Cosmic Queries: Bill Nye Edition

The Science Guy takes the mic to answer your questions for him about evolution, technology, the human exploration of space, and even Leonard Nimoy, chosen from Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus by co-host Chuck Nice.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and this is StarTalk.

• 0:30Bill Nye?

  We have a great show. We're gonna jump around here from logical scientific topic to logical scientific with one extraordinary diversion. Is that right Chuck?

• 0:39Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:40Bill Nye?

  We're gonna talk briefly about meat.

• 0:45Chuck Nice?

  Yes, well actually I'm calling this, this whole thing "High on Nye", because we have queries for you and we've taken them from the internet, from Google+ from StarTalk.net, from Twitter, Facebook.

• 0:59Bill Nye?

  That's social, the social media.

• 1:02Chuck Nice?

  The social media.

• 1:03Bill Nye?

  The electric, the electric internet.

• 1:04Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 1:05Bill Nye?

  That all the kids are crazy about. Kids are crazy for.

• 1:09Chuck Nice?

  So what we've done is we've, we've pulled together questions specifically asked to you, Mr. Nye.

• 1:18Bill Nye?

  Wow.

• 1:19Chuck Nice?

  And so every one of the, every one of the questions here was addressed to you from one of our social media platforms, so I'm calling it "High on Nye."

• 1:30Chuck Nice?

  Let's do it like this, because people kinda ask you all kinds of crazy questions from all over the world. I mean, not all over the world, I'm sorry.

• 1:40Bill Nye?

  You don't know that. Actually, you don't know that with the internet.

• 1:42Chuck Nice?

  Actually, they could be from all over the world.

• 1:43Bill Nye?

  But they're all in English.

• 1:44Chuck Nice?

  But I'm saying on very many subjects. So we have evolution.

• 1:48Bill Nye?

  Evolution. I wrote a book on evolution.

• 1:51Chuck Nice?

  Which was a New York Times bestseller, available from St. Martin's Press.

• 1:55Bill Nye?

  You can go to Amazon.com.

• 1:56Chuck Nice?

  And so I think we should start with that. And this is about evolution. Of course, you had a very famous debate that our friend Neil deGrasse Tyson refers to as "Ham on Nye."

• 2:10Bill Nye?

  Yes, like instead of a sandwich.

• 2:13Chuck Nice?

  Instead of a sandwich.

• 2:14Bill Nye?

  With rye bread, yes.

• 2:15Chuck Nice?

  So let's go with evolution here, alright? First question from Richard Bolin.

• 2:22Chuck Nice?

  I hear this talk about the mechanisms that explain evolution. Everyone says mechanisms. What are these mechanisms, please?

• 2:34Bill Nye?

  Oh, so the first one is, uh, first one. You, what makes evolution go is you reproduce by you. Uh, you're a living thing.

• 2:44Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:44Bill Nye?

  Reproduction is what, is how changes come to be in the descendant species, the next, the offspring, the kids. Be it corn plants, uh, soybean, uh, spiders, sea jellies, or even humans.

• 3:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:02Bill Nye?

  And by making replicas of yourself, you accidentally, in general, induce changes. And so that is a mechanism. Now, this works whether or not you have sex. When you have sex, like dandelions do.

• 3:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:19Bill Nye?

  Then you can accelerate the process by getting this new mixture of genes. So that the offspring are inherently quite a bit, or quite a bit, somewhat more different than they would be if you didn't have sex.

• 3:32Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 3:33Bill Nye?

  So then the question is, and this is where the coin, the term, the phrase got coined. Uh, the fittest. Now, fittest in surviving of the fittest, survival of the fittest, rather, does not mean the people that lift the most weights or have the best cardio workout. Means you fit into the ecosystem the best. It's an old, it's a British usage of this term from the 19th century.

• 3:59Chuck Nice?

  So it's not like this guy to fit.

• 4:02Bill Nye?

  But that might not be bad because my understanding is certain chicks dig that.

• 4:07Chuck Nice?

  Which can help you replicate yourself a little, a little easier.

• 4:10Bill Nye?

  That's a real thing, though. That's a real thing.

• 4:12Chuck Nice?

  Getting each other.

• 4:13Bill Nye?

  And, uh, I mentioned in my book that I have a trainer, a friend of mine, who's also Neil deGrasse Tyson's trainer.

• 4:20Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 4:21Bill Nye?

  When he's in Los Angeles, uh, who says, no matter what they tell you, no matter what they say, women like muscles.

• 4:30Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 4:30Bill Nye?

  That's what they said.

• 4:31Chuck Nice?

  That's what he says.

• 4:32Bill Nye?

  Well, yeah, yeah. So it could be. Anyway, that aside.

• 4:35Chuck Nice?

  So survival of the fittest as in fit in.

• 4:39Bill Nye?

  Fit in the best.

• 4:39Chuck Nice?

  You fit in the best.

• 4:40Bill Nye?

  Then there's other mechanisms, uh, in evolution, uh, where, uh, we end up with not only our size, shape, number of fingers that enable us to survive and reproduce the best, but we end up with emotions that enable us to survive. So you know the word, we throw around the word antisocial nowadays?

• 5:02Chuck Nice?

  Antisocial.

• 5:03Bill Nye?

  If you're a jerk, you're not gonna...

• 5:06Chuck Nice?

  You don't make it.

• 5:06Bill Nye?

  It's less likely you'll have babies.

• 5:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:08Bill Nye?

  Or if you're a raving, um, dog dispositioned person.

• 5:14Chuck Nice?

  Right?

• 5:15Bill Nye?

  Uh, it's very, it's very unlikely that you'll be as successful.

• 5:20Chuck Nice?

  I got you.

• 5:21Bill Nye?

  And so we have this so-called urge of altruism, this urge to help each other out. And that is apparently a result of evolution. So these are examples...

• 5:30Chuck Nice?

  Because the loner didn't make it.

• 5:31Bill Nye?

  The loner, yeah.

• 5:32Chuck Nice?

  Because the loner, I mean, you know, when, when you fall or you're stuck somewhere, if you're a loner, you're there.

