Cosmic Queries – Cosmic Grab Bag

Do black holes evaporate? What is dark gravity? Could Superman really rotate the Earth in the opposite direction? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice answer fan-submitted questions on a variety of cosmic topics.

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. It's Cosmic Queries Edition. Chuck Nice.

• 0:19Chuck Nice?

  What's happening?

• 0:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're always there for me.

• 0:21Chuck Nice?

  That's right, my friend. That's right.

• 0:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm glad you like learning, because otherwise, this would be a really crappy job for you.

• 0:28Chuck Nice?

  Well, I'm glad I like learning too. For reasons other than this, even this. Yes, it's always great.

• 0:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your mama would be proud, the schoolteacher that she was.

• 0:40Chuck Nice?

  That's right, that's right, yeah, exactly. Maybe that's where I'd get it from.

• 0:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 0:45Chuck Nice?

  It's very cool.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So with Cosmic Queries, and occasionally, you know, the bag of Cosmic Queries collects, and sometimes they don't fit into categories. So we've made a category called No Category.

• 1:00Chuck Nice?

  I like that. Cosmic Queries: No Category.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No Cat, Beyond Description.

• 1:05Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, alright, we'll see, we'll see what we got.

• 1:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 1:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just pull them out.

• 1:10Chuck Nice?

  Alright, here we go, let's, uh, let's get to, uh...

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got some Patreon members up front?

• 1:14Chuck Nice?

  Always up front with the Patreon. Thank you for your money, guys. We appreciate you. That's Patreon patrons. Victor Sanchez says, alright, knowing that dark gravity is out there, but we don't know how it got there. Could it be the dark gravity? Is the residual energy from a dead black hole, as Stephen Hawking had a theory that black holes do eventually die after a very, very, very long time? And that's the end of that question, but they've...

• 1:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's an interesting question. Who asked that?

• 1:51Chuck Nice?

  That was Victor Sanchez.

• 1:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, very good, very interesting question. I think we've had gun questions from him before.

• 1:57Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we have. Yeah, Victor's a regular.

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he's a regular.

• 2:01Chuck Nice?

  And clearly, he's literate, knowing that black holes evaporate.

• 2:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and he did to name-drop Stephen Hawking.

• 2:09Chuck Nice?

  Yes, and the Hawking radiation, and the whole deal. You know?

• 2:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me just remind people, or alert you if you've never known, that black holes...

• 2:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Evaporate. All evidence, all theoretical evidence points to the fact that they evaporate. And the way this happens is the energy of their gravitational field is so high that it spontaneously creates matter out of it. That is unbelievable. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Energy and matter on opposite sides of that equation equals mc squared. So, so matter can become energy, energy can become matter. That's how that works. And that's the recipe, if you're gonna make that happen in your kitchen. So, at the, just outside the event horizon of a black hole, what you can make is spontaneously fabricate particles from that energy field.

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when you make particles out of energy, you make a particle and an antiparticle. Right. That's the rule. That's just how that, that's how the universe rolls. And they fly in opposite directions. Okay? So, one falls back into the black hole, the other escapes. It turns out that when the black hole loses energy from its gravitational field, it's the same thing as it having lost mass. Same thing. Wow. So, in fact, the black hole weighs a little less for this. And this just keeps going. It's very slow, and it's not very efficient. Take a long time, but eventually, the entire black hole dissipates back into space. And it only takes three trillion years.

• 3:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, a little longer. Really? Wow. Well, the black holes in the centers of galaxies. Right, the super massive. It'll take about a googol years. Oh, my god. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very long time. That's a long, long, okay. Yeah, so, so there's, in fact, there's a long tradition of those interested in my field to look in the very distant future of the universe. So, uh, there's a colleague of mine who wrote a book, The Five Ages of the Universe.

• 4:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 4:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, uh, his last name is Adams, you can look it up. And he, uh, in it, there's the age of like stars, okay?

• 4:25Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's fine. Alright, well, is, what is another age? Well, when all the stars are dead and all you have are black holes, then the only energy coming out is the black hole evaporation.

• 4:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you have this era of just black holes evaporating, alright? But that's a way long in the future and that takes a really long time, but nothing else is happening.

• 4:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you get to label it by that according to what the primary thing that's going on over that time. So, uh, relative to that period in the universe, the age of stars is just a blip. So, so anyhow, so the question was, could the dark energy, the dark gravity be sort of the spirit energy left over in the field of a black hole?

• 5:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think that's the question. And the answer is no.

• 5:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 5:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back to you.

• 5:10Chuck Nice?

  And there you go, Stephen. Thanks for playing. The answer is no.

• 5:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, no, here's the thing. It's the, if you run the history of the universe back, whatever it is that is the dark gravity, the dark, the, the dark matter, whatever that is, it cannot physically interact with ordinary matter.

• 5:34Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 5:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if it did, it would completely change what the universe looked like. So it has to have gravity and not interact with us. And a black hole-

• 5:44Chuck Nice?

  Does, does both.

• 5:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does interact with, uh, sorry, black hole has gravity.

• 5:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the particles that evaporate out of it, we interact with those particles.

• 5:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those are like, it's regular matter that comes out. So...

• 5:55Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so let me ask, let me ask a follow-up then.

• 5:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't, you can't appeal to black holes for that, no.

