Iceland.

• 19:30Chuck Nice?

  Iceland, yeah.

• 19:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Greenland is Iceland, not Greenland.

• 19:33Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 19:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the opposite here. So I want to do what they do in Iceland.

• 19:39Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 19:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They heat their water.

• 19:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At these lava pits, okay? Up in the mountains and then send the water into town. But they do it under the streets. So that snow never accumulates.

• 20:00Chuck Nice?

  Genius.

• 20:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You never, you don't need snowplows, you don't need salt.

• 20:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't need accident reports.

• 20:06Chuck Nice?

  Nope. It snows and then the streets are just, they're just clear.

• 20:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would run hot water under everything. And then you, you just, snow, snow be damned.

• 20:18Chuck Nice?

  It's radiant heating for us, for your whole city.

• 20:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 20:21Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that's cool.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, and other things I might use unlimited energy for.

• 20:26Chuck Nice?

  I would, I'll tell you what I'd use it for. Uh, pretty much shutting down every war that's ever been fought. Cause most of these wars that we fight are over some form of energy. You know, and so it's just like, well, guess what? It's unlimited, guys. What are you fighting over?

• 20:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it could also be over food. Uh, or water supplies or other, other causes.

• 20:51Chuck Nice?

  There are other scarce scarcity resources.

• 20:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I think we'd be smart enough.

• 20:54Chuck Nice?

  But unlimited energy, you would make water.

• 20:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Today, nobody is going hungry because there's not enough food in the world.

• 21:00Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 21:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're going hungry.

• 21:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it's because somebody, some greedy bastard is keeping you from getting food.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Disrupting the food chain.

• 21:07Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 21:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I don't think that was predicted back in 1900.

• 21:11Chuck Nice?

  No, right.

• 21:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We saw the population growing exponentially. And we saw the food supplies growing linearly.

• 21:16Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 21:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And.

• 21:17Chuck Nice?

  There was a point where people thought that we would run out of food.

• 21:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just completely starve.

• 21:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so run out of food to feed everyone.

• 21:25Chuck Nice?

  Right. The, the, always be the food. Rich people always gonna eat, right? Exactly, yeah. Yeah. Wow, so that's cool, man. I loved, I love the idea of radiant heating for your city, though.

• 21:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, just for, just so you don't have to, you don't have to do it.

• 21:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, especially since we got two feet of snow. All right, I love that answer. All right. By the way, I think this is why, uh, Trump wants Greenland. Because he really thinks he wants Iceland. I think if you gave him Greenland, he'd be like, what is all this snow everywhere? I don't understand. I don't get it. There's so much ice here.

• 21:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But there are references to penguins there. There are no penguins in the north.

• 22:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 22:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're all just, any, any, there are no free penguins north of the equator.

• 22:07Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 22:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're all in captivity.

• 22:09Chuck Nice?

  They're in captivity, wow. All right, this is Scott Oppenlander, or Oppenlander, not open, Oppenlander. And he says, hey Neil, hey Lord nice, Scott Oppenlander here, tuning in from Phoenix, Arizona.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which I'm told is a quarter mile from the surface of the sun.

• 22:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Arizona, I was in Phoenix one time.

• 22:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 22:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My, for my first time.

• 22:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the sun came out.

• 22:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said, oh, this is a beautiful day. The sun is out. No one is in the streets. No one is in the parks.

• 22:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when they walk in the streets, they walk on the side of the street that's shadowed. And they only follow shadows around.

• 22:46Chuck Nice?

  It gets hot.

• 22:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know.

• 22:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 22:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 22:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Yeah, Scottsdale, it's like night, night, the sun goes down and all the vampires come out. Where were you people all day? Like, anyway, since our universe appears to be a pancake shape, like planetary systems and galaxies, do galaxies orbit around some larger central structure? Like an even more super mega blast, massive black hole? Or are galaxy motions just more random or un-uniformed? Um, there you go.

• 23:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Universe is not pancake shaped. So, next question.

• 23:22Chuck Nice?

  Well, there you have it. It's waffle shaped.

• 23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but, but to, to the point, galaxy motions are mostly random. And what I said, what I mean by random is they're not coordinated in some big way unless you're part of a galaxy cluster.

• 23:39Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then, then there's some, some ballet of most movement. However, some structures in the universe are so large that the average speed.

• 23:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of the galaxy moving among other galaxies in that cluster is insufficient for the galaxy to have made one complete pet loop through that cluster.

