Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Cosmic Queries - New Mysteries of the Universe About this episode Alien megastructures? Gravitational waves? Time travel via wormhole? Crack open the latest cosmic conundrums when astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson answers fan submitted questions, thrown at him by our co-host Eugene Mirman.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and this is StarTalk. As always for StarTalk, my co-host is a professional comedian. Today we have with us Eugene Mirman. Eugene, thanks for being back.
0:40 Eugene Mirman? Very glad to be here.
0:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, but what you been doing lately?
0:43 Eugene Mirman? Um, I've been touring. I have an album that came out.
0:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You've toured and albuming?
0:47 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
0:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, cool.
0:47 Eugene Mirman? That's largely what I've been doing.
0:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's what stand-up comedians do.
0:50 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, they release an album and they tour. Well, everybody does that, where they're like, tell people about their album. Sometimes you can do it on the radio.
0:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Except I read this is not an album. This is like nine...
0:59 Eugene Mirman? Yeah. It's nine volumes. It took a few years to make. It's full of a lot of ridiculous things, a meditation, sound effects.
1:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow.
1:06 Eugene Mirman? Forty-five minutes of crying. That's one of the volumes.
1:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So people lined up to buy this?
1:12 Eugene Mirman? Well, you don't have to line up anymore. You can use the internet.
1:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, I got you, got you. Oh, good. Gone is that expression.
1:17 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, exactly. Hopefully two people stood in line. I mean, there's also stand-up. It's a normal album, and it's not like, anyway.
1:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, uh, this edition of StarTalk, Cosmic Queries. We've solicited questions from our fanbase and all the different social media platforms, and you're gonna read them to me. I've not seen them before. And the, what is the theme today?
1:37 Eugene Mirman? The theme is new discoveries and new mysteries of the universe.
1:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, okay.
1:41 Eugene Mirman? So I hope you're up on your new mysteries.
1:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I don't know if I'm up on this.
1:45 Eugene Mirman? We'll find out.
1:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We'll find out. Because I'm classically trained, and so I know, yeah, so I know stuff.
1:50 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
1:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But if I'm like, turning the page of the very latest discoveries, I'm maybe not. So I want you to know if that's the case. Okay, bring it on.
1:57 Eugene Mirman? Okay. Nicole Brooks from Patreon asks, "Based on the expanding knowledge of wormholes and tippler cylinders, do you think it is theoretically possible to travel through the past or the future using one of the following devices? Only wormholes, only tippler cylinders, or wormholes for present/future travel and tippler cylinders for the past?"
2:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The answer is yes. It's theoretically possible, because you can show how moving through a wormhole can put you back in the timeframe from which you... Left.
2:30 Eugene Mirman? Mm hmm.
2:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You can show that. But we don't know how to make a wormhole. It's not a realistic thing yet.
2:36 Eugene Mirman? That we was but theoretically, once we figure out how to make them.
2:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Equations tell us we can do it unless having made the wormhole, we then make discoveries that tell us that we can't.
2:47 Eugene Mirman? Right.
2:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's been hypothesized by Hawking, among others.
2:51 Eugene Mirman? Mm hmm.
2:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That there might be a universal law of physics that prevents you from traveling backwards in time. Because suppose you did this and you prevented your parents from meeting one another, then they you would have never been conceived enough to go back in time to prevent them from meeting one another.
3:06 Eugene Mirman? Right.
3:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So this would be it's a parrot a temporal paradox.
3:10 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
3:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And maybe the laws of physics, when we get there, will tell us about this paradox and therefore, uh, prevent it.
3:18 Eugene Mirman? Right, or create another you could get another universe.
3:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The many worlds hypothesis. Yeah, it's like at any point where a where a a past event is changed, then a new universe spawns off. That was just a way to not have to really answer the question.
3:33 Eugene Mirman? Right, that is okay.
3:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, it was it was given serious theoretical and physical thought.
3:39 Eugene Mirman? Right.
3:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Behind the new world's interpretation that was invoked for quantum physics.
3:42 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
3:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Back in the nineteen twenties, the weird things were happening and maybe all things were happening and we were just choosing which path through reality accounted for what we saw.
3:53 Eugene Mirman? So you're not convinced that Back to the Future trilogy is possible?
3:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Certainly not the Cubs winning the World Series, apparently, as they should have done this October two thousand fifteen.
4:04 Eugene Mirman? All right, well.
4:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right.
4:05 Eugene Mirman? Good, okay, so, uh, from Facebook, a, uh, a doist in here asks, what if there is an alien megastructure? What would that mean for humanity?
4:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So probably this questioner is referring to one of the. The suspected exoplanets that Kepler, the telescope discovered.
4:27 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
4:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And normally, what Kepler is looking for is a slight dip in the light of the host star as the planet eclipses in front of it.
4:36 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
4:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So the planet will, will drop it by maybe one percent and we can measure intensity of light accurately enough to, and with enough precision to say how big the planet is, what its orbital period is and all the like. But it has found something that is some structure that has no resemblance to planet, to, to the signature of a planet.
4:56 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
4:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's been suggested, maybe they were building a, a, a, one of these Dyson spheres where if you want to, way to think about it is, if you, what are we doing to get energy? We're like fighting wars.
5:09 Eugene Mirman? Right.
5:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Digging.
5:10 Eugene Mirman? Stuff out of the ground.
5:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Fossil fuels out of the ground, alright. That's pretty primitive.
5:13 Eugene Mirman? Our plants eat our sunlight.
5:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They, they do, they.
5:16 Eugene Mirman? That's not how they describe it, but I'm not wrong.
5:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So there are levels of civilization that you can reference depending on how sophisticated they are in obtaining energy. So one of them would be, you can tap energy from Earth. So volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, cyclones.
5:35 Eugene Mirman? We should start, start charging our phones with tornadoes.
5:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly. If you can do that, then Earth is supplying all the energy you need. Or it's a source of energy unlike anything you might have had before. Well, can you go more than that? Yes. You could tap all the energy that your host star can give you. Well, how would you do that? Well, you can put up solar panels, where you can only put that on the surface of the Earth. But it's sending energy out in every direction in space.
6:01 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
6:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So why not put up solar panels all around the star? So all the energy that leaves the star hits the solar panels and you take every ounce of energy that star has to give you. That's another level of civilization.
6:14 Eugene Mirman? And then how do you get that to your planet?
6:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, you'd wire it up or whatever. I mean, you have to.
6:18 Eugene Mirman? You'd have a very long cable?
6:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
6:19 Eugene Mirman? Or if you can do that, you might have a, some solution.
6:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly, exactly. You figure that out. And the next level of civilization is you command all the energy of all the stars in your galaxy. And the highest level would be commanding all the energy of all the galaxies in the universe. So, we would have to be a higher level civilization to be able to maneuver and manipulate wormholes. And, so, we're not there yet. We are so far from it. Yeah. So, uh, so there you have it.
6:46 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
6:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah. What's next?
6:48 Eugene Mirman? Next is, uh, James from Facebook. He asks, "What is New Horizons' mission now? Or is it just drifting towards the Kuiper Belt?"
6:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. So, the New Horizons' mission, that's the mission that went to find Pluto. And did a flyby, got awesome data from Pluto, close-up, high-resolution images that are still coming in. The spacecraft was pared down in weight so that it could get to its destination as fast as possible. Because the number-one rule in science is what?
7:15 Eugene Mirman? Uh, go very quickly.
7:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You want to finish your experiment before you die. Yeah, so going quickly would matter.
7:22 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
7:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, you have the light-
7:23 Eugene Mirman? So, I'm not totally wrong.
7:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, you're not totally wrong. So, you want the lightest spacecraft and the most powerful boosters to get you there, and that's a potent combination for getting there quickly. So, we got to Pluto in, in ten years.
7:33 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
7:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, uh, and we, we passed the moon's orbit in nine hours. We, I mean, the spacecraft.
7:38 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
7:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In nine hours.
7:39 Eugene Mirman? Humanity.
7:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Took the, it took the astronauts three days to cover that distance. So, this thing's booking out of the solar system. So, it passed Pluto in a flyby, and now it is not adrift in the Kuiper Belt. They're selecting targets for it. It still has fuel, so it can maneuver in, in, uh, a certain, by a certain angle. And that angle is enough to have it come close to other frozen bodies in the outer solar system whose properties resemble that of the moon.
8:04 Eugene Mirman? And it's sending that info back to us as well?
8:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It will when, when it gets there. That's correct. Yeah, yeah.
8:08 Eugene Mirman? Okay, great.
8:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right.
8:09 Eugene Mirman? Uh, Jared, uh, on Facebook asks, "To build megastructures in space, wouldn't you need something, say, the size of a mineral-rich asteroid belt or a moon mine for the same?"
8:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, what they're saying is, if you're gonna build a huge structure in space that uses more mineral resources than your planet can supply, yeah, you'd have to get this stuff from, from space.
8:30 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
8:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But, that's not a problem, because we know the asteroids are an unlimited suppo- essentially limited, the supply of all the ingredients that would otherwise be rare on Earth. So, the rare Earth elements- They're only rare on Earth.
8:43 Eugene Mirman? Right, right. They're not, they're not rare in asteroids.
8:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In particular, uh, handpicked asteroids. So, yeah, you'd, you would need resources from beyond your home planet, but we, people are well aware of that.
8:52 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, and I think if you're building this megastructure, you'd, that's what you'd do.
8:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct.
8:57 Eugene Mirman? That's how I would do it.
8:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
8:58 Eugene Mirman? Uh, Dave Massey on Facebook asks, "What needs to be improved in carbon nanotube technology to build large space structures?"
9:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, so, uh, so first of all, the, uh, some years ago, I forgot what year it was. Was it nineteen eighty-nine or ninety, when they discovered the, a new molecule, carbon sixty?
9:18 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
9:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is sixty carbon atoms, that, the, the way to make sixty carbon atoms into one molecule is you can connect them in a, in a particular way, where they end up making a sphere. And that sphere was the, the vertices of, uh, the geodesic dome.
9:35 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
9:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That was advanced by Buckminster Fuller. And so, these, these spheres came to be known as buckyballs. And I think they are the same seams and nodes that you find on a stitched soccer ball. The older soccer ball that has hexagons and, and pentagons. So, so there it is. Now, if you cut it in the middle, and spread it, and then put carbon fibers connecting one side to another, you go from a carbon buckyball to a carbon nanotube. So it's the same scale of chemistry. And so, this would be way stronger than steel, way lighter than steel. It would completely transform constru-, the construction industry. Cause you want things that are strong, but light.
10:17 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
10:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is kinda how that works.
10:19 Eugene Mirman? Sounds like transparent aluminum from Star Trek IV.
10:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly. I remember that.
10:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's the Save the Whales episode.
10:27 Eugene Mirman? Yep, exactly.
10:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so the question now is, if you can build long tubes, these would replace steel cables for, for all of your needs, and make things lighter, cheaper, faster, better. The problem is, last I checked, the longest nanotube that they've been able to make has been maybe a centimeter long. And, cause we don't have tools to plant, to, to, to, to position molecules. We have to coax them into these configurations based on the apparatus and the temperature and the pressure and, and the mixture of other chemicals.
10:56 Eugene Mirman? Once they're made, do they, can they live out in the world?
10:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I don't see why not, given their strength. And so, so once, now, the, the space elevator, where you take an elevator to orbit.
11:07 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
11:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is something that would basically require carbon nanotubes, but we have to go from a centimeter length to twenty-three thousand miles of length.
11:16 Eugene Mirman? Right.
11:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And this is, we're not there yet.
11:17 Eugene Mirman? No, that sounds, yeah, it sounds like it's gonna take time.
11:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
11:20 Eugene Mirman? Okay, uh, Martin Holden asks on Facebook, what are the books that a budding cosmologist should have in their library?
11:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hmm, a budding cosmologist? It depends on what level, uh, but I would say a fun book, just cause it's big and audacious, big hairy and audacious, is a book called Gravitation.
11:40 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
11:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's written by, uh, three authors, Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler. Wheeler was the guy who first coined the term black hole. Thorne was the guy who was the science advisor to the movie Interstellar.
11:53 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
11:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And his first name is Kip, and one of the robots in Interstellar was called Kip, by the way. In case you're scoring along with this. Yes, a- as Bill Nye is fond of saying. And also, uh, he wrote a companion book to the movie Interstellar called The Science of Interstellar. So, he's one of the authors, and the third is a, is a professor from the University of Maryland, and Charles Misner. And that, it's a huge book, it's called, just called Gravitation. And there are two tracks.
