Cosmic Queries – Everyday Astrophysics, with Russell Peters

Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Russell Peters answer fan-submitted questions on a variety of astrophysical topics including Pluto, the Andromeda Galaxy, the Magellanic Clouds, the Equator and the Earth’s axis, E = mc2, exoplanets, the Moon, and more! NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/cosmic-queries-everyday-astrophysics-with-russell-peters/ Photo Credit: StarTalk®.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and beaming out across all of space and time, this is StarTalk, where science and pop culture collide.

• 0:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and I'm here today with comedian extraordinaire, Russell Peters. Russell, dude!

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Neil?

• 0:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  First time on StarTalk!

• 0:40Speaker 01

  First time, first time listener, long time fan?

• 0:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you for your enthusiasm and you-

• 0:47Speaker 01

  It's real.

• 0:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, I believe it's real.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  It's genuinely-

• 0:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I heard rumors that you were on some other show, and said, "Who'd you want to have dinner with?", and I came up in the list.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  You were the number one person.

• 0:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, we're testing you on the show first, before we make the dinner plans.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Go ahead. Go for it, yeah. Yeah, before I invite you out.

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so, thanks for doing this. Today is an episode of Cosmic Queries.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every now and then, we gather questions that we've either solicited or trickled in from our fanbase. And the topic today is everyday astrophysics. You didn't know there was such a thing, huh?

• 1:23Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, would this be astrophysics for dummies at that point?

• 1:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know, actually. You've been handed the questions.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Oh, I got the questions.

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got all the questions.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  These are actually really good questions, from what I can see so far.

• 1:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, well, that-

• 1:35Speaker 01

  I'm impressed, and I'm like, "Oh, good, that's a question I would like to know as well."

• 1:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's good. So you can pick them that way. But before we get into that, just remind me, you're on the road all the time touring.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Constantly.

• 1:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Constantly?

• 1:47Speaker 01

  It's all I know. Thirty years of this.

• 1:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So where is home? It was on a bus somewhere, some-

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Well, technically, home is, well, I guess technically, home is Toronto.

• 1:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, but born and raised in Toronto?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Born and raised in Toronto.

• 1:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  But I've been living in Merke for thirteen years now.

• 2:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Merke.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Merke, thirteen years now.

• 2:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thirteen damn years.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  I'll tell you what, boy.

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tell you what?

• 2:06Speaker 01

  I'll tell you what. You need the "H" in front of it.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 2:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, no, it's great to know that you're out there and you've been doing this a long time. So, just try, uh, try to make comedic sense of the world for us, just so, because we need some laughs.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  We did, there's some in this world definitely need some laughs. It needs something. It needs laughs before that asteroid hits us.

• 2:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you're done with this, get the hell back out there and get back to work. So, what do you have for us?

• 2:35Speaker 01

  All right, you ready?

• 2:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Uh, Rene Douglas.

• 2:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we're, we're duty-bound to make sure the first question is from a Patreon.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's what I'm reading.

• 2:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what you're reading, okay.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Rene Douglas from Patreon.

• 2:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Would like to know, why do you think Mercury and Venus don't have moons?

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh. Ooh. Hmm. Well, Mercury's pretty small.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mercury is, I, I forgot whether it's just slightly bigger or just slightly smaller than our moon. So, but it's small. It's, it's much denser. It has a huge iron core, so it's much heavier than the moon. So, it's got planet mass.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But its size is, is, is small, and it's, it's hard to have something else orbiting you when you're small. You know, Jupiter is huge, has more mass than all the other planets in the solar system. And, and it has sixty-plus moons orbiting it.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Sixty-plus?

• 3:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's its own mini planetary system, if you will. Um, but the act of being small doesn't preclude having moons. It's just harder when you're that small and orbiting that close to the sun. Because then you have a gravitational tug-of-war. Okay, who, who's, you know, who's your daddy? Who's your gravitational allegiance?

• 3:44Speaker 01

  Who's your gravity daddy?

• 3:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who's your gravity daddy? So, uh, by the way, Pluto is also small. There are like six moons in the solar system bigger than Pluto. But Pluto has multiple moons. The point is, that far out in the solar system, there's very little sort of gravitational, um, disturbances from other objects, so you can sustain orbits however delicate they are.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Is it, is, is size? I thought, I always thought size was indicative of whether it was allowed to be a planet or a moon.

• 4:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. Well, sort of. Okay, so it turns out if you're really, really small, your gravity loses to the structural integrity of the object. So the rock will take whatever shape it wants. So below a certain size, stuff in the solar system looks like Idaho potatoes.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Yes, I've seen those.

• 4:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, yeah.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  I've seen the, I've seen the pictures.

• 4:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've seen the pictures?

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've seen, um, in fact, I used to have one here. Yeah, in fact, right up there. Could you reach up and grab that? Yeah, you can reach up. You get it?

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Let me grab your potato.

• 4:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just grab that. This is a, a precise model. Thank you.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  I was hoping it was real.

• 4:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anyhow, so this is a model of an actual asteroid. And this is sufficiently small that it takes whatever shape the rocks demand of it. All right, and rocks to, to take their own shape based on the chemistry and how they formed. So, but if this object were larger, then the gravity of the object says, I'm trying to get everything as close to the middle as I can. And there's only one shape you take if everybody tries to get close to the middle. And that's a sphere.

• 5:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So to be a planet, you gotta be big enough, have enough mass to be a sphere. But that's not the only rule. Pluto's big enough to be a sphere. Now we say, in your orbit, we want you to be dominant. We don't want anything else competing with your orbit. So Pluto is orbiting what we call the Kuiper Belt. There's thousands of other objects.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Orbiting out there with Pluto.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  It's littered, right?