• 24:02Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 24:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that has significant consequences to what's going on there. It's called, it's not virilized. A virilized cluster is a cluster that has a very mature shape where like a beehive, all the galaxies are moving around. You step back, it has a spherical kind of envelope.

• 24:21Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 24:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That contains them.

• 24:22Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if it's kind of ratty.

• 24:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like that.

• 24:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 24:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not yet virilized. It's come from what's called the virial theorem, which talks about how energy can be transmitted, shared from objects with high energy to objects with lower energy so that everybody has approximately the same energy at the end of the, of the process.

• 24:44Chuck Nice?

  Very cool.

• 24:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So virilization is the sharing of that energy.

• 24:47Chuck Nice?

  Sharing of the energy.

• 24:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it drops the energy of the high energy objects.

• 24:50Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, it could be thermal energy, it could just be orbital energy and the lower energies come up. So, but it's a whole branch of physics.

• 24:59Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 25:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We talk about virilization of.

• 25:02Chuck Nice?

  Of, of galaxies.

• 25:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of, of, of matter.

• 25:05Chuck Nice?

  Okay, matter in general.

• 25:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever situation.

• 25:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 25:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, the ratty looking galaxy clusters tend to not have been virilized.

• 25:12Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, yeah.

• 25:14Chuck Nice?

  All right, so.

• 25:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, we, moving around the center of our galaxy, takes about two hundred and, two, two hundred million years.

• 25:22Chuck Nice?

  Two hundred million years.

• 25:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's much smaller than the age of the galaxy, which is thirteen billion.

• 25:27Chuck Nice?

  Thirteen billion years, right.

• 25:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, so galaxies is a mature shape.

• 25:30Chuck Nice?

  And we're in a spiral galaxy.

• 25:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, correct.

• 25:33Chuck Nice?

  That is very cool, man. Uh, good question. Uh, this is MX Self-Destruct.

• 25:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Is that a, is that a?

• 25:40Chuck Nice?

  That's what it says here.

• 25:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that a thing here?

• 25:41Chuck Nice?

  MX Self-Destruct, I have no idea, but his name is Seamus and he says.

• 25:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Seamus?

• 25:45Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, he says, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice, Seamus here from Los Angeles. We know that gravity is the result of the way spacetime curves. So wouldn't it be more likely that gravity is simply a side effect of this curvature rather than a force with a carrier particle like a strong, weak, or an electromagnetic force? If there is a carrier particle, why is it not just the Higgs boson? Since that imparts mass, thus providing the curvature for the universe that we call gravity.

• 26:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow. Man, people.

• 26:21Chuck Nice?

  People are doing some work, man.

• 26:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People, man.

• 26:24Chuck Nice?

  People are doing some thinking.

• 26:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, so I can answer 80% of that question.

• 26:27Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 26:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's an assumption that gravitation as a force in the universe has a force carrying particle.

• 26:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the assumption is that if you represented classical gravity, even Einsteinian gravity, with quantum physics, it would have to have a particle. So we even named this hypothetical particle.

• 26:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay. The graviton.

• 26:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The graviton. Exactly. So, the hunt for the graviton is on.

• 26:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. And so, the effect of the graviton and mass and energy is to curve the fabric of space and time, forcing you to move in certain ways that would not otherwise be the case if that were not occupying that space.

• 27:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  John Archibald Wheeler, a great physicist of the 20th century, I had him as a professor in graduate school.

• 27:19Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 27:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. In fact, I met my wife in relativity class that he was teaching.

• 27:25Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 27:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was sitting in the back row, she was in the front row.

• 27:29Chuck Nice?

  And then you guys made relatives.

• 27:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What I can't quite wrap my head around is, if gravity is just the curvature of space and time, maybe it's not a force.

• 27:43Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forces have these carrier particles.

• 27:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you're just falling along a curvature of space and time, what does it even mean to think of that as a force?

• 27:51Chuck Nice?

  As a force, right.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so maybe it sits outside of the quantum paradigms that would require that there be a graviton.

• 27:59Chuck Nice?

  Boy, that's something, that's kind of cool, man, in a way, because that means that there would be something in between the quantum.

• 28:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An understanding that we don't yet have.

• 28:09Chuck Nice?

  An understanding we don't have.

• 28:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right, it's a frontier.

• 28:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 28:14Chuck Nice?

  Well, there you go, buddy, I mean, listen. Now, you did some good, that's a great question.

• 28:42Chuck Nice?

