Cosmic Queries – Before the Big Bang

What does it really mean for us to be made of stardust? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Paul Mecurio answer fan questions about particle colliders, time travel, and what existed before the Big Bang.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Paul, it's not every day I get to think about infinities. Somebody asked about that. That was fun.

• 0:06Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 0:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a little spooky.

• 0:07Paul Mecurio?

  It's a little spooky and it sort of keeps you thinking and then you ultimately get to the point where you don't think that there's a definitive answer to the question about infinity.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or you give up on life.

• 0:17Paul Mecurio?

  That's exactly right.

• 0:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we had a little bit of a celebration of the centennial

• 0:22Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 0:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  of quantum physics.

• 0:24Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 0:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the 1920s.

• 0:26Paul Mecurio?

  And I hear there's a big pool party at your house to celebrate that.

• 0:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not infited. Coming up, StarTalk.

• 0:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. The grass Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Today we're doing Cosmic Queries Grab Bag Edition. And I've got co-host here, Paul Mecurio. Paul, welcome back.

• 1:00Paul Mecurio?

  Great to see you.

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I love your work, man.

• 1:02Paul Mecurio?

  Thank you.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I see you on the Late Show.

• 1:05Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The occasions when I'm on, I see you warming up the crowd. But occasionally gives you a slot.

• 1:10Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, yeah, I've been on a bunch of times and I'm going to be going on again very soon.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:16Paul Mecurio?

  Doing a set of stand-up.

• 1:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll look for you.

• 1:17Paul Mecurio?

  It's always great.

• 1:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you got, there's like a Broadway show or a stage

• 1:23Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 1:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  show, Permission to Speak, and we all know your podcast.

• 1:28Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah. Inside Out with Paul Mecurio.

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Inside Out with Paul Mecurio.

• 1:31Paul Mecurio?

  And you're on it.

• 1:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think I've been on that a couple of times.

• 1:33Paul Mecurio?

  You have, yeah, absolutely. I still owe you money for that.

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's no categories here?

• 1:38Paul Mecurio?

  There's no categories. This is loose, but I gotta tell you.

• 1:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you got pages and pages, dude.

• 1:42Paul Mecurio?

  We got tons of, and they're all good. And they're varied and different people all over the country and all over the world in different age ranges, which you'll see in there.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, good.

• 1:50Paul Mecurio?

  So it's really cool.

• 1:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hit me.

• 1:51Paul Mecurio?

  So this is Man Chano. Chano, from the US of A.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:55Paul Mecurio?

  Had the SSC in Texas gone through, where would we be today? Do canceled projects like this set us back as a species? Also, what other major scientific breakthroughs have been made or halted?

• 2:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, made or halted?

• 2:10Paul Mecurio?

  Mmm.

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that.

• 2:12Paul Mecurio?

  Sounds like he's digging.

• 2:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so the SSC, the Super Conducting Super Collider, which was, had I been in charge of naming it, I would call it the Super Duper Collider.

• 2:23Paul Mecurio?

  I was gonna say.

• 2:26Paul Mecurio?

  I think it needs more adjectives.

• 2:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I know.

• 2:28Paul Mecurio?

  The gargantuan super-

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They ran out of adjectives there.

• 2:31Paul Mecurio?

  Oh my god, honey, look at the size of this collider.

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so they missed out on that one, I thought. If you take certain metals and you reduce their temperature, there comes a point where they become superconducting, where electricity can pass through them and there's no resistance and they don't get hot, and it just moves. We call that superconductivity. In the 1970s and 80s, there was research into, can we make superconducting materials at a higher temperature? In other words, as you lower the temperature of the material, can it become superconducting at a much higher temperature than previously enabled?

• 3:10Paul Mecurio?

  Why is that important to seek it at a higher temperature?

• 3:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if you can find a room temperature superconductor, ooh, that would transform everything.

• 3:18Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, but then every average person's gonna have it, and then we're gonna have all these people with superconduct-

• 3:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With superpowers.

• 3:26Paul Mecurio?

  And then all of a sudden, people are gonna be turned into like little ants, like Ant-Man. What are you, people crazy?

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that how he became an ant?

• 3:31Paul Mecurio?

  You guys can't put power like that in a-

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's a very good point.

• 3:35Paul Mecurio?

  You wanna meet my brother-in-law? You don't want that guy having-

• 3:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It should have some guardrails, right. So it came of age when higher temperature superconducting materials were becoming available. And why does that matter? For any collider, you're accelerating particles. The particles have electric charge. And if you move an electric charge through a magnetic field, you can accelerate it. And you adjust the magnetic field, make it just right, it can get very, very fast. The particles can go very fast, hitting 99% the speed of light.

• 4:06Paul Mecurio?

  And what does the manifestation of that very fast-moving particles look like? Is that the electric-

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just a beam of particles, like typically protons, and you slam it into a target.

• 4:17Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 4:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that creates a field of energy out of which brand-new particles can form.

• 4:25Paul Mecurio?

  And we harness that energy?

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, it's not for energy, it's for what new particles exist in this universe that we didn't know about before we turn on the switch.

• 4:32Paul Mecurio?

  We have enough particles, why do we need new particles?

• 4:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you always want more particles, come on.

• 4:37Paul Mecurio?

  What are you doing with a new particle?

• 4:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We need more, because a new particle might explain something we didn't understand.

• 4:41Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, okay, so you're constantly in search of...

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:44Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, it's like what we were talking about on another show, so you never rest.

