Cosmic Queries – Cosmic Cauldron

Does dark matter interact with black holes? What’s the best alien in film? Is the universe infinite? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice answer a cosmic cauldron of fan-submitted Cosmic Queries.

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. This is StarTalk. We're doing a cosmic queries edition. And you know what that means? I got Chuck Nice as my co-host.

• 0:21Chuck Nice?

  That's right, sir. What's happening?

• 0:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, all right.

• 0:24Chuck Nice?

  How's it going?

• 0:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this one, again, every now and then, there's the bottom of the barrel.

• 0:30Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 0:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We pull out of the barrel all those that were solicited topically. But then a few fall through the cracks and others just come in randomly. And so this is just some random, it's like a potpourri.

• 0:45Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think in the past, we might have called it a galactic gumbo.

• 0:49Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We just don't have a good term for it.

• 0:54Chuck Nice?

  Ah, how about we'll call this one Cosmic Cauldron?

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic Cauldron, ooh.

• 1:00Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, let's try that.

• 1:02Chuck Nice?

  A little juxtaposition, tongue in cheek, a little witchcraft reference with science.

• 1:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the alliteration to boot. All right, so what do you have? I assume you have a Patreon question up front?

• 1:14Chuck Nice?

  As always, we start with Patreon patrons because they give us money.

• 1:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let's do this.

• 1:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, this is Davis Hemsath from Patreon. He says, "Is there a hypothesis for the interaction of dark matter and a black hole?" So, you know, I mean...

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I mean, it's just because dark matter is dark and black hole is black.

• 1:38Chuck Nice?

  Are black.

• 1:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't mean all the black in the dark got to vote together.

• 1:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As far as we know, they are completely separate and distinct, as far as we know. And that, actually, I'm not even saying very much there because we don't know what comprises dark matter. And as I've said many times, it'd be better termed dark gravity. It's something giving us gravity and we don't know what it is. Black holes give us gravity, but we know what a black hole is. So there's no obvious connection between the two at all.

• 2:11Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 2:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not only theoretically, but observationally as well. So I got nothing for you there.

• 2:18Chuck Nice?

  Well, there doesn't look, doesn't seem to be anything there. There doesn't seem to be a there there.

• 2:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not in the dark matter there, right?

• 2:25Chuck Nice?

  Not in the dark matter there, yeah.

• 2:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you want to find out what's in the black hole, you can go check it out and let me know.

• 2:32Chuck Nice?

  Yes. Julia Lysick, uh huh, uh huh. Julia Lysick from Patreon says this. "I have an essay question for you guys."

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An essay question? That means it's compare and contrast. Yeah, that's one of those.

• 2:46Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  College essay questions.

• 2:48Chuck Nice?

  College essay questions. "What, in your opinion, is the best all-time depiction of aliens in a movie or on TV and why?"

• 3:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 3:01Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love me that. Okay, so.

• 3:04Chuck Nice?

  That's so cool.

• 3:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've got the answer. 1958. 1958.

• 3:10Chuck Nice?

  19, wait a minute. With all the CGI that we have available right now.

• 3:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the problem.

• 3:15Chuck Nice?

  You go back to 1958?

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the, there you go. The, one of Steve McQueen's earliest films, if not his first film, The Blob.

• 3:26Chuck Nice?

  Oh snap, The Blob.

• 3:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Blob. Let me ask you.

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, that could be any, that's any movie.

• 3:32Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god, it's so scary.

• 3:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If that's any movie.

• 3:34Chuck Nice?

  It's not. Snot is coming to get us. Ahhh! Something blew its nose on the earth. We're in trouble. Ahhh!

• 3:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why they were freaking out.

• 3:49Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Snot. Oh my god, it's Snot!

• 3:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So The Blob, one of these, you know, low-budget B-movies, I think they were called back then. In any case, what was intriguing about it is, this thing didn't have a face, didn't have arms, legs, nose, mouth, shoulders, fingers, toes, head, didn't have any of the things you normally would be putting on an alien, primarily because you have an actor in the alien costume. And so...

• 4:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why would a creature from another planet with no DNA in common with life on Earth look more like us than we do compared to other life forms on Earth?

• 4:35Chuck Nice?

  Right here on Earth.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right here on Earth. So my argument is, what are two really different life forms? Humans and jellyfish and oak trees. Let's take those three, okay? That's quite the gamut.

• 4:46Chuck Nice?

  That is.

• 4:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever the alien is, it should look more different from the three of us than we do from one another.

• 4:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's coming from a completely other kind of thing. So that's why the blob, for me, which had no spinal column.

• 5:05Chuck Nice?

  It has no, it has no nothing.

• 5:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's got no nothing. It's a blob.

• 5:09Chuck Nice?

  It's a blob.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a blob. And another little-known fact, I mean, it's known if you paid attention. The blob was, like you said, was like snot. It was transparent, colorless, when it arrived on Earth. After it consumed its first victim, for the rest of the movie, it was red.

• 5:33Chuck Nice?

  Ew. That is nasty.

• 5:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It became the color of the blood, right?

