Cosmic Queries – Space Traveler’s Delight

Is there anything in the universe that is not moving? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice answer fan questions about stillness, humans on Mars, and what songs they would add to the Voyager Golden Record.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, I'm exhausted after that last Cosmic Queries.

• 0:02Chuck Nice?

  I am, because we spent most of it over in Europe.

• 0:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the internationality of StarTalk.

• 0:07Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it is.

• 0:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which I'm delighted to know of, and that people are curious everywhere. It's foundational to what it is to be human.

• 0:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Field of the grass Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. And today, we're doing a Cosmic Queries edition. And you know I need Chuck Nice for that.

• 0:39Chuck Nice?

  Yes. We got him right here, and they're burning up the iPad.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, they're all from our Patreon supporters.

• 0:45Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 0:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We used to do this just for whoever had a question, no matter what. Well, this is just potpourri, right? All right, so we don't have a third guest with an expertise.

• 0:54Chuck Nice?

  No, this is just the galactic gumbo.

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this presumes I know these answers.

• 1:00Chuck Nice?

  Right. Well, I think the true presumption is that you will answer.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:05Chuck Nice?

  Doesn't necessarily mean that you know, but there will be an answer.

• 1:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll go somewhere where there's an answer that I know. And we're doing this from my office here at the Hayden Planetarium.

• 1:14Chuck Nice?

  Yes, the Cosmic Creed.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the American Museum of Natural History, right here in New York City.

• 1:18Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 1:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. All right, let's do it. Let's start.

• 1:20Chuck Nice?

  All right. First up, YesKing. And YesKing says, "Hello, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice. YesKing of Queens here in New York. If we ever get to move to Mars, will we be stronger and faster because we're accustomed to Earth's gravity like John Carter of Mars? So are we stronger on Mars, there's the real question.

• 1:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 1:47Chuck Nice?

  When we get there."

• 1:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's an odd question to answer. Because the question is, are you stronger than what?

• 1:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, if two of y'all go from Earth to Mars, whatever your strength ratio was here on Earth.

• 2:03Chuck Nice?

  It's gonna be that on Mars.

• 2:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's gonna be that on Mars. If somebody can kick your ass on Earth.

• 2:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They will kick.

• 2:09Chuck Nice?

  You're just getting a Martian ass whipping.

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, in terms of strength. So we have to be precise about how we're gonna answer that.

• 2:17Chuck Nice?

  Right. Okay? How much stronger will I be as an individual once I land on Mars?

• 2:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so let's, we gotta benchmark it. So let's say on Earth, you can lift a hundred pounds.

• 2:29Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? We have to ask, what does that hundred pounds weigh on Mars? Weighs forty pounds.

• 2:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, on Mars, you can lift more than your hundred pounds.

• 2:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it doesn't weigh as much, not because you're stronger.

• 2:49Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 2:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just want to get my clear about that.

• 2:52Chuck Nice?

  Oh, absolutely, yes, so I'm getting that two hundred and twenty pounds that I'm lifting, but it doesn't make a difference because it's really still a hundred pounds.

• 3:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, on Earth.

• 3:01Chuck Nice?

  On Earth.

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a hundred pounds.

• 3:02Chuck Nice?

  Right, it's still a hundred pounds.

• 3:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you are not actually stronger.

• 3:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If everything you're lifting weighs less.

• 3:07Chuck Nice?

  But, the stuff that I bring from Earth to Mars, which probably won't be a lot because the truth of the matter is you're gonna print everything that.

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ideally.

• 3:16Chuck Nice?

  Ideally, you're gonna print.

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's called in-situ resource utilization.

• 3:20Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, I love it.

• 3:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  ISRU.

• 3:21Chuck Nice?

  ISRU.

• 3:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, a whole branch of NASA.

• 3:24Chuck Nice?

  In-situ resource utilization.

• 3:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In-situ, getting all Latin on your hair.

• 3:28Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly.

• 3:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they don't want.

• 3:30Chuck Nice?

  In the situation.

• 3:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They don't want to have to carry everything.

• 3:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that's high, that's very costly for the payload of any rocket.

• 3:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We did a rocket equation explainer one time.

• 3:40Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we did.

• 3:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How quickly do you need more and more and more fuel to carry the fuel that you haven't burned yet?

• 3:44Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 3:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To carry the excess payload that you're trying to take.

• 3:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if that's what it is, then you would be 3D printing it on Mars.

• 3:53Chuck Nice?

  On Mars.

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Using raw materials there.

• 3:55Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 3:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 3:56Chuck Nice?

  So now, um, let's just say I need an object and here on Earth it weighs two hundred pounds and there on Mars, when I print it, it's gonna be the same, like, two hundred pounds, but it won't be, it'll be Martian, much less.

• 4:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, it'll be Martian.

• 4:14Chuck Nice?

  It'll be Martian weight.

• 4:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eighty pounds.

• 4:16Chuck Nice?

  Eighty pounds. And so I'm gonna be able to.

• 4:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do that right.

• 4:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, eighty pounds, cause a hundred is forty. So it's gonna be eighty pounds on Mars. And so really, it's, it doesn't make a difference.

• 4:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why, that's why the question.

• 4:27Chuck Nice?

  It just doesn't make a difference.

• 4:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, so here's, here's something that matters.

• 4:32Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 4:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're gonna build something.

• 4:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Structurally, it doesn't weigh as much on the supports.

• 4:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 4:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you can build, build bigger.

• 4:42Chuck Nice?

  Bigger, stronger structures.

• 4:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bigger structures and lower gravity.

• 4:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Than you can here on Earth.

• 4:48Chuck Nice?

  Cool.

• 4:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 4:49Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 4:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And anytime gravity is less, you can do more.

