Cosmic Queries – Flapjack Galaxy Grab Bag

Would aliens think we are smart? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice answer grab bag questions on Chandrayaan-3, entangled particles in black holes, the shape of the galaxy, and more.

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

• 0:00Chuck Nice?

  Oh my God, the aliens are Swifties.

• 0:04Chuck Nice?

  That's why they came here. That's why they came. They couldn't get concert tickets on their world.

• 0:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

• 0:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Got Chuck Nice on the line. Chuck, how you doing, man?

• 0:31Chuck Nice?

  Hey, what's happening, Neil?

• 0:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. This is a cosmic queries.

• 0:35Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is so popular. I'm amazed just how many people like to listen to other people's questions and usually they probably got some questions of their own.

• 0:45Chuck Nice?

  Inquiring minds want to know.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so this is a grab bag on any subject at all.

• 0:49Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do we solicit grab bag? Or is this just leftovers from other ones that were not grab bags?

• 0:55Chuck Nice?

  Uh, no. Well, we actually ask people, do they want to send us some grab bag questions?

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:01Chuck Nice?

  Um, there you have it. We ask.

• 1:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Favorite because they're so random, you know?

• 1:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, that's what makes it fun, you know? I think they're hip to it, uh, to that as well, when you

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 1:10Chuck Nice?

  You see. Well, let's jump into it, shall we?

• 1:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Jump. And these are Patreon supporters.

• 1:15Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's right. Yeah.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have exclusive access to the question line here and

• 1:20Chuck Nice?

  Well, you know, so many people were sending in questions that we've had to figure out a way to cull it down and we figured the best way to cull it down is to also make some money.

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um,

• 1:33Chuck Nice?

  You say it was five dollars a month, man. And you can ask whatever you would like. No, the truth is that, uh, you know, we need support through Patreon and we figure why not make this a Patreon perk as a reward for the people who are so gracious as to support us. All right, here we go. This is Victor Ray Rutledge who says, hey, Chuck and Neil.

• 1:57Chuck Nice?

  Here's my question out of Texas. A truly weird space in the multiverse. Since humans can vaguely see infrared and ultraviolet radiation, what other things in the physical world do we just ignore? Since they have always been ignored.

• 2:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, beautiful question. So I write about this in, I forgot which book.

• 2:21Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that is the most humble brag I've ever heard. Oh, my God. You're insufferable. You know, I wrote about this once. And I can't quite recall which one of my many publications, where I place this particular information.

• 2:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I guarantee it's in Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries.

• 2:44Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But there's a chapter in there called Coming to Our Senses.

• 2:48Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 2:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's all about the fact that we have our traditional five senses.

• 2:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That we know and love. And consider that before science took on technology and engineering.

• 3:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why would you think that the world had stuff in it that you couldn't sense?

• 3:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or see, or touch, or taste, or feel. There's no reason to even have that thought.

• 3:17Chuck Nice?

  Because it's all happening. I'm seeing it all. I'm touching it all. I'm feeling it all. I've tasted it all.

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and.

• 3:23Chuck Nice?

  You're telling me there's a whole.

• 3:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you're religious, why would God make you have all these senses that were, that when you're still, when you're practically blind to what's actually happening out there?

• 3:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so there was strong philosophical, cultural, emotional requirements that our five senses saw everything. Anton van Leeuwenhoek.

• 3:45Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 3:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dutch optical lens maker.

• 3:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He had the sense. Who do I get to say that now? He had the, the, the curiosity to say, I wonder what would happen if I looked at a drop of pond water in my microscope?

• 4:06Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 4:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To even have that thought. It's just water.

• 4:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 4:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why are you looking at a transparent liquid? There can't be anything interesting there.

• 4:14Chuck Nice?

  And that was the day that he stopped drinking water forever.

• 4:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Footnote to this.

• 4:27Chuck Nice?

  That was.

• 4:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He found his dehydrated body in the corner of the closet.

• 4:31Chuck Nice?

  Looked at daddy, he was just like, oh my God. Don't ever do this. Don't ever put this stuff inside of you.

• 4:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He saw all kinds of creatures. Yeah. I love what he could, you know what word he used to describe him?

• 4:45Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 4:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anemicules.

• 4:47Chuck Nice?

  Anemicule.

• 4:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Prettily a-swimming.

• 4:50Chuck Nice?

  Prettily a-swimming.

• 4:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh.

• 4:53Chuck Nice?

  That's, that's actually.

• 4:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he wrote this up and sent it to the Royal Society. And they thought he was just pulling their leg.

• 5:00Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 5:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? And they said, you know, okay, this is a, this is fun to read.

