Cosmic Queries – Pure Spacetime

Is there no single shared "now" for everyone in the universe? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Paul Mecurio dive into another grab bag of fan questions about superconducting asteroids, what memories are made of, and if you could ever experience pure unwarped spacetime.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Paul, that was a good set of questions. Oh my gosh.

• 0:03Paul Mecurio?

  It's amazing. We, you know, we learned a lot about sponges and webs and all sorts of things.

• 0:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming up, another installment of Cosmic Queries Grab Bag Edition.

• 0:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. This time I got Paul Mecurio. Paul, welcome back, dude.

• 0:40Paul Mecurio?

  All right. Good to see you again. Neil, how are you, buddy?

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Paul, at some point, somebody christened you Baron Paul Mecurio.

• 0:49Paul Mecurio?

  That is true. And we had a, we had a ceremony, which was quite lovely in your office, if you remember.

• 0:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did we use my Excalibur?

• 0:58Paul Mecurio?

  Excalibur, so yes, we did the whole thing. Yeah. I still, for some reason, there's no red carpet here, but you know.

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you still have your traveling show, Permission to Speak?

• 1:08Paul Mecurio?

  I do, yeah.

• 1:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a theater show, right?

• 1:11Paul Mecurio?

  It's a wagon and I sell medicines. I'm a medicine man now because I'm going to be out of a job at the Late Show. So yes, touring with that, I've got my podcast Inside Out with Paul Mecurio because it's the law and everyone's supposed to have a podcast now. And.

• 1:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been in the biz a while.

• 1:29Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, I go back to, I go back to The Daily Show and one of the original guys on that and.

• 1:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, even predating Jon Stewart.

• 1:38Paul Mecurio?

  Jon Stewart, that tiny little man. Yes, he's, he's, he's only this big. A lot of people don't know. The cameras are amazing that we would have. Yes, with Craig Kilborn and then, and Lewis Black was on and we would have all this crazy fun. And nobody knew what they were doing, but they were letting us, we were like, you know, you would appreciate this. We were like in the, in the lab, just, they just said, just go make it and blow things up. And then we'd get yelled at by the president of the network every once in a while because we went too far. He would literally yell at you like your father would yell at you like they couldn't get, why did you think that that could be okay on TV? And he's like screaming at you.

• 2:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got a grab bag this session. So that means.

• 2:22Paul Mecurio?

  Some great questions, by the way. Some really good questions.

• 2:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever subjects just sort of landed in your lap, and these are questions asked by Patreon members.

• 2:31Paul Mecurio?

  And whenever I do these, I'm always, and this isn't false praise, like you're, the fans of our show, just how smart they are about this stuff. Like they did really great questions.

• 2:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, oh my gosh, we should be handing out degrees.

• 2:45Paul Mecurio?

  Except for this first guy. This first guy's an idiot. No, I'm just kidding.

• 2:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So what you got for me?

• 2:52Paul Mecurio?

  This is Farouk from Uzbekistan, writing from Norwich, UK. It's my favorite movie, Interstellar. After I've seen your interview with Kip Thorne, there's something that bothers me now. When they were on Miller's planet with giant water waves next to the black hole, being immensely time dilated relative to one of their crew that remained behind on the ship and aged faster, what if they had telescopes and looked through the windows of the ship at their crewmate aging years for their minutes? Wouldn't they be able to see the faster passage of time? Or would it have, or what would it have looked like?

• 3:35Paul Mecurio?

  Or is light itself affected and won't allow this to happen?

• 3:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you had a telescope and looked down at them near the surface of the black hole, everything would be going in slow motion?

• 3:45Paul Mecurio?

  I understand, but it's also kind of insensitive. Listen, with the look into the telescope, hey, guys, look at this. Look at he's, he's aging so fast. He just, he just took out a reverse mortgage on his house. Like what?

• 3:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's turning gray while we watch it. Yeah.

• 4:01Paul Mecurio?

  I just had a sandwich and during that time he's been divorced three times and he doesn't have any visitation rights. Like what?

• 4:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They would look down and see them moving slowly. And when you're near a black hole, you see the rest of the universe unfold in rapid speed. And so, yeah, you, there's nothing special about the light that happens. It arrives to you at a different pace. Depending on how deep into a gravitational well you are. And the reason why that orbit was chosen to be very close to the black hole, it was to maximize the time dilation. It's called time dilation. When you create this difference in the rate of time. By the way, that exists for our GPS satellites. We are closer to the center of the earth than the GPS satellites are. So we experience slower time than they do, yet we get our precise time from them.

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when they send down their time from orbit, they pre-correct it for Einstein's general theory of relativity. So that our time works at our location on earth's surface.

