Cosmic Queries – Black Holes and Dark Energy

Could the Earth become a black hole? Does dark energy impact your life? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice answer your fan-submitted questions on black holes, dark energy, and other mysteries of the universe. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons and All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Thanks to our Patrons Ashod Kuyumjian, Tony Biell, Jon Emerson, Zap Andersson, and Ocean & Dylan McIntyre for supporting us this week. Image Credit: NASA, S. Gezari (The Johns Hopkins University), and J. Guillochon (University of California, Santa Cruz).

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.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk, Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. We've got a cosmic queries edition for you today. And I got with me the one, the only, Jugg Nix.

• 0:26Chuck Nice?

  What's up Neil?

• 0:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jugg, I followed your tweets during the Super Bowl, they were hilarious.

• 0:31Chuck Nice?

  Oh, thanks man, yeah.

• 0:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you were watching the game or tweeting, what were you doing?

• 0:35Chuck Nice?

  You know what, I only tweeted during the halftime because I was actually watching the game and enjoying it. And then halftime came up and I started wa- and of course it was very Latino.

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right, in every dimension.

• 0:47Chuck Nice?

  Very Latino in every single way. And you know, I have a partial Latino household.

• 0:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 0:53Chuck Nice?

  So you know, my wife is Puerto Rican and Korean.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is my mother.

• 0:56Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah, so my wife's Puerto Rican and you know, so we're sitting around and the kids and we're all looking at all the Puerto Rican-ness happen on the screen and we're like, yeah, this is great. And then it occurs to me, they better get this show over quickly before Donald Trump supports the whole damn Super Bowl.

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Across the border.

• 1:14Chuck Nice?

  But, uh, yeah, that was fun.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic queries today, what's the topic?

• 1:18Chuck Nice?

  It's black holes and dark energy.

• 1:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I should have sufficient expertise for that?

• 1:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if not, we'll get Jan 11 on speed dial.

• 1:29Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we'll have to check in on her.

• 1:31Chuck Nice?

  We'll get a little Black Hole Blues boogie in over here.

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh yeah, that's her book, Black Hole Blues.

• 1:35Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, right on. Alright, should we start?

• 1:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so she's my cosmologist at large.

• 1:39Chuck Nice?

  Yes, yes. It's, I'm sorry we didn't have her here, I love when you guys get into it man because there's always such great information that you two, you two seem to, it's not quite, it's not-

• 1:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In physics language it's called resonate, there's a resonance.

• 1:55Chuck Nice?

  Excellent.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, in physics lingo.

• 1:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 1:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so you have two waves?

• 1:59Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and they come-

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if they're not resonating, they can actually cancel out and you get nothing.

• 2:04Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If the peaks go with the troughs.

• 2:06Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 2:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, once the peaks go with the peaks and the troughs with the troughs, then it magnifies the strength of the wave and then you have extra, uh, extra flow.

• 2:14Chuck Nice?

  A little constructive interference.

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh!

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck remembered his high school physics lab.

• 2:22Chuck Nice?

  And we're gonna stop right there. I'm gonna quit while I'm ahead.

• 2:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, give it to me.

• 2:27Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Uh, Sunil Engel from Patreon, because we always start with a Patreon patron because they give us money. Uh, and we appreciate that, so thank you, Sunil. And Sunil wants to know this. Why are we so sure that there are black holes at the center of ours and perhaps every galaxy? It could be empty space, like the eye of a hurricane spiraling outwards.

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 2:54Chuck Nice?

  Wow, check this out.

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, I love me the, some eyes of hurricanes.

• 2:58Chuck Nice?

  Right on.

• 2:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was a movie back in the 60s.

• 3:02Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 3:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, the Apollo program was fully up and running, and so it influenced storytelling. And there's a movie called Marooned.

• 3:10Chuck Nice?

  Marooned.

• 3:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so there was some spacecraft that got marooned. It's like they couldn't come back down out of orbit.

• 3:16Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so they had to launch, what do you mean nice? Nice for storytelling.

• 3:20Chuck Nice?

  It's great for a story.

• 3:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all, all space movies, people go to space and something bad happens.

• 3:23Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 3:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the plot.

• 3:25Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so of course it's in Florida. Uh, you know, this, uh, space program, launch bases are in Florida. And so they had to ready a craft to get to them before they died. All right, so they ready the craft and then a hurricane shows up.

• 3:40Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 3:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause it's Florida, right? So they can't launch the hurricane and someone calculates, wait. The eye of the hurricane is gonna pass directly over the launch tower.

• 3:52Chuck Nice?

  Right. But will there be a launch tower left? That's the problem.

• 3:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but they didn't ask that question.

• 3:58Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 3:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but it was like, very cool, that's how I learned that the center of the hurricane is actually a very silent, quiet place.

• 4:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so the eye came over, then they launched and you see the, the rocket coming out from the center of the thing.

• 4:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what they're asking is, in this question, what, uh, it's Sunil.

• 4:13Chuck Nice?

  Sunil.

• 4:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sunil is asking is, We see all this activity in the center of the galaxy, stars orbiting a big dark area. Right. How do we know it's not just like the center of a hurricane? And the reason why we know that is because what we learned from Kepler and later Newton is the orbit that you have is the speed of your orbit is completely determined by the mass that's sitting inside your orbit. Ah. The mass around which you revolve. Right. So what you say is, here are these things, I can see how fast they're moving. Run back to Kepler's equation and say, there must be a mass, a huge. Huge mass. A huge mass, like bigger than the size of the orbit. Wow.

• 4:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, and then you say, but wait a minute. We don't know anything that's that massive that's smaller than the orbit, except for A black hole. Okay. So in other words, if it was a star with that much mass, it would be huge. Or some other thing, and you see it. You'd see it, right. See a glowing thing. Gotcha. This is dark, and it has huge mass, and it's small. Hmm. That's three smoking guns right there. Right. Implicating a supermassive black hole. Supermassive black hole? Yes. And our black hole is less massive than the one in the center of the Andromeda Galaxy, our nearest big galaxy. Do we have black hole envy? I think we do. Yeah, yeah.

• 5:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, but we're talking about hundreds of millions of times the mass of the sun. But it's a black hole, so it's small for that much mass. Wow. And so that's why, so we do it for our galaxy, then we do it for a neighboring galaxy. It's such a. Wait a minute. Go ahead. And we can't, no, other galaxies are far away, so ground-based telescopes, you can't see it, so we sent up Hubble. Mm-hmm. And so we say, well, if we have it, and we're not really a special galaxy in the universe, and Andromeda has it, our nearest neighbor, maybe, this is astronomy, astronomy think, these two galaxies have it, maybe every galaxy has it. Right. Okay? Because why should we be special? Right. It's called the Copernican principle. You're probably not special.

• 6:19Chuck Nice?

  Right. Exactly. Copernicus, better known as my father. Not so special. I don't know what you think, but go ahead.

• 6:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your father interacting with you.

• 6:29Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 6:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so you, we, we hypothesized that maybe all galaxies have black holes. So you invoke Hubble, who can see farther away galaxies and measure the movements of stars down deep in the middle, and they were moving fast too.

• 6:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And every next galaxy, and so we've now done enough, we just resigned to the fact that every galaxy's got a black, even some of the smaller galaxies that might not have, they got black holes.

