Cosmic Curiosities, with Paul Mecurio

Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Paul Mecurio answer a grab bag full of fan-submitted Cosmic Queries on the Big Bang, the boundaries of the universe, space tourism, Star Trek, dark matter, neutrinos, communicating with extraterrestrial life, and much more. Thanks to this week’s Patrons for supporting us: Valentín Elizalde, Tyler Ford, Ted Shevlin. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons and All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/cosmic-curiosities-with-paul-mecurio/ Photo Credit: V. Springel, Max Planck Institut für Astrophysik, Garching bei München.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and beaming out across all of space and time, this is StarTalk, where science and pop culture collide.

• 0:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And we have a cosmic queries edition, but now it's kind of their questions that kind of land in their own category. And so what do you do when you put questions together that belong each in their own category? You get a kind of a grab bag, a kind of a cosmic curiosities, all mixed together. And I got one guy who's a cosmic curiosity himself, Paul Mecurio. Paul!

• 0:56Paul Mecurio?

  How are you?

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, thanks for being on StarTalk.

• 0:58Paul Mecurio?

  Absolutely.

• 0:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've been on your show.

• 0:59Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Paul Mecurio Show, multiple times.

• 1:01Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, you're great.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, thank you.

• 1:03Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah?

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You say that to all of you.

• 1:04Paul Mecurio?

  No, no, no, no. You're actually, I didn't think you knew much about science, but I was surprised. You actually killed it.

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'd love being on your show, because you're curious and your, you know, your fans are curious. And I like being amid curious people, because then I can fulfill my prime directive as an educator.

• 1:21Paul Mecurio?

  I told my wife that if I had you as a science teacher, I'd probably be doing something in science.

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 1:28Paul Mecurio?

  Because I do think the message is the medium in some level and the person communicating. And I had this guy, this big hulking bitter guy who was in it 30 years.

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bitter teacher.

• 1:38Paul Mecurio?

  He would smoke, like, "All right, we're gonna make a battery today." And they're like, "Okay."

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What an exciting thing!

• 1:45Paul Mecurio?

  I remember 8th grade, I couldn't, I'm like, "This is the worst. I got a C in chemistry." But anyway, the way you, and I know, you come on with Stephen Colbert a lot, and I work on the show. He just loves.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. You're the warm-up guy.

• 1:57Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, but he brightens up when you come on, like in rehearsal. "Who do we have in there? Oh, God, that's great. I don't have to do anything. I'll just ask one question, he'll talk for two segments." So you have a big fan over there.

• 2:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, it's excellent, excellent. So you collected all the questions?

• 2:10Paul Mecurio?

  I did.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are questions from the, I gathered from the internet.

• 2:12Paul Mecurio?

  Right, along with Lindsay.

• 2:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're not specifically solicited, because they're leftovers, really.

• 2:16Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're like the leftover podcast.

• 2:17Paul Mecurio?

  I'm a leftover guy. This is about right.

• 2:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What did you want to call this? The cosmic?

• 2:22Paul Mecurio?

  Cosmic catch-all.

• 2:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Catch-all. Cosmic, yeah, the cosmic catch basin. Cosmic trash bin.

• 2:26Paul Mecurio?

  How about Paul's pathetic leftovers?

• 2:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Paul's pathos.

• 2:32Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, exactly. They all have mold on them and everything. No.

• 2:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, the people, they should be rewarded for asking questions that fit no category.

• 2:40Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, and they're very good questions.

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There aren't enough people like that out there.

• 2:43Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 2:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who, who walk at a pace that no one sees or understands.

• 2:50Paul Mecurio?

  That's a good way of putting it.

• 2:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, there's a quote from Nietzsche. This is one of my favorite quotes ever. Those who were dancing were deemed insane by those who could not hear the music.

• 3:01Paul Mecurio?

  Whoa, that's heavy.

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 3:03Paul Mecurio?

  I think we should end the show there. I don't think anything's gonna top that.

• 3:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Think about it. If you're looking through a glass wall.

• 3:09Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 3:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you don't hear the music, what are people, and they're...

• 3:11Paul Mecurio?

  That's so true.

• 3:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're just jumping up and down, waving their appendages.

• 3:16Paul Mecurio?

  All these people are having seizures.

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're seizures. And if there's no, if you don't know they're playing music and you can't hear the music.

• 3:22Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you think they're insane.

• 3:24Paul Mecurio?

  It's a, it's definitely a good point because...

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So therefore, I respect people who think differently. In fact, one could define genius that way. Genius is one who sees what everyone else sees, but thinks what no one else has thought.

• 3:37Paul Mecurio?

  Were you always like this as a child? And I'm trying to make a joke. No, no, no, because like, you're, you're one of the most...

• 3:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you psycho analyzing me, Max?

• 3:42Paul Mecurio?

  No, no, no. I'm just curious.

• 3:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell me about your parents. Tell me, that's what this is. What? What? Okay, go ahead.

• 3:48Paul Mecurio?

  No, I, I know. I'm curious because of how you're so well-versed, not just in astrophysics and science, but in pretty much everything. And I'm just curious.

• 4:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, there's stuff, plenty of stuff I'm not versed in. I just don't talk about it.

• 4:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a huge gaping hole, but if I don't talk about it, you don't know how un-versed I am in it.

• 4:09Paul Mecurio?

  That's good PR.

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm just saying.

• 4:11Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah. No, I just, anyway.

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you know what it is? You know what it is?

• 4:14Paul Mecurio?

  And I mean that as a compliment. I'm not trying to be funny.

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's hard to know if you're a compliment.

• 4:18Paul Mecurio?

  No, I'm sure. Carol, did I just compliment him?

• 4:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's asking, he's asking his wife in the peanut gallery.

• 4:23Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 4:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was that a compliment? Of the spectrum of comments that come out of your husband's mouth, that counts as a compliment.

• 4:28Paul Mecurio?

  It was.

• 4:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, hate to be in your home.

• 4:33Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, God.

• 4:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, no, we got three segments of this. We got more. Okay, let's get some first questions going.

• 4:38Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, all right. Uh, we're starting with our Patreon, folks.

• 4:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Patreon, folks. Got it, got it. Got it, got it.

• 4:44Paul Mecurio?

  Priority people, gotta love it.

• 4:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Priority Patreons.

• 4:47Paul Mecurio?

  This is John Callahan.

• 4:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:48Paul Mecurio?

  Is the name Big Bang a misnomer? From what I recall, we don't actually have any evidence the Big Bang started with an explosion like a supernova or a black hole merger.

• 4:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, first of all, the Big Bang was a name given to this idea that the universe started in this one primordial explosion. It was given pejoratively to this idea by proponents of what at the time was known as the steady-state theory hypothesis of the universe. One way the universe always was and always will be. Even though it's expanding, it's always been expanding. And matter is spontaneously created in the vacuum to fill in for where space is getting thinner. So that you'd always see a universe that looked about the same. This is called the steady-state hypothesis.

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could get that out of Einstein's equations of gravity. That was allowed. But another solution was one where we're either collapsing or where we're expanding. All three solutions were allowed.