• 5:06Paul Mecurio?

  Got it. So, but in you, in saying you look into the telescope, you're seeing things in slow motion, essentially, is that right?

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're looking at, at their behavior on the planet, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 5:18Paul Mecurio?

  Because it, because even if the guy, because light itself gets stretched and so it looks like he's buffering, basically? Is that what we're saying?

• 5:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's an interesting word to bring into relativity. I have to think about that. So no, just the timeline. So here's the thing. You are a prisoner of the present for forever transitioning between your inaccessible past and your unknowable future. That's all you know about your own timeline. There are other timelines that are proceeding at different paces than your timeline. Depending on how fast they're moving in space relative to you and depending on how much gravity they're subjected to. So time is not absolute. That's that. This was the big discovery of Einstein.

• 6:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Isaac Newton is turning in his grave upon hearing this, if you could hear.

• 6:15Paul Mecurio?

  Right. So who's present are we, it's basically like, who's present are we talking about, right? Does this relativity, does this mean there's no shared now? So the idea of watching someone age across frames is already kind of the wrong question in a way?

• 6:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. Some of those questions, you're right. Some of those questions just kind of lose meaning. Like what is the now for everybody if your timeline is unfolding more slowly than mine? Right?

• 6:41Paul Mecurio?

  Because you can't watch them age and fast forward because the universe won't let you skip ahead to the consequences.

• 6:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It won't let you skip ahead, but you can watch a timeline unfold faster than yours.

• 6:51Paul Mecurio?

  And if time is that dilated, does that mean you couldn't actually watch him aging and fast forward? Because the light carrying that information is stretched and delayed as well? So the universe.

• 7:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think if you're tracking time, the stretching of the, so rather than think of stretching of light, think of light pulses, right?

• 7:14Paul Mecurio?

  Got it.

• 7:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so what's the interval between pulses? And that's a nice way to sort of tick out the time. The pulses you would see down on the, on the planet, I guess it was called Miller's planet. I didn't remember the name of it.

• 7:28Paul Mecurio?

  Yes, Miller's.

• 7:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you all agreed, let's pulse every second. And then you see their pulses down there and their pulses happen every two or three seconds, even though according to their watches, it's every one second. So it's not that the light stretches so much as the pace at which time unfolds shifts. And so, yeah, and, and they did it right. They did it right.

• 7:49Paul Mecurio?

  Mark Phillips, fluorescent, Missouri. Hi, Dr. Tyson. This is Mark Phillips.

• 7:55Paul Mecurio?

  Fluorescent, F O F L O R I S S A N, or fluorescent.

• 8:01Paul Mecurio?

  If we are living in a, in a simulation, would you want to know? And would you choose to embrace your place or attempt to break the cycle and communicate to the overlords, knowing you, Neil? You'll need to communicate because it's got a lot of that.

• 8:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that question.

• 8:19Paul Mecurio?

  And what would, and third part of the question, what would you wish to gain from contact with them? Or have you already, and you are just controlling us?

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not authorized to comment.

• 8:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a great question. I love it. I embrace all objective truths, no matter what. I mean, it's not that long ago in the era of our grandparents, perhaps, where it was perfectly acceptable for the doctor to lie to you, to tell you, you don't have terminal cancer and no, you're not going to be dead in six months. That was somehow accepted.

• 9:00Paul Mecurio?

  That's right. You're right.

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, I think there was such a scene in, was it a streetcar named Desire? What's the story that has Big Daddy in it?

• 9:09Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, that's mendacity. That's a cat on a hot tin roof?

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, cat on a hot tin, cat on a, I don't know why I confuse those two. So cat on a hot tin roof, Big Daddy, or whatever his name was. He, he was told, everyone else knew he was going to die and the doctor told him he was like just fine.

• 9:24Paul Mecurio?

  Right. That's right.

• 9:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To me, that is today completely unacceptable, at least for me. I want to know all truth so that I can reckon with that truth in whatever way I see fit. To live a lie is to not fully be in touch with all that controls your life, all that matters, all that. So, yeah, maybe that's because I'm a scientist. Some people just say, lie to me, lie to me. They have a lot of politics, right? Lie to me. Tell me there is no global warming. Tell me we're not, tell me, just lie to me and I know everything will be better.

• 10:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and that's okay temporarily and then it catches up with you and by then it's too late. So yeah, I would want to know if I was in a simulation.

• 10:15Paul Mecurio?

  I, I agree. I would want to know.

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  B, I totally want to talk to the overlords.

• 10:21Paul Mecurio?

  Absolutely.

• 10:24Paul Mecurio?

  I want to talk to the manager. I have questions.

• 10:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You want to be Karen, right?