• 6:55Chuck Nice?

  They still have black holes, right.

• 6:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, no, we haven't seen, we haven't measured every one of the hundred billion galaxies in the universe, but every galaxy we measured, the big ones, the small ones, the...

• 7:03Chuck Nice?

  It's like taking a poll.

• 7:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, except even better.

• 7:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the universe doesn't have weird people living in back roads who think weird stuff. Well, actually, it might. The universe could have some weird galaxy that we've never discovered before.

• 7:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every galaxy that fits into a category of galaxies that we've observed, it's got a black hole of different masses, and the more massive the entire galaxy?

• 7:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then the more massive the black hole is.

• 7:26Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 7:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there's some that have billions of times the mass of the sun.

• 7:30Chuck Nice?

  Damn.

• 7:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As a black hole sitting in the middle.

• 7:32Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 7:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 7:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a very dated reference.

• 7:38Chuck Nice?

  It is.

• 7:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  1974.

• 7:40Chuck Nice?

  It really is. It's a great, great movie and scene.

• 7:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Deliverance.

• 7:45Chuck Nice?

  Deliverance, that's right.

• 7:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That movie was so great, I have on purpose never seen it a second time, because it was so disturbing.

• 7:54Chuck Nice?

  It is a disturbing movie.

• 7:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the most disturbing movie I've ever seen in my life.

• 7:57Chuck Nice?

  It's, it's really, yeah.

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it had, it had...

• 8:00Chuck Nice?

  Which is why I have it on a loop.

• 8:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That explains, Chuck, okay. That explains it.

• 8:07Chuck Nice?

  Sorry.

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that had Ned Beatty, it had, it had, um...

• 8:10Chuck Nice?

  What's his name?

• 8:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A boy?

• 8:11Chuck Nice?

  Uh, a Bert, Bert Reynolds, right?

• 8:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bert Reynolds.

• 8:14Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 8:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a serious role.

• 8:15Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 8:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At a time he was making comedies.

• 8:17Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 8:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he was very, really good.

• 8:19Chuck Nice?

  All right, I guess we'll move on. Wait, why not do another Patreon?

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We took way too long to answer that question.

• 8:23Chuck Nice?

  That's not true.

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 8:25Chuck Nice?

  I, I, I know you always want to answer one.

• 8:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We took a poll.

• 8:27Chuck Nice?

  But here's the thing.

• 8:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We took a definitive poll.

• 8:29Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we did.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you know what they said?

• 8:31Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 8:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They said, so these folks said, we want, keep the long answers.

• 8:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And other people said, no, we want more questions.

• 8:37Chuck Nice?

  This is true, but guess what?

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It split right down the middle.

• 8:40Chuck Nice?

  Everybody wants that though. So there's always gonna be people who are like, I love your long answers. I, I, it's entertaining. I find out stuff, you know, that I otherwise wouldn't have thought about.

• 8:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you wanna know about the movie Marooned? From nineteen sixty?

• 8:50Chuck Nice?

  I love that. And this is why I-

• 8:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's how I learned. I, as a kid, how old am I? Ten years old? The Eye of Hurricanes. It's a quiet place.

• 8:56Chuck Nice?

  As far as I'm concerned, those are, that's what makes the show good. But listen, and here's the thing, people, and, and just listen to me, I'm, I'm, just trust me.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, good point, good point.

• 9:05Chuck Nice?

  Here's the point.

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 9:06Chuck Nice?

  We're gonna get to your question at some point.

• 9:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At some point. Here's the thing.

• 9:09Chuck Nice?

  At some point.

• 9:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You raise an interesting point. If I just gave answers, then you don't really need me.

• 9:14Chuck Nice?

  No, you'd just be Black Google.

• 9:19Chuck Nice?

  Neil, Neil the Black Google.

• 9:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so these are not Google answers.

• 9:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are sort of fleshy.

• 9:31Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Notice like, again, I'm just dating myself here. In the old days, when you look something up, you go to an encyclopedia.

• 9:37Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 9:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, you never, it would take you an hour to get to the thing you were looking up.

• 9:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you stumbled all along the way.

• 9:46Chuck Nice?

  All along the way. That's right.

• 9:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was a whole journey.

• 9:49Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 9:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To find your answer.

• 9:50Chuck Nice?

  And see, kids, this is what you're missing out on by not having an encyclopedia. Cause that experience you just said right there is one of the best things in the world. It is. You go look up in your world book.

• 10:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Same, same with, same with dictionaries.

• 10:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You get lost, oh, that's what about that word? Where'd that word come from?

• 10:07Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Abstraperous. What the hell was that? Right? You know, it's, no, and that's the fun of it. And this is kinda what we're doing, so.

• 10:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, alright.

• 10:15Chuck Nice?

  Alright, here we go. Uh, Alex wants to know this.

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm glad you pronounced his name correct.

• 10:21Chuck Nice?

  Alex from Omaha, Nebraska.

• 10:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was just in Omaha, Nebraska.

• 10:25Chuck Nice?

  You were there?

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 10:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah?

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Omaha.

• 10:27Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Uh, yeah, every, every time I hear Omaha, all I think of is Peyton Manning. Uh, can a small-

• 10:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 10:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, cause that's, no, he's not, but he screams that out when he's at the line of scrimmage. He goes, three forty-five, two forty, Omaha!

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does he really?

• 10:40Chuck Nice?

  I swear to God, yeah. And I have no idea what it means in football or anything, but maybe somebody will write in and let us know.

• 10:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 10:47Chuck Nice?

  Uh, this is what Alex Betts wants to know. Can a small black hole orbit a bigger black hole? And if so, uh, can it be a stable orbit where it would never fall into or merge with the larger black hole?

• 11:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can I be Black Google here? Ready? The answer is- Yes.

• 11:06Chuck Nice?

  Boom.

• 11:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, next question.

• 11:08Chuck Nice?

  Let's move on.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no. So, here's the thing. I don't think a black hole knows it's a black hole.

• 11:17Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 11:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just a lump of mass out there looking for love, okay?

• 11:24Chuck Nice?

  That's why it's a black hole.

• 11:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In all the wrong places.

• 11:26Chuck Nice?

  Now I get the black part.

• 11:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no. So, so the point is, so a way to answer that is, if Earth today turned into a black hole.

• 11:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'd be a mini-black hole, like the size of a, of a, I calculated once, about, of a plum. Okay?

• 11:43Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 11:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 11:44Chuck Nice?

  So you mean, all of this Earth got down into the size of a plum?

• 11:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our event horizon, it would be deep within the plum.

• 11:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the, the, this plum is the size of our event horizon.

• 11:53Chuck Nice?

  Wow, with the mass of the Earth?

• 11:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes!

• 11:55Chuck Nice?

  Holy crap.

• 11:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Black holes don't play, dude!

• 11:57Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so look at this.

• 11:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Black holes don't play!

• 11:58Chuck Nice?

  Before we go on further with this, I just gotta, because you, you know, you just really freaked me out.

• 12:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm in the middle of an answer.

• 12:03Chuck Nice?

  I know, but. Where's the space come from? To, so as you're collapsing, why don't you run out of space? Inside of what's collapsing?