• 4:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Probing the universe, yeah, you never rest. So, it came of age at that time. And, by the way, it's still the Cold War, early 90s. So, under Reagan, we say, yes, let's start this project, superconducting supercollider. They dig the hole. By the way, it would be the largest and most powerful supercollider in the world.

• 5:06Paul Mecurio?

  If you go hole somewhere out there?

• 5:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's like, I forgot the diameter, a couple hundred mile, I mean, huge.

• 5:11Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, it's the Meadowland, that's what they did.

• 5:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some states are not large enough to contain this collider, such as Rhode Island, all right?

• 5:19Paul Mecurio?

  Which is where I'm from.

• 5:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're from Rhode Island?

• 5:21Paul Mecurio?

  That's my home state.

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't...

• 5:23Paul Mecurio?

  Can the world stop making any small reference and compare it to Rhode Island? Can we all move on from that? If I hear blankety-blank, twice the size of Rhode Island, I'm gonna create my own supercollider and zap you.

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know it was that sensitive. Rhode Islanders carry...

• 5:45Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 5:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Issues.

• 5:47Paul Mecurio?

  We have size issues, as it were.

• 5:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Texas clearly big enough, so, it's in Waxahachie, Texas, okay? They acquired the land, started digging the hole, and the years go by. And around 1989, 1990, the government takes another look at the contracting, the budgets, and they judge that there are cost overruns that we cannot afford. And they zero the project.

• 6:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's different from canceling it, but it's the same thing.

• 6:22Paul Mecurio?

  From what I read, the project was fairly far along.

• 6:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it was. Yes, it was. The research, the engineering, and then they zeroed the project. And once that happened, the center of mass of particle physics would no longer be in the United States. But just because you don't do it doesn't mean some other folks can't or won't.

• 6:45Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 6:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the European Center for Nuclear Research, CERN, which is located in Switzerland, but it's a European consortium, an international consortium, I should say, they said, all right, you're not gonna do it, we're gonna do it. So then they built, as part of their facility, the Large Hadron Collider. You might have heard of it, the LHC. That became the detector that found the mythical Higgs boson, the God particle, the particle whose field grants mass to other particles. That's badass. If you're gonna be a particle, that's the particle you wanna be.

• 7:20Paul Mecurio?

  You wanna be.

• 7:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a book called The God Particle, written about the Higgs boson. That was written decades ago. Because we knew it should be there, we don't have an accelerator that can detect the energies where we would find it. So...

• 7:34Paul Mecurio?

  And that's the particle that kills his brother, the other particle, who thinks he's cheating. He's Fredo. He kills his brother Fredo. Oh, I'm sorry, I got this mixed up with The Godfather. Go ahead, continue.

• 7:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So...

• 7:51Paul Mecurio?

  In all seriousness, why couldn't the scientific community in America convince the federal government and the people funding this that this was a mistake?

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they didn't call it a super duper collider. That's my answer.

• 8:03Paul Mecurio?

  Those idiots would have understood the significance.

• 8:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so watch. There is a report that talks about the budget that we can't afford it. I have a different view. No time in the 20th century when we had the power to make particle accelerators, did anyone complain if there were cost overruns? You don't even know if there were cost overruns. Maybe there were no cost overruns. I didn't check the budget on every single particle accelerator in the country in the 20th century. There's Brookhaven, there's Stanford Linear Accelerator, there's, there's, there's all Matt, there's, there's, uh, in, outside of Chicago, Fermilabs, okay? All over the country. And they're all under the auspices of the Department of Energy, by the way. So a budget serves this. All right.

• 8:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This gets canceled. Wait a minute. What else happened in 1989? Peace broke out in Europe.

• 9:04Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Peace broke out.

• 9:07Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 9:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The, the wall, the, the, the Berlin Wall came down. And within three years, four years, the Soviet Union was dissolved. Oh, there was cost overruns, we can't defer. If you're threatened with your life and your way of living.

• 9:22Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 9:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are no cost overruns. It's not.

• 9:25Paul Mecurio?

  And how can, and how? That's exactly right.

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I don't mean to, I'd be blunt about it, okay? So.

• 9:33Paul Mecurio?

  Here's a blank check, keep me alive.

• 9:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Keep me alive. Yes, yes.

• 9:36Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 9:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Keep me alive.

• 9:38Paul Mecurio?

  And by the way, very clever to put it under the auspices of the Department of Energy instead of the DOD, so that it can look like it's.

• 9:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It looks like just a science project that we don't.

• 9:47Paul Mecurio?

  We're gonna better our energy output, whatever.

• 9:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, correct. But 20th century was the century of the physicist.

• 9:53Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 9:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From beginning to end.

• 9:55Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 9:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All the way through.

• 9:57Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 9:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, oh, no Cold War? Uh, oh, by the way, President Clinton comes in, in the 1990s, and it's the first time that anybody remembers the budget is balanced for the United States. And so, they, they wanna take credit for balancing the budget, except, there's no Cold War anymore, okay? So, he, he, he takes off, there's no Cold War. So.

• 10:20Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's be real about budgets.

• 10:23Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 10:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let's understand this.

• 10:25Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I write about this, it's speculative, there, there's no document that says this. The document says, cost overruns, we're zeroing the budget. We have other priorities. There's others that said that when the space station was coming online, the space station would be primarily served through. NASA's Houston, uh, NASA Houston.

• 10:43Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 10:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, uh, uh, the, the, the Johnson Space Center.