• 4:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So look what we, our mammal branch of the tree of life has done when we entered the water. When we entered the water, but how much do you weigh in water?

• 5:04Chuck Nice?

  I don't, I'm, I'm nothing.

• 5:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're neutrally buoyant.

• 5:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you, you'll slowly sink.

• 5:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or you'll slowly float.

• 5:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But basically, because humans, depending how much fat to muscle density you have.

• 5:16Chuck Nice?

  Well.

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 5:17Chuck Nice?

  Let's not talk about that.

• 5:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 5:18Chuck Nice?

  Please.

• 5:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but some will sink and some will float. So on average, we have the same density of water as, as we are of water. So in water, we don't weigh anything.

• 5:26Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Put a scale in water and stand on it and read it, okay? That's what I'm saying.

• 5:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 5:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when you don't weigh anything, then structurally, you're not putting yourself at risk. And that's why the largest creature there ever was is a mammal and it lives in the ocean.

• 5:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a whale.

• 5:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The blue whale.

• 5:47Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 5:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got one of those hanging in.

• 5:48Chuck Nice?

  In, in the museum.

• 5:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the museum.

• 5:50Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 5:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 5:50Chuck Nice?

  And by the way, it says all the time, my back is killing me.

• 5:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause it's.

• 5:54Chuck Nice?

  Because there is no water here.

• 5:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Held up.

• 5:57Chuck Nice?

  I am, oh, these hooks, I can't believe the gravity that I'm feeling right now.

• 6:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so when they say, how much does a whale weigh?

• 6:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The answer is zero. They give you a weight, and how do they give you a weight? They take it out of the water.

• 6:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Put it on a scale on the, on dry land.

• 6:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it weighs, you know, gazillion tons, but that's not the weight that the whale feels as it moves through the ocean.

• 6:20Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 6:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, there's another side of this.

• 6:22Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not to just make a, a long answer, longer, but your weight is whatever is the attraction of gravity is to you, okay? Your mass doesn't change.

• 6:31Chuck Nice?

  Doesn't change.

• 6:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doesn't change.

• 6:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Mass is, count up the molecules in your hand.

• 6:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your body.

• 6:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the rock. The mass is the mass. The measurement of a mass is the same no matter where it is in the universe.

• 6:44Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 6:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 6:45Chuck Nice?

  Nice. All right.

• 6:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless it's moving relativistic speeds, then the mass increases. But holding that aside.

• 6:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a different conversation.

• 6:55Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 6:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? But, but mass matters with regard to momentum.

• 6:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so watch. If I take a hundred pound brick.

• 7:04Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I throw it at you.

• 7:06Chuck Nice?

  I'm suing you.

• 7:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'll knock you over.

• 7:09Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it will.

• 7:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Now, so how much mass is in the hundred pound brick? We can ask, okay? You can measure up that mass. If I pick up that brick on Mars, it only weighs forty pounds. But if I throw it at you.

• 7:20Chuck Nice?

  The mass is the same.

• 7:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The mass is the same. It'll knock you over in exactly the same way it would have done it here on Earth.

• 7:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just so you know.

• 7:27Chuck Nice?

  And in both cases, I'm like, why, why you hit me with a brick?

• 7:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry. That was it. That was a, that was a morbid example.

• 7:34Chuck Nice?

  What happened?

• 7:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know.

• 7:34Chuck Nice?

  What did I do?

• 7:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some other example I could have thought of. I'm sorry. Sorry about that. All right, next question.

• 7:41Chuck Nice?

  All right, this is Alicia. Okorofa, ok, okorof, okoroafu. Okoroafu. Okorofu. This is Alicia.

• 7:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Hi, Alicia.

• 7:55Chuck Nice?

  Hey, Alicia. What's happening? How you doing?

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alicia, Alicia O.

• 8:00Chuck Nice?

  Alicia O.

• 8:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 8:01Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Uh, if the Earth's center wasn't hot and there was a hole all the way through, what would happen if you jumped in? Because you will only fall down until the center of the Earth. And then you'll start going up and you'll start falling backwards. Oh, by the way, um, my name is Arian, uh, age eleven. And I'm from United Kingdom, Wales. Okay.

• 8:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, so what was the first name? That's just a handle?

• 8:31Chuck Nice?

  I guess that's mom or whoever who sent it.

• 8:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 8:35Chuck Nice?

  Right. Yeah, but Arian, who actually.

• 8:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Arian, hi, Arian.

• 8:38Chuck Nice?

  Who spelled her name. Arian. Arian spelled her name.

• 8:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't know if it's a boy or a girl.

• 8:42Chuck Nice?

  Oh, who knows? Spelled her name. Oh, I don't. Okay, Arian, who spelled their name. Their name, uh. Phrenetically is 11 years old from Wales.

• 8:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't be so genderized, dude, okay?

• 8:54Chuck Nice?

  That's true, that is true.

• 8:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:56Chuck Nice?

  So, this is what Arian wants to know. What happens when you jump in a hole that goes all the way through the center of the Earth?

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah. So, I'd like the fact that Arian turned off the heat first.

• 9:08Chuck Nice?

  Isn't that something?

• 9:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's good.

• 9:10Chuck Nice?

  Arian knew the deal. She was just like, "We have a molten core."

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 9:13Chuck Nice?

  So, at the center, here's what happens.

• 9:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 9:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 9:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got, so...

• 9:18Chuck Nice?

  Crackle sizzle.

• 9:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the core is hot enough to vaporize you. So, you would not make it to the other side.

• 9:24Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 9:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just so you know. But if you dug a hole through, and I, I did this, but I didn't do it. I, I, I did the math on it.

• 9:32Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, when I was a kid, or maybe when I was 11, I said, "If you dug a hole from the United States,"

• 9:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that's where I lived.