• 5:38Bill Nye?

  You're done.

• 5:39Chuck Nice?

  You're done.

• 5:40Bill Nye?

  But if the guy's there to help you up, you don't know, maybe the loner will help, I mean, maybe the guy you helped up will help you later.

• 5:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:46Bill Nye?

  And we're all in this together. And if you wanna knock off a mammoth, you're gonna have... It's probably a team sport.

• 5:53Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna...

• 5:53Bill Nye?

  Problem.

• 5:54Chuck Nice?

  Not something you wanna do by yourself.

• 5:56Bill Nye?

  And how about this one last thing about that question?

• 5:58Chuck Nice?

  The mechanisms.

• 6:00Bill Nye?

  We as humans that are part of evolution, we are not separate creatures, independent of the earth's ecosystems. We are a result of the same processes that brought us sea jellies and dandelions and giant squid. We're all here, we're all in this together. We have so much more in common. Then we have different and you can see it in our DNA.

• 6:25Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so there's evidence of that on a cellular level.

• 6:29Bill Nye?

  Overwhelming.

• 6:29Chuck Nice?

  Overwhelming evidence on a cellular level that we have, that we're part of a grand, grand scheme with everything else. Okay, very cool.

• 6:39Bill Nye?

  Oh, and the, oh, the energy for reproduction comes from the sun ultimately, I mean, most of it. It's a green plants and we eat them and we roll.

• 6:46Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 6:46Bill Nye?

  And the earth's got primordial spin, which is not insignificant, but.

• 6:50Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna call that afternoon delight.

• 6:51Bill Nye?

  There you go.

• 6:52Chuck Nice?

  All right, so, uh, let's move on with to Steph Burt. Steph Burt, uh, do you think that one day technology will become so advanced? That it will begin to hinder our own human evolution? Can we de-evolve?

• 7:12Bill Nye?

  Well.

• 7:12Chuck Nice?

  Because of technology.

• 7:14Bill Nye?

  But this gets into a tribal question and I'll put it to you this way. Let's take, let's take for example, a guy who was walking down the street.

• 7:22Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:23Bill Nye?

  When he was an engineer at Boeing.

• 7:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:25Bill Nye?

  And had appendicitis.

• 7:27Chuck Nice?

  Right. What, that could be me, wait. I was gonna say.

• 7:31Bill Nye?

  Wow, just a second.

• 7:32Chuck Nice?

  Continue.

• 7:33Bill Nye?

  But because I live in a tribe that has built hospitals, it was routine. Guy took out my appendix, I'm still going, I could have babies and things.

• 7:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:45Bill Nye?

  But if I lived in a different tribe without that technology, I would probably have died.

• 7:50Chuck Nice?

  Or a different time.

• 7:51Bill Nye?

  That's right, some people apparently survive appendicitis, but generally it kills you.

• 7:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 7:55Bill Nye?

  And so, uh, so because I'm in this tribe, my genes are getting passed on where they might not otherwise have been passed on.

• 8:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:04Bill Nye?

  And so there's an example of technology enabling my genes to go into the future. Could it get to the point where you can't do anything at all? You can't survive at all without technology? That is to say, you'd be plugged into some giant matrix machine.

• 8:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 8:22Bill Nye?

  From the get-go and you'd be there all the time. Uh, it's possible, but I think it's quite a ways off. But from a science fiction standpoint, it is a worthy thing to consider. And it's also something to consider when you think about.

• 8:36Bill Nye?

  Our tribes, our social systems that we have here as humans. We are, we all depend on each other and that's why there's so many of us. You know, in the bad old days, if you got the flu, whatever, you're just dead.

• 8:51Chuck Nice?

  That was it.

• 8:52Bill Nye?

  But now, all these things enable so many people to not die at nearly the rate they used to, which as you can, I hope anyone can agree, is both good and bad. We have, you know, one of my grandparents were around, were young, there were about one and a half billion people in the world. Now they're about seven point two going on nine.

• 9:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 9:16Bill Nye?

  And so those, that's, that's gonna put quite a burden on the earth's resources. And but it's, but it's our ability to understand nature and to create technology based on science that will improve the quality of life of people everywhere. It's a great question.

• 9:31Chuck Nice?

  It is a good question. So let me, uh, let me tack on to Steph Burt's question and ask you, with what you just said, is there a danger of us losing our humanity due to technology? What you just talked about was how our dependence upon one another uh, has got us to a point where we can continue to evolve and grow and actually increase our population because we depend upon each other. Is it possible that technology will move us in the opposite direction of that?

• 10:06Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah, here's why. I'll give you an example. When I, have you ever, have you ever read, uh, The Stepford Wives?

• 10:15Chuck Nice?

  No, I can't say that I have.

• 10:17Bill Nye?

  No, but I just want to tell you guys, they make a remake of it on movies every now and then.

• 10:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 10:22Bill Nye?

  But in the original, the pill is capital T, capital P.

• 10:27Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 10:28Bill Nye?

  And this is an example of technology that enabled women to not have babies.

• 10:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:35Bill Nye?

  And take control of their, uh, family planning in a much more practical way than.

• 10:43Bill Nye?

  Other things that have been suggested with something like, don't look at boys.

• 10:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:48Bill Nye?

  Cross your legs with an aspirin between your knees, like those are ineffective.

• 10:51Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 10:52Bill Nye?

  And so there's an example of technology that enables us to control human reproduction, which then could enable us hypothetically to raise the standard of living of women, which will, over the course of a century or two, lower the human population by natural means, fewer people being born than are dying, and that will provide more of the Earth's resources for more people.

• 11:19Chuck Nice?

  Whoa.

• 11:20Bill Nye?

  Right. So there's an example, will that technology allow us to lose our humanity?

• 11:24Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 11:25Bill Nye?

  Or actually make us love each other all the way?

• 11:29Chuck Nice?

  More.

• 11:30Bill Nye?

  So I don't think technology will make us lose our humanity. I think as long as there are humans involved, there will be human emotions.

• 11:37Chuck Nice?

