Cosmic Queries – Why Are We Here?

Why does the universe exist? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice answer fan questions about black holes, wormholes, the expansion of the universe and more! What are our options to solve the crisis in cosmology?

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What I do every time I'm out and I have my laser, I flash it at a star that's in the night sky. Like a, like a pulse and then I turn it off. So there, there's a length of light. So if you leave the light on for one second.

• 0:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 0:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a beam that's 186,000 miles long.

• 0:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 0:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And so that is on its way to that, to that star and maybe to a planet.

• 0:24Chuck Nice?

  That is so cool.

• 0:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So it's my, it's my space graffiti.

• 0:28Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 0:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I say Neil is here.

• 0:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Cosmic Queries, fan favorite Cosmic Queries. And this is the grab bag edition. Chuck, you ready for it?

• 0:53Chuck Nice?

  Always loving a grab bag.

• 0:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, the grab bags are fun because they're just, they're like.

• 0:58Chuck Nice?

  It's whatever.

• 0:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They just dance around.

• 1:00Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they keep me on my toes. I slide, I haven't seen these questions, so.

• 1:03Chuck Nice?

  They have the random beauty of a snowfall.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know what that means at all.

• 1:08Chuck Nice?

  It means you never know what you're gonna get, but you know it's gonna snow.

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay. Is that your attempted poetry? Okay. You got a C plus on that one. All right. All right, give them to me, Chuck. Let's go right in.

• 1:21Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is, uh, Bjorn Furunap, who says, "You're Dr. Tyson and Lord Nice because, uh, you asked for profound questions."

• 1:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did I? No, I did not ask for profound questions.

• 1:36Chuck Nice?

  What for profound?

• 1:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, I bring it on.

• 1:42Chuck Nice?

  Maybe I did.

• 1:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bring it on.

• 1:45Chuck Nice?

  You never impugn the questions, no matter how they come in, what they ask. You treat every question.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With dignity.

• 1:56Chuck Nice?

  As if, if, as if it were worthy of being answered.

• 2:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they are, not as if, it's because they are. Okay.

• 2:04Chuck Nice?

  I know what I said.

• 2:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, give it to me.

• 2:10Chuck Nice?

  All right, he says, "We seem to focus, for obvious reasons, on the what and the how of the universe. The why never seems to get much scientific attention because it assumes, I imagine, that there is a purpose which physics does not really need. With that in mind, is not the why an important factor for human curiosity? And should we not then seek to not necessarily find a reason for the universe, but encourage those who seek purpose and thus understanding?"

• 2:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And it's philosophical in nature.

• 2:52Chuck Nice?

  I know, he went, you know, hey. So you don't need a why, is what he's saying, but shouldn't we still ask why?

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I have a response for that. I've thought deeply about this, by the way.

• 3:09Chuck Nice?

  All right. I know you have.

• 3:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In physics, we declare full understanding of something when we can account for all the behavior we've seen it exhibit and predict all future behavior that it might undergo. And we know what it'll do when we poke it, when we heat it, when we freeze it. We say, "We understand this thing."

• 3:34Chuck Nice?

  I know what you did last summer.

• 3:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know what you will do. So let's take gravity for an example, okay? So you can say, "Well, what is gravity? How does gravity work?" And then you say, "Well, why is gravity?" You can go in this sequence, I suppose. And I'm here to tell you that we can launch space probes from Earth, a moving target, and hit a moonlit around an asteroid, point blank, having sent a space probe to where it would be when they both got to the same point at the same time. Yes, it is rocket science. Yes, it is involved a precise understanding of gravity.

• 4:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're good with that. If you want to try to now understand why...

• 4:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, why did the, why did the spacecraft hit its target? Because we did the calculations and we gave it the right acceleration. And we knew where the target was when it was gonna get there. That's why it hit.

• 4:40Chuck Nice?

  No, but I love that joke, by the way. Why did the?

• 4:47Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry.

• 4:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why the asteroid crossed the road?

• 4:50Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, because the way you said it was like, why did the chicken cross the road? And then your answer was because we did the calculations and we saw exactly where it was going to hit.

• 5:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My favorite answer to why did the chicken cross the road is, um, can't the chicken cross the road without having its motives questioned every time?

• 5:10Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let me give you the black version of that. Why did, why did the chicken cross the road? Why are you in my business?

• 5:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who asked you?

• 5:26Chuck Nice?

  All right. Why? That's why. That's why.

• 5:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so, so the point is, you can say, let's say, uh, you, you, the pie is up on a table. And it falls to the ground. You say, why did the pie fall to the ground? And I can say, well, because you pushed it. That should be sufficient response to that why question. Okay? Well, you pushed it, but there's a little more going on. If we were floating in space and you pushed it, it wouldn't fall at all. Because there's no net gravity vector there. That will have the thing fall. It'll just, it's in free fall, it'll just float. So, so there are plenty of questions where the why is a completely satisfactory answer.