• 9:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "Where would you come out on the other side?" And all, everyone says, "You'd dig a hole all the way to China."

• 9:47Chuck Nice?

  Right. That's always the case.

• 9:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how we say it.

• 9:50Chuck Nice?

  You dig a hole to China.

• 9:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here in the United States.

• 9:51Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 9:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  However, China is not where you, where you will land

• 9:56Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  if you dig a hole through the center of the Earth.

• 9:59Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because if you dig a hole through the center and you start in the northern hemisphere, you have to end up in the...

• 10:04Chuck Nice?

  In the southern hemisphere.

• 10:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the southern hemisphere. If you start in the western hemisphere, you gotta end up in the...

• 10:08Chuck Nice?

  Eastern hemisphere.

• 10:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how, that's how the geometry works.

• 10:11Chuck Nice?

  Is that because it's a ball?

• 10:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a ball.

• 10:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right? So, when I did that and did the measurements on that, if you dug that hole from the United States, you would end up in the Indian Ocean.

• 10:22Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 10:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay?

• 10:23Chuck Nice?

  So, basically, you just...

• 10:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The South Indian Ocean.

• 10:24Chuck Nice?

  You just flood the United States.

• 10:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, well, water will come through.

• 10:27Chuck Nice?

  That's really what you did. Yeah, you get, you pop through and all of a sudden, you're like, "Oh, Lord, what have I done? What have I done?" And the whole United States is now flooded.

• 10:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, now, so we have to ask now, where, if you live in Wales...

• 10:39Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where does their hole come out? Well, it's easy to figure that out. It's trivial. Okay?

• 10:44Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because what line goes through the United Kingdom?

• 10:48Chuck Nice?

  Uh, the prime...

• 10:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the most famous line, the prime meridian.

• 10:51Chuck Nice?

  Prime meridian.

• 10:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Most famous line in the world. And what is diametrically opposite the prime meridian?

• 10:55Chuck Nice?

  The equator.

• 10:58Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's try that again. What's diametrically opposite the prime meridian?

• 11:03Chuck Nice?

  Oh, uh...

• 11:06Chuck Nice?

  Gimme a second.

• 11:08Chuck Nice?

  I'm trying to think of the line that goes across the north pole.

• 11:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Down on the other side.

• 11:12Chuck Nice?

  On the other side.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Goes all the way through.

• 11:14Chuck Nice?

  The south pole.

• 11:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 11:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I'll help you.

• 11:19Chuck Nice?

  Oh, the prime meridian.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, the prime meridian is only pole to pole, but on the other side, we call it what?

• 11:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the same line, continued, but we have a different word for it on the other side.

• 11:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I don't know.

• 11:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The international dateline.

• 11:31Chuck Nice?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 11:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't know that?

• 11:33Chuck Nice?

  I didn't, I only-

• 11:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't know that?

• 11:34Chuck Nice?

  I didn't know that the prime meridian and the international dateline were the same line.

• 11:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They are the same damn line!

• 11:39Chuck Nice?

  I did not know that.

• 11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't know that?

• 11:40Chuck Nice?

  I have never made that connection. I've always, because people always talk about the international dateline-

• 11:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In its own world, in its own way.

• 11:47Chuck Nice?

  In its own world. And then they talk about the prime meridian because it's like, oh, this is the line that runs all the way through. So I didn't know that.

• 11:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 11:53Chuck Nice?

  Okay, cool. Okay, so that's why, that's why I was just like-

• 11:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time looking at maps and globes and stuff. I thought that was just cool. Sorry.

• 12:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, just to be clear, I was bigger than other kids, so-

• 12:07Chuck Nice?

  Thank god.

• 12:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That kind of nerd activity-

• 12:09Chuck Nice?

  Let me just tell you something.

• 12:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get your ass whooping-

• 12:11Chuck Nice?

  I'm just gonna say-

• 12:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Up in the Bronx?

• 12:13Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 12:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But-

• 12:14Chuck Nice?

  You're a, you're a, you're a man of large stature. If you were Chuck Nice size, we would, the world would not have Neil deGrasse Tyson. That's all there is to it. Because if Chuck Nice was a kid and was just like, "Did you know that the international dateline and the prime meridian were actually the same line? Isn't that amazing?"

• 12:33Chuck Nice?

  First of all, they'd have been like, "Take off all those clothes, those shoes, give me the money."

• 12:39Chuck Nice?

  And then they'd have beaten you.

• 12:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They'd take your lunch for money.

• 12:41Chuck Nice?

  Money, sneakers, and then the beating. That's how it goes. Money, sneakers, beating.

• 12:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In that order.

• 12:45Chuck Nice?

  In that order.

• 12:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what's convenient about the international dateline-

• 12:50Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that goes through Greenwich, England-

• 12:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right? Is, on the other side, is the middle of the freaking Pacific Ocean.

• 12:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you don't want the international dateline going right in the middle of your country. Because then one half the country would be one day, the other half would be the other day, 24 hours different, right?

• 13:08Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 13:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so you don't want that. So it's just convenient. Now, there's few places, is it the Solomon Islands? There's some place where they had to do some bending.

• 13:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because there's some scattered islands in the Pacific.

• 13:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But basically, it bypassed that challenge.

• 13:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? Just I'd say that.

• 13:25Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 13:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so, Arien, we'll dig a hole and we'll land in the South Pacific.

• 13:31Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 13:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Let's get back to the question.

• 13:33Chuck Nice?

  What's gonna happen when you jump in?

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so you jump in, you will fall and accelerate.

• 13:39Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Continually.

• 13:42Chuck Nice?

  Right. You're picking up speed the whole time.

• 13:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, it's not discreet, so I have to say you will fall and accelerate continuously.