  Fantastic. I love that. Wait, that's an emotion too, that's crazy.

• 11:45Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's go to Google Plus and Tariq Hussain. And Tariq wants to know this. What effects do you, what effects do you think humans will have on our own evolutionary path? Through our advances in science and technology, we have extremely minimized the effects of natural selection in favor of some new mechanism of evolution. So that kind of like what you're talking about with your appendix and so forth. Is that going to, are we gonna have four fingers one day? I mean, well, actually, three fingers and a thumb one day is because of?

• 12:16Bill Nye?

  No, I think it's gonna go the other way. Uh, I think the big, here's your, our perception, science fiction movies and science fiction thinking and stuff, is that your brains will get bigger.

• 12:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:29Bill Nye?

  More powerful.

• 12:30Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 12:31Bill Nye?

  Their skulls will swell to the size of rugby balls.

• 12:34Chuck Nice?

  The butt heads from Star Trek.

• 12:36Bill Nye?

  Yes, yes. And that may be, but in the shorter term, your enemy, as a living thing on the Earth, is not lions and tigers and bears.

• 12:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh my.

• 12:47Bill Nye?

  Exactly, which can be very troublesome.

• 12:49Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 12:49Bill Nye?

  But most people are hardly affected at all by the threat of lions or tigers or bears.

• 12:54Chuck Nice?

  Oh my.

• 12:55Bill Nye?

  What does get you are germs.

• 12:57Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 12:58Bill Nye?

  Germs and parasites.

• 13:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:00Bill Nye?

  So, uh, the people that happen to have the most robust immune systems, uh, that keep up with or stay just ahead of. Mutating viruses and bacteria and other parasites are more likely to have their genes passed in the future and the claim that evolution is not happening is absolutely wrong. Sorry, I love you, man, but no. There's evidence that people in the industrial world who can tolerate milk are more successful, their blood sugar is more stable, their hemoglobin counts are better. So, we are perhaps, perhaps, slowly weeding out infants who are not tolerant of modern diets.

• 13:45Bill Nye?

  There's some evidence of that.

• 13:46Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 13:47Bill Nye?

  Very compelling evidence of that. And then, the other thing is, in order to get your genes passed into the future, you have to have offspring.

• 13:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:57Bill Nye?

  So, let's take, for example, and I'm not really an authority on this, but let's take Kim Kardashian.

• 14:04Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:05Bill Nye?

  People would nominally say that she's very attractive.

• 14:08Chuck Nice?

  Some, yeah.

• 14:10Bill Nye?

  So, she has a good chance of attracting a mate who could help her genes advance into the future.

• 14:17Chuck Nice?

  Well, in her case, several.

• 14:18Bill Nye?

  Yeah, and so on. So, and then, you want to attract a mate that is...

• 14:25Chuck Nice?

  Rich? I'm sorry.

• 14:27Bill Nye?

  Young and good-looking.

• 14:29Chuck Nice?

  Rich, young and good-looking.

• 14:30Bill Nye?

  The triple threat. And what are you and I doing here? And so on. So, this is, this process is still going on. You know, there's a saying, "There's a lid for every pot."

• 14:40Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 14:41Bill Nye?

  Meaning that there's somebody for everyone. And that's probably true because we've all made it this far. Everybody's good enough. Keep that in mind, everyone. Everyone you meet is, from an evolutionary standpoint, is just like you. We all got here.

• 14:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:58Bill Nye?

  Somebody was doing it. I know, as troubling as it is...

• 15:01Chuck Nice?

  That is a little disturbing.

• 15:02Bill Nye?

  ...to think that your parents had sex, but it's nevertheless true. And so, we are all in this together, so the forces of evolution are still at work. And the, the real thing that's going to weed people out is going to be that germs and parasites. That's Bill's prediction.

• 15:17Chuck Nice?

  Excellent, excellent, excellent. All right, here's John Marcus, and John comes to us from Twitter, @thuspokejohn. You think a little much of yourself there, do you, John? How does it work that traits skip a generation or two, or sometimes three?

• 15:37Chuck Nice?

  How often are genes presented but not active?

• 15:40Bill Nye?

  It's magic. No, wait, it's science. Uh, when recessive genes are expressed and dominant genes are expressed is one of the great mysteries and so, or not mysteries, uh, great, um, uh, insights that people have pursued for the better part of a century and a half. And the subtle thing now is what happens with repeating genes and repeating sequences and how do they affect things and why are they there? And then there's long strands or portions of our genetic code that are unused. And so whether things dominate or recess

• 16:19Bill Nye?

  uh, is subtle and wonderful and the guy who discovered this was, uh, Mendel messing around with his, uh, peas. And since then, we have been pursuing this, uh, very actively and there's an old expression, genealogy, where you study your family tree.

• 16:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:35Bill Nye?

  And you can for yourself study, uh, recessive traits and, uh, dominant traits. But it is based on probabilities.

• 16:44Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 16:44Bill Nye?

  It's another feature of nature where you can make, uh, very good predictions, but not precise predictions. You have to run the tests, meaning you have to interact. Uh, can we say interact on the radio?

• 16:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:59Bill Nye?

  Can we interact hard and often?

• 17:01Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 17:02Bill Nye?

  Okay, that's enough. Stop, stop, stop.

• 17:06Bill Nye?

  Anyway, this is what people do now, making crops. Making good soybean and corn and peanuts and

• 17:15Chuck Nice?

  heirloom tomatoes.

• 17:16Bill Nye?

  And cucumbers and studying the recessive and dominant traits of these things.

• 17:20Chuck Nice?

  Why do I want a salad now?

• 17:22Bill Nye?

  Uh, cause you've been talking about food. It always makes you think about sex. Wait, uh, uh, this is where, uh, this is what farmers do all day is mull these deep questions.

• 17:35Chuck Nice?

  Fantastic. All right, uh, very quickly, uh, this is from Taylor. Taylor wants to know, can you explain the evolutionary purpose of right and left-handedness? Why are some of us right-handed and some of us left-handed?

• 17:46Bill Nye?