• 5:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Littered. Great word. Just like the asteroid belt.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 5:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Littered. So nobody in the asteroid belt owns the space of objects. So they're all asteroids, even though one of the asteroids is big enough to be a sphere. And Pluto's big enough to be a sphere. So the rules are, are you big enough to be round? And significant enough in your?

• 6:05Speaker 01

  A little sensitive, but thank you.

• 6:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, big enough to be round. And are you dominant enough in your orbit to have cleared it out? So basically, you're the only game in town. And if you have to satisfy both of those, then you're a legit planet in the rules.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Are we, um, does that, could we effectively be seen as our, all our planets as moons for the sun?

• 6:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't see why not, except because the sun is like alive with energy. We have a different designation for it.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's hot.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Warm. Hot's a little overrated, but it's a little warm, it's warm.

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you would vaporize. I can tell you the heat, it's just the humidity on the sun that I can't handle. So, uh, you, you can think of it that way, and not to like overrun this answer, but people wondered a hundred years ago or more, uh, the turn of the previous century.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait a minute, if the solar system has a star and planets that orbit it, and planets have moons that orbit them, atoms have nuclei and electrons that orbit them, maybe it's that all the way down.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Good, that's fair.

• 7:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or all the way up, right? So we have a galaxy, there's a center of the galaxy, and our whole solar system is orbiting the galaxy? Maybe it's just solar systems all the way down. But you get to the size of the atom and there's nothing smaller than that. There's nothing smaller than the particles that make up the nucleus. So.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Except for antimatter.

• 7:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, there's a car.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  See what I did there?

• 7:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 7:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there isn't some other structure of the natural world that we have yet discovered, nor that we think is there. If you probe the atom and look at the nucleus and say, oh, there's another layer right on down, no, we ain't finding that.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Well, that was Rene Douglas from Pittsburgh.

• 8:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  You want this one, you ready?

• 8:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's up to you, you don't even have to go in order.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  Okay, well, that's good. Let's see it.

• 8:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  What would the climate be like on Earth if it wasn't for the axial tilt? That was from Michael Groth.

• 8:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, so that's a good one. So, this is someone who knows that Earth is tipped on its axis relative to our orbit around the sun, so it's tipped like this, tipped at twenty-three and a half degrees. In fact, this is got Earth back there, let me get Earth, hold on. Yeah, so this is a, so I'm holding in my lap for those who are only listening. A map of Earth, which we're familiar with.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Actually a globe.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, thank you.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Let me hump you out with this there.

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, thank you.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Hang on there Astro fellow.

• 8:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you. It's a globe.

• 8:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's the kind of globe we see in social studies class. Because all the countries are color coded. But of course, Earth from space shows no such color coding.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  I know, it's weird how they did that.

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so anyway.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  I tend to believe this globe much more.

• 9:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we're tipped on our axis and it turns out that because of that tipping, for one part of the year, the northern hemisphere is tipped towards the sun. And six months later, that same hemisphere is tipped away from the sun. And if you're tipped towards the sun, your rays are much more intense. And there's much more heating of the ground and you get summertime. And around the other side, we're tipped away from the sun, the sun's angles are low. Rays, the angle of rays is low and we experience winter. Now, since we're part of the same Earth as the southern hemisphere.

• 9:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If we're tipped towards the sun in the north, they're tipped away from the sun at the same time. So we experience summer when Australia experiences winter. That's all. That's all that's going on.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  So then how does the equator stay warm all the time?

• 9:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, well, if the equator is exactly between the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere, then they are switching always between summer and winter. Then the equator has no seasons.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 10:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It can't.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  But wouldn't, uh, like.

• 10:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It can't have seasons.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  When it's even, uh, on the other side?

• 10:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It can't have seasons because it is always exactly between all other seasons. The only way to be that is to have no season at all. And what they do is they say, oh, it's the rainy season. Or it's the, you know, the stormy season.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  It's to make them feel good about it.

• 10:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just so they think they're having a season. But temperature wise, the equator has no seasons. And it's largely true for all the tropics, but if you want to be precise, the equator uh, does not go through seasons. So if you want to undo the tilt and have Earth just pointing straight up and down. No seasons.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  But it would still rotate, right?

• 10:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We would still rotate on our axis and still revolve around the sun. We still have years, but there'd be no seasons.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  For anyone?

• 10:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Again, unless it's just rainy season versus not.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 10:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There'd be no temperature-based seasons of any, of any significant, um, measure.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Would we still have cold and warm and hot?

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the farther away from the equator you go, the cooler it would get.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Now, the whole earth is not the same temperature. But at a given latitude,

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  it, it, you don't get seasons. That's all I'm saying. So the hottest part would be the equator, and then you move away from the equator to the poles. And that would be the coldest spot.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  I don't think you should blame the Polish for this, but, uh, whatever. The poles have done nothing to you. Uh, let's see.

• 11:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If the poles are people from Poland, then the Polish are people that they're sort of from Poland?

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're kinda. They're from Chicago.

• 11:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm Polish. Yeah, okay. Uh, what else you got?

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Let's see. If we were just plopped onto a gas giant such as Jupiter, like when they need to explain that one to you.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Uh, what would happen to us assuming we could survive? Well, if you, all right, I'll just keep reading, but I, I'm not an astrophysicist, obviously, but even I'm looking at this going, come on. Come on, Jeremy Small, you're better than this.

• 11:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The, the word assuming, I think, carries this.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Assuming we could survive, uh, there isn't a solid surface we could stand on, so where would we go?

