Cosmic Queries: TV Sci-Fi with Bill Nye

Who better to answer fan-submitted questions about science fiction on TV and in the movies than Bill Nye? Bill and Chuck Nice flip channels between “Star Trek,” “Star Wars,” “Lost in Space,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “Back to the Future,” and more. (Adult Language.) NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/

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

• 0:02Bill Nye?

  Greetings, greetings, greetings, welcome to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Bill Nye, here with wide world citizen of the worldwide world Chuck Nice. And this is a special All-Star edition. Chuck, here's the interesting thing. I'm the All-Star. I'm starring all wise. Here. It's good. No, it's really fun. I really, I really appreciate you guys, including me. Now, this is a cosmic query. Yes, it is. I see you have stacks of querical queries. Yes, I do, from all over the interwebs, Twitter. That electric thing the kids use. They're electric machines. I hear that thing's catching on. I don't know what's going on with that. Thank

• 0:45Bill Nye?

  you all for sending in questions. Chuck, let's read one. Let's get right to it. Okay. And this is from Dan Gomez. Dan says, what exactly is inside of a vacuum? If not matter, then some sort of cosmic energy? The fabric of reality? Well, there's, there's energy passes through a vacuum. Right. So we love that. We're talking about light, heat, all these exciting things. Then you ask a good question. You know, people talk about spacetime, using it as one word, spacetime. And it's generally agreed that not only is the universe expanding, but space itself

• 1:28Bill Nye?

  is expanding. So most of space has what we reckon is no matter, nothing in it. So perhaps the, any vacuum you have is also expanding along with space. If it's away from a gravity field, or away from a local gravity field. Okay. Maybe it's expanding and we just can't, can't sense it. It's one of the rules. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's pretty wild. It is wild. It really is profound. Yeah. All right. Actually, Dan, very good question. Enough to sound so surprised. He's a Star Trek listener. StarTalk listener. Which brings me to this next thing. This, these questions are generally about science fiction, right? Yes, that's right. Star Trek will probably come up. Star Trek is definitely going to come up because this

• 2:10Bill Nye?

  is sci-fi and scientists on TV. These are the, what the inquiries are about. Let's go to Sam, THFC.

• 2:20Chuck Nice?

  Hmm?

• 2:21Bill Nye?

  All right, I have no problem.

• 2:22Chuck Nice?

  I don't know what THFC means, but um, but he's uh, coming to us from Twitter, uh, Twitter, Twitter. I just made up a whole new social media. Look for it. Twitter, coming to a phone near you.

• 2:34Bill Nye?

  Twitter, sweeter. So, give us a tweet from the twit.

• 2:39Chuck Nice?

  Here's what he says. What fictional scientist?

• 2:41Bill Nye?

  Gee whiz, that didn't sound right. I apologize. Give us a tweet from the Twitter.

• 2:46Chuck Nice?

  What fictional scientist do you think would, if he or her, uh, and his or her science were, were real, would benefit mankind the most? Do you have somebody that you like, uh, as a fictional scientist that you believe, if they were real, they would actually be a huge benefit to mankind?

• 3:07Bill Nye?

  Uh, the person, the man or woman who invents a way to filter saltwater and make it into fresh water.

• 3:13Chuck Nice?

  Oh, wow.

• 3:14Bill Nye?

  And that person may exist right now, but this is a hypothetical thing.

• 3:18Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 3:19Bill Nye?

  And it may not be one person, maybe a corporation who continually dinks around with materials to make this possible, but that would be great. If you could make seawater economically into fresh water.

• 3:28Chuck Nice?

  So now, what is the big deal of, uh, not big deal? What's the big obstacle for capturing fresh water from saltwater or desalinating?

• 3:37Bill Nye?

  E- energy. It takes energy, right? You either have to boil it, often in a partial vacuums, or called partial flash distillation, or, uh, you push it through a osmotic filter, a filter that filters molecules, and get the fresh water to come out the other side, but it takes a lot of pressure. That's what they do on cruise ships and submarines.

• 3:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh, really?

• 3:58Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so, one can't help but wonder if there isn't some trick to make that easier.

• 4:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:05Bill Nye?

  One's hopeful.

• 4:06Chuck Nice?

  And is it, is it going to be necessary one day? I mean, are we going to be in a position where we're out of fresh water?

• 4:12Bill Nye?

  Well, yeah, people talk about it all the time, but it would enable so much. It just, it would be so cool if you could take seawater, make it into fresh water, along the coast. Most people in the world live along coastlines.

• 4:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:24Bill Nye?

  So, um... It would be a really a terrific thing if you could do it economically, especially for the developing world.

• 4:31Chuck Nice?

  Nice. I love it. So you, I mean, what's funny is that they were talking about a character, but you went with an actual scientific thing.

• 4:39Bill Nye?

  That some humans gonna invent.

• 4:40Chuck Nice?

  Some human can actually do at some point, you know, love it.

• 4:44Bill Nye?

  Happen right now while we're talking starwise.

• 4:47Chuck Nice?

  There may be somebody out there doing it as we speak. All right, here we go. Um. Wow, this person, oh, nope.

• 4:55Bill Nye?

  You stumped yourself.

• 4:56Chuck Nice?

  It's Kelly Clementco.

• 4:58Bill Nye?

  Kelly Clement.

• 4:59Chuck Nice?

  Kelly Clementco wants to know this. Doc Brown and the DeLorean.

• 5:05Bill Nye?

  Yes, Doc Brown.

• 5:06Chuck Nice?

  Hee hee hee hee. The good, the bad, and what do you think? A flux capacitor really is, or could be.

• 5:15Bill Nye?

  Let's start with the following thing. We just did, uh, for those of you watched our talk on the TV. We just did a time travel bit where I was in one of the DeLoreans that's used, was used in the movie. There's a company in New Jersey that maintains these movie cars, Batmobiles and Green Hornet, uh, cars.

• 5:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:34Bill Nye?

  And the door, so I was in it and I threw a switch and it was funny and charming. Uh, so, uh, the flux capacitor you may recall was running on banana peels and stuff.

• 5:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:45Bill Nye?

  And then, as far as we know, you can't travel through time, but science fiction writers love that.

• 5:49Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 5:50Bill Nye?

  And can you go back in time? The big question is, can you go back in time and change history? Would you just get the, the captain of the Titanic to slow down, man?

• 5:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 5:59Bill Nye?

  Gee whiz.

• 6:01Chuck Nice?

  See, the thing is, he would slow down. And somehow, the Titanic would still sink.

• 6:07Bill Nye?

  Well, that's it, if your interpretation of, of time travel, but you know, on what is generally regarded as the very best of the original Star Trek series, City on the Edge of Forever.

• 6:18Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 6:19Bill Nye?

  You go back in time and somehow Hitler takes over the world because the passivism. From Edith Keaur, uh, keeps the United States from entering the wars.

• 6:29Chuck Nice?

  Because Kurt actually saves her from getting hit by a car.

• 6:34Bill Nye?

  So you're familiar and then they change and then.

• 6:36Chuck Nice?

  And that changes the outcome of everything.

• 6:38Bill Nye?

  More modern viewers, uh, young people, uh, may wonder if you can send an emissary back in time to have sex with a waitress who then turns out to be your own mother.

• 6:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:51Bill Nye?

  Can you do that the way that he did in, uh?

• 6:53Chuck Nice?

  That's the Terminator. That's, that's the entire premise of the Terminator.

• 6:56Bill Nye?

  But traveling in time is quite difficult unless, like Chuck and myself, you are happy with traveling just one way.