• 12:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 12:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You wanting, you wondering, isn't there a point beyond which you cannot compress it any further?

• 12:24Chuck Nice?

  Yes!

• 12:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 12:25Chuck Nice?

  Yes!

• 12:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright. Alright.

• 12:28Chuck Nice?

  Alex, we're getting back to your question, I'm sorry. But this is, this is really freaking me out right now. And it just, I just gotta know.

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, there are various states of matter.

• 12:39Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 12:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Why, why is a rock a rock? Because something is preventing it from collapsing.

• 12:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? So what is it? Well, it's the forces between molecules and atoms.

• 12:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 12:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they're called electronic forces, they're called.

• 12:54Chuck Nice?

  I got that.

• 12:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? That's why you, we all have, so.

• 12:57Chuck Nice?

  That's why I can't put my hand through my leg.

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Through your leg, okay?

• 12:59Chuck Nice?

  Or through this chair.

• 13:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 13:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 13:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, okay.

• 13:01Chuck Nice?

  I got you.

• 13:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless you're Invisible Man or something, or some other. Alright, so, now, it turns out, under high enough pressure, you can collapse that.

• 13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and close down the gaps that are between those atoms and molecules. Okay. All right, now they get closer. Okay. Together, okay? And you get something called electron degeneracy. That's what it's called, has nothing to do with its moral, uh, compass. That's it. Of electrons. Right, exactly. Okay, so electron degeneracy, they're so tightly packed, okay? That you're trying to cram electrons into the space of other electrons and they don't allow that. All right, from quantum, quantum physics. Okay. All right, so they, they keep their own identity within the structure. And then we have matter out there that resemble it, it's called white dwarfs. White dwarfs are electron degeneracy, and they're extremely dense. Mm-hmm.

• 13:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, wait, we can go further, okay? There's still the gap between the nucleus of an atom and the electrons themselves. Let's collapse that gap, and that is the biggest gap of them all. Ah. Okay, you know what that, that gap is? Take a football stadium, okay? And then put, uh, I don't know, a, uh, a mustard seed. Okay. Or something tiny. Tiny is a mustard seed. A poppy seed, mustard seed is biblical, but let's take a, like a poppy seed. All right. Put that in the middle of the stadium. Right. That's the nucleus and the outer size of the stadium is the orbits of the electrons. Wow. Atoms are mostly empty space. Gotcha. And the first dude to determine this, his name was, was J.J. Thompson.

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he, he performed the experiment by firing particles through a very thin film of gold. Gold you can hammer it so thin you can have practically one layer thick of atoms, okay? All right, you can, it's very malleable is the chemistry term, right? Make it really thin, and he fired particles, and he's ready to see them, some bounced back, careened to the left, to the right, and ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine-nine-nine-nine percent of them went straight through like nothing was there. And he was the first person to realize. That matter is mostly empty space. Gotcha. And the next morning, he is rumored to be afraid to step onto the floor. Getting out of bed. Right. That he might fall through it. Wow. Cause he alone knew how empty matter was.

• 15:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the next stage is collapsing everything down and you're cramming the electrons into the protons. Cause they're no longer can they separate themselves, alright? But they're not gonna occupy the same space anymore. They're crammed together. If you combine a proton and an electron, what happens to the charge? It becomes what? I don't know. Proton. Thank you for that admission of total.

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, electron has a negative charge, proton has a positive charge, they cancel out. And what kind, how much charge are you left with? Uh, neutral. Neutral. So you put them together, you create a neutron. Right. Okay, so now you, so you don't have the electron degeneracy and you have a pack, a pack of neutrons. That is the densest matter that exists out there that is not a black hole. Okay, so, these are called neutron stars. Cause in my field, we tell it like, like it is, alright? And neutron stars that rapidly rotate have magnetic fields, they call, they pulse. In radio waves, we call those pulsars. Okay, that makes sense. The person who discovered pulsars, Anthony Huish, won the Nobel Prize for it back in the nineteen seventy, sixty's. And started a watch company. Little known fact.

• 16:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People always taking our words. Exactly. We got Milky Way candy bar, we, excuse me, can we get some royalties for that, please? Okay, the Mars bar, I know it's a family name, but still, I'm taking it. Right. Alright. And you know how many car names are astronomically named? Uh. Okay, there's like, the Astro, that's the name of a minivan. That was a, oh my god, there is an Astro minivan. Yes, I made a whole list, I got a whole list. One, I will do a whole show. On cars? Car names. Alright. A whole show. Alright. I could do a whole show. Okay, gotcha. Don't get me started. Don't make me go there, okay? A whole show on names of stuff that came from my field. Came from your astrophysics. Yeah, okay. That's it. Promise, we'll do a show. Okay. Alright, so.

• 17:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now we're a pulsar. Okay, now a pulsar, that stuff is there. So, that's, if you take, wanna know how dense that is? Take a herd of three hundred.

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Billion elephants and cram them into a thimble.

• 17:32Chuck Nice?

  Holy crap.

• 17:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 17:35Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 17:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now, you can calculate how much pressure that makes to stop it from collapsing further. And you can calculate that, and then you figure out, in a black hole, the collapsing force is even greater.

• 17:47Chuck Nice?

  Damn.

• 17:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we don't know, we got no physics anymore after that.

• 17:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in a black hole, it's denser than the density of 300 billion elephants.

• 17:57Chuck Nice?

  In a thimble.

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Crammed into a thimble.

• 18:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, just imagine trying to do that.

• 18:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 18:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, with your...

• 18:04Chuck Nice?

  Definitely need a crowbar. Or something.

• 18:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Something.

• 18:07Chuck Nice?

  It's just right.

• 18:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So...

• 18:11Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 18:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yes, you, I can get you to the neutron star density. After that, it's all black holes.

• 18:17Chuck Nice?

  It's all black holes.

• 18:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's all black holes.

• 18:18Chuck Nice?

  Wow!

• 18:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now, Earth becomes a black hole, we just continue to orbit the sun. The gravity between us and the sun is determined just by our masses. Our mass didn't change.

• 18:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? It's still the same mass, who cares if we're a black hole?

• 18:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right? Now, if you turn the sun into a black hole, we don't care if it has the same mass.

• 18:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we're these mini-black hole orbiting big black hole, and there you go.

• 18:40Chuck Nice?

  Right. So, we'd just be orbiting the little mini-black hole, that's all?

• 18:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, we'd be the mini-black hole orbiting...

• 18:46Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no, I'm saying, if the sun became a black hole, we would just continue to orbit that little black hole.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but we're littler, so we're the plum-sized black hole.

• 18:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The sun is the big black hole. It's a bigger black hole.

• 18:56Chuck Nice?

  Bigger.

• 18:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So, so, the point is, the reason why we see black holes have such high gravity is they have high surface gravity. But if you step the same distance away from it that you were before it became a black hole, there's not any difference.

• 19:09Chuck Nice?

  Not this is gonna happen.

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. It's just that you can get real close to the center of gravity, and the power of the gravity keeps getting, the, the force of gravity keeps getting higher and higher and higher and higher and higher.

• 19:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 19:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that's how that works.

• 19:19Chuck Nice?

  That's awesome.

• 19:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the answer is yes.

