Cosmic Queries – Physics All Around Us

What would aliens think of our inventions? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice answer fan questions on Maxwell’s Equations, the symmetry of the universe, and the physics around us all the time.

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming up on this episode of StarTalk, we dig into our archives and find the physics all around us. We learn about the periodic table of elements, the asymmetries in nature, solar energy, battery technology, Maxwell's equations, and more. Check it out.

• 0:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I hail from the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City, where I serve as director of the Hayden Planetarium. And today, we've got a cosmic queries edition of StarTalk with my co-host Chuck Nice.

• 1:09Chuck Nice?

  Hey Neil!

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, always good to have you here.

• 1:11Chuck Nice?

  Good to be here.

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tweeting at ChuckNiceComic.

• 1:14Chuck Nice?

  Yes, and I am the director of parts of my home on certain days of the week.

• 1:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even then, only in certain hours.

• 1:22Chuck Nice?

  Certain hours of certain days. That's all I get.

• 1:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I think today is, the topic is the physics of everyday life.

• 1:30Chuck Nice?

  Yes!

• 1:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, love me some physics of everyday life.

• 1:32Chuck Nice?

  I know you do.

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh man!

• 1:34Chuck Nice?

  I've been around you long enough to actually hear you speak on the physics of everyday life, whether I want you to or not.

• 1:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know what's good about learning physics?

• 1:42Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not a satchel of facts.

• 1:44Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To be regurgitated. It is an understanding of the operations of nature.

• 1:48Chuck Nice?

  That's great. I was about to say, it is actually the understanding of your own experiences.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, that, or even things that are not your experience, things that transcend your experience.

• 2:00Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Physics is there waiting for you.

• 2:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah, that's what makes it so cool. I mean, there's...

• 2:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but what it means is you don't have to learn every single example of how physics manifests in the universe.

• 2:09Chuck Nice?

  Well, thank God!

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can learn the foundational things and then apply that knowledge to what you see.

• 2:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 2:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's, that's the beauty of it. And that, that's why physics books are not the fattest books on the shelf. Accounting books are fatter than the complete works of physics.

• 2:26Chuck Nice?

  Right, because they what, they get to change accounting? You can't change physics. Physics is what it is.

• 2:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's what it is and what it be like.

• 2:34Chuck Nice?

  What it be like is what it be like. But you can change accounting all you want.

• 2:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's so many other fields where the books are just so fat and thick.

• 2:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Books on human physiology, you gotta learn every little. Of course, there are some systems that you learn about, you know, the circulatory system and the endocrine system and this sort of thing.

• 2:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's very helpful for new situations, but physics is the ultimate example of learning the basics.

• 2:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That then apply to everything, stuff you've never even seen before.

• 3:01Chuck Nice?

  And even all of those different systems actually have some applied physics at work.

• 3:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, let me take you there, ready?

• 3:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let's do it.

• 3:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so biology.

• 3:10Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 3:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is the extreme representation of chemistry.

• 3:17Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 3:18Chuck Nice?

  Give me one second.

• 3:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Biology is chemistry come alive.

• 3:21Chuck Nice?

  Okay, now that I'm just got it. It just gave me a little light bulb and I got it, that makes sense.

• 3:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 3:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 3:27Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 3:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can have complex chemistry, but once you talk about life.

• 3:30Chuck Nice?

  Right, that's biology.

• 3:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's earned its own field.

• 3:34Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 3:35Chuck Nice?

  And life is really a, a, a collection of chemical reactions.

• 3:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, have you ever seen the physics desk reference, physician's desk rep, the P D R?

• 3:43Chuck Nice?

  Uh, no, I have not.

• 3:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a zillion pages and it is every single medicine prescribable in the world, or at least in the West.

• 3:50Chuck Nice?

  Is that really?

• 3:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes, and so.

• 3:51Chuck Nice?

  And everyone.

• 3:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when a doctor, uh, looks back and you don't see what pages they turn, they're looking at the P D I.

• 3:57Chuck Nice?

  They're looking at the P D I.

• 3:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so it's every company's medicine that gives what, you know, what it, uh, is supposed to heal, what the, what the contraindications are, the, you know, the side effects, all of this, it's in this book. So all I'm saying is, it's a reminder that we are basically sacks of chemistry.

• 4:15Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 4:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the point, where I'm getting at is.

• 4:18Chuck Nice?

  Which, I mean, it sounds so derogatory when you say it like that.

• 4:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pass me my vitamin, please.

• 4:23Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Hey, listen here, you sack of chemistry.

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chris, yeah, we all take vitamins or some pills for some purpose, most of us, or we eat certain foods to get the chemistry in the food that'll, uh, you know, you're drinking a cup of coffee right now.

• 4:38Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I am, which was.

• 4:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 4:39Chuck Nice?

  It's having a chemical reaction in my brain.

• 4:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 4:42Chuck Nice?

  Right, it turns off a little teeny part of your brain that says, go to sleep.

• 4:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, um, there is no understanding of biology without chemistry.

• 4:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there is no understanding of chemistry without physics.

• 4:56Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 4:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and there's a kind of audacious statement, which is really nasty, but kinda true.

• 5:04Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 5:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, after the laws of physics, everything else is opinion.

• 5:09Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, damn.

• 5:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:12Chuck Nice?

  That's a drop the mic type.

• 5:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a drop the mic and it's, it's kinda like.

• 5:15Chuck Nice?

  You know who made that saying up? A physicist. Clearly.

• 5:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In your opinion.

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so give it to me. We solicited these from our fanbase. I haven't seen the questions yet, as usual.

• 5:26Chuck Nice?

  As usual. And of course, we always start with a Patreon patron.

• 5:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Patreon.

• 5:30Chuck Nice?

  Because if you support us on Patreon financially, we give you a preference to everything.

• 5:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think they get more than that. It's not just they get their question answered. There's like a whole list of stuff they.

• 5:39Chuck Nice?

  There is. I mean, you know.

• 5:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And at one level, they get invited to our holiday party.

• 5:42Chuck Nice?

  That is correct. If you, if you give enough.

• 5:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that right? Just verifying. Yeah.

• 5:45Chuck Nice?

  If you give enough money, you get to invite it to the, uh, to the StarTalk.

• 5:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you give a zillion dollars.

• 5:49Chuck Nice?

  Right. A kabillion.

• 5:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kabil- a bajillion.

• 5:52Chuck Nice?

  A bajillion. Is that, is that a real word?

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the biggest number ever.

• 5:56Chuck Nice?

  That's the biggest number? Bajillion?

• 5:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bajillion.

• 5:57Chuck Nice?