• 5:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. Sorry. Um, you, you, actually, you can't appeal to a black hole for anything. They are so unreasonable!

• 6:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can try.

• 6:08Chuck Nice?

  They're so unreasonable! It's just like, bro, bro, why do you gotta take everything? You're such a taker. Such a taker.

• 6:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Reason with, you know, I should, I should tweet that. Never try to reason with a black hole.

• 6:18Chuck Nice?

  Cannot reason with a black hole. Alright, so, um, basically, this is just out of curiosity, based on what you just said. So now, um, since we cannot interact with it and it does have gravity, so this is this force. Is it possible that this force-

• 6:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just, I wanna be clear.

• 6:35Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 6:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't interact- With this stuff gravitationally.

• 6:40Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly, that's right.

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But this whole other level of interaction that I'm talking about is why we even exist. It's the fact that the material can come together and make atoms and molecules. And that's why you're this physical thing that I can touch. And you're a physical entity that is matter-collected, doing other interesting things as a collected unit. Dark, what we call dark matter or dark gravity, has no such properties.

• 7:07Chuck Nice?

  Right, because we don't, right, and that's why we don't know what it is, because it doesn't have those.

• 7:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 7:12Chuck Nice?

  We don't, we don't know what it is because it doesn't have those.

• 7:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It doesn't interact with light, or the energy, or electromagnetic forces.

• 7:18Chuck Nice?

  Right, so now, is it possible then, that it's kind of a platform that predates all of us? And when I say all of us, I mean the universe.

• 7:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, well, it was there from the beginning.

• 7:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I don't know that it predates us, but it codates us. And it is, and we, here's a way to say it. Its presence shaped what matter did afterwards. So, in that sense, it preorganized us.

• 7:48Chuck Nice?

  Preorganized, wow, wow.

• 7:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, here it is, so it'd be like looking at an ocean at night, like late twilight. And you see sort of the white caps on the, on this, like, maybe it's a gently moonlit night. If all you could see are the white caps, you say, oh, the ocean is just these little white caps. And then the sunrise is like, there's a whole ocean there, okay? And you realize the white caps are just these little, it's evidence of there being water, but it is a small fraction of the total water that's there. So, we spent our whole lives finding galaxies in the universe, thinking that that was the material representation of matter in the cosmos. Turns out, no. These are, the galaxies are found where dark matter has collected them.

• 8:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is. So, in some galaxy clusters, there's a hundred, a thousand times more dark matter than regular matter.

• 8:46Chuck Nice?

  Right. Wow.

• 8:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so we, we are the froth on the waves.

• 8:52Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man. God, can't we just, can't we be, can't we be the foam in a cappuccino? I don't wanna be, I don't wanna be the froth of the wave.

• 9:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Foam on a cappuccino, that's good. That's better, it'd be better if it'd be the, if an Italian had come up with it, then maybe that's what they would have said.

• 9:07Chuck Nice?

  That's what it might have been. Cool.

• 9:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Totally.

• 9:09Chuck Nice?

  Alright. Hey, Victor, great question, my friend.

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was this a song from, was it the 1970s? All we are is dust in the wind.

• 9:15Chuck Nice?

  All we are is dust in the wind.

• 9:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All we are is froth on the, in the waves.

• 9:20Chuck Nice?

  I'm so glad they didn't write the song that way.

• 9:25Chuck Nice?

  All we are is froth in the waves. Alright, here we go.

• 9:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All we are are, are whitecaps. No, no, that was, so it was, all we are are whitecaps in the open ocean.

• 9:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay. I, I like dust in the wind a little better.

• 9:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 9:39Chuck Nice?

  I'm gonna go with dust in the wind.

• 9:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, cause they had a beautiful tune with it, but go on.

• 9:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's what you need. You need, actually, that's what you need now is a melody. Uh, yeah.

• 9:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so go on.

• 9:47Chuck Nice?

  Alright, let's go to Glenn from Patreon. Glenn, Glenn, Glenn's like Cher. Glenn does not need a last name.

• 9:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just Glenn.

• 9:54Chuck Nice?

  It's just Glenn. Alright, Glenn.

• 9:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The problem is, there's a Zilean Glenns out there. Probably only one Cher.

• 10:02Chuck Nice?

  Right. I feel bad if your name is Cher and you gotta have a last name.

• 10:07Chuck Nice?

  Alright, so, uh, Glenn says, "How can we tell when an area is obscured by a black hole, or whether it's just an empty area of space, how much of our view of the night sky is obscured by objects such as a black hole?" Eh, so?

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, so, so, uh, space is mostly empty.

• 10:34Chuck Nice?

  Well.

• 10:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? I think we said on a previous broadcast, I gave the example of how empty space is.

• 10:40Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God, and it's, it's, it's, it's mind-boggling.

• 10:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ready?

• 10:44Chuck Nice?

  Mind-boggling.

• 10:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You look at a sentence printed on a page, and then the sentence ends with a period.

• 10:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think in Europe, they call it a full stop, but there it is, a period. If the sun were the size of that period, and everything shrunk to match that up, the next closest star is four miles away.

• 11:03Chuck Nice?

  That's unbelievable.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 11:05Chuck Nice?

