Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Cosmic Queries Science in Movies and TV About this episode Stay Tuned for… Science! Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Eugene Mirman answer more of your questions about science in Star Trek, Star Wars, Sliders, Superman, Contact, Mary Poppins and more.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. In studio with me Eugene Mirman. Eugene, love having you, man.
0:30 Eugene Mirman? I love being here.
0:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh my gosh, the comedian Eugene Mirman. He's here to make fun of all my answers is what's gonna happen.
0:38 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, and to learn, like you, the listener.
0:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is Cosmic Queries edition of StarTalk. This is where we collect all the questions that we accumulate from our website, StarTalkRadio.net, or on Facebook.
0:52 Eugene Mirman? Twitter.
0:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Twitter, StarTalkRadio is our handle there, and we get enough on one theme or another, we put them together. So today is "Science in Movies and Other Forms of Entertainment."
1:03 Eugene Mirman? Yes.
1:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And some people have like genuine questions about it, others want to know if I, anything I can pick apart, but I haven't seen the questions yet.
1:11 Eugene Mirman? No, and I'm gonna start in.
1:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's just start right in.
1:14 Eugene Mirman? This is about the movie Contact from Danny Davis.
1:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Movie Contact, the story written by Carl Sagan.
1:19 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, yes. My question comes from the movie Contact, one of my favorites. "The problem I'm trying to figure out is the ending when Jodie Foster's character travels in the spaceship and has her experience, but for Earth viewers, the ship instantly falls through like nothing happened, and then it is later revealed that her camera recorded 18 hours of static. Now, from what I understand about relativity, it should have been opposite. On Earth, 18 hours would have passed, but her camera would have recorded seconds of static. Please help me put my mind at rest on this query once and for all. Did the movie get that part wrong, or am I missing something?"
1:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh, this person knows just enough relativity to just get angry about it. Yeah, so just to remind people in the film.
2:03 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
2:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, Jodie Foster's character visits aliens in another part of the galaxy and does so in an odd sort of rotating spaceship that never leaves Earth. And they see her take just seconds and in that time, in those few seconds, she goes on this journey.
2:20 Eugene Mirman? Mm hmm.
2:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I think the point here is that the fabric of space and time.
2:26 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
2:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is such that you can warp either space or time or both. And so you can basically travel through a wormhole, get to some destination instantly.
2:39 Eugene Mirman? Mm hmm.
2:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, and if you travel fast, that you're the the questioner, oh, who is it? Who is it that?
2:44 Eugene Mirman? Danny.
2:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Danny, and it's from where?
2:46 Eugene Mirman? Uh, I don't know, but uh, his name is definitely Danny. He didn't include it.
2:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So normally, if you're the one.
2:52 Eugene Mirman? Albuquerque.
2:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you're the one that goes away, you live for a shorter amount of time than Earth that you've left behind. So Danny is perfectly correct about that. But these are aliens who gave us instructions how to build a spaceship to do exactly what just happened. So I'm not worried about that relative time dilation.
3:11 Eugene Mirman? So Danny's right that it would logically work that way unless aliens gave him a plan that he stuck to that worked differently.
3:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly, which is what happened in the film.
3:19 Eugene Mirman? Right.
3:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You could also imagine that she was not the one who left, that it was Earth that left that location and then returned. I mean, and then Earth is the one that that lives for the only the few moments and he's the one that lives longer. You can imagine aliens controlling space and time in such a way that that's what happened.
3:37 Eugene Mirman? So so in the movie, they could have moved the whole planet with.
3:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That would be hard. It would be, it would be hard.
3:42 Eugene Mirman? No one's saying it's easy, Neil. I am not saying that this is easy. Saying that it's within possibility of science fiction.
3:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What I mean is that it would be hard not only to physically move the planet, but Earth has to be the one that accelerates away and then accelerates, slows down, stops and comes back. We would all feel that.
4:00 Eugene Mirman? You would feel that?
4:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
4:02 Eugene Mirman? If we went through a wormhole, we would feel it.
4:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, if we slowed down, if we sped up and slowed down and stopped.
4:07 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
4:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We would just fall over and roll, roll off the planet because we're not attached to the Earth, so.
4:13 Eugene Mirman? Not even a little?
4:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, not at all.
4:15 Eugene Mirman? Not even with, not even gravity? So we would all fly away if you could stop the earth.
4:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you just stopped the earth from its movement in space or it's adjusted it in some way.
4:26 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
4:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Earth would stop, but we were moving with the earth in orbit around the sun.
4:29 Eugene Mirman? We would just fly very quickly.
4:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As you would fly through a dashboard in a car that hits a brick wall and you're not wearing a seatbelt.
4:35 Eugene Mirman? I really can't believe that like people who do like jump from outer space or bungee jumper or any of that haven't tried to stop earth to just go flying.
4:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That would be a fun experiment.
4:44 Eugene Mirman? We'll try it.
4:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I'm not worried about that, but strictly speaking, if she was the one that went away, Danny's correct.
4:50 Eugene Mirman? All right.
4:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm hmm.
4:51 Eugene Mirman? All right, Danny. Good job. Congrats.
4:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What else?
4:54 Eugene Mirman? You just got your PhD. Okay, this is from Brendan.
4:59 Eugene Mirman? Uh, it's about a time dilation effects of wormholes.
5:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh.
5:03 Eugene Mirman? In the episode Rimmer World of the comedy Red Dwarf.
5:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so I missed that episode.
5:08 Eugene Mirman? Well, it's season six, episode five, he writes, "Thanks, Brendan. You just wasted our lives." "One of the characters goes through a wormhole in an escape pod that is accelerating away from the other character's ship into a wormhole to a planet that he would land on." "They mentioned time dilation effects of wormholes, and the first one through the wormhole had to wait 557 years before the rest of them caught up to rescue him." Would that, how true would phenomena be? How true would phenomena be if the wormhole travel was real? Is that real?
5:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so a wormhole allows you to go to another part of the galaxy quickly, much faster than a beam of light would take you there. By the way, if you can travel through wormholes, it allows backwards through time travel.
5:55 Eugene Mirman? That's how you would do it.
5:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So just an FYI on that, if you can travel, you're effectively traveling faster than light, and that allows certain trajectories through the fabric of space and time.
6:04 Eugene Mirman? Are you saying Sliders is pretty real?
6:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If they can manage the wormhole part. So, uh, so the point there is the wormholes, if you're accelerating through the wormhole and you're moving fast, you would not age very much at all, and you come out the other side, everyone else is aging a long time.
6:19 Eugene Mirman? Right.
6:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But if someone else comes through a wormhole right after you, no, you don't wait 500 years for them, no.
6:24 Eugene Mirman? No, they'd just be right there too.
6:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, just come.
6:26 Eugene Mirman? You're both using the same thing, so it'd be about. About a minute.
6:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, yeah, whatever, whatever. And, and the wormhole could be arbitrarily short time for you.
6:34 Eugene Mirman? Right.
6:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Depending on how warped the space is, or how, how tight the hole is between one section of the galaxy and the next.
6:40 Eugene Mirman? Wait, in fact, this thing that he's describing, he should have just said in the first reboot of Star Trek, there was a wormhole. You don't need to go into season six, episode five of Red Dwarf. This is literally the plot of the first Star Trek.
6:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To have a conversation about wormholes, you don't need to be that specific in your science fiction.
6:56 Eugene Mirman? And you could pick a much broader, I mean, yeah, anyway, so, so that's the same thing about the Star Trek, you wouldn't.
7:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. So, so, uh, the point is if you're all going in together or immediately after one another, yeah, you're good to go.
7:07 Eugene Mirman? Fifteen minutes apart, fifteen minutes, yeah.
7:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Don't worry about it.
7:10 Eugene Mirman? Nice. All right. On Facebook, Robert Millard, this is his thing. I promise I had this thought before I saw Men in Black. We believe you, Robert. You liar. No, yeah, okay. Uh, it seems that matter is basically mass and energy swirling around each other. The same could be said for solar systems. Is it possible our solar system is an atom or the Milky Way is a molecule?
7:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That was a deep thought a hundred and, a hundred and ten years ago. People, as we started probing the structure of the atom, we looked at it and say, oh, there's a nucleus. There's electrons and they're orbiting around. Maybe that's just a mini.
7:47 Eugene Mirman? But there are no cats and there's no cows and farms and buildings.
7:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When we come back, I will give the answer to why atoms are not solar systems. You're listening to StarTalk Radio, Cosmic Queries Edition.
8:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back on StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm a astrophysicist. And my day job is as Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Check us out. Eugene, do you have a day job?
8:31 Eugene Mirman? Uh, I mean, I mean, I, I think as much as you, I guess you have a thing that you would call your day job, but it probably blends into some of your nighttime work.
8:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And the thing you call a day, your, your voice on Bob's?
8:42 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, Bob's Burgers, I guess, would be.
8:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Love to know that. Excellent. So we're in the Cosmic Queries edition.
8:48 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, so someone had asked.
8:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Science in movies, right. And so where do we leave off?
8:51 Eugene Mirman? Basically, they were like, is our solar system an atom or is the Milky Way a molecule?
8:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, and these are great questions, deep questions that were asked about 120 years ago. He's about 120 years late in asking this.
9:01 Eugene Mirman? Right around when Hashish first reached Boston.
9:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Interesting, you have the date for that. So here's the problem, the problem. When we discovered atoms and that there's a nucleus and electrons, you say, hey, that looks like a solar system.
9:17 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
9:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I wonder if inside an atom, there's yet another atom and another atom.
9:20 Eugene Mirman? This is an episode of Mork and Mindy, but yeah.
9:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It turns out that the laws of physics that describe what goes on in a solar system are different from the laws of physics that describe what goes on in an atom. And so the conduct of matter and energy is completely different in these two regimes.
9:39 Eugene Mirman? Really?
9:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And because of it, as you mentioned before the break, no, within atoms, you don't have cats, you know? You don't have.
9:47 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, bulletin boards.
9:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This stuff that does not happen inside of atoms.
9:52 Eugene Mirman? Right.
9:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That happens macroscopically.
9:54 Eugene Mirman? Right.
9:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So the microscopic world and macroscopic.
9:56 Eugene Mirman? Different physically.
9:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The macroscopic world responds to what we call classical physics, right? And the microscopic world responds to quantum physics. Quantum physics actually applies to the whole universe, but on a large enough scale, it looks like classical physics and equations are easier. So we just use it, use those modes to describe it. So, no, it's not just the Russian egg, the Russian dolls.