• 10:47Paul Mecurio?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Others declared that the politics of it were you can't have two major projects in the same state that would get that much attention from the government.

• 10:55Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, but you can move one to another state.

• 10:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you can't move the, the, the hole in the ground, the accelerator.

• 11:01Paul Mecurio?

  Move the other.

• 11:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, Johnson Space Center, you can't move that.

• 11:04Paul Mecurio?

  What is the Florida, do it in Florida.

• 11:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, Florida already has a space center, but that's not where the astronauts.

• 11:08Paul Mecurio?

  See, it's this kind of negative thinking that kept the Super Duper Collider from existing.

• 11:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If Florida's space center, they don't train the astronauts there. The astronauts are trained in Houston. NASA has 10 centers strategically put, all right? This is.

• 11:20Paul Mecurio?

  Listen, my friend, you just said it a minute ago. If we were on the verge of a brink of war, they'd find a way to have both of those.

• 11:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are no cost overruns.

• 11:27Paul Mecurio?

  There are both, both of those programs to exist.

• 11:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I, I wrote about this in my book from a few years ago. When was it? 2017.

• 11:34Paul Mecurio?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, accessory to war.

• 11:37Paul Mecurio?

  Hmm.

• 11:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The unspoken alliance between astrophysics and the military.

• 11:42Paul Mecurio?

  Hmm.

• 11:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I talk about this two-way street.

• 11:44Paul Mecurio?

  Hmm.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Between the frontier of modern astrophysics, particle physics in there as well. Because particles, we learned about the Big Bang and the needs of the military. So that became the most obvious accounting for that to occur.

• 11:59Paul Mecurio?

  Hmm.

• 12:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We lose the, the center of mass, it goes to Europe. Uh, Europe eventually discovers the Higgs boson.

• 12:07Paul Mecurio?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nobel prizes all around.

• 12:08Paul Mecurio?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our accelerator was, depending on the, the, the beam, three to six times more powerful than the most powerful settings of the LHC.

• 12:20Paul Mecurio?

  Hmm.

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we would have discovered the Higgs boson decades ago.

• 12:24Paul Mecurio?

  And perhaps either at that time or in, in the resulting decades, other things.

• 12:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, thank you, other things, perhaps other things. Right. Once you get there, now you ask the next question.

• 12:33Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 12:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a new place to stand.

• 12:35Paul Mecurio?

  You never stop.

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you have a proscenium looking beyond.

• 12:37Paul Mecurio?

  What else is out there?

• 12:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 12:39Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 12:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's never about the question you even know to ask.

• 12:42Paul Mecurio?

  So that.

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the question you haven't thought of yet.

• 12:44Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 12:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because there's a place you will soon stand. That will give you a view that you didn't even know was possible.

• 12:51Paul Mecurio?

  And based on that perspective, the setback is almost exponential in a way, right?

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no.

• 12:55Paul Mecurio?

  We don't know what we don't know.

• 12:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 12:57Paul Mecurio?

  And that's a shame.

• 12:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't know what you don't know. Correct. And that's deep and important and real. Uh, they're trying to boost the energies of the LHC to go to the next level there. So that was getting back to the specifics of the question. The discovery of the Higgs boson was delayed decades because of that decision. But science is science. It's not about the creativity of an individual. If Beethoven did not compose the Ninth Symphony, if Van Gogh did not paint the Starry Night, no one who will ever be born in the future will compose or paint that.

• 13:35Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 13:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whereas in science, you can be very creative and be ahead of everybody, but eventually everybody catches up and we move beyond it. Because what decides what is true is not the public's voting on, oh, we like your artwork. It's nature, which is the ultimate judge, jury, and executioner of your idea. And if you don't want to do it in the United States, another country does it. By the way, it's international, so we had Americans who were part of that collaboration, but we didn't lead it.

• 14:04Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all.

• 14:05Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm an American.

• 14:07Paul Mecurio?

  American.

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm a 20th century American, but we led everything. And now I'm gonna, well, what do you, what you got over there, guys? Can I look over the fence?

• 14:15Paul Mecurio?

  I had that.

• 14:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We almost had that.

• 14:17Paul Mecurio?

  It's like, it's like you're looking over the fence and your neighbor's got an in-ground pool and you've got an above-ground. Yeah, where the, the country, America's a country when it comes to that with the above-ground pool. Well, that was a great question.

• 14:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah, yeah. I might, I gave it a long answer, but it was.

• 14:32Paul Mecurio?

  No, it was great.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  I'm Kais from Bangladesh and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 15:03Paul Mecurio?

  I love this person. This is Rupeesh. Hi, my name is Kriti. I am 11 years old. I'm in the sixth grade. I live in Cary, North Carolina. In my school, we are doing a passion project and my topic is astrophysics as I find this topic very interesting. I have also recently been reading-

• 15:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This person's 11 years old?

• 15:23Paul Mecurio?

  This, I know, right? Been reading your-

• 15:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, you're lying. So it's not 22 or-

• 15:28Paul Mecurio?

  No.

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay, fine.

• 15:29Paul Mecurio?

  It says 11. I know how to read. I've also been reading your book, Astrophysics for Young People in a Hurry. By the way, could you come up with a longer title? Jesus. I have a question for you and I'd love if you could answer it for me as that question would be added into my project plus your answer. So speaking of truth, this kid's asking you to help or cheat? Is the question, very basic. What existed before the Big Bang?

• 15:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I can answer that.