• 5:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But next time, put, put down the gym before you write to us.

• 5:09Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Step away from the bottle. And the good thing about science, among many things, is they can be skeptical of that report. Who wouldn't be? But you can go check it out.

• 5:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. You can build one of these yourself.

• 5:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can look at your pond water. So the verification of an extraordinary claim is fundamental to the advance of science. So there's something your senses can't see. You have sight. So a microscope magnifies your sight so that you see things that were otherwise completely outside of your awareness.

• 5:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And medicine could not have made the achievements it did without the microscope.

• 5:50Chuck Nice?

  Microscope.

• 5:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not that God punished you for being bad and that's why you have this disease. Somebody, something bit you.

• 5:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's a bacterium or a virus or, and you can track the flow of diseases in this.

• 6:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, and not only that.

• 6:05Chuck Nice?

  God still could have punished you with the bite, you know? Could have let the animal bite you so that, you know, you get, you get what's coming to you.

• 6:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we were off and running to the small and to the large, all of which you can't see. Okay. Let's keep going. In my book.

• 6:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Once again. Shut up. What was this? Astrophysics for people in a hurry. Yes. Which I think has some of this senses discussion in it. Right. I recount the discovery of infrared. Right. Okay, I think we did we have an explainer on that one? Yes, one of my favorite stories. Oh, yeah, because he's looking at the spectrum. This is William Herschel. After Newton did his thing with the prism and the colors of the rainbow, just deducing that the colors of the rainbow are embedded in white light. Right. Freaking out artists of the day, but that's the physics of it. And he said, I wonder what temperature the different colors are.

• 7:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so he put thermometers into the different colors of the rainbow projected on his table. But you need a control thermometer. A thermometer that just simply measures the air temperature without the influence of the color. So he puts one off to the side of the red. And that thermometer measured a higher temperature than everybody else. So he's freaking out. And he says, I may have discovered light unfit for vision. Wow. Invisible light. And so, so go from then onward. When someone says, oh, I have a sixth sense. You know, I don't even, I don't even have that conversation because I say, I'm a scientist and I have 12 senses.

• 7:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I could detect ultraviolet, infrared, X-rays, gamma rays, radio waves, microwaves. You can't, all right? I have tools. Oh, you can if you had these tools. I can also detect gravitational vectors, ionizing radiation. I can detect small things, big things, in things too far away for you to see or even notice. Wow. So the answer is yes. The universe brims with things outside of our senses. And modern science is okay with that. Because we don't rely on our senses to decode the universe. Nice. There it is.

• 8:33Chuck Nice?

  Excellent.

• 8:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 8:34Chuck Nice?

  All right. What shall we do? Let's move on to come back to these letters here. Goes, hello Neil and hello Chuck. This is Minoj Chug. It's as in chug a beer Chuck. So there you go.

• 8:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, he's helping you out.

• 8:50Chuck Nice?

  From Plainview. Yes, exactly. That's a good, that's a good man or person here. He says, I'm from Plainview, Long Island. I'm a recent entrant as a part of StarTalk patron. And although I've been a huge fan of you guys for a long time. My question is, with the recent success of

• 9:14Chuck Nice?

  Chandrayaan, India's unnamed moon mission to the moon's South Pole, pulled off at a super low budget of just 75 million smackaroos.

• 9:30Chuck Nice?

  Do you see NASA collaborating with the Indian Space and Research Organization for future space missions, launching astronauts and payloads to the ISS, etc. As a more cost effective option compared to SpaceX and other private agencies? So I love my man is just like, is India NASA's new dollar store?

• 9:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dollar store.

• 9:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, India, so our missions that do what India's mission would do.

• 10:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Would cost 2X, 5X, 10X. What India, that's 74 million dollars. That's a low budget action movie in Hollywood.

• 10:10Chuck Nice?

  Isn't that something?

• 10:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  75 million dollars, right.

• 10:12Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 10:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So, so we have a lot to learn about how they did it on the cheap. The issue here is not how cheap it is in the absolute, but how cheap it is for the government to have done it. So in our world, the government does it. It's expensive, as many things are when you do them first. Then you port it off to private enterprise that trims fat and this sort of thing. And so I don't know that if Elon had to put a satellite on the South Pole, whether he couldn't have done it for 75 million or even less.

• 10:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But NASA can't do it for 75 or less, or they never have. So that's my first point. Second.

• 10:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The good thing about collaborations in space is everybody gets to do what they do best.

• 10:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you bring it together.

• 11:00Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 11:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? So if India can get you there on the cheap, but they don't have the experiment, but you have the experiment, or you just mix and match, you mix and match the best features of the international participants.