• 19:20Chuck Nice?

  The, the, the answer is yes!

• 19:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta take our first break. When we come back, more cosmic queries, black holes, and...

• 19:27Chuck Nice?

  Dark energy.

• 19:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dark energy on StarTalk.

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk. Cosmic Queries, Chuck Nice.

• 19:54Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 19:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The basic ingredients. You, me, Cosmic Queries, StarTalk.

• 20:00Chuck Nice?

  That's it, that's it.

• 20:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's take it from there.

• 20:02Chuck Nice?

  Let's take it from there.

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, and topic again?

• 20:04Chuck Nice?

  Uh, dark energy and black holes.

• 20:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's do it, I thi- I think I can get through that top- those topics.

• 20:09Chuck Nice?

  So far, so good. Alright, let's jump right back into this with a question from Facebook and Kent...

• 20:18Chuck Nice?

  Ba- Baker.

• 20:24Chuck Nice?

  Yep, Kent.

• 20:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People, would you please give, like-

• 20:26Chuck Nice?

  Phonetics!

• 20:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pronunciation guides for Chuck.

• 20:29Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 20:30Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause reading is fundamental.

• 20:32Chuck Nice?

  And I think you guys are just screwing with me, to be honest, I really do. Anyway, he goes like this, "Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, please! Ask Neil if a black hole can reignite into a star once it has lost enough mass through Hawking radiation."

• 20:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, really?

• 20:47Chuck Nice?

  What a great question!

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good question!

• 20:49Chuck Nice?

  Interesting!

• 20:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 20:54Chuck Nice?

  There you go, Kent.

• 20:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because, um... If somehow the black hole could stay the same size and you pulled mass out?

• 21:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then, I dunno, I'd have to think that through. But what happens is, as you pull mass out, the black hole gets smaller and smaller and smaller to be the appropriate-sized black hole for the mass that's left over.

• 21:16Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that's what's happening.

• 21:18Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 21:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the black hole just continues to shrink, keeping all of its parameters, sort of black hole, uh, proper.

• 21:24Chuck Nice?

  Ah, gotcha.

• 21:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why.

• 21:27Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha, gotcha. There you go, alright.

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright.

• 21:30Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty cool. Alright, this is John-

• 21:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's, I mean, that'd make a good sci-fi story. You know, someone in the future figures out a way to undo black holes.

• 21:39Chuck Nice?

  Oh, cool.

• 21:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And turn them back into sort of masses that they once were.

• 21:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 21:44Chuck Nice?

  That's kinda cool, that-

• 21:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's do it.

• 21:45Chuck Nice?

  That, well, you, if you could do that, you probably could just create a black hole.

• 21:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, once you start controlling black holes, they, they will, uh- Bend to your whims.

• 21:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then the first thing people do is weaponize it.

• 22:01Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 22:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, this is what humans do.

• 22:03Chuck Nice?

  Now, that's a great sci-fi story. Instead of some stupid, like, Death Star.

• 22:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 22:08Chuck Nice?

  Like, you actually have a killer black hole.

• 22:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, that's, they did that in Star Trek.

• 22:13Chuck Nice?

  Oh, they did?

• 22:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. It was this, uh, a drill that would drill down to the center of a planet and then drop red matter. And then it would turn this planet into a black hole.

• 22:22Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 22:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, they've been there.

• 22:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, damn. I'm late, I'm late, I'm late on that one. You're right, that was the red matter, that, yeah.

• 22:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Again, why destroy the whole planet? Wouldn't you want to keep the planet? If you don't, if you're enemies with who's on the surface, get rid of them. By some diabolical means.

• 22:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But keep the real estate.

• 22:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, what are you doing?

• 22:43Chuck Nice?

  And it's always about, like, revenge, like, you know? It's not gonna bring your wife and children back, okay? Get over it. All right, here we go. John Feltrin, a black hole warps space, time around it.

• 22:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 22:56Chuck Nice?

  A star does the same.

• 22:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 22:59Chuck Nice?

  What happens to the gravitational well that the star has formed? If the star begins to fall into the gravitational well formed by the black hole? Does it dissipate at the same rate as the amount of mass being stripped? Or do both wells combine? I love the people, there's some good. Nah, this is so good, John. You're just showing off.

• 23:26Chuck Nice?

  That's what you're doing, John. John probably worked right here at the museum. John is downstairs. Sending us questions through, babe.

• 23:41Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 23:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so.

• 23:44Chuck Nice?

  There's a lot to.

• 23:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so if you think of it as the classical distortion in like a rubber sheet.

• 23:51Chuck Nice?

  Right, the rubber sheet model.

• 23:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the black hole is like a very deep hole in the rubber sheet. But everybody's got a dimple in the rubber sheet. Okay, you got, you have your own.

• 24:00Chuck Nice?

  I have my own little dimple.

• 24:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your own little dimple.

• 24:01Chuck Nice?

  Right, they're adorable.

• 24:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Depending on the mass.

• 24:06Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 24:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Depending on the mass determines how deep the dimple is in the fabric of space and time.

• 24:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, as you merge two dimples, if the black hole, if it's a black hole in a star, if the black hole begins to flay the star, as black holes are known to do.

• 24:25Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 24:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then its dimple will get deeper and the black hole's dimple will get deeper and the star's dimple will get shallower in response to this.

• 24:36Chuck Nice?

  Welcome to Cooking with Black Holes. Today, we're gonna flay a star. Go ahead.

• 24:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's, I didn't say flay.

• 24:42Chuck Nice?

  I know, you said flay.

• 24:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Flay.

• 24:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Flay, that's it. You know what that means?

• 24:48Chuck Nice?

  Uh, it means to disperse.

• 24:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 24:51Chuck Nice?

  Oh, what's it mean?

• 24:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 24:52Chuck Nice?

  I thought it meant like to.

• 24:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 24:54Chuck Nice?

  Pull apart.

• 24:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's to skin.

• 24:58Chuck Nice?

  Got you. Okay.

• 25:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm pretty sure.

• 25:01Chuck Nice?

  I'm, and listen, I'm not.

• 25:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me, I'm checking right now.

• 25:04Chuck Nice?

  I thought it meant to pull apart, but to skin, I'll take it.

• 25:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it could be, generally, if you're pulling someone apart, you would do it with the skin first, because that's the outer layer. So maybe that could have led to your, your hypothesis that, all right, let's do this.

• 25:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 25:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we go here.

• 25:19Chuck Nice?

  I love that he actually looks it up instead of just going, hey Siri.

• 25:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Flay. Okay, here we go.

• 25:25Chuck Nice?

  Flay.

• 25:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To strip off the skin.

• 25:28Chuck Nice?

  You're correct.

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or outer covering of.

• 25:31Chuck Nice?

  Right, so it's not really pull apart. It is indeed skinned, because stripping is skinny.

• 25:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you metaphor it, and it's like to criticize or scold with scathing severity.

• 25:41Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yo, you just got flayed, damn.

• 25:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And here's another one, to deprive or strip of money or property.

• 25:49Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's mine.

• 25:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because these are your outer accoutrements, right?

• 25:53Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, gotcha. Better known as divorce.

• 25:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's what it is. So divorce is a, is a, is a legal flaying.

• 26:00Chuck Nice?