• 6:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We, we can give you a why for it. Okay? Um, why were you T-boned at the intersection? Because you ran the light.

• 6:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. There is no end of questions for which the why, there's no end of situations for which the why question has a completely legitimate answer that we're all satisfied with.

• 6:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It becomes an issue if you try to get, take a philosophical step, and then try to explore why as the consequence of intent.

• 6:53Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 6:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In so doing, you are handing intent to things that might have no intent at all. And therefore, you are forcing an intent where there might not have otherwise been one. And therefore, you're forcing an answer. And now you're chasing ghosts at that point.

• 7:17Chuck Nice?

  Right. Right. And he answered his question, and you just confirmed it. He said, "It's not necessary." So, basically, what you're saying is, for the purposes of science, if what we're really concerned about is science, we don't need that.

• 7:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, or, I have answers that are science that are satisfactory answers to the question why.

• 7:44Chuck Nice?

  That are satisfactory, right. And I should have said that, too. I don't need to go beyond that, because the science has been satisfied.

• 7:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you're satisfied because I have a scientific answer for why something happened. Okay? Why is world warming? Because we are adding greenhouse gases to the chemical mixture of the atmosphere. That is a complete, contained answer to the question why.

• 8:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I will not cede the accusation that science is not about why. I will not say that.

• 8:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are plenty of why questions where we are all completely content with the scientific answer for it.

• 8:29Chuck Nice?

  Right. And so, there you go. And like you said, going beyond that, you're creating a dragon and then chasing the dragon.

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You created the dragon, correct.

• 8:38Chuck Nice?

  Right. You created the dragon and now you're chasing the dragon.

• 8:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you want to give meaning and significance to the existence of the dragon you created, where there was never a dragon there to begin with.

• 8:48Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Well, look at that, Bjorn. You started off by saying that you were gonna ask a profound question. I gotta give it to you.

• 8:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But what I do want to say is, because one of them is, what is the meaning of life? That's not a why question, that's a what, okay?

• 9:00Chuck Nice?

  That's not why.

• 9:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I might say, meaning is what you make of it. Given that you have power over objects and events and things and places and people in your influence. You can create meaning rather than just simply look for it. Most people are looking for meaning like it's under a rock or behind a tree. And then they spend their whole lives in search of meaning. And I'm saying, make the meaning. And derive your meaning from that. Now, you might say, why should we have meaning in life? I would say, in our experience, people with more meaning in their life lead a more fulfilled life. And to be fulfilled is, in our short time on Earth, maybe something we should all seek.

• 9:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you can have a better time. Why do you want a better time? You can keep doing this. But I would ask you, what is the end game of that? Where will you be satisfied with your sequence of asking? Why? Because if you're never satisfied, then you're not useful on the moving frontier of science, where we can land a target moving in space. Where we can take pictures of the early universe in a telescope parked a million miles in orbit around Earth, a million miles from Earth, called the James Webb Space Telescope. While you're asking questions, we are answering questions. While you're asking why questions in the dragon that you just created,

• 10:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  we are answering questions and advancing civilization. So, I, yes, I am discounting many people who are asking why about many things. But so many other things where you ask a why, the answer when drawn from science or even from culture or whatever, is a perfectly satisfactory answer that no one would further question.

• 10:51Chuck Nice?

  Well, there you have it. That was very, very necessary. All of, all of that that you just said, very, very necessary. I mean, it speaks to so many other things than just this question from Bjorn.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it does.

• 11:04Chuck Nice?

  There's so many other things.

• 11:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It stretches beyond the limits of the question itself, yes.

• 11:11Chuck Nice?

  Wonderful. Wow, good stuff. Okay, here we go, here we go. Let's go to our next one, which is J. Salmon. Um, or is it Salmon? I don't know.

• 11:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know anybody who pronounces the L in salmon.

• 11:24Chuck Nice?

  Neither do I. Yeah, it's ridiculous.

• 11:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, the Salmon Rusty.

• 11:27Chuck Nice?

  Anyway.

• 11:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  S A L M A.

• 11:29Chuck Nice?

  Oh, you're right, that is Salmon Rusty, yeah. Okay, so he says, "When matter is consumed by the black hole, does it retain its form as protons, neutrons, et cetera? Or is it compressed and ripped apart to the more basic elements of the particles like quarks, et cetera?"

• 11:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't know. Next question.

• 11:58Chuck Nice?

  There you go, let's move on.

• 12:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, so, um, matter and all the identity it carries as it goes down to the singularity, it's the singularity where we're just, we're idiots. That's, that, that's unfair. It's a singularity where we have profound ignorance. All right? And Einstein's theory of relativity, which gives us the black hole in the first place, does not take us to the singularity. It's a limit to the theory of relativity. That's why we have string theorists who are picking up the slack there. We do not know what happens to matter at the singularity. We just don't. We do know that the black hole remembers what it ate.