• 15:56Paul Mecurio?

  You can?

• 15:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yes.

• 15:58Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, go ahead.

• 15:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We had no idea. Okay, next question.

• 16:02Paul Mecurio?

  This is why people find scientists annoying.

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, don't generalize to everybody else just because you-

• 16:08Paul Mecurio?

  We want some definitive answers in our life.

• 16:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just because in this moment you find me annoying.

• 16:13Paul Mecurio?

  Here's, I got two things that existed before the Big Bang. Ready?

• 16:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 16:18Paul Mecurio?

  Lint?

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe.

• 16:20Paul Mecurio?

  And a single sock. It started all with a single sock floating around-

• 16:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is missing from the laundry?

• 16:26Paul Mecurio?

  That single sock.

• 16:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's lost in space?

• 16:28Paul Mecurio?

  Floating around in space.

• 16:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in time. We don't know for sure and we wouldn't even know how to experimentally verify our ideas. But there are some ideas. And when you run the equations back through time of general relativity, Einstein, and quantum physics. By the way, we are in the centennial decade of the discovery of most of the important tenets in quantum physics. So that feels, it gives me goosebumps actually. And not only that, that's the decade where Edwin Hubble, Hubble was a person before-

• 17:01Paul Mecurio?

  Before telescopes that didn't work.

• 17:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It works now.

• 17:05Paul Mecurio?

  Was he as defective as a person as he was as a telescope?

• 17:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mama didn't. So. So in the mid 1920s.

• 17:13Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 17:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He discovers that the spiral fuzzy things in the night sky spiral nebulae were whole other galaxies. Like the Milky Way. This is freaky.

• 17:25Paul Mecurio?

  Was there speculation as to what it was before he?

• 17:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just spiral clouds.

• 17:29Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 17:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There were other fuzzy clouds that weren't spiral. So they were like.

• 17:34Paul Mecurio?

  But there were telescopes that existed before his.

• 17:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but you have to know the distance to things.

• 17:38Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't just pace it out by walking it. All right. If you find the distance to a spiral nebulae and it's 100 times farther away than other nebulae than the sitting outside of your galaxy.

• 17:50Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 17:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. And so he discovered that in mid decade. And then by the end of the decade, he discovers the expanding universe. That decade, that 1920s.

• 18:01Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 18:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Roaring 20s.

• 18:02Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 18:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right before the market crashed.

• 18:04Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In October 1929.

• 18:06Paul Mecurio?

  And then, you know, people weren't so focused on science, unfortunately. It's like the science of eating and having food on your plate.

• 18:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you run the equations back, you generate this entity that pumps out universes, possibly an infinite number of universes. It just pumps them out. And we call that the multiverse, a term that's just been uptook.

• 18:30Paul Mecurio?

  By Marvel Comics.

• 18:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And not only Marvel, but of course Rick and Morty.

• 18:39Paul Mecurio?

  With all of these brilliant minds out there over the years, why haven't? What do you, what is your theory as to what's keeping us from knowing what existed before the Big Bang?

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've been figuring out other things like the origin of the earth and the origin of the moon and the origin of stars and the origin of. And now we're on the origin of galaxies. So the origin of the, give us a chance here of top people working on it.

• 19:01Paul Mecurio?

  You're avoiding the question like I'm having an argument with my wife. You're avoiding the question.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stop. What I'm saying is, science.

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is more about knowing what question to ask than to have an answer for every question posed. Isaac Newton, my man, here my little finger puppet of him here, next to my voodoo thing. I don't even know what that showed up in my office one day. I don't know where it came from. That is a little creepy. Yeah, I don't, I have no, this was just in my, I don't even know where, where it came from. Thing's got to put some weight on. A little malnourished. Sit him there. Isaac Newton, in his book Optics, published 1704, wrote it in English. So that like regular people could read it, not in the academic language, Latin, for scholars. At the end of his book, he has a section called queries.

• 19:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, that's where I get the word cosmic queries. Not called cosmic questions. That was, which would also kind of work. You get the alliteration, but cosmic queries. He has a section in the back called queries. Yeah. These are just stuff that spilled off his, his dinner plate. One of them is, I wonder if the stars of the night sky are just like the sun, except much, much farther away. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yeah. And that's like a scrap on, off the dinner plate. And this is the guy who utters this line, I'll mangle it only a little. He says, sometimes I feel like a child, sitting on a shoreline,

• 20:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  picking up one pebble for being shinier than another,

• 20:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  when an ocean of undiscovered truths lay before me. Wow.

• 20:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Newton saying that, my man. So anyhow, so the, the multiverse is there for what might have been around before the Big Bang and there's, but that just moves the question back. You know, what, where the multiverse come from? Yeah, it just keeps going and going. That plagues origins questions. Right. And by the way, it somehow doesn't. Plague religious people.

• 21:17Paul Mecurio?

  Well, I was just gonna say, it's sort of, we're not even talking about the theory that God created everything, and it's not science.

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's not a theory, it's faith that says that. So, what intrigues me is, when I say, "Well, I don't know what was around before the big..." Something had to be there, something. I say, "Well, we got top people working on it, we're working, give us a chance." It had to be God, then, I say, "Maybe the universe always was." "No, it had to have a beginning." And so, it's okay, well, so what do you say? Well, it was God. And so then I say, "Well, who created God?" "Oh, God always was, God was always there." So, they allow that within themselves to say, "God always was," but won't allow the scientists to say, "Maybe the universe always was." Apparently, that's not allowed. But it's allowed when you're religious and you say that about God.