• 13:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 13:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The difference between continual and continuous. I was talking to a Brit who invented the language, so we gotta be good about the language here.

• 13:56Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 13:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 13:56Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 14:00Chuck Nice?

  Yes, they sound so much smarter than we do when they speak English. Well, some of them.

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're self-aware, right? You don't go deep cockney.

• 14:06Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah, well, yeah. We sound smart if they're going like, "Hello, government!"

• 14:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, then we sound like the smart ones. You know, but if you're like Gary, our Gary O'Reilly, automatically sounds sophisticated and smart with a British accent.

• 14:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right. So you'll jump in, you'll accelerate continually.

• 14:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Until you get to the center. Let me just, for those who didn't know, okay? A river flows by continuously.

• 14:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The parade floats, moved by continually.

• 14:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, because those are discreet objects.

• 14:40Chuck Nice?

  They're discreet and they are not connected.

• 14:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're not connected.

• 14:42Chuck Nice?

  But if it's connected, then it's continuous.

• 14:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And usually, it's the same material substance.

• 14:47Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 14:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 14:47Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't tie a chain between the floats and call it continuous.

• 14:51Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 14:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. So you jump in, you will accelerate until you get to the center. Where you'll be, you'll hit peak speed.

• 14:59Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 15:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Peak speed. And... I'm thinking that speed is five miles per second.

• 15:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 15:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I have to verify that. I'm just pulling that out.

• 15:10Chuck Nice?

  Five miles per second. So you're dead.

• 15:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, no. You're just falling.

• 15:15Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 15:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You are weightless.

• 15:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't care that you moved five miles per second. What do you care?

• 15:20Chuck Nice?

  That's, well, that is true.

• 15:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're on Earth going 20 miles per second around the sun.

• 15:24Chuck Nice?

  So now, okay, I'm gonna let you finish, cuz.

• 15:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Your speed, you don't care what this.

• 15:28Chuck Nice?

  No, I was talking about when you, when you said peak speed, that means now we're going up because you're.

• 15:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't get there yet. We're the center of the Earth.

• 15:35Chuck Nice?

  All right, all right.

• 15:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 15:36Chuck Nice?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Peak speed, center of the Earth. Now, what happens to you? The hole is all the way through the Earth.

• 15:41Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 15:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You will overshoot the middle.

• 15:44Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 15:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. You go five miles per second. You'll overshoot.

• 15:48Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'll overshoot the middle, and now Earth will slowly slow you down.

• 15:53Chuck Nice?

  So that's what I was saying. You're dead. So that braking, it actually, you're going up now.

• 15:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not going up. Up is anyway away from the center of the Earth.

• 16:01Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. So you're going up in terms of.

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Up into and towards the South Pacific when, if you're in waves.

• 16:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And you are slowing down continuously.

• 16:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in the exact rate that you had sped up going in. So it's the exact undoing of everything that happened on your, en route to the center of the Earth.

• 16:23Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 16:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So then you will exact, we're ignoring air resistance here, of course.

• 16:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 16:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:28Chuck Nice?

  There we go.

• 16:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then you get to the South Pacific.

• 16:32Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Assuming the water's not just flowing in against you.

• 16:35Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. We have a tube that takes us above.

• 16:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Above. We'll give you a, a, a life-saving tube.

• 16:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'll come right up to the edge, and unless somebody grabs you, you're gonna fall back down, and you're gonna repeat this forever.

• 16:49Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's terrible.

• 16:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Somebody's gotta grab you.

• 16:50Chuck Nice?

  Well, this is a good version of hell.

• 16:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, forever.

• 16:54Chuck Nice?

  I like it as a version of hell.

• 16:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you'll just keep going back and forth.

• 16:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is.

• 17:00Chuck Nice?

  Oh, well, that was cool.

• 17:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And one round trip.

• 17:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Comes back to Wales. One round trip takes the same amount of time as an orbiting spacecraft.

• 17:08Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 17:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep.

• 17:10Chuck Nice?

  That makes sense.

• 17:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if the space station orbits over your head.

• 17:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you jump in the hole.

• 17:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You go down the other side. You actually see it passing over you.

• 17:18Chuck Nice?

  You're gonna see the space.

• 17:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On the other side.

• 17:20Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's great.

• 17:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you come back, and then there it is.

• 17:22Chuck Nice?

  There it is again. That's really cool.

• 17:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's really cool.

• 17:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, cuz you're going the diameter of the earth.

• 17:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you have to do the math and the Newtonian physics, and it all works out.

• 17:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it makes sense, though, because you're falling.

• 17:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're falling.

• 17:33Chuck Nice?

  It's falling.

• 17:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 17:34Chuck Nice?

  So you're falling the diameter, it's falling the circumference.

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're both in free fall.

• 17:38Chuck Nice?

  That's awesome.

• 17:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In earth.

• 17:39Chuck Nice?

  Dude, I love it.

• 17:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's physics.

• 17:41Chuck Nice?

  That's really cool.

• 17:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 17:43Chuck Nice?

  Well, Ariana, that was, thank you for that.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ariane.

• 17:45Chuck Nice?

  Ariane, sorry. You're right.

• 17:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 17:47Chuck Nice?

  I messed up her name, and she spelled it phonetically.

• 17:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it's a she.

• 17:50Chuck Nice?

  Oh, sorry, Ariane. Sorry.

• 17:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They.

• 17:53Chuck Nice?

  They. There you go.

• 17:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, Ariane.

• 17:56Chuck Nice?

  Thank you, Ariane.

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From Wales. Great to have fans in Wales.

• 18:00Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  I'm Ali Khan Hemraj, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 18:29Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Brett S. Chapel says, hello, Dr. Tyson and his niceness. Warm greetings from Copenhagen here in Denmark. Wow, we're getting international.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know.

• 18:39Chuck Nice?