  I mean, seriously, every time I think about that, great. So, I mean, you gotta imagine that scale and the distance of four miles, because we all know what four miles is. And we all know, and we all know what a single-

• 11:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's kilometers, right, and we all know how small a period is. Right, so, so what I'm saying is, as you look out into space, your sightline is not accidentally bumping into anything. Okay, it looks like the night is filled with stars, well, because you're, you're finding the stars to look at. If you just close your eyes and like through a dart, it would just go here to the end of the universe. Yeah, hit nothing.

• 11:39Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 11:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All air, all space.

• 11:41Chuck Nice?

  All space.

• 11:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, no, the space is not crowded so that things are blocking your view. But, you know, sorry, you know what does block your views? Huge gas clouds, they block your view.

• 11:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they're huge. They're manifold times larger than the solar system. Whole star clusters are formed out of such gas clouds. So, you know they're huge. And radio waves pass right through them, which is why radio waves is the band of choice for aliens. If you want to talk to aliens or you want to hear what message they have. They probably know, if they're smart, that radio waves pass through all the obscuring dust and gas in the galaxy. So, you would use that. If you used visible light, then it would just get absorbed or scattered and you wouldn't be able to communicate. So, radio waves would go through, but ordinary light, visible light, no. So, gas clouds can block your view.

• 12:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, the Milky Way at night, there are these dark lanes and people thought, oh, that's where they're, a hundred years ago, oh, that's where there are no stars. Maybe we see through the galaxy to the rest of the universe. No, they're dark clouds that are actually obscuring your view from what's behind it. And that took a long while to figure out.

• 12:56Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 12:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And somebody could consider this, in Australia, the native aborigines, and like everybody else in the world, they had cosmic lore about what they see in the night sky. And to them, they identified not the brighter areas of the Milky Way.

• 13:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the dark areas.

• 13:17Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They gave meaning to the absence of light.

• 13:22Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 13:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rather than to the presence of light. And in fact, one of the largest dark lanes is called the Great Emu in the sky. Very, very local fauna.

• 13:32Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you look at it, it's a, yeah, it's, it's got a tall neck and it's got a beak area. So it's an emu. So just, it's an interesting distinction between a Western concept that something has to give you light for it to exist as a thing. And in Australia, where the absence of light was the thing itself, so.

• 13:52Chuck Nice?

  So they're working in negative spaces.

• 13:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, as the, as the designers would say.

• 13:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 13:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so now, how would you know a black hole is there? Because it's completely distorting all of the imagery surrounding it.

• 14:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it, the fabric of space and time doesn't send light in straight lines. It curves and you will see this. So if you, if you travel through space and all of a sudden, your images start taking these circular distorted patterns back to hell.

• 14:20Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly. That's a detour sign.

• 14:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a detour.

• 14:25Chuck Nice?

  That's the detour sign of the cosmos.

• 14:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There, there you go. Get the hell out of, out of, out of bad. So yes, you would know black holes if they were in front of you.

• 14:33Chuck Nice?

  Cool. All right. So let's move on. Let's take one more Patreon patron.

• 14:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:39Chuck Nice?

  This is Travis Mansfield and he says, do you think SpaceX is just a front to a larger Armageddon conspiracy? Like maybe we already know that a huge asteroid is going to hit Earth and, and, and this is our only hope.

• 14:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not authorized to comment on that.

• 14:59Chuck Nice?

  Uh-huh.

• 15:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next, next.

• 15:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck, we've got to wrap it up. But that's a really good question. And see what I did there? I'm making a weight.

• 15:10Chuck Nice?

  Little teaser, little teaser.

• 15:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Through the commercial, yeah, yeah, yeah. So when we come back, more Cosmic Queries Galactic Gumbo Edition. And we're going to talk about, we're going to touch on conspiracy theories when we return.

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, Cosmic Queries Galactic Gumbo Edition, which is a category unto itself that Chuck invented. Galactic Gumbo.

• 15:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you're hung, guaranteed.

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Guaranteed.

• 15:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, how?

• 15:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Questions are completely random, out of this bag. So, we left off with a cliffhanger on conspiracy theories. So Chuck, read the whole question again, just so we're on the same page here. Go.

• 16:04Chuck Nice?

  Okay, cool. Travis Mansfield, "Do you think space death is just a front for a larger Armageddon conspiracy? Like, maybe we already know that a huge asteroid will hit the Earth, and Martian colonization is our only hope." Boom.

• 16:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so here's the thing. Here's the thing. As you know, we upload billions of photos and videos to the internet every day. Let's just start there.

• 16:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Second, a conspiracy requires many people participating in a lie on a level where the temptation to let others know is somehow removed from people's behavior. And so, I... And it would require the government to successfully pull this off. And anyone who's worked for the government knows how inept they are at keeping secrets.

• 17:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 17:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or doing anything organized at such a level.

• 17:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I think the urge to want to believe that conspiracies are driving everything that's happening around us needs a deeper psychological explanation that we don't currently have.

• 17:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 17:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, ask the psychologist why you want to believe there's a conspiracy. That's really what we should be doing here. Not asking, "I think there's a conspiracy, convince me that it isn't."

• 17:37Chuck Nice?

  "Why do I think there's a conspiracy?" is the real question.

• 17:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the question.

• 17:40Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 17:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 17:42Chuck Nice?

  So Travis, there's your answer. We're gonna send you the number of several therapists.