• 11:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the International Space Station is kind of like that. But that being said, competition also kind of works to stimulate innovation and achievement.

• 11:28Chuck Nice?

  Right. So does profit.

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So does profit. Sorry.

• 11:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Profit first.

• 11:36Chuck Nice?

  Profit's first, remember?

• 11:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I don't see, I don't see every country always collaborating. So that's, that's more than what is necessary to make, keep the engine going. But when it makes sense to collaborate, yes.

• 11:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And

• 11:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  when I met with Prime Minister Modi of India, he, I asked him about the Artemis Accord, which is a document signed by modern spacefaring nations where they promise each other to share data.

• 12:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To, to do this in peace as we advance the frontier. So if you share data, that's a form of collaboration.

• 12:20Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 12:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? So they go to the South Pole, they're going to see where the ice is first. They share the data. Now we retool our mission to the moon with humans. Now they don't have to look in the same way because that's already been verified. They can look in a different way or look in a different place.

• 12:37Chuck Nice?

  Will they really do that? Because now water on the moon becomes a resource. And when resources are scarce, people get kind of sketchy.

• 12:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's true. You mean, are there gonna be moon wars on access to the crater waters?

• 12:54Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, cuz even though we said, like, you know, there's an agreement that says nobody can plant a flag on the moon and say, this is ours, this is our territory, this is our... What you can do is take resources. So now, if we can, if, if, if, if people are locating and finding a ways to extract and utilize, especially water, because, and I learned this from you, water is what is the propulsion system to take you further into space.

• 13:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so you can, if you break apart the hydrogen and oxygen, and then bring them back together, it's highly exothermic.

• 13:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's, it's jet fuel, basically. No, no, not jet, rocket fuel.

• 13:32Chuck Nice?

  Rocket fuel. So now, why, so if you gotta find a bunch of ice up there, you're like, damn, we just found all this rocket fuel, I'm not giving this to the United States. Why would I give this to the United States? And by the way, uh, Manoj says, uh, uh, dear Neil, my apologies on behalf of the anchor who recently interviewed you from the prominent Indian news networks and kept referring to the far side of the moon as the dark side of the moon.

• 13:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I told you.

• 13:57Chuck Nice?

  Definitely, he is not a follower of StarTalk.

• 14:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ah, there you go. He saw that broadcast, yeah.

• 14:03Chuck Nice?

  He saw the broadcast, so.

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I was, I did some major Indian press that day.

• 14:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, very cool. Very cool. All right.

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And me and Modi were like that, you know?

• 14:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 14:14Chuck Nice?

  That's funny. No, I saw that. You made some headlines talking to Modi. He, he called for you, so that was a good thing.

• 14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. It was a good thing what you said, though, talking about how, you know, the idea of the, um, furtherance of scientific literacy in the pursuit of these lofty goals in space is great for the entire country and therefore for the entire world. I thought that was well said.

• 14:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're right, the entire country would include the one out of six residents of India who are Muslim.

• 14:44Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 14:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And they're Muslim children, you know, and so, you know, I'm worried that he's got, that...

• 14:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, he's got that tendency.

• 14:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's that, you know, there's that Trumpist, let's find an enemy so you can vote for me, cuz I'm hard on the enemy. And that, you know, in the long run, that's destabilizing.

• 15:02Chuck Nice?

  It does.

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I like to think that space can bring everybody together, that's all.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  I'm Joel Cherico and I make pottery. You can see my pottery on my website, cosmicmugs.com. Cosmic Mugs, art that lets you taste the universe every day. And I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 15:36Chuck Nice?

  All right, let's go on to Cicero Artifon. And Cicero Artifon says, hello, Dr. Tyson, hello, Lord Nice. This is Cicero Artifon from Toronto, Canada. I've heard a few people saying that maybe a more advanced alien would not even see us because we are just not advanced enough to be seen, just like we don't care about bugs and worms when we're building our homes. Is that really what you think? With all of our technological advancements, wouldn't aliens look at us and at least perceive us? We're able to do math. I mean, we know physics. We've been to space. I mean, that's got to count for something.

• 16:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man, my boy's got... He's not getting to sleep at night on this one.

• 16:29Chuck Nice?

  That's right. Cicero was upset. He thinks... Well, what do you think? I mean, are we advanced enough to be at least interesting?

• 16:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I allow the possibility that the answer to that is no. Because, all right, I've given this example before, but I'm going to put it right out here and fresh. So what animal is closest to us genetically in the tree of life?

• 16:59Chuck Nice?