• 5:38Chuck Nice?

  That's wild.

• 5:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It happened just one scene, and then you don't think about it. I think the blob is just this red thing that's...

• 5:44Chuck Nice?

  Now, I don't, because I'm...

• 5:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You couldn't, you couldn't defend against the blob because it would come in under the door.

• 5:51Chuck Nice?

  It would do it. It would come in through anything.

• 5:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Through the grates of the thing. It came into a movie theater, terrorized people because that's how it got in.

• 5:58Chuck Nice?

  Should have called, should have called it the ooze. That should have been the name of it.

• 6:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For me, that's the most, that representation of an alien has the highest sort of integrity with regard to it not looking like anything here on Earth. Now, that being said, there are two movies, maybe three, so start with 2001: A Space Odyssey. That had aliens in it. You just never saw them. You saw the manifestation of their intelligence.

• 6:26Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 6:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Arthur C. Clarke and Carl Sagan was one of the advisors on that film. They said, "Just don't show aliens at all. You can't imagine it, but you can put their handiwork." And so that's one that did it. Not only that, in Carl Sagan's novel Contact, which then became a movie in the late 1990s, because 2001: A Space Odyssey was 1968. So Contact, that also had aliens that you never saw.

• 6:54Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's because, "Hi, I'm gonna take the form of your father."

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yes. That scene.

• 7:00Chuck Nice?

  "I've taken this pleasing form to you, so because there's no way you could actually comprehend what we really look like."

• 7:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, exactly, exactly. So, so these are, I think, this shows honesty in our ignorance by not even attempting to show them at all.

• 7:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And meanwhile, a very important movie, but for me, showed very little imagination, was Predator.

• 7:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Predator is this alien drops on Earth and goes human hunting, right? It's like it's...

• 7:35Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 7:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's what he does, and it's got Arnold in it, and it's got some other muscle men of the 80s in it.

• 7:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they fight this one alien. Well, how tall is the alien? He's about, you know, six feet five or so. It's not three inches tall. It's not 60 stories tall. It's approximately human-sized. It's got feet, except they're a little bigger. It's got a head, it's got a mouth, it's got arms, it carries weapons, it's got a belt, it's got stuff, and this is an alien? Come on now. So it really shows an absence of imagination in Hollywood any time they go down that road.

• 8:15Chuck Nice?

  Okay, well now, what do you think of Alien? So that's...

• 8:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, the Sigourney Weaver.

• 8:22Chuck Nice?

  Sigourney Weaver, so the actual Alien itself, who happens to be my favorite Alien because, I mean, you know, because he's he's got a mouth in a mouth.

• 8:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, right, so if if a mouth with teeth is scary, then you give him two mouths with teeth.

• 8:38Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's gotta be twice as scary. So it opens a mouth, but then there's another mouth and then another mouth, right?

• 8:43Chuck Nice?

  No, also too, the fact that it it bled acid to me was, that's just the coolest thing ever.

• 8:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but it's still like had a mouth with teeth. You realize most life forms on Earth doesn't have teeth?

• 8:55Chuck Nice?

  Don't have teeth, right.

• 8:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, I think teeth, I think, are only in vertebrates. Let me think about that.

• 9:02Chuck Nice?

  You got, you know, you gotta eat something, you gotta chew, you gotta chew.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not only, well worms eat things, but they don't have teeth.

• 9:09Chuck Nice?

  Well, they absorb. They have, no, they have a mouth, but yeah.

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 9:13Chuck Nice?

  A lot of things, whales that don't have teeth, that have baleen instead of teeth.

• 9:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, it filters through, right, right. So I'm just saying, this concept that you're gonna make an Alien and it has teeth.

• 9:24Chuck Nice?

  Because teeth are scary.

• 9:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't have a problem with that, just don't try to convince me that this is something from another planet.

• 9:30Chuck Nice?

  Can you imagine if the Alien tried to gum you to death?

• 9:36Chuck Nice?

  Come on!

• 9:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's funny.

• 9:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If a lion came running after you and it roared and had no teeth in its mouth.

• 9:47Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly.

• 9:51Chuck Nice?

  Right, it's wearing slippers and a robe. Yeah.

• 9:57Chuck Nice?

  So, all right, well, you know what, I gotta say, you make a very cogent argument for the blob that I never considered. And, you know, I, I'm gonna say, here's how you've changed my perspect, my my perspective on this. I always thought that the blob was a lack of imagination.

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 10:20Chuck Nice?

  Yes. I always thought of it as, oh, okay, so you guys just couldn't think of a good monster, so you just made it into a blob. But, but the way you explain it, and I'm wondering if they actually were as thoughtful as you, because if so, then it's brilliant.

• 10:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I'm sure, they'll take it, they'll take it, I'm sure.

• 10:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, if not, they're lucky that you came along.

• 10:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it was preordained, because in fact, that was my birth year. So we had, we, the movie and I are the same age.

• 10:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay, right on, okay, cool.