• 17:51Chuck Nice?

  And have at it, my friend, have at it. Uh, there's, there's, there's a couple, there's a couple teledot.

• 17:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Specializing.

• 18:00Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, there's a couple that you could do through tele, like, you know, Zoom and it's, it's, listen, it's a good thing, my friend, it's a good thing.

• 18:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So at what, at some point, you have to ask, why don't you completely flesh out the conspiracy? Just put in all the details you need.

• 18:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, it would mean the government has discovered an asteroid that's gonna destroy us all.

• 18:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're keeping that a secret and everyone else in the world who has a telescope, who can detect it somehow is missing it, but only the government caught it.

• 18:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then the government is putting in a, is secretly negotiating with SpaceX to build spaceships that we can then, an ark, basically, to collect maybe two by two of only the chosen ones in the world, so that they can go to Mars as we terraform Mars, because we've been practicing this with the, the air, the contrails of airplanes for the last several decades. So all of this comes together, now just think that through, and how many people that involves? And how many people would have to keep that a secret? Okay? Just put all that together and then ask yourself.

• 19:04Chuck Nice?

  Is that viable and feasible?

• 19:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't it easier that just?

• 19:09Chuck Nice?

  Tell us. Isn't it easier to just tell us we're gonna die?

• 19:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no, no, isn't it just a simpler explanation to say, uh, no, the government doesn't have this kind of secret information about the night sky, because anyone else could then have access to it, and there's no way they can keep that a secret.

• 19:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On top of that, we just have someone as a modern day Thomas Edison, and he's building and inventing stuff.

• 19:30Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 19:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's great, and we all look forward to whatever the next, and he's very transparent about his successes and his failures, whole YouTube compilations of his rockets that blew up on the launch pad.

• 19:40Chuck Nice?

  That's so true.

• 19:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  None of this sounds like a secret to me, that's all.

• 19:44Chuck Nice?

  Okay, you know what, that's, um, that was an extremely salient. And thoughtful answer to give to this question. Because, you know, see, and this is why you're an educator. Because me, I'm just like, man, shut up.

• 20:01Chuck Nice?

  But, and I don't mean that to you, Travis. I'm not talking to you.

• 20:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It requires a little more patience.

• 20:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm not as patient is what I'm saying. You know, like, come on, and let's, you know, but, but no, that, that, I, I think that's, I think it's good that people heard you kind of walk through. Because what you just said is applicable to any conspiracy that you might subscribe to.

• 20:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, and my favorite version of these is, I think I saw it in a meme, but I can, I'll just retell it. So Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11 fame agreed to fake the moon landing. But they really wanted to be as authentic looking as possible and urged NASA to do it on location. And NASA agreed.

• 20:49Chuck Nice?

  Oh my God, that's insane. I love it.

• 20:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so there you have it. All right, Chuck, next question.

• 20:59Chuck Nice?

  All righty, let's go to Beltfed Joe.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beltfed?

• 21:07Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 21:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 21:09Chuck Nice?

  Beltfed Joe from Tucson, Arizona.

• 21:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't even know what that means.

• 21:13Chuck Nice?

  I don't either, but apparently Beltfed does.

• 21:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or his mama did.

• 21:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, somebody, somebody knows the deal. And, uh.

• 21:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not us.

• 21:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and he says, uh, that Astro, uh, Arizona is the astronomy mecca. Now, I thought it was New Mexico, Neil, but he says it's Arizona. I, you know, is there an astronomy mecca?

• 21:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, yeah, I would say Hawaii, but, um, yeah, yeah. Cause they have a 14,000 foot mountain, uh, the big island where you're above clouds and we have telescopes there.

• 21:49Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, yeah, so if there were one.

• 21:52Chuck Nice?

  Now, is that, is that?

• 21:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I had to pick a state where you would say the most significant astronomy happens, Arizona would be maybe a close second.

• 21:59Chuck Nice?

  Close second?

• 22:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's Arizona's claim to fame.

• 22:02Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 22:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ready? Okay, in Tucson, Arizona.

• 22:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The nearest town to, nearest, uh, important city to an observatory called Kit Peak.

• 22:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 22:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have a relationship, Kid Peak Observatory and Tucson. Kid Peak said, "In order for us to continue to do our science, you can't keep making your city brighter at night because you'll interfere with our observations. So let's work together to reduce the nighttime illumination."

• 22:32Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 22:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, because it creates a sky glow and interferes with your ability to see the stars at night. So they got together and all the streetlights have these sort of caps on them so that the light only points downward. And the, and by the way, if it only points downward, you don't need half the wattage you previously had to illuminate the sky. Think about it, if you're flying over a city in an airplane and you see a streetlight, somebody is paying to have that streetlight send photons to you in the sky in your seat in the airplane. What the hell good is that? So, this is very sensible recommendations, which saves the town money, saves the astronomical dark skies. And this set of ordinances, the dark sky ordinances,

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  have been copied by many other cities around the world.

• 23:18Chuck Nice?

  Well, there you go, belt-fed Joe. You, uh, you may not be the astronomical Mecca, but you certainly are super important. That's cool.

• 23:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. And New Mexico also has a quite a fun suite of telescopes.

• 23:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So as, and so both together, I would say.