• 12:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because Hawking Radiation, where particles come into existence from the energy of its gravitational field just outside the event horizon. That gravitational energy, through E equals mc squared, spontaneously becomes a pair of particles. One side of that particle falls back in, the other side escapes. If you get the inventory of the particles created out of the gravitational energy field, that inventory of particles exactly equals the history of what the black hole ate. Remarkably, somehow the imprint of what it ate

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  is remembered in the gravitational field of the black hole itself. Yes.

• 13:33Chuck Nice?

  Damn. That's pretty wild. That is just wild.

• 13:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you didn't reach back in and pull it out. It was

• 13:40Chuck Nice?

  No.

• 13:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It appeared with the, the energy outside the event horizon. It's like, oh my gosh. And of course, Stephen Hawking was at the centerpiece of that. Yes.

• 13:52Chuck Nice?

  That's amazing. Hawking Radiation, the evaporation of a black hole.

• 13:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We actually had him on StarTalk back when we were, uh, uh, we were on the National Geographic Channel. And you might be able to dig it out.

• 14:03Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 14:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I guess Disney Plus has the entire Nat Geo catalog.

• 14:07Chuck Nice?

  Yep, they do.

• 14:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But yeah.

• 14:10Chuck Nice?

  It's good stuff, man. That is good stuff. All right, here we go. Colby La Pressey from South Carolina. And Colby says, once again with the black holes, if a black hole was smaller than my body, beyond the event horizon in all directions, would it still rip me apart atom by atom?

• 14:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't ever, no, just stay away. Because what matters is, not the size of the black hole, how much mass? So if Earth were a black hole, it would be the size of a plum. So you take all the mass of the Earth, cram it into a plum, and you want to walk by it and believe you're going to stay intact? That is not going to happen. It will suck you in and it will funnel you down and you'll be spaghettified, funneled, and that's it. And just kiss your ass goodbye.

• 15:08Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 15:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you wonder how something your size can fit into something that's small. The very fabric of spacetime narrows towards the black hole. So you will be funneled, basically extruded through the fabric of space and time, like toothpaste through a tube.

• 15:28Chuck Nice?

  That's crazy, man, when you think about it. It's, that's, uh, it's so hard to just like.

• 15:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To fathom it. Yeah, to have a black hole that fits in your palm of your hand, and then it sucks you down into a tiny point.

• 15:41Chuck Nice?

  It sucks you, it's, oh. I mean, it's really, it's, it's oddly terrifying and beautiful at the same time.

• 15:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 15:52Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 15:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, yeah, you're not getting out of that one.

• 15:54Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. We're, we're, we're banging them out, banging them out here. Alan Rayer, Alan Rayer says, can someone address, uh, the comet C 2022 E3? Hey Neil, just want to let you know, I'm a big fan. And I'm coming to you from the Isle of Malta.

• 16:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh, cool. Well, when we come back from our first break, we will address that question on StarTalk. Cosmic Query.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Chris Cohen from Hallworth, New Jersey, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. Please enjoy this episode of StarTalk Radio with your and my favorite personal astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 16:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk Cosmic Query.

• 16:47Chuck Nice?

  Grab bag edition.

• 16:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, we left off with someone asking me about comet, what's that, what number did that, what's the full number?

• 16:54Chuck Nice?

  Uh, our good man Alan Rayer from the island of Malta in the Mediterranean wants to know, hey, what's the deal with, uh, C 2022 E3?

• 17:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, he gave me the, he gave me the phone number of the comet. Cool, cool. So, uh, that's been called the, the Great Green Comet of 2023. Uh, by the way, that, those, that ID is, uh, includes the year it was discovered, 2022, and the semi-month it was discovered. So there's, there's, that, that ID is packed with information for someone in the know to know when it was discovered. And so A, B, this comet, based on its orbit, uh, it comes from what's called the Oort Cloud.

• 17:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is a, this is a spherical shell of comets that surrounds the solar system, but it extends halfway to the nearest stars. And comets that come from this can come in from any direction at all. They can loop in from above, from below, and their orbits last tens of thousands of years. There is no comet that we see from the Oort Cloud that was ever seen in the history of civilization.

• 18:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you might say, "Well, I'd better go out and watch it." Well, every Oort Cloud comet is that. So it's, it's possible for something to be rare but uninteresting.

• 18:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they're common, right? Right, that's, that's, just keep that in mind. So with this comet, it's made the news primarily because there's a chance people could see it. And right now, like last night, it would be among the days of peak visibility. I looked up, I didn't see it, I'd have to find it with binoculars. So it's got a lot of press attention. By the way, we discover hundreds of comets a year. So a comet alone is not so, you know, I don't invest special attention to the existence, to the fact that a comet was discovered. They're as common as, as blades of grass on a lawn. There's trillions of them that orbit the sun, so A.