• 10:29Paul Mecurio?

  First of all, here, here, first of all.

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want to speak to who's in charge.

• 10:31Paul Mecurio?

  Who's in charge? First of all, who picked my avatar? Why don't I have a better body? That would be one. You had infinite rendering power and you chose to make me a guy who pulls a hamstring tying his shoe. That would be number two. Why did you give me mild acid reflux? I have a lot of issues with this overlord person. And with our luck, it's a 14-year-old kid who gets like a triple A plus.

• 10:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's an alien kid in his parents' basement. Yeah.

• 10:59Paul Mecurio?

  Listen, if we're in a simulation, I just want the patch notes. That's all I want. Okay?

• 11:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The programmer of this simulation in which we live gave you freedom to join a fitness center, which you haven't done. It is obvious to me you've never stepped into a fitness center in your life.

• 11:18Paul Mecurio?

  Wow. Okay. This is why I would, I don't want to know all truths. This is why I want, there are some, there are some things I don't want to know. So what would you change?

• 11:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, question is, what would I ask? And I would, I would ask, is every bit of this universe knowable through laws of physics? Or is there something you just got lazy programming? And it will never make sense to anybody. And no one can ever create a law for it because you just pulled it out of your ass. That's what I'd want to know because if, if they didn't, then I would still continue to explore with the laws of physics.

• 11:57Paul Mecurio?

  Well, it's funny because in my mind, when I read this question before we came on the air, it was like, it's sort of maybe the, the other side of the coin of what you just said, which is, is there only a simulation? Or is there some being or power ephemeral, ethereal that has some hand in how we exist? Does that be?

• 12:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know that we would ever be able to deduce the difference.

• 12:23Paul Mecurio?

  Well, but could you, that's the point, right? So the simulation maybe only exists because of this greater power being like we don't, you'll never know the answer to that.

• 12:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The simulator is the greater powerful being.

• 12:36Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, but that's, but that's, yeah, but, but we don't know what the sim, is the simulator a human being? Is it a, is it an alien of some kind? Like what is, who is the simulator?

• 12:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does it matter? I mean, I'm saying it's someone vastly smarter than us. That's all.

• 12:53Paul Mecurio?

  Whoa.

• 12:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like an ant farm.

• 12:54Paul Mecurio?

  Speak for yourself, buddy, Mr. Insecure, low IQ guy. I can catch, first of all, in this one question, you told me I have arms like limp spaghetti noodles in terms of my body's height and I'm dumb as a stump. Is this how we're going to do the whole show? Or is it going to end here?

• 13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I only talked about your arms. I didn't talk about your brain. You have a brilliant brain and spaghetti noodle arms.

• 13:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no. So that's what I would do. I would say, shall I continue as a scientist exploring the knowability of the universe? Or is there some point where you just gave up and it's all random? That's what I want to know. But I'd, here's, here, it has good precedent. There was a day before Newton, you'd look up and the planets would move against the background stars and the moon and the sun. And no one really understood it. We could sort of trace it, but an understanding eluded us. But that was okay because the sky was the realm of God. And how could you possibly understand the mind of God? And then Isaac Newton says, here it is, it's three equations.

• 14:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And some accused Newton of heresy for, for, for stepping where previously only God had tread. And so in this case, is, is God a deity as known through religious texts? Or is God a programmer in an alien basement? In either case, whatever's going on is created by them and is vastly more complex than we are. And we're just inside of it, just poking the edges.

• 14:39Paul Mecurio?

  Well, but is it? I mean, if, if it's so sophisticated that it can create all of this, one question I would have in all seriousness is why have you created so many imperfections when you have this amazing ability to create this simulation?

• 14:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So I have an answer to that. I have an answer. Okay. Okay. Just when everything is going fine, just when everything is going fine, the programmer gets bored and say, let's throw in COVID.

• 15:08Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 15:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stir the pot.

• 15:10Paul Mecurio?

  I know. Let's throw in the feature where Paul has to get up three times a night to pee at, how about that? Let's throw that in there just to make it like, you know?

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's TMI, Paul. I don't need to know about your bladder condition. So then we finally get through COVID. Okay. And we have the vaccine. Then

• 15:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  a billionaire New York real estate developer becomes the most powerful person in the world. Stir the pot some more. If there were ever evidence that an alien programmer were in charge just for their entertainment, it is that.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Ernie Carducci from Columbus, Ohio. I'm here with my son, Ernie, because we listen to StarTalk every night and support StarTalk on Patreon.

• 16:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 16:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Paul, here's an interesting fact. If we reach the point where in, in our exploration of the universe, where it's all random because the programmer got lazy, right? That's, that's interesting. At that point, science loses all utility. Science exists only because something I figure out here applies over there. And I can predict its behavior and understand it and manipulate it and use it in the service of my own survival. And, and if, if it were all random, there would be no such thing as science.