• 23:36Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 23:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And why? Because they, there's a lot of desert climate within them and you don't put a telescope in a rainforest, right? You put it where there's no clouds, or a minimum of clouds. And New Mexico, Arizona, Southern California satisfy that.

• 23:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay. All right. So this is what he says. Are the sizes, masses of planets proportional to the distance between planets? Is the composition a factor? Are there any exceptions?

• 24:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a great question because you might ask, if I have a lot of space between me and my nearing, neighboring planets, did I eat everything?

• 24:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right? And would I then be the biggest planet?

• 24:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, there's, you could think about it that way. Uh, there's some truth to that, perhaps? Um... Jupiter is big, it's the biggest planet of them all.

• 24:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But Saturn has more room between it and Jupiter and it and Uranus than Jupiter has between it and Mars and it and Saturn.

• 24:33Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 24:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not a direct one-to-one relationship.

• 24:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, because Saturn is twice as far away from the sun as Jupiter is. And then Uranus is twice again as far away, right? So there's way more space out there, but it doesn't always mean this. And by the way, when you look at early modelings of the formations of solar systems, stuff, it's a shooting gallery. It's mean back then. Stuff is slamming in.

• 25:02Chuck Nice?

  It's a pinball machine.

• 25:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a pinball machine.

• 25:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 25:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where the balls stick together. Whether they stick together or blow each other apart, right? One or the other.

• 25:12Chuck Nice?

  Worst pinball game ever.

• 25:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so when we do this, it's a, um, when you run those simulations, you find many objects that might have hung around and collected more material, competing with the material you want to collect. It gets ejected from the solar system entirely or sent down to plunge into the sun and vaporize. So it doesn't precisely work that way. But I say by and large, if you have a bigger sort of gravitational zone, we would expect you to be bigger.

• 25:45Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 25:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's not a perfect, it's not a perfect relationship.

• 25:48Chuck Nice?

  All right, cool. Nice question. And by the way, he ended by saying Tyson and I, 2020.

• 25:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 25:55Chuck Nice?

  Might be a little late for you to get on the ballot, but still, there's the sentiment, okay? There you go. All right, let's go to Michael G. Thompson from Facebook. And Michael says, "If I was on an alien planet, many light years away, but I had a telescope, a powerful telescope, powerful enough to see people on distant planets, what would be possible based on how far away my alien planet is? Would it be possible for me to see actual Roman battles taking place if I were looking here at Earth?"

• 26:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. If you are at the distance in light years from Earth that corresponded to the time in the past that those Roman battles took place. So when, when did you have the Colosseum? Let's just say 2,000 years ago. The time of Jesus, right? Because that's the whole storyline there.

• 26:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, and so find a star 2,000 light years away.

• 26:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get, park yourself on a planet there. You have to do that now. And get a nice big telescope, aim it towards Earth, and you will see the Roman Coliseum in real time.

• 26:59Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, delayed time.

• 27:01Chuck Nice?

  Right, exactly. In real, delayed time. In your real time, in their gone time.

• 27:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's a galaxy, I forget, is it M101 or M100? There's a beautiful spiral galaxy that's 65 million light years away from the Milky Way. So you know I want to go there and look back.

• 27:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do I get to see?

• 27:22Chuck Nice?

  The beginning of everything here.

• 27:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  65 million years ago?

• 27:25Chuck Nice?

  Well, not the beginning of everything, but the beginning of what we, you know, this, this crap.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  65, Chuck, 65 million years ago?

• 27:32Chuck Nice?

  Wasn't, wasn't that the dinosaurs?

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, thank you.

• 27:34Chuck Nice?

  That's what I said, the beginning of everything now. The beginning of this crap, I called it. I forget which.

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what you'd, that's what you'd write on an exam trying to get partial credit because you didn't remember it was dinosaurs.

• 27:44Chuck Nice?

  I said, I said dinosaurs. But anyway, I was trying to think of.

• 27:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've wrenched it out of you.

• 27:49Chuck Nice?

  No, I was trying to think which, which scene it was, like, you know, is it the Pliscet scene?

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 27:56Chuck Nice?

  That's what I was trying to think of, but.

• 27:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they, they got a little bit of a renaming, so it's no longer the KT boundary.

• 28:02Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 28:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, and, but, uh, there's a more accurate, less memorable name that it's been given.

• 28:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 28:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the, the point is that boundary, that 65 million year ago boundary, uh, an asteroid struck Earth. It took out the dinosaurs.

• 28:16Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Reached havoc. Uh, you bear witness to that.

• 28:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From this galaxy 65 million years ago.

• 28:23Chuck Nice?

  That's so cool. And you couldn't even say lookout. You couldn't even.

• 28:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you can't warn anybody?

• 28:30Chuck Nice?

  Can't warn anybody.

• 28:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stuff already happened.

• 28:32Chuck Nice?

  You gotta sit there and watch it because you're watching, you're watching a rerun. Damn.

• 28:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's already happened.

• 28:36Chuck Nice?

  A rerun.

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, so the point is, you can't go there from here to see your past.

• 28:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who knows? You could if you could beat the light beam.

• 28:47Chuck Nice?

  Right. So, see, that's, so let me ask you this. What you just said, now that sparks in me this. Okay. You can't get there, but if you were already there, you could see the past. So now, that says, all right. Why is it then that we can move up and down? Back and forward, left and right on this axis, right? But we can't move back? In time, theoretically, like, we can't, not even theoretically, we can't do it. You gotta, you gotta beat the light in order to do it.