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  B, the, the, many comets are very faint, and you might catch it with binoculars, and you can see the green in a telescope, because it's a green comet. Remember, our retina has rods and cones, and the rods are sensitive to shades of gray. The cones are sensitive to color, but they require higher intensity light in order to get triggered. So if you dim the lights in a room, if you look at a room in the dark, but just light leaking in from a streetlight, something through the window, that room is not vibrantly colored. It's basically shades of gray.

• 19:40Chuck Nice?

  Gray.

• 19:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because your cones, your rods are taking care of business there. Just so you can see your way anywhere. Only when it gets brighter that you start registering the colors. So dim comets, no matter what color they are in a telescope, typically you don't notice that with your eyes. Unless you can see them through a big telescope. Okay, that can make the object bright enough to trigger your cones. So, where to get the green from? The green? Well, we did an explainer on the comet. I think we did.

• 20:12Chuck Nice?

  We did.

• 20:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we did an explainer.

• 20:15Chuck Nice?

  Yes, we did.

• 20:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So cyanogen is one of the molecules that when it interacts with sunlight, gets warm, it radiates light. There are different ways a comet is rendered visible. And different chemicals will have different color signatures. And that's part of what tells us what comets are made of. Right? I mean, it's a beautiful, wonderful thing. So I love me some comets, but most of them are just not, you know, they're not something you're gonna write home about and say, "You alive in the 20th?" I promise in your lifetime we'll have a really good comet because every 10 or 20 years or so, a really good one comes around. I wouldn't count this among them.

• 20:57Chuck Nice?

  Now, the real deal is the action is where the asteroids are, my friend. Don't worry about the comets. The action is with the asteroids.

• 21:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but asteroids are dark and they only like reflect light. And even if they do reflect, they're dark, so they don't reflect much light. So they can come up on you and you wouldn't know. Whereas comets,

• 21:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "Look at my tail. Look at my beautiful..."

• 21:18Chuck Nice?

  Comets are like, yeah, they're, "Look at me, look at me." Asteroids are just like, "Yo, I said give me your wallet."

• 21:28Chuck Nice?

  Hey, man, where'd you come from?

• 21:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You said that way too glibly. "Give me your wallet."

• 21:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, more likely the asteroid is like, "Yo, give me all your species."

• 21:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, they haven't talked to me about it.

• 21:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  About the wallet at that point.

• 21:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I'm trying to figure out if there's ever an asteroid big enough that would blow off the entire atmosphere. Because anything that hits the atmosphere, the atmosphere becomes like, like, like, like the ocean or anything else. It, you know, it would have to be penetrated. So you, if suppose you had something big enough that it hits the atmosphere, but it's so powerful that it blows the atmosphere off. But would it then be so big it would destroy the planet?

• 22:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next question.

• 22:33Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that was just.

• 22:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So no, here's the thing.

• 22:34Chuck Nice?

  Yo, yo, yo. That was cold, man. That was cold.

• 22:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know it was cold. You want to get rid of the atmosphere. You, you get enough asteroids hitting Earth to heat the atmosphere. And the hotter atmosphere expands and we might lose some outer layers.

• 22:48Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 22:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The molecules start moving faster.

• 22:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And some will achieve escape velocity.

• 22:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 22:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, um, but the, and a large enough asteroid just punches a hole in the atmosphere. Real damages. Because it doesn't leave its energy in the atmosphere.

• 23:03Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 23:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The energy, it'll barely be slowed down by the atmosphere.

• 23:06Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 23:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it hits Earth's surface and that's where it stops moving. Hey, where did all the kinetic energy go? It made a crater. It burned the forests.

• 23:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It, um.

• 23:16Chuck Nice?

  It became a shockwave, all that.

• 23:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shockwaves, that's, so you have to ask, where, the, where, look at the energy budget. Where did it go?

• 23:22Chuck Nice?

  Where did it, okay.

• 23:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's where the damage will occur.

• 23:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay, cool, man. That was cool. All right, here we go. This is Nick Davis. He says, hello, uh, Dr. Tyson and Lord Nice. Um, this is Nick from Australia. I was, I was wanting to know more about how gravity and its influence on time were to influence light.

• 23:48Chuck Nice?

  On the hypothetical Mylar's planet on Interstellar, what would happen if someone orbiting outside of the time distortion were to point a super powerful laser pointer at the planet? Would the beam be dimmer? Or would the night sky look like? What would the night sky look like for someone on the ground compared to someone in space? Ooh. And let's take out atmosphere so that we don't have those distortions.

• 24:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So here's what interesting to do with your laser the next time you're trapped in a black hole. You can try to point your laser out of the black hole and see if anybody gets the signal. They won't. All right. Why not? Because it's climbing out of the gravitational well that the black hole is. And for every little bit it ascends, it's losing energy. So the energy profile of your laser will become lower and lower and lower energy until there's no energy left at all and the light does not escape.

• 24:47Chuck Nice?

  Where I am.

• 24:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you were just outside the event horizon and did the same thing, the light would escape, but it would also be shifted in energy. And it's called a gravitational redshift.