• 17:02Paul Mecurio?

  Well, but no, but you couldn't, but, but couldn't you use science to help explore and try to explain the randomness and the chaos?

• 17:11Paul Mecurio?

  Seriously?

• 17:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so you want, you want a scientist to say, okay, Paul, today, your whole day will be chaotic. I predict that. Go forth. What, what are you expecting?

• 17:21Paul Mecurio?

  No, no, no, no. But you can't, can't you make the argument that you could use science to sort of explain chaos? I mean, isn't, isn't it there?

• 17:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not if it's truly random. I mean, chaos is a very specific thing and in mathematical, mathematically. And the interesting thing about chaos is you can predict with precision how uncertain certain quantities will become over time. And you can watch the chaotic regime unfold. This is what makes weather predicting so challenging because there's so many variables, the heat from the sun, the absorption of the earth, the reflectivity of the earth, the, the, the oceans, which are a different temperature from the land, how much moisture is in the air? All of these factors come together. And the more they come together and the more in the future you try to understand it, the

• 18:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  more chaotic it becomes. So we try to get handles on it. That's why they say, uh, the models, we have this model and we have that model. And here's where they agree. So you go where they agree.

• 18:25Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 18:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To try to boost your chances of understanding the objective reality of the system. But I'm just saying, if, if, if, if no laws discovered here apply over there. And it doesn't matter where here is, and it doesn't matter where there is. Then that undermines the entire profession of science.

• 18:45Paul Mecurio?

  Right. It makes it unnecessary.

• 18:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The fact that I tell you that on earth as it is in the heavens, laws of physics on earth, applied to the moons, planets, stars and galaxies, not only across space, but through time, that is not an assumption. That is a measurement we have made. And that's extraordinary. Is there any reason, is there a tablet in the sky that says that must be so? I, I don't know. I'm delighted we live in a universe that it is so.

• 19:14Paul Mecurio?

  Absolutely. All right, let's move on to the next question. This is, uh, Michael from Canada. Since it's around three Kelvin in space, could an asteroid be a superconductor? And if so, would it get stuck if it, um, if it went too close to a huge magnetic field like the sun's or ours?

• 19:36Paul Mecurio?

  There you go.

• 19:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that question. Very clever. This, what's the person's name?

• 19:42Paul Mecurio?

  This is Michael.

• 19:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Michael. So thank you for that question. Michael knows that metals, certain metals and other materials, when you reduce the temperature in which they're immersed, the behavior electron changes so that they no longer act separately from one another. As the temperature drops, as they get cooler, the wavelength of each electron grows bigger and bigger and bigger. Until it reaches, I'm simplifying this, but it's, it's basically what's happening. Until the temperature is so low, by the way, this is a quantum, it's a quantum phenomenon.

• 20:20Paul Mecurio?

  Was that absolute zero, is that absolute zero?

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's three degrees above absolute zero. Right.

• 20:24Paul Mecurio?

  Right. So no more heat can be taken out.

• 20:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When it gets to zero. Right. So as you drop the temperature, the wavelength of the electrons gets bigger and bigger. Quantum mechanics dictates this to a point where the wavelength is so large, all the electrons.

• 20:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Behave as one electron because their waves overlap and synchronize. And when that happens, electrical current passes through without any resistance at all. And so it's called superconductivity. At three degrees ought to get some superconductivity in some metals. I haven't checked the chart lately and who goes superconducting at what temperature? Some go superconducting at even cooler than three degrees Kelvin. So this, let's start with that. So, great question. I'd have to check my numbers to see who would be superconducting at those temperatures. A, B, it's not entirely three degrees if you're near a star. So the asteroids are orbiting the sun.

• 21:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Many of them are very dark. Sunlight gets absorbed, raising their temperature. So you're only going to hit three degrees like in intergalactic space. We are so far away from nearby stars that there's very little heat added to your, to your, to your rock temperature.

• 21:44Paul Mecurio?

  Jason Ashton from Liverpool, Liverpool.

• 21:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Beatles are from Liverpool. Yeah.

• 21:50Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, if he's from Liverpool, you have to read it with a Liverpool accent.

• 21:55Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, please.

• 22:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not Liverpool. That's like Irish or something.

• 22:05Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, Paul, Paul, the home of the Beatles. Yeah. I like Yoko. You know, I had Paul McCartney on my podcast, you know, along with you.

• 22:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I do know that.

• 22:17Paul Mecurio?