• 7:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 7:05Bill Nye?

  Forward, older, closer to death.

• 7:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 7:10Bill Nye?

  And that's where we're going right now.

• 7:14Chuck Nice?

  I, I started off laughing, I ended up crying.

• 7:18Bill Nye?

  Chuck's an artist. He's an artist. But it is this troubling thing. After you reach adulthood, your adulthood, heavens bill.

• 7:25Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 7:26Bill Nye?

  After you reach adulthood, your head is headed toward death.

• 7:30Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 7:30Bill Nye?

  Very troubling, but nevertheless apparently true fact as opposed to a false fact.

• 7:35Chuck Nice?

  Uh, this question took a decidedly morbid turn somehow.

• 7:38Bill Nye?

  Either that or deal. Okay? We're only going one way. You can't go back in time. So play the hand you're dealt. All right?

• 7:47Chuck Nice?

  There you have it.

• 7:48Bill Nye?

  Quit pining for something that's not possible.

• 7:51Chuck Nice?

  Yes, you're never going back to win that big game at state. Okay?

• 7:56Bill Nye?

  Take that as a learning experience for your next big game.

• 7:58Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 7:59Bill Nye?

  Also furthermore to continue, there is a very, which I say for comedic effect. There's a very reasonable theory in physics that you could build a time machine, but you could only go back to when the machine was built.

• 8:11Chuck Nice?

  Couldn't go any further.

• 8:12Bill Nye?

  No. And furthermore, further back in time more.

• 8:17Bill Nye?

  You can only, um, you have to travel at relativistic speeds to get there, which would be akin to falling into a black hole, which would tear you apart from its own gravity. So it's just not that easy.

• 8:27Chuck Nice?

  God.

• 8:28Bill Nye?

  So everybody, I don't mean to be dismissive of time travel, but don't count on it to solve your problems.

• 8:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:34Bill Nye?

  Let's say you live on a planet, uh, that is, uh, where a certain species is burning so much ancient fuel that they're accelerating the rate of warming by about a factor of a million.

• 8:46Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 8:46Bill Nye?

  Let's just say.

• 8:47Chuck Nice?

  Let's just say.

• 8:48Bill Nye?

  You can't pine for the day.

• 8:49Chuck Nice?

  I can't even imagine what kind of planet this would be.

• 8:51Bill Nye?

  You can't pine for the day when you could have done something about it at the turn of a couple centuries ago. You gotta play the hand we're dealt right now and address climate change.

• 8:58Chuck Nice?

  Right, right. Which, you know, I'd like to believe is going to happen.

• 9:03Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 9:03Chuck Nice?

  But I also believe that people are stupid. And none of you listening?

• 9:08Bill Nye?

  No, yes. No, no, no.

• 9:10Chuck Nice?

  Hearing our voices right now, but.

• 9:12Bill Nye?

  Other people.

• 9:12Chuck Nice?

  There are other people who are, quite frankly, stupid. And they don't believe anything you just said. As a matter of fact, one of them is a senator. His name is Inhofe, and he actually wrote a book called, um, The Biggest Hoax Ever, or something like that.

• 9:28Bill Nye?

  Yes, you're, you're digressing a bit, Chuck, but I appreciate it.

• 9:31Chuck Nice?

  He's a senator, Bill.

• 9:32Bill Nye?

  I know. He gets re-elected all the time.

• 9:35Chuck Nice?

  He represents. There's only two of them for his state.

• 9:38Bill Nye?

  I know.

• 9:39Chuck Nice?

  He represents half of a state.

• 9:41Bill Nye?

  I know.

• 9:41Chuck Nice?

  And he says it's a hoax. Guys like you, who do this so they can get money. Because that's what happens when you say that the.

• 9:49Bill Nye?

  Chuck, you're going kind of Bill Cosby on me there.

• 9:51Chuck Nice?

  Yes, no. I would like to invite you over for some cappuccino, Bill.

• 9:57Bill Nye?

  Thank you, Doc, you're a huck.

• 10:00Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 10:01Bill Nye?

  But this said.

• 10:02Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 10:03Bill Nye?

  Chuck, your digression is worthy. It's just something to think about. You know, we, time travel is a cool idea.

• 10:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:09Bill Nye?

  In science fiction. But let's keep an eye on the prize. We almost certainly cannot travel through time. We cannot go back in time and fix things.

• 10:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:17Bill Nye?

  So we gotta play the hand we're dealt.

• 10:19Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 10:20Bill Nye?

  Lead on.

• 10:21Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Let's move on to another query and, and keep those very grave words in mind.

• 10:27Bill Nye?

  Well, they're also empowering. They're also empowering.

• 10:29Chuck Nice?

  They are empowering.

• 10:29Bill Nye?

  Constraints are empowering.

• 10:31Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely.

• 10:32Bill Nye?

  You gotta solve this problem. Let's go.

• 10:33Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. Jonathan B. East, uh, at Becca Meest. I like that. From Twitter says, "If you could interview any fictional scientist."

• 10:44Bill Nye?

  Fictional scientist.

• 10:45Chuck Nice?

  Fictional scientist. Somebody from the movies or a book or anything like that. Who would it be and why? And, uh, he's coming to us from Indiana, the state.

• 10:52Bill Nye?

  It's fictional.

• 10:53Chuck Nice?

  Fictional. So like, is there any fictional character that, uh, you, uh, admire whatever they embody? The character embodies certain values?

• 11:02Bill Nye?

  Your first cut is you'd say Mr. Spock, right? Would you like to chat it up with Mr. Spock?

• 11:07Chuck Nice?

  I have to tell you that, uh, I've often fantasized about that.

• 11:11Bill Nye?

  Uh, but then, uh, fictional scientist, the guy who invents the time machine in the H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.

• 11:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:18Bill Nye?

  That might be, how did you do that?

• 11:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's a pretty, yeah, especially how did you do it out of bubble gum and a pinwheel?

• 11:25Bill Nye?

  Yeah, whatever.

• 11:26Chuck Nice?

  Basically, that's, it was a tear with a big fan on it.

• 11:29Bill Nye?

  He oiled something and he's able to try, yeah, that would be a good couple of questions.

• 11:34Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 11:35Bill Nye?

  But I will say, uh, as charming as all that is, there are some real people I'd love to know.

• 11:39Chuck Nice?

  Ah, I was about to go there.

• 11:40Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean.

• 11:41Chuck Nice?

  I was about to say.

• 11:42Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 11:43Chuck Nice?

  Is, are there?

• 11:43Bill Nye?

  Wouldn't like to talk to, uh...

• 11:45Chuck Nice?

  Would, would you, now, would, would you rather speak to?

• 11:50Bill Nye?

  Rosalind Franklin or?

• 11:52Chuck Nice?

  Franklin or Albert Einstein?

• 11:54Bill Nye?

  Oh, man.

• 11:55Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, buddy.

• 11:56Bill Nye?

  I'd like to talk to Rosalind. Because you don't hear that much about her.

• 11:59Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 12:00Bill Nye?

  People write books now, but I would like to know what her life was like.

• 12:03Chuck Nice?

  Sweet, sweet.

• 12:04Bill Nye?

  She had to play, she had a tough road to hoe there. She was the only woman in the thing.

• 12:07Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, when you're a female, I mean.

• 12:10Bill Nye?

  Back in the 1950s.

• 12:11Chuck Nice?

  It's not gonna be.

• 12:11Bill Nye?

  For those of you who are down, not hip, not down, she took the picture. That enabled Watson and Crick to envision DNA.