  Uh, well, apparently right-handedness started to dominate in certain tribes and having everybody same-handed was of great value.

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to StarTalk. Stay tuned for another segment.

• 18:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. Here's more of this week's episode.

• 18:20Chuck Nice?

  Stacy Pro from, uh, looks like Facebook says, uh, "What kind of technological advances would we have to make before journeys to Mars can be more than one way?"

• 18:34Bill Nye?

  Yeah, this one-way thing, everybody, well, I think, um, fade into the past, but, uh, this was a proposal to send a few dozen people to Mars that would never come home and we would all watch them suffer starvation and death on, uh, international television, but that probably won't happen. Instead, we at the Planetary Society strongly believe that we could send an exploration mission to, uh, the vicinity of Mars, let's say, landing on Phobos by 2033, which sounds like a long way off when you're a kid, but when you're my age, doesn't sound

• 19:15Bill Nye?

  like that far. And this we could do with the current, what everybody likes to say, "funding profiles." There's a graph that shows how much money you spend every year, and it looks kind of like a profile, I guess, and that's where this term came from. But, uh, this is a long way to go. And the technological advances that I think we need, we gotta find ways to have people keep their bones while they're in very low gravity for a long, long time, and we have to be able to breathe and eat and recycle water supplies on, I don't wanna... Trouble you, but we have to not throw water away.

• 19:53Chuck Nice?

  That just sounds disgusting.

• 19:55Bill Nye?

  We do it here on Earth.

• 19:57Chuck Nice?

  I guess you're right.

• 19:58Bill Nye?

  We have a water cycle.

• 19:59Chuck Nice?

  We do have a water cycle.

• 20:00Bill Nye?

  That's how we roll. So, uh, this is the, these are the kind of problems that should be, have to be solved. And I myself have always been a fan of making a spaceship that spins. So you may not get one G worth of gravity like we have here in this room.

• 20:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:16Bill Nye?

  But you might get forty percent. And that would be enough acceleration to keep your bones healthy.

• 20:22Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 20:22Bill Nye?

  It should be tests worth running. And here's the reason to explore Mars. Is we would make discoveries that would change the course of humankind. We'd have adventures that would, people would talk about till the, till the end of humans.

• 20:34Chuck Nice?

  Sounds good. Uh, let's go to Lance Elliott. Okay, this is what Lance says. There's been speculation that perhaps life could exist on Saturn's moon Titan.

• 20:46Bill Nye?

  Uh, yeah.

• 20:47Chuck Nice?

  It would suggest that such life would take in hydrogen and acetylene and output methane.

• 20:53Bill Nye?

  How hard could that be?

• 20:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:55Bill Nye?

  Taking hydrogen atoms and acetylene is, um, that's the old nomenclature for propane.

• 21:01Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:02Bill Nye?

  Which is like propane, but it has a triple carbon bond instead of a single one. So, okay, that could be, uh, what's, these only.

• 21:09Chuck Nice?

  So that's what he says.

• 21:10Bill Nye?

  Let's go find out. Let's, let's build a mission, build a spacecraft.

• 21:14Chuck Nice?

  And let's, let's get to Titan.

• 21:15Bill Nye?

  With extraordinary instruments and sniff around. Let's go.

• 21:19Chuck Nice?

  I don't want to sniff around if it smells like methane.

• 21:21Bill Nye?

  Uh, the instrument would do the sniffing chart.

• 21:24Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay, okay, good. Since then, we've detected such depletion of hydrogen and acetylene and don't know the cause. We also don't know what's restoring Titan's methane. My question is, thank God, we finally got to it, Lance. Bill, what do you think of the possibility of life on Titan? You know, you could have just said that, Lance.

• 21:47Bill Nye?

  I don't think, well, I don't think it's that likely. Uh, because people in astrobiology, as it's called.

• 21:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:54Bill Nye?

  Have spent a lot of time with us.

• 21:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:57Bill Nye?

  And people like methane the way we do. We have swamp gas here on Earth.

• 22:01Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we do.

• 22:02Bill Nye?

  Natural gas, which is methane, same word, same, uh, two different words, three different words to describe the same thing. But it looks like water is the best deal for living things.

• 22:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:12Bill Nye?

  So water is not just H2O, that's sort of a shorthand, it's HOH.

• 22:19Bill Nye?

  Is water and it's a molecule that has a polarity. It has a north and a south. It has a plus and a minus quality.

• 22:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 22:27Bill Nye?

  And apparently, near as any astrobiologist can tell, this polar quality of water makes it extraordinarily good for the chemistry of life. Now, it could be, because you and I are water-based things.

• 22:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 22:42Bill Nye?

  We just think in water-based ways and we're not asking questions, in this case, outside the box or the periodic table edges. But maybe there is something out there, per this guy's question, but it looks like the real, what you really want is water. So we'll see. We'll see.

• 22:59Chuck Nice?

  So, uh, there you have it, Lance. Uh, highly unlikely. Highly unlikely.

• 23:04Bill Nye?

  But if we, after we've done Mars and Europa, I'm ready to invest. Let's build a spacecraft out there.

• 23:11Chuck Nice?

  All right. All right.

• 23:12Bill Nye?

  Then send it out there.

• 23:14Chuck Nice?

  So here is a question from Dachrick Chaya or Kia, okay?

• 23:20Bill Nye?

  Could be Kia.

• 23:21Chuck Nice?

  Could be Kia. Doing my best here. Okay?

• 23:23Bill Nye?

  Kia, Kia, Kia. That, that fabulous sound. Go ahead, take it.

• 23:28Chuck Nice?

  Hello, Mr. Nye. How do you feel about NASA announcing a trip to Europa? Do you think a successful human colony will be placed on Europa before we have a successful colony on Mars? Thank you. P.S. To whoever is reading the questions, my name is pronounced Derek Chaya.

• 23:44Bill Nye?

  Oh.

• 23:45Chuck Nice?

  There you have it. Answer, answer was in the question there.

• 23:48Bill Nye?