  Chimpanzees.

• 17:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chimpanzee, of course. 98 plus, almost 99% identical DNA. All right? What's the smartest thing a chimp would do? Well, it could stack boxes and reach a banana, okay? If it sees a banana hanging from the rafters. It might do some rudimentary sign language. It will know what size stick to use to extract termites from a termite mound, because apparently they're tasty to chimps. All right, so these are smart things that a chimp does. So what do we do? Well, we have math and poetry and music and art and the James Webb Space Telescope and we walked on the moon.

• 17:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So our urge is to say, what a difference that one and a half percent makes. Well, that's your ego talking because maybe the difference between stacking boxes to reach a banana and the James Webb Space Telescope is as small as that one and a half percent difference in DNA.

• 18:02Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 18:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just consider that, okay? And here's how to do that. You ready? Uh. Imagine a species, one and a half percent beyond us genetically on the intelligence scale. What would we look like to them? We'd look like chimps. We're one and a half percent beyond the chimps and we have a James Webb Space Telescope. Go one and a half percent beyond us.

• 18:32Chuck Nice?

  Oh, they got a Dyson sphere.

• 18:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They, they, they. Is anything we've done gonna impress them? Really? And that's just what, make it 5%. Make it 10%. At 10%, there is, I cannot imagine anything we would have done that would impress them.

• 18:52Chuck Nice?

  No, I would say, I would say, but I would say at one and a half percent, we would still be somewhat interesting because we study chimps. Now, possibly we study chimps because they are also apes and we are apes and maybe that is what causes our intrigue and our curiosity. But, uh, so, but anything beyond the one and a half percent, I mean, when you say 10%, I mean, if, if one and a half percent is the difference between us and chimps, then 10% is unimaginable.

• 19:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is my point. So, yeah, and I love the analogy, you build a house and are you, do you concern yourself with displacing the ants? No.

• 19:36Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 19:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. But do you concern yourself with any of the wildlife that's on the plot of land?

• 19:40Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 19:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where you just put in the foundation? No. So I, I'm not gonna, I cannot say with good conscience that a sufficiently intelligent alien would possibly find us interesting.

• 19:52Chuck Nice?

  Where's Chris Cicero?

• 19:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ego involved in that too.

• 19:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 19:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are all the people saying, oh, the aliens are coming and they probed my gonads. Really? They care that much about you?

• 20:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 20:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you're not that sexy and they don't care that much.

• 20:07Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 20:10Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that makes, that's very sobering when you think about it and that.

• 20:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just trying to be honest. I'm not, you know, I don't want it to be like that, but.

• 20:17Chuck Nice?

  You know, it just says that if we ever are visited by aliens, that most likely they're just going to take whatever we have.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and, and don't pull out your handgun and shoot at it. Like, that's not gonna.

• 20:31Chuck Nice?

  Clearly, yes, exactly.

• 20:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, now, if there's any thread of hope that I could offer here. It's that human knowledge and achievement is, is cumulative.

• 20:51Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 20:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you don't have to invent calculus.

• 20:54Chuck Nice?

  Because somebody already did.

• 20:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Already did. You can use it, start there, then invent something new.

• 21:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So maybe it's not that we have some limit of our knowledge or our brilliance and that's that. Maybe every bit of human achievement is a rung on a ladder that gets added. That'll enable us to see farther and farther into this universe, into the ideas that, that comprise the universe. And if that's the case, then we're, we are smarter as a species than we are as individuals.

• 21:27Chuck Nice?

  Oh, there you go. That's nice. That's, that's a good thought. I like that. All right.

• 21:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or, or the aliens come and they say, take us to your leader. And you say, it's that AI algorithm over there.

• 21:38Chuck Nice?

  Right, yes.

• 21:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go tussle with our algorithms. See, see, see if you survive that.

• 21:43Chuck Nice?

  Or just take them to Taylor Swift and, you know, same, same difference.

• 21:49Chuck Nice?

  Take them to Taylor Swift, man.

• 21:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, and believe me, the alien will be like, oh, my God, it's Taylor Swift.

• 21:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh my God, the aliens are Swifties.

• 22:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why they came here.

• 22:04Chuck Nice?

  That's why they came. They couldn't get concert tickets on their world. So, anyway.

• 22:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, keep going.

• 22:11Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. Stone Courier. Stone Courier says this. What a great name, by the way, Stone Courier.

• 22:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But is it real?

• 22:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's definitely a news anchor name. I'm Stone Courier.

• 22:26Chuck Nice?