  This is John Meyer. I think it's Meyer, or Meyer. He says, M E I E R. Meyer.

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Meyer, yeah.

• 28:50Chuck Nice?

  John Meyer. Salutations from John in Carlsbad, California.

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Carlsbad, California.

• 28:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, Carlsbad, California. He says, Dr. Tyson Lord and I is the great defenders of art curiosity. I have a question that has plagued me.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love that. Oh, that's a T-shirt if there ever was one.

• 29:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, the great defenders of art.

• 29:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Startalk, the defenders of curiosity.

• 29:10Chuck Nice?

  Of curiosity. He says, as budgets seem to be one of the significant components of innovation in science.

• 29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. It's not a component of whether or not something is found to be true. It's a component of whether or not the research is conducted at all.

• 29:30Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. He says, if we were to greatly increase the national, or hypothetically, the global science budget for building telescopes, what would you propose to maximize mankind's current technological possibilities? And what could they deliver in order to create the most powerful telescope possible? What would it look like? What would you point it at? And what might we see?

• 29:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I would put an entire. Array of telescopes on the far side of the moon.

• 29:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no atmosphere, so there's no clouds or anything. So there's no value to be on a mountaintop. You don't even have, there's no value to being in an orbit.

• 30:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The whole point of the orbit is you're outside the atmosphere. On the moon, there's no atmosphere, you're good. You're good to go. So I put them all on the far side of the moon. And it doesn't even have to look towards Earth, where we have all this contaminating radio wave noise and everything. I mean, Earth is just this messy thing in space.

• 30:22Chuck Nice?

  It is, it's terrible. That's a great idea, though, put it on the far side of the moon, though, to watch. Put all the telescopes there.

• 30:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and then I would, you put, of all bandwidths.

• 30:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You put all the telescopes of all the windows of the electromagnetic spectrum. The radio waves.

• 30:37Chuck Nice?

  Everything.

• 30:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything.

• 30:38Chuck Nice?

  Everything. And now, what would you like to see?

• 30:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want, I'm ready for the next generation of telescope that can see gravitational waves and neutrinos.

• 30:49Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is not electromagnetic.

• 30:51Chuck Nice?

  Not electromagnetic.

• 30:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 30:52Chuck Nice?

  That would be fantastic.

• 30:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know.

• 30:54Chuck Nice?

  Look at that. Hey, great question, John Meyer. Way to go.

• 30:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:58Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is Tuomas Limmata. Okay?

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 31:04Chuck Nice?

  Tuomas Limmata.

• 31:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you spell it?

• 31:07Chuck Nice?

  Okay, T-U-O-M-A-S-L-double-I-M-A-T-T-A. Limmata. Tuomas Limmata.

• 31:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:15Chuck Nice?

  There you go, I'm gonna say that.

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 31:17Chuck Nice?

  Um, and he says, hey, it's Tuomas from Olu, Finland. Longtime lurker and first time Patreoner.

• 31:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Longtime lurker?

• 31:28Chuck Nice?

  Lurker, yeah. So he's been watching forever, but he's decided to.

• 31:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You lurk. You just look over the shoulder.

• 31:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so now he's, he pulled the trigger, and now he's, welcome aboard, my friend. He says, I have a small question, uh, that I've been pondering for a very long time. Is time permanent?

• 31:48Chuck Nice?

  Thank you.

• 31:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know.

• 31:54Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mentioned John Archibald Wheeler a moment ago. He's famous for uttering the following sentence. Matter tells space how to curve. Space tells matter how to move.

• 32:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that motion is defined to make time look simple.

• 32:10Chuck Nice?

  I love that. That's so great. Motion is defined to make time look simple.

• 32:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 32:15Chuck Nice?

  Simple.

• 32:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 32:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 32:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So. I so is time.

• 32:19Chuck Nice?

  So without that, who knows?

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I mean, I want to believe that. Your whole timeline is just there and you're occupying this point.

• 32:27Chuck Nice?

  A point in the present. On the arrow.

• 32:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the, that's correct.

• 32:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's correct. I want to think that. And I can sort of do it. Because I can lay out what's going to happen. That's what a schedule is. What's your schedule? You're, you're, you know.

• 32:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm going to be here on Thursday and there on Friday and there on Saturday. And that's your future history. I don't know how you would live outside of a timeline.

• 32:52Chuck Nice?

  Right. Yeah. Yeah.

• 32:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because where there is no time.

• 32:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Reckoning, then nothing moves.