• 10:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 10:55Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Let's go to Ryan Espinoza from Facebook. And, uh, Ryan, a little all over the place, but I'm gonna give it to you right now. Uh, he says, "If the universe is technically finite, how about the multiverse?" And the reason why I say it all over the place is, first of all, is there a multiverse? Because he has made that a fact, which is not necessarily an evidence. So what are your thoughts, first of all, on a multiverse? Now, secondly, after your thoughts on the multiverse, if this universe is indeed finite, would that multiverse also be finite?

• 11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the question.

• 11:41Chuck Nice?

  Yes. My answer? I, I, I, I altered his question.

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You summarized, you summarized the question.

• 11:47Chuck Nice?

  I summarized.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the answer is, we gotta take a break. When we come back, in the next segment, we'll, we'll get the latest on the multiverse on StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Uh, Cosmic Cauldron Edition.

• 12:02Chuck Nice?

  Cauldron.

• 12:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic Cauldron Edition. We'll be right back.

• 12:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 12:24Chuck Nice?

  Yes, sir.

• 12:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fully locked and loaded, alright.

• 12:27Chuck Nice?

  Fully locked and loaded.

• 12:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We last left off on the multiverse, and who's the questioner again?

• 12:33Chuck Nice?

  And the questioner was Ryan Espinoza.

• 12:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 12:37Chuck Nice?

  He wanted to know if the multiverse was finite, but first of all, we would have to establish, is there a multiverse?

• 12:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, first of all, before we get to the multiverse, we don't know if the universe is infinite or finite, we just don't know.

• 12:50Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I don't know if we can know for sure, any more than a ship at sea looks in every direction, and it sees the horizon, and it doesn't see land in any direction. It's in the middle of its own horizon.

• 13:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It cannot know how big the actual ocean is if it only has access to the water within its own horizon. What it would have to do is keep moving, okay? It'd have to like travel, and it would keep moving and take its horizon with it, and that horizon moves across the water surface, and then eventually they might see land. At that point, they have found the edge of the ocean. The ocean ends, because more ocean doesn't keep coming in. So, if we wanted to explore, if the universe had some edge, then we're not gonna learn it just sitting here in the middle of our own horizon.

• 13:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'd have to start moving to other places within the universe. And you want to do that fast, otherwise it expands faster than you can get there, and you'll just never know, ever, okay? If the universe is expanding faster than you're traveling, if the ocean is growing faster than the ship is sailing...

• 14:06Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, now you're on an oceanic treadmill.

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right, thank you, that's a perfect analogy there. So, we simply don't know. So, anytime any of my, I or my colleagues reference the size of the universe, or the dimensions, it's basically the observable universe, the universe that's within our horizon, we can give you the size of that. And how long we've been at that? Beyond that, we don't know. Now, the multiverse. It turns out, the multiverse is on good theoretical grounds. So, we didn't just pull that one out of some orifice, right? It's, it's quantum physics mixed with general relativity. Two highly successful understandings of the universe.

• 14:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you shotgun marry them in the early universe. Because quantum physics is the physics of the small. And general relativity is the physics of the large. But the early universe, the large was small. So if the large was small, then perhaps the quantum influenced the entire universe. So when you have particles popping in and out of existence or doing weird things. Maybe that particle is an entire universe unto itself. If the universe is the size of a particle. So you can take that kind of reasoning that comes from that direction. And in doing so, you can conclude that maybe we are not alone. That our universe is not alone in a multiverse.

• 15:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Possibly an infinite number of universes to reckon. So, by the way, depending on what level multiverse we're talking about. The universe can just have different configurations of atoms and energy. Or even the same configuration. Now Chuck, you have a goatee in this universe. That means you're the evil Chuck. Right, exactly. There's another universe where there's a clean shaven Chuck. That's the good Chuck.

• 16:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think he's faking it. So, that's one class of multiverse. But there are other classes of multiverse. I first seen, explicated by a friend and colleague Max Tegmark up at MIT. He's written extensively on this. There are other levels of multiverse. Another one where, okay, you're, the matter and energy. Not only that can be different, but the initial conditions are different. So maybe your universe won't expand forever. Maybe it'll re-collapse. Then there's another level where the laws of physics are different. Alright, this is how deep into the rabbit hole you drop before you hatch out another universe. What control do you have over the laws of physics?

• 16:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the traditional multiverse that people think about, we are in the same spacetime, just different pockets that cannot interact with each other, as is different ships at sea would be. They're on the same ocean, but they don't interact with each other because their horizons are separate and distinct. So that's the traditional multiverse that people think about and talk about, and has been represented in science fiction. So, just because we might be finite, or open, or flat, doesn't mean others have to be. Because their matter and energy could be distributed differently. So there you have it.

• 17:29Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Wow! That's fascinating stuff.

• 17:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, people say, "Well, if there's an infinite number of universes, then there's you in another universe, therefore you can in principle live forever." But no, that other me, it's not me. It ain't me. That's not me.

• 17:45Chuck Nice?

  Just as much as you care about him, he cares about you. See, that's the problem.

• 17:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I've said, we've done this experiment before, with copies of each other, and it's called twins. Twins are identical copies, and they walk among us.

