Cosmic Queries - Expanding Our Perspectives, with Bill Nye – StarTalk All-Stars

If you think this episode will be filled with questions about pot and LSD, you’d be right. But Chuck Nice also throws a few other Cosmic Queries at host Bill Nye, from how to get more women into STEM to the potential impact of discovering life on Mars. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is StarTalk.

• 0:09Bill Nye?

  Welcome, welcome to StarTalk. Bill Nye here. And this week on Cosmic Queries, I'm joined by none other than Chuck Nice. Chuck, it's good to see you.

• 0:17Chuck Nice?

  Always good to see you, Bill.

• 0:19Bill Nye?

  And this week, our CosmicQuery topic

• 0:23Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 0:23Bill Nye?

  is expanding our perspectives.

• 0:26Chuck Nice?

  That's correct.

• 0:29Chuck Nice?

  Is that the sound effect that goes along with expanded perspectives?

• 0:32Bill Nye?

  Well, it's a zoom out.

• 0:33Chuck Nice?

  It's gotta be right.

• 0:33Bill Nye?

  We're zooming out. It's an iris out. So Chuck, you have the great list of Cosmic Queries which come to us from our listeners.

• 0:41Chuck Nice?

  Yes, they do, from all over the internets.

• 0:44Bill Nye?

  And we're gonna expand our perspective.

• 0:46Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we are. We've got some great questions from Facebook, Twitter, StarTalkRadio.net, and every other incarnation where we live.

• 0:56Bill Nye?

  These are electronic media.

• 0:58Chuck Nice?

  These are electronic media.

• 0:58Bill Nye?

  That the kids use.

• 0:59Chuck Nice?

  Yes, that's right.

• 0:59Bill Nye?

  With their electric computer machines.

• 1:01Chuck Nice?

  That's right. And I think we're on everything except Snapchat because, you know...

• 1:06Bill Nye?

  This doesn't last long enough.

• 1:06Chuck Nice?

  It doesn't last long enough. And nobody wants to see us naked. So...

• 1:11Bill Nye?

  It's very troubling, this image. Yeah, lead on.

• 1:14Chuck Nice?

  Did I disturb you there?

• 1:15Bill Nye?

  Just a little.

• 1:16Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so listen, let's just jump into it. You haven't seen the questions. That's the way it works. And it's just really, you know, the great thing about expanding your perspectives is a lot of this is science as well as Bill Nye's actual opinion. So we got a little sci-pinion going on here.

• 1:34Bill Nye?

  Sci-pinion?

• 1:35Chuck Nice?

  Sci-pinion!

• 1:36Bill Nye?

  Quite the coinage.

• 1:36Chuck Nice?

  Yes, alright. So let's go with Nelson Sa, okay, from Facebook. This is a pretty decent question, you know.

• 1:45Bill Nye?

  You have to sound so surprised. Our listeners are a very sophisticated bunch.

• 1:50Chuck Nice?

  You know what, I just realized that that I did sound that way.

• 1:53Bill Nye?

  Well. Hey, this was to let it go, I would have been remiss, so lead on.

• 1:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so Nelson from Facebook says this. Have NASA's zero-gravity experiments had any useful breakthroughs which better our society? So I, I assume that Nelson means outside of space travel, where of course it is directly applicable. But here on Earth, do those zero-gravity experiments do anything for us down here who are living in gravity?

• 2:23Bill Nye?

  I'd say there's one thing specifically. They have led to research in bone health.

• 2:30Chuck Nice?

  Really?

• 2:31Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so these modern bone medicines wouldn't, probably, they probably wouldn't be the way they are without all these discoveries made in zero or so-called microgravity. Where people have very low gravity, your bones, you know, you look at a skeleton.

• 2:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:45Bill Nye?

  They're in the museum, let's say of American Museum of Natural History, for example.

• 2:49Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:50Bill Nye?

  Uh, and they are solid, they look like rocks, but bones get flexed, they're alive. And if you stop putting a load on them, they get weak. And this is one of the things they discovered about astronauts in space for a long time, or even a medium amount of time. They lost their bones, their calcium, they would urinate it away.

• 3:09Chuck Nice?

  Is that because the body just realizes, well, there's no need. I, I'm not, I'm not using this, I don't need it.

• 3:16Bill Nye?

  Yes, and when you say realizes, reacts as though it realized, yeah.

• 3:21Chuck Nice?

  Yes, that's my non-scientific way of saying the body reacts.

• 3:25Bill Nye?

  Body reacts, yeah, and so they now, people take pills to keep their bones going. And so they've speculated, people who are in this world, speculate that you could go to Mars in nearly zero-gravity just by taking the right drugs. You could keep your bones. So this is affecting health on Earth. The other thing. We've learned so much about physics writ large by watching people bounce around in microgravity.

• 3:49Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 3:51Bill Nye?

  No, you just, I mean, you just watch how things happen, you learn about torques and reactions, sort of classical physics, it's a beautiful thing, it's a beautiful thing.

• 3:59Chuck Nice?

  Nice, alright, so, and do any of those observations, especially when it comes to watching objects or people bounce around in zero G, does that do anything in any particular industry, like I'm thinking maybe the automobile industry might be able to, you know, go ahead?

• 4:21Bill Nye?

  Two things people all dreamt of was new alloys

• 4:25Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 4:26Bill Nye?

  of metal.

• 4:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:27Bill Nye?

  That would only be fabricable, if I may coin the adjective, in space, or in nearly zero gravity. That hasn't panned out or alloyed out, and then the other one was sophisticated drug molecules that you could create more easily in zero gravity than you could create on Earth, and while that sounds reasonable, when you're working at a molecular level, gravity isn't the main thing, it's sort of viscosity, just stickiness of molecules, or overwhelms the gravitational effect. With that set, who knows what lies ahead, what discovery is yet to be made? And they study, they, we, people, astronauts, study spiders, who are still able to capture prey even though there's zero gravity.

• 5:12Chuck Nice?

  Even in zero gravity.

• 5:13Bill Nye?

  They have trouble spinning webs.

• 5:15Chuck Nice?

  They have trouble spinning webs, but they somehow can still

• 5:19Bill Nye?

  Well, it's a learning curve, or it's a learning process, spider jumps and misses, spider adjusts, jumps and gets, so there's something going on spider brain-wise.

• 5:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:28Bill Nye?

  Compensating for zero gravity, so what you and I think with our inner ears, and how we roll Or keep from rolling. You think that, we think that you might project that on spiders and other arthropods, but they've got something else going on. There's something else going on. And so you wouldn't really learn that without experiments in zero gravity or, or near zero gravity.