• 22:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, all I'm saying is, the origins questions will always be able to push it forward unless somehow it creates itself. And then you have a loop. And, but we're not there yet, it's a frontier. Give me some more.

• 22:18Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, you got it.

• 22:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Grab, bad me some more.

• 22:20Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, this is Umar Chima, Umar from Seattle. Longtime StarTalk listener, "I finally decided to get off my cheap ass and become a patron."

• 22:34Paul Mecurio?

  I love that.

• 22:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, Umar, for getting off your cheap ass.

• 22:37Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, save your money, because t-shirts are coming, Patreon Saints.

• 22:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Patreon Saints.

• 22:42Paul Mecurio?

  Here's my first question. "We know that we can slow down our time relative to others by traveling at a super-high speed or getting very close to a massive object in space, but is there a way to accelerate our time instead of slowing it down? Can we accelerate our time and essentially visit the past? Or does it just mean we just get old super-fast? And if anybody knows about getting old..."

• 23:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See, I'm proud of my age.

• 23:12Paul Mecurio?

  I, you should.

• 23:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'd like to believe that I have wisdom to show for it.

• 23:16Paul Mecurio?

  You do.

• 23:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all.

• 23:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pizza, I don't wanna get old, I don't wanna get old, yeah, because they're not learning new things.

• 23:22Paul Mecurio?

  Exactly.

• 23:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're stuck in some previous time in their lives.

• 23:25Paul Mecurio?

  I agree with you.

• 23:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where they wish they were still on the football team, or on the, still on the cheerleading squad, when...

• 23:31Paul Mecurio?

  Speaking of which, that's why I don't wanna go back to the past. Cause I'm not gonna ever win that 50 yard dash and then embarrass myself, I couldn't get Mary Ferguson go to the prom with me, don't get me started, okay?

• 23:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dude, the issues you're bringing to the show. You gotta leave those in therapy.

• 23:46Paul Mecurio?

  I can't, this is why I'm here, I need you. So can, so can we accelerate our time and visit the past?

• 23:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think you have to look at it differently.

• 23:53Paul Mecurio?

  The guy's a paying customer, he can look at it any way he wants.

• 23:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's true, customers always right. Okay, you're right.

• 23:59Paul Mecurio?

  You're right.

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever you're thinking, you're right.

• 24:00Paul Mecurio?

  Just keep sending the money, people, come on, send the money.

• 24:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You shouldn't look at it that way, you should look at it as your speed as seen by others, by the way, you don't feel this at all. It's only as measured by others. So if you go fast and time slows down for you, you're still ticking. To you, it's one second per second. To everybody else, it's one second per 10 minutes, one second per hour.

• 24:23Paul Mecurio?

  I, I'm not following, I didn't explain it, it's how is it observable by others, my speed?

• 24:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I see you, oh, so I'm here, and I see you whiz by at some speed.

• 24:31Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, see, you walked down the hall.

• 24:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I was thinking of rocket ship, but sure.

• 24:36Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, all right, a rocket ship.

• 24:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, walk down the hall at half the speed of light.

• 24:40Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 24:42Paul Mecurio?

  Which I can do.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, I have an equation, a formula that tells me the rate at which your time is ticking, relative to me. And I plug it in, and I forgot the number, it might be ticking a third or a fourth.

• 24:56Paul Mecurio?

  My time is different than yours, cause you're stationary and this thing is moving, no?

• 25:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, that's almost the right way to say it. Your time is different from me because we are moving relative to each other.

• 25:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As far as you're concerned, you are stationary and I'm moving past you at half the speed of light.

• 25:12Paul Mecurio?

  Ah.

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't know.

• 25:14Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 25:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you will look at me and say, oh, he's moving slow. And I look at you and say, oh, you're moving slow. Both of us will measure the same thing about each other if we are passing each other in the night at half the speed of light.

• 25:27Paul Mecurio?

  One going one direction, one going the other.

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. And so.

• 25:31Paul Mecurio?

  Why is half the speed of light a critical?

• 25:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not. I could say 10%, but it's not linear, so the faster you go relative to the speed of light, the greater and greater the effects are. Alright, so half the speed of light is not half the effects.

• 25:46Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 25:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a small fraction and it grows rapidly.

• 25:49Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright. It goes like the square of your velocity as you get closer. How do I make your time go slower if you're going half the speed of light? I make you go faster. Now you go three quarters the speed of light, 90% the speed of light, and I can watch you slow down relative to me. Now I speed you up. Go slower. Go one fourth the speed of light, one tenth the speed of light. How slow can I get your time to go? Stop right in front of me. And that is the slowest we can make your time go.

• 26:17Paul Mecurio?

  Which is the same time.

• 26:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that happens to match my time. Correct.

• 26:20Paul Mecurio?

  But this.

• 26:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They want to go backwards. We don't know how to do that.

• 26:23Paul Mecurio?

  We don't.

• 26:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I have to repeat my time poem.

• 26:28Paul Mecurio?

  Please.

• 26:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I may.

• 26:29Paul Mecurio?

  Please.

• 26:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are prisoners of the present. Forever transitioning between our inaccessible past and our unknowable future.

• 26:40Paul Mecurio?

  That's exactly what I say to my wife when she asks if I bought pickles and I forgot.

• 26:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, you're bringing your issues into.

• 26:46Paul Mecurio?

  Well, you make it very relatable to my life.