• 5:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The one with the Big Bang itself, uh, they was, it was an equal competitor to the steady-state theory for decades until we finally got some evidence to support the Big Bang. And that was the famous microcosmic microwave background. This is a leftover signal, signature, from an explosion that started in one hot primeval fireball.

• 6:16Paul Mecurio?

  Thirteen point eight billion years ago.

• 6:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, sir.

• 6:18Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 6:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't need me for this.

• 6:20Paul Mecurio?

  No. That was the only thing I remember.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Trouble with thirteen point eight five, you're showing off now.

• 6:24Paul Mecurio?

  No, no.

• 6:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're showing off, okay. Right, so, so it was, it was given as a, as a, as a funny pejorative name, but it stuck and, and if it fits, it fits. Now, it's not clear how much noise it would have made because just the expansion of space itself is not, you know, that's not associated with noise. And space is vacuum anyway and noise doesn't propagate. So, if you don't want to call it the Big Bang because it was probably made no noise.

• 6:50Paul Mecurio?

  Hmm.

• 6:53Paul Mecurio?

  You'd think you'd fix that by now.

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you call it, uh, the, how about the main event?

• 7:03Paul Mecurio?

  Let's get ready to blow up.

• 7:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think the, the big event, but, you know.

• 7:08Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The main event.

• 7:09Paul Mecurio?

  Well, you've talked about laws and theories and what used to be called laws.

• 7:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You remember that. Thank you for, that's a, that's a subtle point. In, in the old days, we'd come up with an understanding of the universe, a new law has been discovered. That's a very exciting time in science when that happens. And then you learn later on that with better instruments and more tools and deeper thinkers, that what you came up with as a law was a smaller subset of a larger understanding. So you don't really, you shouldn't call it a law.

• 7:36Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 7:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it's a, but it works.

• 7:38Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 7:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we just use the word theory for everything that works now.

• 7:41Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 7:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if, and if you just have an idea and it hasn't been tested, we call it hypothesis, Paul's hypothesis.

• 7:46Paul Mecurio?

  Right, well, there's, there's a lot of those.

• 7:49Paul Mecurio?

  Paul's BS hypothesis. But there's something you said. Right, exactly.

• 7:55Paul Mecurio?

  There's something you said in this context, you said, as a quote, yours, what happened in the 20th century is that we came to learn that whatever we determined to be true about the universe may only be a subtext of a larger truth.

• 8:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's right. Not that would later shown to be wrong.

• 8:08Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 8:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not like science goes from one truth to another truth, discarding previous truths. Not the physical sciences at least. Not since the 1600s have we been in that situation. Before the 1600s, that's, that's about when we, uh, the methods and tools and practices of what we now call modern science were forged. Galileo, Francis Bacon, folks said, you know, if you have an idea about how the world works, you should test it. I don't care how it looks.

• 8:35Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 8:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't care what your senses tell you. Come up with an experiment that goes a little beyond your senses or extends your senses. Galileo had a telescope, uh, Leu and Hooke, Hooke had a microscope. You start seeing directions that were previously inaccessible to your sensory system.

• 8:51Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 8:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your eyes, your, your sense of touch, taste, smell. And so the universe comes to you now. Outside of your, the experience of your senses.

• 9:03Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the experiment then becomes the measure of what is true, not whether it makes sense. And one of my recent books, the, the, the front piece, the, I mean, the, the, what, the epigraph, epigram, agram or epigraph, I always forget what they're called.

• 9:16Paul Mecurio?

  If you don't know, I'm not gonna know.

• 9:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, I just said, I just lead, I just, I just baptize people into this by saying, the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.

• 9:27Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, but it's, it's, but we're always in a state of subtext then, in some way?

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Possibly.

• 9:32Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 9:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's some things we might know completely.

• 9:34Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 9:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, uh, let it be open enough to say, this is a subset of a larger understanding. Newton's laws of motion and gravity worked. Did he experience anything faster than a running horse?

• 9:45Paul Mecurio?

  Well, that's.

• 9:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or the, or the gravity of the earth?

• 9:47Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 9:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so it worked.

• 9:48Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 9:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, it got us to the moon and back.

• 9:50Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 9:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then we have particle accelerators and we get moved close to the speed of light. And we say, you know, Newton's laws are, there's weird things happening.

• 9:58Paul Mecurio?

  Your knowledge is limited by what you can do at that time in the 20, in the 18th system.

• 10:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, and, and Einstein came up with his laws, his theories of, of mo- of motion and gravity. And we learn that it's a deeper understanding of reality that still has limits.

• 10:13Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  His, you know where Einstein's theories leave, leave us high and dry? At the singularity of the black hole and at the singularity of the big bang itself. It, it, it's like dividing by zero. You remember you're not supposed to do that in math class?

• 10:26Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, right, yeah.

• 10:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so there's a, there's a poster that said, probably a t-shirt by now, that said, a, a black hole, the center of a black hole, is where God is dividing by zero, right, okay? So I thought that was cute. So, so singularities are now the frontier of string theorists and others who are trying to take it to the next level.

• 10:44Paul Mecurio?

  Got it.

• 10:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 10:45Paul Mecurio?

  Just one other thing on this, Hawking said the boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary. Is that sort of what you're alluding to here?

• 10:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A way to think about it, I think that's a, it's, it's a, it's an organizational thought for you. Okay, you can say, what is, uh, here you go, ready? Uh, holding flat-earthers aside, let's, I assume you agree that earth is spherical.

• 11:09Paul Mecurio?

  It depends.

• 11:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, so if I say to you, start walking and call me when you get to the edge of the earth. You'll say, I'm not gonna do that because the earth has no edge. Meanwhile, you can walk forever and never get to an edge.

• 11:24Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 11:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what are the boundary conditions of the earth? Is there an edge? No. There is no edge.

• 11:30Paul Mecurio?

  Right, so.

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so you can have things that have no boundaries. They're real. The surface of the earth is one of them.

• 11:37Paul Mecurio?

  And so if you can have that on earth.

• 11:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now you go to higher dimensions and you can just go to whole other places with that.

• 11:42Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 11:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And imagine an entire universe that has no edge.

• 11:45Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And no boundary. You can have no boundary in time. We live forever as a universe. There's no boundary at the other end of time.

• 11:50Paul Mecurio?

  I gotta tell you, I love you. Your job's annoying because there's never an answer at the end of anything.

• 11:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we got, no, no, no. I take you to places where we don't have answers because that's where things are coolest. But there's plenty of stuff we have answers to.

• 12:00Paul Mecurio?

  No, I know.

• 12:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The age of the earth, where humans came from. I got this.

• 12:04Paul Mecurio?

  Ah, you know what I like about astrophysics is like, the names you come up with, other.

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got the coolest names.

• 12:10Paul Mecurio?

  Well, wait a minute. Other science, like zoology, whatever, it's like Latin phrases. You have like quark, spooky action in Big Bang. Who's name, is this like Beavis and Butthead naming these things?