• 5:52Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's great. So zero gravity, there you have it, Nelson, doing great things for us as a society and for spiders as well.

• 6:00Bill Nye?

  For example.

• 6:02Chuck Nice?

  For example.

• 6:03Bill Nye?

  But you know, Spider-Man, one of the things that he can do, he can do whatever a spider can.

• 6:09Chuck Nice?

  This is true.

• 6:10Bill Nye?

  He can spin webs, any size.

• 6:13Chuck Nice?

  Catches thieves just like flies.

• 6:15Bill Nye?

  Look out.

• 6:15Chuck Nice?

  Here comes the Spider-Man.

• 6:18Bill Nye?

  But we've all dreamed of being able to hang upside down without blood going to our brains. Spiders apparently are able to roll.

• 6:25Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 6:26Bill Nye?

  Or hang.

• 6:27Chuck Nice?

  And I have dreamed of hanging upside down and kissing Mary Jane, my girlfriend, who doesn't know that I'm a radioactive superhero. All right, I'm gonna move on now, cuz that was, that was kinda weird and creepy and I don't know why.

• 6:40Bill Nye?

  It wasn't really creepy.

• 6:41Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 6:42Bill Nye?

  It's just a digression. Yes.

• 6:44Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is Chad William Harden. He is coming to us through Facebook from Irvine, California. And he says this, "My question is, can physics explain why time seems to speed up as we get older? Could this have something to do with the entanglement and the more interactions we have with each passing day? Or the expansion of the universe decreasing density and altering time itself?" Chad, I want some of what you are smoking.

• 7:18Bill Nye?

  Well, here's what I say to people like that.

• 7:21Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 7:22Bill Nye?

  Where we start any of these things. Chad, you may be right. But far more likely, it seems to me, is that each day, as you get older, becomes a smaller fraction of your total number of days.

• 7:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:35Bill Nye?

  And so each day blends in with the others more easily. When you're five years old, a day is one in fifteen hundred.

• 7:42Chuck Nice?

  That's a long time. That's right. That's a long time.

• 7:45Bill Nye?

  When you're fifty-five-year-old, it's a day in, you know, fifty-five thousand. Have we talked about thirty thousand days?

• 7:51Chuck Nice?

  No, we haven't.

• 7:52Bill Nye?

  So if things go really well for you, Chuck.

• 7:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:55Bill Nye?

  And you live to be eighty-two and seven weeks.

• 7:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:59Bill Nye?

  A month and three quarters.

• 8:00Chuck Nice?

  A month and three quarters.

• 8:01Bill Nye?

  You get thirty thousand days.

• 8:02Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 8:03Bill Nye?

  Thirty thousand days. When you're five years older, maybe Chad's age, thirty thousand, you know, a lot.

• 8:08Chuck Nice?

  That's a big time. That's a long period of time.

• 8:10Bill Nye?

  But when you get up near it.

• 8:11Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 8:12Bill Nye?

  Doesn't seem like that many at all.

• 8:13Chuck Nice?

  So the days behind you.

• 8:15Bill Nye?

  Are bigger than the days.

• 8:16Chuck Nice?

  Bigger than the days in front of you.

• 8:17Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 8:18Chuck Nice?

  As a result, time seems to speed up.

• 8:21Bill Nye?

  Speed up. That's right.

• 8:22Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 8:23Bill Nye?

  It could be dilation of the time space, spacetime continuum, could be. But more likely is just the arithmetic fraction denominator getting bigger than numerator.

• 8:34Chuck Nice?

  But the truth is, it's, it's a perspective at that point. It really is a pers- your perspective. So that the five-year-old has a different perspective of time than you do.

• 8:43Bill Nye?

  You hope so.

• 8:44Chuck Nice?

  At sixty-five. And so, right, you hope so. Unless you're that Benjamin Bratt, uh, oh, no, Benjamin Button.

• 8:52Bill Nye?

  What did we do to, what did he do to tick you off? He kept getting younger. You're just mad at him.

• 8:57Chuck Nice?

  I'm PO'd. Let me tell you something. I'm so PO'd at that guy. Okay?

• 9:02Bill Nye?

  Take comfort. He's not real.

• 9:04Chuck Nice?

  He's living my dream, though, real or not. Hey, Chad, thanks for the question. That was, uh, that was pretty cool. Uh, so there you have it.

• 9:11Bill Nye?

  Who was, who was he interacting with in the movie?

• 9:14Chuck Nice?

  Who, Benjamin Button?

• 9:15Bill Nye?

  Kate Blanchett, is that right?

• 9:18Chuck Nice?

  Was it, was it Kate Blanchett?

• 9:19Bill Nye?

  Well, that would be a good dream. That's a solid dream. We can say interacting on radio?

• 9:25Chuck Nice?

  Yes, you can. Mm-hmm. Matt Ellie. No, no, I'm doing this wrong. I'm gonna say it's Matt Eli, even though it's spelled E-L-Y.

• 9:35Bill Nye?

  Matt Eli. Matt. Matt, what's your, what's your, what's on your mind prospectively?

• 9:39Chuck Nice?

  Matt is coming from Facebook and he says, is there a moment that sticks out in your memory, Bill? When you have witnessed someone else's cosmic perspective expand when they weren't seeking it, but it happened anyway? Steve Jobs experimented with hallucinogenics and it aided him greatly. So I think Matt is looking for tacit approval from you for him to do psychotropic drugs.

• 10:04Bill Nye?

  Uh, I don't, I don't recommend those.

• 10:07Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 10:07Bill Nye?

  Uh, however, I am a host on this show and, you know, when you work with Neil, wine is often.

• 10:14Chuck Nice?

  Yes, flowing, flowing, yes.

• 10:16Bill Nye?

  That's it. It's happened more than once and it has been with the planet Saturn.

• 10:23Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 10:23Bill Nye?

  I set up a telescope. I have a modest 80 millimeter telescope. It's enough to look at planets.

• 10:29Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it is.

• 10:30Bill Nye?

  And you get a 30 times or better, 50 time magnification. Woman looks through the eyepiece and goes, "Whoa, whoa." Sends me postcards the next day, like, just is in romance with Saturn.

• 10:45Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay, sending you postcards of Saturn.

• 10:47Bill Nye?

  No, no.

• 10:48Chuck Nice?

  Just sending you postcards.

• 10:49Bill Nye?

  Some things, some things.

• 10:49Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 10:50Bill Nye?