• 18:01Chuck Nice?

  Right, they came from the same single cell.

• 18:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you pinch one twin, the other twin doesn't say ouch. So they're not the same person, even if they're molecularly identical. So, that's why I'm not thinking that this other person in another universe is going to grant me eternal life. I don't see that, I don't think it, I don't think it's good evidence or reasoning to argue that way.

• 18:26Chuck Nice?

  Wow, cool. Well, that's... Thanks, Ryan. Appreciate the question, man. Here's Michael Scarn from Facebook. And Michael says, "The faster you travel, the slower time is for you." How much younger do career pilots stay being if they fly and travel uh faster than common people? So if you're constantly spending time at, let's call it supersonic speed, uh is there any negligible time? Just, I mean, time?

• 19:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can always, you can always calculate how much younger they are relative to their twin on Earth. You can always do that. By the way, we've done this experiment. There is a twin astronaut who went into orbit and stayed there for a year or so and left the other one on Earth. And we studied, we, I mean, the NASA medical professionals studied any differences in their DNA, exposure to space radiation. Um, and there is this factor because there's going, in orbit, you're going much, much faster than a fighter pilot would ever go.

• 19:38Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah.

• 19:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're going, in fact, in orbit, you're going, if you were to travel that through the air, it'd be like Mach 30 or 40.

• 19:46Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 19:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And fighter pilots are going Mach 2 at most, Mach 3, right? So if you're really, you know, really booking it. So you can calculate. You just plug that into an equation. And when you do that, and I did this for, it's, it's the, um, the twin brothers that went into space. By the way, this is not a special calculation. Anybody with rudimentary knowledge of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity can calculate this, okay?

• 20:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What I mean by rudimentary is it's like the first equations you learn in relativity 101, whenever you might have.

• 20:22Chuck Nice?

  Okay, yeah. Too bad I didn't, too bad I didn't take that in, in school, relatively 101.

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so, and I, I don't, I might've come up with like a hundredth of a second or something, uh, for being at those high speeds for a year relative to his twin. So we don't measure deaths with that time precision. So for me to say he will live a hundredth second longer than his twin on Earth, uh, that's not a meaningful time difference. So he'd have to be traveling much, much faster than just Mach dozens. He'd have to be traveling a major fraction of the speed of light and do that for a sustained, sustained period of time. Then you come back days, years, decades younger than your twin would have aged.

• 21:11Chuck Nice?

  That'd be cool.

• 21:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so fighter pilots, forget about it.

• 21:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forget about it.

• 21:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, uh, yeah, forget about it. Okay, so, all right, well, there you go, uh, Michael. It's a hundredth of a second, so enjoy that.

• 21:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I forgot the exact number.

• 21:25Chuck Nice?

  Enjoy that time.

• 21:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a fraction.

• 21:26Chuck Nice?

  Enjoy that time.

• 21:30Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is, uh, let's keep it simple here, because I like this question. Some, since we, since we're getting into the questions that we don't normally ever get to.

• 21:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 21:42Chuck Nice?

  I might as well get to the, those really like weird questions. Uh, this is Ralph Succi, and Ralph from Facebook says, "If you were to get a spaced-themed tattoo, what would it be?"

• 21:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh. Ooh. No, I don't have any tattoos.

• 22:00Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 22:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'm just, you know, I'm the generation where the only two kinds of people ever got tattoos, and it was bikers and sailors, right? And that's why Popeye, Popeye had a sailor, had a tattoo.

• 22:11Chuck Nice?

  Right, yes.

• 22:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there any voice you can't do?

• 22:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Popeye had a, like, I think it was an anchor, uh, tattoo on his forearm.

• 22:21Chuck Nice?

  On his forearm, right.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  His bloated forearms. So I thought he had some kind of arm disease or something when I was young.

• 22:27Chuck Nice?

  Uh, yeah, probably elephantitis.

• 22:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, something, right, right? So, um, so I'm just not a tattoo guy, primarily because there's nothing I have that much confidence in that I want to look at eternally until I die. I, I want to be, always be able to have a thought that's different from a thought I had before, and therefore you don't lock in a previous thought, you continue to put in new tap roots. Now, I said this to someone who had a lot of tattoos, "Oh, no, no, no, no. The, my body is just the record of those thoughts."

• 23:04Chuck Nice?

  Right, well, that's, that's, that's one way to, to, to look at it.

• 23:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I said, "I could write down the record, that's another way I can do it."

• 23:12Chuck Nice?

  I have paper for that.

• 23:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so if I were to get one, maybe it would be one of these sort of bullet shaped rockets from the 1950s, you know, with the fins.

• 23:25Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, just kind of, it's, it's classically imagined, I should say, even though that's not how they ended up.

• 23:31Chuck Nice?

  The comic book version of a rocket.

• 23:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Comic book version of a rocket, but from the day, no one would draw that today. And just because it was, it's, it comes from a time when we had very high hopes and expectations that our energy and investments would continue into space and be sustained in ways that we have not lived up. So that would be a, that's how I think about it.

• 23:58Chuck Nice?