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good question. So if I plunk you down on Jupiter, you would just descend through the clouds. Okay? Jupiter gets denser and denser and denser as it goes down. If you have a pressure-proof suit that you're wearing, you will continue to fall until you are about the same density as the surrounding area, and then you would just sort of bob there and float. That's what would happen.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  So you would find your floating point.

• 12:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your floating point. Exactly. But if you didn't have your pressure suit, you'd be crushed by the atmospheric pressure that was there.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  But don't they?

• 12:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and you would vaporize because it gets very hot very quickly.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Is that what happened at Cassini?

• 12:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ignoring the vaporizing and avoiding getting crushed, you'll find, you'll find your, your, your, uh, your place, your zone.

• 12:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  So is that what happened to Cassini?

• 12:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so Cassini, oh, you did, my boy did some, did some homework.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  I'm a nerd for this stuff.

• 13:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, very good.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Just a quick side note, so you know.

• 13:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  In 2017, I went to Chile, uh, uh, to the.

• 13:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get that he's pronouncing that all like he's, like he knows Spanish or something. Chile, yes, go on.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Chile, I'm a Chileno. I, uh, went to the, uh, uh.

• 13:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have observatories there.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  European, the, the European, uh, ESA.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, European Southern Observatory.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yes, I went there and I spent two nights, three nights there.

• 13:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How?

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Uh, I have a friend.

• 13:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You knew somebody?

• 13:24Speaker 01

  I'm friends with Nile Rodgers.

• 13:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, all right, you know people.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  And Nile, uh, this guy had invited us all down.

• 13:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very cool.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Last minute Nile bailed, but the rest of us all went.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isn't it magical?

• 13:34Speaker 01

  It is ridiculous.

• 13:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is ridiculously magical at the top of a mountain when it gets dark and you see out and it's just you and the cosmos.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  But I thought that I was gonna look through telescopes and see things and, cause they have those giant.

• 13:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no, there's no, there's no lenses.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, they just shoot lasers and I'm like.

• 13:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Laser is another thing we can do, yeah, yeah, the, the two reasons why you would shoot lasers, uh, but we can save that for another question if it ever gets asked. But, but the, uh, it's, it is truly magical to be on a mountaintop at night.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  It is pretty wild.

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  They did pull out like a little rinky dink, uh, telescope.

• 14:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, cause we don't look through telescopes anymore, they're, it's all digital.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Apparently not. I found out.

• 14:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You thought there'd be this giant eyepiece waiting for you to walk up to it?

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I thought it was, I thought like this.

• 14:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you see the gates of heaven through it.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  I saw the pictures and I was like, oh my God, I'm gonna look through those and like.

• 14:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  You don't look through those. It just sends us data and I'm like, well, well, that's, how's that help me? I gotta read the data at home.

• 14:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Do you want my, can I sneak, sneak mine in?

• 14:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, sneak, oh, go on, go on.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Let me sneak the one I wrote last night.

• 14:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got your own question?

• 14:39Speaker 01

  I do.

• 14:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that allowed?

• 14:40Speaker 01

  I don't know, I'm doing.

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Engineers, is that allowed?

• 14:43Speaker 01

  I'm doing, I brought, I brought a question.

• 14:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, go, go for it.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Uh, is the Big Bang Theory only for the observable universe or does it, uh, encompass like, like the entirety of everything?

• 14:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So first, it's a TV show.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Finishing its last season.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Highly successful, and I've never watched one episode in my life.

• 15:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really? Yes, highly, it's one of the most successful shows ever, actually. So if you type the Big Bang Theory into Google, the show comes up first.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Right, far more important. Far more important.

• 15:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then next, I think there's a K-pop band called Big Bang.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Is there?

• 15:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, and then they come up next. Then, the origin of the universe. These are our priorities.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Is it still considered a theory?

• 15:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, a theory is the modern word we use to describe our successful understandings of the operations of nature. So, quantum theory, relativity theory, evolutionary theory. So, people say, "Oh, it's just a theory." That's the word we use to describe stuff that works. If you have an idea that hasn't been tested yet, it's a hypothesis.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 15:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? So, it's Einstein's theory of relativity, it's Russell's hypothesis. If you have an idea about something.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  I have no idea.

• 15:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Until it's put out, and then it gets fully explored and investigated and tested, and has other predictive value, then we're good to go with it. So, the Big Bang is our understanding of the existence and expansion of the universe in which we live. And it goes not only to the edge of the observable universe, but it would include the universe beyond that. It's just that it's hard to get answers to that which is beyond our horizon. So, colloquially, we say it is the theory of our understanding of the visible universe. But technically, the whole universe came into existence, even the parts you can't see, in what we call the Big Bang. So.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  So, from nothingness comes somethingness.

• 16:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. And by the way, just to put you at ease with that.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Please.

• 16:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the way you said that was all pejorative, just want you to know.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  It was, it had a little pejority to it.

• 16:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You copped a little attitude on that.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  I was like, I wasn't really excited with the answer. I was like, it didn't really answer anything for me.

• 16:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you get something from nothing? So, so let's say you have, oh, you know, let me save the answer to that. After the break.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  The answer to this, Mr. Bender, next week.

• 17:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When we come back on StarTalk, we'll find out how you get something from nothing on this edition of Cosmic Queries.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  The future of space and the secrets of our planet revealed.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  This is StarTalk.

• 17:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. Everyday Astrophysics. And helping me answer is my co-host today, visiting for the first time, Russell Peters. Russell.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Hey.

• 17:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dude.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  I'm back.