  Uh, but it was, uh, it's happened more than once. When people look at the planet Saturn, I claim they have a cosmic moment and your, your perspective is enlarged. People think it's...

• 11:00Chuck Nice?

  Now, why just Saturn? I mean...

• 11:01Bill Nye?

  Well, I think it's because it's inherently, intrinsically so pretty. So, it's such a beautiful object.

• 11:07Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 11:07Bill Nye?

  And there's this moment, it's happened, I, I can't, I cannot count. More than a handful of times when people say, "Did you put a slide in there? Did you put a slide in the other telescope while I wasn't looking?" No, that's it.

• 11:17Chuck Nice?

  That's actually Saturn. You're looking at it.

• 11:20Bill Nye?

  When the planes of the, plane of the rings is especially favorable, it's especially beautiful.

• 11:25Chuck Nice?

  Well, I am sure Carolyn Porco would be very happy to hear you say that.

• 11:29Bill Nye?

  Uh, I hope so. She's the leader of the Cassini team, if you're scoring along with us. Uh, Cassini was the mathematician who predicted the gaps in the rings mathematically and after whom this spacecraft is named.

• 11:44Chuck Nice?

  Right, the Cassini spacecraft, which took pictures and, you know...

• 11:47Bill Nye?

  Still does.

• 11:48Chuck Nice?

  It's still taking pictures.

• 11:49Bill Nye?

  Your tax dollars at work, people.

• 11:51Chuck Nice?

  And you know what? It's a better, uh, use of tax dollars than most of the stuff that's happening. I'm sorry.

• 11:55Bill Nye?

  Testify, Chuck Nice, testify.

• 12:00Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Matt, Eli, there's the answer, man. So, the cosmic perspective expands.

• 12:05Bill Nye?

  Do not recommend the psychotropic.

• 12:07Chuck Nice?

  Right. Don't do, don't do the drugs, man. Buy a telescope and look at Saturn. There's your answer, okay?

• 12:12Bill Nye?

  And you know, Steve Jobs, although he brought success to some companies, he also rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. And one cannot help but wonder if he wouldn't have been even more successful.

• 12:24Chuck Nice?

  If he didn't rub those people the wrong way?

• 12:25Bill Nye?

  Yeah, if he'd, uh, if he'd stayed focused.

• 12:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:30Bill Nye?

  But who knows?

• 12:31Chuck Nice?

  Listen, I've had...

• 12:32Bill Nye?

  We're speculating on, we can't.

• 12:34Chuck Nice?

  I've had my share of problems for rubbing people the wrong way.

• 12:36Bill Nye?

  I am shocked.

• 12:39Bill Nye?

  Your last name is not Chuck Rub the Wrong Way. You're Chuck Nice. People have expectations, or maybe that's the, that's the

• 12:48Chuck Nice?

  That's the problem.

• 12:49Bill Nye?

  You see?

• 12:50Chuck Nice?

  That is the problem.

• 12:51Bill Nye?

  That's where you go light fingered on them. Expect this and you get that. That's right, okay.

• 12:56Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 12:57Bill Nye?

  Chuck Mean.

• 12:58Chuck Nice?

  Chuck Mean, oh my god. Just as, as I digress for a second. There's a club owner here in New York City who calls me that.

• 13:07Bill Nye?

  Calls you Chuck Mean?

• 13:07Chuck Nice?

  Chuck Mean, he was like, "I'm the one who knows the truth. No one knows the truth."

• 13:12Bill Nye?

  That's not bad.

• 13:13Chuck Nice?

  You're Chuck Mean, so.

• 13:15Bill Nye?

  I still, let the record show, I still have great interest in meeting your wife.

• 13:19Chuck Nice?

  You know, I have to tell you, um...

• 13:21Bill Nye?

  Cause she's gotta be extraordinary.

• 13:23Chuck Nice?

  She is an extraordinary woman. And you know what, I gotta tell you, you and I are in the same brook. I still look very much forward to meeting my wife.

• 13:32Chuck Nice?

  And we've been living together for eighteen years.

• 13:35Bill Nye?

  But you work nights.

• 13:36Chuck Nice?

  That's there you go.

• 13:36Bill Nye?

  Very clever of us to night.

• 13:39Chuck Nice?

  This is, uh, Lysandro Gutierrez. Lysandro Gutierrez, uh, must be coming to us from Twitter, although she doesn't say. So, uh, Lysandro wants to know this. "Wow, look at this, man. When you say expanding perspectives, people pretty much go to one place." She says, "Would it be better for marijuana to be available as a prescription drug for those who truly need it, or be available for recreational purposes? What are your thoughts on marijuana?"

• 14:10Bill Nye?

  Well, I'll give you two separate, uh, tines of this fork.

• 14:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay, and, and let me just say before you answer that, that, uh, Lysandro comes to us from Patreon, so, uh, this is, this is a Patreon question, so we must give it special attention, Mr. Nod.

• 14:25Bill Nye?

  Well, uh, there are two tines to this fork, for me. The first one is, in Washington State, in the United States, they claim that their new marijuana laws are working in the following way. They've reduced the number of DUIs, driving under the influence. They don't have, policemen don't have to spend as much time pursuing what used to be petty offenders, when people have a small amount of marijuana with them.

• 14:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:50Bill Nye?

  And, uh...

• 14:50Chuck Nice?

  Not that it's hard to pursue somebody who's high on marijuana, let me just tell you. Yeah.

• 14:55Bill Nye?

  Dude, and, uh...

• 14:57Chuck Nice?

  I would run right now, but, yeah.

• 15:00Bill Nye?

  So it's an income stream instead of a burden. But I will say that's the first time of the fork. The other one, just for me, I do not like the smell. I'm not a fan of marijuana.

• 15:11Chuck Nice?

  See, I'm just, I don't mind the smell of marijuana. I like the smell of cocaine a lot better.

• 15:17Bill Nye?

  Uh, can't hear you, can't hear you. And so the thing is, if marijuana is taxed and we have an education program, because I, I mean, this is anecdotal, Chuck.

• 15:28Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 15:30Bill Nye?

  Just people I've known have smoked marijuana for a long time.

• 15:32Chuck Nice?

  Long time.

• 15:34Bill Nye?

  Some of them are completely unaffected, but some of them just seem like they get stupider.

• 15:39Chuck Nice?

  Well, yes.

• 15:39Bill Nye?

  And so I think it's related, or not related, it's a similar pattern to what you see with alcohol.

• 15:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:45Bill Nye?