• 26:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 26:49Paul Mecurio?

  And I have a lot of issues and, you know, I love you, man. I love you. So the answer is.

• 26:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not your fault. It's not your fault.

• 26:57Paul Mecurio?

  But there's this obsession in pop culture with this time travel.

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want to go backwards in time.

• 27:01Paul Mecurio?

  And you think, well, do you just think, and I know, I love you never say absolutes, but like, why? It's dangerous because you start flirting with the past and you alter the future, whatever.

• 27:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you can flirt with your own future.

• 27:12Paul Mecurio?

  So if you went in the past, what would you change?

• 27:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, you have to watch out for that because you don't know the full set of contingencies that would follow.

• 27:19Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, who cares about anybody else?

• 27:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, they don't because you say, if you go in the past and there's Hitler as a child, will you kill Hitler? As a child, would you do that? What you don't know is there's someone else that would rise up that would have been worse than him.

• 27:33Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For the stability of the world.

• 27:34Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 27:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the 1930s and 40s. You don't know that.

• 27:37Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 27:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm keeping the past the way it is. Uh, not knowing whether, having altered it, by the way, this was explored in an episode of Star Trek. They went back in time to the 1930s or late 30s, I forgot the exact year. And Bones, I think it was Bones, the, the surgeon, falls in love with a woman, you're not supposed to do that. Cause they're, they're, this.

• 28:00Paul Mecurio?

  You messing with.

• 28:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You messing with the time continuum, the space-time continuum.

• 28:04Paul Mecurio?

  But as usual, men led by their whatever. That's a scientific fact. That is a scientific fact.

• 28:12Paul Mecurio?

  Go ahead.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, on that subject, by the way, the first interracial kiss between a black person and white person was on Star Trek. And it was William Shatner.

• 28:22Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, I remember that.

• 28:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was, it was kissing Lieutenant Uhura.

• 28:25Paul Mecurio?

  I remember that.

• 28:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, they got all kinds of hate mail from the South on that. They could, it was 1967, somewhere around there.

• 28:32Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 28:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Meanwhile, Captain Kirk can visit all these galaxies. There's a green woman, a blue woman.

• 28:39Paul Mecurio?

  She's got a tumor over here, a horn over here.

• 28:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kiss them. Clearly female aliens.

• 28:45Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 28:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's kissing all up in them, but another human who has skin.

• 28:50Paul Mecurio?

  He's kissing a woman that looks like a creller. That's fine, but not that black woman, damn it. We have standards.

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, Bones falls in love with this woman.

• 29:00Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 29:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And she's a peace, she's into peace.

• 29:03Paul Mecurio?

  Hmm.

• 29:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She doesn't want war.

• 29:05Paul Mecurio?

  Hmm.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She sees nations building up and she tries to prevent the start of the Second World War. This is her motive and her mission. Meanwhile, she gets hit by a bus or a truck and dies. And Bones is distraught. He wants to go back in time again.

• 29:24Paul Mecurio?

  To prevent.

• 29:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To prevent that, to save her. They go back in time again. That's when Spock does his research. He realizes she has to die. Because if she lives, she will successfully delay the entry of the United States into the Second World War, giving Germany, Nazi Germany, the leg up in creating the atom bomb. They create the atom bomb first and take over the world. And this is communicated to Bones. And the scene where she's going out into the street and the truck is coming, he wants to save her and they, and Kirk and they hold him back.

• 30:01Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they just watch her die.

• 30:02Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 30:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that's a different world that they don't want to have happen.

• 30:06Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 30:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, stay in the present.

• 30:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get your ass out of the past.

• 30:12Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 30:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 30:13Paul Mecurio?

  That sounds good.

• 30:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, Hawking has a time travel conjecture. Where he says, he thinks that as we get closer to traveling through time, there'll be some new law of physics that we will discover that will prevent it.

• 30:25Paul Mecurio?

  On the subject of Star Trek, can you explain to me why when they transport Kirk, his shirt never fits properly? They can't make it so it's a little bigger. It's like he went to the baby Star Trek store.

• 30:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it fits tightly? Because he had a, he was a buff body back then.

• 30:39Paul Mecurio?

  I understand, but.

• 30:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not by today's standards, but back then, he was, and plus, plus, if I, of all the captains, he's the captain I'd want to be.

• 30:47Paul Mecurio?

  Why?

• 30:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because.

• 30:48Paul Mecurio?

  The pointy side burns.

• 30:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I did have, I did give myself pointy side burns in my day. But, he

• 30:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  took on all his own fights.

• 30:58Paul Mecurio?

  That, that, that's music.

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Remember that?

• 31:04Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 31:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes. So, the point is, if you're a crew member and your captain is fighting the bad guy.

• 31:09Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 31:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're gonna fight the bad guy.

• 31:11Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 31:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not gonna be like Jean-Luc Picard. They say, go fight them. It's no, get your own ass out there.

• 31:19Paul Mecurio?

  No, but there's another side of that. I don't want the guy leading to get in a fight and die. Like.

• 31:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's Kirk and he's got phasers. Don't worry about it.

• 31:26Paul Mecurio?

  I'd be like, hey guy, you, I gotta stay back here.

• 31:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, he's got phasers. We good.

• 31:30Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, but he's got all the change to put in the meter when he's parking this ship in the middle of the thing. You don't know what you're talking about. Um, I, I, I think he does have a good body. I'll give you that.

• 31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the day, that was a good body.