  Uh, Derek, Derek Chaya. Derek, Derek. No, we will not have a human colony on Europa before we have it on Mars. Europa is, um, an icy world extraordinarily far from the sun, influenced greatly by the extremely powerful Jupiterian, Jupiter's magnetic field.

• 24:05Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 24:06Bill Nye?

  No, what we want to do is look for life there because there's all that seawater on Europa that we want to investigate and see if with four and a half billion years of liquid water, maybe there's something living there. So we're not going to build a colony on Europa.

• 24:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 24:19Bill Nye?

  Anytime. No, it's a good question, but.

• 24:21Chuck Nice?

  No, no, it's, I was just thinking of a very juvenile joke. You said, we're not going to build a colony on Europa. And of course, I was going to say, or Uranus, but I'm sorry.

• 24:30Bill Nye?

  I'm shocked. I'm just shocked.

• 24:32Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry for even.

• 24:33Bill Nye?

  But you have now, you're fifteen and nine and a one-year-old.

• 24:36Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I do.

• 24:37Bill Nye?

  They go through phase. There's a phase. Speaking of liquid and solid and gaseous water phases, anyway, we want to look for signs of life on Mars and Europa. That's what is a worthy investment of your tax dollars. And that's why I took the job as CEO of the Planetary Society.

• 24:53Chuck Nice?

  Ah, fantastic. Alright, let's go to, uh, Lim Lipka, coming to us from Google Plus. Len wants to know this. The Mars One mission is considered a one-way ticket. What would be projected, the projected lifespan of the astronauts and what would prevent us from retrieving them during that estimated time?

• 25:17Bill Nye?

  Well, everybody, there was one, uh, study done, I'm almost sure it was something associated with the National Research Council, which is associated with the National Academy of Sciences. And they thought people would live less than 70 days before chaos caught up with them and they wouldn't be alive anymore. So, uh, even if you're off by a factor of 10.

• 25:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 25:43Bill Nye?

  700 days is just not enough time to mount a mission to Mars. It's not like you guys, it's not like going to the Alps and getting the guy hanging from the rope. It's just so far away. It takes, you can only go to Mars successfully economically every 26 months, every two years and a little bit because of the orbits of Earth and Mars. You just can't economically get to Mars when it's on the wrong side of the sun. It's just...

• 26:08Chuck Nice?

  That's all there is to it. It's just got to line up, it's got to line up and that's it.

• 26:12Bill Nye?

  You have to launch before, you have to get the spacecraft to catch up with Mars and so on. So, you can't just, you can't just do that. And this, that people have this perception is kind of cool, but things are just much, much farther away in space than you're real. There's a lot of space.

• 26:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:29Bill Nye?

  In space.

• 26:30Chuck Nice?

  In space. So, the whole idea of total recall, it's not...

• 26:33Bill Nye?

  It's not likely.

• 26:34Chuck Nice?

  Not likely. Oh, damn, got it. Alright, let's move on to Casey, coming to us from Twitter and says, "Hey, Bill, with private sector space travel, do you feel it will lead to less moral obligations towards astronauts' lives? In other words, hmm, will there be a kind of like..." There'll be more astronauts, so we don't care if they die.

• 27:00Bill Nye?

  Actually, it would almost certainly go the other way. No, because astronauts historically have been military pilots.

• 27:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:07Bill Nye?

  And it's the civilian space program in the United States, for example, is still closely tied to the traditions and the hierarchy of military. And if you are a military commander and they tell you to do something, that's your deal. You follow orders. And that's why they indoctrinate you and you boot camp and you rise up through the ranks and you just get, the chain of command becomes imbued in.

• 27:31Chuck Nice?

  Right, and so.

• 27:33Bill Nye?

  On the other hand.

• 27:35Chuck Nice?

  It doesn't make a difference if you want to go up or not.

• 27:37Bill Nye?

  And those people have their tickets paid for. That is to say, if you're an astronaut, the governments of the world are paying your salary and your rocket fuel and your tang. But when you are a commercial citizen.

• 27:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:55Bill Nye?

  Buying a ticket, people expect the same level of safety as you have in commercial airplanes.

• 28:00Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 28:01Bill Nye?

  Actually, it will go the other way. People will be outraged when there's a crash that kills civilians.

• 28:07Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 28:08Bill Nye?

  Now.

• 28:08Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that is an excellent point.

• 28:11Bill Nye?

  You have to sound so surprised, Sean.

• 28:15Chuck Nice?

  But yeah, you know, when you think about it, how often do we hear about a helicopter going down? An F-15 going down? We hear about some type of test plane going down. No one is outraged because we did not care for the safety of that pilot. It's just like, that dude knew what he signed up for? Oh, well.

• 28:39Bill Nye?

  That's right.

• 28:39Chuck Nice?

  Big deal.

• 28:40Bill Nye?

  That's right.

• 28:40Chuck Nice?

  But let an airliner go down.

• 28:42Bill Nye?

  Oh, man, people are totally freaked. Reasonably so, too. You're paying, you buy a ticket, you're hoping, you're expecting, rather, not to get killed by it.

• 28:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:53Bill Nye?

  You're a military pilot who loves flying and realizes this machine you're sitting on is extraordinarily powerful. You know what you're getting into. Doesn't make it great, but it is a very different outlook from the passenger.

• 29:07Chuck Nice?

  Excellent. Wow.

• 29:09Bill Nye?

  Passengers' point of view.

• 29:09Chuck Nice?

  Hey, great question there, Casey, and there's your answer. It's actually going to go in the opposite direction. Well, you're better off.

• 29:18Chuck Nice?

  You're better off not being an astronaut and, and, and, and having

• 29:23Bill Nye?

  Buying a $200,000 ticket.

• 29:25Chuck Nice?

  There you go. All right, let's, uh-

• 29:27Bill Nye?

  With that said, keep in mind Virgin Galactic had a crash killing a test pilot. But test pilot is the same kind of guy.

• 29:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, same kind of guy. And it's funny because now that you've mentioned that, the big question that ensued that crash was, is this the end

• 29:45Bill Nye?

  I know.