• 12:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:20Bill Nye?

  The spiral, the double helix. But did she envision it first?

• 12:25Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 12:25Bill Nye?

  Because she looked at the picture and then the men took credit.

• 12:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:28Bill Nye?

  Arguments have ensued.

• 12:29Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 12:30Bill Nye?

  There have been, uh, whole radio shows devoted to this argument. I can't resolve it right now, but it is intriguing.

• 12:36Chuck Nice?

  And, uh, clearly still having ramifications to this day. We are probably one of the most important discoveries ever.

• 12:43Bill Nye?

  Yeah. By the way, Darwin and Russell discovered evolution without any knowledge of DNA. It's amazing.

• 12:50Chuck Nice?

  That is amazing.

• 12:51Bill Nye?

  It is amazing.

• 12:51Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 12:52Bill Nye?

  Talk about discipline, scientific method.

• 12:54Chuck Nice?

  Just straight observation.

• 12:56Bill Nye?

  Observing and thinking.

• 12:58Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Sweet.

• 12:59Bill Nye?

  So don't forget, if you ever read Origin of Species, Darwin did all kinds of very diligent naturalist experiments.

• 13:07Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 13:08Bill Nye?

  He's a really impressive guy. I mean, I know everybody says that, but he really was quite the experimentalist as well as the observationalist naturalist.

• 13:16Chuck Nice?

  Right. Alright, cool.

• 13:18Bill Nye?

  Lead on.

• 13:19Chuck Nice?

  So there you go, there you go, there you go. Good, good question. I like that. Alright, let me move on to another query. This is Denard Springle coming to, I like that name, coming to us from Google Plus. He says, "How much more interesting would Lost in Space have been if they'd elaborated more on Dr. Maureen Robinson's biochemical background? Instead of having her be the typical housewife in space, preparing meals, tending to the garden, et cetera, et cetera."

• 13:51Bill Nye?

  Well, it sounds like from your point of view, Mr. and Ms. Springle would much better. And notice that, uh, compare and contrast the contemporary show Lost in Space with Star Trek.

• 14:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:04Bill Nye?

  Star Trek, the woman, women were empowered. Yes, there was a lot of legs. Yes, there are a lot of

• 14:10Chuck Nice?

  Mini skits.

• 14:10Bill Nye?

  A lot of nice uniforms.

• 14:12Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:12Bill Nye?

  But ultimately.

• 14:14Chuck Nice?

  Green women.

• 14:15Bill Nye?

  Green women, uh, who were strangely hot.

• 14:17Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 14:18Bill Nye?

  Uh, but ultimately, right there in the middle of the whole thing was Lieutenant Uhura.

• 14:23Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 14:23Bill Nye?

  Who was an empowered woman.

• 14:25Chuck Nice?

  Yes, she was.

• 14:25Bill Nye?

  Ran things. And then you'd cry, come across your woman Romulan, who was in charge of a ship and so on.

• 14:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:31Bill Nye?

  And so.

• 14:31Chuck Nice?

  And then you go forward into the, the Star Trek series, you have, oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.

• 14:36Bill Nye?

  No, bring, no, Chuck, take it.

• 14:37Chuck Nice?

  Of course, there's Captain Janeway.

• 14:39Bill Nye?

  Right there, running the whole freaking starship.

• 14:41Chuck Nice?

  Starship, who became Admiral Janeway.

• 14:44Bill Nye?

  That's right. And notice, but that shows that, like, the women's movement, at least here in the United States, uh, was reflected in science fiction.

• 14:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:53Bill Nye?

  Uh, you know what I mean? That, you know what I mean?

• 14:57Chuck Nice?

  So it's.

• 14:57Bill Nye?

  I can't hear you. I don't know why I would say such a thing, but you see that the evolution right there. And by the way, Nichelle Nichols came to the 35th anniversary of the Planetary Society, October 2015.

• 15:08Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 15:09Bill Nye?

  And she told the story again, Chuck.

• 15:11Chuck Nice?

  Um.

• 15:11Bill Nye?

  She's told the story countless times. She was very gracious about it.

• 15:15Chuck Nice?

  About what?

• 15:15Bill Nye?

  Martin Luther King called her.

• 15:18Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 15:18Bill Nye?

  Apparently on the phone.

• 15:19Chuck Nice?

  I have a dream.

• 15:21Bill Nye?

  Yeah. And he said, you can't quit this job. She was gonna quit. She wanted to go back to Broadway or whatever she was as a big time actress, not pretending to be in the 23rd century.

• 15:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:30Bill Nye?

  And he said, you can't quit this job.

• 15:32Chuck Nice?

  As he saw the value.

• 15:33Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 15:34Chuck Nice?

  And her being on the bridge of a starship in the future.

• 15:38Bill Nye?

  And being.

• 15:39Chuck Nice?

  As a ranking officer or lieutenant.

• 15:41Bill Nye?

  Who, who was responsible for all kinds of important things.

• 15:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 15:44Bill Nye?

  And so, uh, it was a, a really a moving moment for me to say, wow.

• 15:49Chuck Nice?

  You know what's funny about Lieutenant Uhura is a lot of people say, well, she was the, she was nothing but an operator. You know, she was the, and the truth of the matter was, she was the first contact for anyone that they.

• 15:58Bill Nye?

  She was Capcom.

• 15:59Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 16:00Bill Nye?

  Oh, but really, Capcom's a big job.

• 16:02Chuck Nice?

  There you go. So.

• 16:03Bill Nye?

  No, she was a big deal and she made decisions and she, uh, had to remain calm in some pretty stressful situations, albeit fictional ones.

• 16:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:12Bill Nye?

  But it was to the point where Martin Luther King himself.

• 16:15Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 16:16Bill Nye?

  Says, my friend, uh, Ms. Nichols, you can't quit this gig, cause you're a role model for.

• 16:23Bill Nye?

  Uh, African American people and women especially.

• 16:26Chuck Nice?

  I do believe you are a future.

• 16:28Bill Nye?

  It was really, it was.

• 16:29Chuck Nice?

  Well, it makes sense.

• 16:30Bill Nye?

  Quite a story that she told, I gotta say.

• 16:32Chuck Nice?

  I was completely unaware of that story and that's a great.

• 16:35Bill Nye?

  Yeah, but she's told it a lot of times, but she was very nice about it.

• 16:38Chuck Nice?

  Nah, it's very cool. That's very cool. Then it kinda goes to show you the importance of.

• 16:43Bill Nye?

  Television.

• 16:44Chuck Nice?

  Television, science fiction.

• 16:45Bill Nye?

  Science fiction. And by the way, the thing about Star Trek as a Trekkie.

• 16:48Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 16:49Bill Nye?

  It's an optimistic view of the future through science. It is not an apocalyptic view of the future. It is not. Science is bad and leads to disaster. It's science is good and leads to all material needs. Being taken care of and any conflict we have is when we encounter new cultures who are not totally hip to.

• 17:09Chuck Nice?

  Right. They don't get it the way we do.

• 17:11Bill Nye?

  Well, they haven't had a chance yet.

• 17:13Chuck Nice?

  There you go. All right. Super cool. All right. Here we go. This is, uh, Cora Killabitch.

• 17:21Bill Nye?

  Oh heavens. Chuck, you gotta edit before you read. I've only got 30 seconds left in this segment. You're coughing to death. Person sent you a joke name.

• 17:31Chuck Nice?

  I know that.

• 17:32Bill Nye?

  Suck you right in.

• 17:33Chuck Nice?

  Suck me right in with the, with the joke name.