10:17 Eugene Mirman? The nesting dolls.
10:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The nesting dolls. All, that's how you say that?
10:20 Eugene Mirman? Matryoshky, yeah.
10:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Matryoshky.
10:23 Eugene Mirman? Very good.
10:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Says my.
10:24 Eugene Mirman? You and I should go to Moscow now.
10:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Matryoshky dolls. So, no, it's, it's just not that, but it would have been a really cool philosophical revelation.
10:34 Eugene Mirman? So there's no life inside of an atom or molecule?
10:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? None that we know of or that we would have ever defined as such.
10:39 Eugene Mirman? Right.
10:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's correct.
10:40 Eugene Mirman? Okay, okay, next question.
10:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What else you got?
10:42 Eugene Mirman? Oh, I have a lot.
10:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
10:44 Eugene Mirman? Okay, Brian has a question.
10:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And he's from where?
10:48 Eugene Mirman? Brian Hodgson, no one here is telling us where they're from. I think they're afraid we're going to find them and help them learn. If you were an astronaut tumbling through space like in the movie Gravity, could you change your rotation or trajectory, say through twisting your body? Thank you, love the show, Brian.
11:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No.
11:06 Eugene Mirman? No?
11:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Unless you, unless you're in contact with some other thing.
11:10 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
11:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or unless you lose mass.
11:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you do not lose mass or come in contact with anything else, you will tumble in that same way at that same speed.
11:22 Eugene Mirman? Wait, but you.
11:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Forever.
11:23 Eugene Mirman? But you actually will lose mass in the sense that you'll grow hungry and die.
11:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, uh, it depends. You, well, okay.
11:30 Eugene Mirman? Thirsty? Would that be better?
11:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Really slow, as people who have tried to lose weight will attest, that is a slow way to lose. There are much faster ways to lose mass.
11:38 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, but if you're tumbling through space and you don't have access to any restaurants or anything.
11:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, what you can do is if you open up certain hatches of your spacesuit.
11:46 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
11:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You could like pee in one direction or another.
11:50 Eugene Mirman? Oh.
11:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This will send your mass out another direction, opposite presumably the way you're tumbling and you don't want to go. That will slow you down.
11:58 Eugene Mirman? So I do like the idea of someone spinning and peeing and then just it would just they'd be spinning in the other direction. They'd still spin.
12:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you'd have to know some angular angular momentum physics before you went about.
12:11 Eugene Mirman? Started peeing.
12:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Started peeing or spitting or.
12:13 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, yeah.
12:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Pooping or or or or.
12:16 Eugene Mirman? Do you think that's the end of gravity is just someone peeing themselves back to earth?
12:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm just saying, oh, by the way, you can't be inside the suit. It has to actually leave your body.
12:23 Eugene Mirman? Oh, of course, of course.
12:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Into space, right?
12:25 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
12:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you do this, you can then control to some level that your your wayward trajectory. This is no different.
12:32 Eugene Mirman? Would you die? Like, say you open the suit, there'd be, your skin wouldn't be able to contact. You would.
12:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, it's just a vacuum. I mean, yeah, it's not, it won't be comfortable, but you can do it temporarily in order to adjust your, oh, yeah.
12:41 Eugene Mirman? For how long?
12:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A couple, few minutes.
12:43 Eugene Mirman? Oh, really? That sounds great.
12:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
12:45 Eugene Mirman? Now I have a new goal. Tumble through space for a few minutes in no suit.
12:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so the the point is that when you lose, if you look at spacecraft when they make adjustments, if they're in free open space, they're little sort of what they call these nozzles.
12:59 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
12:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? These rocket nozzles that are strategically positioned around the body of the ship.
13:03 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
13:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To make it rotate one direction or another, to change the attitude, the angle.
13:08 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
13:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or to slow down or to speed up. It is losing mass.
13:11 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
13:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? By the act of burning fuel that sends gases out in one direction or another.
13:15 Eugene Mirman? Oh, wow.
13:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. So anything that comes out burp, any other flatulent activity?
13:20 Eugene Mirman? I understand.
13:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
13:21 Eugene Mirman? Yes, that all the things that are funny to children become the way you survive tumbling through space is what you're saying. Every bodily function that you're not supposed to discuss during the day in school, you need to survive to fly back to the earth.
13:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
13:36 Eugene Mirman? Sounds like a plan.
13:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Mm hmm.
13:38 Eugene Mirman? All right, here we go. This is a question from Robbie. Oh, and he's at the University of Michigan. He didn't mind telling us where he was.
13:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Excellent.
13:45 Eugene Mirman? Here's his question.
13:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So he could be a student or a professor. We'll find out.
13:48 Eugene Mirman? It's true. Well, depending on how good his question is.
13:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or an administrator.
13:52 Eugene Mirman? He used a lot of exclamation points. He's probably a student.
13:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, the OMGs and exclamation points. Right, okay.
13:59 Eugene Mirman? Yeah. While at home, I was watching Futurama and during the episode, the characters land on an alien world that had three suns. It left me wondering what would happen if there was a second or third star in our solar system, either in orbit around our sun or fighting with it to become the center of the solar system. Thank you and thanks for the show.
14:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh, so here's the problem.
14:20 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
14:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you start throwing extra suns in the middle of your star system, depends on how far away your planetary orbit is.
14:27 Eugene Mirman? Mm hmm.
14:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you're not far enough away from all of them.
14:30 Eugene Mirman? Mm hmm.
14:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's say it's a triple star system.
14:33 Eugene Mirman? Sure.
14:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Do one up on what they showed in Star Wars. So let's have a triple star system. If you're not really far away from all three.
14:39 Eugene Mirman? What's considered really far, like Jupiter?
14:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, much farther than any one of them are from each other.
14:44 Eugene Mirman? Uh huh.
14:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so it's a relative statement. So you want to be far enough away so that all three stars feel like one source of gravity to you.
14:52 Eugene Mirman? I see.
14:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you're too close and one is over to the left and one is over to the right, your gravitational allegiance becomes constantly compromised.
15:01 Eugene Mirman? Mm hmm.
15:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who am I orbiting today? Oh, it's this star, not that one. And you'll become really close to one star and far from another. Your climate would be all to hell.
15:10 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
15:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because you wouldn't sustain a stable temperature environment. And you can do models on a computer to show what happens to these orbits and most of them are unstable.
15:19 Eugene Mirman? Right.
15:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A star will either fall, a planet will either fall into a star or be ejected from the star system altogether. So.
15:27 Eugene Mirman? But it would be fine if you simply were so far away that that they felt like one.
15:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They felt like one, and they did it right in Star Wars, where they had the double sunset, if you remember that scene. Those were far enough away from the planet.
15:38 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
15:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But the planet is really only seeing one sort of collective gravitational.
15:43 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
15:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And and so that's the problem that you have here. But otherwise, it'd be really cool. It'd also be cool if the stars were different colors. And.
15:50 Eugene Mirman? And then you'd have a.
15:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, as one star set, the color of your sky would change, you know.
15:54 Eugene Mirman? What are the, what are some of the?
15:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, you can have red stars, uh, white stars, blue stars. You don't have green stars, though.
15:59 Eugene Mirman? Why not?
16:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You want me to get into, I can't get into that now.
16:03 Eugene Mirman? Wow, okay. Finally stumped with green stars. Ah, it's exhausting. There's no green in space.
16:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, there's green in space. There are just no green stars. There's plenty of green.
16:12 Eugene Mirman? Why, no, now you have to tell me why there's no green stars. Finally, I want to reveal a piece of science, and you're like, no.
16:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, fine. There's actually green emissions from gas clouds in space. And we looked at it, and we looked at its spectra. We didn't know what it was. And we, as my my historical brethren in the field that I study. And in fact, it was named of nebulae, and it was called nebulae.
16:34 Eugene Mirman? Mm hmm.
16:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This green, this green light in space, nebulae, there was a placeholder until we've actually figured out what it was. We figured out it's actually oxygen behaving in ways that we've never been able to reproduce in the laboratory.
16:47 Eugene Mirman? Oh, wow.
16:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Under the, under the rarefied vacuum of space, oxygen behaves badly. Or good, depending on how you want to look at it.
16:53 Eugene Mirman? It's a green cloud that's coming for us.
16:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's, so it it emits a beautiful green light, and if you're, if you're angstrom fluent, it's 5,007 angstroms.
17:02 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
17:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On the, on the scale. So you can have green light coming from gas clouds. But stars, because they're giving off a whole spectrum of light, green is this narrow part in the middle of the spectrum.
17:14 Eugene Mirman? Right.
17:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And when you puddle together all the light, you can, you can lean towards the red side of the red.
17:19 Eugene Mirman? Cause it's not a primary color.
17:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Cause red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, that whole spectrum.
17:24 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
17:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It either leans to the blue side, it leans to the red, or it gives about the same of each. And that'll give you a blue star, red star, or a white star. You're not going to get a green star.
17:33 Eugene Mirman? All right.
17:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's why.
17:35 Eugene Mirman? All right, uh, here, I'll ask. Here, one more, one question.
17:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, you've got about a minute left. Yeah, go for it.
17:40 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
17:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A minute left in this segment, but go.
17:42 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, yeah. This is from Harrison Bizzle Fizzle. It is. Dear Neil deGrasse Tyson and funny person, how can one fly a kite?
17:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? For you.
17:51 Eugene Mirman? I watched Mary Poppins recently and it got me thinking if one had a long enough string, how high could a kite possibly go if the kite and string were made of a sturdy enough material? Could it go up through the atmosphere, up where the air is clear? Anyway, it goes on. Oh, let's go fly a kite.
18:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I love that question, especially since I also love that song. I love corny Broadway songs. So what you need is enough updraft to keep the kite afloat.
18:17 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
18:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Against the weight of the string that's pulling down the kite. All right, we gotta think, don't forget that.
18:24 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
18:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And let me pick up on this answer when we come back to StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition, Science in the Movies.
18:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back, StarTalk Radio. Neil Tyson here.
18:53 Eugene Mirman? So kites, what, how high can a kite go?
18:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Again, thanks for doing this. Yeah, great question we left before the break about how high up can a kite go? Brought a thought brought on by watching Mary Poppins. And by the way, at the end of Mary Poppins, where they're all flying kites.