  Okay, let's move on. I've been a Patreon member for over a year and finally have a question that is probably more basic than, uh, than my and your expectations are. So I'm feeling a little bit dumb here. If the moon left the earth's orbit, would the oceans no longer have tides?

• 22:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They would still have tides caused by the sun.

• 22:40Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 22:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The sun's tides are about one third the strength of the moon's tides. Or to put more precisely, whatever is the height of the tide that you measure, a third of that height is attributable to the sun.

• 22:54Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, smaller, less dramatic. It's like what I like to call decaf get gravity. It's like decaf.

• 22:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That works, that works. And what's more important here, and by the way, it's a perfectly legitimate question. I love it. And, uh, so in fact, there's a whole book written by a colleague of mine called, What If There Were No Moon? And then the, the whole book just goes, talks about the consequences of that. And we probably wouldn't have moons because they're named after the moon.

• 23:27Paul Mecurio?

  That's true.

• 23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, we have some other sort of reckoning of time. So the moon has the dominant tidal bulge. All right, so there it is. And the earth turns in and out of that bulge. That bulge is always there, however.

• 23:42Paul Mecurio?

  And it's always in the same place.

• 23:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it's a little bit ahead of the moon in the moon's orbit, right? But we rotate faster than moon's orbit around us. So we rotate into and out of the tidal bulge. And because the moon still moves around us, high tide shifts each day by about 45 or 50 minutes. Because of this effect. It, it's all one synchrony of time.

• 24:06Paul Mecurio?

  Because of the effect of the tidal bulge being slightly ahead of us.

• 24:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's slightly ahead of the moon, but the moon is orbiting the earth. So how far does the moon go in a day? It goes about, you know, one, you know, 45, 50 minutes worth of your clock time around the earth. So that therefore the, the tidal bulge has shifted by that much. But that's not even my point. The bulge is, the bulge is always there. When we line up with the sun, the sun's high tide adds to the moon's high tide. And you get full moon high tide. So when people think the full moon has some extra tidal forces on us, no.

• 24:53Paul Mecurio?

  It's the sun, it's the sun.

• 24:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the sun added to the moon's tide and the moon's tide is just always there. But the sun adds to it. And so it's a delusion. We think, oh, the rays of the sun, the moon. We have werewolves. We have all like canthropic stories that have been written. We've got all of this about moonlight. And plus the moon is only reflected sunlight. So if, if the werewolf turns into werewolf under full moon, it should definitely do it under sunlight.

• 25:21Paul Mecurio?

  And a lot faster and with a lot more hair, bigger teeth, bigger fangs. But what, so what is the, remind us, the full moon high tide, which means sort of the sun and the moon have sort of aligned. That happens every how often? What is the frequency of that?

• 25:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Once a month. Well, actually twice a month. So, so it'll work for full moon because earth, moon and sun are lined up. And it works for new moon where the moon is on the other side. And you get the tidal bulge. So you get the highest of the high tides during new moon and full moon. So people aren't thinking that the new moon has special powers, even though it's making tides just as high as full moon. Because you can't see the new moon. So people are very influenced by what they see and what they think is true, rather than all that they can't see and what we otherwise know is true.

• 26:14Paul Mecurio?

  And is, yeah, that is, yeah, there's a lot there. It's sort of, hello from Flecherton, Ontario. Not going to be a part of the 51st state, Canada.

• 26:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But we need your, we need your healthcare.

• 26:34Paul Mecurio?

  We need your healthcare, your, your pleasant qualities, your lovely manner with people, your, your maple syrup. We've only got a couple of states that really generate that. Come on.

• 26:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Vermont, New York, that's it, some New Hampshire.

• 26:49Paul Mecurio?

  Maybe some Maine too. Neil, my 13 year old son was so blown away by our experience at your show. He wanted me to pass on this question. Why are your T-shirts so expensive after the show? No, that's not the question.

• 27:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I don't sell T-shirts after this. I have no merch. I mean, people said I should, but I, there's no merch. There's no.

• 27:11Paul Mecurio?

  You sell those Neil deGrasse Tyson fake, you sell those Neil deGrasse Tyson fake mustaches for $15 each. I know you do. All right, Neil, my 13 year old son was so blown away by our, with our experience at your show. He wanted me to pass on this question. Could you ask if he thinks your memories and consciousness are made from atoms? Love you guys and keep the laughs coming. Andrew Nisker.

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this is my favorite joke that's safe for elementary school.

• 27:41Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 27:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Never trust atoms. They make up everything.

• 27:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's safe for like third graders. We're, we're, we're good there. So, yeah, I, I mean, we, we so want to believe that there are forces and things going on that defy account or description or investigation by the laws of physics. That earth is very strong because oh, you'll never, you might explain, uh, you know, language or whatever. But you'll never explain love, you know, they, and I say, is it because you don't want us to ever explain love? Or do you have some reason for thinking that this is really true? So a couple of things about our consciousness or our thoughts. Let's just talk about our thoughts.