12:21 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
12:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The wimp track and the advanced track.
12:23 Eugene Mirman? In the book?
12:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the book.
12:24 Eugene Mirman? So, meaning you, or maybe the layman?
12:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, they're color-coded, and so if you want the easier track, you read the pages with the black corners, and you want the harder one, you read the ones with the white corners.
12:34 Eugene Mirman? Oh.
12:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
12:35 Eugene Mirman? Oh, maybe I'll try it.
12:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that one, if you're, if you're kind of advanced, that's the one I'd recommend.
12:39 Eugene Mirman? You can do either one.
12:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But if not, then there's so many excellent, popular level books. Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos, and, and Lisa Randall has three books all about cosmology and our understanding of our place in the universe. So you can start with those popular level accounts, and then ascend from there.
12:56 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
12:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
12:57 Eugene Mirman? Um, Amy Danger on Facebook asks.
13:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Great name.
13:01 Eugene Mirman? I know, a very good name. My nine-year-old daughter wants to know why our moon doesn't have a name. I'm with her, why doesn't our moon have a name?
13:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Our moon does have a name.
13:10 Eugene Mirman? What, Jeff?
13:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Freddy.
13:12 Eugene Mirman? Yeah. What's our moon's name?
13:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So.
13:15 Eugene Mirman? Mr. Moon.
13:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, all the planets are named for Latin gods.
13:19 Eugene Mirman? Uh huh.
13:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, you would expect any name for Earth or the moon to be Latin. And so.
13:26 Eugene Mirman? You would expect.
13:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You would expect. So, the Earth, Moon, and Sun combo have Latin cor- corresponding names.
13:34 Eugene Mirman? Uh huh.
13:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And we can use them in my field. Everyone will know what you're talking about.
13:37 Eugene Mirman? What's the name of the moon?
13:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, the name of Earth is Terra.
13:40 Eugene Mirman? Terra.
13:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The name of the moon is Luna.
13:42 Eugene Mirman? Luna, oh.
13:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah. And the name of the sun is Sol.
13:46 Eugene Mirman? Oh.
13:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not, not like S O U L, which would be really cool, but S O L. And so, those Latin words have all been lifted to become the roots of other words. So, Sol is the root of solar system.
13:58 Eugene Mirman? Right.
13:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And Luna, like lunatic and lunar month and this sort of thing. So, of course, a lunatic is someone who acts crazy after they see the full moon. But they don't tend to act crazy when it's cloudy out.
14:08 Eugene Mirman? Right.
14:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They don't even know that it's full.
14:10 Eugene Mirman? I didn't know that lunatics specifically was someone who was crazy.
14:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? From moonlight.
14:13 Eugene Mirman? From moonlight?
14:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Why else would you call it lunatic?
14:15 Eugene Mirman? Well, no one uses it that way now. That's why. Sorry. That's the reason I thought that is, because.
14:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
14:21 Eugene Mirman? Yeah. Wow, that's great to know. So, Amy, the moon does have a name and it's Luna.
14:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, Sol, uh, Sol, Terra, and Luna.
14:29 Eugene Mirman? Nice.
14:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
14:30 Eugene Mirman? Martin Holden asks on Facebook, is space continuous or granular?
14:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All evidence points to that it's granular in quantum physics, which has been trumping every other field that it has touched.
14:45 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
14:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's the most accurate theory of the universe we have ever put forth. Tells us that space is granular, that there's a.
14:52 Eugene Mirman? So, what does it mean for it to be continuous?
14:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's the smallest possible length that you can measure in space. There's the smallest possible unit of time that can exist in space. And this granulation of space and time would tell us that, in fact, space is not continuous. By the way, general relativity, Einstein's theory of gravity, requires that space be smoothly continuous.
15:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So there's a, there's a shotgun war going on there about who's gonna be right in the end. And if you're a betting person, you put your money on quantum physics.
15:26 Eugene Mirman? Really? Wait, so that means that if you were to get to the edge of the universe, then what would be?
15:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It says nothing about the edge of the universe.
15:33 Eugene Mirman? Okay, it says nothing about that.
15:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It has to do with how small you can divide the fabric of space and time.
15:37 Eugene Mirman? Oh, I see.
15:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? By the way, this is not a weird concept.
15:39 Eugene Mirman? Right.
15:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you take a sheet and you say, okay, give me a section of the sheet.
15:44 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
15:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you, and you cut a section, oh, fine, and I give you a one foot square, let's say. And now you say, I want a smaller section. I give you one inch square. I want an even smaller section. One millimeter square. Now suppose you're asking me for a section of the sheet that is smaller than the fibers are tracking within the sheet.
16:01 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
16:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that still sheet?
16:04 Eugene Mirman? Ooh. Uh, yeah.
16:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No. Your fibers, and then now you're in a zone within the stitches of the fiber where there's no sheet at all. So pieces of the sheet are no longer heterogenously represented.
16:17 Eugene Mirman? Right.
16:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because your sizing is smaller than the stuff that's constructing it in the first place.
16:21 Eugene Mirman? So now you're going to the, it's building blocks, is what you're saying?
16:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly. So, so right now, everything looks continuous because we're not, we're not dealing with these very small sizes.
16:30 Eugene Mirman? Right.
16:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But when you do get there and you try to measure time, you'll find that you won't be able to.
16:36 Eugene Mirman? And it's granular.
16:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
16:37 Eugene Mirman? All right. Now I understand.
16:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know what I just learned recently? It just freaked me out, and I have to like read up on it because it's not where it... So I learned that some ideas of the expanding universe will have the universe in some places where the spacetime fabric itself melts.
16:56 Eugene Mirman? What does that mean?
16:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I don't know.
16:58 Eugene Mirman? You don't know what it means?
16:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I, I tried to, I'll, I'll come back to you on this.
17:02 Eugene Mirman? Okay, because I'm very curious.
17:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But that's...
17:03 Eugene Mirman? What it means for spacetime to melt.
17:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, that spacetime might have corresponding states of matter going on within them. And, uh, and you might be able to melt space. And I just...
17:16 Eugene Mirman? Oh my god, and then you could, you could drink it.
17:20 Eugene Mirman? I can't wait to tell people I've drunk one liter of molten space.
17:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're listening to StarTalk. Stay tuned for another segment.
17:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome back. Here's more of StarTalk.
17:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, you've got questions from our fanbase?
17:57 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
17:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's just about new discoveries in the universe. And if I don't know it, I'll just say, "I don't know."
18:03 Eugene Mirman? I'll answer it anyway.
18:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh.
18:04 Eugene Mirman? Some misleading... Okay, here we go.
18:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Go.
18:07 Eugene Mirman? William on Twitter asks, "What are your thoughts on the mysterious structure orbiting a star 1,500 light-years away?"
18:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so that's related to the earlier question about alien megastructures.
18:19 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
18:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, I don't know what that structure is. By the way, I didn't... I don't think I detailed earlier. These structures that pass between the telescope and the host star, we know it's not a planet.
18:32 Eugene Mirman? So, what are some of the options and what...
18:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's dimming the light in odd, significant, and unusual ways.
18:38 Eugene Mirman? Right.
18:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Of the host star.
18:40 Eugene Mirman? That we've never seen before?
18:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Never seen.
18:41 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
18:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Never seen. And that's why people think they're building structures to grab the sunlight, the starlight, and beam it back to the home planet.
18:48 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
18:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, I tend to be very conservative in my...
18:53 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
18:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? ...in my scientific...
18:54 Eugene Mirman? Advanced alien civilization guesses?
18:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On the subject of advanced alien civilization. And I would say, just because we do not know what it is, it does not then mean it's alien megastructures.
19:06 Eugene Mirman? Right.
19:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You just admitted...
19:08 Eugene Mirman? It's just something we don't know.
19:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's so... And I said, "It's probably something more mundane accounting for it."
19:14 Eugene Mirman? Like a super-thick cloud of space debris?
19:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Possibly. I don't know.
19:18 Eugene Mirman? What are... What kinds of... So, alien megastructure is one theory, and the other...
19:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The hypothesis, yeah.
19:24 Eugene Mirman? One hypothesis, sorry. Right, yeah.
19:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
19:26 Eugene Mirman? So, what are some other hypotheses?
19:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, because there's the theory of evolution, the theory of gravity.
19:30 Eugene Mirman? Right.
19:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And...
19:31 Eugene Mirman? The hypothesis.
19:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And Eugene's hypothesis.
19:34 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, yeah.
19:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's not Eugene's theory.
19:36 Eugene Mirman? Theory is one... It's been agreed on and...
19:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, and it's very powerful and deeply...
19:39 Eugene Mirman? Okay, and a hypothesis is like, "This is a very good guess."
19:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you just came up with it on the spot.
19:43 Eugene Mirman? Yeah. So, what are some other hypotheses? So, alien megastructure is one.
19:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, maybe a cloud of comets that had broken apart but were still traveling together as a gang.
19:50 Eugene Mirman? That's a pretty good guess of mine.
19:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, if you have a huge comet and you break it apart into multiple pieces, all those pieces still travel together.
19:55 Eugene Mirman? Oh.
19:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And orbit around the sun, kind of like in a...
19:57 Eugene Mirman? Oh.
19:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In a pack of cars, like in NASCAR.
19:59 Eugene Mirman? Like a bunch of, uh...
20:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
20:01 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, birds.
20:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, they'll slowly separate, flocking, yeah. They'll slowly separate, but not until you get some good...
20:06 Eugene Mirman? Right.
20:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? ...movement there. And so the, uh, where was I?
20:14 Eugene Mirman? Well, it was the comet broken apart.
20:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. So if you have a start with a huge comet and it breaks apart into a hundred pieces, now you have more blockage of your host star. But it still was not repeating periodically, which any orbiting object would do. So it's a tremendously fascinating mystery. And I'm content in knowing it's a mystery. I don't require of the mystery that it yield a solution on the spot.
20:39 Eugene Mirman? Okay, we'll wait and see.
20:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
20:42 Eugene Mirman? But you're not jumping to alien civilization yet.
20:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not yet, yeah.
20:45 Eugene Mirman? John on Twitter asks, "As the universe expands, will the Higgs field expand and thus weaken to the point of matter degradation?" Oh, just sorry, degeneration. Sorry, let me ask it again. John on Twitter asks, "As the universe expands, will the Higgs field expand and thus weaken to the point of matter degeneration? Same with EMF."
21:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so I don't know if, what effect the expansion of the universe has on the Higgs field.
21:16 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
21:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm guessing it might dilute it in some way. And the question is, how does that then affect the mass that it grants to particles within that field? So I, I, I do not know the answer to that.
21:28 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
21:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Do you want me to make up an answer?
21:31 Eugene Mirman? No, I appreciate your honesty more.
21:35 Eugene Mirman? Okay, David on Twitter asks-
21:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, wait, wait, no, let me make up an answer.
21:38 Eugene Mirman? Okay, make up an answer. Sure, sorry, wrong answer on my part. Make up an answer.
21:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If it did weaken and that somehow interfered with the ability of the Higgs field to grant mass to particles,
21:47 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
21:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? that would be completely destabilizing on the universe.
21:51 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
21:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That'd be awesome.
21:52 Eugene Mirman? And what would happen then?
21:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, I don't know. If, if particles have less mass than we thought they did or that-
21:57 Eugene Mirman? Can I fly? Could I be able to fly?
21:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, just because you'd have less mass doesn't mean you can fly, no.
22:03 Eugene Mirman? How, so, but what's, would there be a point at which though that would be the case?
22:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You'd need strength in- Wing clapping.
22:11 Eugene Mirman? Okay, or become super magnetic? What if I could control magnets?
22:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, then you're not like, like, you know, yeah, but then you're not really.
22:18 Eugene Mirman? Oh, I see.
22:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I mean, yeah, you, you, you're, you need magnets, magnets wherever you need to do your, your.
22:24 Eugene Mirman? Flying, right, right. Okay, fair enough. I'm just trying to figure out how I could fly, but I don't think that's what he was trying to do. Okay, David asks on Twitter, uh, will the presence of water on Mars affect how we manufacture fuel for the return trip?
22:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, not for the, uh, well, in the future, possi-, oh, most certainly.
22:42 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
22:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, because fuel, the, uh, what is water made of, the chemically?
22:47 Eugene Mirman? Uh, H2O, I'm guessing.
22:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very nice, very nice. And H2O, it turns out, is rocket fuel. Not in the form of water, but if you separate the hydrogen and the oxygen, and you bring them together to make a molecule, the water molecule, then, uh, they, it is hugely exothermic.
23:07 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
23:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A lot of energy gets released and it makes an ideal rocket fuel. So, if you go to Mars and you want to use resources in situ,
23:15 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
23:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? then converting the water under the soils into rocket fuel is an ideal usage, usage case of the future of that expedition.
23:24 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
23:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, yeah.
23:25 Eugene Mirman? Um, great. James asks, what question would you like to have answered before you die, regardless of if you think it will, or even can be, and why?
23:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so I've got a cop-out answer to that.
23:39 Eugene Mirman? Uh-huh.
23:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I like the questions that no one have thought of yet, have, have thought of yet, because they only emerge from having made a discovery that you're after in that moment.
23:48 Eugene Mirman? Right.
23:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Those are the questions I, so, so I would not have even known to ask a hundred years ago, how many asteroids could render humans on Earth extinct?
24:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because the asteroids were not thought, not known to cross the orbit of the earth. So, so now I'm asking a question that was unforeseeable.
24:08 Eugene Mirman? Right.
24:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I- in a day.
24:10 Eugene Mirman? So, so it'd be something like, how do we control wormholes to go back in time to kill all our grandparents? But we can't conceive of that quite yet.
24:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, I, I think this is my challenge in coming up with the question because I love the questions that have not even been thought up yet. So therefore I can't even share them with you.
24:27 Eugene Mirman? Right.
24:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But when they do arise, it's like, wow, that was good. That was a good one.
24:31 Eugene Mirman? Right.
24:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
24:32 Eugene Mirman? Um, all right. Uh, Louis asks, um, theoretically, if a man is sent to Mars for a year, would he be awake and asleep for the same amount of time as a earthling?
24:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I mean, you can set a schedule that's slightly different from earth. Maybe a twenty, maybe a twenty-five hour day or a twenty-three hour day. And people that tend to stay up later, in the, you know, they're morning people and they're nighttime people.
24:58 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
24:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You could probably take a boatload of nighttime people, put them on a ship and have them go to Mars, and have them live in a twenty-six or twenty-seven, maybe even a twenty-eight hour day. Cause they're always staying up late pushing.
25:11 Eugene Mirman? How, what's the day of Mars? How long is it?
25:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's about twenty-four hours.
25:14 Eugene Mirman? Okay. Oh.
25:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, it's very cool.
25:16 Eugene Mirman? So you wouldn't even need to?
25:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, you wouldn't even, no, yeah, it's ma- it might be different by twenty minutes or something.
25:19 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
25:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But by the way, people who work on Mars, or rather scientists, colleagues of mine who study rovers that work, uh, work on Mars, they have a watch that's made so that the, a twenty-four hours on that watch matches the exact rotation rate of Mars, so that they can live on a Mars time as well as human time.
25:38 Eugene Mirman? Right.
25:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And.
25:40 Eugene Mirman? I wonder if they go like, oh, okay, well, I'll see you at dinner at seven. Mars time.
25:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And the reason why they have to do that is they need to know when mo- many of the rovers have solar panels and things. And all of them have solar panels. And so you need to know, when is it exposed to the sun, recharging its batteries? When is it not?
25:59 Eugene Mirman? Right. All right, good answer.
26:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
26:02 Eugene Mirman? All right, um, Jared, uh, has a question, and his question is, "Would it be plausible to find gravity waves by observing the resonant frequency of, say, a mile-long piano string?"
26:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh.
26:18 Eugene Mirman? Mm.
26:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh.
26:20 Eugene Mirman? What do you think?
26:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so the mass and energy in a piano string is insufficient to generate a detectable gravity wave.
26:27 Eugene Mirman? So it would be-
26:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You need, you need a major gravitational disturbance in the fabric of space and time.
26:33 Eugene Mirman? What would that entail?
26:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, a collision of two black holes.
26:36 Eugene Mirman? Oh.
26:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Co- collision of two-
26:37 Eugene Mirman? A piano string is not, is not enough then.
26:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm sorry, it's not measuring up to the, to-
26:42 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
26:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, sorry about that. But, but, he's thinking that, that this vibration would somehow vibrate the fabric of the universe, and no, it would vibrate any kind of air molecules-
26:54 Eugene Mirman? Right.
26:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? -that it touched on doing so, and in space, there's no air molecules, so it'll just swing back and forth, but it won't generate sound.
27:02 Eugene Mirman? Right.
27:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because the vibration of the air molecules is what we sense as sound.
27:05 Eugene Mirman? The saddest thing is a piano in space.
27:10 Eugene Mirman? Um, all right, uh-
27:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Any musical instrument in space.
27:13 Eugene Mirman? No, just pianos, a trumpet, well, yeah, because it just feels like, well, because of the cost to put a piano up there.
27:20 Eugene Mirman? Um, uh, Denard on Google Plus asks, "With slowing investments in space-based science across the board in multiple countries, what effect does this have on limiting human discoveries of our place in the universe?"
27:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, that's, that's a great question, and if you're gonna cut back on science, which is the current, which, which constitute the current roads of discovery, then just move back into the cave.
27:46 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
27:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What are you doing? Now, you can vote for that kind of country, but that's not the kind of country I grew up in.
27:50 Eugene Mirman? Right.
27:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We had investments in science and technology, you did not need special programs to convince kids that they should be interested in science.
27:58 Eugene Mirman? Well, doesn't-
27:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Built into the fabric of the media cycles.
28:01 Eugene Mirman? Well, NASA, for every dollar put into NASA, it returns something like seven or eight dollars into-
28:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I hardly ever cite that calculation, because there's a lot of-
28:11 Eugene Mirman? Or is it somewhat accurate?
28:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, it can be accurate, but it's a matter of what you value that goes into the equation that gets that number. So that, that's the kind of same calculation you do when you say, well, let's put an opera in town.
28:22 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
28:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, how are we going to support the opera? Well, we don't know, but if you put an opera there, then these stores will open up around the entrance to that opera.
28:29 Eugene Mirman? Right.
28:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so it's a seeding effect.
28:32 Eugene Mirman? Right, right.
28:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That many people talk about, but, um.
28:35 Eugene Mirman? But it's, it's hard to actually say.
28:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's hard to anchor that in a way that if five different people did the same analysis, would they get the same answer? And the answer is no.