• 17:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can't go to Netflix without seeing your face.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  I created that job for you.

• 18:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're trying to get me to watch all your stuff.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't, don't waste your time. Listen, you're an astrophysicist, you're smarter than this.

• 18:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love your rapport with the audience. It's great, it's great. You just make them all feel like they're, they want to be there, so.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Well, hopefully, you know, you know, I'm not only I'm captive, you know. Unless they have Stockholm syndrome, I don't know about it.

• 18:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you've got questions?

• 18:24Speaker 01

  I've got questions.

• 18:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's on everyday astrophysics?

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bring it on.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Uh, actually, um, you left me hanging on the last, it was a big cliffhanger that we left on. And you didn't finish it for me.

• 18:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I forgot.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  And I almost forgot too.

• 18:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Cause you, you, you, you, you greased me out of it.

• 18:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, I did. Yeah, I said nice things about you. Hey, it's all about me.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was like, I'm listening.

• 18:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, so the, the question was, how do you get something out of nothing? So it's, the thing is with energy, you can have positive energy and negative energy. It's not just an emotional thing, it's actually a real physical thing in the physical universe. And if, and each of those have consequences on space, time, and matter. And, but if you bring them together, it sums to no energy at all. So how does, how, how does this happen? So think about it, let's say there's level ground. And then I have a shovel and I put ground from this part and I stack it over here. So I'm digging a hole.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And making a, making a mound. Well, I can keep doing this and I can have a hill as arbitrarily as high as I want. And I can climb to the top of the Empire State Building. But there's a hole next to it. So how did I get that high? How is that even possible? I took the dirt over here and I put it over here. But if I put the dirt back in, then everything's level again. So it's a way to think about what it means when you have negative energy and positive energy. A lot of things we do where you started with nothing, but you ended with something. Something that you care about. But in the total picture, it sums to zero.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  I see that's good. See, now that's a good explanation.

• 20:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  That I can walk away with and go, okay, I get that.

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And not lose sleep tonight.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would have, I would have lost sleep. I would have been, tonight I'm gonna be sleeping going, ah, damn it, I should have asked him.

• 20:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Let's go with, I haven't read this one. I'm just gonna read it now and see what happens.

• 20:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And see what happens.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Let's see what happens. It might be, it might be a crappy question. We don't know.

• 20:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Vincent Zimmerman wants to know.

• 20:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From where? What, what, where is he?

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Just at Twitter.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Twitter, sure.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  From the town of Twitter. What's the most distant star you can see with the naked eye?

• 20:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, so that's an interesting question. I can answer that two ways. So one of them is the most distant thing you can see with the naked eye is our nearest red-blooded galaxy. The Andromeda Galaxy. And for the longest while, until the early 1920s, it was called the Andromeda Nebula. Because it was just this fuzzy thing in the night sky among the stars that trace out the constellation Andromeda. So we named it after Andromeda. And it was just a nebula. Fuzzy thing. And then with better and better telescopes, you're, wait a minute, this thing is composed of stars. Wait a minute, this thing is far away. Wait a minute, this is an entire other galaxy. It's not just a fuzzy thing in the Milky Way.

• 21:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's another Milky Way. Well, how far away is it? It was not close, quote, close, like these stars we see in the night sky. This is outside of our entire galaxy. The stars you see in the night sky are tens, hundreds, a few, or thousands of light years away. The Andromeda Galaxy is two million light years away. And you can see that with the naked eye.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  I believe I saw that when I was in Chile.

• 21:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You would have. Well, no, no, no, no, no. That's too far north. There are other fuzzy objects in the night sky.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  I saw two.

• 21:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's called, those were first described and written about by Ferdinand Magellan.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. That guy was no Magellan, I'll tell you.

• 21:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was, uh, sorry, what I should say is, Western folk first learned of these two clouds when Magellan did his round the world voyage. Clearly Aboriginal peoples of Australia knew all about the Magellanic Clouds. So they named it in his honor, the Magellanic Clouds. And they were called clouds at the time. They are galaxies as well.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except they're closer.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  There's a small one and a big one.

• 22:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're called the small Magellanic Cloud and the large Magellanic Cloud.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, they really went out on the names.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What are we doing? We tell it like it is.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  They blew the bank on that one.

• 22:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, those are relatively nearby. A couple hundred thousand, hundred thousand light years away. Um, the, uh, Andromeda is two million light years away. You're not seeing an individual star. You're seeing hundreds of billions of stars, the muddled, muddied light. The blended light of hundreds of billions of stars that comprise the Andromeda Galaxy. That is the farthest object visible.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Would you?

• 22:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To the unaided eye. And, and you can't see that from New York or any light, light polluted place. Just go out in the countryside, uh, it'll be there.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Would you, um, venture to think that if there are people there, that they could see us the same fuzzy way we see them?

• 23:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by all means. Oh yeah, I think about that all the time.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, if there were, if there was intelligent life there and they had detectors and they're looking our way, they would see us not as we are, but as we were two million years ago. Cause that light is only just now reaching them.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 23:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they would not see signs of what we would call intelligence on Earth.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They would see very, I don't-

• 23:30Speaker 01

  If they saw us now, they wouldn't see those signs either.

• 23:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So would conclude it.

• 23:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So yeah, Andromeda Galaxy. There it is.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  That's pretty awesome.

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  This is a completely different type of question. Let's try this.

• 23:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  This is slightly angri, slightly angry Lugia, Lugia? I don't know, that's their name on Twitter. Why do sodium and chloride, two extremely toxic and harmful chemicals combine to form normal table salt?