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me, let me re-ask your question. You're saying, if time is a coordinate, like all the other coordinates, and we can move back and forth in X, Y, and Z, why can't we move back and forth in time?

• 29:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that your question?

• 29:32Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 29:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, okay. So, it is, it is indeed true. We are prisoners of the present, forever transitioning from our inaccessible past to our unknowable future.

• 29:45Chuck Nice?

  Now, see, I asked you a question, and you done turned it into a doggone poetry slam.

• 29:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 29:52Chuck Nice?

  I mean, that is beautiful, what you just said. It's gorgeous, but, yeah.

• 29:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, it would be very interesting if you could step out of your timeline and then re-join yourself.

• 30:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 30:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Either in your future or in your past. And, but that kinda would imply that your timeline is predetermined.

• 30:14Chuck Nice?

  Oh, whoa, okay.

• 30:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the same way the coordinate, the coordinate is predetermined.

• 30:17Chuck Nice?

  Right, because if that coordinates are definitely predetermined.

• 30:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I step over there, that's been there, it's waiting for me to step there.

• 30:22Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It doesn't invent itself as I arrive, it's there. Okay, so, wait, wait, hang on, we gotta take a break.

• 30:30Chuck Nice?

  Aw, crap, man. Because I gotta notice. You bring up predetermination, and then you said we gotta take a break?

• 30:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Time for a break, Chuck.

• 30:39Chuck Nice?

  You asked my therapist, just when I'm about to have a breakthrough, he's like, "And that's all we have time for today."

• 30:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. When we come back, more Cosmic Queries Galactic Gumbo Edition. We're talking about, I guess, in this moment, time travel.

• 31:02Chuck Nice?

  Hey, it's time to give a Patreon shout-out to the following Patreon patrons, Jennifer Sell-Napp and Chris Reynolds. Guys, thank you so much. Without you, we couldn't do this show. And for anyone else listening who would like their very own Patreon shout-out, please go to patreon.com/startalkradio and support us.

• 31:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, have you calmed down?

• 31:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a therapist on speed dial.

• 31:34Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 31:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you ask a very important question. Why can't we move on our time coordinate?

• 31:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it is what the physicists say it is, it's just another coordinate.

• 31:46Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, right.

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it is a little different because we are prisoners of its present.

• 31:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why it's a little different. But if you could step out of that coordinate, yeah, you could go backwards and forth.

• 31:57Chuck Nice?

  You could go backwards and forth. So now that, so then you bring up, this is more philosophical than it is, you know, physics. But, you know, I'm gonna ask, speaking of stepping out, so that, you know, connotes, infers,

• 32:16Chuck Nice?

  the unfolding of time as a...

• 32:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We infer, if your mom were here, we infer, it implies.

• 32:22Chuck Nice?

  It implies, correct, right. I was about to say...

• 32:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was your mother an English teacher?

• 32:26Chuck Nice?

  Yes, she was. What I should have said was, "I'm inferring." That's what I should have said. But, because I'm not sure if it implies, but I'm inferring that that would, that would connote the unfolding of time as opposed to the predetermination of time.

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If what?

• 32:47Chuck Nice?

  If we lack the ability to step out of these coordinates and look at our timeline, thereby being able to identify a point in the past and go back, does that mean that being a prisoner of the present means that the present is not determined? Because there are some people who believe in predetermination.

• 33:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I mean, maybe preded... I mean...

• 33:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 33:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know.

• 33:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Because that's a rough, that's a crazy thing that you just brought up.

• 33:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are you suggesting that if you could step out,

• 33:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  it would require that it's predetermined?

• 33:22Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 33:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the fact that we can't step out is the evidence that maybe we have free will?

• 33:29Chuck Nice?

  And you know, that's, it's funny because when you see, when you say it that way, free will, I think, brings in a completely different philosophical discipline, but I, but, but I, I look at it more as a, and it, as a present unfolding, more so than I look at free will, which, which means that we have some influence, okay? Maybe not free will, because that's so philosophical, but we have some influence, like-

• 33:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the problem is, if you rejoined yourself in the past, and you changed something that prevented you from stepping out of your future, then you could not have rejoined you, yourself in the past.

• 34:04Chuck Nice?

  Damn!

• 34:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there's a, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a causality conjecture violation-

• 34:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, which Stephen Hawking had proposed, that he suggested there will never be backwards time travel, and one day we will discover why. Um, and it's, it's a time, it's a time protection conjecture-

• 34:24Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where, yeah, because you, you can't go back in time and prevent your parents from meeting, then you would have never been born to have gone back in time to have prevented your parents from meeting.

• 34:32Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 34:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you've got to avoid those kinds of paradoxes.

• 34:36Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it may be that there's a law of physics that prevents it, we don't, we don't know.

• 34:40Chuck Nice?

  We don't know.

• 34:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, this brings me to Superman, if I may.

• 34:43Chuck Nice?

  Uh-oh. I always love when we talk Superman, so go ahead.

• 34:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, uh, this, I've said this in some other videos, but here and now, it's relevant. Okay, I got a call from DC Comics some years ago-

• 34:55Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 34:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they wanted to have Superman visit the Hayden Planetarium.