  Mmm, that's cool. I like it.

• 5:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're, if you're eight, that's the biggest number ever.

• 6:01Chuck Nice?

  Bajillion! My god. And really, it's like eight, it's like, you know, there's, there's 16 of them.

• 6:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 6:07Chuck Nice?

  Like, that's to a kid. It's like my son, I told my son I was 30, and he was like, "You're gonna die soon." Right? And mind you, I'm like, much older than 30.

• 6:17Chuck Nice?

  Why am I lying to my son about my age? I don't.

• 6:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't trust anyone older than 30.

• 6:20Chuck Nice?

  There you go. That's it. That's, there you go. Alright, so, uh, Renee Douglas from Patreon says this. "Why is the periodic table of elements not an exact rectangle? My OCD will not let this go." Missing elements or what? Who cares? It should be a rectangle! All of a sudden, at the end, she started sounding like, uh, Jerry Seinfeld. "What's the deal with the rectangle?

• 6:45Chuck Nice?

  Why? Who are these elements?"

• 6:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so we should call it the periodic irregular table.

• 6:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, so, I, I'm, I'm with her on this.

• 6:56Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's the urge to want nature to be symmetric in its beauty.

• 7:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 7:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And beauty in its symmetry.

• 7:05Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That sentence is symmetric.

• 7:08Chuck Nice?

  That it is. Uh, yes, it is. It is symmetric and, uh, in a mirrored way.

• 7:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so I'll give you an example. Um, when we were filming Cosmos, one of the scenes was in a forest in Northern California.

• 7:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm looking at the tree. I'm from the Northeast and we don't have California trees here.

• 7:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 7:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our trees are kinda raggedy.

• 7:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 7:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kinda gnarly raggedy.

• 7:28Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 7:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Compared to the mighty redwoods and other, you know.

• 7:31Chuck Nice?

  They don't see the trouble that our trees see. Our trees see a great deal of trouble here.

• 7:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our trees are like.

• 7:39Chuck Nice?

  Our trees are.

• 7:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They've seen the Northeast issues.

• 7:42Chuck Nice?

  That's right. They're grizzled veterans of Nor'easters and hurricanes and like harsh winters. You talk to a tree in the Northeast going to be like, "I'll tell you what I've seen." "I've seen some things."

• 7:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's the old tree on the front porch in the rocking chair.

• 7:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Our trees are like the two trees in the two towers of Lord of the Rings, you know, just like, "I remember a time long ago."

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, slow down. You're too spark. You're talking too fast.

• 8:09Chuck Nice?

  I know, that's true for those, right. And for the trees, yeah. Yeah, redwood trees are just like.

• 8:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're just badass. It's like, I'm here and nobody mess with me.

• 8:16Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, because they get to grow unfettered by anything.

• 8:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, they have fireproof bark.

• 8:21Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You try to burn a redwood, it's like, there you go.

• 8:24Chuck Nice?

  That's sweet.

• 8:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go on around, you know. Keep, uh, as you keep going, keep moving.

• 8:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nothing to see here.

• 8:31Chuck Nice?

  That's amazing.

• 8:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fireproof.

• 8:32Chuck Nice?

  They need to make all of California out of redwood tree bark.

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bark, right. So, here's my point. Some of the trees, and I'm not, I'm not a botanist, so I can't identify what tree it is. The bark had striations that spiraled in one direction.

• 8:49Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Around the tree.

• 8:50Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 8:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I'm thinking, if nature itself were symmetric, that could never happen.

• 8:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These things are twisting on their way as they grow.

• 9:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In one direction and not the other direction, and nothing else was twisting in the other direction. It means at the molecular level, you have asymmetries in the foundations of nature.

• 9:13Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 9:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, here's something I read, but I'm not a chemist, so I just read this, okay?

• 9:17Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 9:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The molecule.

• 9:20Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 9:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That you taste as spearmint.

• 9:23Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 9:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you took the mirror image.

• 9:27Chuck Nice?

  That's the double mint molecule. But go ahead.

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you take the mirror image of that molecule.

• 9:33Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Make that molecule.

• 9:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you write down the chemical formula, it'll be the same. Because the chemical formula doesn't tell you how to build it.

• 9:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The spirals in it, okay? It's just the same number of carbon, same number of hydrogen, same number of everything. If you build the mirror image of it and taste that.

• 9:49Chuck Nice?

  Taste like poop.

• 9:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it tastes like caraway.

• 9:53Chuck Nice?

  Caraway?

• 9:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And so, this is an asymmetry in nature. You don't taste the same thing.

• 9:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because of the mirror image of one molecule versus another. So, the universe is full of asymmetries. And you know our amino acids have a handedness to them. These are the building blocks of our protein.

• 10:09Chuck Nice?

  So, there's a left hand and a right hand.

• 10:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All amino acids of all life on Earth is one-handedness.

• 10:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? There is no life that's the other, but there's no reason in principle why you could not make it so.

• 10:20Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's all, it would just be, we're right-handed, it'd be a left-handed, just the way it spirals in a mirror, okay? I mean, the way it spirals versus what it would do in a mirror.

• 10:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so this, um, it's intriguing because if you find life on another planet.

• 10:36Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it has the other, it's called chirality. Then you know it didn't come from us. We had nothing to do with it.

• 10:42Chuck Nice?

  We had nothing to do with it. Because it's a different handedness.

• 10:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a different handedness, right?

• 10:45Chuck Nice?

  Wow, so what is the sound?

• 10:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what we're not sure about is whether if you eat the other life.

• 10:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that's all we do is eat other life.

• 10:52Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 10:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 10:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 10:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what, if.

• 10:54Chuck Nice?

  I mean, if it's not alive and you're eating it, then you're probably gonna have a little trip to the hospital. Because it's Lego.

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look, the only thing we eat that was never alive is salt.

• 11:03Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 11:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, everything else was once alive or derived from something that was alive, right? Um, so.

• 11:08Chuck Nice?

  Even pepper comes from a seed.

• 11:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, pepper was a plant, right, right.

• 11:12Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 11:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why salt and pepper are not really equal partners.

• 11:14Chuck Nice?

  No, they're not. No. Salt is cheating. Pepper was, pepper gave its life to be on that table.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On that table. Right, right, right.

• 11:22Chuck Nice?

  Salt just showed up.

• 11:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It just showed up for the party.

• 11:25Chuck Nice?

  That, just like white salt. No, I'm joking.

• 11:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 11:30Chuck Nice?

  That is so white a salt.

• 11:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, there's black salt. I got black salt.

• 11:32Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 11:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've got black salt and red salt.

• 11:34Chuck Nice?