  Some people are tolerant of it, some people aren't.

• 15:48Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 15:48Bill Nye?

  And so I'm all for legalizing marijuana so long as we include an education program with it. Like, some people are not gonna be able to do it.

• 15:56Chuck Nice?

  You know, and this is, it's, what you just say right there is very important. And I agree with you exactly in that same way, because I myself used to. And when I say used to-

• 16:06Bill Nye?

  Look, he's fine.

• 16:07Chuck Nice?

  And, no, I'm not, that's the point. I am not fine. I used to smoke marijuana, and it's not that I'm done-

• 16:16Bill Nye?

  That's it, right there.

• 16:17Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 16:17Bill Nye?

  I used to smoke marijuana, and, uh, like, what happened was-

• 16:22Chuck Nice?

  No, so I used to smoke marijuana, but it's, I'm not done with marijuana, it's done with me. So-

• 16:26Bill Nye?

  Uh, you lost me.

• 16:28Chuck Nice?

  So what happened?

• 16:28Bill Nye?

  You took a meeting?

• 16:31Chuck Nice?

  No, it just-

• 16:31Bill Nye?

  It fired you?

• 16:32Chuck Nice?

  It stopped working.

• 16:34Bill Nye?

  Oh, I see.

• 16:34Chuck Nice?

  The desired effect that I wanted was no longer available, and it did not produce the desired effect. And so basically, I would smoke it, become very paranoid, and that would be the entire experience. Me sitting alone in a room going, "There's a lot of people in here," and I was by myself.

• 16:51Bill Nye?

  So you stopped doing it?

• 16:52Chuck Nice?

  So I stopped, because it just, it wasn't working.

• 16:54Bill Nye?

  What was the effect you were going for before?

• 16:57Chuck Nice?

  Uh, that whole, "I would run right now, officer, but yeah."

• 17:01Bill Nye?

  A sense of well-being?

• 17:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly, like-

• 17:03Bill Nye?

  A sense of well-being.

• 17:04Chuck Nice?

  Like, who cares, everything is great, you know? Now, I have a friend who told me, "I'm just smoking the wrong marijuana," but that's a whole nother conversation.

• 17:12Bill Nye?

  That sounds like a pushing person.

• 17:15Bill Nye?

  No, it sounds like a guy who's trying to make a sale.

• 17:17Chuck Nice?

  That's my dealer, right?

• 17:20Bill Nye?

  No, I don't mean to.

• 17:21Chuck Nice?

  No, he wasn't. He's not.

• 17:22Bill Nye?

  Oh, no.

• 17:23Chuck Nice?

  No, no, he's just a guy who always had it and I bought it from him.

• 17:26Bill Nye?

  That's all you're saying.

• 17:27Chuck Nice?

  That doesn't make him a drug dealer, right?

• 17:29Bill Nye?

  And so with that thought, uh, these, we've expanded our perspectives somewhat and we're going to expand them further in the coming minutes here on StarTalk. Appreciate everybody who's sending your perspectival questions in and we will join you, Bill Nye and Chuck Nice, right after this.

• 17:48Bill Nye?

  Welcome back. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. This is Bill Nye hosting this week and I'm joined by a man with extraordinary cosmic perspective, none other than Chuck Nice.

• 17:59Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 18:00Bill Nye?

  And we are taking your, uh, input with respect to a cosmic perspective.

• 18:08Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 18:09Bill Nye?

  And we finished the last segment with some mind expansion questions about, uh, smoking marijuana and the role of the pusher person in Chuck's life at one time.

• 18:21Chuck Nice?

  Which, by the way, I, I think from now on, the pushing person is the new term to be used for anyone who is a purveyor of substances.

• 18:30Bill Nye?

  Well, it's politically correct. You can't go generalizing. You might think the pusher man was a guy, but it could be.

• 18:40Chuck Nice?

  It's a pushing person.

• 18:41Bill Nye?

  A woman.

• 18:41Chuck Nice?

  I like it. I love it. Hey, you know what? Since we're on that, since we're back on that theme, I gotta ask this question. Uh, this is Matt Eli again, who, who sent in.

• 18:52Bill Nye?

  He's prolific.

• 18:52Chuck Nice?

  He is.

• 18:53Bill Nye?

  If Matt's a man.

• 18:54Chuck Nice?

  And you never know, cause it could be, uh, could be Matilda. Um, this is what Matt wants to know. Have you, Bill Nye, ever experimented with any perception altering drugs or aids that have expanded your perspective?

• 19:16Bill Nye?

  No. I mean, I've enjoyed alcoholic beverages. I don't know if that's expanded my perspective. It's definitely reduced my inhibitions.

• 19:29Bill Nye?

  But I don't know if that's the same as expanding perspective.

• 19:31Chuck Nice?

  I am picturing a shirtless Bill Nye up on a bar right now, baby. That's, uh, yes.

• 19:42Bill Nye?

  With that said, I've tried on the glasses. I've tried closing my eyes for extended periods. Trying to turn off all your senses. I've tried meditation with extraordinary input or techniques with words to say, thoughts to think, breaths to feel on your upper lip. I've tried all this stuff. But no, I never really had my reality expanded, my perception of reality expanded, gotta say.

• 20:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 20:10Bill Nye?

  Oh, I've tried. But I haven't tried as hard, like, I knew people who take LSD.

• 20:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:15Bill Nye?

  And they've had, they claim, you know, good experiences. But they all come back a little afraid of it.

• 20:21Chuck Nice?

  Okay, yes. I was gonna say, there's a, there are a lot of people who have good experiences with LSD, or even if it's not LSD, like, just any hallucinogenic, like mushrooms, or... And they, they tend to like it. And, and then at the same time, they are very leery. Like, they don't, they would never say, "Yo, man, you should do that." Like, I don't, I don't know too many people who are like, "LSD? Man, you gotta do that." I don't know too many people like that.

• 20:52Bill Nye?

  It's not my, it's not my thing. But I'm, you know, people, I am dull and boring. I mean, I have an unexpanded life. Give me a perspective, expand me.

• 21:00Chuck Nice?

  Okay. All right, well, let's move on. Uh, this is from Cosmos Matters. This is the person, that's what they call themselves.

• 21:07Bill Nye?

  It may not be, it could be his real name.

• 21:09Chuck Nice?

  Cosmos Matters. That's true. Cosmos is a real name.

• 21:13Chuck Nice?

  Uh, from Facebook. What waste management strategies are they considering when people go to Mars? I sometimes think we need to save Earth before potentially polluting and messing up another planet. So he is assuming that when we go to Mars, we are going to screw it up.