• 34:58Chuck Nice?

  All right. By the way, that's, I mean, you know, just another afternoon in the life of Neil the Grass Ties fan, you know? Hi Neil!

• 35:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, hello.

• 35:08Chuck Nice?

  Uh, this is DC Comics, just want to know if Superman could drop by? Okay, all right.

• 35:17Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's great.

• 35:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could have visited too, I didn't, I know, I wasn't looking against that.

• 35:21Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that is so good, that is so good, but go ahead. So, they wanted to know Superman could visit the Hayden Planetarium?

• 35:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said, they wanted my permission, I said, sure, and then they said, well, do you mind if he meets you in this? And I said, uh, sure.

• 35:36Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, of course we, we can meet. And then I asked what the storyline was. The storyline was, um, he wants to use the observing capabilities of the planetarium to look back at Krypton to see it get destroyed. Gotcha. Okay, because he did a calculation to realize that the light from that episode, which is when he was born, was finally reaching Earth. Right. And so he wanted to witness this. So I said, all right, wait. I said, wait. Uh, you can't just do that unless one of two things happens. Either he traveled here in a wormhole. Okay.

• 36:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beating the beam of light. Right. Okay. Cause you can't go faster than the speed of light, but you might be able to get places faster than the speed of light. What, what, so he has to, right, he has to tunnel through space in some kind of way. Right. And, and we do know that he arrived in, you know, Moses' style in a basket. Right. Not much older than when he was launched. He shall deliver my people. Okay, so, so. Go ahead. And infants, you, you can tell when they've aged weeks and even months. Right. So here's an infant, it's really no older when it arrived than when it was launched. So it got here basically instant, or, excuse me, or it traveled at the speed of light and didn't age. Right.

• 37:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it traveled at the speed of light, then the speed of light of the dying civilization would have arrived at the same time he did. Right, so thereby rendering it impossible for him to look back at his past. So I told him, it's gotta be a wormhole. Gotcha. And they said, oh, great, great, and they're taking notes. And I said, huh, fine. So, so we do this, and then I said, well, how old is Superman? Because this will depend on how, you know, how far away the star is from Earth. Okay, because if, if he was launched when he was born, at whatever age he is now, that's how many light years away the thing is. Right. Okay, that's how that works. Right. So they said he's eternally in his late twenties.

• 37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I said, okay. By the way, Neil, so am I.

• 37:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I asked him, I said, "Do you have, um, do you want me to find you a star? A red star, like Krypton? Do you want me to find you a red star at about that distance? And we could just declare that to be Superman's home, home planet." And they said, "You could do that?" I said, "Yeah, there's a bajillion stars out there." Went to the catalog, found a star, found a red star, found a red star 27 light-years away, and boom, there it is. So now, in Superman canon, there is this star, an actual star in the night sky, which is where he came from.

• 38:25Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 38:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, and he comes and then he observes it. And he's very sad, because he, he knew it happened intellectually, but then he sees it as we recreate the image at the Hayden Planetarium. So that's actually done in Action Comics 14.

• 38:37Chuck Nice?

  All right, that, that's a really cool story, okay?

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Action Comics 14.

• 38:41Chuck Nice?

  Action Comics 14, I gotta give it to you, man. That is a really cool story.

• 38:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, I was a little, a little chubby then, I'm a little chubby now, but I, so I said to the illustrator, I said, "If it makes no difference to you, could you take off a few pounds?" I just asked. And they said, "Dr. Tyson, this is the world of the comics. Everyone looks good."

• 39:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we're gonna give you a six-pack, are you kidding me?

• 39:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I'm, I'm there, standing poised, as, as I did in my youth.

• 39:11Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 39:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, and so, yeah, it was fun. If you want to find it, Action Comics 14.

• 39:15Chuck Nice?

  All right, that's super cool, man. All right.

• 39:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's in there.

• 39:18Chuck Nice?

  I guess we should move on, even though I mean...

• 39:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I guess so.

• 39:21Chuck Nice?

  God.

• 39:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, next question. But that's, that's precisely related to that question.

• 39:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it was.

• 39:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can you see, can you see something in the past?

• 39:26Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely, absolutely. I love it. All right. Uh, Portuguese for Americans says this. Português for Americans, he says...

• 39:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Português.

• 39:34Chuck Nice?

  Português. Uh, uh, he says, "What would happen if something made Earth rotate in the opposite direction, speaking of Superman?" By the way, I did not plan this. I swear to God, I did not plan this. I just happened to look down, and this was the next question that jumped out. I didn't even know it was coming up. And he says, "As Christopher Reeves did in the Superman movie." I can't believe that just happened, but that, this is, this is kismet, it must be meant to be. Uh, so go ahead.

• 40:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, what's the question?

• 40:03Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yeah, "What would happen if you actually did rotate the Earth backwards? What would happen to Earth?"

• 40:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 40:08Chuck Nice?

  So, you stop us, first of all, you stop us, and then you start us in the other way. What happens?

• 40:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, um...

• 40:15Chuck Nice?

  We all die.

• 40:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  First, you don't want this to happen. You all die.

• 40:18Chuck Nice?

  We all die.

• 40:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the answer. Next question.

• 40:23Chuck Nice?

  I was joking. I really don't know what happens. Uh, what happens?