  And there's pink salt, too, yeah.

• 11:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's Himalayan salt, and there's Hawaiian salt.

• 11:37Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 11:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's pink salt, yeah.

• 11:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah. Um, wait a minute, man. How racist are you that your salt is black? Seriously?

• 11:47Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All I'm saying.

• 11:48Chuck Nice?

  Why are you saying this?

• 11:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, and another asymmetry in physics, okay?

• 11:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 11:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you realize an electron is a positive charge?

• 11:57Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 11:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry, negative charge.

• 11:58Chuck Nice?

  Negative charge, right.

• 11:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Negative charge, okay. So now watch. I can draw field lines coming off the electron, and there'll be straight lines coming out. They call it the electric field lines, and that's fine. I have a formula that describes that. Okay, electricity and magnetism are two sides of the same coin.

• 12:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why we have the word electromagnetic.

• 12:18Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 12:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Electromagnetic. That's why we have that word.

• 12:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so if things were symmetric, I should be able to find just a negative pole of a magnet. Just the same way I have a negative charge on an electron.

• 12:32Chuck Nice?

  But you can't.

• 12:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't.

• 12:33Chuck Nice?

  Because the moment you have a magnet, you gotta have two poles.

• 12:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. So get yourself a magnet, bar magnet, horseshoe magnet, I don't care. There's a plus side and a negative side. Cut it in half. Now you have two magnets with a plus and a minus side. Cut them in half. You have four magnets, each with a plus and minus side. You cannot cut off the negative from the positive in a magnet. But you can in electricity.

• 12:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That shows up in the formulas as an asymmetry in what's called Maxwell's equations. They are not symmetric.

• 13:03Chuck Nice?

  That's awesome.

• 13:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And as a physicist, you gotta get over that when you first learn his equations. So getting back to the woman's point, the periodic table of elements has a remarkable and profound level of symmetry in it. The reason why it wraps around to another row.

• 13:17Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And certain elements line up.

• 13:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In columns is because the elements that line up in columns. Have the same mating properties with other elements.

• 13:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, if you're.

• 13:29Chuck Nice?

  So you can combine them.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so take carbon, for example, we're carbon-based life.

• 13:33Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're a science fiction fan, you'd think about silicon-based life. You ever hear about silicon? Did they just pull that out of their, the ether? No, silicon sits below carbon on the periodic table, directly below it. It makes the same families of molecules that carbon does. So they're saying, if we're carbon-based life, why not swap a silicon atom in with the carbon? And make all the same molecules.

• 13:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you have life based on silicon rather than car. The periodic table of elements captures this fact in its structure and in its form. As you get to heavier and heavier elements, things get more complex. They get, um, and so you have entire groups of elements that all behave in the same way. So how you, you can't, you're gonna shoehorn them into one column? You can't, because now they're next to each other. So you have these things that spread out underneath. There's the, the two of the lanthanide series and the, uh, so just go back to your periodic table. You'll see these two, uh, rows of elements not sitting in with the other rows of elements. And we're still discovering elements, so.

• 14:36Chuck Nice?

  And sometimes creating elements.

• 14:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry, and we're creating elements.

• 14:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are better at creating elements than nature is.

• 14:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 14:45Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 14:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why, so we've got like 20, what are we up to? Yeah, uh, no, about 30 artificial elements now.

• 14:51Chuck Nice?

  Wow, look at that.

• 14:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they're real. They're made, electrons, protons, neutrons. And they're sitting there, yeah.

• 14:57Chuck Nice?

  Hmm, look at us playing God. Mm-hmm. Now, well, that was a great answer to a really cool question.

• 15:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a long answer, too.

• 15:03Chuck Nice?

  Who cares? It was fascinating, that's all, no.

• 15:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so I'm saying.

• 15:07Chuck Nice?

  We're about quality, not quantity.

• 15:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, so it's, uh, if you have issues with asymmetries in nature.

• 15:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you're in the wrong universe.

• 15:17Chuck Nice?

  You're in the wrong universe, right. But I'm sure that there is a, uh, someplace in the multiverse that is just right for you, Renee Douglas.

• 15:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, just a quick thing.

• 15:25Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 15:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, Isaac Newton was a big fan of God.

• 15:29Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 15:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As everyone was in the day.

• 15:30Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 15:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not isolating him in particular in this regard.

• 15:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But everybody was a God fan back then.

• 15:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he was.

• 15:38Chuck Nice?

  God, dude, such a fan. Oh, God, what's up? Such a fan, dude. Love your work. Friend me.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, I love your work, right? So, a lot of Newton's writings, he's extolling the beauties of nature.

• 15:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As the handiwork of God.

• 15:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in one place, he comments about the beautiful symmetry that the human form takes.

• 16:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Left and right.

• 16:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 16:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But he has to then say, "But only on the outside."

• 16:08Chuck Nice?

  Only on the outside, right.

• 16:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because the inside.

• 16:10Chuck Nice?

  The inside is all messed up.

• 16:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, yeah, there's not, it's, there's some things that are symmetric, but not really.

• 16:14Chuck Nice?

  Right down to your heart, where one side is bigger than the other.

• 16:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And is louder than the other.

• 16:18Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 16:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You only have one liver, and that's.

• 16:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, the inside of your body kinda looks like Jeff Bezos' eyes, you know?

• 16:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What?

• 16:25Chuck Nice?

  I'm just saying.

• 16:28Chuck Nice?

  He's got like one tiny one and one big one.

• 16:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, your organs are sort of mildly symmetric, and there's a lot of.

• 16:33Chuck Nice?

  His eyes are so weird.

• 16:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're not 50% left-handed and 50% right-handed?

• 16:37Chuck Nice?

  No, we're not.

• 16:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so there's some asymmetries going on, that's all I'm saying.

• 16:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 16:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, he had to sort of accept that from his praise of God.

• 16:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because he assumed that God was, is perfect.

• 16:48Chuck Nice?

  That there's a plan.

• 16:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And God planned, and the plan would be symmetry. Same with the Vitruvian Man that is widely associated with.

• 16:54Chuck Nice?

  What's it, Da Vinci?

• 16:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Da Vinci, right?

• 16:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Um, with the man with his hands sticking out.

• 16:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Left and right, centered on a circle. So, the idea was, your belly button, because if we're divine, then our form would be geometric. So, your belly button would be the center of a circle that you could trace with a compass.

• 17:12Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then your arms extend and your legs out would further trace the circle.

• 17:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this was the perfect human form.

• 17:18Chuck Nice?

  Had, had Da Vinci ever met a human being?

• 17:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No!