• 24:57Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 24:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gravity redshifts the light. And so that's what would happen to the light. To the... This is only about light or do they also ask about time?

• 25:08Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, so he started off saying, um, I wanted to know about gravity and its influence on time.

• 25:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 25:17Chuck Nice?

  And light.

• 25:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if he remembers from Interstellar, they're on a planet orbiting a black hole.

• 25:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they are severely time dilated.

• 25:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that minutes to them are years to the folks orbiting far out. That's right.

• 25:35Chuck Nice?

  That's the scene where he comes back and the guy is old, right?

• 25:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's old, correct.

• 25:40Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 25:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. And it was subtle, but they got it in there at the end. The, the, the, what was it? The, they showed someone in a hospital bed or was it?

• 25:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, I think that was his daughter who was-

• 25:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's who was older.

• 25:57Chuck Nice?

  Who was older than he is.

• 25:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, correct. Because his, uh, so, so, because his life was prolonged for having been in a very intense gravitational field.

• 26:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah, all these are real and you can calculate it. And by the way, we do this every day with GPS satellites.

• 26:17Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  GPS satellites are in a different gravitational field compared with us. Yes, it's still Earth, but we are closer to Earth's center than the GPS satellites are. So just the way they did in the movie Interstellar, except it's not a, it doesn't have to be a black hole to mess with your time. It just will mess with it at a different level, at a lesser amount. So, our time on Earth is ticking more slowly than the time in GPS satellites.

• 26:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, the GPS satellite is handing us our time.

• 26:51Chuck Nice?

  Right, wow.

• 26:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So how is it that they match up?

• 26:53Chuck Nice?

  Um, I know how, I know how.

• 26:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How, how, how they do it?

• 26:57Chuck Nice?

  Because the GPS, um, they're on CP time.

• 27:04Chuck Nice?

  See, a lot of y'all don't know about CP time.

• 27:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, alright, thank, thank you Chuck.

• 27:09Chuck Nice?

  But see, GPS, y'all don't know. They, they down with CP time and they cool with it.

• 27:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're cool.

• 27:16Chuck Nice?

  And I'm not gonna explain what that is.

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Google CP time.

• 27:20Chuck Nice?

  If you know what it is, you know what it is.

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Google CP times, alright. So, Chuck, I don't know what to do.

• 27:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck is still in race therapy.

• 27:32Chuck Nice?

  Hey, listen-

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This stuff, alright, so, so the GPS satellites-

• 27:40Chuck Nice?

  Not late.

• 27:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are, are, no, you're saying that on Earth we'd be CP time, because the GPS satellites being in a different low-

• 27:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's right, we're closer to the gravity, so we are slow.

• 27:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are slow, and the GPS satellite is ahead by a calculatable amount.

• 27:55Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so when it gives us our time signature, signals, it precorrects it using the equations of Einstein's general theory of relativity-

• 28:04Chuck Nice?

  It's fantastic.

• 28:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that we get the proper time on Earth's surface.

• 28:07Chuck Nice?

  That's, that's just- Oh, I'm telling you, it's just fantastic. Yeah, yeah, and, and people say, well, I don't believe in science. I don't want to do that. It's like, do you really, do you people, do you know what we do? Exactly. We're living? Exactly. All right, don't let, don't get me started here, Chuck. Like, you can't even tell time. You talk, you talking about, you don't believe us, you can't even tell time. I don't decide, what does scientists know? Yeah, I'll tell you what they, they, they put crap in the sky. That calculates the time that you can't even tell. That's, that's what science does. You got the nerve to sit around like, oh, you know, cause seriously, do they really know? Do they really? I'm not sure if they really know.

• 28:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay, okay.

• 28:57Chuck Nice?

  That is, that is just so, I just love that it's so elegant. And the fact that it's, you know, establishing the time, but then relaying the time after it equates what the time will actually be for you. That's fricking amazing! For you because it is touched by Einstein's general theory of relativity. Damn! Oh, that's just so good! All right, okay. That is so fricking cool, man. Like, what do people think scientists do, right? Right? Exactly. Sitting around? So cool! Oh, man, all right. Right, next one. Here we go, this is Kyle Marston.

• 29:38Chuck Nice?

  And Kyle says, um, I know how I perceive the universe. And I know, uh, you and Neil, you perceive the universe as well. And that our perceptions are pretty similar as biological entities from Earth. What insights do you have, Neil? Uh, as we now have artificial intelligence? How will they perceive the universe around them? Like, are they gonna go straight to Dan Simmons' technical core? Or more like Tchaikovsky's hive assembly? Wow. Holy crap! Okay. I'm gonna tell you the truth, Kyle.

• 30:20Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry, I read your question.

• 30:23Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm joking. That's pretty wild.

• 30:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay, so I have several ways to address that. One of them is, I don't know that people thought much about AI's sensory system.

• 30:33Chuck Nice?

  Ooh, very nice. I love where you're going.