• 29:46Chuck Nice?

  Of commercial space flight?

• 29:48Bill Nye?

  No.

• 29:48Chuck Nice?

  All over the news the next day. All over the news.

• 29:51Bill Nye?

  No, people redouble their efforts because this guy was a, was an explorer.

• 29:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:57Bill Nye?

  He was out there pushing the envelope. And if you want to know, by the way, everybody, just in airplanes, uh, there's a graph of propulsion and altitude and that when you look, when you draw all the lines to figure out where the best place to operate your airplane is, it kind of looks like the back of an envelope. There's a horizontal line, there's a downsloping line, a downsloping line of the other direction. It kind of looks like the back of an envelope. And so that's where this expression, pushing the envelope, came from.

• 30:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 30:29Bill Nye?

  Yeah. It's a, it's a

• 30:31Chuck Nice?

  Very cool.

• 30:32Bill Nye?

  Based on a graph.

• 30:33Chuck Nice?

  Based on the graph. Fantastic. All right, let's switch gears here because you are a man of many talents and, uh, your knowledge spans many subjects.

• 30:42Bill Nye?

  Oh, yes.

• 30:43Chuck Nice?

  And-

• 30:44Bill Nye?

  Just ask me about it.

• 30:45Chuck Nice?

  And here's the great thing is a lot of our listeners know that you are indeed an engineer.

• 30:50Bill Nye?

  Yes. I have a license.

• 30:52Chuck Nice?

  You're a licensed engineer.

• 30:55Bill Nye?

  I am.

• 30:56Chuck Nice?

  So here's the deal. Let's move into some, uh, technology and engineering questions that people want to know specifically from you, Mr. Nye. Uh, Paul Johnson wants to know this. Is it possible we have reached close to this level of civilization technology here on Earth? And just don't know it? Okay, in other words, what's he saying is where we are right now technologically, is it possible that sometime in the past in unrecorded history, uh, there's tens if not hundreds of millions of years unaccounted for on our planet where billions of species have lived and died, could we have experienced some other technological explosion without

• 31:41Chuck Nice?

  knowing it and like kinda went into a dark ages and started all over?

• 31:45Bill Nye?

  I don't think so.

• 31:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay, why not?

• 31:47Bill Nye?

  They're done. Because I think you'd have evidence of it and every time humans do anything, they leave stuff by like pyramids and

• 31:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:56Bill Nye?

  And I say humans, but there's no evidence whatever that the ancient dinosaurs had a space program, for example.

• 32:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:05Bill Nye?

  They would have deflected the asteroid and they'd still be running the show.

• 32:08Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 32:09Bill Nye?

  So it's very, very unlikely. It's great science fiction and this idea that ancient people knew more about math than we do.

• 32:19Chuck Nice?

  Totally not true.

• 32:21Bill Nye?

  Doesn't seem very likely, especially when you look, you know, people, the pyramids are perfectly square. They're really square, but they're not perfectly, yeah, they're really good, they're not perfect.

• 32:31Chuck Nice?

  I think it's that those guys had a lot more time on their hands.

• 32:34Bill Nye?

  The other thing they had was energy and where it really impressed me, if you ever go to Pompeii

• 32:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 32:41Bill Nye?

  And, uh, and, uh, outside of Naples, Italy, Napoli, you see, they had slaves.

• 32:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 32:50Bill Nye?

  So they could just build all kinds of cool stuff.

• 32:52Chuck Nice?

  Manpower, baby.

• 32:53Bill Nye?

  And now we have fossil fuels and we have built all kinds of new stuff. What we wanna do is take humankind to the next level where we don't rely exclusively on fossil fuels for our livelihood, resources and food so that we can, dare I say it, chuck working together, change the world. These are great questions and they all lead to these, these big ideas, these big science fiction ideas, which I think are so charming.

• 33:41Chuck Nice?

  Welcome back. Here's more of StarTalk.

• 33:46Bill Nye?

  We have questions Chuck.

• 33:47Chuck Nice?

  Yep, we're still in our cosmic queries and we've got questions from all over the internet and you know, all of these questions have been specifically directed at you.

• 33:58Bill Nye?

  A man can dream.

• 33:59Chuck Nice?

  There you have it. So let's continue right now with some more technology and engineering because you're an engineer.

• 34:06Bill Nye?

  I am.

• 34:07Chuck Nice?

  And this is from James Koltus. And James wants to know this. What do you think of the possibility of biological interstellar ships? Biological interstellar ships. I gotta tell you, I've never even heard of this.

• 34:21Bill Nye?

  Well, this is where you'd make your ship out of space weed.

• 34:28Bill Nye?

  And

• 34:28Chuck Nice?

  First you gotta make sure you don't smoke it.

• 34:31Bill Nye?

  Well, it's like seaweed, sea plants. You'd make it out of space plants.

• 34:35Chuck Nice?

  Space plants?

• 34:37Bill Nye?

  Woven together in a space plant ship.

• 34:39Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 34:40Bill Nye?

  And it would then, you know, the way you do, fly around, you know, in space. And everybody would live inside and breathe, um, space plant produced oxygen and stuff.

• 34:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:55Bill Nye?

  So I'm open-minded, but I don't have a clear vision.

• 34:58Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, something tells me you don't have to leave Earth to fly in this spaceship. However, he does give me a little, he gives me a little bit of clarification. He defines it as this, ships that use advanced biochemical mechanisms and evolve and learn along with the passengers. And I guess this would be along the lines of a biochemical computer, which is something they were talking about a little while ago.

• 35:28Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so why have a biochemical computer?

• 35:31Chuck Nice?

  I, I don't know why.

• 35:33Bill Nye?

  I know, I have one.

• 35:34Chuck Nice?

  Oh, you do? Yeah.

• 35:35Bill Nye?

  I'm using, yes, I'm using it to create these sounds.

• 35:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 35:39Bill Nye?

  So, uh, I follow you, but you, what you'd want is like the Borg, uh, that would also be your spaceship, or you'd have this distributed computing power in the fabric, or in the skin, or in the superstructure, or in the chassis, the bus of your spaceship. It sounds cool. You should write a science fiction story.