• 17:21Chuck Nice?

  Because there's no one who fits that.

• 17:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the urge, this is the, but he drew it, but he didn't come up with it.

• 17:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It long predates him.

• 17:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 17:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, uh, from what I've read, it long predates him. But, uh, so my point is, when you actually do that with actual people, belly buttons are not in the same place. People have longer arms, shorter arms.

• 17:40Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 17:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, relative to their height.

• 17:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you want it all to be perfect, because you have a philosophical urge for nature to be symmetric and perfect.

• 17:52Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 17:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if that's what's driving you, history tells us you're just gonna get the wrong answer.

• 17:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, get over it. So, in physics, we get over it early when we first learn that.

• 18:01Chuck Nice?

  Sweet!

• 18:14Speaker 02

  I'm Jasmine Wilson and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, I love you some physics in everyday life.

• 18:29Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, man, so do I.

• 18:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:31Chuck Nice?

  This is really good stuff.

• 18:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what do you have?

• 18:33Chuck Nice?

  Let's jump right back.

• 18:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bring it right back.

• 18:35Chuck Nice?

  And this is Rafael Kadabak from Facebook.

• 18:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been practicing, Chuck.

• 18:42Chuck Nice?

  Nah, not at all.

• 18:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, what do you have?

• 18:46Chuck Nice?

  I mean, it probably says Smith there as far as I know. But anyway, if we were visited by a more advanced alien race, what do you think they will admire most about humans? And with regards to our current scientific knowledge and understanding, what particular theory or law do you think they might disprove?

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, that's interesting.

• 19:07Chuck Nice?

  That is a very, that's a great question.

• 19:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'd like that, so.

• 19:11Chuck Nice?

  It would have to be.

• 19:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I may be cynical.

• 19:13Chuck Nice?

  Cynical?

• 19:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  May I? Only with your permission.

• 19:15Chuck Nice?

  Oh, go please, I'm all about, it's rare that I see you actually admit to being cynical.

• 19:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think aliens more advanced than us would be impressed how far we've come.

• 19:28Chuck Nice?

  For being such dumbasses.

• 19:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For being such.

• 19:31Chuck Nice?

  For being such dumbasses, you were trying to find out a very diplomatic way.

• 19:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How far we've come in spite of ourselves.

• 19:38Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, that's what I said.

• 19:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think they would have said, we never thought you'd get there.

• 19:44Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's hilarious.

• 19:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you've all been on Earth for thousands of, you've had what you call civilization for thousands of years.

• 19:49Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it took you 10,000 years of civilization before you even visited the moon. You could have been there a long time ago.

• 19:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I'm, but let me just be happy with what you did achieve.

• 19:59Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God. Oh my god.

• 20:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What? Imagine if we'd landed on the moon 2000 years ago.

• 20:05Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm imagining right now.

• 20:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Imagine if the Romans had rockets.

• 20:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but I'm, no, I'm imagining right now, just where we are.

• 20:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Imagine if the Egyptians said, "Let's leave Earth."

• 20:14Chuck Nice?

  Well, they did. They were aliens.

• 20:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's true. They were born aliens. They had aliens had a thing. I saw Stardust, Stargate.

• 20:20Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Right, exactly. They, they had a wormhole, so we can't really, but anyway. No, think about it. Look at all the technology that we have right now. And if we were to take all of the energy that we put into trying to destroy one another and keep one another from advancing, and we were to take all of that energy and just pour it into humanity.

• 20:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not just pure physics energy, but intellectual.

• 20:43Chuck Nice?

  Intellectual, you know, the political energy that we, that we expend.

• 20:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our cultural, political, and financial capital.

• 20:50Chuck Nice?

  Capital.

• 20:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That we've used to destroy one another.

• 20:52Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 20:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Imagine.

• 20:53Chuck Nice?

  If, just take that.

• 20:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Imagine.

• 20:56Chuck Nice?

  And it was all pointed at the propulsion of the human race in a positive direction.

• 21:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want me to quantify this?

• 21:05Chuck Nice?

  Oh, snap.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ready?

• 21:06Chuck Nice?

  You've been thinking about this.

• 21:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You ready?

• 21:07Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 21:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. In today's dollars, you know what it costs to go to the moon, in total?

• 21:11Chuck Nice?

  No, I don't.

• 21:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hundred billion dollars.

• 21:13Chuck Nice?

  Who are you, Dr. Evil?

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dr. Evil.

• 21:16Chuck Nice?

  One hundred billion dollars.

• 21:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so we went to the moon on a hundred billion dollars. The entire US interstate system is a hundred billion dollars.

• 21:29Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. A hundred billion is one-sixth a single year's allocation of the military budget of the United States.

• 21:43Chuck Nice?

  All right, that's disgusting.

• 21:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It just is.

• 21:45Chuck Nice?

  Ugh.

• 21:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It just is.

• 21:47Chuck Nice?

  You should have never told me that.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I used to judge that, but I stopped judging it. You know why?

• 21:50Chuck Nice?

  How can you not judge that?

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna tell you why.

• 21:52Chuck Nice?

  Please do. Please, you should be judging that.

• 21:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm gonna tell you why.

• 21:55Chuck Nice?

  Okay, you tell me, cuz.

• 21:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm telling you.

• 21:56Chuck Nice?

  That's deserving of judgment?

• 21:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm telling you.

• 21:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 22:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What are we, in sixth grade? I said it first. So, where does the budget come from? It comes from Congress. Where does Congress come from? We vote for Congress. So, so, well, what does it mean? What does it mean? That's very funny. That's what I'm saying. As an educator, I- Oh my god, I gotta stop judging it now. That's what I'm saying. Ugh. Dude. Where's that- The collective representatives of the electorate allocate this money. Oh my god. And they all agree to it. Raphael, you sent us the most depressing question ever. Well, but I didn't finish answering. So I think they'll be happy. Yeah, we would have been on the moon 4,000 years ago. Right. Right, it would have been like cavemen, next- Right. Chapter 2. Right, we would have been on the moon just going, "Mm, ah, mm."

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fire. Right. Fire on the moon. Rock. Yeah. Okay, that's A. B, I think they would be impressed with our engineering ingenuities. Okay. So, because that's not the laws of physics now. Because they would, they would know all the laws of physics that we know. Absolutely. And then some. Oh, by the way, the laws of physics is not later shown to be false. When we demonstrate a new theory of the universe, it's because it has been experimentally verified multiple times by competing factions, and we say, "This is how it is." We're moving on from here. Okay. What can happen is you have a deeper understanding of the world that encompasses this smaller understanding that you have that works. That can happen, it happens all the time.