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we call it like we see them, okay? We, we, okay? The beginning of spacetime, energy in the universe, Big Bang. We're into one syllable communication.

• 12:31Paul Mecurio?

  For people like me to get it.

• 12:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? There's a region of space where you fall in, you don't come out, light doesn't come out. Black hole. Okay? There's a crater in Arizona made by a meteor. We call it meteor crater. Okay? All the other sciences come up with these huge Latin, Greek derived words.

• 12:51Paul Mecurio?

  Cretaceous, Paleogen.

• 12:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Paleo, the deoxy.

• 12:54Paul Mecurio?

  You would call it Dynapocalypse.

• 12:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. I would say big tooth animal. That's what we call it. Rrr.

• 13:02Paul Mecurio?

  Maybe make that noise.

• 13:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Make it onomatopoeic. So I think it's why so much of our vocabulary has been absorbed and adopted into the marketing of products.

• 13:12Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 13:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pulsar watches, I don't know if they still make them, but that was a watch. The Quasar brand.

• 13:17Paul Mecurio?

  TV.

• 13:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  TVs and microwave ovens in the old days. But today, I think it's the second, the third highest category of where you draw names from to name cars.

• 13:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Astrophysic. Yes, yes, yes. So, no, or sci- science leaning astro. So, let's start off, okay, right, right? Aren't you supposed to be asking me questions? Yeah, I got questions. You want me to go to it? I count you as a questioner, you're two. Okay, so, fine. Okay. This counts as Paul's question. No, no, I can go to the next question, I'm sorry. Fine. Wait, do you want me to ask the next question? No, we're doing Paul's question and make everyone pissed off at you. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm done, I'm done, I'm done. That's fine. I'm done. That's fine. I'm done, we'll go to the next question. So, number one in car names, I think are names that don't mean anything, like, Yeah. like, the S-Class for Mercedes, just letters and digits and numbers, okay? The, the, the M-Class with a number, okay? Then you have locations. Right.

• 14:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like, Yukon, or Denali. Telluride. Yeah, these are places. Okay, I think third is like, science name, science astrophysics name. And I made a whole list of them. Is that right? Yes, I got a whole, let me read, I got it right here in my pocket, okay? Okay, give me a second, pull this up. I swear to God, I'm happy to go to the next question. No, the audience will be pissed off at you. That's fine. They're gonna mad at me. Okay, ready? Uh, okay, uh, between 1973 and 1975. Yeah. Um, what had just finished, what did we just finish doing just before that? Uh, getting rid of Nixon? That, that's true.

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We just finished going to the moon. Yes. The car called the Apollo. Oh. Yes. I forgot about that, yeah. Well, you forgot you that old, it was a Buick? Uh, of course, General Motors, okay? And then I got, um, 2008 to 2009, the Saturn Car Company. Whoa. Start there, okay? They had a car called the Astra, which is, which is basically star in Latin, okay? I got that. But this can go on and on and on. Uh, you told me when to shut up. Uh, 2005 to current, the Chevy Equinox. I'm taking it. Whoa. Equinox, you didn't know that these, okay? No. Uh, keep going, here we go. Another one. Uh, Saturn, going back to Saturn, which the car company does not exist anymore, but Saturn from 2003 to 2007, had the ion. I'm taking it. Did you say?

• 15:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The ion, it's chemistry, but I, we, the, it, the sun is a ball of ionized gas called plasma. Oh, so you're, okay. All stars are ionized. All right, I'll give you, it's a cousin, really, it's not, you know. But, excuse me, most of the universe is ionized. I'm taking it.

• 15:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 15:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not giving that to you. Okay, famous one here, 1962 to 1979, and again, 1985 to 1988, the Chevy Nova.

• 16:01Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, that was the car we made out in.

• 16:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wait, what's, yep, for those only listening, you should say who you were making out with.

• 16:09Paul Mecurio?

  Oh.

• 16:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not you and I.

• 16:12Paul Mecurio?

  Okay. My wife Carol.

• 16:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who was in the peanut gallery of this.

• 16:16Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, we went to high school together.

• 16:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you made out.

• 16:18Paul Mecurio?

  And my mother.

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Chevy Nova's not all that large.

• 16:20Paul Mecurio?

  We had a Chevy Nova.

• 16:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:22Paul Mecurio?

  And we would go.

• 16:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, bench front seats.

• 16:24Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 16:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it wasn't bucket seats.

• 16:26Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, you couldn't move the steering wheel up though.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got the biggest smile.

• 16:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't think people know that a Nova was a star that had just blown up. I think Chevy, had they known that, they might have found it.

• 16:36Paul Mecurio?

  Well, it also means no go.

• 16:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No go in Spanish.

• 16:39Paul Mecurio?

  In Spanish.

• 16:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've got another 20 cars in this list.

• 16:42Paul Mecurio?

  I just want to say, by the way, for those listening.

• 16:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's proof.

• 16:44Paul Mecurio?

  He has it on his phone and he has so many that he's, he must have did about 70 swipes. He just kept going and going and going. All right.

• 16:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, um, ask, ask me what gum I chew.

• 16:56Paul Mecurio?

  Trident.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nope. Eclipse.

• 16:58Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, God, there you go.

• 16:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, or Orbit. Orbit, I prefer the, the, the harder gum rather than the softer gum.

• 17:03Paul Mecurio?

  Oh.

• 17:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so.

• 17:05Paul Mecurio?

  You're really committed to your craft.

• 17:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, and there's Moon Glow bath beads, you've got Celestial Seasonings tea, you've got Milky Way candy bar, Mars candy bar, even that's the name of the family, they named it Mars. And it's red, okay? The packaging is red, I'm taking it.

• 17:22Paul Mecurio?

  That's all the time we have for today, everybody.

• 17:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got one, we got 30 seconds left. What's the next question?

• 17:28Paul Mecurio?

  All right, next question is from another Patreon, uh, fan.

• 17:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now that Paul blew the entire first segment.

• 17:33Paul Mecurio?

  One Hive, One Hive Gazette asks.

• 17:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:36Paul Mecurio?

  Will space tourism require some fundamentally new technology to make it affordable for everyday people? This is Patrick Follis in Mill Creek, Washington.

• 17:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we will get to that question in the next segment.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  This is StarTalk.

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic Queries Edition, where it's really a grab bag. It's Paul's, well, Paul Mecurio, my co-host today. Thanks for being on, Paul.

• 18:13Paul Mecurio?

  Absolutely.

• 18:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the Paul Mecurio Show.

• 18:15Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, podcast.

• 18:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On my podcast, iTunes. I've been on it several times, and it's always fun being on there with you.

• 18:20Paul Mecurio?

  Thank you.

• 18:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for coming to help me do StarTalk.

• 18:22Paul Mecurio?

  Thanks for having me. I've been a big fan of the show. It was really like an honor to be asked to do this.

• 18:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you collected not out of one category, you just, you got the drags of everybody's questions.

• 18:31Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, but I think it's cool because it's like, it's a mixed bag. It's fun, you know? It's not just one topic, you know?