28:44 Eugene Mirman? And that also isn't necessarily the, the scientific discovery is partially its own end, not the fact that.
28:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct.
28:50 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
28:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct. Even though some people want you to do it for some purpose, it's really for its own end, and later on you find out how it really applies.
28:56 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
28:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
28:57 Eugene Mirman? All right. Um, Jorg, Jorgen, Jorgen Nyberg asks, uh, he's writing from the west coast of Sweden on Google Plus.
29:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Jorgen?
29:07 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
29:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Jorgen?
29:08 Eugene Mirman? Jorgen Nyberg.
29:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm-hmm.
29:10 Eugene Mirman? Any news read K I C eight four six two eight five two? If not, do you know what the period, uh, periodocity of the dimming has been?
29:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so this is again that.
29:22 Eugene Mirman? Ah. Oh my god, this is more alien megastructure. But he's, he's like, I.
29:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? By the way, as you read it, you sounded like a second grader reading, uh.
29:31 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, I mean, well, this, I also, you know, without knowing the, uh, the actual number of the planet or whatever, it sounds like maybe it's also a veiled death threat. It's like, any news read, like, is, he's like a code?
29:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, code, yeah, exactly. What do you know about?
29:47 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
29:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so no.
29:48 Eugene Mirman? Any word I'm asking on the radio?
29:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, there's no, no updates, and, and it's, it's got people, uh, it's got people thinking long and hard and deep about what it could be, but for me, like I said, I don't know what it is, and I reserve comment.
30:02 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
30:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
30:03 Eugene Mirman? We have one last question.
30:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
30:05 Eugene Mirman? Um, Mark Miller, Patreon, he asks.
30:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Patreon is, that's our
30:13 Eugene Mirman? Funding.
30:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a, it's a, it's you can be a funding friend
30:16 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
30:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Of StarTalk.
30:17 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
30:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Where, and you get certain perks.
30:20 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
30:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Like, we'll bring your question to the top of the list.
30:23 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, well, I had asked one Patreon question and we have one more.
30:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? One more, yeah, you'll just get to the list.
30:29 Eugene Mirman? Well, Mark already got to ask one on another episode, so Mark's getting a real ton of questions.
30:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's getting it in there.
30:34 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
30:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But there, depending on your participation level, you want to promote the innovations that we're trying to bring to.
30:39 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, for one million dollars, I'll carry you nine feet.
30:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
30:44 Eugene Mirman? That's just one, one thing I'll offer.
30:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think we can do better than that, Eugene.
30:48 Eugene Mirman? Well, if you really love StarTalk, I don't need to do better than that.
30:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very happy to have our Patreon supporters, so thanks for being out there.
30:55 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
30:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Folks, so go ahead, go ahead.
30:57 Eugene Mirman? Let me ask Mark's question. Uh, with the discovery of a black hole expelling some of the matter it had consumed, what forces may be responsible for this unusual behavior?
31:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, it's not unusual because it's not coming from within the event horizon. Once you cross over the event horizon, just, you know, kiss your ass goodbye. So what's actually happening is all this matter is spiraling towards the black hole center. And it can't all get there all at once. And it forms this disk on which all this material accretes. And the disk feeds the black hole on the very inner edge of it. But until, until it gets to that point, you still have this, this, um, this assembly of matter. And as it spirals down, it gets hotter and hotter and hotter, and it begins to radiate. It radiates so ferociously, it punches out above and below the disk itself.
31:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then you get these jets, these, these, these long spewed forth uh, sig- signatures of moving matter. And so, so, yes, this happens because all this matter's trying to get down into the same place at the same time, and it's going to fail in doing so. And once you heat up a gas, it's got to radiate somewhere and it'll do it. It'll do it.
32:15 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, oh, it will. That's the promise I make to you.
32:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So yeah, so most of the exotic galactic center phenomenon we've seen with powerful jets emanating from above and below a galaxy and very intense in all bands of light, radio waves, microwaves, ultraviolet, X-rays. So we have, um, we have established over the decades that the thing that's causing all that violence in the galaxies are black holes with matter trying to get in there too fast, creating these explosive accretion bits. That's how it comes out of a black hole.
32:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're listening to StarTalk. Stay tuned for another segment.
33:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk Radio continues now.
33:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And now we're going straight to grab bag.
33:27 Eugene Mirman? All right.
33:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Potpourri.
33:28 Eugene Mirman? Let's see what it is.
33:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's do this.
33:30 Eugene Mirman? Andrew asks, uh, is it possible that the long-term collection of matter, space mining, may cause a change in the way the Earth orbits the Sun or the Moon orbits the Earth? Is there a tipping point of the Earth collecting changing mass from a large asteroid that can change its gravitational pull on the Moon or the Sun's pull on the Earth?
33:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
33:51 Eugene Mirman? Yeah?
33:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Next question. No, it's not as bad as you think, however, because if you take all of the asteroids in the asteroid belt.
34:00 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
34:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And collected it together back into one solid mass.
34:05 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
34:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You can ask, how much is that?
34:08 Eugene Mirman? Florida.
34:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so it's about...
34:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Five percent of the mass of our moon.
34:15 Eugene Mirman? Mm hmm.
34:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So one twentieth of the moon. And so we could accumulate all mass of all the asteroids. And we would barely notice it in terms of our own weight.
34:25 Eugene Mirman? Mm hmm.
34:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And the moon's orbit would adjust a little, but not by, not much.
34:29 Eugene Mirman? Right.
34:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so it's really not, not an issue.
34:32 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
34:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, no, nothing to lose.
34:33 Eugene Mirman? Not scared of that.
34:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And by the way, anything large enough that we did bring to earth that would badly disrupt our orbit would be bad enough on earth to render us extinct. So it would not be the kind of question you'd be asking.
34:44 Eugene Mirman? Like Mars, if we brought Mars to earth, that would be bad?
34:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very bad. Yes, that's the end of both Mars and earth.
34:49 Eugene Mirman? What's the most you could move Mars without it being a problem?
34:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You can put it wherever you want, but, and it'll affect our orbit around the sun, but not in any bad way. But if you want to combine them.
34:58 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
34:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's bad for both.
35:00 Eugene Mirman? Superplanet.
35:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Super, that's bad for both.