  Look at this.

• 18:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, one of the most famous astronomers ever was Danish.

• 18:42Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 18:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I sat for 20 minutes with some native Danes to teach me how to pronounce his name.

• 18:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 18:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I will show off now that I can pronounce his name.

• 18:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay, who is this?

• 18:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tycho Brahe.

• 18:54Chuck Nice?

  Tycho Brahe. No idea.

• 18:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tycho Brahe, we call him.

• 18:59Chuck Nice?

  Oh, Tycho Brahe.

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tycho.

• 19:00Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a crater on the moon named after him, called Tycho.

• 19:02Chuck Nice?

  Right, Tycho.

• 19:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the crater that has rays coming off of it.

• 19:04Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's called the Ray Crater Tycho. Very famous crater. Two Cobra.

• 19:09Chuck Nice?

  Two Cobra.

• 19:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I want A plus for that because I worked my butt off.

• 19:12Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty cool.

• 19:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, what do you have?

• 19:15Chuck Nice?

  All right. Carl Sagan edited a golden record which went into space in nineteen seventy seven on NASA's Voyager expedition. This disc included music by diverse sources such as Chuck Berry, Peruvian, Pan Pipes, and John Johannes Buck. If you had to revamp the playlist to meet twenty twenty four standards, which one of the two songs would you add to ensure a more modern repertoire?

• 19:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 19:43Chuck Nice?

  So is there, is there a song recently, so let's get past Chuck Berry time, so I'm gonna say you have to go from late sixties till now. What two songs would you add?

• 19:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Two songs.

• 19:54Chuck Nice?

  Two songs, from late sixties till now, because Chuck Berry is the fifties.

• 19:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 19:59Chuck Nice?

  So you gotta go late sixties till now.

• 20:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I gotta put in Rapper's Delight.

• 20:03Chuck Nice?

  What? Well, it did start it all.

• 20:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It birthed.

• 20:05Chuck Nice?

  It birthed.

• 20:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's from my home borough, the Bronx.

• 20:10Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 20:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Bronx birth hip hop.

• 20:12Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 20:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I put, put in Rapper's Delight.

• 20:15Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 20:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 20:17Chuck Nice?

  Worst rap song ever made, but the most important rap song ever made.

• 20:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was number one.

• 20:22Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it did.

• 20:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we danced our ass off in college to that, because when it came out when I was in college.

• 20:26Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 20:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Shake It Off.

• 20:30Chuck Nice?

  Shake It Off. Wait, oh, Taylor Swift. Shake It Off.

• 20:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, I don't know. I mean, we gotta update it.

• 20:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's very in the moment.

• 20:42Chuck Nice?

  Right, whatever alien finds this will also find the leader of our world.

• 20:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the leader.

• 20:50Chuck Nice?

  When they, when they listen to Taylor Swift, they'll be like, oh, and this is the leader of their world.

• 20:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take me to your leader, that's the leader.

• 20:56Chuck Nice?

  There she is.

• 20:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the realm of pop music, I think that's what I would pull out.

• 21:00Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 21:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What would be fun if we put, uh, John Cage's Four Twenty Seven or whatever the name of his work is? You know, it's a piano work.

• 21:07Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know it?

• 21:08Chuck Nice?

  I don't think I know that.

• 21:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The penis sits there at the piano.

• 21:11Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It doesn't do anything.

• 21:14Chuck Nice?

  Is this the guy who doesn't play?

• 21:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doesn't do anything for four minutes.

• 21:17Chuck Nice?

  For four, okay, I, I've heard about this.

• 21:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We should put that on the record.

• 21:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that'd be great. Four minutes of silence and, and somebody going.

• 21:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The aliens are listening.

• 21:29Chuck Nice?

  Clearing their throats.

• 21:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, what's wrong with these people?

• 21:31Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So may, if I were to do it, maybe that. I might have thrown in a disco song, but disco kinda came and left.

• 21:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 21:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I would not have predicted that at the time.

• 21:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 21:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would have said hip hop was a flash in the pan and disco would be here forever.

• 21:45Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 21:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But the opposite has happened.

• 21:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 21:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. What, what's two songs that you pick?

• 21:50Chuck Nice?

  Hmm, okay, for me, I'm going to go Kendrick Lamar, They Not Like Us.

• 21:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 21:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 21:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 21:58Chuck Nice?

  Just because clearly these are aliens that found it, so.

• 22:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, okay, very clever.

• 22:04Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 22:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 22:05Chuck Nice?

  And for my second song, Smells Like Teen Spirit, um, and that is Nirvana. And the reason is because I don't know any teenager ever, no matter what their color, no matter what their creed, no matter like what their background, who doesn't hear that song and isn't moved to buy it. They truly capture teenage angst in a song.

• 22:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They found the resonant frequency.

• 22:33Chuck Nice?

  Way to say it.

• 22:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of, uh, not just of a generation, but of a.

• 22:37Chuck Nice?

  Of a period of life.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Life.

• 22:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, a period of life. Everybody knows what it is to have the anxiety of teenage existence.

• 22:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 22:46Chuck Nice?

  And they'd exist in that song.

• 22:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 22:49Chuck Nice?

  So, yeah, smells like teen spirit.

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, all right.

• 22:52Chuck Nice?

  So.

• 22:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that. Okay, we hope that, there you go.

• 22:54Chuck Nice?

  All right, well, there you go. This is Oliver Cook. Hello there, this is Oliver, I'm 36 year old painter and decorator from South Wales.

• 23:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoa.

• 23:03Chuck Nice?

  Love the podcast.

• 23:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a second question from Wales?

• 23:05Chuck Nice?

  From Wales. I wanna know if there's such a thing as absolute stillness in the universe? And if so, what would happen if we were to reach it? Would everything else just blink out of existence? Wow, look at that.