• 28:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have come to learn that the brain operates with, via electrochemical signals between the synapses of our nerve cells, of the, of the brain cells in your head. Okay. And there it is. By the way, the medical profession could not have known that before the discovery and the harnessing of electricity. Think about that. So much of physics has fed the medical profession's powers to diagnose and treat the human body. That if anyone says, okay, we're done with physics, now let's invest all in medicine.

• 29:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That yet, that's, there's a limit to how far that'll go, given how much they've tapped discoveries by my people in my fields. Okay. So when you know that, that thoughts are communicated through electrochemical signals. And then you stick a, a probe in there and stimulate a part of the brain that you know behaves in a certain way. And then you see the, the person react. You, you, you kind of know what's going on there. This is.

• 29:50Paul Mecurio?

  Because atoms, yeah, atoms are the building blocks of everything.

• 29:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Atoms are the building blocks of, of, of cells and the cells are the building blocks of our neurophysiology. Okay. So, so, but the real evidence here, because you can't just experiment on people's brains that, you know.

• 30:05Paul Mecurio?

  Really?

• 30:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Can't do that.

• 30:09Paul Mecurio?

  Hang on a second. All right, let them go. We can't.

• 30:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's your kids, your kids in the lockbox.

• 30:15Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, get them out of the box and give them some peanuts and hit them. We can't do the experiment. Go ahead. Sorry.

• 30:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People who have mini strokes, right? So a stroke, a broken blood, blood vessel, there's oxygen doesn't get to a part of the brain. Many strokes, the identity of the person.

• 30:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Begins to fade depending on what part of their brain was touched by the stroke. And so is it their facial recognition? Is it their spatial recognition? Is it their appetite for food? Is it their ability to speak? Is it, is it their hearing, sight, locomotion? If you have a series of mini strokes, bits and pieces of you basically disappear. So everyone who says, what happens to your consciousness when you die? A series of mini strokes are mini deaths of your brain. And as far as we can tell, that's what's happening to you when you die. None of that works.

• 31:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now that's not very comforting to people, especially not to religious people have a whole story of what happens to you when you die. All I'm saying is if you're going to ask a scientist to answer that question, the point is once your brain ceases to undergo electrochemical changes, then you don't exist anymore. Everything we know about you no longer exists.

• 31:39Paul Mecurio?

  So I mean dementia is sort of in that family, right?

• 31:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So for example, correct. And that's not even a stroke. I, I should have included.

• 31:46Paul Mecurio?

  But it's in that family of, you know, so my mother has it right now. And you can see there's just pieces of it. But the fascinating thing is her long-term memory is insanely accurate.

• 31:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's stored differently and possibly even in a different place.

• 32:00Paul Mecurio?

  I would introduce you to her and 10 minutes later she'd be like, how do you, how do you know my son again? But then she can, in the same breath relay a story when she was 12 of spending a day with her father with great exactitude. And so it's, is it the shifting of the atoms in the cells? Is it, is it the shifting of the atoms of the cells that's happening there? Is it the death of some atoms in cells? Like what, what is?

• 32:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The atoms don't have life or death. They just comprise larger molecules and the cells are composed of the molecules. So you can't blame atoms directly. You have to, you break, you, you have to credit or blame the functioning of living tissue. Okay. That's really what it is. The atom is just an atom. Now, if I may, I mean no disrespect, but I heard this joke told by another comedian who said that, that if you're a comedian, being around people with dementia is excellent because you could tell that's the same joke every 10 minutes.

• 33:04Paul Mecurio?

  Absolutely.

• 33:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People with short-term memory dementia.

• 33:09Paul Mecurio?

  It also helps with guilt because like you'll, you could say to your mother, uh, I haven't seen you in a while. No, I was just here yesterday. Oh, that's right. You know what I mean? So like, you don't have to feel so bad. I'm not, you know, yeah, exactly. It's like, oh, you're such a good son. I know. I was here yesterday and I painted the whole house.

• 33:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Point is atoms, everything that is not empty space or energy in the form of photons represents as particles in the universe and certain combinations of particles we call atoms. If you have a nucleus and at least one electron, it's an atom. And so atoms comprise everything. That's, that's hence the joke. Don't never trust atoms. They make up everything. If you go down to like a snowflake and a snowflake is six-sided snowflake, it's a crystalline structure of the water molecule. Water is H2O. You break that apart, you have two hydrogen atoms, one oxygen atom.