  All right. Actually, kind of a cool tattoo. All right, I'll give you that. I thought you were gonna be like, you know, Saturn or something like that.

• 24:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no, no, I can look at pictures of Saturn, which will look better than any tattoo that would ever land on my skin.

• 24:11Chuck Nice?

  This is true. This is true. Yeah, okay. All right, let's go to, okay, keeping with the same theme, the stuff we never ask, okay? This is Migu31 on Instagram. If you can time travel, what's the one place you'll go and the one person you'll see?

• 24:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I assume they mean backward time travel.

• 24:34Chuck Nice?

  Uh, yeah, yeah.

• 24:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so there's a, there's an old joke about that, all right?

• 24:38Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so consider the two facts.

• 24:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If backward time travel were possible, wouldn't we have met such a person by now?

• 24:50Chuck Nice?

  If, wait, if backward time travel were possible, wouldn't we have met such a person by now? What person?

• 24:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A backwards time traveler.

• 24:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, they should have come here to us.

• 25:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It should have shown up.

• 25:02Chuck Nice?

  But, but, but you know, the, the whole, um, the prime directive of time travel.

• 25:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go on.

• 25:11Chuck Nice?

  Is that you're not allowed, yeah, is that you're not allowed to upset the timeline in any way, and you're not allowed to tell anybody you're time traveling.

• 25:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's how they hide among us.

• 25:23Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah.

• 25:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forgot about that. Well, okay, so.

• 25:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of my favorite, was it during the science march in Washington shortly after Trump was elected president? There was a science march, just in praise of science, and one of the placards said, they started a chant, "What do we want? A time machine. When do we want it?" It doesn't matter.

• 25:52Chuck Nice?

  Right. That's, I like that.

• 25:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good, that's good.

• 25:58Chuck Nice?

  It doesn't matter.

• 25:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It doesn't matter. Whatever you get, we'll move back to whatever we want.

• 26:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 26:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if I could move back in time, I would go back and have a conversation with Isaac Newton.

• 26:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so now that we know that.

• 26:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's, and he lived, you know, I have to go back to 16, no, the late 1600s, the year 1700 would work. He'd already discovered his laws of optics, gravity, and calculus, and laws of optics are still getting assembled. He'd discovered them, but he hadn't published it yet, and I'd bring some of our problems to him.

• 26:33Chuck Nice?

  But see, no, now, now, okay, so this is fascinating to me right now, right? I don't know how much time we got, but I gotta jump into this for a second. So here you are, you're back, 1700, talking to Isaac Newton. Now, you know everything that he's already said.

• 26:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, isn't that interesting? Yes.

• 26:54Chuck Nice?

  But he doesn't.

• 26:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 26:56Chuck Nice?

  You also know things that he would find wondrous.

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 27:01Chuck Nice?

  How do you have a conversation? What do you talk about?

• 27:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back.

• 27:05Chuck Nice?

  You might end up screwing everything up.

• 27:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back, details of my conversation with Isaac Newton that I may or may not have already had. Start back.

• 27:28Chuck Nice?

  Hey, we'd like to give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patron, Saawun Patel. Thank you so much for your support, because without you, we couldn't do it. And if you would like your very own Patreon shout out, please go to patreon.com/stargtorkradio and support us.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Of course Chuck is sitting right there.

• 27:57Chuck Nice?

  Yes, sir.

• 27:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're here because you named this one, because this is a potpourri, but you're not you're not happy with potpourri.

• 28:03Chuck Nice?

  No, we went with the Cosmic Cauldron.

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic Cauldron. I was thinking Cosmic Crucible, but that's not right.

• 28:10Chuck Nice?

  I like the crucible.

• 28:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you burn stuff in a crucible.

• 28:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But that's very alchemic.

• 28:15Chuck Nice?

  It is. Yes, exactly. We have the alchemy, the cosmic alchemy. We're putting this stuff in the crucible and burning away the the bad and leaving only what we need.

• 28:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we we left off with the question about who would I meet or what would I witness if I could go back in time?

• 28:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Definitely, I'm going to meet Isaac Newton.

• 28:37Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 28:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Year 1700 is as good as any in his late in his middle years. And but you posed an interesting point.

• 28:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like, there's stuff that I know, because I'm trained in physics, that he's already discovered.

• 28:49Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But then there's stuff I know that

• 28:51Chuck Nice?

  That he has.

• 28:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He hasn't figured out yet.

• 28:55Chuck Nice?

  Right. And he and he will figure it out.

• 28:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so

• 28:58Chuck Nice?

  So now, this is everything. You could screw it all up.

• 29:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just disturb the spacetime continuum.

• 29:04Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it reminds me of my favorite, one of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons, which has been on TV for so long.

• 29:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Simpsons, okay.

• 29:11Chuck Nice?

  It really does. Homer Simpson somehow turns a toaster into a time machine.

• 29:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 29:17Chuck Nice?

  And every time he goes back in time and comes back, there's something different because he keeps disturbing the continuum.

• 29:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, he disrupts what the flow of time. Right, okay.