• 33:00Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 33:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because then you can measure time by that. Otherwise.

• 33:05Chuck Nice?

  Right, otherwise, yeah. So that'd be kind of cool, though. I mean, no, it wouldn't be. I hate that idea.

• 33:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To be outside of time.

• 33:11Chuck Nice?

  Outside of time, I hate the idea. However, that's what many people think. Um. Eternity in the afterlife is, is that it's in a dimension that exists outside of time.

• 33:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 33:22Chuck Nice?

  And that's why it's eternity. Because time does not exist. You know?

• 33:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right, I see.

• 33:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 33:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's the, that's the reasoning given.

• 33:29Chuck Nice?

  That's the reasoning given, you know, so you, you know. Anyway, um, that's very cool, man. What a, what a great thing to think about.

• 33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, by the way, if that's the case.

• 33:37Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're outside of time. Then that's the realm of divinity, the realm of spiritual, these sorts of things. I, I just don't know how a material object could be.

• 33:48Chuck Nice?

  Could it actually be there?

• 33:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 33:49Chuck Nice?

  Right. No, yeah, that's the whole idea.

• 33:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:52Chuck Nice?

  History allows us to remember our future.

• 33:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice.

• 33:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Anyway, um, Gavin Bamber says this, hello from North Vancouver. Uh, please visit and please tell me, how much does the universe weigh?

• 34:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, I'm going to be in Vancouver, giving a public talk.

• 34:11Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 34:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  May 4th.

• 34:13Chuck Nice?

  May the 4th be with you.

• 34:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 34:15Chuck Nice?

  May the Neil be with you, Vancouver.

• 34:20Chuck Nice?

  How much this universe weigh?

• 34:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you can just do, you can do, do that on the back of an envelope.

• 34:26Chuck Nice?

  Back of an envelope?

• 34:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back of an envelope.

• 34:27Chuck Nice?

  Sound like a big envelope.

• 34:31Chuck Nice?

  Must be a manila envelope at least.

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, you've got, we know the mass of the sun.

• 34:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We know the mass of all the planets, a fraction that of the sun.

• 34:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can practically ignore them because it's just in the roundoff error.

• 34:48Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 34:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of the, then we know how many stars there are in the galaxy.

• 34:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 34:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then we know how many galaxies there are in the universe.

• 34:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 34:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then we know, because we have, we know where the edge of the observable universe is.

• 34:58Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We know these numbers.

• 35:00Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All you have to do is multiply it up.

• 35:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, uh, the sun is, is two times 10 to the 33 grams, uh, times, let's say 100 billion stars in the galaxy. So, two times 10 to 33 times 10 to the 11th.

• 35:22Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's 100 billion, so that's two times 10 to the 43rd grams.

• 35:28Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Times a, possibly a trillion galaxies.

• 35:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To the 12th power.

• 35:33Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that, uh, what is it?

• 35:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  10 to the 50 something grams.

• 35:41Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, grams is small units, you want to measure in tons or something?

• 35:44Chuck Nice?

  Who cares?

• 35:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At that point, right.

• 35:46Chuck Nice?

  Who cares?

• 35:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who cares? The number is too big.

• 35:47Chuck Nice?

  The number is too big to even conceive of anyway.

• 35:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, so.

• 35:50Chuck Nice?

  The real answer is, how much does the universe weigh? Fuck ton.

• 35:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the biggest unit of measure there is.

• 35:58Chuck Nice?

  That's right. You can't get bigger than that.

• 36:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I told you, I, I created this.

• 36:03Chuck Nice?

  That's where I got it from.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what you got it from. It's the vulgar, the vulgar metric system.

• 36:09Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's where I got it from. That's why I said it, so.

• 36:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause it's like, it's a, you know, isn't there like an assload of something?

• 36:16Chuck Nice?

  There's a shitload.

• 36:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A shitload. No, ass load is less than that.

• 36:21Chuck Nice?

  Right?

• 36:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take this ass load and take it to the market. You got more than that, that's a shitload. And then, yeah.

• 36:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 36:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's online somewhere. I think I had it at a Facebook post, but then it kinda hit it.

• 36:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 36:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's out there.

• 36:37Chuck Nice?

  I know, I know, I just remember from that we.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when I did that, someone wrote in and said, this is beneath you.

• 36:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, of course.

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is. Then I saw I've been hanging around Chuck.

• 36:46Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, just blame me, because I get that letter every day. You bring down Dr. Tyson. Why does he, why does he sully himself? Being around you, Chuck. Like so many, so, I can be surprised. Like, this guy.