  It says, hello Neil. Hey Chuck, I was looking for some information on spacetime. What shape is it? I know our solar system and galaxy are flat discs. Does this mean that spacetime is also a flat plane? Also, what is the deal with bending to matter? That's a strange way to interact with matter, don't you think? Thanks, guys. What's the deal?

• 22:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let me lead off with the opening quote of my book Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.

• 23:00Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 23:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know that opening quote?

• 23:02Chuck Nice?

  Yes, the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.

• 23:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's my answer to your guide.

• 23:09Chuck Nice?

  Well, there you go, buddy. There you go, Stone Courier. There you go.

• 23:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, matter and energy, which are the same thing.

• 23:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Their influence on the spacetime continuum is to curve it.

• 23:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Curve it towards it.

• 23:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the sun has spacetime continuum curved towards it.

• 23:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So all the planets are falling towards it.

• 23:38Chuck Nice?

  Towards the sun, right.

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but they have sideways speeds which maintains their orbit. But if you take away the sun, they'll fly off at a tangent and never come back. So, the dimple in the fabric of spacetime.

• 23:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is what contains all of the orbiting objects around the sun. So, yeah, that's how that works. Like, deal with it. And not only adjusts the fabric of spacetime, the time coordinate is such that your time slows down in the vicinity of these concentrations of matter and energy. And so time goes slower for us on Earth's surface than it does up in high orbit, like a couple hundred miles up where our GPS satellites orbit. So they have a different time system than we do. Yet, as I've said in another show, we get our precise time from GPS. So how's that possible if it's in another time coordinate system?

• 24:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we take Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, published in 1915, calculate how much faster its time is ticking and correct it before it tells you what time it is on your cellphone.

• 24:49Chuck Nice?

  It still blows my mind, man. I mean, that is just, that alone should make everybody a fan of science. Just that fact and the fact that the man figured it out in 1915, before there was any such thing as a calculator.

• 25:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or, or space travel.

• 25:08Chuck Nice?

  Or space travel.

• 25:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Satellites, right, right. Fifty, fifty years before anybody, forty-five years before anybody went into space.

• 25:16Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 25:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, and then people say, I don't care science, that's just my own. It's like, okay.

• 25:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, what do I need science for? I have a gut.

• 25:28Chuck Nice?

  I got this gut, man. That's what God gave me this gut for. I don't need science. You and your calculations.

• 25:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I'll do what I feel. Yeah, we'll see how far that gets you.

• 25:41Chuck Nice?

  Well, that was great, man. Okay, let's go to Johnny G. Johnny G. says, hello, Dr. Tyson and Lord Nice. Hope your day is going well. Easy name here for you, Chuck. Okay, thanks, Johnny.

• 25:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'll write it in crayon so you can understand.

• 25:59Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. I have a question that keeps me up some nights. What caused the universe to be infinitely hot and dense? Was there something before the Big Bang? Or did the universe expand and collapse time and time again before our universe could come about? Also, what caused the Big Bang this particular time? Well, that assumes that there were other times. Thank you for your time and for the many laughs and for making learning so much fun.

• 26:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that, love that. So, so we devote a fair amount of- Paid for your number of pages in the Cosmic Queries book, which I think you can click, click by it on our website, StarkTalkMedia.com. I think it's in there somewhere. If not, it's on my website, if you can't find it anywhere else. And on my website, you have a choice of different vendors, right? If you don't want, if you're anti-Amazon, you can, there's like indie book sales and this sort of thing. Oh, okay. In there, there's a fair number of pages given to the origin of the universe and the best current ideas surrounding it.

• 27:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, to be very small, very hot, very dense, that is its birth state. It was burst into that state. So it's not how did it become that? Right. That's how it was born. And it has to do with this pocket of energy that slides into a, a configuration that has such extreme temperatures and densities, where when you are that hot and that dense, you only have one thing you can do, and that's rapidly expand. Right. So, so now, this, this mechanism that gives us our understanding of the Big Bang also makes other Big Bangs. So that's how you get the multiverse. Right. Okay.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you say, well, what time is it in this universe? We can start the clock at our Big Bang, but maybe the multiverse has its own clock. And we came into existence at 20 minutes after 5 on a Tuesday afternoon. That's when we'd start our clock, but the multiverse might have a meta-clock, where it's cranking out the universes one by one. Right. So, it has to do with, with these, these energy diagrams. Trying to explain this in the best way I can. But I want to give an analogy. So what would that be? Uh, if you have a hill, if you have a hill, okay? That, that, if you have a hill that goes into like a little basin,

• 28:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and it rains, and all water collects in that basin. But wait a minute, that's not the lowest place that water can be. Right. Because there's an even lower point on the other side of this little bump, okay? But this other water collecting there doesn't know that. It keeps building and building and building. It is possible for the water on this side of the bump to tunnel through to the other side of the bump. Okay? Quantum physics tells us that. If it does that, then it falls to the bottom catastrophically. And that falling to the bottom is the birth of another universe.