  It's legal flaying, that's all. Sweet. All right, so anyway, the star is flayed by the bigger dimple of the black hole.

• 26:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, and so if you flay that, so the dimple's changed size relative to the mass that has changed hands.

• 26:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so it is possible for the star to flay the star, for the black hole to flay the star completely, so that it no longer has a dimple and it has consumed all of its mass.

• 26:27Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 26:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it is the sum of the two dimples together.

• 26:30Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 26:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Otherwise, you can have a star that's getting flayed while it's orbiting the two. And so you have two dimples just in orbit with a slow change in the two. And that's until one just disappears completely. This is kind of fun to watch.

• 26:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, you can imagine that.

• 26:48Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 26:49Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 26:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so there you go.

• 26:50Chuck Nice?

  There you have it. So that's how it is.

• 26:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay. All right, let's go to Love Marauder.

• 26:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You knew how to pronounce that.

• 26:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 27:01Chuck Nice?

  How big of an impact does dark energy have on my everyday life?

• 27:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  None. Okay, next question.

• 27:09Chuck Nice?

  It's not always about you, Love Marauder. It's not always about you.

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the thing is, dark energy is this, is this myster- still mysterious pressure in the vacuum of space that's forcing the universe to accelerate in its expansion against the wishes of all the galaxies and their gravity trying to slow the thing down.

• 27:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, so some people thought of it as an anti-gravity force. Could we one day harness it and make spaceships out of it?

• 27:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so there's an interesting sci-fi frontier there. But what I can tell you is, because it's manifesting in the vacuum relative to where there isn't a vacuum, there's not much vacuum here.

• 27:59Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 27:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so gravity and electromagnetism and all these other things are really dominating where you happen to be. So, no, there's no known, visible, or measurable effect on anything you will do in your life.

• 28:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all I'm saying.

• 28:14Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 28:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just, just.

• 28:16Chuck Nice?

  If you're not a galaxy, don't worry about it.

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, yeah, it's not a galaxy among other galaxies in the expanding universe.

• 28:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just chill.

• 28:22Chuck Nice?

  Just chill.

• 28:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chill on that.

• 28:23Chuck Nice?

  All right, well, there you go. That's it, Love Marauder. I, I hope that, I hope you find that sufficient to continue your love exploits. All right. All right, uh, this is Brian Bull, and he wants to know this. Um, does a black hole still produce light or other radiation that just can't escape the black hole's gravity? So. Yeah.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there's a lot of energy and matter inside of a black hole.

• 28:48Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you're in the black hole.

• 28:50Chuck Nice?

  In.

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he's probably.

• 28:51Chuck Nice?

  Bright as I don't know what.

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, exactly.

• 28:53Chuck Nice?

  Cause the light got no place to go.

• 28:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, it's got no place to go.

• 28:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so it's all in there. So now, we don't have direct evidence of this. Chuck, you wanna be? Chuck, you know, call me and when you get back.

• 29:04Chuck Nice?

  I'll go find this out. Let me go get on this.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, get, yeah, you, you report back to me. I'm on a full report on my desk in the morning.

• 29:09Chuck Nice?

  I'll be like Matthew McConaughey in that string theory movie. Damn, what was the name of that movie?

• 29:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interstellar.

• 29:14Chuck Nice?

  Interstellar, yes.

• 29:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you mean, that's string theory? Interstellar.

• 29:18Chuck Nice?

  Interstellar.

• 29:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Again with the program.

• 29:19Chuck Nice?

  Listen, I'm on new medication. It's really bothering my memory.

• 29:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So, um, yeah, there's no reason why you wouldn't still see light and other things inside the black hole.

• 29:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, it's just not getting out.

• 29:31Chuck Nice?

  It's cool.

• 29:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 29:32Chuck Nice?

  That's excellent, excellent, excellent. All right, um, oh.

• 29:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you know what else you'd see?

• 29:36Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 29:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you tried to look outside the black hole, you'd see all the stuff coming in.

• 29:42Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 29:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that'd be really bright. Oh, yeah.

• 29:45Chuck Nice?

  That's kinda cool, actually.

• 29:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 29:47Chuck Nice?

  Not a bad, yeah, the only problem is you'd just be like, "Don't come in here." "There's no way out. No, don't come in," you know? What's that guy saying down there?

• 29:59Chuck Nice?

  All right, uh, this is R Y P. Thank you, R Y P, for just using your initials, okay? R Y P wants to know this.

• 30:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe that's his name, Rip.

• 30:12Chuck Nice?

  Like, yeah, that's, that's cool. Rip wants to know this. Could dark energy or matter, dark matter or dark energy?

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:20Chuck Nice?

  Is it possible to manipulate it, to use it as a fuel of some sort? Interesting.

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's a problem.

• 30:27Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dark energy, we don't know how to interact with it. We, we just measure its effects on the universe. Dark matter. Reveals itself to us through its gravity.

• 30:39Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. But it doesn't reveal itself to us in any other way that we normally interact.

• 30:45Chuck Nice?

  So we can see its effects, but not what it is itself.

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not materially.

• 30:51Chuck Nice?

  Not materially.

• 30:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's correct, because materially, what do you do? You you touch it.

• 30:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You pinch it.

• 30:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You weigh it.

• 30:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, you you you put it on, you grab it, piece of it, put it on a scale.

• 31:01Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You do all of this and dark matter. In order to have something, you you are this person called Chuck.

• 31:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because all your atoms are all attached to each other.

• 31:11Chuck Nice?

  Thank God.

• 31:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 31:13Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 31:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're all there.

• 31:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dark matter not only doesn't attach to your atoms.

• 31:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It doesn't attach to itself.

• 31:23Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 31:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So as far as we know, there are no lumps of dark matter out there.

• 31:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are no dark matter planets.

• 31:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No dark matter galaxies.

• 31:32Chuck Nice?

  In the cosmos that is oatmeal, there are no lumps of dark matter.

• 31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't like lumps in your oatmeal?

• 31:41Chuck Nice?

  No, I do not. I used to as a kid, because you would put, roll them in sugar, then eat them like oatmeal candy, but go ahead, sorry.

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 31:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 31:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, do you, that was early, uh, you were early out of the box with granola.

• 31:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 31:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those are rolled, with dipped, rolled in sugar.

• 31:57Chuck Nice?

  So you take the oatmeal lump, you roll it in some sugar and you eat it.

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that was, yeah, alright.

• 32:02Chuck Nice?

  So there you go. Alright!

• 32:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, yeah, there's no, we have no way to harness it in that sense.

• 32:09Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 32:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you, if you can't grab it because your hand goes straight through it.

• 32:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it doesn't make itself, given itself any kind of density.

• 32:16Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 32:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you can't.

• 32:18Chuck Nice?

  There's nothing you can do to, right, so you can see it.

• 32:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, you can see its effects.

• 32:23Chuck Nice?

  Its effects, you can see its effects, but you can't see it and. You can't interact with it.

• 32:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is literally invisible.

• 32:31Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 32:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because not only do your molecules and atoms not interact, light doesn't interact with it.

• 32:35Chuck Nice?

  Oh my gosh.

• 32:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And light and molecules and atoms are all related to each other.

• 32:38Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 32:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They all interact, they all, you reflect light.