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 18:36Paul Mecurio?

  We've got dark matter.

• 18:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think some of them are the best questions, right?

• 18:39Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't, they don't...

• 18:40Paul Mecurio?

  There's several dark matter.

• 18:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  March to the beat of a different drummer.

• 18:43Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 18:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what, what, you call this Paul's what?

• 18:47Paul Mecurio?

  Cosmic, Cosmic Catch-all.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Catch-all.

• 18:50Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go. Okay.

• 18:51Paul Mecurio?

  There you go, alright.

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So reread that question before we exited that last segment.

• 18:54Paul Mecurio?

  This is a Patreon person, One Hive Gazette, Patrick Follis in Mill Creek, Washington, asked, "Space tourism requires some fundamentally new technology to make it affordable for everyday people."

• 19:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that's a really good question. What's interesting about access to space is, if you remember your Econ 101, we think the demand is completely elastic, okay? And an elastic demand would be, if you drop the price, more people will do it. If you raise the price, fewer people will do it. But there's always a demand at a price, okay? That's one of the measures of whether something is elastic. If it's inelastic, it doesn't matter what price you charge, everyone has to buy it, and you can drive some people bankrupt or whatever. But elastic is like most products, you want them to be elastic. It's a healthy economy, okay? So tourist seats have already been sold on the space station by the Russians because

• 19:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the Americans wouldn't do it. And how much were they? They were $20 million.

• 19:53Paul Mecurio?

  Why wouldn't we do it?

• 19:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it was not our, that's not how we roll.

• 19:56Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 19:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's America.

• 19:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not for, for our greatest frontier. No, so for example, we have the right stuff. If you could just buy the right stuff, it ain't the right stuff. So our image of going into space.

• 20:09Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 20:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Had some of that.

• 20:10Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, you don't want to sully it, right?

• 20:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you don't sully, yeah, exactly. I think that was, no one would say that, but I think that was part of.

• 20:17Paul Mecurio?

  But don't you think it's inevitable that?

• 20:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm getting there, I'm getting there, exactly. No, no, no, don't apologize for interrupting me, this is New York. If you interrupt me, that's my only evidence that you're paying attention to me, okay?

• 20:26Paul Mecurio?

  I'm sorry, who are you again?

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so you can drop the price. So if you made it 10 million.

• 20:35Paul Mecurio?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, there might be 10 people who will go up. If you have a billion dollars, 10 million is lunch money, right? A lot of billionaires today.

• 20:42Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 20:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Make it 1 million, then you have all the, like, 100 millionaires, okay? So there, as you go down the economic ladder, the number of people who I think would be interested in this would continue to grow. Plus, I bet, I don't know your budget, I don't know what you do on holiday, I'm not gonna ask, but I bet you would save two years of holiday expenses to go on one space trip.

• 21:08Paul Mecurio?

  Absolutely.

• 21:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you stay home and watch TV and all the other holidays when you might have gone to Aruba, or whatever.

• 21:13Paul Mecurio?

  Does my wife have to come?

• 21:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, she's in the room now, the answer is yes.

• 21:16Paul Mecurio?

  Can I go on a craft called Nova?

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I, so I think there's a price that you can, you just keep doing this. Then, if there's a price below which it can't go.

• 21:26Paul Mecurio?

  Hmm.

• 21:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Make a lottery.

• 21:29Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, interesting.

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes, so let's say you can't get it below a million dollars.

• 21:33Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 21:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you sell a million lottery tickets for a dollar. You could do that every single time.

• 21:38Paul Mecurio?

  How low?

• 21:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every single seat will go for a dollar. But you can sell for a dollar and you get the one person and that's the million, the 10 million dollars it pays for that one person's seat. You could, you could do that every time.

• 21:49Paul Mecurio?

  How low do you think this, the price could go realistically?

• 21:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's tough, it's, it's tough getting into space.

• 21:54Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It really is.

• 21:55Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 21:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, I don't, I don't know. It's tough.

• 21:59Paul Mecurio?

  Do you trust the technology on the private side to get it right and do it right?

• 22:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean to not kill you?

• 22:04Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 22:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, no, people will die, for, that's what happened with the first airplanes, people die. Right now, people.

• 22:10Paul Mecurio?

  You're a bad commercial for this.

• 22:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it's just how this works.

• 22:13Paul Mecurio?

  Go to space, die.

• 22:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Die, no, no, go to space first, die. People said.

• 22:18Paul Mecurio?

  At least you went.

• 22:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People said, uh, if Elon Musk, you know, has a spacecraft to Mars, would you take his, the first spaceship? I said, no, I wait till after he sends his mother. And brings her back, right? If he can do that, then I'm going on the trip. I'm bringing the fam. Get a good Netflix account. And occupy the nine months to get there.

• 22:36Paul Mecurio?

  We're gonna move on. Listen, I believe in science. If you can make Disney and Disney World affordable, then I know we got something going on in science.

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think you'd have to do lottery if the ticket doesn't come down to the thousand dollar vacation that we would all take, paying for an airplane and rental car and a hotel to go to a beach. You're dropping anywhere between one and five thousand dollars for a family that you might have saved up to do. And I don't see it coming that, getting that cheap. I don't see that happening.

• 23:05Paul Mecurio?

  To me, it's come faster than I thought it would. I mean, there was talk, it seemed like it just talked about a few years ago and suddenly like we're close to making this happen.

• 23:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and so as a thing, we'll watch the rich people do it first. By the way, rich people were the first to fly in airplanes.

• 23:19Paul Mecurio?

  That's a good point. That's a good point.

• 23:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The first president to do it, that was headline news. President flies in an airplane.

• 23:25Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, quick prediction, then we'll move on. How many carry-ons am I allowed?

• 23:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think you, right now, access to orbit costs ten thousand dollars a pound, no matter what it is.

• 23:40Paul Mecurio?

  Whoa.

• 23:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 23:42Paul Mecurio?

  So I can't do that fake I have an emotional problem, can I bring my dog?

• 23:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, then you pay ten thousand dollars a pound for your dog. So a lot of chihuahuas are on this trip. Forget.

• 23:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forget the bloodhound and the Great Dane.

• 23:55Paul Mecurio?

  You have a Great Dane on a weight loss program. You wanna go to space, run.

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that ain't happening, no. So ten thousand dollars a pound, Elon Musk is trying to get that down, but I don't think he's gonna get it to a thousand dollars a pound. And what do you weigh, a hundred and fifty pounds? Yeah, so there'd be a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Way less than a million. But, and I bet if you weighed a hundred and sixty, but you could drop to a hundred and fifty, you do that to save the ten thousand dollars.

• 24:22Paul Mecurio?

  Absolutely.

• 24:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To go into space. So.

• 24:25Paul Mecurio?

  I'd go on naked just to save the weight on clothes. All right, we're gonna move on.

• 24:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you talk about carry-ons, there better be some, there better be some seriously important carry-on.

• 24:35Paul Mecurio?