• 30:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Feel pain.

• 30:37Chuck Nice?

  I love it.

• 30:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And can AI, um, taste?

• 30:42Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right?

• 30:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, but we know we can outfit it with capacity to hear and to see that is vastly greater than our own.

• 30:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 30:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, and self-driving cars.

• 30:54Chuck Nice?

  And those are, those are senses.

• 30:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  These are senses, correct. So, so we can outfit AI.

• 31:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With scent. I don't know that we can quite have them taste things.

• 31:03Chuck Nice?

  Why not? Why not? Think about this. Your olfactory sensors in your brain basically are, um, responding to a molecular stimuli.

• 31:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 31:16Chuck Nice?

  So why wouldn't we be able to program what that molecular makeup is and then give the computer the same response?

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  However, yes, we can. However, I, we just have centuries of efforts to improve our capacity of sight with microscopes and telescopes and to improve our capacity to hear with sensory devices and microphones. So, so we don't, we're much more behind in having machines that can taste.

• 31:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I got you.

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so we can have a machine that can analyze the chemicals of what's touching, of, of, you know, there's mass spectrometers that can analyze chemicals. We can say, if it's this much that, that tastes salty, this tastes sweet, and this is the umami. We could teach it that, I guess, sure. But then it has to sort of bite into you, right, to, to taste it, right? It has, it needs some mechanism to taste.

• 32:18Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 32:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, you can't just leave a box on the table.

• 32:22Chuck Nice?

  It'd be the difference between someone telling you what something tastes like and you putting it in your mouth and taste. Right.

• 32:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct.

• 32:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, and so, uh, because you can hand them all the ingredients that went into your pie, and then they can analyze those ingredients, and they say, mm, mm, good, I want some ice cream with that, in a pie hour mode, they might do that, but would they want to?

• 32:50Chuck Nice?

  Right, right.

• 32:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Does AI have our urges? Does AI have our, you know, typically it's only thought of in terms of problem solving and this sort of thing.

• 33:00Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not in terms of receiving the sensory pleasures of what it is to be alive.

• 33:05Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 33:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But let me add to that, that in science, you know, there are people running around saying, I have a sixth sense, and they want you to be impressed with that. And I say, well, I'm a scientist, and I have a dozen senses.

• 33:18Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 33:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because I have sensors that can detect all manner of things happening around me that my five biological senses can't. I can detect polarization. I have a, a gravimeters that can detect slight differences in where the mass is beneath our feet. I can have things, I can have devices that can detect radioactivity that we cannot sensorily do. I can detect, um, wavelengths of light that fall outside of the visible spectrum.

• 33:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 33:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so I have dozens of senses, you're not impressing me with your sixth sense.

• 33:53Chuck Nice?

  Wow, yeah. So why don't you take that little, uh, that little parlor trick back to your séance?

• 34:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh!

• 34:02Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I'm sensing someone who's passed with the letter J.

• 34:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, J is, is too rare.

• 34:11Chuck Nice?

  You're right, because they never do that. It's always D.

• 34:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  S, T, or D.

• 34:16Chuck Nice?

  S, T, D, well, I shouldn't say them in those, in that order.

• 34:23Chuck Nice?

  Wow, so then, okay, so that's cool. So.

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I sense someone here with a relative that has an X in their name.

• 34:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Those, those, those seers don't.

• 34:32Chuck Nice?

  Isn't that funny? That's so funny. Yeah, they never do that. Okay, that's where, well, there you have it, man. There you go. So let me ask you this, as a call, a follow up to Kyle's question. Do you think it's a good idea? To, you know, and not in a, not as a means of anthropomorphizing machines, but do you think there's any true benefit in giving them our sense of taste and smell?

• 34:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever I want.

• 34:58Chuck Nice?

  And emotion and so forth.

• 35:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever it is, I want them to think that humans taste badly.

• 35:07Chuck Nice?

  It's people.

• 35:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's people.

• 35:11Chuck Nice?

  It's people.

• 35:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't want them thinking that we're a tasty snack. That, that will not go over well.

• 35:17Chuck Nice?

  Oh my God, that's so great. That's very funny. All right, here we go.

• 35:24Chuck Nice?

  This is Christopher Fowler and he says-

• 35:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To serve man.

• 35:27Chuck Nice?

  It's, oh yes, exactly. Christopher Fowler says, "Hey Neil, what's up Lord Nice? Uh, first, I am just a huge fan of yours Neil. Uh, thank you for providing the spark of curiosity to us commoners. Uh, second, thinking about the Stargate franchise, could there be a discovery in nuclear fusion advancements and understanding, and I use this term very loosely, of the quantum, being able to establish an Einstein Rosen bridge for interplanetary and interstellar travel?" Wow.

• 36:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let me, let me first agree that we kind of need that if we're gonna go between the planets.