• 29:26Chuck Nice?

  And one time, all he did was step on a bug. And then he comes back and everybody's a lizard person.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotta find that episode.

• 29:34Chuck Nice?

  It's very funny.

• 29:37Chuck Nice?

  And then he comes back and um, everything looks uh, the same except it's super boring or something like that. And he's like, oh, I gotta get out of here. And he goes and right after he leaves, it starts raining doughnuts.

• 29:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that toaster is actually access to the multiverse.

• 29:58Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly. That's what it is. Yeah.

• 30:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's, here's an interesting uh, issue. It's a time travel issue. And it has to do with what are called gin particles. In this particular example, it would be a gin concept. So a gin particle, it's J I N is the, is how you, it is something that was never created nor destroyed. It just exists.

• 30:22Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so let's, in the more classic, movie classic example, let's go to Back to the Future. Okay? And Back to the Future, Marty at the school prom gets a hold of the guitar. And then he starts imitating Chuck Berry.

• 30:41Chuck Nice?

  Chuck Berry.

• 30:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but Marion Berry is the bandleader. Chuck Berry's brother. Marion Berry hears this tune and say, Chuck, here's the tune you've always been trying to figure out what would work. And he puts the phone up to the thing and he hears.

• 30:59Chuck Nice?

  And it's Johnny B. Good.

• 31:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's Jo, okay? And so now, if we follow that through, what we are led to believe is that Chuck Berry got his most brilliant song from a whiteboard.

• 31:13Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 31:14Chuck Nice?

  From Michael J. Fox.

• 31:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, but what happens is, so if he does actually get it from Michael J. Fox, and he then influences Michael J. Fox in the future, then the song only exists in this loop.

• 31:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was never written by anybody. Right. Do you see what I'm saying? No, yeah, that's the only way it could exist. Is that it was never written by anybody. It was never written. Because Marty plays it because he heard it sung by Chuck Berry. Chuck Berry hears it for the first time through his brothers putting the phone out on the thing. And then Chuck Berry includes it in his, in his performance as well as the, the, the. The duck walk. The duck walk, right. Yeah. So, so in the case with Isaac Newton, it would be interesting if Newton is on some calculation and he's struggling, I say, hey, have you thought about, have you considered? Right, hey Isaac, Isaac, just carry the two. Carry the two. Just carry the two, Isaac. You forgot to carry the two.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You forgot to carry the two. And so there I am helping Isaac and then of course he's remembered for doing it. But I only know it because I read that he had done it. Right. And so again, that would be something that's closed in a time, in a, in a time loop, basically. That never had a beginning or an end. So it's just an interesting little fact about that. I love that, I love that, the gin particle, nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In that, in that case, it's a gin, a gin, it's a gin concept. So for example, in the movie, the lesser seen movie, but it's a slow romantic, uh, uh, not a rom com, but what do you call them? It was just a romantic movie. A romantic movie, okay. It was a romantic movie, it was called Somewhere in Time. A love story, Somewhere in Time. It's a love story, it was a love story. And I think I told this at some other occasion.

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you told me, I know. I, I think where an old woman comes up to the main character who happens to be Christopher Reeve, who played Superman. Oh no, we didn't, we never talked about this. We never talked about this. And she comes up to him, he's a professor and she gives him a locket and says, come to me. Oh no, we never talked about this. And he finds out that she comes to, she's back in time, like the 1920s or 1930s. And he does research on this and finds out that this woman exists at, at another time. And he goes to his physics professor and colleague and says, anyway, go back in time. So we'll try this and do this. He goes back in time. And he brings this locket with him. And he does meet her and they do fall in love. And as a gift of his love for her, he gives her this locket.

• 33:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he didn't love her that much, that was her locket.

• 33:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He did, he spent a dime on it.

• 33:58Chuck Nice?

  Yes, he did spend a dime. Gave her her own locket.

• 34:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But whose locket is it?

• 34:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that, in that case, that's a gin particle where the locket was never created or destroyed. And it doesn't exist before it appeared, and it doesn't exist after. It only exists within that time, it's locked in time, between when she gave it to him and when he gave it to her.

• 34:23Chuck Nice?

  Interesting, I love it.

• 34:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that, you have to just watch out for that.

• 34:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so now what do you, what do you ask him? What do you say to Newton?

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I say, please help.

• 34:34Chuck Nice?

  You just ask him everything.

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the problem is, there's a lot I take, we take for granted, not just I, but any of us, living in the year twenty, in the 21st century, we just take for granted that we understand energy, which was a poorly formulated concept in his day.

• 34:53Chuck Nice?

  So he wouldn't even know what you're talking about.

• 34:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, how'd you get it? I took a car. What's a car? Well, it's a horse-drawn carriage without the horse. Well, how did it move? Through chemical energy. Well, what's chemical energy? And what's, well, he'd be a fast study, but I have to invest a lot of time catching him up on things that we, that we just live with.

• 35:09Chuck Nice?

  I don't like this, I don't like this. Here's what I say, because he's your hero.

• 35:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 35:14Chuck Nice?