• 21:34Bill Nye?

  Well, he raises a very important point. He raises a very important point, a key point, something to consider. You don't want to contaminate another planet, especially if you're going there as an explorer to look for signs of life.

• 21:47Chuck Nice?

  Prime Directive.

• 21:48Bill Nye?

  The Prime Directive. And the Prime Directive is of course spiritually reasonable. Don't let other people, don't mess up other people's societies. But technically or scientifically, it's a guideline, a very good, strong guideline. If you're going to try to look for evidence of some Martian microbe, a Mars probe, you don't want to bring a bunch of microbes from Earth that would contaminate them. You wouldn't be able to tell one from the other. That said, I will just remind everybody, it is my opinion, as you pointed out earlier, Chuck, my opinion, Bill Nye's opinion is so often correct. That you don't, you don't really want to go live on Mars. You don't want to colonize Mars.

• 22:29Chuck Nice?

  Now, listen, see, you say that, Bill, but you have to understand that you say this in the face of an actual lust for living on Mars. There is a living La Vida Loca Mars movement right now. You got the movie Martian.

• 22:48Bill Nye?

  Loved it. But he's not colonizing it. He's doing scientific research and he fully intended to come home.

• 22:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:56Bill Nye?

  Right? He's like, oh, I can't wait to live where I can't breathe or drink or eat. Cool. But you do want to go find out because everybody, we are living, it's 2015 as we record this.

• 23:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 23:07Bill Nye?

  In the next hundred years, humankind will know whether or not there was living, there are living things on Mars, or were living things on Mars. Humankind will probably know whether or not there are living things on Europa, the moon of Jupiter, with twice as much seawater as the Earth. I want to do it now. I want to do this exploration now. And as far as waste management on Mars, the main thing I would say, Cosmos, is you've got to conserve water. You don't want to waste water. About 90% of human waste is water. So you want to recover all that. When you go to set up your Mars base, to do your scientific research, to learn about Mars's past and prepare for our future, to have a safe journey in the joy of discovery,

• 23:52Bill Nye?

  we also hope you keep track of all that water. It's precious on Mars.

• 23:56Chuck Nice?

  You know, it's kind of precious here on Earth, too, if you kind of look around. I mean, do you think that that's something we should be worried about here?

• 24:03Bill Nye?

  Oh, Chuck. I did not cue Chuck up on this, people. Yes, those are one, the water is one of four's, Bill Nye's Big Four.

• 24:13Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 24:14Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 24:15Chuck Nice?

  I did not know Bill Nye had a Big Four.

• 24:16Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 24:17Chuck Nice?

  I must hear all four of them now.

• 24:18Bill Nye?

  What we want is electrical storage, a way to store electricity.

• 24:23Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 24:24Bill Nye?

  We need electrical transmission.

• 24:26Chuck Nice?

  All right. So once you've proved it, you've got to...

• 24:28Bill Nye?

  Improved transmission.

• 24:29Chuck Nice?

  Get it from place to place.

• 24:30Bill Nye?

  We waste about six, or lose about 6% in transmission. That's huge. There's enough to power Montana, or Saskatchewan, or some exotic place.

• 24:36Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 24:37Bill Nye?

  And then, then we need a new policy. We need to penalize or incentivize people to not make carbon dioxide. We need a fee on carbon dioxide. This is a big policy, it's a big, heavy thing. Then the fourth thing is, clean water for everyone on Earth. So if you can come up with a way, Cosmos, out there, if you can come up with a way to desalinate seawater.

• 25:01Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 25:02Bill Nye?

  More cheaply than we are able to do. I mean, we do it. But if you could do it more cheaply, and by cheaply I mean using less energy.

• 25:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:09Bill Nye?

  You could get rich and change the world, improve the quality of life for humans everywhere. Yes. I must pull back. I must pull back.

• 25:18Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 25:19Bill Nye?

  And I cannot help but point out that these Big Four are described in my upcoming book, Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World. Comes out November 10th. There are 20 in a carton. They make great gifts.

• 25:33Chuck Nice?

  Pick up a carton today. Pick up some eggs.

• 25:36Bill Nye?

  If you want them autographed, I know a guy.

• 25:38Chuck Nice?

  There you go. All right, Cosmos, good question there. There you have it. Let's save water on Mars and on Earth.

• 25:48Bill Nye?

  When you go to Mars in waste management, you want to save water.

• 25:50Chuck Nice?

  Save water, that's the number one thing, and let's do it here.

• 25:53Bill Nye?

  It's a number one, it's a thing.

• 25:54Chuck Nice?

  It's the thing.

• 25:54Bill Nye?

  It's an important thing. You've got to save air, too.

• 25:57Chuck Nice?

  That makes sense, because I hear there's not a lot of it.

• 25:59Bill Nye?

  But they want to like, we're going to institute resource utilization, ISRU. We're going to make oxygen from the regolith. Okay, it's just, it's just not that easy. Cool.

• 26:11Chuck Nice?

  See, when you say it's not that easy, what I hear is, that ain't happening.

• 26:15Bill Nye?

  Well, no, we'll see. We're going to run tests on the 2020 rover. We're going to get started on this.

• 26:19Chuck Nice?

  All right, cool. That's cool, that's cool. All right, let us go to, let's go to another Patreon question, okay? And for those of you who don't know, Patreon is at patreon.com where you can go. And you can help StarTalk sustain this wonderful programming that we bring to you and be a sponsor of the show. And we pay special attention to you because you have made an investment like Joel.

• 26:46Bill Nye?

  So you're saying people are buying their way on the air?

• 26:49Chuck Nice?

  That's exactly what I'm saying, and I have no problem with it.

• 26:52Bill Nye?

  They're patrons and supporters, lead on.

• 26:55Chuck Nice?

  That's right. And this is from Joel Cherico, and he's at Cherico Pottery and from St. Joseph, Minnesota. And this is what Joel wants to know, Bill. Smartphones and computers give us amazing access to information, but come with financial burdens. Should powerful new technology be made available to everyone? Or is it fair that only those who can afford new technology are the ones that can use it? Wow, this is really opinion, this is straight up Bill Nye's opinion. Kind of like the art question, the technology question. When art is made, is it for everyone? Or is it just for the rich people who can afford to commission it? When technology is made, is it for everyone?

• 27:39Chuck Nice?

  Or is it just for those yuppies who actually need to do stuff with apps?

• 27:44Bill Nye?