19:07 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
19:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All kite string angles are the same as they're all standing there. I just want to make note of that. That would be true if all the kites are flying at about the same height. And then the wind is the same for everybody. And so they did that accurately. So I want to commend the Mary Poppins creators of the movie.
19:25 Eugene Mirman? For accurately presenting the kites.
19:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The kite.
19:28 Eugene Mirman? Oh, good. All right.
19:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So how high up can it go? So you have to watch out because the higher the kite goes, holding wind currents aside for the moment, the higher the kite goes, the more string is dangling beneath it. You reach a point where the weight of the string rivals the weight of the kite. Not only the weight of the kite, but even the updraft buoyancy of the kite. And when that happens, the string becomes a burden to the kite and the kite will not continue to ascend. That's a problem.
19:55 Eugene Mirman? So but what so your but your kite could be one mile long.
19:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, if you had a really huge kite.
20:00 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
20:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah.
20:01 Eugene Mirman? A a a super kite.
20:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, my gosh, you take it up to the stratosphere. Oh, my.
20:04 Eugene Mirman? Then, yeah, OK, so say you have a one mile.
20:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, the problem is in this in the stratosphere.
20:08 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
20:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wind speeds are about a hundred, several hundred miles an hour.
20:11 Eugene Mirman? Sounds good. Sounds like a su- super fun kite ride. So basically, if you had a mile long kite.
20:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Keep your kite up there.
20:18 Eugene Mirman? Tie it to your foot, got it up there, you would just fly. So it'd be fun, but temporary.
20:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Stratosphere a little higher than a mile up, but yeah, yeah.
20:25 Eugene Mirman? No, I mean, the the, sorry, the kite itself, the the with one square mile would be the size of a physical kite.
20:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So and you, uh, you can put that up really high.
20:35 Eugene Mirman? OK, good. I now have a new, uh, summer project.
20:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And by the way, it's a good way to think about physics problems is compare one thing going on to the other. And you don't even have to get a number. You don't have to be numerical about it.
20:47 Eugene Mirman? Right.
20:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How high can the kite go? As high as the weight of the kite versus the weight of the string, you know, you just think about it in those terms.
20:53 Eugene Mirman? Kites wouldn't be enough, but a super kite that you and I made.
20:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In fact, if you tried with your kite, you will see there's a point where the string starts getting saggy. Compared with the ability of the kite to keep it buoyant. And the kite just gets farther away from you rather than higher up.
21:07 Eugene Mirman? I feel like you would like win a kite contest. Like if there was one and someone had to build one, I would definitely put you on my team. All right, here's a question. I was gonna skip it because it's long, but because it's Buck Rogers and that's something I love. I'm just going to ask it. Watching an episode of Buck Rogers from, oh, this is, uh, Ray, by the way, Ray Bamer. All right, watching an episode of Buck Rogers from nineteen seventy nine, Tweaky is missing. The subplot was transferring ten million tons of frozen oxygen from space to the North Pole, where it would melt and replenish the oxygen depleted atmosphere of the planet. The quote spaceberg has to hit a window in our atmosphere exactly, or be ignited by friction and scorch a third to a half of the planet. My questions, one, would an exgen- I know.
21:52 Eugene Mirman? Would an injection of frozen oxygen or anything from space help Earth? And B, could a spaceberg of oxygen scorch the earth?
21:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? OK, so. So a couple of things.
22:02 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
22:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? First, Berg, actually German for mountain.
22:05 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
22:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just be a oxygen Berg.
22:07 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
22:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah. Uh, but space Berg would be a mountain of space if you want to.
22:11 Eugene Mirman? Oh, I see.
22:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Analyze this.
22:12 Eugene Mirman? I will let whoever wrote Buck Rogers know that they have made some terrible word mistakes.
22:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The iceberg is a properly named object.
22:19 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
22:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a mountain, it's an ice mountain.
22:21 Eugene Mirman? Yes.
22:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So the, so here's the thing. Uh, Earth is, has no shortage of oxygen at the moment. We just have too much carbon dioxide. We don't have a shortage of oxygen. Uh, if you wanted to just simply add oxygen to the atmosphere, what will happen is fires that are ignited will not burn out as easily as they might today.
22:43 Eugene Mirman? Oh.
22:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because oxygen feeds fires.
22:45 Eugene Mirman? Right.
22:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right? So let's say we have twice as much oxygen as we do today and lightning strikes a leaf. And ordinarily, the leaf would just sort of ignite, but then fizzle away. Not with more oxygen in the atmosphere. It would totally come to flames. It would catch to another leaf and you would burn forests like it was nobody's business.
23:04 Eugene Mirman? So a space Berg made of oxygen is what you would describe as a very bad idea.
23:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That would be a bad idea unless we're actually for some reason losing our oxygen and you have to replenish.
23:14 Eugene Mirman? Right. And what we're gaining is carbon dioxide. We're not losing oxygen. It's two different.
23:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct. Now, we have plenty of water. We don't need to bring oxygen from space. Water is what chemically?
23:23 Eugene Mirman? Hydrogen and oxygen.
23:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? H two O.
23:25 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, yeah.
23:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you just, what's, you, you break the hydrogen away from the oxygen and you got free oxygen.
23:30 Eugene Mirman? Right.
23:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You don't have to go to space for it. Yeah. So maybe the, the Buck Rogers writers didn't know this.
23:35 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
23:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Plus oxygen itself is not flammable. It only allows other things to burn.
23:39 Eugene Mirman? Right.
23:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So when they say, don't smoke near oxygen tanks, you're not going to burn the oxygen tank. The oxygen tank is going to burn you.
23:46 Eugene Mirman? Right.
23:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. You light a cigarette, the cigarette burns instantly. And then the, the flame, the spark hits your finger, then it burns your skin. And then it burns your clothes.
23:55 Eugene Mirman? You, you would explode.
23:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. And this is how we lost three, three astronauts in Apollo one.
23:59 Eugene Mirman? Oh, really?
23:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It was a pure oxygen atmosphere inside their capsule on the launch pad, on a practice launch pad as they were testing communications and other things. And a spark inside the spacecraft. craft triggered and everything burned inside the spacecraft.
24:13 Eugene Mirman? Okay, but they didn't like light a cigarette. They weren't.
24:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, they were not smoking.
24:18 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, yeah. Well, you said that's what happened and then you were and then but now I realize it's a spark. No, it's good.
24:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right. What else you got?
24:23 Eugene Mirman? Here's a question from Alex Robinson about the Death Star. In the movie Star Wars, thanks for clarifying. We see the Death Star blow up the planet Alderaan. Setting aside the question of how a thing would be possible, what would happen to our solar system if the Empire blew up, say, Mars?
24:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, that's a great question. So it's really simple. First, how would you want to go about blowing up a planet?
24:50 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
24:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What you can do is look at what's holding the planet together. There's all the gravity.
24:54 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
24:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And there's all the all the tensile strength of all the solid matter that is the planet.
25:00 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
25:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And when we come back, I'll tell you how to blow up that planet.
25:03 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
25:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? StarTalk Radio Cosmic Queries Edition. We'll be right back.
25:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? StarTalk Radio, Eugene Mirman with me in studio live in New York. Eugene?
25:30 Eugene Mirman? Hello.
25:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, you're reading me questions. I'd never seen any of these questions before and we left off. Somebody wants to like blow up Mars.
25:35 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, yeah. Someone's basically like if the Death Star blew up Mars, how what's a good way to blow up Mars?
25:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
25:40 Eugene Mirman? Do that? What would it do to our solar system?
25:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so here's how to blow something up. You ask yourself how much energy is keeping it together?
25:46 Eugene Mirman? Mm hmm.
25:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Then you put more than that amount of energy into the object.
25:50 Eugene Mirman? Mm hmm.
25:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It will explode.
25:52 Eugene Mirman? So more than whatever, so more than the gravitational?
25:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so you find out you can calculate that. That's physics 102.
25:59 Eugene Mirman? Right.
25:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not physics 101, 102.
26:01 Eugene Mirman? Is how to blow up Mars. That's a pretty, that's quite an accelerated sciences.
26:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you calculate what's called the binding energy of the planet. All right, and it's a gravitational binding. It's gravity keeps it together. You want to overcome the gravity that's holding it together. Calculate that. How much energy is it? Now you have a device. That can pump that energy into your planet and have that planet absorb the energy rather than have the energy come out the other side. It will completely destroy the planet to smithereens.
26:33 Eugene Mirman? Uh huh.
26:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Entirely. So that's how one would go about it. If you did it to Mars, uh, we'd lose our curiosity rover that's fine discovering science there now.
26:41 Eugene Mirman? But it wouldn't affect us that much.
26:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I would affect our rover.
26:45 Eugene Mirman? No, no, of course.
26:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Tax money. Excuse me.
26:47 Eugene Mirman? I mean, I mean, our physical well being, not our mental, emotional and knowledge well being.
26:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, we, we will continue to orbit the sun and Mars will have essentially no effect on us.
26:57 Eugene Mirman? Right. Will, uh, will parts of it land here and then?
26:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
27:00 Eugene Mirman? Will, will people then gain powers?
27:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There will be Mars debris scattered all over the solar system. There's some Mars debris will land everywhere. Yes.
27:06 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
27:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Eventually it'll land everywhere.
27:07 Eugene Mirman? And would it, uh, radiate kids and make them powerful?
27:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, cause Mars is not radioactive. So, all right.
27:13 Eugene Mirman? Oh, well, well, at least we get some of it. Okay. Here's another question from SAR. Uh, planetary death in the movie.
27:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait, can I back up for a minute?
27:22 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
27:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When you make a snowball?
27:23 Eugene Mirman? Yes.
27:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How much, how much effort did it take to make a snowball? Well, not much, right?
27:26 Eugene Mirman? Not, not a much.
27:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not much at all. And then you throw it at the wall.
27:29 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
27:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It explodes on the wall.
27:30 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
27:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You don't think of it as an explosion.
27:32 Eugene Mirman? I do.
27:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But it doesn't bounce off the wall.
27:34 Eugene Mirman? Right.
27:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It completely shatters on the wall.
27:36 Eugene Mirman? Yes.
27:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's an example of the energy of motion of the ball.
27:41 Eugene Mirman? Mm hmm.
27:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Of the snowball being greater than the energy that's holding it together in the first place.
27:46 Eugene Mirman? Yes.
27:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so you explode a snowball by throwing it into a wall.