• 37:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, it's interesting.

• 37:04Chuck Nice?

  Wait, this guy wrote me, he went, I'm sorry, I'm, we gotta, I gotta say this, because it's so funny. He goes, hey, man, no disrespect, but I hate you.

• 37:14Chuck Nice?

  And he's, he's just like, please shut up. Please, just sit there and don't say anything. Right? And then he's just like, he's like, uh, let Dr. Tyson, um, give his talk. Right? And I'm just like, bro, that's not the show. What you're talking about is his lectures. If you want that, go, go watch a lecture.

• 37:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:37Chuck Nice?

  But anyway, it just tickles me, you know, when people, like, you know, there's a, there's a contingency out there that feels like, I sully you.

• 37:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean no disrespect.

• 37:46Chuck Nice?

  I mean no disrespect.

• 37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Reach your head out of your ass.

• 37:50Chuck Nice?

  But I hate you. Oh, so great.

• 37:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's how you measure the mass.

• 37:53Chuck Nice?

  That's how you measure the mass.

• 37:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just multiply it all up.

• 37:55Chuck Nice?

  We got the numbers.

• 37:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, oh, sorry, sorry, I left out.

• 37:58Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 37:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. There's six times as much gravity in the universe as is what is created by that mass that I just calculated.

• 38:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if that extra gravity comes from matter, then we legitimately are calling it dark matter. So you take whatever number you multiplied up, multiply by six.

• 38:18Chuck Nice?

  That's.

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 38:19Chuck Nice?

  Phenomenal.

• 38:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And we can do that without going out there with a scale.

• 38:23Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah.

• 38:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are ways to do this.

• 38:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 38:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Didn't we have an explainer, was it explainer or question? Where we weighed a truck?

• 38:31Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yeah, we did that. And basically it was about using the air tires in the truck and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, let's move on because we're getting derailed.

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Time for just a couple more.

• 38:41Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is, uh, Mila, um, from Macedonia. She says, hey Chuck, hey Neil. Mila from Macedonia, Balkan, Europe, world. Japanese astrophysicists have defined, have identified a strong gamma ray glow near the Milky Way's center, matching predictions for annihilating dark matter particles, wimps. Okay?

• 39:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Weekly interacting massive particles, they call wimps.

• 39:13Chuck Nice?

  Wimps.

• 39:15Chuck Nice?

  Could you explain how these particles are different from regular matter?

• 39:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 39:21Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 39:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry.

• 39:23Chuck Nice?

  That's so great.

• 39:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The hunt for dark matter.

• 39:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, you know who was doing that was Katie Freeze.

• 39:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've had her as a guest.

• 39:31Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 39:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You go dig up Katie Freeze.

• 39:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's absolutely a really fascinating episode that we had.

• 39:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Freeze, F R E E S E.

• 39:40Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 39:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She's an expert on dark matter detection. She's a theorist.

• 39:43Chuck Nice?

  She's a theorist.

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So she would think about what particle would interact with a dark matter particle for that to happen. Now, I'd be surprised if dark matter interacted with such ferocity that it would be giving us gamma rays.

• 39:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a little bit mysterious to me.

• 39:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's, it's, it's, we would see that everywhere.

• 40:00Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 40:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'd think.

• 40:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 40:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't take this one example in our own Milky Way and say, see? Where do you have a trillion other galaxies?

• 40:07Chuck Nice?

  Right, right, right.

• 40:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That should be a common phenomenon.

• 40:09Chuck Nice?

  It should show up someplace.

• 40:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our sample size is so large.

• 40:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can see even rare phenomenon every night.

• 40:15Chuck Nice?

  Boom, that's awesome.

• 40:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 40:17Chuck Nice?

  I love that.

• 40:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:19Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 40:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A quick reference to medicine. If I have, if I have a new, uh, pill, a new cure for something.

• 40:26Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 40:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's medicine that you take.

• 40:27Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not safe for, this is an old saying in the, in the, in the field. It's not safe for anyone until everyone has tested it.

• 40:37Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 40:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Think about that.

• 40:39Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 40:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could test on a thousand people.

• 40:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you have a condition that's one in a million.

• 40:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not likely that you were in that data set.

• 40:46Chuck Nice?

  That you weren't in that sample.

• 40:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not in that sample, right?

• 40:49Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 40:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So ideally, you would test on everyone.