• 36:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and, no, not the planets, between the stars and galaxies. Yeah, planets takes, you know, a dozen years, we can, it's within a human lifetime. But to the nearest stars, it's tens of thousands of years. We need a wormhole. Stargate is basically a wormhole. They didn't call it that, but that's what it was.

• 36:25Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 36:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, except it was just this, this, this metallic ring that, you know, it's mixed with mysticism and magic and this sort of thing. So you step into the ring, like time tunnel, those who remember this from the late 1960s. You step into the ring and you're transported through time. The, but do you know where they went in the very first episode of Time Tunnel?

• 36:49Chuck Nice?

  I do not.

• 36:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They went to the Titanic.

• 36:52Chuck Nice?

  Why, what is it?

• 36:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the guy's on the ship of a, he's on the deck of a ship. He's, "Oh, I'm on a ship." Because they got lost in time, right? So he's on a ship.

• 36:59Chuck Nice?

  That's great.

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I wonder where's that? And, and he walks by and the camera moves with him and then the camera moves back. And you see the life, the buoy that says Titanic.

• 37:09Chuck Nice?

  That's great.

• 37:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you say, "Oh." Because you know there was not a second voyage of the Titanic, right? So my boy's going down on this, on this trip. And apparently they took a poll about, um, if you could move through time, what historical event would you want to witness? And many people said they wanted to see the sinking of the Titanic. So it has been hypothesized that that's why the Titanic sank. Because when the time machine was finally invented, everyone went back to the Titanic and there were too many people for the lifeboats.

• 37:42Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's funny.

• 37:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they were all time travelers and they all died.

• 37:45Chuck Nice?

  And you know what? If they wanted to go back in time to the Titanic, they deserved to die.

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 37:50Chuck Nice?

  That's all I'm gonna say.

• 37:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That ain't right.

• 37:54Chuck Nice?

  All the places you can go, you're like, "I wanna go back to see a bunch of people drowned."

• 37:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Drowned.

• 37:59Chuck Nice?

  Listen, you know, I don't care how much you don't like rich people.

• 38:07Chuck Nice?

  It's a little too macabre to wanna go back to the Titanic. You get some, you got what you deserve. You right on there with them when it goes down, okay? I hope, I hope Leonardo DiCaprio grabs you by the head and pulls you right down with him, just like, "Sorry, Grace." Okay.

• 38:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Are, are you done, Chuck?

• 38:26Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry. I don't know where that came from.

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it was just about the, the, the Stargate, the possible Stargate portal. Uh, we know how to make a, we know what is required to make a wormhole.

• 38:40Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We just don't have this material. So it needs something, it needs the equivalent of negative gravity.

• 38:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Negative energy substance. And we don't know what that is or how to make it. But if we had it, we can make a wormhole.

• 38:53Chuck Nice?

  There you go. Great question, Chris. There you go.

• 38:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. All right, we gotta take a break, Chuck. Uh, and when we come back, the third and final segment of StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Grab that.

• 39:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk, Cosmic Queries, Grab Bag. We left off that last segment, we were talking about Stargate. Chuck, do you know I have a cameo in Stargate Atlantis?

• 39:23Chuck Nice?

  I did not know that.

• 39:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I do.

• 39:25Chuck Nice?

  Now, that was the TV show?

• 39:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, TV show.

• 39:27Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man, I love it. Uh, what, what, please tell me. And now I gotta, you know I gotta look this up.

• 39:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm an old friend of one of the characters and, and I can't act, so it's embarrassing, so I'm not, I shouldn't have told you.

• 39:40Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no, it's not.

• 39:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Never mind.

• 39:42Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let me tell you why it's not embarrassing.

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 39:44Chuck Nice?

  Guess how many appearances I have on Stargate? So, to hell with the haters, see? That's what, that's what I say to haters, to hell with you.

• 39:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it's a cameo, people give you a little more slack?

• 39:57Chuck Nice?

  It doesn't make a difference, it's so cool. I mean, you know, shoot, please, I can't act either, and I've been in a bunch of stuff.

• 40:06Chuck Nice?

  And I'm supposed to be an actor.

• 40:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hired as such.

• 40:11Chuck Nice?

  I was an actor before, and I still can't act. So, guess what?

• 40:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 40:15Chuck Nice?

  You should be very proud. Don't ever, shoot, please.

• 40:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The next one.

• 40:20Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go, this is Jason O. Whiteer, uh, who says, um, greetings, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice. With the expansion of the universe, likely never-ending, and spacetime with it, will individual galaxies be ripped apart by the expansion as objects get further apart from each other? Will individual bodies be then ripped apart and so forth?

• 40:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hmm.

• 40:48Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 40:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What? Ultimately, as galaxies spread apart, this pressure within the vacuum of space, we call it dark energy.

• 40:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't know what it is, but it's there, and it's doing its thing, and it is most of what is driving the universe right now. That dark energy, uh, will ultimately overcome the gravitational attraction of stars that are held together within galaxies.