• 35:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I was gonna, yeah. The ship is alive.

• 36:01Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 36:01Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 36:02Bill Nye?

  It turns on you. That's what'll happen.

• 36:04Chuck Nice?

  Of course it does.

• 36:05Bill Nye?

  Right.

• 36:05Chuck Nice?

  The ship definitely has to turn on you.

• 36:07Bill Nye?

  It's gonna take you the whole freaking movie to either resolve the situation, or you're just...

• 36:12Chuck Nice?

  Or kill the ship.

• 36:13Bill Nye?

  Yeah, or just, yeah.

• 36:14Chuck Nice?

  And, and then your, your, your quandary becomes, if we kill the ship, how do we get home?

• 36:19Bill Nye?

  God, Chuck, it's written itself.

• 36:21Chuck Nice?

  (laughing)

• 36:22Bill Nye?

  It's written itself.

• 36:23Chuck Nice?

  (laughing)

• 36:24Bill Nye?

  And I just cannot help but hearken to that moment when Hal remarks, "I could see your lips move."

• 36:31Chuck Nice?

  (laughing)

• 36:32Bill Nye?

  Hal the computer in 2001 Space Odyssey is reading the guy's lips, knowing that they're planning to unplug him.

• 36:40Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 36:41Bill Nye?

  So Hal tries to kill them all.

• 36:42Chuck Nice?

  Well, there you have, there you have it, though it's a wonderful idea. It's, uh, you should write the science fiction novel about it. There you have it, straight from Mr. Nye himself.

• 36:51Bill Nye?

  You might think, take it straight to video.

• 36:52Chuck Nice?

  Let's take it straight to...

• 36:54Bill Nye?

  Lead on.

• 36:55Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Thomas Charles Davis II would like to know, well, actually, he first says, "I am an artist, and I want to be more involved with science and NASA. What should I do?"

• 37:08Bill Nye?

  Join the planetary society.

• 37:10Chuck Nice?

  I knew somehow you were gonna say that.

• 37:12Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so we, uh, you have to have art in everything you do. This is to say, art is what humans do. Humans create art.

• 37:21Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:21Bill Nye?

  And to think of science and exploration as completely separate or unrelated to art, I'm always a little troubled by that. And so, uh, I think many of us agree that when you make a really elegant engineering thing... Like Brooklyn Bridge, for example.

• 37:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 37:38Bill Nye?

  Golden Gate Bridge.

• 37:39Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:40Bill Nye?

  Everybody goes, wow, that looks great. So that has an artistic quality. In the same way, when you make a really cool-looking suit.

• 37:49Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:49Bill Nye?

  You say, wow, that's quite practical. It keeps you warm or makes you stand up straight or allows you to brush against subway railings without getting your skin burned.

• 38:01Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:02Bill Nye?

  These things converge. So you want to have art and aesthetics in everything you do.

• 38:07Chuck Nice?

  There you have it. That's actually a good answer, and it is true.

• 38:09Bill Nye?

  You don't have to sound so surprised, Mr. Nice.

• 38:11Chuck Nice?

  You're right, you're right, you're right. I mean, you know, you don't really think about how important aesthetics are when it comes to aesthetics and technology until you think about an Apple product.

• 38:21Bill Nye?

  Yes, right.

• 38:21Chuck Nice?

  You know?

• 38:22Bill Nye?

  Yes, right.

• 38:22Chuck Nice?

  When you think about an Apple product, you see exactly how important it really is.

• 38:26Bill Nye?

  That's right. People want their technologies to look good. And I mean, to me, it's all, they're all connected. As the old saying goes, you can't fight a dirty ship. Let me rephrase that.

• 38:38Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:38Bill Nye?

  If things are not ship-shaped on your ship, it's not as effective at its job of being a fighting machine.

• 38:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:46Bill Nye?

  This is to say, you keep things neat and tidy or in aesthetically pleasing way so that it's more effective, it's more useful. In the same way, you don't want to have pure utilitarian things because it doesn't appeal to people.

• 38:58Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 38:59Bill Nye?

  And I understand there is, there is great value in clutter. It has its own patterns and wonder. Yes, yes, yes. No, I'm digressing. Imagine, Bill Nye digressing. Weird. Lead on, Mr. Nice.

• 39:12Chuck Nice?

  All right, Nate Owens.

• 39:15Bill Nye?

  Could be.

• 39:15Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I'm just going to read what he says and let you handle it.

• 39:19Bill Nye?

  All right.

• 39:20Chuck Nice?

  If the near-Earth asteroid Apophis passes through the keyhole in 2029, will seven years be enough time to prepare to deflect it? And he says, personally, I think NASA should let it crash into the Pacific so that we can teach Congress space programs are important. So that was, that was his commentary on it. So the question is,

• 39:40Bill Nye?

  Yeah, I get you.

• 39:40Chuck Nice?

  What we have time?

• 39:41Bill Nye?

  So Apophis is an asteroid named after the Greek god of worry or anxiety.

• 39:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh, dear. Oh, dear!

• 39:48Bill Nye?

  And the keyhole is a mathematical shape in space that would, in this case, if I understand his question, would mean it's on course to hit the Earth next time it comes around.

• 39:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:58Bill Nye?

  2036. Well, it is to be hoped that if it's, as it gets closer, we will be able to determine Whether or not it's passing through the keyhole. And so you'll actually have quite a bit more than seven years because its trajectory will be clear into the 2022s and 2025s. And then you would have, you would have time, perhaps, to mount a mission to give the thing a nudge. However, with all that said, right now, it looks like Apophis is gonna miss.

• 40:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:25Bill Nye?

  It would be extraordinarily small chance. Now, I haven't looked at this in quite a while, but less than one in a hundred thousand.

• 40:32Chuck Nice?

  I'll take those odds.

• 40:33Bill Nye?

  It's not zero.

• 40:34Chuck Nice?

  Not zero.

• 40:35Bill Nye?

  It's not zero.

• 40:36Chuck Nice?