• 23:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Okay, all of Newtonian physics got subsumed into Einsteinian physics. Right. But Newton is not all of a sudden wrong Right. in all the regimes in which it was tested. So, I think they'll say, "Not that you're wrong. Oh, you think this is the full story, there's a bigger story. You got the Big Bang starting the universe? No, we got multiple bangs. We have higher dimensions. Right. We got this, we got that, and you're just one little cog in this much larger wheel." That would be highly enlightening for us. Right. On, on a scale of learning, and this is an unheralded point of discovery in the history of my field, in the 1920s, 1920, the year, going into 1921, we did not know whether spiral fuzzy things in the night sky

• 24:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  were just spiral fuzzy things in our galaxy or entire other spiral galaxies in the universe. Wow. There are people alive today who-

• 24:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're alive before we knew that our galaxy was one of only a hundred billion in the universe. So, the idea that you're not alone in some concept, we've been hit with that multiple times before.

• 24:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the astrophysicist, we'd be ready for it. We'd love it to death.

• 24:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, there's some people who are kind of happy with their contained knowledge of what is and is not.

• 24:50Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 24:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just have to get over it.

• 24:52Chuck Nice?

  Don't, don't make me think about something other than what I already think about.

• 24:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Other than what I already can think about and already can grok.

• 24:57Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. I've actually, I've actually accepted this.

• 25:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This, correct.

• 25:01Chuck Nice?

  Excellent. So, let's go to, um, okay, I'm gonna read this anyway. Uh, Kevin Miller from Facebook wants to know this. Assuming the Earth is flat. That's a big assumption, Kevin. I just love any question that starts off with, "Assuming the..."

• 25:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, let's go there, let's, let's follow.

• 25:17Chuck Nice?

  Assuming the Earth, but I know you're the-

• 25:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's follow, let's follow the reasoning.

• 25:20Chuck Nice?

  One of the things I like about you is that you'll take these and do something with it. Alright. "When the ice melts at the poles, where is all the water going to go?"

• 25:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have no idea.

• 25:32Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, because the Earth ain't flat!

• 25:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It seemed to me it would spill off the edges.

• 25:37Chuck Nice?

  The edges, right? I mean, seriously, if the Earth were flat, it'd be like a table, you know, so...

• 25:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you spill some on a table, it goes, spills off the edge.

• 25:44Chuck Nice?

  It spills off the edge, yeah.

• 25:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm thinking, unless you build a dam.

• 25:47Chuck Nice?

  Ah, so now the Earth is not flat, it's more like a pie dish.

• 25:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:53Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 25:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's got edges to it.

• 25:54Chuck Nice?

  It's got edges, mm.

• 25:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "And beyond there be demons."

• 26:02Chuck Nice?

  Why do I feel like Jack Sparrow right now? "And beyond there be demons."

• 26:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Far, beyond far limits.

• 26:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Alright, well, there you go, Kevin, there you have it. Alright, that's, um-

• 26:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a pie plate.

• 26:12Chuck Nice?

  It's a pie plate, bro. That's, that's, that's all we can do for you. Let's move on to Nader's, uh, 19872 from Instagram. "How far away would a black hole have to be in order for our solar system to fall into it?

• 26:29Chuck Nice?

  I also have another question. Why are you so awesome? I love StarTalk and you are just one of my heroes."

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's, yeah.

• 26:38Chuck Nice?

  No, that part, that last part was for me, man.

• 26:42Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 26:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you Chuck.

• 26:45Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, no.

• 26:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do you know, did he really say that?

• 26:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm serious. That's, he was talking to you. I was joking, yes. He's, he's saying you are one of my heroes and I really love StarTalk.

• 26:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, no, we appreciate that. And let the record show that you were reading that question, whether or not he appended it with that sentence.

• 27:00Chuck Nice?

  Oh, well, he didn't write it to me, so you don't know the questions.

• 27:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't boost questions up just because you're like saying nice things.

• 27:07Chuck Nice?

  Well, we do boost questions up if you're saying nice things about Chuck Nice, because I'm the one who's reading the damn questions.

• 27:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's true.

• 27:12Chuck Nice?

  You know to me, but...

• 27:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, thank you for those kind words.

• 27:15Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The...

• 27:18Chuck Nice?

  Now, the question, after the kind, or actually preceding the kind words, was how far away would a black hole have to be in order for our solar system to fall into it? I, I think what he means is that of how far, how close?

• 27:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, so...

• 27:30Chuck Nice?

  Would it have to be is what he really...

• 27:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Same, same idea.

• 27:33Chuck Nice?

  Same thing.

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that's not how black holes work.

• 27:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Black hole is not some giant sucking machine.

• 27:39Chuck Nice?

  Like my career.

• 27:45Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I'm sorry, laughing at my own...

• 27:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We love you Chuck.

• 27:48Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, you're a hero on our podcast, no matter what else is happening to your career.

• 27:55Chuck Nice?

  No matter how far in the toilet your career may be, Chuck.

• 27:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you get booed off this comedy stage last night?

• 28:01Chuck Nice?

  No, actually, really good show.

• 28:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A good show, very nice. Very nice.

• 28:04Chuck Nice?

  So, anyway, it doesn't work that way.

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Should a comedian be the one who judges whether the comedian has a good show?

• 28:08Chuck Nice?

  No, yes, the comedian is always the one who judges. Because here's the great thing about being a stand-up comic.

• 28:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Well, you know.

• 28:14Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you always know. And you can, you, you can...

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know.

• 28:18Chuck Nice?

  And I love young comedians, because they get off the stage and they immediately lie to themselves. You know, and they get off the stage and they look at you and they go, "Yeah, so that felt good, right?" And I'm like, "Why are you asking me? It felt good, it felt good. You don't need my permission for it to feel... You know you suck. You know you suck. What is your problem?"

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, the mentor.

• 28:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No wonder no one comes to me for advice. Alright, anyway, back to Nader's 1987. Black holes are not some giant sucking machine. Okay. So, they have a gravity commensurate with their mass, like anything. You have gravity. Yes, I do. The moon has gravity, Earth has gravity, the sun has gravity. Anything with mass. Anything with mass or energy has gravity, because energy and mass are the same. Ah, that's right. So, you can ask, how much mass does, how much mass does the black hole have? And if it has a planet's worth of mass, it could just hang out in our solar system like another planet. Right. If it has a star's worth of mass, it might accrete planets to orbit it. If it has. Interesting. So. It could even have a galaxy's worth of mass. A galaxy's worth. We have a supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy.