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the beauty of chemistry. So you think that a thing's properties are somehow inherent in the thing. But the property is what manifests after you combine it with whatever else is. So you combine sodium, which is a lethal metal that you can cut with a knife. That's how soft it is. And it reacts violently with water. Add that to chlorine, which would poison you if you breathed it. Okay? And put them together and you get completely necessary table salt. For necessary for the life. So when you put them together, all the chemistry, it's a new chemistry.

• 24:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a new thing. Don't think of it as I need, it probably has some of those properties it used to have. No. All that matters is what are its electrons doing when they talk to your electrons? And if the configuration is different, that's all that matters. And the electrons that manifest themselves to you in table salt are differently configured than the electrons that manifest themselves to you as either sodium or chlorine. And for me, the best way to say this, I had a little paragraph in this in my, in one of my books. It was, let's take hydrogen. Hydrogen is explosive. If you have a ball of hydrogen and light a match to it. So is Mexican food.

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Carry on. Thank you for that clarification in case we didn't. So hydrogen will explode if you light a match to it, a ball of gaseous hydrogen. Oxygen promotes combustion. If you have a flame and add oxygen to it, it'll burn faster. Combine hydrogen and oxygen, you get water that puts out flames.

• 25:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  You know, it reminds me of George Carlin's old bit about halfway dirty words. Words aren't dirty until they're put together.

• 26:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  You know?

• 26:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he has a follow on to the seven dirty words?

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Well, this was, this is old great material, but he said cock isn't a dirty word, it's in the Bible.

• 26:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  And if you go to the dentist or the doctor and they give you a sucker, uh, you put them together, you got a bad word.

• 26:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so good point. So alone, those words mean things. You put them together, it means something else.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Entirely.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so it's the same thing. Once, meaning is everything in language. And if two words together have a different meaning, you know, deal with it. Don't say, wait a minute, take it apart, and those have their own separate meanings. Therefore, the word together has a, no, that ain't how it works.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  So it's the same as the sodium and the chloride?

• 26:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly the same as the sodium and chloride.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  But it works in the opposite way. Where sodium chloride come and come form together and make something nice?

• 26:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And make something beautiful.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 26:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Gotcha. See what I did there for you?

• 27:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  You're welcome, kid.

• 27:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what else you have?

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Let's see, Raoul Sala Narano. Uh, at a little-

• 27:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can do better than that. Try that again.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Raoul Sala Narano. Narano, Narano. Narango, listen. It's on Twitter. What am I doing?

• 27:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Uh, uh, da-da-da-da-da. Nah, it's not a good question.

• 27:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not a good question.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Okay, well, what would be the single most alarming thing that I could see with the naked eye? I don't know.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, ooh.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  I mean, that's-

• 27:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, no, I got this.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got this.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  I guess that's up for interpretation.

• 27:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got this.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, you ready?

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't know what the single most alarming thing I could ever see with the naked eye was until I saw it.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which meant I did not anticipate it. Okay, you ready?

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 27:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, this is 1999. I'm on the Brooklyn Bridge at 2 o'clock in the morning, and I'm looking up. Because that's how we roll.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  That's exactly how you roll.

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's November.

• 27:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I remember this because there's a meteor shower. Okay, meteor showers are best typically after midnight. So there I am. And Brooklyn Bridge is a nice, you're away from lights. It's still very lit, but you're away from lights. As good as you can. I'm a city person. It's the best I can do. And I'm there. And I'm looking up and I'm seeing this meteor shower. It's called the Leonid Meteor Shower. And you see the streaks of light. They're shooting stars. It's beautiful. We're getting like three or four per minute. This is a good rate. Okay, then.

• 28:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I saw a new star in the sky. I said, I don't recognize that star. And it just got brighter and brighter and brighter.

• 28:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it disappeared. Then I saw a puff of smoke.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said, whoa, whoa. Okay, so you know what just happened?

• 28:52Speaker 01

  No.

• 28:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't know what I just witnessed?

• 28:55Speaker 01

  It sounds like a firework.

• 28:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was headed straight towards me.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. And it disintegrated.

• 29:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it disintegrated, straight towards me. There was no streak. There was no, and I thought to myself. This is the final moment of my life.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  It's the best way you could go. In all fairness. I mean, it's the most appropriate way.

• 29:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are so accustomed to seeing streaks of light in the sky. And some of those are going to be headed straight for you. And they're not going to make a streak. They're just going to get brighter. That when I realized a split second after that had happened. What I just witnessed, I freaked out. I mean, not in a psycho, I just intellectually freaked out. And I said, damn, that's what that's going to look like. So that's the, that's the most terrifying thing to look up and see.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Well, there you go, Raul. That's definitely the most terrifying thing Neil saw.

• 29:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  But what about you? What could?

• 29:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, what else you got?

• 29:57Speaker 01

  It's Ramona Vaughn on Facebook.

• 29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ramona Vaughn.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  Ray Mona, Ray Mona Vaughn.

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ray Mona.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Ray Mona Vaughn. Uh, can you explain why some of the planets in our solar system rotate in the opposite direction?

• 30:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, so the planet Uranus, for example.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 30:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, its axis is tipped 98 degrees. So it's rotating upside down.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  But what determines that being, oh, because it's going backwards?

• 30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, you're asking, I was hoping you were gonna ask that question.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a very intelligent, thought-out question.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If, if, so if you take something turning, and then I turn it, and then I flip it, it's still turning.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who am I to say that's upside down? That's basically your question, right? It's because of the right-hand rule.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Okay, but Uranus doesn't know that.