• 17:35Bill Nye?

  We're gonna get to this. Cosmic queries with a science fiction bent.

• 17:39Chuck Nice?

  There we go. How far are we?

• 17:40Bill Nye?

  So let's get the question. We'll tease it. Come back after the break. Brilliant. What's the question?

• 17:44Chuck Nice?

  Here's the question. How far are we from force fields and inertial dampers? That's the question from Cora Killabitch.

• 17:50Bill Nye?

  Okay. We're not too far from either one. And Chuck and I will tell you all about it when Star Trek, Star Talk returns right after this.

• 18:14Bill Nye?

  Welcome back. That's, uh, I'm your host, Bill Nye. Welcome back to StarTalk. That's my colleague, citizen of the wide world Chuck Nice, who is rendering his own a cappella version of the original Star Trek, uh, theme song. And the reason he's doing that is because this cosmic query segment is a generally on a science fiction theme.

• 18:37Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it is.

• 18:38Bill Nye?

  Now, we had a query about force fields.

• 18:40Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we did. Who came to us from a joke made, but I didn't catch.

• 18:44Bill Nye?

  Inertial damping.

• 18:44Chuck Nice?

  And it was, uh, Corey Kilovich, who said on Instagram, "How far are we from force fields and inertial dampers?"

• 18:51Bill Nye?

  So let me just say, in the, in the biggest picture, you live in a force field. Gravity is a force field.

• 18:58Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 18:58Bill Nye?

  And it's can be thought of as a field. And recently, it was proven that it also apparently travels in waves. Gravity does.

• 19:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:06Bill Nye?

  And so this was predicted or very reasonable to physicists. And now we had an instrument that measured that. But I think I know what, at which you drive. And plus, we also have dampers, inertial dampers. Uh, the old, the British term was dampener.

• 19:20Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:20Bill Nye?

  But in American English, the middle syllable got dropped. And this is a shock absorber in a car. And it, a damper generally means something that goes at the rate. The faster you move the car axle, the more damping you get, the more damping retard, retarding force you get.

• 19:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 19:39Bill Nye?

  It's a little bit out of your, uh, mathematical experience for most people, but it's out of your every, it is out of your everyday experience. And, uh, you know this when you, um, when you try to bounce a car up and down, which you can do. You can make the, with the cars in park, everybody perfectly safe, push it up and down. You'll find the faster you try to make it go, the more difficult it is. Now, with that said.

• 20:00Chuck Nice?

  Just flip your switch on your lowrider. That's all.

• 20:02Bill Nye?

  Oh, yeah. Well, if you, for our lowrider listeners, the many StarTalk lowrider listeners that are out there, I'm sure there are a few of you. Thank you for your good work.

• 20:12Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 20:12Bill Nye?

  But now, but I think what she's driving at is tractor beam.

• 20:16Chuck Nice?

  You know it.

• 20:17Bill Nye?

  In fact, I heard a, uh, a pundit, I believe, on Meet the Press. Use the term tractor beam talking about the presidential election.

• 20:26Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 20:27Bill Nye?

  A tractor beam isn't so far not a real thing.

• 20:30Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 20:31Bill Nye?

  Wouldn't it be great instead of a tugboat having to throw a line out to the barge it's towing, you could just do it with some sort of electromagnetic beam with with the accompanying sound effect that would bring the barge up the river or through deep space easily. So it's a cool idea. I don't know. I think we're pretty far away from that.

• 20:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 20:53Bill Nye?

  So I think we're pretty far away.

• 20:54Chuck Nice?

  Pretty far away.

• 20:55Bill Nye?

  We do have force fields.

• 20:56Chuck Nice?

  We do have force fields?

• 20:57Bill Nye?

  We're living in one. You may rub your hair in a balloon and feel your hair stand on end on your forearm. And then you also may get a beam of light that pushes the spacecraft through space.

• 21:10Chuck Nice?

  Ah, I wonder.

• 21:11Bill Nye?

  From the Planetary Society, for example.

• 21:14Chuck Nice?

  Hmm, sounds vaguely familiar to me.

• 21:17Bill Nye?

  Planetary.org, consider joining. Yeah, so you were saying.

• 21:20Chuck Nice?

  Light sailing.

• 21:21Bill Nye?

  Give me another query.

• 21:22Chuck Nice?

  Novel idea, light sailing.

• 21:24Bill Nye?

  No, it is cool. It was really.

• 21:26Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 21:27Bill Nye?

  Cool.

• 21:27Chuck Nice?

  All right, man. Well, good luck. Good luck for the next flight. Here we go. Walter Vinci wants to know this. In sci fi, if one were to have a laser gun capable of producing a visible shot, what would the effects on the shooter, the target, and those in the vicinity be?

• 21:50Bill Nye?

  So.

• 21:51Chuck Nice?

  So he's basically talking about a phaser or?

• 21:54Bill Nye?

  Well, there are laser weapons.

• 21:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 21:57Bill Nye?

  We had a laser weapon flying around on a 747. And the idea is the momentum, what you're talking like the recoil from a conventional bullet type gun, shotgun, whatever, is very small with a laser because all you're doing is reacting the photon pressure. But what the deal is, is you're sending heat. At the target.

• 22:19Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 22:20Bill Nye?

  And so the heat can damage a target in a new way. That's not momentum. It's not recoil. It's burning stuff up.

• 22:26Chuck Nice?

  Burning stuff up.

• 22:27Bill Nye?

  And then if you tune it, you can have a a mazer, a microwave beam that messes up the enemy's radar.

• 22:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:35Bill Nye?

  That's a not that anybody would spend tax dollars doing that in our

• 22:40Chuck Nice?

  Oh, sure, no.

• 22:41Bill Nye?

  peaceful way of life, but I've heard of it.

• 22:43Chuck Nice?

  And would it make the pew sound? I mean,

• 22:46Bill Nye?

  I hope so.

• 22:47Chuck Nice?

  We ever make a laser

• 22:48Bill Nye?

  We produce that pew sound.

• 22:49Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 22:50Bill Nye?

  They got a guy wire. You know what I mean? A real long wire that holds up an antenna.

• 22:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:55Bill Nye?

  And tapped it.

• 22:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay, and that's the this going in.

• 22:59Bill Nye?

  And it's a, so it's a conventional mechanical resonance, just like a violin or guitar string.

• 23:04Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 23:05Bill Nye?

  It has a certain tightness. Very cool.

• 23:07Chuck Nice?

  Nice. All right.

• 23:10Bill Nye?

  We all know that's the sound of

• 23:12Chuck Nice?

  That's a blaster.

• 23:14Bill Nye?

  Gotta say, saw the new Star Wars movie.

• 23:18Chuck Nice?

  Speaking of

• 23:19Bill Nye?

  Yeah, that the, the, um stormtrooper armor.

• 23:24Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 23:24Bill Nye?

  It's not very good.

• 23:25Chuck Nice?

  No, it isn't.

• 23:26Bill Nye?

  People burn right through it.

• 23:27Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, I, you know, I, I don't know why they, uh, you would think it would be somewhat protective. But every stormtrooper that gets hit by a blaster goes down and goes down pretty easily, too. Yeah.

• 23:37Bill Nye?

  Yeah, it's, it's bad.

• 23:39Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go.

• 23:40Bill Nye?

  Another fiction problem that I can't really no one, I wasn't consulted.

• 23:45Chuck Nice?

  Okay, do you think, okay, this is from, uh, A U T

• 23:49Bill Nye?

  A U.

• 23:50Chuck Nice?