• 31:41Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. You think the transporter should have had a tail? He shows up looking dapper.

• 31:48Paul Mecurio?

  Exactly. Yeah, with a jaunty hat, a cane. Come on.

• 31:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a different transporter. That's a more expensive transporter. The one that's also your tailor. Okay.

• 32:21Paul Mecurio?

  Emily Koneko Reynolds. Hello, Neil. This is Emily in Kyoto.

• 32:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice.

• 32:26Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah. Is there stardust in the air we breathe? Or is the stuff in the air that air is made of just an evolution of stardust? I get the impression that everything is an evolution of stardust, which makes me wonder, what does future evolution hold? And I can tell you, future evolution, there will be a time when humans don't have to bend over to put their shoes on. It's called Skechers Future. Is this where we are now? That we have shoes, that people can't bend over to put their shoes? Is Skechers sponsoring? I am so annoyed by this. Is this where we are now?

• 33:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, okay, we invented automobiles.

• 33:07Paul Mecurio?

  I can't go all the way down there.

• 33:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And flight and supersonic transport. And we went to the moon and this generation makes.

• 33:15Paul Mecurio?

  Right. I don't have to bend over three feet and I can put more weight on.

• 33:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think the baby boomers are getting older, but they've always been inventive. Because we went to the moon under the baby boomers' watch.

• 33:26Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 33:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're making our lives easier, making it seem like it's better for everyone, but it's really just for ourselves. Okay?

• 33:34Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Because we can't bend over.

• 33:36Paul Mecurio?

  Exactly. All right. So I get the impression that everything is an evolution of stardust, which makes me wonder, what does future evolution hold? Now, this evolution could be in the context of astrophysics or biological evolution.

• 33:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So allow me to clarify a couple of things. I speak glibly that we are not only.

• 33:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Poetically, but literally stardust. We are made of ingredients that were forged in the hearts of stars. Not all stars, this kind of stars that in their end of their lives explode and become supernovae, scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy. I was gonna say contaminating, enriching other gas clouds with the ingredients of life itself. Carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, go all down the periodic table, right to iron.

• 34:27Paul Mecurio?

  And these are particles that are smaller than the diameter of hair.

• 34:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're atoms, they're atoms, okay? So I've loosely called it dust. Because these atoms gather and they make larger molecules. Dust has a specific definition in space. We'd speak of dust in space. So dust are agglomerations of molecules that are stuck together, but are not chemically connected. You could pull apart the dust to get raw molecules. You pull apart the molecules to get atoms. I'm saying the foundations of this are elements on the periodic table. And I call loosely call all of that dust. So if you inhale dust from your shelf with the, with the, no, the, the whiffer poofer. What do you call that thing? Swifferd poof?

• 35:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The pooper scooper, they don't wanna mix those two up.

• 35:17Paul Mecurio?

  The whiff and poof is, that's Yale choir.

• 35:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, the whiff and poofs are the Yale glee club. Yeah, okay, the Swiffer.

• 35:24Paul Mecurio?

  If you hire the Yale glee club to dust your house and dust is generated, go ahead.

• 35:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Swiffen poofers. So if you, so if there's dust and you inhale it, yeah, that's like household dust. Which commonly is like pet dander and other things. Um, yes, if you get to the bottom of that, ultimately, those ingredients came from stars and from the origin of the universe. So it's not an evolution of dust so much as dust taking on other shapes. So when I say we're made of stardust, the actual dust from stars has been processed here on Earth. But it's still the same ingredients, the nitrogen, oxygen, carbon. And so if I were to be more.

• 36:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sort of chemically accurate in my discussion of dust. That changes the whole conversation. Hannah Holmes wrote The Secret Life of Dust. From the cosmos to the kitchen table, great title. A former science editor with the, I think, the LA Times. But anyhow, so, so dust is, it's everywhere, you know. But I, rather than look at dust and say, oh, this, this is cat dander. And this is from sawdust. I, I, as a, as a cosmologist, cosmetologist, as an astrophysicist. It's all stardust to me.

• 36:47Paul Mecurio?

  And, and so.

• 36:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in that famous song, was it by Kansas? All we are are dust in the wind. And he says, all we are, this is, that's what we are.

• 36:57Paul Mecurio?

  But, but, but this human being that I am is stardust.

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, the, you are traceable to stars.

• 37:04Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 37:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And to me, that's a stardust memory.

• 37:07Paul Mecurio?

  So if we get back to the question from Emily, I get the impression that everything is an evolution of stardust. Which makes me wonder.

• 37:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which is fair, that's very fair.

• 37:15Paul Mecurio?

  So now her question is what does future evolution hold? Based on this foundation of stardust that we just talked about.

• 37:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it is the richness of the chemistry that the periodic table of elements grants us.

• 37:27Paul Mecurio?

  Got it.

• 37:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it, far as I can tell, it knows no bounds.

• 37:32Paul Mecurio?

  That's the beauty of science.

• 37:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you, the water molecule, H2O, you break it apart, the hydrogen joins something else. The oxygen joins somebody else. And there, the universe progresses unless it finds itself in, in a, like a, a nuclear furnace. And then it'll become, can become another element.

• 37:51Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 37:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But absent that.

• 37:53Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 37:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You breathe in oxygen atoms that.

• 37:57Paul Mecurio?

  Anything's possible.

• 37:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Were exported by a star five billion years ago.

• 38:02Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah.

• 38:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Feel it.

• 38:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Feel that connectivity.