  Can I take my bowling ball on? That's gonna cost you fifteen thousand dollars. All right, we're gonna go on to another Patreon.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bowling would be hard in space, by the way, just if we're going there. Leave your bowling ball at home.

• 24:47Paul Mecurio?

  If you get a strike in space and you don't hear it, did it happen?

• 24:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you got a strike in space and you didn't hear it, you'd be bowling in a vacuum with a space suit on. And that would be weird. We would, we would make a place where there's air and you could breathe, okay? We would do that for you and your bowling ball. All right.

• 25:04Paul Mecurio?

  And one other thing, real quick. I saw you were talking about something and you talked about the movie Gravity and you made the point that Sandra Bullock's bangs.

• 25:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The bangs always point you down. The bangs knew where gravity was.

• 25:15Paul Mecurio?

  Everything's floating around.

• 25:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything's floating around and the bangs didn't budge. That angered me for, irrationally, I'm sorry.

• 25:22Paul Mecurio?

  And whoever cut it, like immediately went to her face and just, she looked great. You're right, they were down, they were perfect, they were straight, everything around her was floating.

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, was I, was I wrong to, to go there?

• 25:31Paul Mecurio?

  No, you were totally right.

• 25:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's my thing, here's my, let me just, let me just defend myself for the moment. If you look at any picture of somebody in space who has long hair, the first thing you notice is that the hair is everywhere. That's the first thing.

• 25:46Paul Mecurio?

  That's a good point, yeah.

• 25:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The women who go up with all their long hair and they don't tie it in a thing, stick it straight up.

• 25:51Paul Mecurio?

  Is that why Kelly, the bald guy, he's bald?

• 25:55Paul Mecurio?

  He wants, he wants to keep you guessing if he's in space or if he's on a soundstage.

• 25:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mark Kelly?

• 25:59Paul Mecurio?

  Mark Kelly.

• 26:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it Mark Kelly?

• 26:01Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, one of the, the twins, right? Yeah, I think it might be Scott, I don't know.

• 26:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Scott, Scott, which one did we interview on StarTalk? We had, um, one, one of those two twins. Uh, we had the better looking one, apparently, that's as he introduced himself. Scott Kelly, I think it was. Uh, he, yeah, maybe he had long dreadlocks.

• 26:19Paul Mecurio?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna screw with their heads and shave my stuff.

• 26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fool in that photo, let me, let me mess with them.

• 26:23Paul Mecurio?

  Um, all right, so we're gonna go on to, uh, another Patreon, uh, supporter, uh, One Hive Gazette. Uh, this is, uh, this is, this is the same gentleman, this is, uh,

• 26:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's getting two questions in there, all right, let him do it.

• 26:35Paul Mecurio?

  Dark matter seems to be a placeholder for unexplained gravitational forces in the universe. Is it possible that our understanding of gravity is incomplete? Could gravity work differently on galactic scales?

• 26:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not likely. It's an excellent question. First, it's not so much a placeholder.

• 26:56Paul Mecurio?

  Hmm.

• 26:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is a placeholder, but it's not. We measure this thing out there and we don't, that has gravity associated with it, and we don't know what it is. Come up with a name. Call it something. Call it Fred. I don't care what you call it. It's a thing.

• 27:09Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 27:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's got gravity. We measure its gravity. It interacts with matter.

• 27:13Paul Mecurio?

  Hmm.

• 27:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By gravity.

• 27:14Paul Mecurio?

  Hmm.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we happen to call it dark matter, and everyone's thinking, oh, is it matter? Is it? It's really dark gravity.

• 27:21Paul Mecurio?

  Oh.

• 27:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dark matter implies you know it's matter. We would label it correctly, just like the Big Bang, we'd have to call it the big event.

• 27:29Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 27:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The silent, silent movie, the main event. If it didn't make any sound, dark gravity is the accurate thing we should be calling it, and we don't know what it is. But we can calculate it with it, and you put it in the equations, and it works. There's a term. Here's the extra gra- the extra stuff, dark, the dark matter.

• 27:49Paul Mecurio?

  Is it eighty-five percent or something like that?

• 27:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, uh, so eighty-five percent of all gravity in the universe is of unknown origin. Gravity that we measure. So, yeah, it could be that we need a deeper understanding of gravity on larger scales, but we have examples of colliding galaxies.

• 28:05Paul Mecurio?

  Hmm.

• 28:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you can run the numbers on it, and regular gravity accounts for that. And then you throw in dark matter to account for some other things that are going on. So, I don't,

• 28:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I, I, we think it's not that.

• 28:22Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 28:23Paul Mecurio?

  How slowly?

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, there is, there is a, there is a sub-cottage industry of people who think we just have to modify gravity, modify Newtonian gravity. And they abbreviated that M O N D, modified Newtonian, and they called Mond, the Mond people. You type Mond in Wiki, you'll get all this description of taking Newton's gravity and adding a term to it for a large-scale thing. And you can fit a few things, but there's some things you can't fit.

• 28:45Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 28:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With it. So we think it's, we think it's something else that we simply don't know what it is.

• 28:50Paul Mecurio?

  Well, you said you, you, this is something you said. You don't know if it's made of matter. It's a misnomer to send people in thought directions that's not the right path.

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't say it's not the right path. It's, it's, it's, you don't want to mislead, you don't want to prejudge what it could be. Because then people use the word and then they get caught up in the word. And then the word becomes the thing rather than the idea.

• 29:15Paul Mecurio?

  Are you a wimp, a wimp proponent?

• 29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A weekly interacting massive particles, yeah, yeah, sure. The possibility of what role they could play in the universe, who do play, sure. I mean, in the universe, astrophysics, we're open to anything. We're, we are so ignorant of so much stuff. We should take any, you've got an idea, bring it on and, and, and give us ways we might test it and we'll test it.

• 29:37Paul Mecurio?

  Is there a process of elimination? Is there like, are you all like crossing things off the list?

• 29:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want to come up with a hypothesis that has enough detail in your predictions that we can rule it out if we make the experiment. If you just say, oh, it could be just something that's there when you don't look at it, but then it's there. It's for the, then give me a prediction. If you don't have a prediction, you're not, it's not useful.

• 29:59Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 30:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there are hypotheses that are put on the table. The, the more fuzzy wuzzy they are, the less useful they are and you just discard them. It's the ones that say, if this is idea is correct, you should find this if you look in that direction. And then we do it, we find it, hey, you're on to something, give me another prediction. Oh, that failed, okay. Should you modify your hypothesis or? And by the way, if your predictions keep coming right.

• 30:22Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We elevate your hypothesis to a theory.

• 30:25Paul Mecurio?

  Oh.

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how you get the theory of gravity, you get quantum theory, you get relativity theory, you get evolutionary theory. These are ideas that started out as an hypothesis, elevated to a working understanding of how the universe works that has predictive value.

• 30:42Paul Mecurio?

  Is it, I guess, is it possible that our understanding of gravity is so vague that my bathroom scale could be off? So that I'm actually lighter than I am?

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the part of gravity we understand precisely.

• 30:55Paul Mecurio?