  This, so you're saying that's my opinion?

• 27:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 27:47Bill Nye?

  It sounded like Chuck's to me.

• 27:49Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm saying, that's the question.

• 27:50Bill Nye?

  Well, it's good.

• 27:51Chuck Nice?

  What's your opinion?

• 27:51Bill Nye?

  I kid because I love. So what you want is for everyone to have access to the internet. You want everyone to have access to the world's information. This is to say, this doesn't mean all the information is free, but you have access to it. For example, if you buy a book online. Right. You want the author to be, uh, to be compensated. Of course. So you have to buy it, and there's the electronic scheme to do that. But I remind everybody that the, in the example of the post office, the United States Post Office, you can send a letter from Miami to, uh, what's another exotic place? Tampa. Okay.

• 28:34Bill Nye?

  For the same price, you can send a letter from Tampa to Juneau, Alaska. It's the same price. And the reason is not because our forefathers, the drafters of the Constitution were crazy. It's to enable people to vote, to engage the whole country, or ultimately the entire planet, in the same means to communicate. The reason the post office was established was to have communication for everyone in the same way. Now that we have the internet, which is the electronic equivalent of the post office, we want to include everyone. And people have talked quite a bit in my business of science education and education writ large, about the digital divide. Yes.

• 29:19Bill Nye?

  You don't want to have people excluded from participating in information-based, uh, events or, uh, information exchanges, uh, without, uh, because of money. With, and so this is why we want to not have, we want to have a, a neutral internet, where everyone gets access. This is to say, um, it's not free. And the way, the way it would be paid for is through taxes. In the same way, we expect sewers to work. Water in the United States, water out of the tap to be drinkable.

• 29:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:57Bill Nye?

  Or if you want to change that.

• 29:58Chuck Nice?

  Whether you can afford it or not.

• 29:59Bill Nye?

  Yeah, right, it's there. Uh, in the same way, everybody gets, has access to electricity, you can control how much you buy. We want everyone to have access to the information. So that's, to leave people out based on money is, information is power. It is really, it sounds cool, but.

• 30:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so now, let me.

• 30:18Bill Nye?

  It is not in everybody's best interest.

• 30:21Chuck Nice?

  All right, let me just follow up, uh, on Joel's, uh, question with this, okay? You're talking about net neutrality, uh, net neutrality. Why, when you say everyone should have access to the information? The, the question, me as a soulless capitalist pig, who needs to make money no matter what.

• 30:40Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 30:41Chuck Nice?

  Because that's my God-given right as an American.

• 30:44Bill Nye?

  All right, yes.

• 30:44Chuck Nice?

  Why, why do these people, why should they have access to the internet when they can't afford it? I mean, what is the?

• 30:51Bill Nye?

  Hold on, let's make it affordable.

• 30:53Chuck Nice?

  What is the benefit?

• 30:54Bill Nye?

  What's the benefit of, what's the downside of having people not have access to sewers?

• 30:59Chuck Nice?

  Uh, we have poop in the streets.

• 31:01Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so in the same way, if you have people excluded from the goings on in society, you're gonna have people that become a burden rather than contributors.

• 31:10Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 31:11Bill Nye?

  And this is, I'm first to admit, you know, this progressive, bleeding-heart liberal, liberal, crazy, thoughtless, two chickens in every pot perspective, but believe me, if you exclude people.

• 31:22Chuck Nice?

  I'm hungry, I don't know why, I'm very hungry now.

• 31:24Bill Nye?

  If you exclude people from what goes on in the community electronically, you're, you're, there will become a burden rather than contributors. Just imagine you're trying to hire somebody who, who goes home and cannot receive email from you, or cannot communicate with you, or does not have a phone. That person is much harder to employ.

• 31:43Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 31:44Bill Nye?

  And so, uh, that person then will ultimately pay less taxes.

• 31:49Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 31:49Bill Nye?

  Or none, and will become a burden on you.

• 31:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:52Bill Nye?

  And so this is, uh, i- While this is obvious to me and not other people is charming.

• 31:57Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so.

• 31:58Bill Nye?

  But who do we hate more than the cable company? I mean, very few things. And so you want to, you want to straighten that out and make it competitive.

• 32:08Chuck Nice?

  You are so, boy, you touched the nerve there.

• 32:10Bill Nye?

  So we want to straighten that out and make it reasonably priced and competitive. And this gets into, as we say, just like a machine should have all the parts it needs and no more, we want our government regulations, our government, rather, to enact and enforce all the regulations it needs, but no more.

• 32:29Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha. All right, hey, Joe, what a great.

• 32:31Bill Nye?

  That's why we have governments and legislatures and we argue about stuff.

• 32:35Chuck Nice?

  No, all that stuff should go away. I'm sorry, as a libertarian, I'm just saying there should be no regulation. People should do whatever they want to do.

• 32:41Bill Nye?

  So they build their own telephone lines, their own routers.

• 32:45Chuck Nice?

  Can and a string, Bill. Can and string.

• 32:49Bill Nye?

  Who paves the road out front of your place? You hire people.

• 32:53Chuck Nice?

  Gravel? Get yourself some gravel, you got yourself a road.

• 32:57Bill Nye?

  Where do you get gravel? From gravel co. Your other libertarian buddy who sells gravel.

• 33:04Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 33:05Bill Nye?

  Okay, well, does he get his gravel from a glacial till? Or does he get it by stealing it from the other libertarian gravel.com? Or we be gravel?

• 33:16Chuck Nice?

  I don't know, I think you're, I think you're just patronizing me to blow holes in my argument here.

• 33:20Bill Nye?

  Well, I'm just reminding us all that we live in communities and it's, communities are where you're, where you're productive. Communities are where you have radio shows. Communities are where people work together to create wonderful things like Star Talk Radio with Chuck Nice and your host, Bill Nye. And we will be back right after this. Welcome back, welcome back to Star Talk Radio. Bill Nye hosting this week. I'm joined today by none other than Chuck Nice.

• 33:48Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 33:50Bill Nye?

  And we are doing your. Questions, we are answering your questions from an expanding of perspective point of view. Now, this fall, I guess earlier this month, that we had Comic Con in New York.

• 34:04Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we did.

• 34:05Bill Nye?

  Which is sort of Halloween on the Hudson.

• 34:08Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 34:10Bill Nye?

  So, we have some, uh, expanding of our perspective queries in Cosmic Query Sense from Comic Con.

• 34:19Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 34:20Bill Nye?

  Is that true Chuck?

• 34:20Chuck Nice?