• 29:13Chuck Nice?

  There you go. That is...

• 29:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's crazy.

• 29:17Chuck Nice?

  That's crazy.

• 29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's crazy.

• 29:18Chuck Nice?

  I mean, that's really cool stuff, man, but...

• 29:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 29:20Chuck Nice?

  That gets, that gets super deep. I love it.

• 29:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Right.

• 29:25Chuck Nice?

  There you go, man.

• 29:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. So we're up here.

• 29:38Chuck Nice?

  All right. Let's keep going. Let's go to Mark Armstrong. And Mark Armstrong says, hello, Dr. Tyson. Hello, Chuck. Why does the Milky Way look like a cloud when you look up at the sky? Shouldn't it cover the entire night sky?

• 29:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, great question. I love that. I love that. First, it looks like a cloud because you're stuck with human eyeballs.

• 30:02Chuck Nice?

  Stupid.

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When Galileo, Galileo, with his newly perfected telescope...

• 30:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Said, I'm gonna look at the Milky Way. When he did this, he saw stars. So the cloud, while there are gas clouds in the Milky Way, the light that you see is coming from the puddled, merged, um, image of light that you cannot resolve into the component stars.

• 30:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 30:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And even binoculars...

• 30:34Chuck Nice?

  Like, like, like, like, like an LED array. If you, you know, if you ever see these LED lights, it looks like one big light.

• 30:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From a distance.

• 30:43Chuck Nice?

  From a distance. But when you get up on it, you see, oh, there's all these tiny little diodes, each one of them being equally bright to create this giant...

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're calling them diodes.

• 30:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's the, that's the, the third letter in LED stands for.

• 30:57Chuck Nice?

  Diode, light emitting diode.

• 30:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you got it. You got it.

• 31:01Chuck Nice?

  So, yes, cool.

• 31:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, right, right. So, so, so that would be with binoculars or a telescope resolves the, the puddled light into individual stars. First. Second, the Milky Way is very flat.

• 31:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That the spiral pictures you see of spiral galaxies, if you put them on their edge, they're not going to disappear, but they're going to become very not visible to you. Okay? I'll tell you how flat the Milky Way is. It's flatter than a flapjack.

• 31:31Chuck Nice?

  Than an actual flapjack?

• 31:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, if you look at the ratio of the diameter. It is about, it's closer to a crepe, actually.

• 31:40Chuck Nice?

  Oh, damn, that is.

• 31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now, let's put you inside that crepe.

• 31:45Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 31:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you look horizontally around you, all you're gonna see is crepe.

• 31:49Chuck Nice?

  That's it. Hmm, I'm good.

• 31:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if you look above and below, right? There's not much crepe there to block your view. Cause it's so thin.

• 31:59Chuck Nice?

  But hopefully there's some blueberry compote.

• 32:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so the solar system is embedded in a galaxy crepe.

• 32:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the, and the, the, the galaxy, the Milky Way, is the plane of the galaxy.

• 32:16Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 32:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when we look above and below, we're seeing outside of the plane of galaxies, and there's hardly anything there to block our view.

• 32:22Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 32:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, all data on all galaxies that we have in our catalogs come from looking above and below the plane of our galaxy, cause you cannot see through it. That's how dense the gas and stars are in our own Milky Way.

• 32:38Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 32:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cool. Yeah, and by the way, this is true with blueberries and pancakes, right? The blueberry's always poking through the top of the pancake.

• 32:48Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Always. And so if the blueberry said, what am I doing here? Hey!

• 32:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'd see the rest of the universe.

• 32:55Chuck Nice?

  God, I am so hungry right now. Oh, could I go for, hmm, crepes. It's been a while since I've had.

• 33:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, crepes are fun.

• 33:03Chuck Nice?

  Crepes are fun.

• 33:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pancake variant that you gotta throw in there every now and then.

• 33:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, man, it's always good stuff, you know? And, and, and then they, they have the best toppings, crepes, you know? Anyway, let's go to Peter Jacobs. He says, um, okay, wait a minute. I love it. Listen to this, Peter Jacobs, listen to this. This one's for Chuck, okay? Um, if the vacuum of space spontaneously produces pairs of entangled quarks and Hawking radiation is where one of those quarks enters a black hole, can the remaining quark give us information about what's happening inside the black hole? You know what? Peter, you're a jackass, okay?