• 29:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you don't want to get too close to it, because there are places where they're no longer stable orbits. Then you'd fall in. Then you fall in. But, you can calculate what that distance is, and it's not too hard to stay away. Right. It's not that hard. Right. If we turn Earth into a black hole, it'd be like the size of a plum, last I calculated. So, and it would send it, and the moon would still orbit it. The moon wouldn't care. Wouldn't care. It's only responding to the, the mass and the gravity that it ex. So, what makes black holes interesting is that you can get really close to them, and get ripped apart and spaghettified. Okay? You can't get closer than Earth's surface to Earth's center of gravity. Okay? Okay. You'd have to shrink Earth. Right.

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To get closer to it. Shrink it down to a plum, now you've been spaghettified. Wow. So, all the interesting stuff that happens with black holes is because you can get really close. Otherwise, you're hanging out where you've always been, you were perfectly safe. Don't have nightmares about it. It doesn't do anything to this, like it never. Now, now, if, now, if I had Earth as a plum, if I took another planet, take Venus, made a black hole and brought it here. Right. And let go. It would fall through the earth and eat earth swiss cheese style as it bounced back and forth. And it would systematically dine upon all the physical contents of the earth. Until earth plus venus became one.

• 30:43Chuck Nice?

  A big, right. So you'd have the merging of those two.

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, and it'd become like the size of an orange or something.

• 30:49Chuck Nice?

  So the black hole would actually increase in size itself.

• 30:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Physically.

• 30:53Chuck Nice?

  The physical black hole would increase in size if you would emerge two black holes.

• 30:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It turns out to be linear with mass. So a black hole that's twice the mass will have twice the diameter.

• 31:02Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 31:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you do the math.

• 31:04Chuck Nice?

  Okay, cool.

• 31:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the diameter is the diameter of a vaporizer. Gotta say that.

• 31:09Chuck Nice?

  That sounds cool.

• 31:26Chuck Nice?

  Uh, here we go. What degree can you do more with? A physics degree or a mathematics degree?

• 31:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Physics degree.

• 31:33Chuck Nice?

  Really? Now, are you biased?

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some things are objectively true in the world.

• 31:40Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 31:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, let's say it another way. In spite of what it might seem like to your parents.

• 31:47Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you choose to major in physics or math.

• 31:51Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Both of them are highly employable by people who know and understand the brain wiring that emerges for having done so.

• 31:59Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 32:01Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 32:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mathematicians and physicists are problem solvers and engineers are problem solvers.

• 32:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They can see problems in ways others have not. And it's just that physics has more places to plug into.

• 32:16Chuck Nice?

  More applications.

• 32:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Operations of society than does a mathematician. That's all. But in either case, you don't see either mathematicians or physicists as on the street.

• 32:29Chuck Nice?

  Begging, right.

• 32:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 32:31Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 32:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'll find artists, you'll find musicians.

• 32:33Chuck Nice?

  We'll calculate for food.

• 32:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. We'll recite digits of pi for, right, no, no, so.

• 32:38Chuck Nice?

  For pi.

• 32:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For pi. Haven't had pie all day.

• 32:43Chuck Nice?

  Pie all day.

• 32:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How many digits can you do?

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, it's a reminder that there's certain professions that fundamentally plug in to civilization. And others that become a part of civilization because we choose it to. So, we embrace music. We embrace art, the kind of art that is not otherwise self-sufficient. So, I'm not talking about pop music. I'm talking about, you know, orchestral music that generally is performed in institutions that require.

• 33:19Chuck Nice?

  Funding.

• 33:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Funding, yes.

• 33:20Chuck Nice?

  And that funding normally comes from someone who gives a great deal of money to make that happen.

• 33:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 33:25Chuck Nice?

  Because it can't sustain itself through the appetite of the public.

• 33:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yet, the city in which you find those offerings of art boasts that they have those offerings of art.

• 33:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's in the catalog. It's in, we have this Philharmonic Hall.

• 33:38Chuck Nice?

  A Boston Philharmonic.

• 33:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we have this art museum, and we have all these institutions.

• 33:42Chuck Nice?

  That's what makes us a cosmopolitan destination.

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. So, it's an interesting difference that we have art and science in the same phrase. I went to the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of whatever. Arts and Sciences go way back as a paired thing. We have Leonardo as the epitome.

• 34:00Chuck Nice?

  Right, actually combining the two.

• 34:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Combine two, he's one of the greatest examples of that. So, I'm just saying, a society has to want to embrace its artists in order for them to manifest as a fully expressed, employed community. Whereas, financial forces can drive your interest in having an engineer or a physicist on staff.

• 34:22Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 34:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For example. Mayor Bloomberg.

• 34:27Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Former Mayor Bloomberg.

• 34:28Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 34:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Successful businessman.

• 34:30Chuck Nice?

  Very much so.

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very much so.

• 34:32Chuck Nice?

  Billionaire.

• 34:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Multi billionaire.

• 34:33Chuck Nice?

  Like a real billionaire, not like some other people.

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some other people you heard of?

• 34:37Chuck Nice?

  I'm very rich. Very, very rich. Normally, when people tell you they're very rich, they're me.

• 34:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They ain't.

• 34:44Chuck Nice?

  Right, they're me. Like, yo, don't look at that, I'm very rich.

• 34:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, here's the thing. When he built his company.

• 34:50Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He could have hired MBAs who know their business, but that's not who he hired.

• 34:55Chuck Nice?

  Who'd he hire?

• 34:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He majored in physics and engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

• 35:00Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 35:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He hired mathematicians, physicists, and engineers.

• 35:04Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 35:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And would teach them the business side of the world, but he needed people who

• 35:08Chuck Nice?

  Problem solvers.

• 35:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who would go with gnashed teeth.

• 35:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And attack a problem they've never seen before.

• 35:15Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 35:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And my wife was one of those earliest employees.

• 35:18Chuck Nice?

  Get, get out.

• 35:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  She has a PhD in mathematical physics.

• 35:20Chuck Nice?

  Well, I knew that. I didn't know that she worked for Bloomberg in the early days.

• 35:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When she was there, Bloomberg had 100 employees.

• 35:25Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God.

• 35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 35:26Chuck Nice?

  She got more money than you.

• 35:29Chuck Nice?

  Now I know.

• 35:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So she was early in on that, and he recognized what she could bring to the table.

• 35:39Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 35:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As others that, that she worked with, yeah.

• 35:42Chuck Nice?

  That's so cool.

• 35:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 35:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. All right.

• 35:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so go for it.

• 35:46Chuck Nice?

  Go, go, go, go.

• 35:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, either. Do either. Do, if you're gonna pick one of those, pick the one you love and do it.