  That is correct. So, we were, uh, we were out at Comic Con and, you know, we, uh, took a microphone and got some people who were fans of the show to ask us, uh, you know, some questions.

• 34:31Bill Nye?

  So, we could say, roll that digital recording.

• 34:34Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. That's all we have to do is roll the tape and, uh, let's see, uh, who it is and what they want to know.

• 34:41Speaker 03

  Leora from New York. Hey Bill, how much of humanity's trash is currently on Mars?

• 34:48Bill Nye?

  How much of humanity's trash is currently on? Well, they're very valuable scientific instruments. Do you want to call the parachute that landed the Spirit and the Opportunity Rovers, are those trash? Are those glorious artifacts of humankind dedicated to exploring the solar system so that we would know the cosmos and our place within it? Or are those refuse? I would say there's no human trash on Mars.

• 35:14Chuck Nice?

  No human trash on Mars?

• 35:15Bill Nye?

  Not yet.

• 35:16Chuck Nice?

  And that's because you are not a Martian. If you walked out of your front door on Mars and you saw a big parachute laying on your lawn, you'd be like, who put that trash there?

• 35:26Bill Nye?

  Or you'd say, wow, how do I take advantage of this wonderful, wonderful alien material?

• 35:31Chuck Nice?

  That's true too. Yes, I guess.

• 35:32Bill Nye?

  Wow, this is a gift from the sky. Cool.

• 35:37Chuck Nice?

  The gods must be crazy. Okay. All right, well, there you have it.

• 35:40Bill Nye?

  Exactly. Instead of a Coke bottle.

• 35:42Chuck Nice?

  Instead of a Coke bottle, it's a big giant parachute. That's pretty cool.

• 35:45Bill Nye?

  Or sky crane.

• 35:48Chuck Nice?

  All right, excellent, excellent. No trash on Mars, no human trash on Mars as of yet.

• 35:53Bill Nye?

  Here to four.

• 35:54Chuck Nice?

  Here to four. All right, I, uh, let's go with this name here. Okay?

• 36:02Bill Nye?

  That's an unusual name. How do I spell that?

• 36:09Chuck Nice?

  All right. Dietrich Iswig Chaya or Chaya.

• 36:16Bill Nye?

  All right, Dietrich Chaya.

• 36:17Chuck Nice?

  Dietrich Chaya, okay, from Facebook. I am from Alaska.

• 36:24Chuck Nice?

  My question for you, Bill, is what do you believe our next step in space exploration is or should be? We've been to the moon, but we haven't gone in a little while. Is our next step another trip to the moon? Is it perhaps an asteroid? Mars? Europa? Where do you think it is? And where do you think it should be?

• 36:48Bill Nye?

  I'm listening to the nature of your question. I think you mean, what's the next place for people? Because in 2020, we're going to land another rover on Mars.

• 36:57Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 36:57Bill Nye?

  Shortly after that, we hope by 2023, we'll have a mission orbiting, a spacecraft orbiting Europa, the very thing you brought up. 2016, Juno will be in orbit around Jupiter. Cassini's still working Saturn and so on. But what we at the Planetary Society propose is that NASA get its self organized.

• 37:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 37:18Bill Nye?

  So that we send humans in orbit around Mars in the year 2033. This is an especially favorable orbital opportunity. I mean, it's not magical, but it's favorable. And we would have enough time to build the architecture. And architecture is space words for a bunch of rockets and spacecraft ship things that you would use to get humans all the way to Mars in orbit around Mars. And then probably four years later, you would land on Mars. In 2033, that orbital mission might land on Phobos. And the word land, Phobos is a moon of Mars. It has so little gravity. How little does it have? It's more like Lasso Phobos more than land on it. And so this would be an extraordinary thing.

• 38:00Bill Nye?

  And the claim of the Planetary Society, we sponsored a workshop. In the end of March, beginning of April this year, we brought in 70 of the world's experts, people expert on what it costs to explore space and experts on NASA's budget. And we could do this only adjusting for inflation. The key thing would be to agree that we've actually agreed to actually agree actually, to actually not support the International Space Station with NASA money after 2024.

• 38:31Chuck Nice?

  So, wait a minute, is that the condition under which we would be able to go to Mars? Is that we no longer support the IS?

• 38:39Bill Nye?

  Well, without an increase in the budget.

• 38:41Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay, without an increase in the budget.

• 38:42Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah, if you just leave the budget just the way, adjusting only for inflation, which is an increase, but an expected one.

• 38:48Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:48Bill Nye?

  You could do it, we could do it, and this would be an extraordinary thing. And as my, what does he, regular host Neil deGrasse Tyson often remarks, if we were really people going to Mars, there would be a line around the block of people who wanted to go. And what we would do is go there to look for signs of life. If we were to discover life on this other world, it would change this world. It would change the way everyone feels about his or her place in space.

• 39:17Chuck Nice?

  Would it now? Uh, uh, uh, let's, uh...

• 39:19Bill Nye?

  I'm not saying we'd start driving on the left.

• 39:21Chuck Nice?

  I know, but I'd...

• 39:22Bill Nye?

  I'm saying it would be, it would just get to you in the same way Copernicus showed, the earth goes around the sun, it changed everything, not in a weekend.

• 39:30Chuck Nice?

  No, you're right, because, because it took quite some time for that to happen. So what would be, in your estimation, when you talk about expanding perspectives?

• 39:38Bill Nye?

  Which is what we're talking about here on Cosmic Courier and StarTalk Radio.

• 39:41Chuck Nice?

  Right. What would be the number one perspective or change in people's perspective? Okay, what would the delta be for that perspective in humankind? Because you found some microbes on Mars, and we're not talking about, you know, uh, the, just the microbes that you don't have on Earth. What does that do to the perspective?

• 40:05Bill Nye?

  Life is more likely than you thought. So there's gotta be something else out there. Right. And it's once again, this humbling nature of astronomy. You think you're the center of the universe? No, first of all, you think your territory, the map that you draw is the whole thing. Then you go over some mountains and there's some other people whose skin's slightly different color and their faces are a little different shape and you go, dude. We're in Detroit. Yeah. For example. Then you find out, you expect the sun to go around your flat place. But then it turns out, no, you go around the sun. And wait, the sun isn't the only star. Wait, there's billions of stars. Wait, there are things that look like stars that are actually groups of billions of stars.

• 40:49Bill Nye?