• 33:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck's just say yes to that. The answer is yes.

• 33:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You came with a little bit of extra authority at the end. Right.

• 33:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So first, it's a brilliant question. I love it. It is. And entangled particles allow you to know what the other particle is doing upon the measurement of a particle. So the suspicion in this question is, all the particles that went outside the black hole, orphaning their counterpart inside the black hole, will it tell us what's inside the black hole? The answer is yes. Okay, except it's weirder than that. Okay, ready? Go ahead. The particles that pop into existence, these particle pairs, emerge from the gravitational field of the black hole. Right.

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The field, all right? So, in this field, particle appears. One escapes, one falls back in. The black hole now weighs less than it did before because you just took away some of its gravity. Right. The gravitational energy became particles and one particle escaped. If you inventory those particles that escape,

• 35:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  they match everything the black hole has ever eaten.

• 35:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the idea that a particle that escapes tells you what's inside the black hole, yeah, it is the precise inventory of everything in its digestive tract. So, the black hole does not lose information. This is a famous bet between Stephen Hawking and my boy who worked with Interstellar.

• 35:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kip Thorne, who got the Nobel Prize for his work on discovering laser gravitational waves using LIGO, Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatory. So, he's all in on this. So, he made a bet with Hawking, what happens to the information that falls into a black hole? Is it forever lost? Then you run the calculation, the Hawking radiation recovers that information until the black hole disappears entirely.

• 36:03Chuck Nice?

  Look at that. So, information is not lost.

• 36:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not lost, and so, yes. And you're not finding out what's in there because of what fell in.

• 36:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just that moment, you're finding out what was in there that it had eaten long ago.

• 36:16Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 36:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 36:18Chuck Nice?

  This is really great stuff.

• 36:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And when we say the black hole evaporates, it's not particles escaping the black hole.

• 36:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's particles being created out of the-

• 36:27Chuck Nice?

  The energy of the gravitational field itself.

• 36:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that meant the gravitational field remembered what had fallen in in the first place. And that's some spooky stuff.

• 36:37Chuck Nice?

  That's really crazy, man.

• 36:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 36:39Chuck Nice?

  That's super cool stuff. I mean, well, Peter, thank you for that question, even though you're a little bit of a jerk for putting it on me like that. No, we don't care. Okay, this is Patrick Waglinski. Patrick Waglinski. And he says, "Hey, Patrick here from Salt Lake City, Utah. Hello, Dr. Tyson and Lord Nice. If I were to go on a naked spacewalk hypothetically, what would space feel like on my skin? Just regarding the fact that I would be unconscious in about half a minute, of course. And to my understanding, getting in a cold pool or going outside in the winter feels cold because of the molecules around me are spreading energy away from my body.

• 37:24Chuck Nice?

  In space, there's a lot less matter around you to draw heat away from you, and I think the only way to lose heat would be from the radiation of my own body, right? Would that be enough to really feel cold as a human popsicle cold like in the movies? Or could someone theoretically be comfortable for a short amount of time without a suit leaving their spaceship? Thanks."

• 37:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that.

• 37:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, look at that. He went all in.

• 37:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All in.

• 37:52Chuck Nice?

  Bought up the explainer that we did too.

• 37:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My boy was all in on the, because we did temperature explainer.

• 37:58Chuck Nice?

  We did the temperature explainer.

• 37:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he's, so it's a note to self. Tell them to check out our temperature explainer where we talk about radiative cooling and heating and this sort of thing.

• 38:10Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 38:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, yes, there are no molecules to sw- to whisk away your body heat. And so you'll be completely radiative. Yes, you, your body heat will radiate away from your skin. And it will do it faster than your body can maintain its temperature. And so you will, you will die, then your body temperature will drop rapidly. So, uh, yeah, so, yeah, you could, you could, a few seconds, yeah? This was correctly shown in the film 2001, A Space Odyssey. The guy came through the airlock without his helmet. And, uh, he's out in space and in the vacuum of space, he hold his breath.

• 38:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 38:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And which I don't think is the right thing to do because your lungs will explode if you do, you, you, the lungs have normal air pressure air in them.

• 39:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you go to zero air pressure.

• 39:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'll just blow out your thing.

• 39:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you wanna let the air slowly.

• 39:11Chuck Nice?

  Spell the air out.

• 39:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Come out, come out of you, correct. And I think divers know this as well. And so for, depending on certain diving conditions where the air in your lungs is compressed, once you're already low. So as you come up, you can just exhale for longer than you thought you could.

• 39:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because the air is continuing to expand.