• 23:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That'd be a fun science fiction premise.

• 23:21Chuck Nice?

  That would be.

• 23:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or if you can't find it, you create it. Right. Right? Earth is rotating, let's stop the rotation. Earth is going around the sun, let's stop that. The sun is going around the galaxy, let's stop that. Galaxy is falling towards it, let's stop that. The power of stillness. What a cool super. I have the power, but now would that be stillness all the way down to the vibration of molecules? And atoms? That's not how I'm thinking of the question. Okay. But it turns out that that's not possible because quantum physics demands that even when you cool something down. Right. To absolute zero. Absolute zero. In the day. Right. In Lord Kelvin's day. Right. Oh dear. Lady and Lord Kelvin!

• 24:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kelvin. His actual name was Thompson, but Kelv- when he became Lord, he was Lord Kelvin. Right. A brilliant physicist, a little cocky, but brilliant. He pioneered the Kelvin temperature scale. Right. Which is the absolute temperature scale. Right, that's what. So what they found was, at any given temperature, air molecules are vibrating. Right. Or they're moving among and bouncing off each other. Okay. If you drop the temperature, they move a little slower. Right. Drop it some more, they move a little slower. Nice. And so he extrapolated, there must be a point where they stop moving at all. Okay. If they stop moving at all, there's no temperature left. Absolute zero. Nice. You can't have temperature less than the temperature of something not moving. Ooh. Completely reasonable before quantum physics. Uh huh.

• 24:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Quantum physics, as you try to take it to the lowest possible energy state, and you cannot characterize a zero-energy state, there's always some fluctuation. Something is moving. Some fluctuating. Or fluctuating, or. I want to distinguish sort of vibration from translational movement. Exactly. And I'm thinking he means translational movement. Is there a point where nothing is moving, okay? So, uh, the answer is no. Wow. Because you've been on a train before. So true. Let's say Amtrak, not everyone has it, but Europe, they're all about trains. Right. Here, some of us have been on trains. Yeah, we only have one, it's called Amtrak. Yeah, yeah, and you sit on the train and you look out the window, and all of a sudden, things start. Moving. Right.

• 25:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're at the station. Right. And you're there. Right. And then things start moving backwards. Right. And you rationally say, oh, they're not actually moving. I'm moving because I'm on the train. Right. But you didn't know that because it was so smooth.

• 25:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? All I'm saying is, if you believe you are stationary. Mm hmm. Someone else has equal rights to that claim.

• 25:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm. And if you say they're in motion, they can legitimately say, no, I'm stationary and you're in motion. There's no experiment you can conduct to say otherwise. I know I am, but what about you? Well, you are, but what about? I know you are. But what am I? I know I am, but what do you? So that is a foundational principle of relativity. Right. Yeah. Okay? And so we're stuck with it. That's how the, that's how the universe is put together. There was a brief moment where, looking out to the cosmic microwave background. Right. The question was, is it a different temperature in this direction than that direction? Okay. Because if it is. Right.

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That means we can tell absolutely that we are moving relative to a reference frame that's the entire frickin' universe. Right. There is no such thing as no motion. There's no such thing as no motion. Correct. Because once you get down to the quantum, there's something. And even so, even if you think you're in motion. Someone else's frame of reference. It's a reference frame. Someone else's frame of reference says. If you think you're not moving. They're in motion. You're still. Your frame of reference says, I'm in motion. You're still. Correct. There you go. And there's no experiment that you can conduct that can tell you differently. Right. Okay? Wow. I never thought we would get all of that out of Oliver's, uh, question. That is fantastic. His name Oliver Stone? Oliver from Cook. Oliver Cook. Oliver Stone's the director. Yeah. I'm Oliver Cook.

• 27:24Chuck Nice?

  Please sir, may I pay some more?

• 27:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a bad Welsh accent.

• 27:28Chuck Nice?

  It certainly is.

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're imitating Oliver from the streets of London.

• 27:32Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly. Alright, here it is. Caleb Carter says, "Howdy from northern Indiana. I just watched an episode where someone asked if a pair of quarks get spaghettified, would they sooner or later find an equilibrium? Y'all responded with essentially, "I don't know." But I do know, this is the moment there is enough energy to sufficiently separate them, they would just make quarks to become a pair again. Thus, an infinite amount of quarks would be made. I remember y'all talking about how a single H2O molecule doesn't make water, but water is made from clumps of H2O. It's possible that quarks and gravity are related in a similar way. If, and this is a mighty big if, both cases are true.

• 28:16Chuck Nice?

  Could this explain why black holes are infinitely dense? Could this just be another version of a runaway thermal nuclear reaction like we see in stars, but in terms of gravity? I'm gonna handle this one for you.

• 28:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got this? Okay, thank you, thank you.

• 28:33Chuck Nice?

  Here we go, watch this. Nah, bro.

• 28:39Chuck Nice?

  Sorry, bro, nah. That's not how it works. That ain't how it goes.

• 28:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I'm thinking again about this quark falling into the black hole.

• 28:47Chuck Nice?

  Into the black hole, where we were talking about.

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Would you have a runaway creation of quarks? And I realized, where's it getting its energy from? It's getting its energy from the gravitational field

• 28:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  of the black hole.

• 29:02Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 29:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the black hole, I think, would eat itself.

• 29:09Chuck Nice?

  It's right.

• 29:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Its entire gravitational field would morph into particles.

• 29:15Chuck Nice?

  Right, because it's feeding that reaction, which is feeding off of the field.

• 29:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, but then the particle itself can then make a field.

• 29:24Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. So you have this kind of just infinite loop that would keep happening and it could end up eating itself.

• 29:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so.

• 29:32Chuck Nice?