• 40:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They know exactly who, for whom it works and who it doesn't. That's not realistic.

• 40:56Chuck Nice?

  It isn't realistic, and...

• 40:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whereas, the universe is big enough so that extremely rare things happen all the time.

• 41:05Chuck Nice?

  All the time, right.

• 41:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Last question, Chuck, is all we have time for.

• 41:08Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's go with Larry McGuire, who says, "Hey, Dr. Tyson..."

• 41:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jerry McGuire?

• 41:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, show me the question.

• 41:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Show me the question!

• 41:19Chuck Nice?

  This is Larry McGuire. He says, "Hey, Dr. Tyson, Lord nice. Larry from Callahan, British Columbia, just down the road from the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory."

• 41:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I use software that they wrote.

• 41:35Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 41:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was a, there was an important colleague of mine from that observatory.

• 41:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 41:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who wrote data reduction software.

• 41:43Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 41:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it was the primary software I used for my thesis, which is sitting right there, that big old fat book down there.

• 41:49Chuck Nice?

  That one right there.

• 41:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:51Chuck Nice?

  So, he says, "I'm curious about your tools to keep looking up. What was your first telescope? And do you still have a telescope? And what type is it?"

• 42:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, very good, thank you. I had my question to end on.

• 42:06Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 42:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, my first encounter with the night sky was this dome of the Hayden Planetarium.

• 42:12Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's so cool!

• 42:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I grew up in the Bronx.

• 42:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no night sky to New Yorkers. We had no relationship.

• 42:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so that was my first night sky.

• 42:20Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 42:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then a friend of mine.

• 42:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 42:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My best friend growing up.

• 42:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was smarter than me in like, many countable ways.

• 42:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 42:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He taught me chess, he taught me poker, he taught me gambling, he taught me...

• 42:33Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that doesn't sound like a good friend.

• 42:36Chuck Nice?

  I'm just saying, that's, that's how people feel about me hanging around you. He was your Chuck Nice, like, he was just like, alright, let me show you how to gamble.

• 42:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, all his grades were higher than mine and everything, so, oh, in fact, I'll give his name, his name is Philip Branford.

• 42:49Chuck Nice?

  Philip Branford.

• 42:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when I was on Celebrity Jeopardy?

• 42:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 42:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I pointed him out in the audience.

• 42:54Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 42:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he, he came to the show.

• 42:56Chuck Nice?

  He came to the show.

• 42:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Came to the show, I pointed him out, and I say, "He first got me to watch Jeopardy."

• 43:01Chuck Nice?

  He first got, got me to watch Jeopardy, and, uh, first dude to, uh, give me drugs. What was your first telescope?

• 43:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, he had a pair of binoculars.

• 43:10Chuck Nice?

  Oh, cool.

• 43:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I looked through the binoculars, and I never knew, uh, we, we weren't wealthy enough to have, like, binoculars just laying around. That's a different, you know.

• 43:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's a, that's a whole nother.

• 43:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you got that.

• 43:21Chuck Nice?

  That's the income level thing.

• 43:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, that's income, just a level.

• 43:23Chuck Nice?

  Just a level.

• 43:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was laying around the house.

• 43:25Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 43:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, get the binoculars, when we go to the.

• 43:32Chuck Nice?

  Look at what they're doing over there, Abner!

• 43:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where's you got Abner?

• 43:36Chuck Nice?

  I don't know, anyway.

• 43:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, he invited me to look up with them, and I saw the moon. And the moon wasn't just bigger.

• 43:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 43:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was better.

• 43:45Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 43:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was, oh my gosh, and you don't want to look at a full moon, because that sucks.

• 43:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 43:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want to look like a half moon. Blown out. Yeah, yeah, any photographer knows.

• 43:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't directly illuminate something.

• 43:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are no shadows, there's no depth, you wait for there to be shadows. Any other phase, ideally, half moon, which is officially called the first quarter, or last quarter, first or third quarter moons. So, yep, longest shadows visible. I'm looking at it with a binoculars, it was like, whoa, this is like a whole other thing.

• 44:14Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 44:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my god, I felt like I was there.

• 44:16Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 44:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that was like, tipped me off, that stuff was going on up there that the human eye does not notice.

• 44:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So then.

• 44:24Chuck Nice?

  That was your gateway.

• 44:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This, this.

• 44:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, the binoculars were the gateway drug.

• 44:31Chuck Nice?

  That was your gateway drug.

• 44:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Curiosities.

• 44:32Chuck Nice?

  Cosmic curiosity.