• 34:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So atoms are everywhere, but atoms don't have agency. They're just, well, sorry, they might want to combine with other atoms to make molecules. But that's, it's a very simple, are we mating or not? It's not otherwise, let me give Paul Mecurio dreams. That happens based on life experience and leftover neuro synaptic history of your brain and stuff you was unresolved, trauma that might've happened in your life, joys. So yeah, atoms are everywhere.

• 35:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Paul, we got enough time for like a lightning round.

• 35:11Paul Mecurio?

  This is Todd Chambers from Yuba City, California. In the system of the universe, what is or are the purposes of a black hole? Do they recycle matter and energy?

• 35:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To speak of purpose implies intent. And in physics, we generally don't think of the universe as having intent. There are just laws and forces and things flow according to those forces guided by the laws of physics as we've come to describe them. So you can ask what role they play. And if you wander too close to a black hole, that's all she wrote. You, you'll get pulled in, spaghettified, and you won't be able to tell anybody about it. So to say, to think of a role, no, there's, there's roles that nobody, there's aren't a roles. There's just what it does.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, if the sun became a black hole today, Earth would plunge into darkness, but we can still continue to orbit around it in just the same way we are right now.

• 36:15Paul Mecurio?

  We wouldn't be pulled in?

• 36:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, black holes are not giant sucking machines.

• 36:20Paul Mecurio?

  But there's stronger gravitational force.

• 36:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Only at its surface.

• 36:24Paul Mecurio?

  Don't disagree with me. Don't, you don't know what you're talking about.

• 36:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just simply saying you're wrong. There's a difference. Two politicians will disagree.

• 36:35Paul Mecurio?

  Yes.

• 36:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. But if one person is wrong, you're just wrong. It's not that we disagree.

• 36:43Paul Mecurio?

  You're flat out wrong.

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:46Paul Mecurio?

  Okay.

• 36:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, so it doesn't become a giant sucking machine. It'll, it's, we speak of the high gravity of a black hole because of the high surface gravity. Because the black hole is so small, you get really close to its center and that's where the extreme gravitational phenomenon occurs.

• 37:04Paul Mecurio?

  Got it. Okay. Lightning round, we'll keep going here. Liam Corcoran. Hi Neo, this is Liam from Rhode Island, my home state, the best little state in the Union. Is there anywhere in the universe that you could be outside the gravitational influence of any matter beside your own? And would this be the closest you could get to experiencing pure spacetime, totally unwarp by matter?

• 37:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that question. I love that question. So there is, oh, I forgot what the metric is called. There's, there are approximations we make when we doing some calculations. We assume space has no matter or energy in it. So that's perfectly flat. Okay. And then you can do some calculations more easily than if you admit that there are stars or planets or black holes distorting that spacetime. The mathematics becomes much more complicated if the spacetime is curved than if it's flat. So now in 1968, if memory serves, Walter Cronkite, the anchor for CBS News was describing in December, the voyage of Apollo eight to the moon.

• 38:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And he says, as of 9:22 this afternoon, Apollo eight astronauts have left the gravity of Earth. And I remember hearing this like, what? They're on their way to the moon and last I check, the moon orbits Earth. So, so I know what he meant, but that's not what he should have said. Okay. What he meant was we reached a point where the moon's gravity pulling it in is stronger than our gravity trying to come back to Earth. So that the moon's gravity takes over and it just falls towards the moon. That's not the end. Earth's gravity extends to infinity as does every other gravitational field. You cannot escape the extent of gravity, no matter what.

• 38:59Paul Mecurio?

  But it weakens over time. The farther you get away from Earth, it dissipates in strength.

• 39:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The weaker and weaker it is, but it doesn't, it's never zero.

• 39:07Paul Mecurio?

  Right.

• 39:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's true for everything. The sun, the galaxy, galaxy clusters, everything.

• 39:13Paul Mecurio?

  My name is Emily from Berkeley. I am a first time poster. I hope this is an interesting question. Many times when people talk about particle pairs being separated at outer surface of black holes, where one half of the pair is on the outside and one half is doomed to the inside, they will say that it should be theoretically possible to reconstruct the information that fell into the black hole. Why is it important to theoretically retain this possibility?

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, this comes from information theory because there's a certain amount of information. And if you fall into a black hole, was the information destroyed? That's the question. And so there's a big debate about information. Information theory is relatively new. You know, it's sort of, uh, well, it comes out of entropy. So in the last hundred years or so, especially in the last 50, 50 years puts it in the 1970s, I guess. Wow. Yeah. And if you believe or want it to be so, that information is never destroyed, then when

• 40:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the black hole later evaporates, which it will do by Hawking radiation, well, that is, excuse me, that is the way it evaporates. Okay. So, so that particle pair is conjured out of the gravitational field. And the, if you took an inventory of the particles that appear out of the gravitational field of the black hole, they will exactly match everything the black hole has ever eaten in its life.