• 38:06Paul Mecurio?

  Feel the burn.

• 38:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Feel the burn. Feel, I think that's all the time we have.

• 38:10Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 38:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At least you have a really fast one.

• 38:11Paul Mecurio?

  Uh.

• 38:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a really fast one, and I'll give it a soundbite answer.

• 38:14Paul Mecurio?

  Alright, okay.

• 38:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really fast.

• 38:16Paul Mecurio?

  Uh, while a sta- staple, this is Sparkman. While, it's a staple, it's Sparkman?

• 38:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sparkman.

• 38:22Paul Mecurio?

  That's all I got. While it's a staple of mathematics such as calculus, are there any instances of infinity in the observable universe?

• 38:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, I, well, the universe, the universe itself might be infinite.

• 38:36Paul Mecurio?

  Yes, I have it, Neil explaining anything.

• 38:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's as long as it takes.

• 38:40Paul Mecurio?

  That's the ultimate definition of infinity. Goodnight, everybody. I'll be here all week.

• 38:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't get no respect. I try to.

• 38:49Paul Mecurio?

  That's a great question, though, seriously.

• 38:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so the universe itself might be infinite. If there's a multiverse, it's pumping out an infinite number of universes.

• 38:58Paul Mecurio?

  Which in each, each of which could be infinite of its, in another.

• 39:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In its own dimensionality. So, for example, I can have a sheet of paper that goes to infinity in every direction, but then I have another sheet of paper floating above it that also goes to infinity, and they don't intersect.

• 39:14Paul Mecurio?

  Because they can go like this?

• 39:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because they, they coexist but in a higher dimension than either of them. Each sheet of paper is only in two dimensions.

• 39:21Paul Mecurio?

  But aren't magnetic forces pulling them together in some way?

• 39:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It could be, or even gravitational forces. And if you have two universes that collide, oh, you're talking about on Earth, the two actual sheets of paper. I'm talking about two universes.

• 39:32Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 39:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That are infinite but not colliding with each other. If you embed them in a higher dimension, you can get away with that as you would with two sheets of paper. That's all I'm saying. There are people, top people, wondering if there's a parallel universe, might we feel something of them, of their gravity?

• 39:49Paul Mecurio?

  Hmm.

• 39:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there something, is there some leakage out of their spacetime that we might feel? That could be the future of detections of parallel universes, of the infinite universes. But my favorite example of infinity is Zeno's paradox, where you want to exit the door, you gotta go halfway.

• 40:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you gotta know another halfway. And then another halfway.

• 40:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just keep doing that.

• 40:12Paul Mecurio?

  Wait, when I walk through the door, I walk through the door.

• 40:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you're going halfway first. And then you're going halfway again.

• 40:18Paul Mecurio?

  Here's the door, here's me. How am I going halfway? I walk through the door and I don't stop.

• 40:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you're being too rational here. You gotta stay with the math. Okay? You wanna exit the front door. Before you get to the door, you have to cross the halfway point, don't you?

• 40:34Paul Mecurio?

  Halfway point of what?

• 40:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Between where you happen to be standing and where the door is.

• 40:38Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 40:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We agree.

• 40:39Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 40:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, now, you gotta cross the halfway point between there and the door.

• 40:43Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, I got you.

• 40:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then the half and the half.

• 40:45Paul Mecurio?

  But it's so random to pick half. You could say I gotta pass the third, the point at the one-third.

• 40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I could have, that's correct.

• 40:52Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 40:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. But, so there's an infinite number of halfway points.

• 40:56Paul Mecurio?

  Yes, I get it.

• 40:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Zeno saw this and said, by that reasoning, you'll never get to the door. This is an infinite, but of course you do get to the door. So what's going on? And what he didn't realize is that you are covering more and more halfway points in less and less time. And the infinity actually converges to a finite amount of time.

• 41:19Paul Mecurio?

  Because you're cutting down the distance.

• 41:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 41:21Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 41:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And infinity can be cut into something that's finite. So, yeah, but other than math, no. I mean, the universe is finite to our observable edge.

• 41:32Paul Mecurio?

  Right, so there's no such thing as to infinity and beyond? I think that's...

• 41:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just dissed a book that I co-wrote with my producer.

• 41:41Paul Mecurio?

  No, that I...

• 41:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know the title of that book?

• 41:43Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 41:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To Infinity and Beyond?

• 41:45Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 41:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Why you dissing the book?

• 41:48Paul Mecurio?

  No, I didn't remember that, actually. I'm referencing a Disney movie. Do I look that smart?

• 41:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Paul, we gotta go.

• 41:56Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, this has been great.

• 41:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dude, thanks for coming back.

• 41:58Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, man, it's great to see you.

• 41:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, man. Keep us smiling, keep us laughing.

• 42:01Paul Mecurio?

  Absolutely.

• 42:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, and we'll find you on the road.

• 42:04Paul Mecurio?

  Permission to speak. My Broadway show, directed by Frank Oz, PaulMercurio.com for tickets. We're gonna be in Dr. Philip's...

• 42:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mercurio.

• 42:11Paul Mecurio?

  Mercurio, M-E-C-U-R-I-O.

• 42:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like the SAT word, mercurial.

• 42:15Paul Mecurio?

  There you go.

• 42:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This has been StarTalk's Grab Bag Cosmic Queries.

• 42:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From my office here at the American Museum of Natural History. Paul, thanks for coming in. Thanks for having me. All right. As always, I bid you keep looking up.