  Right? He's the guy that you love.

• 35:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 35:16Chuck Nice?

  He's got a beautiful mind.

• 35:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 35:19Chuck Nice?

  And after you talk to him for an hour, you're gonna be like, listen, dumbass.

• 35:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I told you that already.

• 35:27Chuck Nice?

  Newton, Newton, you dumbass. Right, yeah, nah, I don't like this, I don't like it.

• 35:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that could upset my hero, the hero worship.

• 35:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that, that's what I would do.

• 35:39Chuck Nice?

  All right, there you go, here we go. Let's go to Austin Media, Austin C. Media from Instagram says, hello, my name is Austin, and I live in upstate New York, I work in the aerospace industry, and I build giant hyper-rockets. Um, my question is based on rocket telemetry. As the Earth rotates due east, as we launch rockets due east, uh, and use the Earth's gravity to help it get into orbit, does the amount of gravity assist come from just the overall mass of the Earth and its speed of rotation, or does the mass of our iron core?

• 36:18Chuck Nice?

  Help with the amount of speed of the rotation in relation to the amount of gravity we feel. So.

• 36:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, it's got nothing to do with any of that.

• 36:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay, there you go.

• 36:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nothing to do with any of that.

• 36:29Chuck Nice?

  All right. Austin, we're gonna treat you like Isaac Newton right now.

• 36:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that's a rocket scientist overthinking the problem.

• 36:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's possible to think too much. Just to rein that in a little bit.

• 36:44Chuck Nice?

  Right, let that big brain calm down.

• 36:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just calm, just, just, just take a cleansing breath.

• 36:50Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 36:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, clearly he knows, and others might not know, that it is our preference, our, anyone who's launching rockets, to launch east. Okay, because Earth is rotating.

• 37:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  West to east. So you get the.

• 37:05Chuck Nice?

  You're getting a little assist.

• 37:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're getting a little, it's not a gravity assist.

• 37:09Chuck Nice?

  No, it's not a gravity, it's just getting a little.

• 37:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a push, a little.

• 37:12Chuck Nice?

  Right, push.

• 37:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Speed assist.

• 37:14Chuck Nice?

  A tailwind.

• 37:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A tailwind.

• 37:16Chuck Nice?

  Getting a little tailwind for the rocket.

• 37:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, and, and as such, if you want the maximum extra boost, you want to do it where Earth is actually moving the fastest. Obviously, Earth is spinning as one solid object.

• 37:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But at the equator, it does one full turn in the same time it does closer to the pole, but it's got a bigger distance to travel.

• 37:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's therefore moving faster. You look at the equator, it's going about a thousand miles an hour.

• 37:43Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 37:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're here in New York City, we're moving about 800 miles an hour due east. So generally, you want to launch as far south as possible. They have some mobile launch platforms that go pick up your rocket, go to the equator, and then launch it from the equator. It's kind of cool.

• 37:58Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 37:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a business, it's a business model. So anyhow, if you do that, then you don't need the fuel necessary to have gapped that extra uh, speed boost that you got. So it's a matter of, if you save fuel, now I have more payload capacity for the thing you're paying me to put into orbit. So everything is better, okay? If you can take less fuel. And it's not that much less fuel, but it's enough. You can make incremental differences in your profit margins. That's all. It's got nothing to do with the core. It's got nothing to do with how strong Earth's gravity is. That's extra speed is just this whiplash.

• 38:38Chuck Nice?

  Just the rotation itself.

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all it is. And the speed with which you have to attain so that you can maintain orbit, that depends on Earth's gravity. And for Earth, it's about five miles per second. If you go a little less than five miles per second, you'll go up and then crash back down. Right? So you want to go fast enough so that your eastern motion, you want to go so fast that as you fall back to Earth, Earth curves away from you.

• 39:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if every five feet, let's say, you fall towards Earth, you move so far downstream that Earth's curved shape has curved five feet away from you. So you're constantly falling towards Earth at a speed where Earth is exactly curving away from you. That is the orbital speed. And for Earth, it's 18,000 miles an hour. Comes out to about five miles per second.

• 39:31Chuck Nice?

  Wow, there you go. That's so cool. There you have it. Nice. Ah, skate philosophy. I've been in the house with my kids for a long time. That sounds really good, man.

• 39:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sending them or you?

• 39:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can make it a game. Who wants to go into orbit today?

• 39:48Chuck Nice?

  It's a dealer's choice as far as I'm concerned. All right. We are running out of time. So let's get to KOB from YouTube.

• 39:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How can we be running out of time? I'm talking too much. Damn.

• 40:01Chuck Nice?

  No, it's okay. It's okay. Does light ever cease to move? Can a photon be in a state of momentumless relax? Or does it continue to move indefinitely? And so I guess he has to be talking about in the vacuum of space because we know that photons cease to move. You know, when they hit your eye.

• 40:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, then they're not photons anymore.

• 40:23Chuck Nice?

  Right, they're not photons.

• 40:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They've become pockets of energy, electrochemical energy in your head. All right. So photons.

• 40:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can slow them down.