  Damn.

• 30:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'm just saying.

• 30:57Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, we're gonna move on, another.

• 30:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, people don't talk about this. Because of the centrifugal force of the rotating earth. You weigh less on the equator than you do on the, on the pole.

• 31:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the Earth is trying to spin you off. And so you actually weigh a little less at the equator. You weigh less here than you do in Canada.

• 31:16Paul Mecurio?

  Really?

• 31:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:18Paul Mecurio?

  By?

• 31:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not only that, Earth is slightly wider at the equator than it is at the pole. So you're farther away from the center of the Earth.

• 31:24Paul Mecurio?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you weigh less for that reason as well. You also weigh less because you are immersed in a fluid called air. There's a buoyancy that you have in air.

• 31:37Paul Mecurio?

  Air is a fluid?

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it takes the shape of its container, it's a fluid. You can have liquids and gases or fluids. And so fluid dynamics, which is an entire branch of physics and engineering, involves the movement of things that would, that are, would take. So the movement of, of water around bridge embankments, the movement of air over the, the wings of planes, it's all, it's all fluid dynamics. So, so, so why did I talk about that? Where was, where was I going with this?

• 32:04Paul Mecurio?

  Um, because I asked you if the laws of gravity are so vague that my scale could be wrong.

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, no, sorry. Oh, yeah, you started.

• 32:10Paul Mecurio?

  Me just being an idiot.

• 32:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's, here's how to go. On the equator, where you get the centrifugal forces.

• 32:16Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 32:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, you weigh a little less than you would, than, Santa Claus would weigh less on the equator than on the North Pole.

• 32:21Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? And you also weigh less on the equator because Earth is slightly wider at the equator than it is pole to pole.

• 32:28Paul Mecurio?

  All right.

• 32:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you'd also weigh less if you went to a mountaintop because you're farther away from Earth's center than if you went down in a, in a mine, for example.

• 32:37Paul Mecurio?

  Kyle, we're moving to an equator. I want to be able to eat what I want to eat.

• 32:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Moving to a mountain on an equator.

• 32:43Paul Mecurio?

  Now we're talking.

• 32:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now you're talking.

• 32:44Paul Mecurio?

  Pizza every day.

• 32:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get you six ounces. Uh, when we come back with Paul Mecurio on StarTalk, we're going to do more cosmic queries from the dusty.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Hey, we want to shout out the following people who support us on Patreon and help us as we make our little journey through the cosmos. Valentin Elizalde, Wilson Teixeira, and Julia Leschek. Thank you so much, guys, for supporting us. And if you want your name shouted out, go to Patreon and support StarTalk Radio.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  Bringing space and science down to Earth. You're listening to StarTalk.

• 33:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk, we're back. Paul Mecurio, on loan from the Paul Mecurio Show. Did you allow yourself to be loaned out to us? Okay, you have to check the authorities on that one.

• 34:05Paul Mecurio?

  I bought myself a car service and everything. Yes, I got permission to be out just for the day.

• 34:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just for the day, they let you out.

• 34:12Paul Mecurio?

  I said, please, it's Neil. They're like, all right.

• 34:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you brought your wife. She's in the studio with us here. Welcome. Tell me your name again? Carol. Carol, welcome to StarTalk. So you've got some more questions for me.

• 34:21Paul Mecurio?

  I do.

• 34:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's go.

• 34:22Paul Mecurio?

  We're going, we're sticking with dark matter. This is Kale Honeyset, Instagram. Do you think that once dark matter is discovered and understood, would it actually help in space travel?

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'm going to answer a bigger question than that. Almost, by the way, we've already discovered dark matter. We just don't know what it is. Okay, so let me, what she means that there is, once we know what dark matter is made of, okay, we've already discovered it. It's there.

• 34:50Paul Mecurio?

  Can we then use it?

• 34:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, by the way, there's a long history of discovering things that we don't know what it is. Okay, that's, this is not a first time you discover something.

• 34:57Paul Mecurio?

  The Kardashians.

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is this? Why am I watching this?

• 35:03Paul Mecurio?

  Exactly. How did this come about?

• 35:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How did this come about?

• 35:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be the dark matter forces operating on our culture.

• 35:11Paul Mecurio?

  That's the eighty-five percent.

• 35:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eighty-five percent. So, once we find out what it is, I can say more broadly that practically every scientific discovery there ever was,

• 35:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  when you have enough clever engineers and other folks in the pipeline,

• 35:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  we find a way to apply it to our everyday lives. In this case, maybe space travel. Maybe we can exploit its existence as we move through space. Maybe we can isolate a dark matter particle here on Earth and use it for, you know, walking through walls. Dark matter doesn't interact with ordinary matter in ordinary ways. In fact, it moves through it as though it's not there at all.

• 35:50Paul Mecurio?

  But how do we know that if we don't know what it is?

• 35:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, because we can see, oh, because we can see, you can log the behavior of things.

• 35:58Paul Mecurio?

  Effects of things, okay.

• 35:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. So you say, here's this region of space. We don't see any matter. No light is coming out, except stuff is getting attracted to it.

• 36:07Paul Mecurio?

  Must be.

• 36:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stuff that moves through it unimpeded with its speed. So I'm attracted to it, yet it's not slowing me down. I'm not plowing into anything.

• 36:16Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 36:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, dark matter and, quote, "regular matter" can move through each other with no effect at all. So maybe that's how you can make ghosts. Maybe these are the spirits of all the dead people.

• 36:27Paul Mecurio?

  Do you believe in, do you believe in any of that?

• 36:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. Next question.

• 36:32Paul Mecurio?

  But what?

• 36:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, there's been about a hundred billion people ever born on Earth, maybe a little less, like eighty billion. So, and we got about seven billion here now. So let's, eighty billion minus seven, what did it get you down to? So that's seventy-three billion ghosts out there. So first, that's a lot of ghosts. People said, "Do you believe in ghosts?" No, because there'd be so many of them. There'd be ten times as many ghosts as there are people.

• 36:56Paul Mecurio?

  You'd have to have high rises.

• 36:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's so annoying. It's like, get out of here. I'm busy.

• 37:02Paul Mecurio?

  Everywhere you turn, there's a ghost.

• 37:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a ghost.

• 37:04Paul Mecurio?

  Enough with the ghosts already.

• 37:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Great Caesar's ghost, I don't know. So, where was I?

• 37:10Paul Mecurio?

  We were talking about seventy million ghosts.

• 37:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Seventy-three million ghosts. So, here's the thing. The total number of humans ever born doesn't amount to that much mass. There's way more mass in the universe in dark matter than ever could be equaled by the ghosts of dead people. So you can't appeal to the ghost of dead people, or lost socks.

• 37:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the washing machine. Space-time continuum.

• 37:36Paul Mecurio?

  Jerry Seinfeld thing where the sock is up against the dryer wall and trying to get out.

• 37:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, next question.

• 37:44Paul Mecurio?