• 30:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's

• 30:43Speaker 01

  It's not like, hey, Uranus is like, Earth, what, what's going on there?

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  (laughing)

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, I'm a lefty, I'm a lefty.

• 30:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's called the right-hand rule. So, here's how you do it, okay? So hold up your right hand in front of you, like you're gonna shake someone's hand.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good, okay? Now stick your thumb up.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the axis of rotation. Now curl your fingers. Your thumb is pointing north.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm declaring that.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By tradition.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so if you go to the planet and curl your fingers in the direction it's rotating, your thumb is gonna point north on that planet.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? So, if I take Uranus with my thumb up and fingers curled, and I then tip my thumb so it's pointed downwards,

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uranus is cur- turning back the other way. But the north still has to have that relationship to that rotation. So, that's what defines the north of an object, the right-hand rule, just by convention. That's how we can say Uranus is rotating upside down. Now how, why do we think that happens?

• 31:52Speaker 01

  So their south is our north.

• 31:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  So they're Russia, yeah.

• 31:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  (laughing)

• 31:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, they're no, no, I didn't, I, why'd you get me to agree with you on that? Their north is their north. Their north is their north. Um, it just happens to be in everybody else's, uh, occupying the same area as everyone else's southern hemisphere. That's all. But Uranus is, it doesn't have issues here.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Well, Uranus doesn't have much.

• 32:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, all I'm saying is that Uranus, um, so we think in the early solar system, because all the planets would have formed in the same sort of circulating cloud, and so you don't get upside down things in that. Everybody, all the planets are going in the same direction around the sun. That's the direction the sun is rotating, that's the direction Earth is rotating, so everybody's turning the same way, because that's the ener, the, the rotational energy of the original cloud out of which we formed. If you rotate the other way, the way we explain that is you had some bad stuff happen to you early on, you got slammed by some other object in the early solar system that tipped you on your axis.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  So possibly during...

• 32:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We think likely, not just possibly, but even likely.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  From the Big Bang?

• 32:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, way later, when we're forming our own solar system. Big Bang made the whole universe.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait 10 billion years, then you get our solar system.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're a little late.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  We're the dust settling, so to speak.

• 33:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  God, very good.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 33:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very good. So, uh, it got, it got slammed in, in the early solar system, and then it got tipped and has been that way ever since. So, we gotta take another break, uh, and when we're back, more Cosmic Queries Astrophysics Household Edition when we return.

• 34:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Startalk, we're back. Third and final segment of Cosmic Queries, Household Astrophysics Edition. Is that what we call this, household? Everyday, everyday astrophysics.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  Household sounds like a cleaner. Like, these are like tips for you to get the stove shiny again, you know?

• 34:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Using cosmic principles. So Russell Peters, great to have you on the show. So you got all the questions there.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  I got all the questions.

• 34:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give them to me.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  This is from, I don't know if that's a real name, IC Bank Carl.

• 34:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  It's an Instagram name. "What is a fascinating fact or thought that makes your appreciation for the universe overflow?"

• 34:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  That's a deep question.

• 34:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's beautiful.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a beautiful question. Let me just hear that question again.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  I feel we need sax playing in the background when you do it. What is a fascinating fact or thought that makes your appreciation for the universe overflow?

• 35:01Speaker 01

  A fact and a thought are two different things, though.

• 35:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, I know. But here goes, here goes. I bask in our collective ignorance on the frontier of the unknown. I long to look out. Look behind me and say, hey, we got that. And look in front of me and say, we have no idea what that is. And so what keeps me awake at night and has me run back to my office every morning is the prospect that we could be on the heels of a major discovery, answering a question that we might have posed already,

• 35:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  but possibly revealing a question we had not previously known to ask. That's my muse, my cosmic muse. I feel you overflowing.

• 36:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had to give an overflowing answer.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  You're like in LA when it rains. The LA River. So overflowing.

• 36:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Russell, give me more.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  All right. Harry from California would like to know.

• 36:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No last name?

• 36:16Speaker 01

  No.

• 36:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just Harry. Do you know Harry in California?

• 36:17Speaker 01

  No, but he's ScaryLevinedBread is his Instagram name. Harry from California wants to know, what do you think the single most important discovery in the history of physics is and why?

• 36:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh. Ooh, I got this. Okay.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Now, physics or astrophysics, are they two different things?

• 36:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Astrophysics is a subset of physics, but we good.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We good. Some years ago, I wrote an essay. It won an award from the American Institute of Physics, a writing prize award. And the title of the essay was, "In the Beginning." And you're in the chair that I won, and it's stenciled on the back. Plus, I got $3,000, which is totally cool.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  That's... $3,000 is always a good thing to get.

• 37:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Except I don't have the $3,000 anymore, but I do have the chair.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Because you bought this damn chair with it.

• 37:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, here's what I celebrated in that essay. In that essay, I celebrated the existence and the consequence of E equals mc squared on the arc of the universe.

• 37:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There is no understanding of matter and energy in the universe without that equation. Stars would not produce energy. They would have been no Big Bang. Everything we take for granted in this universe

• 37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  owes its foundation to equals mc squared, the equivalence of matter and energy in the universe. For me, that was the greatest discovery because of how much it enabled us to understand. Combine that with quantum physics. Had a lot of good folks working on it in the 1920s. A watershed decade in the history of human understanding of the universe. Quantum physics is a theory of the small. Atoms, molecules, nuclei.

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming to understand how the universe works on its smallest scale made us badass.

• 38:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not only could we have now, well, bad, good and bad, bad. Take the word bad in both contexts.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that empowered us to end civilization as we know it.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The foundation of the nuclear arsenal.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  The atom bomb.