  A U T K D. Mm-hmm. Do you think something such as the death of the planet Krypton could ever happen to Earth?

• 24:01Bill Nye?

  No.

• 24:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:03Bill Nye?

  Any other question? Just exploding planets don't

• 24:06Chuck Nice?

  That doesn't happen.

• 24:08Bill Nye?

  With that said. The Earth's moon apparently was created by a pretty big thing hitting the proto-Earth.

• 24:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:17Bill Nye?

  The Earth in its early days.

• 24:18Chuck Nice?

  Earth wasn't fully formed the way it is right now.

• 24:21Bill Nye?

  So it did destroy a planet, but maybe it formed a new planet and a moon. But that's not the same as the way it's depicted in Superman where stuff just blows up.

• 24:30Chuck Nice?

  Yes, it just blows and that's it and completely falls apart.

• 24:35Bill Nye?

  Yeah, so I I don't see any way for that to happen. Stars.

• 24:39Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 24:39Bill Nye?

  They they do that. They supernova.

• 24:42Chuck Nice?

  They do both, right?

• 24:43Bill Nye?

  Supernovae.

• 24:43Chuck Nice?

  They blow up and they implode, right?

• 24:45Bill Nye?

  Yeah, they do all that. But this, we're talking about a planet and so. If you like to worry about things, that's, I wouldn't put that up high.

• 24:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:52Bill Nye?

  I'd put climate change way up higher.

• 24:54Chuck Nice?

  Way up higher than than than than Krypton like death?

• 24:56Bill Nye?

  Yes, yes.

• 24:57Chuck Nice?

  Okay, gotcha. So no need to put any kids inside of a little, uh, escape pod or?

• 25:03Bill Nye?

  Probably not.

• 25:04Chuck Nice?

  You know, send them off to a distant galaxy.

• 25:06Bill Nye?

  Improve the the the environment we have. Much better.

• 25:09Chuck Nice?

  So.

• 25:10Bill Nye?

  Make an Incluso pod.

• 25:12Chuck Nice?

  There you go. So I guess it's an Incluso pod.

• 25:16Bill Nye?

  Rather than in this, yeah.

• 25:18Chuck Nice?

  Pardon me.

• 25:19Bill Nye?

  Stay on Earth pod.

• 25:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, uh, which is called Earth.

• 25:23Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 25:23Chuck Nice?

  So we should probably take care of this place.

• 25:25Bill Nye?

  We should.

• 25:26Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. Uh, yes, this is Scott.

• 25:30Bill Nye?

  That's his title? That's pretty good.

• 25:32Chuck Nice?

  Yes, this is Scott.

• 25:33Bill Nye?

  Yes, this is Scott. What's your query?

• 25:34Chuck Nice?

  Here's what yes, this is Scott wants to know. Thoughts on our country's education system, particularly as it pertains to the scientific ignorance of the average US citizen? Could I have some of that from you, Mr. Nye?

• 25:47Bill Nye?

  Well, we got, we have a big concern. So for example, I was at the science teacher convention.

• 25:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 25:53Bill Nye?

  And one of the fights that the Science Teachers Association fights is this current opposition to Common Core standards.

• 26:01Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I hear that's a big, big deal.

• 26:04Bill Nye?

  No, it's core. You wouldn't think it would be. Why not have a set of ideas that we agree everybody should know? Everybody should learn the alphabet.

• 26:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:14Bill Nye?

  For example.

• 26:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:15Bill Nye?

  It'd be hard to read and conduct your life without memorizing the order of the letters.

• 26:20Chuck Nice?

  Kinda.

• 26:21Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 26:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 26:22Bill Nye?

  So, uh, along that line, there's some other things we want people to know about certain plays and certain poems and certain pieces of art.

• 26:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:33Bill Nye?

  We also want people to know certain facts and discoveries in the process of science and the process of science. But right now, uh, so, so then educators around the US got together and came up with this common core of standards.

• 26:49Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:50Bill Nye?

  C O R E of standards. But then it came to be, uh, opposed by certain states who don't want to teach evolution.

• 27:00Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay, now see.

• 27:02Bill Nye?

  And this is being, this, the common core is being opposed in the name of states' rights.

• 27:06Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 27:07Bill Nye?

  But it's being opposed really by people who are not aware of the fundamental idea in all of biology.

• 27:14Chuck Nice?

  See, I have to tell you that, uh, they're quite insidious, the way they make their argument, because they never let you know that there's an actual opposition to something so specific as evolution.

• 27:26Bill Nye?

  Um, it's states' rights.

• 27:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, states' rights. They never broach the issue of evolution in the fight for common core. And I've always, oh, the fight against common core. And I've always wondered, why is it, uh, that it's just, you know, one particular, uh, a group of people who are always decrying common core? And then I thought.

• 27:47Bill Nye?

  First, everybody thought it was a great idea.

• 27:49Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 27:49Bill Nye?

  Conservatives and progressives.

• 27:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:51Bill Nye?

  But then when people realized that if you had science teachers, including the basic idea in all of life science. Evolution, they started to like totally freak. And so, there's a basic idea in geology, plate tectonics.

• 28:05Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:06Bill Nye?

  Right? There's a basic idea in physics, energy can either be created or destroyed.

• 28:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:12Bill Nye?

  Okay, and so, we love that. So, there's a basic idea in life science, that, uh, things change as they reproduce, which we call the process of evolution.

• 28:22Chuck Nice?

  Evolution, right.

• 28:23Bill Nye?

  My goodness, people.

• 28:24Chuck Nice?

  Wow, I, you know what, I, this is why I love co-hosting these shows. Because, certain things just pop up on these shows.

• 28:33Bill Nye?

  Oh, yes.

• 28:33Chuck Nice?

  Never realize.

• 28:34Bill Nye?

  This is my little business.

• 28:35Chuck Nice?

  This is it, man.

• 28:36Bill Nye?

  This is why we answer these queries.

• 28:37Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, and this is super cool, because that's the real deal. The real deal is, it's evolution.

• 28:43Bill Nye?

  They don't wanna.

• 28:44Chuck Nice?

  The big problem is evolution.

• 28:45Bill Nye?

  They're afraid of it. There are some people who are empower, uh, Neil, Tyson.

• 28:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:52Bill Nye?

  Myself, you, I presume.

• 28:53Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 28:54Bill Nye?

  Are excited and empowered by the idea that we don't have all the answers.

• 28:59Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 28:59Bill Nye?

  Other people are deeply troubled.

• 29:02Chuck Nice?

  Never understood.

• 29:02Bill Nye?

  They want all the answers, everything spelled out, right now, we wanna know everything there is to know about the universe, right now. And when you challenge that, uh, they get, they get unsettled.

• 29:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 29:13Bill Nye?

  And that's, I consider that entirely my fault, as a science educator. Instead of getting people excited about it, they just grow up afraid of it.

• 29:20Chuck Nice?

  Don't blame yourself. You know, that's, wow, so there you have it. Hey, listen, this is, uh, yes, this is Scott, thank you for that question, that was, uh, that was quite enlightening.

• 29:30Bill Nye?

  It was really good.

• 29:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. All right, let's move on, uh, let's get to, uh, Spenny46.

• 29:37Bill Nye?

  Spenny.

• 29:37Chuck Nice?

  Spenny! Spenny wants to know this, in order to achieve warp speed.

• 29:41Bill Nye?

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:42Chuck Nice?

  Like in Star Trek.

• 29:43Bill Nye?

  The way you do.

• 29:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you know the way you do in Star Trek, right? You know?

• 29:46Bill Nye?

  Sure.