• 40:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It reminds me, I recently tweeted about, I do tweet this every five years or so.

• 40:31Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, you know, if you took all the veins, arteries and capillaries out of your body and tied them end to end.

• 40:38Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 40:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You would die.

• 40:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that's funny. Alright, that's a funny joke though, by the way, man. That's...

• 40:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I put that out there.

• 40:45Chuck Nice?

  I like that.

• 40:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then people get all serious with it. You realize you would die before you had the chance to tie them into. And people try to analyze it.

• 40:53Chuck Nice?

  Well now, welcome to my world.

• 40:58Chuck Nice?

  Your premise is untenable, sir. Okay. So anyway, let's just say you, you, you slow us down to a stop and then you go back the other way.

• 41:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's worse than that. Okay.

• 41:09Chuck Nice?

  It's worse than that.

• 41:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you ever been going fast in your car?

• 41:11Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 41:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and someone puts on the brakes.

• 41:14Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 41:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a steady slowdown, but it's, it's, you put on the brakes steady. In a steady slowdown, you feel yourself leaning forward the entire time the brakes are applied.

• 41:22Chuck Nice?

  Thank God I have the active restraint seatbelt, which actually grabs me and pulls me back because you're still going for, you're...

• 41:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're still feeling this.

• 41:30Chuck Nice?

  You're still feeling that forward motion.

• 41:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. While the earth is slowing down, everyone will lean east.

• 41:41Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 41:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 41:43Chuck Nice?

  Alright, this is cool. Alright.

• 41:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody will be leaning at exactly the same angle east, depending on how quickly we slow ourselves down.

• 41:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? So, so what, what you'll think of as vertical will be a lean at that point, okay? And you'll stay there until we stop. And as we come to a stop, then you'll stand erect again, okay? But then we're not rotating, so one side of the earth will always face the sun. Well, this didn't last that long, right? Cause he sped the earth up.

• 42:12Chuck Nice?

  Right, he sped it right back.

• 42:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that's fine, because otherwise you get very unequal heating of the earth and that could wreak havoc climatically. But then he quickly sped us up and had us go the other. So then you lean, because now you were decelerating, now you're accelerating. And anytime there's an acceleration, you're gonna feel that as a sort of a constant.

• 42:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sort of lean, okay? Because the same force that slows you down and speeds you up in the other direction is the same force operating the whole time.

• 42:41Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 42:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 42:42Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 42:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in other words, he's pushing against the rotation of the Earth.

• 42:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you lean against that, but he just keeps going through zero and rotates us back the other way.

• 42:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that same force does that. You'll feel that lean, but then he has to stop that and then send it back the other way. So then you'll all be leaning the other direction.

• 43:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Until we're back to our normal speed. But nothing would have happened to the timeline. There is no backwards time. That is nothing.

• 43:09Chuck Nice?

  Now, what about the things that are not, the physical characteristics of the Earth that are not nailed down? Like the oceans and stuff like that?

• 43:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, so, I'm sorry. So all the oceans would slosh up. Yeah, so the Atlantic Ocean would begin to slosh up onto Europe and Africa.

• 43:30Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 43:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the Pacific would slosh up onto... Thank you, I forgot all about that. Because the ocean is not stepping with friction to the Earth.

• 43:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'll just slosh with it. Yeah, so you'll basically flood all the continents.

• 43:41Chuck Nice?

  Okay. So, all right, so there you go. All right.

• 43:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it depends on how abruptly you do it.

• 43:46Chuck Nice?

  So basically Superman killed everybody on Earth.

• 43:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Killed everybody.

• 43:49Chuck Nice?

  When he did, just to save Lois Lane.

• 43:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to save Lois.

• 43:53Chuck Nice?

  By the way, in the words of Donald Trump, "Not that hot."

• 44:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I'm told by people in the know that there's a reason for that.

• 44:07Chuck Nice?

  Okay, what is it?

• 44:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they... If Lois Lane were a beauty queen.

• 44:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you, as an average person, would not have access to Superman. Because if you're... You know you're not as beautiful as the singular beauty queen.

• 44:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 44:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they'd drop her down a few notches, closer to sort of your average person. And then if you're an average person, then you'd say, "Oh, I could..."

• 44:29Chuck Nice?

  I can bag Superman.

• 44:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm hot enough for Superman. I'm hot enough. You know, you say, "Well, Lois Lane could do it, then I could do it." I can get him. No, I can get him. That'd be totally the mindset. Right, exactly. Oh, that's too funny. So, now, the problem is, if he had stopped it abruptly, then we'd all fall over and roll due east 800 miles an hour. Oh, sweet. And then that'd be the end of anything that's not attached to the earth. Nice. But the fact that he did it slowly means there's a chance you could survive. Right. If you have a boat. Yeah, if you have a boat. Chuck, we gotta end it there. Oh, crap. No, I know, I'm sorry. It was fun. These are so much fun. Gumbo. And since they don't fit a category, they're their own... They have their own flavor. We gotta do more. All right, Chuck, always good to have you. Always a pleasure. Tweeting at Chuck Nice Comic.

• 45:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, sir. I don't follow many people, I follow you. Well, thank you. I follow you too. To the ends of the earth. To the ends of the... Even when Superman is sloshing it full of water. You got it. Star Talk, Cos McQuarries, Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, keep looking up.