• 38:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, exactly. Yet it gave us our deepest understanding of how the world works. And it is the foundation to the entire information technology revolution. There is no creation,

• 38:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  storage or retrieval of information in the IT universe without an understanding of the quantum.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Now you're saying IT because I'm Indian and that's what my people excel at?

• 39:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's your, your people?

• 39:04Speaker 01

  My people, we excel at IT?

• 39:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aren't you from Toronto?

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I gotta go back to India for my family.

• 39:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got fam in India?

• 39:11Speaker 01

  I do.

• 39:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, cool.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Tunso.

• 39:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tunso, okay. So, uh, yeah, for me equals MC squared. That's, I think, the most profound

• 39:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  fact of the universe. There's some close seconds and thirds in that list, but I put equals MC squared at the top.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  So.

• 39:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what's cool is we learned that in like third grade. That's your first equation, right?

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Well, I, I was never a good student.

• 39:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah?

• 39:32Speaker 01

  I became more curious as I became older. I, I wanted, cause I always questioned everything.

• 39:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's all, that's, that, that's it.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  I know.

• 39:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't need anything else.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  So, wait, but did you find if, I, let's go off topic here, but don't you find it fascinating that? So Albert Einstein, he came up with E equals MC squared, right?

• 39:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Um, but it, in such a short amount of time, like it took us how many, you know, centuries?

• 39:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Millennia.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  Millennia to get there. And then from then to here, we just did so much in a short amount of time.

• 40:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  Like, why were we so dumb before that?

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Like, what made us so stupid before that? And then all of a sudden we're like, oh, bam.

• 40:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Um, it looks that way. It only looks that way. Okay, I have books from five years before equals mc squared. That would have been the year 1900. Okay, I have books. You read those science books. Read those books and say, the discoveries of recent years are so vast and so amazing. We are lucky to be living in special times. Look at the steam, uh, steamships across the ocean. We're laying, uh, telegraph cables. We can now communicate great distances. We have the railroads across the country. The world is smaller than ever before. What a great time to be alive.

• 40:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what they're writing in the year 1900.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that, that's what you sound like today. What a great time to be alive. Look at all the discoveries we've made. All I'm telling you is when you're living in a great time, every year feels like you're living in a special time. Come back in a hundred years, we'll say, those idiots back in 2019? What the hell did they know?

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, yeah, you can go back to 1999 and be like, computer, it was, you know?

• 41:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, or, no, no, no, in 1999, uh, um, no one has any concept yet of a smartphone.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, we had the Palm Pilot, I believe.

• 41:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had, I had a Palm Pilot.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  I had a Palm Pilot and I thought that was pretty good.

• 41:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you thought it was, it was great. I remember, you, you only, I remember 1987 movie, Wall Street.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, in that movie, there's Gecko on the beach in the Hamptons with a cellphone.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's like shoulder mounted cellphone.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, as he's, and I, I remember, cause I saw that movie in first run and I remembered, wow, that's cool. He could walk and there's no wires and he's talking on a phone. And any of us today looking at that and say, what the hell were we thinking?

• 42:12Speaker 01

  I remember my brother's first cell phone was about about the size of that book, that physics energy book.

• 42:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Big fat book on my table.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  It had a handle that's pulled out.

• 42:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  It still had like a receiver to catch, like a

• 42:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh, uh huh.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  And the buttons were separate. It was

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it was portable.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  It was portable. I used to sit in my brother's car and talk to my girlfriend at the time, like 1988, 89.

• 42:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Showing off in front of your girlfriend.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Because he had free minutes after like nine o'clock. So I would use it then. And it wasn't long distance, didn't matter.

• 42:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right. So, so the evidence you're living in special times is that at every moment you think you're living in a special time.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, but okay, let's go with not just equals, let's say from like eight, the mid 1800s. To now, we made some big strides, but what was happening before that, that just we were not doing anything? It just seems like we were not being logical back then.

• 43:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the middle of the 1800s? We discovered and perfected and harnessed electricity.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Right, that's what I'm saying. When all that started.

• 43:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Since, you want to go before electricity?

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, before that. Like, let's go 1700s.

• 43:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Like, we were just like, what were we doing?

• 43:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The steam engine.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 43:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Steam ships. Excuse me.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  All right, all right.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  All right, let's go 1600s.

• 43:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  1600s. We discovered that Earth goes around the sun. The Earth is not in the middle of the known universe.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  What was that guy's name again? That was Galileo?

• 43:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Galileo.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, see?

• 43:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Okay, just checking.

• 43:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, no, there were discoveries.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Making sure you're

• 43:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Making sure I'm on

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Making sure you're legit.

• 43:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm on

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Make sure this isn't just internet's trickery.

• 43:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is true that discoveries happened less frequently.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is less likely that there was an engineering discovery that would change your life at that time. That is true. But think of the mindset. If any discovery changed your life at that time, that was amazing.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because previously, it didn't change anybody's life. It would change it over generations.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Right, that's when things were selling like hotcakes.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  What I'm saying is, people cared about hot cakes at that time.

• 44:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  That was the best part of their day.

• 44:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you go later on, there are advances in medicine, and we discovered cures, and there was, uh, so...

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I mean, what I'm saying is like, they were all farther apart, you know, spread apart more, and they seem like...

• 44:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The seventeen hundreds into the eighteen hundred, we, we invent the chronometer that's seaworthy, so we can figure out longitude on Earth, which has precision navigation. This stuff, you think you live in special times, just go back then and you'll be celebrating that. I'm just saying.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  No, what I'm saying, what I'm saying is, is that I feel like every day we're discovering something new that's gonna change our lives. But now, there's so many things coming in, there's so many things that we're discovering that, that they hold back on us now, like, it's almost like, hold on a second.