• 29:46Chuck Nice?

  Number one, engage. That's how you achieve it, by the way, Spenny. Number one, engage. Um, what would the ship have to be made out of? So, uh.

• 29:58Bill Nye?

  Well, it generally agreed, that you'd start with some sort of unobtanium.

• 30:03Bill Nye?

  And build out from there. Keep in mind, there is no evidence that you can actually travel at warp speed. It's a science fiction device to enable, uh, interactions between people. You know, what makes any good story is what's happening between people. Yes, there can be Andorians, and Romulans, and Klingons, there can be Xenonians, and, um...

• 30:28Bill Nye?

  So on, but they're really any science fiction story has to do with us.

• 30:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:32Bill Nye?

  Humans interacting.

• 30:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:34Bill Nye?

  And yeah, there's some issues about what's possible technologically in the future or the past. But it's really about what people are doing to each other. So, uh, there's no, there's no evidence that there really is a warp drive and I don't know what the ship would be made of.

• 30:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Okay. There you have it.

• 30:52Bill Nye?

  Be really strong.

• 30:52Chuck Nice?

  It would be because you're warping space to travel through it.

• 30:56Bill Nye?

  Really good.

• 30:57Chuck Nice?

  Which means whatever it is, is getting stretched out through space.

• 31:00Bill Nye?

  Sure it is.

• 31:00Chuck Nice?

  Showing up someplace else.

• 31:01Bill Nye?

  It has artificial gravity.

• 31:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:03Bill Nye?

  Everybody speaks English when you get there.

• 31:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 31:08Bill Nye?

  That's key.

• 31:10Bill Nye?

  Big time.

• 31:10Chuck Nice?

  That's awesome. Yes. How did that happen? Here we are halfway across the galaxy, but yet somehow these guys speak English.

• 31:17Bill Nye?

  It's crazy.

• 31:18Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man.

• 31:18Bill Nye?

  Unexpected.

• 31:19Chuck Nice?

  Ah, yes.

• 31:20Bill Nye?

  Well, it's a remarkable example of Hodgkin's laws of parallel planetary development. Boy, I am, I'm an old geek.

• 31:27Chuck Nice?

  I love it.

• 31:28Bill Nye?

  Take it, take it Chuck.

• 31:29Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. Here we go. Oh my God. Mm. Uh, here we go. From Ethan Bottoms. Ethan says, Bill, what's your favorite sci-fi technology? And what would be its real life equivalent?

• 31:49Bill Nye?

  Uh, two things.

• 31:50Chuck Nice?

  Two things.

• 31:51Bill Nye?

  First of all, I'd love to have a transporter.

• 31:53Chuck Nice?

  Oh God, so would I.

• 31:55Bill Nye?

  But people have done analysis on the information theory involved and taking a few trillion cells and putting them back together.

• 32:02Chuck Nice?

  Reassembling them.

• 32:03Bill Nye?

  Huge amount of energy required, but the other one that we'd all like is subspace radio.

• 32:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:08Bill Nye?

  Where no matter where the other person is, no matter how fast he or she is traveling, no matter what's going on, you can talk to him or her.

• 32:15Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 32:15Bill Nye?

  We've almost got it.

• 32:17Chuck Nice?

  For real.

• 32:18Bill Nye?

  I mean, you had, take out your mobile phone. You can talk to pretty much anybody in the world. Once in a while.

• 32:23Chuck Nice?

  That's true.

• 32:23Bill Nye?

  The, uh, transmission is not as good as it might be. Once in a while it's breaking up. Once in a while you have to move near the window.

• 32:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:30Bill Nye?

  Once in a while the phone goes down.

• 32:31Chuck Nice?

  I'm roaming in my own apartment for no reason.

• 32:33Bill Nye?

  Yes. Your data costs more than your voice and so on, but we're getting close where you can talk to anybody, anywhere, anytime. Now, you can fly on planes six miles above the earth.

• 32:46Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 32:46Bill Nye?

  And be on the internet, communicating, taking care of things. It's not going to be long before. People will be able to talk routinely. I'm sure there'll be phone booths on planes again. Do you know if you remember the radio phones that were 10 bucks a minute or something?

• 33:03Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 33:04Bill Nye?

  On airplanes. But this, uh, this will come back around. We'll have the equivalent of subspace radio.

• 33:09Chuck Nice?

  Right. Okay. So subspace radio, uh, that's a-

• 33:12Bill Nye?

  That's what I'd like.

• 33:13Chuck Nice?

  Be nice.

• 33:14Bill Nye?

  Yeah. Be nice, like you, Chuck.

• 33:16Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm. Oh, I like that. I like that. I like what we did there.

• 33:20Bill Nye?

  That's brilliant.

• 33:20Chuck Nice?

  That's very cool.

• 33:21Bill Nye?

  No one's ever thought of it before.

• 33:24Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go.

• 33:25Bill Nye?

  Getting nigh the end of the segment, by the way.

• 33:28Chuck Nice?

  We are nigh the end of the segment. I don't even think, well, you know what? I'm gonna go ahead and give you this one. Uh, uh, why are, this is, uh, Hova, Casanova. Why are fictional scientists usually portrayed as bad guys?

• 33:42Bill Nye?

  Because you need enemies in stories, and you want the good guy to be like you.

• 33:47Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 33:48Bill Nye?

  Man against the universe, man against himself, or man against man. That's how you run an English class. So you have the man be a bad guy from the future's fictional. This is StarTalk with Chuck Nice, and I've been your host, Bill Nye. Turn it up loud and keep looking up.

• 34:11Bill Nye?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Bill Nye, here with the worldwide citizen of the wide world, Chuck Nice.

• 34:18Chuck Nice?

  That's right, sir.

• 34:19Bill Nye?

  And it's the Cosmic Queries Continued, where we take your questions from the cosmos and, uh, your enquiries and do our best to respond. Chuck?

• 34:29Chuck Nice?

  Well, you're gonna do your best to respond. Nobody wants to hear from me.

• 34:33Bill Nye?

  Chuck, you provide great insight on this show.

• 34:35Chuck Nice?

  Oh, Bill, that's very nice of you to say. You are beyond kind, sir. Uh, here, Kaylee, uh, Kaylee-

• 34:43Bill Nye?

  Who else could sell, say Kaylee, except you? Besides you?

• 34:47Chuck Nice?

  Who else could butcher the name Kaylee?

• 34:49Bill Nye?

  Yeah, take it.

• 34:49Chuck Nice?

  Better than you, Chuck. Here we go. Kaylee Bush wants to know this. In many science fiction movies, hypersleep is used by astronauts-

• 34:56Bill Nye?

  Hypersleep.

• 34:57Chuck Nice?

  Hypersleep is used by astronauts on long voyages to make their trips seem shorter. Is hypersleep possible? If so, would it be a valid method to keep future astronauts sane during long trips in space?

• 35:10Bill Nye?

  A couple of things about that. We, you may have met, uh, a bear. Or squirrels. These kids hibernate.

• 35:18Chuck Nice?

  They do a little something called hibernation.

• 35:20Bill Nye?

  Yeah, and so it's very reasonable. They're mammals. We're mammals. It's very reasonable that you could figure out how they do it.

• 35:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:27Bill Nye?

  And then you would enable astronauts to do that. It's not. I don't think it's too entertain to keep astronauts from going crazy so much. As to keep astronauts from aging too much, right? You go on these long trips and then uh. It seems reasonable to do that. However, with that said. Mark Kelly.

• 35:48Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 35:49Bill Nye?