• 40:57Paul Mecurio?

  How, how so?

• 40:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, what's freaky is it's not the same particle coming out that survived the trip in and survived the trip out. Part of it being created from the energy field of the black hole.

• 41:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Energy is creating it and it has a memory of what was there before. That's tantamount to preserving the information that went in. So now there's a little bit that I'm unsure of. We're going to have to bring Jana Levin on this. If you, if you throw in a DNA molecule, there's a lot of information there. It's your whole identity. It's not going to come back out as a DNA molecule in particle pairs. No. So where's the information?

• 41:40Paul Mecurio?

  It'll come back altered in some way.

• 41:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It won't, it will come back as a molecule at all. It'll come back as particles. So how do I recover the information that the DNA molecule contained as a representation of you? I don't have an answer for that. We've got to check with either one of the two Bryans or with Jana Levin on that. We'll bring them back on.

• 42:01Paul Mecurio?

  Don't worry about it. I got it. I got it.

• 42:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got this.

• 42:04Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah. What happens is it goes in and there's centrifugal force that happens along with a certain level of radiation, red wave, and then you get your thing. All right, moving on.

• 42:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 42:17Paul Mecurio?

  Mercedes Dominguez, hello. Mercedes here from Denver, Colorado. I've heard of the cosmic web before. My question is, is that a real thing? And if so, what is it?

• 42:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So it's just a word that we apply to how we find the galaxies configured in the universe. So galaxies are not evenly separated. There's gravity operating and there was some fluctuations in the early universe that preloaded some parts of the universe relative to others. When you step back and take a look at it all, you see this sort of network of filaments and clusters and it's as though you took a sponge, cut it in half, like a nice thick sponge, cut it in half and look at the textures and structures. There are places where the fibers meet.

• 43:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are places where it's empty.

• 43:13Paul Mecurio?

  It's almost like a honeycomb in a way, not as symmetrical.

• 43:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but not as organized, not as structured.

• 43:17Paul Mecurio?

  So the galaxies aren't sprinkled evenly. They, they line up along huge strands of matter, mostly dark matter with these like empty voids in between and it looks like a three dimensional spider web in a way.

• 43:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or, or a sponge. Yeah. I mean, cosmic web sounds a little more romanticized than cosmic sponge.

• 43:37Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's a little, that's a tough sell to the, yeah. But the, the point is the universe isn't random. It's organized. I mean, it's not like Pinterest.

• 43:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wouldn't even use the word organized. I mean, gravity collects it. You want to call that?

• 43:52Paul Mecurio?

  It's like a garage with stuff piled into the corners of every possible spot.

• 43:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good point. In fact, um, here's an interesting phenomenon. If you look at a movie where they show a scene in the fall, basically there's set designers scattering leaves onto the street. Okay. If it's not actually in the fall. What they always get wrong is they try to scatter the leaves evenly on the street. It's never that. A breeze comes by and it pales into one corner. Some other new leaves fall down, but it's never evenly distributed. You can always tell because people don't understand random. They think random is scattered everywhere. Random has clumps. That's how that is. So, so I can always tell if they fake the street for that reason.

• 44:39Paul Mecurio?

  But the, but science can't answer the randomness question here, right? Like that's, that's, isn't that to me is the fascinating thing here is sort of, it's sort of organized, it's in a way organized chaos. Maybe that's not the right technical term.

• 44:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Forces of gravity are operating on it. So there's not, nothing more mysterious than that. And dark, dark matter is mysterious. We don't know what that is, but that's operating on the gravitational fields around which all of this is collecting. So we speak of that entire, that entire map of the universe as the cosmic web. So Paul, that's all the time we have. Plus I think I hear your mother calling you for lunch.

• 45:17Paul Mecurio?

  Ah, meatloaf. It's great to be on with you.

• 45:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, man. And keep us posted on the end of Colbert, the end of days.

• 45:29Paul Mecurio?

  Oh, you'll know because I'm, I'm going to be, I'm coming out to your neck of the woods. I'm doing, I'm doing landscaping after this. I need the, I need the money, buddy. Can you buy a place and get a lawn so I can cut it? I need the, come on, be a friend, be a friend, will you, Neil?

• 45:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we'll work on it.

• 45:53Paul Mecurio?

  All right.

• 45:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Paul Mecurio, always good to have you, man.

• 45:56Paul Mecurio?

  Yeah, always great. Chubby Terry Crews.

• 46:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This has been another installment of Cosmic Queries Grab Bag Edition with Paul Mecurio. Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.