• 45:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, this is too much for you, yeah, we gotta be nice, yeah, we gotta like...

• 45:06Speaker 01

  I was talking to a computer guy the other day, and he was telling me about technology that is about to be introduced to the public, he said, "But we've had this for over twelve years."

• 45:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, yeah.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  And now they're introducing it to the public, and they're making it seem like it's the newest, greatest thing, he goes, "But this has been around."

• 45:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they have a marketability of the other stuff, and they wanna get their money's worth out of it.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 45:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The R and D that produced it.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Yes. So there's so much...

• 45:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're holding back, it's an interesting concept. So if, if we keep this up, we could be a century behind what we could be doing, just because they're trying to make a buck off of stuff that they invented a hundred years ago.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 45:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, interesting, this is an interesting conspiracy theory.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  I don't know if it's a conspiracy or if it's just a, a, a hypothesis.

• 45:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We only have a couple of minutes left, we're gonna go into lightning round, okay? So, ask me five questions and I'll give you soundbite answers to them, okay?

• 45:50Speaker 01

  All right, from these questions?

• 45:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They took my bell from me, we're gonna have to simulate this, okay, ready, go.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Okay, here, ready? When the Earth and the Moon become doubly, double tidally locked, what effect could that have on tides and weather patterns?

• 46:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, excellent, so, the Moon is spiraling away from Earth at the rate of a few inches a year. One effect of that is that Earth is slowing down in our rotation, we have to put in leap seconds every now and then. You know what the Moon is trying to do?

• 46:13Speaker 01

  What?

• 46:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's trying to slow us down so that one day on Earth equals one month for the Moon. When that happens, we will always show the same face to the Moon. And when that happens, there will be no tides, at all, tides will end.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Really?

• 46:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, moon tides will end. We'll still have sun tides, but the moon tides will end. Yeah.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  What are moon tides exactly?

• 46:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The moon's stre- the gravity of the moon across the earth

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 46:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  stretches the earth. The part of the earth close to the moon pulls closer to the moon. Part that's farther away is farthest away, and it stretches, and earth rotates inside of those tidal bulges. You're at the beach and the tide comes in, the tide comes out, goes out. Nothing's coming in and out. You are rotating on the solid earth in and out of a tidal bulge caused by the moon and the sun on the ocean surface.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Is it like when you're in a bathtub with water and you start rocking back and forth? The water starts?

• 47:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'll, no, because in that case, it's the water that's moving.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 47:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In this case, it looks like the water's moving, but it's not. It's you rotating into it. Hardly, hardly anyone knows that, because colloquially, we talk about tides moving in and out.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 47:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we are rotating into the tidal bulge and out of the tidal bulge. And, and there'll be a point where the tides won't, the, the tide will just be static and they'll never change.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  So that is inevitable?

• 47:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it, it'll take longer for that to happen than the future life expectancy of the sun. So don't worry about it.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  Okay, so, okay. Well, that, that's a concern.

• 47:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I was supposed to give a short answer to that question.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Well, I know, but.

• 47:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One last one, go.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  All right, uh. How similar must an exoplanet be to earth in order to host human life?

• 47:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you know, I think we can handle a planet that's, has slightly less gravity. You know, if, if you go to a plant, uh, uh, an exoplanet with slightly less gravity and you weigh 190 pounds,

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 48:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  you, you, you're not gonna complain. Slightly more gravity, if your heart is strong, and you weigh 230, 240, you're not gonna complain, so.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Don't take me back up there.

• 48:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's a range. You, you won't be fatter, you'll just weigh more. Your weight is not only how many molecules you have in you.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  It's the density?

• 48:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's also what's the force of gravity operating on you. So you weigh more, but you won't look heavier. You'll just be heavier. So, so.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  So my mass will be the same?

• 48:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, mass will be the same, correct. But your weight can be less or more, depending on what planet you're on. In fact, it's less or more on earth. If you go to the equator and the equator's spinning, uh, at the equator, you're moving a thousand miles an hour.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 48:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, you weigh less on the equator than you do here in New York City. You weigh less on a mountaintop than you do in a cave.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  We should go to the equator, guys.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  They should have weigh-ins for fights at the equator.

• 48:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the equator, at the equator. And if you had a mountain on the equator, you'd weigh less than any other place on Earth.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 48:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got that?

• 48:59Speaker 01

  I'm gonna propose it to the UFC.

• 49:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you have to ascend the mountain. And you'll lose the weight that you would have hoped you'd lose by being in a lower-gravity well just by climbing the mountain. So you're better off just... By the way, it's not all that much weight. You pee out more weight than you would lose by going to the equator. It's ounces, it's not pounds.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  Well, then I'd be pissed. If I went through all that.

• 49:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Russell, we gotta go!

• 49:24Speaker 01

  Why?

• 49:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dude!

• 49:25Speaker 01

  This is so much fun.

• 49:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks, we gotta do this again.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  Yes, please.

• 49:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next time you come through town.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're a world tourist, you know, world performer, but...

• 49:31Speaker 01

  I come to New York all the time.

• 49:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  New York has gotta be in your soul somewhere.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  It's definitely in my soul.

• 49:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very good.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  It's my favorite place on Earth.

• 49:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Russell, great to have you. You've been listening to and possibly even watching StarTalk, and I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Thank you to Russell Peters.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 49:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The one and the only. And as always, I bid you to keep looking.