27:50 Eugene Mirman? I would love to throw Mars into a wall.
27:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
27:52 Eugene Mirman? And watch it just go everywhere and not irradiate anyone.
27:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There you go.
27:56 Eugene Mirman? Okay, planetary death in movies, uh, which is the most scientifically accurate death destruction of a planet you've seen on the big screen? How many?
28:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, uh, so two things, uh, the Death Star planet, if it can pump the right amount of energy into a planet, it will blow up a planet just the way it's shown.
28:14 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
28:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. With all debris scattered.
28:17 Eugene Mirman? That was pretty accurate.
28:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That was accurate.
28:18 Eugene Mirman? Probably the most scientifically accurate part of Star Wars.
28:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That was accurate. Now.
28:21 Eugene Mirman? That and Yoda.
28:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Now, now in the red matter, uh, droplet, uh, in Star Trek, the J J Abrams Star Trek.
28:28 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
28:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, that one, holding aside.
28:32 Eugene Mirman? The unlikeliness of red matter? Holding, yeah.
28:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you turn a planet into a black hole, it would become a black hole just the way they, essentially the way they showed it.
28:40 Eugene Mirman? So that's sort of accurate.
28:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's, it's imposed.
28:43 Eugene Mirman? Assuming that, uh, red matter creates tiny black holes, that is a great plan.
28:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly.
28:49 Eugene Mirman? But would you need to drill it into the center?
28:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, that's the only one you want to go to. Don't get me started.
28:52 Eugene Mirman? Oh, sorry. Oh, boy. Okay.
28:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Once the, once the red matter is into the surface at all, it won't know that it's at the center. How is it gonna know it's at the center of the planet? It has no idea.
29:01 Eugene Mirman? Well, yeah, no, they don't. They don't make it seem like this is the red matter's plan. They definitely make it seem like a Romulan idea, but Romulans, what do they know, right?
29:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly.
29:09 Eugene Mirman? Um, and then the other deaths of planets, Superman, I guess the new Superman, it implodes and then the old one, it exploded.
29:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, uh, yeah, well, it just, it's destroyed from within because they.
29:18 Eugene Mirman? That's more realistic, or no?
29:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They overmind the planet. So here's, here are people who have superpowers and super everything, and they don't know that they're overmining their own planet.
29:27 Eugene Mirman? I don't know. Can you think of any analogies?
29:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And they can send the baby Superman, Moses style, on a basket.
29:33 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
29:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Spaceship, you know, so anyhow, yeah, that could happen if you, if you.
29:37 Eugene Mirman? Are you telling me that Superman is unrealistic?
29:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You can, you can destabilize a planet if you make, make Swiss cheese out of its innards.
29:44 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
29:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's clear, but, but I like the Star Wars destruction, just good old, good old fashioned planetary explosion.
29:49 Eugene Mirman? Put some energy into it, blow it up. All right. Here's a question. Crowdsourcing science from Ryan Labee. With the popularity of crowdsourcing Kickstarter, Indiegogo, why haven't scientists taken to the internet in the same way? Why can't we get a mission, say to Mars, by crowdsourcing true science geeks who would love to support in a big way? If Veronica Mars can do it, so can the real Mars.
30:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I think the problem is, well, there are two things. There's using the internet and having people participate in data reduction. That's just sort of another efficient way. And then getting people to sort of contribute to make a mission happen. Space is expensive, far more expensive than your laboratory science experiment. That's all. It's a matter of scale. It's billions of dollars, billions and billions of dollars. So.
30:36 Eugene Mirman? Not three million.
30:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. So if you want to create the budget to do real space things, it's not millions, it's billions, and it's a whole other scale. That's why. Gotta take a break. When we come back, more of StarTalk's Cosmic Queries Edition.
31:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back on StarTalk Radio Cosmic Queries Edition. This, the last segment, we traditionally have our lightning round because I take so much damn time answering all the other questions.
31:20 Eugene Mirman? Yeah, the other questions are so involved and tell you the episode and what made them think of it.
31:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, lightning round, I'm gonna pretend I'm in soundbite mode and we'll test our bell. There we go.
31:30 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
31:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Eugene, you're here for me.
31:32 Eugene Mirman? Yes, I am. Let's do it. Let's do it. Eric, he's got a question. Could an alien species consist of only thought or energy, nothing we would recognize as body or mass?
31:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I don't see why not, except, by the way, mass is energy, energy is mass, so I can imagine an alien species that is energy. I can imagine it.
31:49 Eugene Mirman? Like a pound of energy.
31:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I can allow my brain to accept the possibility of it. I don't know how to portray it. I don't know. But since matter and energy are equivalent, I think we're good here.
32:01 Eugene Mirman? Okay.
32:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The problem is, energy, it's hard to create form out of energy. When energy becomes matter, you can make molecules and things and objects and brains and this sort of thing. Without it, it's amorphous, and it might be harder to make amorphous life than material life. Next.
32:20 Eugene Mirman? Could you eat it, though? Could you eat a being made of energy? Okay, acceleration.
32:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Actually, since the only point of humans eating is to give ourselves energy and nourishment. If there is an alien that is made of energy, you wouldn't have to eat it, you just have to absorb it.