• 32:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some light goes through you, like, but gets absorbed inside of you, like X-rays go into your bones.

• 32:46Chuck Nice?

  This is true.

• 32:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See this on a map, they shadow your bones.

• 32:49Chuck Nice?

  I absorb a little more light than most, I will say.

• 32:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's true, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a very, it's called albedo.

• 32:54Chuck Nice?

  Albe- ah, wait a minute.

• 32:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have a word for that.

• 32:56Chuck Nice?

  Albedo.

• 32:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 32:58Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 32:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, if you have an albedo of one.

• 33:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You reflect a hundred percent of the light that hits you.

• 33:03Chuck Nice?

  Ah, not to be confused with libido.

• 33:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you have an albedo.

• 33:08Chuck Nice?

  If you have a libido of one.

• 33:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you have an albedo of zero, you absorb everything that comes to you, that would be a black hole.

• 33:15Chuck Nice?

  If you have a libido of zero, you are married. Go ahead.

• 33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many more libido jokes?

• 33:23Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

• 33:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Into a minute.

• 33:25Chuck Nice?

  I can't help it, I don't know what it is, but go ahead, albedo.

• 33:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the point is, yeah, albedo, so, so, um, albedo, just, it's the ability of a surface of something to reflect light.

• 33:36Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 33:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all, and it's a percent, so one would be a hundred percent.

• 33:40Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 33:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And zero, zero, so, the moon has a very low albedo, as bright as it can be, it doesn't reflect much light.

• 33:45Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 33:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's like in the, like ten percent of the lighters, I forgot the exact number, but it's really, it's absorbing most of the rest of it.

• 33:51Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 33:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, so, um, where was I, all I'm saying is, if you can't grab something and put it in a box.

• 34:01Chuck Nice?

  You can't harness it.

• 34:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't, what do we, we don't know how to harness it, right, we need some other way that we invent, once we figure out what it is, we might be able to find a dark matter trap.

• 34:10Chuck Nice?

  How do you figure out what something is if you can't interact with it?

• 34:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know! Thank you!

• 34:16Chuck Nice?

  He's like, "Welcome to my world!"

• 34:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, thank you! This is the longest unsolved problem in astrophysics. It's been with us since 1936.

• 34:25Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 34:26Chuck Nice?

  Dude, that is amazing. That is really cool.

• 34:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 34:30Chuck Nice?

  So, the guy who figures that out.

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The person.

• 34:34Chuck Nice?

  The person.

• 34:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The human.

• 34:35Chuck Nice?

  You're right. I shouldn't say guy. I don't know how to say, we're living in 2020 now. I should, the person who figures that out is gonna win a Nobel Prize time 10.

• 34:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the person who figures out what dark matter is.

• 34:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and then we, ideally, we can control it, manipulate it, put some in a box. That'd be cool.

• 34:55Chuck Nice?

  Nice. Alright.

• 34:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We gotta take a break?

• 34:57Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 34:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, more StarTalk, cosmic queries, black holes, dark matter. And energy.

• 35:17Chuck Nice?

  Time to give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons. Ashad Kuyamjian and Tony Biel. Thanks so much, guys, for supporting us and helping us make our little trek through the cosmos. And anyone else, if you would like your very own Patreon shout out, make sure you go to patreon.com/startalkradio and support us.

• 35:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk, Cosmic Query.

• 35:55Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 35:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck Nice tweeting at Chuck Nice Comic.

• 35:58Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, sir. Yes, that is correct.

• 36:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very good. So, it turns out, we are luxuriating in these answers. I will, I will executive privilege and say, we will not do lightning round.

• 36:08Chuck Nice?

  Excellent.

• 36:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we'll just continue to, continue to bask.

• 36:12Chuck Nice?

  Nice, nice.

• 36:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the cosmic knowledge juxtaposed with cosmic ignorance.

• 36:18Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 36:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And therein.

• 36:19Chuck Nice?

  Did you just, did you just describe the two people who are on this podcast? Wait a minute, what just happened?

• 36:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you need more self-confidence here. I was describing something bigger than us.

• 36:30Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 36:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 36:31Chuck Nice?

  Alright, alright.

• 36:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the intersection of cosmic knowledge and cosmic ignorance. That is the moving frontier of cosmic discovery.

• 36:38Chuck Nice?

  Ooh. Nice. That's, I love that. You should tweet that.

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me go ahead and tweet that.

• 36:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you should. That's, that's, that's quite eloquent and elegant at the same time. All right, here we go. Martin Cuevas. And Martin wants to know this. What would happen to the Earth if it came close or directly in contact with a black hole? The one being hypothesized to be perhaps the Planet Nine orbit? So I didn't realize that Planet Nine was actually posit, um, posited to be a black hole. I thought that's why they call it Planet Nine because it's supposed to be this supermassive object that's out past the Kuiper Belt, but...

• 37:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's new to me, too.

• 37:23Chuck Nice?

  Is it? Okay. All right, good.

• 37:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying.

• 37:25Chuck Nice?

  All right, good, then I'm not alone. Good.

• 37:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I don't know who's hypothesizing that we have external black holes orbit. I don't know.

• 37:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't, if, maybe it's, maybe I missed that.

• 37:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe I missed that.

• 37:37Chuck Nice?

  A new development?

• 37:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That Morning Edition with the Astrophysical Journal.

• 37:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I might have, you know, but, uh, so, but it's still a fascinating question. And I think about this all the time.

• 37:47Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 37:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. If Earth happened upon a black hole that was traveling through space, an encounter between Earth and a black hole, Earth loses.

• 37:56Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 37:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 37:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, because we know about this tidal force that will stretch things, where the, the side of the Earth nearest the black hole will experience a much higher force of gravity than the side that's farthest.

• 38:11Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 38:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That means the side closest to the black hole will pull towards it faster than the side of Earth, and so you'll end up stretching Earth.

• 38:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, the, the problem with the word "stretch" is, you know, Earth is not Gumby, right? Or Elastic Man.

• 38:25Chuck Nice?

  I am Earth, dammit!

• 38:28Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry.

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, so, it's not like, it's, Earth is not made of rubber. Earth is made of sort of solid substance. So if you're going to stretch, put under... Stress the solid sphere that is Earth. Earth will basically begin to crumble.

• 38:47Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Into smaller and smaller bits of rock.

• 38:50Chuck Nice?

  So you're looking at massive earthquakes.

• 38:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, but it would happen.

• 38:55Chuck Nice?

  And tidal waves.

• 38:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, I mean, if you're falling straight in.

• 38:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, so, yeah, so Earth will distort. Become more and more oblong until the the the strength of the materials can't hold that shape any anymore.

• 39:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it'll start sort of crumbling apart. And we call that spaghettification is when you start becoming this long strand. But again, spaghetti is one continuous string.

• 39:20Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 39:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whereas this will be a stream of of particles.

• 39:26Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 39:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A parade of particles as they.

• 39:29Chuck Nice?

  So is this Netflix-ication?

• 39:33Chuck Nice?

  Instead of spaghettification.

• 39:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you get Netflix in there?

• 39:36Chuck Nice?

  Streaming.

• 39:39Chuck Nice?

  Now, I am going to.

• 39:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you have to flub one every now and then.