  But I'll take them.

• 40:37Bill Nye?

  But, uh, right now, that's why people are not panicked about Apophis. But at the Planetary Society, we emphasize to everyone, there are about a hundred thousand enormous asteroids that cross, cross the Earth's orbit. And we don't know where most of them are, let alone whether or not they're gonna hit us.

• 40:54Chuck Nice?

  There you have it.

• 40:55Bill Nye?

  Ancient dinosaurs, near as anybody can tell, did not have a space program. And it caught up with them. It caught up with them. This is a worthy investment to look for signs, to look for asteroids and to learn to build systems that would give one a nudge. Just a little nudge.

• 41:15Chuck Nice?

  All right. All right, here we go. Um, Paul Duma. Paul wants to know this. How much material would be needed to make a Dyson sphere? Would it require more than is in our solar system?

• 41:27Bill Nye?

  A Dyson sphere, if I understand, it depends how big you want it. You want it to go around the sun.

• 41:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:32Bill Nye?

  With the Earth inside, and then we'd capture all the sun's energy and do things.

• 41:37Chuck Nice?

  Uh, yeah.

• 41:37Bill Nye?

  Uh, I think it's really difficult. Uh, I haven't run that number. That sounds like something that'd be fun to do. Compute the total mass of a Dyson sphere. It seems to me unless it's extraordinarily thin.

• 41:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:50Bill Nye?

  To keep the, the Earth within it would require, I mean, a sphere, just if you wanna run the numbers. It's a volume.

• 41:59Bill Nye?

  Goes as 4 thirds pi r cubed, 4 thirds times pi, the ratio of circumference and diameter, times the radius cubed. It's, surface area goes, I guess it'd be the derivative of that, right? So it would be, um, I'm kidding, but it would be, uh, be 4 pi r squared. The derivative of the cu- of the volume would be the surface area. So it's be 4 pi r, it's a lot of r.

• 42:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 42:22Bill Nye?

  When you get 150 million kilometers, 93 million miles, and you square that, and that's now, that's, that's an enormous number of kilometers. And I don't think there's enough material on the earth or the solar system to build that.

• 42:35Chuck Nice?

  To even build it.

• 42:36Bill Nye?

  Yeah, that's a good question. There was a little outlouding there.

• 42:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, a little outlouding.

• 42:39Bill Nye?

  Hey, you know Chuck?

• 42:40Chuck Nice?

  It's time, my friend.

• 42:42Bill Nye?

  There's four minutes left. It's time for the lightning round.

• 42:45Chuck Nice?

  And the lightning round is brought to you by Personal Questions.

• 42:48Bill Nye?

  Wow.

• 42:49Chuck Nice?

  It's all about that bill.

• 42:51Bill Nye?

  Wow.

• 42:51Chuck Nice?

  These are all personal questions for you. Here's Kalen Manzer. If you and Neil were given the entire US budget for one year, what would you do with it?

• 42:58Bill Nye?

  Fix everything. No, we would address climate change. We would raise the standard of living of women and girls through education. And we would improve transportation systems so that we would use less energy. The key to the future Chuck.

• 43:11Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 43:12Bill Nye?

  Is not to do less, but to do more with less.

• 43:15Chuck Nice?

  I'm voting for you guys. Okay? That's a ticket I'm voting for. Here's, um, Ellie St. Sire says, what in your opinion was Leonard Nimoy's greatest tribute to science? Uh, what is your favorite Star Trek, the original ser- the original series?

• 43:32Bill Nye?

  Well, my favorite Star Trek, this isn't a hard question, is City on the Edge of Forever. I mean, many such journeys are possible. Anyway, the, um, the importance of Leonard Nimoy is hard to underestimate. The guy gave us, Star Trek writ large, and he was a huge part of it.

• 43:48Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:49Bill Nye?

  Gave us this optimistic view of the future. Through magic? No! Through what Chuck? Science! Yes! He was a science officer, lead on.

• 43:59Chuck Nice?

  That's right. This is from Louis Demela. What is your ideal future for this planet and our species?

• 44:07Bill Nye?

  Where we raise the standard of living of women and girls so that the human population naturally decreases, so that there are more resources for each person, so that we have a sustainable energy system, comfortable transportation system, so that people everywhere have a comfortable, happy, have the opportunity to be comfortable and happy, uh, for forever, for, till the extent of humankind.

• 44:33Chuck Nice?

  A noble, noble cause, no doubt. Tricia McClellan wants to know this. Hey, since we've got more Cosmos, why not more Science Guy?

• 44:42Bill Nye?

  Your people need you, Bill! I'm working on it. Hey, I'm a host on StarTalk Radio. The longest journey starts with a single step. You're listening to StarTalk Radio and you should do what I do when I listen to this show, Chuck.

• 44:55Chuck Nice?

  What's that?

• 44:56Bill Nye?

  Turn it up loud! Next question.

• 45:01Chuck Nice?

  Nathan Smith wants to know, as a student in STEM, what types of things do you suggest I do now to accelerate science literacy in the United States of America?

• 45:13Bill Nye?

  Well, as always, the single, oh, I have to add this. The, uh, single best indicator of whether or not anyone will pursue a career in math and science is not science class as such. It's, right now, it's algebra. So whatever you can do to promote human understanding of algebra will writ large change the world!

• 45:36Chuck Nice?

  Fantastic! And Brittany wants to know this. Bill, have you ever invented something? If not, what would you like to invent?

• 45:45Bill Nye?

  I have a couple patents, Chuck.

• 45:46Chuck Nice?

  Do you?

• 45:47Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 45:47Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 45:48Bill Nye?

  Uh, the improved ballet toe shoe, a magnifying glass made of water, and, um, and then the, uh, digital abacus, which helps you learn binary arithmetic. But what would I like to invent? This other baseball thing I'm working on. So stay tuned, uh, to StarTalk in general. This has really been fun, Chuck.

• 46:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for listening to StarTalk Radio. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Many thanks to our comedian, our guest, our experts, and I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Until next time, I bid you to keep looking up.