• 35:51Chuck Nice?

  And do it. Okay, cool.

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you'll be better at it than others, and people will be to pass through your door. All right, give me some more.

• 35:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. Why haven't there been a greater number of advancements on solar energy, given it's literally a constant free source of energy?

• 36:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the source of the energy is free, but the devices to convert it into useful forms.

• 36:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Given the economics of what is going on right now.

• 36:16Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Has not yet reached that tipping point. So, right now, sort of the wealthy class that has the luxury of being green without regard to its impact on your pocketbook.

• 36:27Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're the first adopters of the electric cars, and the electric this, and the solar panels, and the like. What is missing from the equation is how much our tax money Throughout the last century has subsidized the oil and gas industry.

• 36:42Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we built the roads, bought the car that now we put their gas in. They didn't build the roads.

• 36:48Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 36:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the question is, can and should society subsidize the solar energy universe in the way we have subsidized?

• 36:59Chuck Nice?

  The fossil fuels industry.

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The fossil fuels industry.

• 37:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 37:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in doing so, would that tip the economics in the favor of solar panels and solar energy?

• 37:07Chuck Nice?

  That's a great point, man.

• 37:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, by the way, that was George Xenofontos, who actually, uh...

• 37:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Love that name, Xenofontos, oh man.

• 37:14Chuck Nice?

  Uh, and by the way, yeah, tan, getting a tan is free. Solar power is not.

• 37:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so the sun's energy is basically limitless.

• 37:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the, um, also, you have to be able to transport energy.

• 37:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Move it from where it is to where you need it.

• 37:31Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And solar power exists when the sun is out.

• 37:34Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's daytime, you know, so where you're getting your energy at night.

• 37:38Chuck Nice?

  Well, you have to develop batteries with it.

• 37:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so battery technology is still, is a century behind other technologies.

• 37:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there's, there's still some, uh...

• 37:48Chuck Nice?

  But wouldn't you see a proliferation of new battery designs and an improvement in battery life if you were to see the same burgeoning, uh, of, of, of solar power? I think one would drive the other.

• 38:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Possibly, except we already have a huge demand for battery. We're using more batteries today than ever before.

• 38:06Chuck Nice?

  This is true.

• 38:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It used to be, I need a battery for my motor car, and so you go buy the battery, and then the battery would leak or run out, or you leave it, leave it on. The, the buying of batteries was a major thing in the day. Now, anybody's house has thirty batteries laying around.

• 38:19Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 38:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? And the batteries last longer than ever, and our machines, our, our devices that use batteries...

• 38:27Chuck Nice?

  Use them more efficiently.

• 38:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Use them more efficiently.

• 38:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, so we, so batteries, we think batteries are improving at a higher rate than they actually are because the demand, the, the energy demand is...

• 38:37Chuck Nice?

  The energy demand for it.

• 38:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even our flashlights are LEDs.

• 38:39Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, which means that they're using much less juice.

• 38:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 38:43Chuck Nice?

  Wow, okay, well, listen, man, I, I can only hope that, uh, George, that, uh, what, what you want to see actually happens, you know?

• 38:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, yeah, yeah, and, and so, like I said, it's, it's an economics thing.

• 38:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the day that economics tips, everybody will have solar panels on every horizontal surface in their life. It'll happen practically overnight. Because that's how these things work. And in a free society, there's a limit to how much you can beat someone on the head to get them to to spend more money for something that's almost as good or not quite as good as what they already have.

• 39:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or even if it's a little better, but if they can do it cheaper. So, most people want to save the buck.

• 39:21Chuck Nice?

  That's true. That's, yep. That's why I don't mind that.

• 39:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right now, right now, you can't give away an incandescent bulb.

• 39:26Chuck Nice?

  No, you can't.

• 39:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't.

• 39:28Chuck Nice?

  Because they, they cost you more money. I mean, if you're smart enough to know what you have.

• 39:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no. So, so incandescent bulbs, no, they, I think they're cheaper than I think, but if you do the math on it, they ultimately cost you more money. And you gotta throw them away, and they get hot, and everything.

• 39:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, well, they're really a heat source, not a light source.

• 39:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. They give off more infrared than they do visible light.

• 39:49Chuck Nice?

  That's correct, yeah, yeah. I think I learned that from you.

• 39:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 39:52Chuck Nice?

  I'm just, that's how long we've been working together.

• 39:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're primarily a heat source.

• 39:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, they're primarily a heat source, yeah. All right, here we go. Marco Blackwell from Facebook wants to know this with the advancements of science. Has there been any attempts to change any of the established rules, laws, of physics, laws of motion, thermodynamics, et cetera? Or is it once that it's a law and it's established that it just cannot be changed? So, in other words.

• 40:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You were like 10% Captain Kirk on that one.

• 40:23Chuck Nice?

  I know.

• 40:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just saying.

• 40:26Chuck Nice?

  It just cannot be changed. Tell me, Spock, what is it with the laws of thermodynamics?

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Once, once, okay, in the old days, we used to call them laws, back in the 19th century, classical, the, the pinnacles of classical physics. Newton's laws of motion, the laws of thermodynamics. 20th century, we've loosened the word law, we don't use the word law anymore. Not because they aren't laws, just because we're a little more candid about the fact that what we say is a fundamental property of the universe may be a small part of a bigger understanding of the universe.

• 41:00Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 41:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whereas law implies, there we go, and but what we are discovering that is experimentally verified, is not later shown to be false.

• 41:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this is a misconception that so many people have. They say, oh, there's a theory of, of, you know, quantum theory, that means that we won't be different. No, it is working, baby.

• 41:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got this, okay? There's still some other things we can understand about it. There's still some frontiers. It may plug into a larger understanding, but the quantum, um, theory that we have established, experimented on, and works, it is, we are good to go. So, no, it does not change. It only expands.

• 41:38Chuck Nice?

  Aha, there is, there's the rub.

• 41:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 41:41Chuck Nice?

  It expands.

• 41:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our understanding can expand on that understanding.

• 41:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it doesn't swap out that understanding, once it has been experimentally verified. And that's, and so, and it, at that point, it elevates to the level of theory.

• 41:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's why I'm trying, I, I may lose this battle, but I, I'm trying to get people to not say, when they say, I have a theory about, no, you have a hypothesis.

• 42:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 42:03Chuck Nice?

  And it's probably not even a hypothesis. You have a feeling.

• 42:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right. You say, I have a theory. No, Einstein had a theory. You got a hypothesis.

• 42:11Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, right. Cause a hypothesis, there's.

• 42:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, if you have a feeling, that's another, that's another level. You got a feeling.