• 44:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then when I'm 11.

• 44:36Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 44:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, we moved to Lexington, Massachusetts.

• 44:39Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 44:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we spent just a year there. My father had an academic appointment.

• 44:43Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 44:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And for just one year, uh, in the Kennedy School of, of Government.

• 44:49Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 44:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, now it's just called the, uh.

• 44:51Chuck Nice?

  Now it's called the Trump Kennedy School of Government. But no one wants to perform that.

• 45:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're talking about the Kennedy Center, right? Okay. I, you know, I'm a city kid and we're living in a private house. Like, what's up with that?

• 45:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want me to do what with this shovel? You want me to do what with this rake?

• 45:15Chuck Nice?

  Right, right, right.

• 45:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, isn't it snow pretty?

• 45:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then they hand me a shovel.

• 45:19Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 45:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. It's like, what?

• 45:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 45:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and then it's autumn and the leaves are on there. What?

• 45:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 45:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The grass gets long. Okay, what? Mowed, what?

• 45:29Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 45:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm a city kid.

• 45:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you're like, you're pining for the city again.

• 45:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We just stayed, it was someone else's private home for a year.

• 45:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what it was.

• 45:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 45:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They were on sabbatical or something. Anyway, my interest in the universe was stoked. Cause I was, I already, I'd learned that Harvard had a Center for Astrophysics.

• 45:50Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 45:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Old department of, it was like, whoa. That's like, really cool. And so my parents saw this and they took me there for one of their open house nights. They had telescopes.

• 45:59Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 46:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I ran in there and it was like, I died and went to heaven. And I'm, I'm 11 years old, okay? For my birthday.

• 46:07Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In October.

• 46:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That year when I turning 12, they bought me my first telescope. It was a 2.4 inch refracting telescope. That telescope, I rapidly outgrew. But, I mean, I saw the rings of Saturn, the, the, the, the, the weather bands on, on, on Jupiter, Jupiter's moons, nebulae, the Andromeda Galaxy, the, uh, sunspots, they had special filters for that. And then I'm like 12 and my parents just let me out there to observe the sun. They'd never even asked. I think they.

• 46:42Chuck Nice?

  That's cool, man.

• 46:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Trusted that I knew what the hell I was doing.

• 46:45Chuck Nice?

  No kid walks out with a telescope to go get in trouble.

• 46:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey guys, I'll be right back.

• 46:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, gonna go rob a bank with this telescope. No, no. I'm just, in retrospect, they would never concern that I did not know what I was doing. Right. That's, I'm, no, I'm not kinda angry. Listen, yeah. I mean, Lee, you can't, you're not gonna question your kid when they're just like, yeah, I wanna go look at the sky. Yeah, with a telescope. With a telescope, yeah, yeah. So, and then when it did snow, you know, it's, this is New England, right? So there's a lot of snow there. I'd wanna take the telescope out back. And, and, and winter nights are long. Right. Anywhere, they're long. And the air is crisp. There's much less humidity. Right. And so the really good observ-, some of the best observing is in very cold nights.

• 47:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I dug a path into the middle of our back, we had a backyard, and a little circle, and that was my little observatory circle. Observatory circle. And I would take the telescope out there, and I had several eyepieces, and that's what I did. Very cool. Okay, so within a year, I outgrew the telescope. Okay. Okay. Tired of looking at this thing. No, so they, we sold it to a friend, like, acquaintance. And then I would then buy my own telescope the next year. Gotcha. Uh, when I was 13, no, maybe a year and a half later, I'd buy my own telescope with money I earned by walking dogs.

• 48:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that was a six-inch Newtonian optics reflecting telescope. Wow, okay. It's six-inch telescope. Nice. That telescope, I took to Africa to view a total solar eclipse when I was 14. And I lied and told everyone I was 15, cuz I- Oh yeah, cuz that made a difference. Cuz I wanted the respect, I was 16, we're all- I went alone on this cruise. It was like a science expedition to the- Very nice. So I took my telescope with a big ol', the telescope is huge, and a big ol' crate. That telescope was-

• 48:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Has since been gifted to the, a museum of science in Kentucky, who decided to make an exhibit of famous people's first telescopes. Interesting. They have my telescope. They have your telescope. It's like on permanent loan. That's great. I haven't visited there. I don't know if it's on display or anything. Right. They got my telescope. That's, that's cool, man. I also took it to the Mojave Desert, where I was an astronomy, uh, uh, lived nocturnally in an astronomy camp. Very nice. Talk about geeking out. Yeah, man. Who else is gonna be there but like crazy other? Yeah, geeks. That's it. Yeah, girl geeks and boy geeks and they were all there.