  That's really cool.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now I'm no less than what I knew before.

• 29:35Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, right.

• 29:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I don't have a good answer. I don't think, I don't know how to respond.

• 29:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 29:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It remains a mystery, at least to me, if not to others.

• 29:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 29:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Out there.

• 29:47Chuck Nice?

  There you go. That was easy.

• 29:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is he saying that the gathering of quarks is itself the black hole? In the way the gathering, because you can't have a single black hole molecule, in a sense.

• 29:59Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so, but a bunch of water molecules makes water, a bunch of quarks makes a black hole.

• 30:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 30:08Chuck Nice?

  Nah, bro.

• 30:11Chuck Nice?

  It's fun to think about.

• 30:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you did give it quite a dramatic read, that question, that was, alright.

• 30:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Time for just a couple more questions.

• 30:36Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. Fabio later says, "G'day, Fabio here from Washington."

• 30:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fabio?

• 30:40Chuck Nice?

  Yes, Fabio.

• 30:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 30:42Chuck Nice?

  And, what should I say? Fabio.

• 30:47Chuck Nice?

  So lovely to see you, dear. Uh, might I say you look ravishing? Excuse me while I stroke my hair and look at you longingly. While I flex my pec. And wash your clothing on my washboard abs. I am Fabio.

• 31:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was his real name, right?

• 31:07Chuck Nice?

  Yes, that's, I don't know.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That they drew on all the romance novels?

• 31:10Chuck Nice?

  That was his SAG name, we know that.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Screen Actors Guild.

• 31:15Chuck Nice?

  Screen Actors Guild, that was his name for them, so. Alright, he says, "In your educated opinion, do you think media censorship should exist in future space colonies in order to mitigate most of humanity's undesirable traits?" Wow, bro!

• 31:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good one.

• 31:32Chuck Nice?

  Wow, look at you!

• 31:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm...

• 31:34Chuck Nice?

  He's talking so selective, protective censorship is what he's talking about.

• 31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With all of its weaknesses, I think its greatest strengths outweigh them.

• 31:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's the strength of freedom of speech.

• 31:50Chuck Nice?

  There you go, my friend.

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And maybe I say that because I'm indoctrinated as such as a merc.

• 31:55Chuck Nice?

  I'll tell you what you said because you live in the greatest damn country on this face of this earth, Merica.

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Merica. Merica, apostrophe M.

• 32:02Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 32:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  U R R I C A.

• 32:04Chuck Nice?

  Let me tell you something. Jesus gave me the right to free speech. That's because I'm here in Merica. All right. He let all you other people speak too.

• 32:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I could do this all the time. We need a ref here. Blow the whistle. So, and maybe because I'm indoctrinated that way. I allow that to be a possibility.

• 32:27Chuck Nice?

  First of all, I agree, but I disagree that it's indoctrination. Here's why I disagree that it's indoctrination. Because with the right to censorship comes a certain power. And we all know that power corrupts.

• 32:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 32:39Chuck Nice?

  Power also seeks power. And so if you were to give people the ability to censorship, it never ends well. That's all there is to it.

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not just indoctrination, there's evidence.

• 32:48Chuck Nice?

  That's right. There's empirical.

• 32:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you want the stability of that colony to be a thing.

• 32:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like with all the challenges and all the fits and starts.

• 32:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The free speech.

• 32:59Chuck Nice?

  Causes.

• 32:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Causes.

• 33:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The benefits outweigh.

• 33:02Chuck Nice?

  Outweigh any of the detriments. And quite frankly, what you need to do, Fabio, is have free speech and teach everyone in that colony to think critically so that they can assess the value of the free speech that's being spoken.

• 33:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you get it for, you nip that in the bud.

• 33:19Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 33:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You start out that way.

• 33:21Chuck Nice?

  Start out that way.

• 33:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe you don't even allow people to go to that colony.

• 33:24Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless they.

• 33:26Chuck Nice?

  They can think critically. I'd like to go to the colony. No, dumbass.

• 33:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, stop.

• 33:33Chuck Nice?

  No. You stay your dumbass right here on earth where you belong.

• 33:41Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 33:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's the dumbass disqualification.

• 33:44Chuck Nice?

  Dumbass disqualification. That's it. That's it.

• 33:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can formalize this. We should name that planet rationaleia.

• 33:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 33:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 33:55Chuck Nice?

  Like in your book.

• 33:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which I just happen to have.

• 33:57Chuck Nice?

  Excellent.

• 33:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I tweeted-

• 34:01Chuck Nice?

  Wait, you gotta tell them the name of the book.

• 34:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, Starry Messenger, Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization.

• 34:06Chuck Nice?

  Sweet.

• 34:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I and others came up with this idea of rationalia-

• 34:11Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 34:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At a conference.

• 34:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 34:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A science conference.

• 34:13Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 34:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I tweeted it, it says, "Earth needs a virtual country." I wasn't thinking other planets.

• 34:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Virtual country, rationalia, with a one-line constitution. "All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence."

• 34:30Chuck Nice?

  Whoa, there you go. Boom. That's it.

• 34:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it.

• 34:34Chuck Nice?

  That's it. You get rid of so many problems.

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So many problems. And if you don't have evidence, then there's no policy.

• 34:40Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly. But wait a minute, I feel- Shut up! Shut up! I- I- I- I- I care about how you feel. You shut up with your feelings! Get out of here. We said evidence.

• 34:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, wait, wait, hold on. Wait, just to be clear.

• 34:53Chuck Nice?

  Go ahead.

• 34:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On rationalia, you can have feelings.

• 34:56Chuck Nice?

  No, your feelings are fine, but you can't-

• 34:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just can't make a law.

• 34:58Chuck Nice?