• 40:33Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 40:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anytime you put them in a transparent denser medium, they go slower. So they go slower going from vacuum to air.

• 40:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It goes slower going from air to water. It goes slower going from water to glass. It goes slower going from glass to diamond.

• 40:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, diamond, uh, uh, light travels forty percent of its peak speed in a vacuum.

• 40:58Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 40:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now, there have been some experiments where they created a medium where the light is really, really slow. Like you could practically watch it move from one point to the other. Right, so what they're doing is they're boosting what's called the index of refraction. The higher the index of refraction, the greater the light will bend as it crosses into that medium, and the slower it will move. Okay, that's why diamonds are so useful as rings, because you, you put facets in it, and the light goes in, it bends so severely that you can have, uh, you can trap light enough so that it comes out a completely different place from where the white, light went in. So it gives the diamond, uh, the appearance of having a certain radiance.

• 41:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? If it only gave light in the direction you sent it in, then it's, it's because I have the light. All right? But if light comes here and it goes out there and you see it from that direction, it gives you the impression of something highly radiant. So diamonds have value for that reason, uh, among others, but, uh, for, as jewelry, they have value for that reason. So, all I'm saying is, uh, in principle, you can have the index of refraction so high that you can like watch the lights sort of move, but I don't know that you can just stop it. I don't think so.

• 42:12Chuck Nice?

  That, and so no frozen light?

• 42:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't think so.

• 42:16Chuck Nice?

  Damn, because that would be so cool, frozen light.

• 42:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't think so.

• 42:21Chuck Nice?

  I don't mind, I don't mind the molasses light either.

• 42:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That, that's kind of cool, too.

• 42:25Chuck Nice?

  That's kind of cool, too.

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, there's a laboratory Caltech that specializes in high-speed photography, and they have some camera that tastes like a trillion frames per second. And then they put light through a medium that slowed it down, and then they, you can take all these frames per second, you can actually watch the light move through the medium.

• 42:40Chuck Nice?

  Amazing.

• 42:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. But I don't think you can stop it, that, that, in fact, let me put, let me say it another way. I don't want to be around if you succeed, because I don't want to.

• 42:50Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's funny.

• 42:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Time for one quick question. What do you got?

• 42:55Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here you go. This will be very quick. Daniel220 from YouTube says, "If aliens are real, what technology can we suggest that they have?" In other words, what technology do you think they would have? Example, like a Dyson sphere. Is there anything that we... First of all, if they can get to us...

• 43:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you. That's... The jig's up.

• 43:20Chuck Nice?

  Right. I mean, if they can get here, because I mean, it's not like we can't see what's around us. We know how close stuff is, right?

• 43:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's the thing. Here's the thing. I wield things in my back pocket that would have me burned at the stake 20 years ago for sorcery in our own in our own civilization, okay? If you had the smartphone in like the 1990s, and said, "Oh, wait a minute. Let me do these 19 other things." People would look at you, "What? What is that?"

• 43:57Chuck Nice?

  Where's that?

• 43:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's just us in our own technology in our own time. Now, you want an alien who got here from another planet, from another galaxy? And you want to say, "Do they have a Dyson sphere?" If all you come up with is stuff we've thought of that they might have, that's not creative enough.

• 44:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, because everything they do is going to be more interesting than anything we can even...

• 44:18Chuck Nice?

  That we can ever think of.

• 44:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we're doing stuff today that's more interesting than we even invented.

• 44:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You look at the movie 2001. Back then, computers were getting more powerful. So that... Because that was 1968, imagining the year 2001. So, computers were just coming around. You see computers, and they get big and powerful. So in 2001, they'll be really big.

• 44:44Chuck Nice?

  Right, they'll be huge.

• 44:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They'll be huge.

• 44:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And no one is imagining that you'd be carrying computers with you.

• 44:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're not carrying a computer, but they're trying to imagine the future. All I'm saying is... We, we can barely imagine our own future with the technology sitting in front of us, much less predict what kind of technology the aliens are gonna have. But if I had to go there, I'd say, "Yeah, they got warp drives and they can do what the hell they want."

• 45:11Chuck Nice?

  There you go. That's it.

• 45:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that's what we want. They have warp drives and we want that.

• 45:15Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. It's funny you say that to a joke where I say if you had an iPhone and you went back in time just 300 years, they would have burned you at the stake for witchcraft, unless you were a man, in which case they would have worshipped you as a god.

• 45:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's exactly. Or if you go back to slavery times, wait, black folks aren't supposed to be that smart.

• 45:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kill that one. That's a bad example.

• 45:38Chuck Nice?

  Oh, absolutely. Are you kidding me? Oh, damn it.

• 45:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So anyhow, yeah, we gotta, we gotta go check.

• 45:47Chuck Nice?

  All right. Okay.

• 45:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. That's another Cosmic Queries. These are fun. Thanks for being a part of it.

• 45:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, these are so much fun. Thank you.

• 45:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, definitely. All right. This is Cosmic Queries. StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice. We're all here for you, serving your cosmic curiosities. Keep looking up.