• 39:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so it's an interesting phenomenon when it happens to you. So, so, yeah, I, I think you can survive a bit. I, I'm not gonna do that experiment myself.

• 39:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, yeah. And now, why would you wanna do this naked though? Because, you know, you've all heard what happens to your ears when it gets very cold out. Your ears will freeze and they'll crunch off like a potato chip.

• 39:59Chuck Nice?

  Right. Well, I'm not worried about my ears.

• 40:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's what I'm saying.

• 40:04Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I'm just saying, I'm not worried about my ears. Okay?

• 40:11Chuck Nice?

  Something far more important pops to mind. Just saying.

• 40:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just saying. Just saying.

• 40:18Chuck Nice?

  Just saying.

• 40:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just saying. Yeah, so I will be cautious of that.

• 40:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 40:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, but again, it's radiative heat that's leaving your body. Until your body reaches an equilibrium of the radiation, radiative energy that's coming towards you.

• 40:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so if you happen to be near a star, you could probably reach an equilibrium temperature that would be okay. But then you still have to breathe.

• 40:43Chuck Nice?

  Have to breathe.

• 40:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So.

• 40:45Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man, that's so cool. Well, it's, it's a fun thought experiment. All right.

• 40:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let's get one more question.

• 40:50Chuck Nice?

  One last question. Here we go. This is Julia Lind, Julia Lind, and or Lindy. Yeah, she says, hello, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice, what should be our biggest priority for exploring the solar system? Landing humans on Mars? Sending probes to Europa or Enceladus? Building a base on the moon or maybe something else? Thanks, Julia, from Hatboro, PA.

• 41:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, okay, so I have, I'm glad I can answer that with high, high authority and confidence. You ready?

• 41:24Chuck Nice?

  Go hard.

• 41:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's do it all.

• 41:27Chuck Nice?

  Woo.

• 41:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, uh, so here's, I, I will first, I will not tell people what they should do.

• 41:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not what I do, even if it feels that way sometimes.

• 41:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm, I'm here to, uh, try to enlighten people, to inform them so that when you make a decision i- in a free country.

• 41:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where you vote for people who will go into space, you are as informed as you possibly can be. That's my goal. All right, so I'm not going to prioritize destinations in the solar system. What I will say is it's not all that expensive in the big picture.

• 42:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everything NASA is doing is happening with four tenths of one penny on your tax dollar. Four tenths. That was the DART mission to deflect an asteroid. That's the space station. That's the Artemis mission back to the moon. All of that. All right, so, and that's four tenths of one percent.

• 42:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 42:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I ask you. How much is the universe worth to you?

• 42:28Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, look at that.

• 42:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so that's what I ask. And so, so yeah, let's put people on Mars and mine an asteroid and and lasso a comet in case we need some fresh water and figure out a way to deflect the asteroid that's headed our way. And let's, and space tourism, let's do it all, all of it. And then the solar system becomes our backyard, which is, which is cosmically true, was always cosmically true, and then we'll make it a reality for our species.

• 43:03Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 43:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, and by the way, and we want to look for life on Mars or on Europa. Yeah, let's do it. And by the way, there are missions to do this, you know, but they're, they're bits and pieces, and it's not the backyard plan from NASA. That would be fun.

• 43:17Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 43:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, there's rare ingredients on Earth, like rare Earth elements that are common in space.

• 43:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 43:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Energy is common, is plentiful in space. There's a lot of things that are common in space that are, we're fighting over to gain access to here on Earth. And so, space might be the greatest force of peace in the world for removing an entire category of warfare that's existed with us ever since we stepped out of the cave. And that's violence committed upon other tribes because of limited access to resources.

• 43:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 43:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. There it is, Chuck.

• 43:57Chuck Nice?

  Ah, man, that was a good one.

• 43:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Man.

• 44:00Chuck Nice?

  Well, this was a great episode. Thank you, people, for all these great, great questions.

• 44:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you all for that. And like I said, if you want to like be the ones who can ask the questions, that's just five dollars a month.

• 44:11Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 44:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm pretty sure nothing in Starbucks costs five dollars.

• 44:15Chuck Nice?

  No. Yeah.

• 44:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There might be a hot water and a tea bag, I think, is left.

• 44:22Chuck Nice?

  No, you're not getting that for five dollars.

• 44:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. Nope.

• 44:28Chuck Nice?

  Maybe if you brought your own cup.

• 44:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And your own tea bag.

• 44:33Chuck Nice?

  And your own hot water. Find out it's a hot water.

• 44:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so this has been Cosmic Queries, Rad Bag Edition. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.