• 39:42Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna, we're gonna cut that out. We're cutting that one out. That one was just for me.

• 39:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You were testing, new material, just testing material.

• 39:53Chuck Nice?

  That was just for me. You're the person who came up with spaghettification, if I'm not mistaken.

• 39:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I just popularized it.

• 39:59Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 39:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's.

• 40:00Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I thought, I thought you, I thought you actually coined the term.

• 40:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I, I popularized it, but the, the, it's traceable to Martin Rees.

• 40:08Chuck Nice?

  Martin Rees.

• 40:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sir Martin Rees, in fact, he got, he's now Lord, Lord Rees.

• 40:12Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 40:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lord Martin, do you go the first?

• 40:14Chuck Nice?

  A little full of himself, isn't he?

• 40:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 40:18Chuck Nice?

  You call me Lord Rees. Oh, Sir Martin Rees, that's Lord Rees to you. What the hell is up with Martin? Just.

• 40:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, Martin, Marty, Marty, Marty from the street corner, what happened to you?

• 40:32Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Marty, it's Lord Rees now. What is Marty? What the hell is your problem, Marty?

• 40:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he's not from Brooklyn.

• 40:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Marty.

• 40:44Chuck Nice?

  Lord, I command thee to. I command thee to bring me my spaghettification. All right, so, okay, all right, well, yeah.

• 40:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did we answer that? Oh, yeah, yeah, so we just break apart.

• 40:58Chuck Nice?

  So we break apart.

• 40:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're sitting here on Earth, it would just be an interesting phenomenon to behold.

• 41:02Chuck Nice?

  Wow, yeah.

• 41:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 41:04Chuck Nice?

  That's cool, man. All right, hey, Martin, great question.

• 41:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would break open the, the, the very hot, liquid core of the Earth.

• 41:12Chuck Nice?

  Now, that doesn't, that doesn't sound good.

• 41:15Chuck Nice?

  I'm just gonna say, I don't, I don't know if I like that.

• 41:20Chuck Nice?

  You cracking open the Earth.

• 41:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the whole middle.

• 41:23Chuck Nice?

  And the whole middle.

• 41:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is glowing iron nickel ball.

• 41:26Chuck Nice?

  Damn.

• 41:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of molten iron.

• 41:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, it's a bad day for Earth.

• 41:30Chuck Nice?

  That's, yeah, that's not cool. Right on. All right, let's go to Todd Tobin, and Todd says, "How does a black hole not consume space-time itself? And just go BS crazy, bat crap crazy, and destroy the entire universe? Why aren't black holes running amok?"

• 41:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did he say BC crazy?

• 41:54Chuck Nice?

  He said bat, you know.

• 41:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, with the S or the C?

• 41:59Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, bat, the bat, the bad word.

• 42:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did he say crap, or did he say S-word?

• 42:02Chuck Nice?

  No, he said the S-word.

• 42:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you, you were translating for us?

• 42:05Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I was.

• 42:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you're, you're acting as your own sponsor, uh, uh.

• 42:07Chuck Nice?

  You know why? Because.

• 42:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Acting as your, as your own censor.

• 42:09Chuck Nice?

  These little kids, they write me, and they're just like, "Hey, man, you know, children are listening to this." And I'm like, "Well, you shouldn't be." "Stop trying to learn stuff and give up your dreams." "Damn you."

• 42:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a joke, people.

• 42:25Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it was, please, these are jokes, go ahead. But anyway, yeah, so he said BS crazy, bat crap crazy, and why aren't they, why aren't black holes running amok?

• 42:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, so.

• 42:37Chuck Nice?

  So he's saying, why, why doesn't the whole thing just like, why aren't they out of hand? Why aren't they just like consuming not only?

• 42:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I get it. That's why, why aren't they consuming space time itself?

• 42:49Chuck Nice?

  And just, just eating away the entire universe? Just eat it away?

• 42:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, because black holes are not any more voracious as black holes than they were as stars before they became black holes.

• 43:02Chuck Nice?

  Interesting. So it's really about mass?

• 43:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just the mass.

• 43:05Chuck Nice?

  It's just mass?

• 43:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all. If you get, now, so the thing, so here's how to think about it. Think of the sun, okay? Um, before you, how close can you get to the sun? You get near the surface and you just vaporize, okay? All right, so now, the cer- the sun's surface, it's atmospheric surface, has a certain strength of gravity there.

• 43:26Chuck Nice?

  Okay, okay.

• 43:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, let's cram the sun into a smaller volume. Same amount of mass, it's just denser. You can now get closer to the sun's center of mass. So its surface gravity is now higher. Cram it smaller. The surface gravity is even higher. Black holes are fun to think about and talk about because you can get close to them. If you get closer to Earth's center of mass, you're leaving half of Earth behind you. And it's not interesting. The good thing, the fun thing about black holes is you can get close to their center of mass. And their entire mass is between you and their center. That's why they become interesting. But puff it back up to the original size, there's no difference. Nobody cares.

• 44:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. So black holes are just, they're, they're, it's, you can just get, it's, it's.

• 44:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're, they're, they allow you to get close to them without you knowing how deadly they are in such a state.

• 44:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh my.

• 44:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all.

• 44:30Chuck Nice?

  Oh, snap.

• 44:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the difference.

• 44:32Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I got you.

• 44:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, and but technically they-

• 44:35Chuck Nice?

  I have an ex-girlfriend like that.

• 44:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Technically, they are consuming the spacetime around them. Space folds back on itself so that you cannot even come back out. You can think of a black hole as completely consuming the volume of spacetime in its vicinity. I have no qualms with you thinking of what's inside the event horizon as the black hole having eaten its own spacetime continuum. I have no problems with that.

• 45:05Chuck Nice?

  That is super cool.

• 45:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 45:07Chuck Nice?

  Wow, what a great question then, I mean-

• 45:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's that old ancient question, what happens if a snake starts eating its tail? And continues to do so?

• 45:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Will the snake, one day, disappear?

• 45:22Chuck Nice?

  I don't know, but it certainly won't be hungry. This, this we're sure of.

• 45:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it just keeps eating.

• 45:28Chuck Nice?

  If it just keeps eating itself. Yeah, but then how does the head eat itself?

• 45:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It keeps, it comes in from behind the head. Okay, if you imagine a completely flexible snake at all times.

• 45:37Chuck Nice?

  Right, it just keeps going, going, going.

• 45:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It comes eating, then it eats.

• 45:41Chuck Nice?

  And there you go.

• 45:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that sound. That is the sound a snake would make if it did that.

• 45:46Chuck Nice?

  At the end of the meal. And it's gone. No more snake.

• 45:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. That's, that's a black hole.

• 45:52Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Alright, that's cool. Alright, Christopher Carns, uh, uh-uh, Kyrens, wants to know this. Everything in space seems to be spinning and rotating. Planet spins and rotates around stars, stars.

• 46:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just to be clear, if you rotate on an axis, if you turn on an axis, we say you're rotating. If you move around another object, we say you're revolving.

• 46:13Chuck Nice?

  Okay, got you.

• 46:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So just, just, most people don't know that, but it's, since the language can distinguish it-

• 46:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why not?

• 46:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're not weird words, we've all used them before. Okay, so go.