  Just finished almost a year in space, three hundred and forty days in space, and he remarked. You know, you could go two years. I could go two years.

• 35:56Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:57Bill Nye?

  Uh astronauts are anything but bored.

• 36:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:00Bill Nye?

  They have, if anything, too much to do.

• 36:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's what he's.

• 36:03Bill Nye?

  The things going, yeah.

• 36:03Chuck Nice?

  One of the things he said is that there's so much to do. There's so many things all day long that he's doing that he doesn't think about it like.

• 36:11Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 36:12Chuck Nice?

  Like that.

• 36:12Bill Nye?

  He doesn't, he doesn't run out of mental stuff to do. So uh. This is a great question, but very reasonable to to enable astronauts to make this long journey without having to eat as much.

• 36:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:23Bill Nye?

  And process the waste as much.

• 36:25Chuck Nice?

  Mm hmm.

• 36:26Bill Nye?

  Having as much time, seriously, in sleep cycles. Uh, it's very reasonable to have people in suspended animation and in science fiction movies, what you generally do. Is have the people in suspended animation kill each other or die.

• 36:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, or wait, one of the chambers malfunctions.

• 36:43Bill Nye?

  That's right.

• 36:44Chuck Nice?

  And when they get to wherever they're going, it's a corpse.

• 36:47Bill Nye?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:47Chuck Nice?

  Dried up corpse.

• 36:48Bill Nye?

  Yeah, and he didn't even know it or she, because they were, he or she was asleep during this traumatic uh time. But this is, uh, it's a fine idea in science fiction, but it goes way back because we observe bears. Who hibernate. Why couldn't we do that? With the right hormones or berry and bark diet.

• 37:08Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 37:09Bill Nye?

  It's a good question.

• 37:10Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Good question. Oh, way, way to go, Kaylee. Ethan, a cool guy, Smith.

• 37:16Bill Nye?

  That's quite a claim.

• 37:17Chuck Nice?

  What a claim. As he says, why does it seem that with every new generation, there is a new level of both scientific acceptance and scientific ignorance, which is a wonderful question, especially when you're thinking about science fiction. I mean, he's absolutely right. When you think back from the time of Galileo till now, Jesus, man, the leaps and bounds we've made, but yet when you look at where we are right now, you can't believe the people are such idiots that they believe some of the things they believe.

• 37:49Bill Nye?

  For example. Give me an example.

• 37:52Chuck Nice?

  Like, like, for example, that, um, human activity may, uh, be creating a climate change that is deleterious to the entire ecosystem of this planet upon which we live.

• 38:04Bill Nye?

  And denying that.

• 38:05Chuck Nice?

  And denying that.

• 38:06Bill Nye?

  Yes, with the face of evidence.

• 38:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:08Bill Nye?

  Or denying that, uh, organisms change through the process of evolution.

• 38:12Chuck Nice?

  How about that?

• 38:13Bill Nye?

  Yes.

• 38:13Chuck Nice?

  Even though we have clear, clear evidence.

• 38:16Bill Nye?

  Fundamental idea in life science. So, uh, you're asking a great question. I think people, there's an expression, I think, in almost every culture, the good old days.

• 38:26Chuck Nice?

  Good old days.

• 38:27Bill Nye?

  People have a way, we, I think it's a survival mechanism. We have a way of suppressing the really traumatic times.

• 38:33Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 38:33Bill Nye?

  And embracing the happy times.

• 38:35Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:35Bill Nye?

  And these are the good old days. And so the ultimate manifestation of that is, if only things were the way they were when I understood everything.

• 38:44Chuck Nice?

  Ah-huh.

• 38:44Bill Nye?

  Now, uh, it gets away from me is these changes around us are happening in technology, culture, uh, the speed of things, but you gotta get over it. It's back to this deal that I talk about all the time. Some people are greatly troubled by change.

• 38:59Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 39:00Bill Nye?

  Other people accept it as part of the excitement of being alive.

• 39:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:04Bill Nye?

  So, uh, this is a great question, but we are working very hard here at StarTalk to empower the world's citizens to know science.

• 39:12Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:13Bill Nye?

  And that planetary society to know the cosmos and our place within it. That's why we want to know the cosmos and realize that we don't know everything. And pursue truth in nature, to find out nature's rules so that we know where we fit in. In the great scheme of things.

• 39:31Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 39:32Bill Nye?

  Where did we come from? Are we alone? These are deep questions, answers with science. Some people think it's cool, other people are troubled. And the troubled people are the ones living in the past.

• 39:42Chuck Nice?

  There you have it.

• 39:42Bill Nye?

  So far.

• 39:43Chuck Nice?

  Hey, uh, I have to say that, um, um, that was a very cool question, Ethan Cool Guy Smith.

• 39:50Bill Nye?

  Thank you, Ethan Smith, the cool guy. Lead on.

• 39:55Chuck Nice?

  Here we go. Uh, BTU, oh, one oh five.

• 39:59Bill Nye?

  British Thermal Unit, oh, one oh five.

• 40:01Chuck Nice?

  One oh five, wants to know this. The professor on Gilligan's Island always seemed to be using seawater and coconuts to power gadgets like radios. First of all, is that feasible?

• 40:14Bill Nye?

  Uh, it depends. If you have enough dissimilar metals. By the classics, you might be familiar with are copper and zinc. Then you can make a battery. But I don't know that you can power a coconut radio.

• 40:28Chuck Nice?

  Right, I was gonna say.

• 40:29Bill Nye?

  But I remind you, a lot of the stuff that hap-

• 40:31Chuck Nice?

  Just for, uh, aesthetics.

• 40:32Bill Nye?

  Give it the tropical island feel.

• 40:33Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 40:34Bill Nye?

  I remind you, a lot of the stuff the professor did on Gilligan's Island was not real.

• 40:40Bill Nye?

  And so this enabled, uh, the, it enabled the plot to be advanced and you'll notice generally on Gilligan's Island, he'd get it almost working.

• 40:50Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 40:51Bill Nye?

  For a few seconds.

• 40:52Chuck Nice?

  Seconds, and then, oh.

• 40:53Bill Nye?

  Oh, and then doggone it. And so, uh, with that said, changing the subject to a more recent, more desperate situation on Lost.

• 41:04Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 41:05Bill Nye?

  What I say as a, I was a pretty good Boy Scout.

• 41:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:09Bill Nye?

  Get off the island! What's wrong with you people?

• 41:12Chuck Nice?

  Cause all they cared about was what was happening on the island.

• 41:15Bill Nye?

  That's what I just gotta say. When I watched the, the, um, was it the Blair Witch Project?

• 41:20Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 41:21Bill Nye?

  Get out of the woods! What's wrong with you? We lost the map. Well, follow the stream, you clowns.

• 41:28Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 41:28Bill Nye?

  I had no sympathy for those people. Maybe somebody will kill them and we can move on. Yes. Oh, Bill, Bill, you're so harsh. I'm just telling you, these are, through the process of science, you would find a way. You would find a way to get off the, out of the woods, off the island.

• 41:47Chuck Nice?

  That's

• 41:48Bill Nye?

  Especially, how long was that on? Five years?

• 41:50Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 41:51Bill Nye?

  Three and a half years?

• 41:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 41:52Bill Nye?

  Somebody would get something done, people.

• 41:55Chuck Nice?

  All right, there you have it, BTU. The professor was a fraud.

• 41:59Bill Nye?

  Not a fraud, he was a fictional character.

• 42:01Chuck Nice?

  He was a fictional character. I think he never had anything that worked because he was secretly doing something with Ginger.