35:02 Eugene Mirman? Okay. Um, Adrian asks, uh, hello, Dr. Tyson. Would it be possible within our lifetime to extend people's natural life synthetically through either bios, cybernetics, or bioengineering to such an extent that while they may not live forever, they might certainly be around for the next one hundred to two hundred years or more?
35:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so I, we got people working on this now. This is, this is not science fiction. It's science fact. And, and it, people are thinking, oh, the engineering of it, we, we hybridize uh, biology with, with material science perhaps. And maybe that's not even necessary. Maybe we just find the gene for aging and snip it, cut it, alter it.
35:44 Eugene Mirman? What would happen, so how would aging work if theoretically you didn't age the way that things currently age? Because you'd still get older, like you'd still have things.
35:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You would be older.
35:53 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
35:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To, to get older, we make synonymous with becoming more frail or weak.
35:57 Eugene Mirman? Right.
35:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You would be an older entity, yes.
36:00 Eugene Mirman? Right, so there would be a different, a new type of frailty would develop. Where just from simply being two hundred years old, you might have a frailty that you didn't have? Is that what you're saying?
36:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, I'm saying if you, if you live, if you live a long time beyond any current actuarial tables.
36:14 Eugene Mirman? Mm hmm.
36:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It may be that the decline we see in our bodies from age like fifty to eighty. Maybe that would happen between age hu- a hundred and a hundred and, uh, between a hundred and fifty and two hundred, for example. Right, but you you have a more, a bigger chunk of your time being alive, would you would be physically fit and healthy?
36:34 Eugene Mirman? Right, you could play a lot more soccer.
36:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It has huge consequences, because that means the population of the earth would go up.
36:39 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
36:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let the human population, unless you made fewer babies, because the equilibrium of people and new jobs and all, it it has built in the fact that people die.
36:51 Eugene Mirman? Well, what if we just let only rich people live forever? Would that be something people would like?
36:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, that's what happened in, what's the movie?
36:58 Eugene Mirman? I don't know.
36:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Where time was a commodity. The time was a commodity.
37:01 Eugene Mirman? Oh, yeah, then there's where the
37:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wasn't money.
37:03 Eugene Mirman? Where like they built the space station.
37:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, that's a different movie.
37:07 Eugene Mirman? But there's a lot of movies where the rich people get to live for a long time. Um, all right. Well, that's good to know that people are working on this terrible thing that will destroy mankind. Uh, but also be kind of fun.
37:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, I think it to to live forever, I I I've spoken on this before, I I think that's misguided. It suppose you actually live forever.
37:28 Eugene Mirman? Right.
37:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Then what is the value of tomorrow to you?
37:32 Eugene Mirman? Well, maybe if you just live for two hundred years, then you still have like a little fear, but not as much.
37:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not as much, yeah. I just wonder, I knowing that I'm going to die.
37:39 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
37:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is a fundamental part of what creates meaning for any moment I'm alive.
37:46 Eugene Mirman? Right.
37:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And if a day goes by where I didn't like discover something or learn something, or or play with my kids, or go on a playdate with my wife, or or or or contribute to this world in some fundamental way, I wasted that day. And if I live forever, I would not have the state of mind that I could waste any time at all.
38:04 Eugene Mirman? Right.
38:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I don't know what that would mean for people's creativity.
38:07 Eugene Mirman? You could you could still be blown up in a war if that makes you feel any better. You mean not die naturally?
38:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right, right.
38:14 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
38:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I think it's living forever might be overrated.
38:17 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, but living for two hundred years underrated. So it's a middle ground. All right, Aaron asks, uh, how are those fashionable, easily worn space suits coming along? Read the Mars episode of Nova Science now.
38:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so I don't I don't have the latest on that, but, uh, they, you know, part of the challenge, of course, is the spacesuit needs to be pressurized. Because typically you're bounding around in someplace that doesn't have normal atmospheric pressure. And it's got to keep you, your temperature regulated.
38:49 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
38:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Warm when it's cold out and cool when it's warm out, and that can change on a dime.
38:54 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
38:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Depending on what side of you is facing the sun, for example. And so, and you want it to be flexible so you can still bound around a planetary surface and maybe do science experiments, or, or just do sports, right?
39:06 Eugene Mirman? Right, it's true, maybe you want to play space tennis.
39:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, or something. And when you do that, you want to have the mobility that a, that a, a flexible spacesuit would, would give you. So I don't know the latest on that, and I should check up on that.
39:19 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
39:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? By the way, if anyone is going to spend meaningful time on Mars, I'm thinking they're going to want one of these spacesuits.
39:24 Eugene Mirman? For sure. Cause they're gonna want to do Mars Tai Chi. They're gonna do Mars cooking classes.
39:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, exactly.
39:31 Eugene Mirman? Um, okay, Tyler wants to know, would a somewhat self-sustaining moon base drastically improve the likelihood of a manned Mars mission?
39:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, however, I, I think so. However, I don't know what it means to be a self-sustaining moon base, because where are you getting your food?
39:47 Eugene Mirman? Well, I'm sure you'd bring a cow and you'd eat just a little bit of the cow. You'd keep it alive, like in that horrifying movie, The Road.
39:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, so, yeah, you, it would give us a lot of training, just to moving stuff to another location, pitching tent.
40:02 Eugene Mirman? Right.
40:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, but we shouldn't think of that as a stepping stone to Mars. It's way better just to go straight to Mars if you're going to explore space. But, just to, I happen to like the moon as a target for this.
40:14 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
40:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because it's within a media cycle away. It's like three days away.
40:18 Eugene Mirman? Right.
40:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, when you launch from Earth. So you can check up on the astronauts, how you're doing.
40:22 Eugene Mirman? You could build like a sort of French Quarter, like in New Orleans, but you could put it on the moon and you could have some jazz.
40:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
40:29 Eugene Mirman? You could make it fun.
40:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Make it, it'll be a place, an outpost.
40:31 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
40:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A human outpost. So I think we'd, there'd be a lot of training, uh, for what it is to do that.
40:36 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
40:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, what kind of supply chain of food you would need and other resources, and do you send up a doctor who can then, you know, surgeon? You know, we, we get to think about how to make that happen.
40:47 Eugene Mirman? How, if you had no training and you went into space, how sick, like, would you die or would you just be very upset?
40:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, what would be weird is if you have a group of people that go to space, and then a virus mutates, and then it affects just that group of people because you're all breathing the same air.