• 49:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And since then, uh, I went a long period without a telescope when I went to college. And, and I says, time, I gotta get back in the game here. Much later, when I had some cash, then I bought a very high quality optical telescope. And since then, I've, I have two digital telescopes. Yeah. Which takes some of the fun out. You know, you just set it, you just set up the tripod, go back into your warm. It's the wrong appeal of telescopes. Set it and forget it. You, you just, you go, you go back in to your warm living room. Right. And you just guide it with your iPad. Love it. So, I'm old school. Give me, make it hard for me. Love that. Love it.

• 50:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, I, so at the time I was a, I was a member of the amateur astronomers club, which had monthly meetings here at the American Museum of Natural History, uh, under the, the shadow of the Hayden Planetarium. So I go way back in this. Nice. That's what it is. There you go. Those are my telescopes. Very nice. Oh, and in this office, I have a 2.4 inch refracting telescope, which is not my original, but it's exactly the same size. Exactly right. Okay? And in the hallway. Of the astrophysics department, there's a six inch

• 50:51Chuck Nice?

  Yes, there is.

• 50:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Newtonian reflecting telescope.

• 50:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 50:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is exactly the size of my telescope, but they were selling them in the shop fifty years ago.

• 51:00Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 51:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this one was the display model, and we just kept it now that the shop is all blended with the other shops.

• 51:05Chuck Nice?

  Very nice.

• 51:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, so those are my two mem- no, you were the first to- no one in, in the department knows this.

• 51:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 51:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That I had that telescope there and this telescope there, that same optics. And so when I see them, I feel a little nostalgic.

• 51:19Chuck Nice?

  A little nostalgic.

• 51:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, except for when I was on the roof with my telescope.

• 51:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 51:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then neighbors called the cops.

• 51:27Chuck Nice?

  Oh, well, yeah, because, you know, you can't have a black man on the roof.

• 51:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With something that looks like a bazooka.

• 51:36Speaker 03

  I think he's gonna murder the president, I'm not sure. He's up there with a big scope.

• 51:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, it's- cop approaches me, hand over his gun, it's like, what the hell, I'm a fifteen year old kid.

• 51:45Chuck Nice?

  That's funny.

• 51:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, just absorbing the universe.

• 51:49Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 51:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One last thing, and then we, we gotta call it quits here.

• 51:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 51:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there's some children's books that tell my story growing up.

• 51:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 51:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And one of them retells that story of me on the roof.

• 51:59Chuck Nice?

  On the roof?

• 52:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they show the cops showing up.

• 52:01Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 52:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, but then the cops show up and I say, have you ever seen Saturn through a telescope before?

• 52:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 52:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then they're enchanted, they're on. But up until that moment, it's actually quite tense.

• 52:10Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 52:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't know what I'm telling them to look at, and, you know.

• 52:13Chuck Nice?

  You got them with Saturn.

• 52:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta have the moon or Saturn.

• 52:18Chuck Nice?

  Right, that's a good one to get anybody.

• 52:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get anybody. And that children's book, which showed the cop, was banned in Pennsylvania.

• 52:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no.

• 52:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 52:30Chuck Nice?

  For what?

• 52:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it was showing-

• 52:34Chuck Nice?

  A police officer in a bad light?

• 52:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Do you remember there was a period of book banning?

• 52:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 52:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That wanted to protect the image.

• 52:42Chuck Nice?

  The image, right.

• 52:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and so, and I tracked it, and it was only on the banned list for about six months, six to eight months.

• 52:49Chuck Nice?

  Those people who banned those books, they would like the version where the cops show up and they go, oh, well, hello, young negro. And then they go, we'd like to introduce you to somebody, and, and, and then all of a sudden they bring out Carl Sagan. And you're like, oh, my God! And everybody lives happily ever-

• 53:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not how that one went down.

• 53:06Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, right.

• 53:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so that's my story of my telescope. Oh, well, that was cool. Yeah, thank you for that question. Yeah. Very good. Alright. Alright, we gotta call it quits there. Well, there you have it. That was as popery a selection of questions as there ever was. That's why they're fun. That's, there you go. Chuck, always good to have you, man. Always a pleasure. Neil deGrasse Tyson for StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Until next time, keep looking up, with or without a telescope.