32:34 Eugene Mirman? Okay, great. I'm on it. Acceleration of expansion of space 2C, that's the, okay, Justin, here's his question. Is the expansion of space accelerating? If so, will that acceleration reach the speed of light? If so, what happens when it reaches the speed of light?
32:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's accelerating, and over time, it will one day exceed the speed of light, which it can do because it's expanding space, not objects moving through space. This is allowed by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, published in 1916 by Albert Einstein. And in so doing, as the universe expands faster than- The speed of light, the objects that it puts beyond that horizon will forever then be visible from your view. So the very distant future, all galaxies will accelerate beyond your visible horizon. And the nighttime sky beyond our galaxy will go dark.
33:27 Eugene Mirman? Uh oh.
33:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And our entire known universe will just be the stars in our nighttime sky.
33:32 Eugene Mirman? Sounds fine. It's still pretty far.
33:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And and all that we know of and what we call cosmology will no longer exist. Because there'll be no information about the rest of the universe, other than the stars that are sitting in front of our nose.
33:44 Eugene Mirman? Oh.
33:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Next.
33:45 Eugene Mirman? Okay, Justin wants to know lunar terraforming. If we terraform the moon, would nights be darker due to the lost surface reflectivity?
33:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah, almost anything you do to the moon will make it reflect more. The moon is one of the worst reflecting. The moon reflects.
34:01 Eugene Mirman? Even adding skyscrapers?
34:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The the moon reflects like a sidewall tire. The moon is a is like, I forgot then it's like 5% reflects low, single digit reflective.
34:11 Eugene Mirman? What if we covered it in mirrors? Would that be helpful? What would happen to the earth?
34:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So for example, earth, which has oceans and land and clouds, earth is like 10 times more reflective than the moon is.
34:24 Eugene Mirman? Oh, wow.
34:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so the moon is is a bad. It's like dark.
34:28 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
34:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's just so much light pouring.
34:30 Eugene Mirman? Reflective as a pancake.
34:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, well, no, it's as reflective as the surface of an iron skillet.
34:36 Eugene Mirman? Oh.
34:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so anything you put there is going to make it more reflective.
34:39 Eugene Mirman? Wow, I can't even believe we can see it because of how non-reflective iron skillets are.
34:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because how bright the sun is.
34:45 Eugene Mirman? Sun is very, very bright.
34:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Exactly. So when you do this, if you want to terraform it, you will make the full moon brighter at night.
34:50 Eugene Mirman? Oh, really?
34:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Next.
34:52 Eugene Mirman? All right. If the universe is expanding, can we use the direction of expansion to determine the center of the universe? Aka where the big bang occurred?
34:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It is expanding in every direction. Therefore, there is no center.
35:03 Eugene Mirman? Oh.
35:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And the best analogy I can think of is if you inflate a balloon.
35:07 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
35:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Everybody on the surface of that balloon is expanding.
35:10 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
35:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But you can say, where's the center of the surface of that balloon? Where's the center of earth's surface?
35:14 Eugene Mirman? It's a balloon shaped like a rabbit. You know, it's gonna make it harder.
35:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so there's certain geometries where there is no center, even though it can be expanding, and the universe is one such shape. Next.
35:25 Eugene Mirman? What is the minimum size for something to be labeled a planet? And why is it that Kepler 37b, which is only a fraction larger than Pluto, has been labeled as an exoplanet while Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet?
35:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so a couple of things. In the 2006 definition of a planet, it has to be large enough for its gravity to make it a sphere. Pluto checks out on that.
35:47 Eugene Mirman? Mm-hmm.
35:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Kepler checks out on that.
35:49 Eugene Mirman? Yeah.
35:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But it also has to be significant enough with its gravitational attraction to have cleaned out its environment in which it orbits. And Pluto has done no such thing. It orbits in the Kuiper belt of other icy bodies in the outer solar system. Pluto, dwarf planet, Kepler planet, real planet. There you go. So just get over that.
36:08 Eugene Mirman? So Kepler is not covered in ice?
36:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh, no.
36:10 Eugene Mirman? In an icy belt?
36:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You could be covered in ice, but we don't...
36:13 Eugene Mirman? Surrounding you.
36:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, exactly. Next.
36:16 Eugene Mirman? Quick. If a quasar of a...
36:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Lightning round, go.
36:19 Eugene Mirman? Stars in its distance. If a quasar or a star is billions of light years away, how do we calculate that distance if light takes billions of years to reach us?
36:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ooh, because the universe is older than that, and we've waited around for it to get here, and it finally got here. And the light that reaches us is light that left that quasar back at the beginning of the universe. So the stuff that sent us light that hasn't gotten here yet, we don't see those objects.
36:42 Eugene Mirman? But we will.
36:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We will eventually, as the universe gets older, those objects, we will see them being born.
36:47 Eugene Mirman? Yes!
36:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They will rise up out of the firmament of the cosmos, and their light will show up to us and will say, "There is an object being born now that the universe and our cosmic horizon has enveloped their existence."
36:59 Eugene Mirman? Nice.
37:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And the universe is old enough for its light to reach us. We gotta go. Thanks, Eugene, for being part of Cosmic Queries. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Thanks always to Eugene Mirman, who does such a great job with me. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.
Previous Cosmic Queries with Bill Nye and Astro Mike Next A Conversation with Laurence Fishburne Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