  By the way, on this dark matter thing, real quick, the idea that you can't define it, we don't know what it is. That's a good way to scare kids. Like, if you don't go to bed, dark matter's gonna get you. You'd like freak them out.

• 37:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 37:54Paul Mecurio?

  Did you ever think about that?

• 37:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I didn't.

• 37:55Paul Mecurio?

  All right.

• 37:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you have kids?

• 37:56Paul Mecurio?

  Yes, we do.

• 37:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How old are they?

• 37:58Paul Mecurio?

  I'm not sure. I'm trying not to get too close. Okay. We're gonna, we're gonna move away from dark matter. We've done a few of those. This is from Mike Parker, Facebook. When something explodes in space, as is shown on numerous TV shows and movies, is there really a shockwave in a vacuum?

• 38:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, good question.

• 38:17Paul Mecurio?

  That was mine.

• 38:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This person clearly knows there's no sound to move. You only get a shockwave if energy is moving through a medium. And so...

• 38:28Paul Mecurio?

  Example of a medium.

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, anything.

• 38:29Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 38:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Anything.

• 38:32Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 38:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's how bombs work. A bomb works because it creates a shockwave that moves through air, then walls, then your flesh.

• 38:42Paul Mecurio?

  Ghosts?

• 38:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. I haven't seen experiments on ghosts yet.

• 38:46Paul Mecurio?

  There's 73 million of them. You should get on it.

• 38:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, billion.

• 38:50Paul Mecurio?

  A billion, sorry. Wow, I screwed that up.

• 38:54Paul Mecurio?

  Sorry, go ahead. So, so it goes through these mediums?

• 38:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, generally, in a supernova, which is some of our best shockwaves in the universe, the star that was once there had shed a lot of gas into the vacuum of space. And deep down is where you get the explosion. And so the explosion happens, sending a shockwave rippling through the gas that it had spread out into space. You see these beautiful photos of these terribly disturbed, gaseous regions. The shockwave had blown through it. By the time it gets out the other end of the, of the material, then the shockwave can't propagate. So what it does is it accelerates particles at the end with that leftover energy. You get very high-moving, fast-moving particles. It's a fun thing.

• 39:41Paul Mecurio?

  Is this where Newton's third law comes into?

• 39:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Newton's third law always comes in.

• 39:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, just there, but not with you? Yeah, news laws apply everywhere at all times.

• 39:51Paul Mecurio?

  All times?

• 39:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 39:52Paul Mecurio?

  My ass, my butt is pushing down on the seat.

• 39:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it pushes back, exactly. So you have this energy moving through and it needs to manifest. And at the edge of the, edge of the gas, you get this acceleration. It happens at the edge of the sun as well. Get these accelerating particles at the edge of the sun. It's very cool.

• 40:08Paul Mecurio?

  Really?

• 40:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. It's part of the solar wind, actually.

• 40:11Paul Mecurio?

  Does any, the stuff that happens on Star Trek, is any of that true? Cause I mean, I, I learned, I learned Klingon, so I hope it's not a waste of my time.

• 40:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You did learn Klingon, you're in the club. Wow. No, I didn't learn Klingon. I said, no, I'm gonna use my brain for other things.

• 40:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I knew enough back then that that's how I should be using my brain.

• 40:29Paul Mecurio?

  Alright, we're gonna do one.

• 40:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The, the photon torpedoes, or the, or the phasers, the, the ship phasers that shoot forward.

• 40:36Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 40:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If they're directing their energy to the ship in front of them, you should not see them from the side.

• 40:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no energy coming out from the side.

• 40:44Paul Mecurio?

  It's like when the, it's like when the speedometer is on your windshield in a really fancy car, you can only see it straight on.

• 40:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, oh, just cause it's in a, well, okay. That's cause it doesn't let you see it from the side, cause it's in a, it's in a cylindrical cavity. Oh, the digital ones, oh, so what they do is they have a, like a, a polarized screen, so only the driver would see it. You do all that, but that's not why this is the case. When you see, when you see a laser through the air, it's cause air is reflect, particles in the air are reflecting the laser light to you on the side.

• 41:16Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 41:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if it's Starship against Klingon ship in the vacuum of space and you send a light beam forward, you have no idea the light beam is there.

• 41:25Paul Mecurio?

  Got it.

• 41:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 41:26Paul Mecurio?

  You said that about Rudolph's red nose, that it doesn't emit light, it reflect, it's reflecting.

• 41:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would reflect light, but let's, we can allow it to emit light. Why do you know everything I've ever written or said? This is a little spooky.

• 41:36Paul Mecurio?

  I'm just supposed to know stuff.

• 41:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is bordering on.

• 41:40Paul Mecurio?

  I'm sorry!

• 41:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is bordering on, what's the word you have, uh, um, groupie?

• 41:44Paul Mecurio?

  Anal? No, I'm interested in your stuff and I feel like I should know something if you're nice enough to have me here. Alright, uh, what's your name again?

• 41:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we're at the five-minute mark, which means we have to go into lightning round.

• 41:56Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, here we go.

• 41:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that means I will answer every question with a soundbite.

• 42:02Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, and I will move to the next one.

• 42:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we're training for when I'm on the evening news, because they only want soundbites out of me anyway.

• 42:06Paul Mecurio?

  I feel like this is a game show. This is for a car.

• 42:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There we go, okay.

• 42:10Paul Mecurio?

  Uh, okay, Brian Amaral, Facebook. "Hi Neil, can you please talk about why scientists are so intent on catching neutrinos on Earth and what they can tell us about the universe? Thank you in advance."

• 42:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. So every nuclear process that goes on in the center of the sun and the center of every star, every nuclear event that happens has neutrinos associated with it. So for every hydrogen atom that becomes helium, becomes a helium atom, there's a neutrino emitted. And neutrinos are hard to block. In fact, they exit the sun without any trouble at all. And so neutrinos are the signposts of intense nuclear activity wherever you happen to be looking. And we think that there's a neutrino blast from the early universe, when the universe was formed, and we need, we want to create neutrino telescopes that

• 43:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  could see that. This would be, for neutrinos, what the cosmic microwave background was for the Big Bang. And the rest of our understanding of the Big Bang, this would take us even farther back in time. So neutrinos, they, they're where the action is.

• 43:20Paul Mecurio?

  I'm sorry, that's not the correct answer. Thank you for playing. Okay, uh, we're going to Miriam Sissalem. I'm sorry if I'm butchering that.

• 43:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. Chuck Nice is usually here and messes up every word.

• 43:33Paul Mecurio?

  "At present, how accurately can we intercept possible signals from intelligent aliens?"

• 43:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. Here's the problem. Uh, let's say you assert that they're going to communicate in this frequency. So now you build a particular frequency. Now you build a telescope.

• 43:48Paul Mecurio?

  Doesn't it matter on their cell plan?

• 43:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 43:51Paul Mecurio?

  International.

• 43:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is it 3G or 4G? So, so now I'm going to listen on that frequency, but which way am I going to point the telescope? I'm going to point it this way. Suppose they're giving me a message on a different frequency. Well, I could listen to that. Well, how about a different frequency from that? Suppose they're not in that direction. Suppose they're behind you.