• 42:08Bill Nye?

  So, I don't need to know, Chuck?

• 42:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 42:10Bill Nye?

  But are you Ginger or Mary Ann?

• 42:12Chuck Nice?

  Uh, you know, I gotta tell the truth, I'm more of a Mary Ann person.

• 42:15Bill Nye?

  I'm total Mary Ann.

• 42:16Chuck Nice?

  I'm a Mary Ann guy.

• 42:17Bill Nye?

  I am.

• 42:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 42:18Bill Nye?

  I'm sympathetic to the Ginger thing.

• 42:19Chuck Nice?

  I'm sympathetic to the Ginger too, but you know, that was a little, that looked a little high maintenance and

• 42:23Bill Nye?

  It did, a lot of work.

• 42:24Chuck Nice?

  Honestly, a lot of work going in there.

• 42:26Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 42:26Chuck Nice?

  And, and, and didn't, you know, didn't look like it would be worth it, whereas Mary Ann.

• 42:30Bill Nye?

  That's it, she was accessible.

• 42:31Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and also felt like when it, you know, when, when my pursuits were achieved, that I may want to spend some time with Mary Ann.

• 42:40Bill Nye?

  Uh huh, yeah. So, everybody, if you're not familiar with this, these references, a lot of the reason young men watch television is to look at women. And if you look at the cover of any ma- I, I walk by here in New York, you walk by newsstands continually.

• 42:57Chuck Nice?

  All the time.

• 42:58Bill Nye?

  So many of the magazines feature women rather than

• 43:00Chuck Nice?

  On the cover, not men.

• 43:01Bill Nye?

  No problem with that, I gotta say, if it ain't broke. So, on this show, Gilligan's Island, uh, we can all ask ourselves, which of these contrasting personalities would you prefer?

• 43:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:12Bill Nye?

  And I think this is a good moment, Chuck, with that important digression resolved.

• 43:15Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 43:16Bill Nye?

  To get at last, to the lightning round.

• 43:19Chuck Nice?

  Uh, yes, and that is where we will speed things up and take as many questions as we can in the remaining time. So, let us move on and say from, ooh, um, ooh, Seba Films wants to know this. Hi Bill, are you happy?

• 43:39Bill Nye?

  I'm happy because you're at, you're sending questions or queries to StarTalk.

• 43:44Chuck Nice?

  There you go, that was simple enough. We're off to a, uh, very good start. Um, uh, this is from AndresGamma07. AndresGamma07 wants to know this, in Star Trek, are you really, when you're teleported to another place, are you really being teleported, or is it a copy of you?

• 44:04Bill Nye?

  Oh no, you're really being teleported, right. I've seen it.

• 44:10Chuck Nice?

  Easy enough. Uh, Jay Shipka wants to know this, is it, is it possible to convert sound waves into an energy source?

• 44:20Bill Nye?

  Energy source, has to be really loud. Uh, think about how little energy it takes to make a big cymbal crash, I mean, really compared to something else, you know, if you have stereo speakers, they might be a hundred watts, just think how loud that gets. So yeah, we turn electrical energy into sound all the time.

• 44:40Chuck Nice?

  Wow, there you go.

• 44:41Bill Nye?

  We're doing it right now, it's a radio podcast.

• 44:44Chuck Nice?

  Yes, there's your answer, Jay Shipka, it's happening right before you, you're soaking it.

• 44:49Bill Nye?

  He wants to go the other way, he wants to take sound.

• 44:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, he wants to take sound, like a sonic boom.

• 44:52Bill Nye?

  Moderation.

• 44:53Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm, okay, here we go. Uh, duh duh duh duh, uh.

• 44:58Bill Nye?

  It's still ringing.

• 44:59Chuck Nice?

  Alphabetize wants to know this, what are the chances of humanity recovering after a catastrophic extinction event? The subject of many, many movies.

• 45:10Bill Nye?

  They're pretty good. Humans are said to be extinction-proof, that is to say, there's so many us living on so many continents, that even in a

• 45:18Chuck Nice?

  It's gonna be a remnant.

• 45:20Bill Nye?

  Somebody will be around and they'll be doing it, they'll be making more humans. I'm just, if you like to worry about things, that one, I'd set that one aside.

• 45:27Chuck Nice?

  Okay, there you go. Uh, Benjamin in Luria, Benjamin in Luria. That's, uh, he wants to know this, could Rick's portal gun from Rick and Morty ever exist? In other words, could we ever have a means of creating a dimensional portal?

• 45:45Bill Nye?

  Oh yeah, it's easy enough.

• 45:48Bill Nye?

  No. You think you feel better? No. But it's good. It's it enables the plot.

• 45:58Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Um, DJ Pure Logic wants to know this. Will humanity survive long enough to achieve a type two or three civilization?

• 46:07Bill Nye?

  We'll see, won't we? If we can live on pure energy and become electrovores. It's not gonna happen this weekend.

• 46:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 46:14Bill Nye?

  Climate change is gonna be a problem before then. These are great questions. Maybe something worth achieving. But bear in mind, the type one, two, and three civilizations are human constructs. Who knows if there are any of them and what they think of us?

• 46:29Chuck Nice?

  Very nice. Chris Showdrem.

• 46:33Bill Nye?

  Last name.

• 46:34Chuck Nice?

  Showdrem.

• 46:36Bill Nye?

  Showdrem.

• 46:36Chuck Nice?

  Showdrem. Chris Showdrem wants to know this. What did you learn today, Bill?

• 46:41Bill Nye?

  Uh, I learned how Chuck feels about climate change. He's concerned. He's got three kids.

• 46:46Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I I I have to tell you, I just, oh, God, I'm not gonna get back on my little thing here because, yeah, I'm very concerned. Um, Atom Bomb Baby wants to know this. If you could show one thing, be it a photograph, a painting, or a piece of music, a book, or a movie, or something completely different to an intelligent species from somewhere outside of our solar system, what would it be and why?

• 47:09Bill Nye?

  Uh, that's a great question.

• 47:10Chuck Nice?

  That is a great question.

• 47:11Bill Nye?

  And if it's one thing?

• 47:13Chuck Nice?

  One thing that you could show them, would it would it be art? Would it be literature? Would it be a photograph? Would it be, you know, a mathematical equation, uh?

• 47:22Bill Nye?

  I might show him a rocket. I might show him a spacecraft.

• 47:25Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 47:26Bill Nye?

  But that's a tough one.

• 47:28Chuck Nice?

  That's a tough one.

• 47:28Bill Nye?

  It's a tough one.

• 47:29Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:30Bill Nye?

  I think I might. I might show him.

• 47:33Chuck Nice?

  I would just give him the internet and say, have at it.

• 47:36Bill Nye?

  Have at it.

• 47:38Bill Nye?

  One thing.

• 47:39Chuck Nice?

  Just one thing. It's the internet. Here you go. All right, so this is Davy Jones from San Bernardino, California. Wants to know what's your opinion on how science is overall depicted in Futurama? And Professor Farnsworth, a great scientist or the greatest scientist on TV?

• 47:55Bill Nye?

  It's just, it's just fun, you guys. Just fun. Don't put, don't put too much voracious, true facts. There aren't that many facts in Futurama. With that said, Chuck, we've come to the end of our show.

• 48:07Chuck Nice?

  We have indeed.

• 48:08Bill Nye?

  Cosmic Queries on StarTalk. It's been my worldwide citizen of the world, Chuck Nice.

• 48:14Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 48:14Bill Nye?

  And I've been your host, Bill Nye. Please keep looking up.