41:02 Eugene Mirman? Right.
41:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Eating the same food and touching each other's bodies. And so, so then you have some weird virus that you didn't have. Uh, vaccine against because it just arose in that moment. And so that, so maybe this is the kind of thing you, you need confidence that you have way better control over the spread of viruses under those situations than what anybody is exhibiting today.
41:26 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
41:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
41:28 Eugene Mirman? Um, okay, so here's a question, uh, Ramblin Scott asks, oh, never mind. Yes, how much can you bench? But I'm gonna, I meant to ask.
41:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Why don't you ask me? Why, why?
41:38 Eugene Mirman? Sure, okay. Ramblin Scott wants to know, how much can you bench?
41:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How much can I bench? Uh, so.
41:45 Eugene Mirman? Sorry.
41:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, uh, he didn't ask me on what planetary surface.
41:49 Eugene Mirman? No, but I think it's implied, uh, that it's Venus.
41:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so Venus has approximately the same gravity as does Earth. And so, uh, I'd be benching about the same. Mars, however, if you saw The Martian, there's the obligatory image of, of Matt Damon with his chest sticking out and his six pack abs. Cause every movie I think has to have a guy with six pack abs.
42:14 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
42:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that we can completely delude the entire heterosexual female population into thinking that this is just a common thing on guys, right?
42:24 Eugene Mirman? Yes, people talk a lot about how, uh, men are subjected to these terrible standards. And it's so exhausting for us.
42:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Can't live up to those standards.
42:34 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
42:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, so, and, and where have they heard that before? Right?
42:38 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
42:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Um, so he's buff.
42:40 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
42:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But, and there he is, you see him lifting these huge canisters up and down this, on, on the Carrie basin of the rover. And you say, well, he's buff, so that's why he's doing it. No, he was doing it because he's on Mars.
42:52 Eugene Mirman? Right.
42:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And if it weighs 300 pounds on Earth, it weighs 120 pounds on Mars. And so you can pick it up and put it, uh, put it where he wants. So they did this in the movie, they understood this.
43:05 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
43:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so, yes, it does help to be strong, but he doesn't have to be as strong as you thought he was.
43:09 Eugene Mirman? Right. So then that would be a fun, so then boxing would be, or like ultimate fighting would be much more fun to watch on Mars, cause everybody would be so powerful.
43:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, no, no, you're not more powerful. Your punch doesn't have any more punch to it.
43:20 Eugene Mirman? You could just lift a bigger thing. You could throw a bigger person.
43:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, you can throw people, yes.
43:24 Eugene Mirman? Okay, sorry. It would be fun to watch a throwing contest of people.
43:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A judo match.
43:29 Eugene Mirman? Exactly.
43:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, wait, yeah, you can flip people, uh, all over. So, so I would, I, I would bench on Mars, um.
43:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you, you, so what you, you take how much I bench on Earth, divide by point four.
43:42 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
43:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then you get a bigger number when you're done, and that's how much more I can bench.
43:45 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
43:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bench on Mars. But you notice I didn't say how much I can actually bench.
43:48 Eugene Mirman? I'm, I'm sure on Mars, it's between three and 700.
43:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, actually, that's a very, very good estimate.
43:54 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
43:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, let's go to a lightning round.
43:55 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
43:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
43:56 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
43:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bell works?
43:57 Eugene Mirman? Okay, let's do it. Uh, Higgs wants to know, how fast is the speed of dark? If dark matter emitted light, would it be the same speed?
44:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, everything that is electromagnetic energy goes at exactly the same speed. So if your dark matter emitted any kind of light, which we know it doesn't, but if, if it did, and it had any kind of species association with light at all, even if it's a new, uh, uh, band of light, because the light we know and love, microwaves, radio waves, gamma rays, these all bands of light, all travels at the speed of light. So do gravity waves, for example. So if it's gonna send out energy through space, we're pretty sure it's gonna be moving at the speed of light.
44:33 Eugene Mirman? Right.
44:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
44:34 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
44:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Good, go.
44:35 Eugene Mirman? Um, what and why does it, uh, what and why does it glow at the center of galaxies?
44:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, the center of galaxies, most, anytime we've had enough data to look in the center of a galaxy with precision, we find a supermassive black hole flaying and dining upon stars that come too close. And in the act of doing so, they become highly radiant just outside of their event horizon.
44:59 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
44:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so, yeah, so watch every center of every galaxy, including our own.
45:03 Eugene Mirman? Okay, I'll watch it.
45:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Good.
45:05 Eugene Mirman? Do he-
45:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Watch out for it.
45:07 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, yeah. Do heavier elements get produced in black holes, like a star with nuclear fusion?
45:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If heavy elements get produced in the centers of black holes, I'd, I wouldn't know, maybe, because matter is so dense and under, we know what matter does under very dense situations.
45:24 Eugene Mirman? And what is that, in your opinion?
45:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, you can merge nuclei and make heavier elements. This is what goes on in the centers of stars. So I, I do not know what the matter is doing at the center of the black hole after it has passed through.
45:36 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
45:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I, I, I, I ha- I do not know. Yeah.
45:39 Eugene Mirman? Okay. Uh, when will New Horizons overtake the two Voyager spacecraft as the furthest man-made object from Earth?
45:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, it turns out, turns out, the Voyager, and I did, I ran the numbers on this. Voyager 1, which is the farthest spacecraft from Earth, will actually never be overtaken by-
46:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? By New Horizons, the New Horizons missions, mission to Pluto. Because the Voyager missions got gravity boosts upon going out and moving past Saturn.
46:12 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
46:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Past Jupiter, got a huge gravity boost. And at that point, it had more energy to leave the solar system than the New Horizons mission ever did. And so, the New Horizons mission, we wanted there to get quickly, so we didn't have time to chase planets to borrow some of their orbital energy to speed us up, not borrow, take. So with their orbital energy to speed up, they went basically straight to Pluto. But if you're not going straight, you can meander, and as you meander, then you can steal orbital energy from planets and go out real fast. It'll never overtake it. Voyager is the, is the crown winner of that contest.
46:49 Eugene Mirman? For now.
46:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Eugene, yeah, I think you gotta call it quits, like, right there. That went fast.
46:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Thanks for listening to StarTalk Radio. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Many thanks to our comedian, our guests, our experts, and I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Until next time, I bid you to keep looking up.
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