  And you're in one of them. And you suck because you are nothing. You are smaller than you could even at first imagine. But then you find out, not only do you suck that way, you suck because there's life on another planet right down the solar systemic street. Wow. And somehow it's your fault. No, wait. Then the question would be, are those things on Mars, like us, to wit, do they have DNA? Okay. If they have DNA, what would that mean to medicine? It would mean DNA's always there? DNAs, or does it mean, obviously? When Mars was hit with an impactor, SFX coming. That's Mars getting a bitch slapped from the cosmos.

• 41:34Bill Nye?

  Then, whoo, rock went into outer space, but you're in space, there's no sound, just. And then landed on Earth. Right. Fiery entry, shhh. And then you and I are descendants of Martian microbes. Right. That is extraordinary. Same out. That is wild. And that would change, I hope, the way you feel about it, what it means to be a living thing. And I hope it gives you just that much more reverence. Right. For the cosmos and our place within it. It is worth exploring. This, the NASA budget now is 0.4% of the federal budget. Less than half a percent. And you could keep it right there, just adjusting for inflation, and you could change the world. Then you engage international partners.

• 42:19Bill Nye?

  Canadian Space Agency, European Space Agency. Right. Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency. ISRO, Indian Space Research Organization, Chinese Space Administration. And here we are, changing the world together.

• 42:35Chuck Nice?

  Nice, nice.

• 42:36Bill Nye?

  I'm okay, I'm okay.

• 42:37Chuck Nice?

  Wow, you know, that was, that was real.

• 42:39Bill Nye?

  I'm okay Chuck, I'm okay.

• 42:40Chuck Nice?

  Do you need some water? Because that was fantastic.

• 42:41Bill Nye?

  I'm all right, I'm all right. Let's get another.

• 42:43Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's.

• 42:43Bill Nye?

  Another question from Comic Con.

• 42:44Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's do a Comic Con question, shall we? Uh, let's hear it.

• 42:48Speaker 04

  Hey Bill, this is Sam Eiffling. I live in Brooklyn. Met Comic Con. Had this thought, and I want to know what you think about it. There must be a finite number of possible molecules that we could catalog and understand in the same way that we've done with human genes. Is there any chance we will ever have a full catalog of all the possible, let's say, organic molecules available to us on planet Earth?

• 43:17Bill Nye?

  Hmm. That's a great question, and I'll say people are pursuing this in plants. There are people at the Boyce-Thompson Institute at Cornell that are working hard to assay or assay all the different molecules in plants that people didn't realize were there. But I have to say, from a practical standpoint, you probably never get every molecular combination because, because we just can't think of them. And when you start talking about polymers, do you count ultra-high molecular polyethylene, like Tupperware? And then do you count plastic wrap, food film?

• 43:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:55Bill Nye?

  Which is a different, like, then it gets to be a question. You know Chuck, that question is sort of overwhelming. But nevertheless, I feel a jolt, and by that, I mean, I think it's time for the lightning round.

• 44:10Chuck Nice?

  There you have it. It is time for the lightning round. Shall we?

• 44:14Bill Nye?

  Yes, this is where you hit me with a question. Answer really quickly, then I hit the bell. Take it Chuck.

• 44:17Chuck Nice?

  This is Bethany DiCaprio, coming from Facebook. Here she says, "What do you think it would take to unite the human beings on this planet?" Big question.

• 44:31Bill Nye?

  Working together over the next century and a half to resolve climate change.

• 44:36Chuck Nice?

  Wow, good one. Kelly Elizabeth Claus from Facebook wants to know, "What are your thoughts on toys and games such as Goldie Box that are recently being developed and marketed towards young girls to help foster an early interest in engineering?" Which you are, Bill, you're an engineer. What, what do you think about that?

• 44:54Bill Nye?

  Oh, it's terrible. No, wait, it's great. Come on, it's great. The more the merrier. Let's go. We'll get, we'll double the number of brains applied to engineering problems and we will improve the quality of life for humans everywhere. What's not to love?

• 45:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay, and follow-up question. Do you think that those games work?

• 45:10Bill Nye?

  Uh, time will tell. It's hard to say right away. But intuitively, if the parents are excited about it, then the kid will get excited about it because kids watch what the parents do and emulate them. For better or for worse, that's the way it is. And full disclosure, everybody, Chuck Nice has three kids.

• 45:30Chuck Nice?

  But I'm not a role model. Okay, this one comes from, this one comes from Gabe Dominguez on Facebook. "How can we get more women into STEM careers? At what point in life do you think the little girls stop believing that they can become astronauts or inventors?"

• 45:45Bill Nye?

  The key may be algebra. By engaging people, students in school, when, in letters representing numbers much sooner than we do now. So that when you take formal algebra in 7th grade, let's say, in the United States, the stakes aren't as high. Apparently, algebra not only enables you to think abstractly about numbers, it enables you to think abstractly about all sorts of things. And so, but in a formal fashion. And that's what, uh, so we could just up the algebra budget just a little bit and see what happens. Keep in mind, it takes years for these things. Now, the European Space Agency is largely run by women, but it took many years or decades for those people to work their way up through the brittle glass ceilings.

• 46:31Chuck Nice?

  There you have it. Okay, Bradley Dean Summerfield from Facebook wants to know this. Is there a room in our current understanding of the universe for the possibility that our consciousness may in fact reside somewhere in space and not necessarily within the brains of our bodies? Wow.

• 46:49Bill Nye?

  In a word, no. No, because if you hang around people who grow old and die, it certainly seems like as they lose their faculties, which many of us do, it certainly seems like it's a chemical thing going on in your brain. But when I watch science fiction, when I read my science fiction, it would be great to put your consciousness in some receptacle, as long as I still could feel the whole thing.

• 47:15Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that was oddly sexual. I don't know why.

• 47:18Bill Nye?

  Talk on right. That's exactly what we're talking about, people. What did you think I was talking about?

• 47:22Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go.

• 47:23Bill Nye?

  And he's the guy with three kids. Are you down with cause and effect, Chuck? We've got time for one more question. Hit it.

• 47:28Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. Kayla Lynn Yetman on Facebook wants to know this. As we explore the universe more and more in search of life and answers, if we did encounter new life, microbial or intelligent or ascension, how do you think the world proceeds from that point forward?

• 47:44Bill Nye?

  We would think differently about what it means to be alive in the universe, in the cosmos, and we would have more respect for it. And that would improve the quality of life, quality of life for humans everywhere. Let's work together and change the world. This has been StarTalk with me, Bill Nye, your host, joined by Chuck Nice, together.

• 48:00Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 48:01Bill Nye?

  Keep looking up.