• 46:23Chuck Nice?

  So, stars spin and revolve around galaxy centers.

• 46:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So things rotate, and then they revolve, yes.

• 46:30Chuck Nice?

  Even galaxies are spinning.

• 46:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 46:34Chuck Nice?

  Is there any evidence that there are rotate, that they are rotating around something?

• 46:42Chuck Nice?

  They spin, but do they rotate or revolve?

• 46:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And with the new vocabulary, revolve around something else.

• 46:49Chuck Nice?

  Around something else.

• 46:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in our neck of the woods, no.

• 46:53Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 46:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, because we don't have enough galaxies where we are to be able to create an orbital system.

• 47:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right now, as far as we can tell, we're on a one-way collision course with

• 47:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're not orbiting each other or anything like that. All right. However, there are places in the universe that have hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of galaxies in a sort of a beehive configuration.

• 47:19Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 47:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can track those galaxies. Those would have orbits around the center of that galaxy super, we call it supercluster.

• 47:26Chuck Nice?

  Superclusters.

• 47:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So yes, in, in not all cases, but in some interesting cases, you do have stars that rotate, orbit the center, revolve around the center of their galaxies, as do all the other stars in their galaxies, and the galaxy itself is orbiting the center of the supercluster. Yes.

• 47:46Chuck Nice?

  Now, is it possible to see the, uh, to see the movement of the galaxy and measure it in such a way that we could possibly see if there's something there revolving around? Like a black hole or something that's at the center of the supercluster?

• 48:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you know, centers of superclusters, that's an interesting thing.

• 48:06Chuck Nice?

  That's what I'm saying. That would be a really, that would be a really cool thing to find out. If the supercluster is actually revolving around.

• 48:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Around a black hole.

• 48:15Chuck Nice?

  A black hole itself.

• 48:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's an interesting question.

• 48:18Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 48:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't, I don't know.

• 48:20Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 48:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know.

• 48:22Chuck Nice?

  Cool. Well, please go find out.

• 48:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that my assignment between now and the next time?

• 48:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Chuck, I'll get right, I'll get right on it.

• 48:31Chuck Nice?

  I'll get on that for you, buddy.

• 48:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it turns out, you might ask, could the supercluster be orbiting around some other concentration of some meta-mass of, of galaxies?

• 48:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's a problem. Ready?

• 48:44Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 48:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can look at the speed of galaxies moving in the largest of the superclusters. Because you can measure this with the Doppler shift. Okay, that makes sense. We all know the Doppler shift intuitively. Alright, so if a car is... Exactly. You stand on the edge of a freeway. Right. I can do better than that. Go ahead. Oh, that was good. That was a speedway. That was, yeah.

• 49:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not bad. So no one ever asks, "Why doesn't it sound the same coming towards you as it does going away?" Wasn't it? No, it's...

• 49:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the pitch changes. Okay? Which is, "Why are you laughing? I'm trying to teach here, dude." I love it. Okay? Go ahead. So it's a higher pitch if it's coming towards you. Right.

• 49:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And a lower pitch as it goes where? So it's like compression and expansion. Exactly. Gotcha. And so even though it's only giving the same sound, if the car is parked in front of you, the engine is making one sound. Right. Alright. Inside the car, all you hear is... Exactly, exactly. But here it is. Okay? Gotcha. So, so... If you measure... Worst Kung-Fu movie ever. If you measure the change in the frequency of sound Right. as it comes towards you. Right. And compare it to... You can... And you know what that sound should be. There's a very simple formula that was developed by Christian Doppler, who was a German physicist. He might have even been a chemist, actually.

• 50:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But he was, I think this was 19th century, he figured this out. Okay. And he did it with a railroad train. The whistle of a train as it came by. Because they didn't have race cars Right. in the 19th century. Alright. So you measure how fast the galaxy is moving, and then you look at how big the galaxy cluster is. Right. You can say, "How long will it take at that speed to cross the cluster?" Gotcha. That's a perfectly honest question. Yeah, no worries. Okay? For the biggest of these clusters takes longer than the age of the universe. Wow. So the cluster has not had enough time to have everybody sort of organized into their orbits. Got you.

• 50:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So for many of these measurements, you can't use the speed as an indication of other stuff that's going on. Wow. Yeah, yeah. We don't live long enough. I know. Damn it. I know. Our time frame is like that. That was that during the Super Bowl, I tweeted that. What? No, I did not. You know, see, I read your tweets. You don't read my tweets? Um, now I'm embarrassed.

• 51:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All I said was while you're watching, if the hundred yards on the field were a timeline of the universe. Okay. Of the fourteen billion year universe, and in one end zone is the Big Bang. Right. And modern day is like the other end zone, then the thickness of a blade of grass, the width of a blade of grass at the other end zone is from thirty thousand years in our past to the present. Just one? The thickness. The thickness. Not, not the width, the thick, just. Just right. The thickness. Yeah. Cavemen to modern time. That's our little, that's what we occupy. Well, our humans, yeah, Cro-Magnon, Cro-Magnon humans, uh, o- over that time.

• 52:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's the entire history of our species on a hundred yard long football field. Wow. So were it not for computers to simulate what's going on over time scales longer than we live, we would not know anything about things that lasted longer than we do. Damn. Oh, yeah. That's pretty wild. And our, our ego historically was we are the know everything. So why should Earth be much older than our history books? Exactly. Right. Why should it? Why should it? When this is all about us. Why should your eyes not see things that are seeable in the universe? Right, when I'm the only one that matters. Right. So even the telescopes that were first constructed only brought us visible light. Right.

• 52:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we have better versions of our eyes, but it's still light that we can see. Discover infrared, X-rays, ultraviolet, X-ray, gamma rays, the whole rest of the spectrum you can't see? How dare the universe communicate in ways that our senses cannot detect?

• 53:03Chuck Nice?

  Wow, you know what? This is really fascinating because it starts, as you look at the fact that we are indeed one chromosome away from, you know, the other apes.

• 53:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 53:12Chuck Nice?

  But yet, at the same time, we're the only, or are we? Are other animals thinking about this kind of stuff that we're talking about right now? Are there dolphins just like, "Yeah, I'm telling you right now, man, there's something more than this ocean."

• 53:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was a, uh, we'll end, we gotta end right, like, right now, but there's a comic, Gary Larson, you remember the, the illustrator?

• 53:39Chuck Nice?

  Uh, he, there was a chicken, a horse, a, a cow, and some other farm animal in the barn. Right.

• 53:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're having a conversation.

• 53:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 53:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? And the chicken says, "But if you divide by the square root of the mass, you get the same result." And then, like, the cow said, "Wait, but you're missing the basic premise of my theory." And one of them looks out the window, "Farmer!" Okay, the farmer's coming towards them, and the farmer comes in, "Pluck, pluck, pluck."

• 54:12Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah, that's cool.

• 54:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you don't know if they're not talking that way when you're not looking?

• 54:16Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm pretty sure they're not.

• 54:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like the refrigerator light. How do you know?

• 54:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 54:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't know if it's on, off, or closed? You don't know! All right, we gotta go. We went way over time here. This has been StarTalk, Cosmic Queries, Chuck Nice, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. As always, I bid you keep looking out.