• 42:16Chuck Nice?

  I got a feeling, right. Cause people say, I have a hypothesis, and I'm like, really? Is it educated?

• 42:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you really thought it through?

• 42:21Chuck Nice?

  Have you really thought it through? Because that, yeah.

• 42:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we got two minutes left. What, how many, what do you got?

• 42:26Chuck Nice?

  All right, here's one. This is Haney, uh.

• 42:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Laugh in advance of the question. That's embarrassing for the person who asked the question.

• 42:32Chuck Nice?

  I'm not laughing at the question. I'm just laughing at that. Okay, I'm laughing at the question.

• 42:37Chuck Nice?

  Uh, Haney Lawrence says this.

• 42:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From where?

• 42:40Chuck Nice?

  From Instagram.

• 42:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 42:42Chuck Nice?

  What causes thunder?

• 42:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thunder, very good.

• 42:46Chuck Nice?

  I know, but it just seems so weird to ask Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 42:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 42:50Chuck Nice?

  Because you're an astrophysicist and there are so many.

• 42:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's physics, dude.

• 42:53Chuck Nice?

  It is physics, but I'm just saying, you're, like, there's so much that you are associated with in terms of your expertise.

• 43:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe this person knows everything else.

• 43:04Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 43:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's the only gap left in their knowledge.

• 43:06Chuck Nice?

  Oh, sure. So the, yeah, right, yeah. They know all about red shifting.

• 43:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 43:11Chuck Nice?

  But they don't know what thunder is.

• 43:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 43:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay, by the way, I am not trying to disparage you, Lauren, at all, okay?

• 43:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 43:17Chuck Nice?

  I mean, Haney, and that's his name, Haney.

• 43:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so.

• 43:20Chuck Nice?

  What is thunder?

• 43:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here you go, okay? So during a thunderstorm.

• 43:23Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 43:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A rainstorm, a vigorous rainstorm.

• 43:26Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 43:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Water falls out of the clouds. All right. And generally, those water droplets have a net charge associated with them, a net negative charge. Okay. So it is separating negative charges out of the cloud and putting it in the ground. All right. There's a limit to how much of that you can get away with. Okay. Before the charges say, "We want to rebalance." We need more charge. No, we want to un- Oh, we want to uncharge? Uncharge. Right. Okay? You are stripping negatives from positives, and that's not how they want to be. Right. Okay? They want to be balanced. They want to be balanced. So this builds up enough imbalance and it says, "I'm coming back to you, Elizabeth." Lisbon. I'm coming to join you, honey. I'm coming back. I'm coming to uncharge.

• 44:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so those charges rise up. Right. And they come out of the ground and they create a visible arc of light that we call lightning back up to the cloud. Okay. So all lightning- Comes from the ground. -is either cloud to cloud or ground to cloud. Right. It's not cloud to ground. All visible lightning, okay? So, up comes this, this very hot, extremely hot- Arc of light. Arc of light, okay? It is so hot- That when you open and look into it, your face melts. It's beautiful!

• 44:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's beautiful! It's beautiful!

• 44:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, God, we are such nerds, dude. Such, such Raiders nerds here, okay? So- So it's so hot- It is so hot that the air, the air catastrophically expands. Interesting. That's what happens in the cartridge of a bullet. Right. It gets hot. That's why it makes a bang. And so, and it expands catastrophically, the bullet comes out the side, the shell drops to the ground. Right. Okay? So anytime you rapidly expand, rapidly heat air, that's how a bomb works. Right. It rapidly heats air. That's how the nuclear bombs work. You rapidly heat the air, the air knows only to expand catastrophically at that point, and it's a shockwave. A shockwave. So it's not just, "I'm getting louder." No, it's boom!

• 45:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's that expanding air that you then hear as thunder. After the lightning. After the lightning. Right. And it moves at the speed of sound. Which means the lightning you always see first. Okay, so I forgot, was it seven seconds a mile or something? It's some, some number of seconds per mile. So you can count how far away the lightning is and how far away that thunder clap was from you. And that'll let you know how close the storm is. By the time delays. I saw a documentary once. Uh huh. And he's very concerned about the accuracy of the thing. And he had a thunderstorm out in the distance and you heard the lightning exactly with the thunder. So at the end, the filmmaker was there in the room. I said, uh, why did I hear the thunder exactly timed with the lightning? I first said, do you care about accuracy in your documentary? Of course, of course.

• 46:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Accuracy is everything. So I said, why did the light? Oh, well, we shifted the sound because it was too weird. Right, it's too weird to have them, right. It looks like it's out of sync. It looked like it's out of sync. That's because it is out of sync, dude. Nature made it out of sync. You know what's really cool? Uh, if you go see a, a, well, a shuttle launch. Right. Um, go back in time. I was gonna say, yeah. Or watch any launch. Any launch, okay. The, that's a catastrophic heating of the air. It's thunderous. And the closest you can get if you're a civilian is like three miles away. Mm-hmm. So you just see this thing take off and it's total silence. It's total silence. Nice. And you see the shockwave, the front wave of the sound move. This is Florida, so there's a lot of, um, water.

• 47:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Water around here. So you see this ripple. Coming, moving towards you and birds coming up. You still don't hear anything, it's still silent. Then you hear boom as it comes to you. So it's just fun to watch the sound come to you. Nice. It's just a fun thing to, to do that. But anyhow, so that's what thunder is. And because the arc is not straight, a straight line. Right. It can bend, it'll take the, the most electrically expedient way back to the cloud. Makes sense. And it's not always a straight line. Right. It could be because it's wetter here and water absorbs, uh, conducts electricity better than dry air does. Okay? So, um, so what you have here is you, if there's angles to the lightning strike. Mm-hmm.

• 47:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's possible for you to be at the focus of two of those angles.

• 47:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in other words, if there's a straight segment off to your right and a straight segment off to your left, then you have sound coming to you from two different directions. Ooh. And if they hit you at the same time, you get the snap, that crack of the thunder. Like it sounds like a paper tearing or the sky is tearing. It's an extra magnification of the sound because you get multiple sound paths coming to you at the same time. Oh, I love it. Rather than just one, one. It's like. Yeah, yeah. That's this, that, that, all these different angles coming to you at different times, some of them hitting you at the same time. Cool. Chuck, we gotta end it there. Aw, man, that was a good one. Always great to have you, man.

• 48:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's always gonna be here. Love you, man. Love you too, man. Love you, Chuck. You've been listening to, possibly even watching, StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and this brings an end to our Physics of Everyday Life, Cosmic Queries. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.