  Right, you can't-

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. You just can't write a law-

• 35:01Chuck Nice?

  You can't be a part of the conversation.

• 35:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Based- no, you can have a conversation, you just can't write a law based on your feelings.

• 35:06Chuck Nice?

  No, but that's what I'm saying, when we are debating the law, what the law should be, your feelings don't matter. They're just all about evidence.

• 35:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it's about evidence, correct.

• 35:13Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 35:14Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 35:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, on that planet, free speech would be, oh my gosh.

• 35:18Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 35:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would be the blooming of the greatest democracy the universe has ever seen.

• 35:25Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Wow.

• 35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's from the chapter in here called "Law and Order."

• 35:28Chuck Nice?

  Law and Order.

• 35:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Law and Order.

• 35:30Chuck Nice?

  From Starry Messenger. Very, con con.

• 35:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's really what- It's a ta ta. Thank you for the sound effect. It's things that we care deeply about in civilization, it's what they look like when seen through the lens of science.

• 35:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so many of the arguments that we have over at holiday dinners- They evaporate.

• 35:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the presence of rational analysis.

• 35:54Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what goes on there. Okay.

• 35:56Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Let's do this one. It might be our last one. Hello, Dr. Tyson and Lord Nice and anyone else that might have been invited. Craig Cordwell from the UK here. I was wondering, how sure are we that spiral galaxies like our own and our neighbors Andromeda are not being sucked into the black hole, which is what causes the flushing toilet-like shape that makes up the galaxies? Love the show and look forward to hearing the episode.

• 36:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh, okay. This makes like four people from the UK? What is that on this round?

• 36:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we got a lot of, a lot of people, a lot of love from the UK. Lot of love from the colonizers.

• 36:34Chuck Nice?

  Lot of love from the colonizers on this show.

• 36:42Chuck Nice?

  But watch out, we tune in next week, we two British dudes sitting here.

• 36:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's an old joke about Earth, there's no such thing as gravity. Earth sucks.

• 36:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, black holes are not giant sucking machines.

• 36:57Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They just have a gravitational field. If you get really, really close, kiss your ass goodbye. If you're not, you'll just maintain an orbit around it.

• 37:06Chuck Nice?

  Like we do the sun.

• 37:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like we do the sun. Exactly as we do the sun.

• 37:10Chuck Nice?

  Right. We don't, we don't crash into the sun. We're not getting sucked into the sun.

• 37:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so if you step back, it looks like all the planets are spiraling around, which they are.

• 37:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they're not getting sucked into the sun. All right. So, the toilet bowl effect.

• 37:24Chuck Nice?

  That swirl.

• 37:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are called spiral arms. And our understanding of them came of age while I was in graduate school. Because how do you maintain that? And because the inner parts of the galaxy actually will complete in orbit faster than the outer parts. So you get this stretching of these coherent cloud formations. Cloud, gas formed in a cloud.

• 37:48Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The gas cloud, but not like, not like.

• 37:50Chuck Nice?

  Not puffy clouds.

• 37:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not puffy earth clouds, right? They're, they're gas, streams of gas that because the galaxy rotates, as we say, differentially, which means the inner parts rotate faster than the outer parts, it will drag it into this spiral shape.

• 38:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And one of our big challenges was, how does it maintain? The grand design two-arm spiral without over time just winding up on itself. Right. Okay, so that's where it got complicated. We had to worry about what's called spiral density waves. It's not really a physical gaseous structure. The gas is everywhere. There's a density wave that's moving across the clouds, triggering star formation. Wow. So wherever this density wave is, there's star formation in that shape. So it's more complicated than it looks. But all I'm saying is everything is just simply orbiting the center of the galaxy. Right. And it's not like a toilet bowl that's ultimately gonna go down the tube. Right. And because there's gravity at the center of the galaxy. Yeah, there's gravity there, and that's what maintains the orbit.

• 38:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The orbits. Right, but if you want it to fall in, you're gonna have to stop the motion. Right. Then it won't know to go sideways and it'll just fall straight in. It'll fall straight in. That's what you'd have to do. If you wanted it to actually behave like a toilet bowl.

• 39:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, we detect black holes because of this toilet bowl phenomenon. Oh. Okay, if a gas cloud or a star gets too close, tidal forces will rip it apart. The material spirals around and the spiraling material, because the inner parts are rotating faster than the outer parts, there's friction. And wherever you have friction, you have what? Heat. Heat. So this, this, what we call an accretion disk. Right. This disk, as it spirals, gets hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter. It starts glowing. First red hot, then white hot, then blue hot. Then it radiates, it's glowing so hot, it emits X-rays. Uh-huh. That's how hot it gets.

• 39:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so we, our greatest discoveries of black holes occurred when we launched X-ray telescopes into orbit. Right. Earth orbit. And you look out, you see these sources of X-rays, those are black holes talking to us in the universe. Is that the chandra? Yeah, Chandrasekhar, a brilliant Indian physicist. We named the telescope after him. In the way, we named Hubble after Edwin Hubble. Right. So the Chandrasekhar X-ray Telescope is named after him. Cool, man. But anyway, that's how we found black holes. Very cool. There you go. That is a toilet bowl because it's falling in as it radiates away. Whereas we are not falling in. It's just a density wave moving across clouds that are already there. All right, that's all the time we have for this. That was great, man! We got caught a lot of ground there.

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. That's our international version of cosmic queries. There you go. There you go. Plus northern Indiana.

• 40:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This has been another installment of StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Galactic gumbo. Galactic gumbo. Galactic gumbo. We love those. Those are nice. Absolutely. Because we can do that just ourselves. Exactly. We don't need like bringing the big guns extra expertise. We don't need no stinking astrophysicists.

• 40:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Extra astrophysicists. All right, until next time, keep looking up.