• 44:09Paul Mecurio?

  Are we eliminating possibilities?

• 44:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Suppose they sent the message 10 minutes ago before you started listening.

• 44:14Paul Mecurio?

  Right, you were in the shower, you didn't hear it.

• 44:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is called the parameter space of communication. And are they using your frequency at your time from that direction? And if it all has to match up. So you need a detector that can listen to all frequencies. You need to look in all directions and you need to look at for all of time.

• 44:34Paul Mecurio?

  And we don't have that.

• 44:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't, we're not there.

• 44:36Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 44:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're not there.

• 44:37Paul Mecurio?

  Are we working toward that?

• 44:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's hard.

• 44:39Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 44:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's hard. Plus, suppose they sent us a message and it came during the Roman Empire. And no one caught the message because they didn't invent radio waves, discover radio waves yet. And then nobody sends back a signal, they might conclude there's no sign of intelligent life on Earth. Yet you had the entire Roman Colosseum and statues and what we call intelligence. So, yeah, do we just... No.

• 45:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, let's get some more in.

• 45:02Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 45:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These answers are too long. I gotta make them even shorter. Go.

• 45:05Paul Mecurio?

  Luke the Inventor, Instagram. Do you think if people traveled closer to the edge of the universe with a huge telescope, they would be able to see past it to the other side? And will they see a giant fetus and then an old man in a white bedroom? What does that mean? No, I'm just kidding. That was my... Uh, space odyssey. Uh, yes. Uh, if you travel with a huge telescope edge, uh, will you be able to see past it to the other side? And what would they see?

• 45:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are bound by the horizon established by the speed of light. And so if you could travel faster than the speed of light, you could then get ahead of the signal that came from your past. And then see things in the past.

• 45:44Paul Mecurio?

  No, seriously, say that again.

• 45:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But right now, we don't know how to go faster than light. We don't have wormholes or anything. So you're stuck in your present or and in your future. But the moment you can travel faster than light, you can get ahead of the light beam that you created in your past and be able to see your life unfold before your eyes. Next.

• 46:01Paul Mecurio?

  I don't know if I'd want to see that.

• 46:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know what you've been into.

• 46:05Paul Mecurio?

  Shava Bello at Emily Luris, Instagram. What obstacles do you think space tourism will face?

• 46:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's one no one talks about, okay? I send you up in space, you are weightless. How many of us have experienced being weightless? None of us. By the way, it's the experience you get on an amusement park ride, except more so. And so in space, if you throw up, all your vomit continues to float in the air and doesn't go into a splatter diagram on the ground.

• 46:33Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 46:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you ever go, you see, you know, 3 a.m.

• 46:37Paul Mecurio?

  You take the fun out of everything.

• 46:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You walk the streets outside of bars, the throw up pattern is very clear, okay?

• 46:43Paul Mecurio?

  It's very, they are different, but they're all so general.

• 46:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they're all different, but they have, there's a general recurring geometric pattern, okay? There's always some carrots in there in the middle somewhere, alright.

• 46:55Paul Mecurio?

  That he ate seven years ago.

• 46:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know that, right. So, so we trust gravity to gather the vomit in one place.

• 47:02Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 47:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But in space, when you're in zero G, it's everywhere. So if you have all these newbie tourists throwing up everywhere, it will smell, it'll get in your hair, it'll just be nasty.

• 47:13Paul Mecurio?

  But don't you have to put them in a centrifuge and get them all like, that thing and get them used to it?

• 47:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That gives you extra gravity when you're in centrifuge.

• 47:19Paul Mecurio?

  You see how I did the astrophysics thing, I went, zzz, zzz.

• 47:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You did the sound thing that you would not hear in space, right. So.

• 47:25Paul Mecurio?

  You really do ruin everything, right.

• 47:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give me one last one, real quick.

• 47:28Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, Julian Garcia, okay, we know where the center of the galaxy is, but does anyone know where the center of the universe is?

• 47:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, there is, there is no center of the universe. The center is in fact everywhere. You want the center of the universe, go back in time.

• 47:45Paul Mecurio?

  Me.

• 47:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  3.8 billion years.

• 47:48Paul Mecurio?

  Ask my wife.

• 47:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I tweeted that one, I said, um, there is no center of the universe, so you can't be it. Okay?

• 47:57Paul Mecurio?

  That's great.

• 47:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if you want to think of a center of the universe, you have to go back in time when we were smaller. 13.8 billion years ago, when all the universe was in the same place at the same time. Think of that as the center.

• 48:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then, we're all at the same place at the same time. So now, as we expand, the center of the universe is everywhere.

• 48:19Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, and that place is like a fraction.

• 48:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I'm just saying, it is now everywhere. That center of the universe is now the entire universe. Cause we were all in the same place at the same time. Now that being said, just because a thing exists, doesn't mean it has to have a center.

• 48:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where is the center of Earth's surface? Tell me.

• 48:40Paul Mecurio?

  The corner of 88th and Clark Avenue.

• 48:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Paul, we gotta end it there.

• 48:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Paul from The Paul McCurry Show.

• 48:51Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 48:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for having, I'm glad, thanks for coming to our show.

• 48:54Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, thank you for having me. This was really, really fun.

• 48:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You gotta have the coolest gig in the world, warming up the audience for Stephen Colbert.

• 48:59Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 49:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  CBS Ed Sullivan Theater.

• 49:02Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, it's a really cool theater, yeah.

• 49:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's always good to see you there, the several times I've been on the show.

• 49:05Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, I try to come by and say hi.

• 49:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 49:07Paul Mecurio?

  They've been nice enough to have been on the show a few, bunch of times too. It's great, yeah. I've been, Stephen and I go back to The Daily Show together, so.

• 49:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, cool.

• 49:14Paul Mecurio?

  It's, uh, it's really great to see how the shows, like, come together, you know?

• 49:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And he found his groove.

• 49:20Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, you know, because he's not a stand-up. He's, that's not his thing. And he really, like, he got, he got it. He got it, yeah. And you're always so great on the show.

• 49:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, thank you.

• 49:27Paul Mecurio?

  Daily Show, Colbert Report.

• 49:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is a high compliment.

• 49:29Paul Mecurio?

  And by the way, like, you know.

• 49:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you see them all.

• 49:30Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, you know, because you know when a guest is, like, the staff hangs out around the TV. I don't, I'm not a big fan of it, but, um, no, they do. And like, you know, you know, you work on it. Sometimes people are going to be, who's on the show today? I'm like, I don't know. Like, it's like a job, right? But like, I just, you should know that.

• 49:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, thank you.

• 49:50Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, Neil's on, and everybody's standing around the TV.

• 49:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I try to say something interesting about the universe. I'm glad sometimes it happens.

• 49:56Paul Mecurio?

  Absolutely.

• 49:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 49:57Paul Mecurio?

  Absolutely.

• 49:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we're done there. You've been listening to, possibly even watching, StarTalk. And I, your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, good year to keep looking out.