• 41:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It'll start ripping apart galaxies, then it'll rip apart star systems as it pulls planets away from their host stars. Then it will rip apart solid objects as the molecular bonds that hold the atoms together are broken. Then it will rip apart atoms where the electrons are ripped from their nuclei. Then it will rip apart nuclei. Then it'll rip apart the fabric of space and time on the Planck scale. And at that point, it's the end. That is called the big rip. And that will take place in 22 billion years unless something stops it.

• 41:57Chuck Nice?

  Sleep well, Timmy. Have a nice day. Geez. God, that's awful.

• 42:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It starts ripping apart protons themselves. Right, this is, this is serious stuff.

• 42:09Chuck Nice?

  Look at that.

• 42:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, when that begins to happen, it happens rapidly. So it's a, you know, once starts things getting flying apart, it's, because the more vacuum there is in the universe, the more is this pressure to accelerate it.

• 42:22Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 42:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so it's, it's a runaway process.

• 42:25Chuck Nice?

  So, okay, gotcha, yeah, right. It's, it's like a snowball rolling downhill. It just keeps going boom, boom, boom, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.

• 42:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bigger, bigger, and the bigger it is, the bigger it gets.

• 42:32Chuck Nice?

  Look at that. That is insane.

• 42:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's called the big rip. By the way, in our second Star Talk book, guess what it was titled, Chuck?

• 42:42Chuck Nice?

  Uh, no, go ahead.

• 42:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic Queries. In our second Star Talk book, uh, one of the questions is, what is the future of the universe? And we show all the scenarios that, and one of them is the big rip.

• 42:53Chuck Nice?

  It's the big rip.

• 42:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So if you get that book, you have way more conversation about it than anything I just laid down to this before.

• 42:58Chuck Nice?

  Fantastic.

• 42:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic Queries.

• 43:00Chuck Nice?

  Cosmic Queries.

• 43:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got it.

• 43:02Chuck Nice?

  All right. So this is Bruce Ryan. Hey, what's up, gents? Bruce from Virginia here. I'm wondering what happens to all the heat and energy emitted from stars? Is it actually heating up the universe? Or does it just travel until it hits something and then that something absorbs that heat? And then what happens when that heat is absorbed?

• 43:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love it. Okay, so both of those happen. So what happened is the heat generated from a star goes out in the form of photons of light. Right. Okay, and that will travel until it hits something else and then it gets absorbed. Mm hmm. So you'd think it would just be this tennis match going on back and forth. However, in the expanding universe, the energy of the photon is diluted into the space that has been expanded for it. Mm hmm. So the energy, the total energy, okay, the total energy is still there, but it's diluted. So another, if you have a, so have a box of energy, right?

• 44:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now I take that energy and spread it into a box twice that size. Right. It's the same amount of energy, but the energy intensity is now half in each place. Now make the box a thousand times as large. Right. That energy is all spread out. The energy intensity is dropped by a factor of a thousand. Add it all up, you'll recover all the energy you began with, but the energy density is thinner. And as the universe expands, the energy density drops, and so the temperature of the universe drops. Right now, we're three degrees Kelvin, three degrees absolute on the scale, and it's dropping. Look at that. Wow. That's a. And by the way, the James Webb Space Telescope. Right.

• 44:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Part of why we put it where it is, is that it's far away from Earth, so Earth, it's a million miles from Earth, and it only ever points away from the sun. And it has these baffles that will absorb sunlight that hits it, but re-radiate it back to the sun. A little bit moves through, and we have another baffle that will absorb it and re-radiate it back to the sun. And so we have four or five of these layers. And each layer, less and less of the sun's heat energy makes it through to shield the telescope from any infrared energy that could hit it from the sun. By shielding away the sun, it drops into equilibrium with deep space.

• 45:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  James Webb Copertone. That's so it's.

• 45:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I guess you can consider, I guess it is like sunscreen.

• 45:44Chuck Nice?

  Right?

• 45:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's sunscreen. It's it's it's a cosmic sunscreen.

• 45:46Chuck Nice?

  Cosmic, there you go.

• 45:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For that analogy.

• 45:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 45:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And and so, and by doing so, the sun, which is relatively close to it, all things considered, will not then heat it up. And so, any heat that's in it will just radiate back out into space. So, uh, this is the thermodynamics of technology and engineering and in the universe itself.

• 46:12Chuck Nice?

  That is cool. All right. Man, we're getting through a lot today.

• 46:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, look, keep it coming.

• 46:17Chuck Nice?

  I can't believe it. All right.

• 46:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Keep it coming.

• 46:18Chuck Nice?

  This is Cameron Bishop. He says, hey, Neil, hey, Chuck. I like to think that if I waved at the night sky, someone out there in the distant past is waving back. Now, in the last century, we have gone from stars might have planets to stars on average have lots of planets. If you run the numbers, the amount of planets out there is huge. Given that we exist, it's not fair to say that with life here on Earth, in one hand, and the amount of planets in the universe, on the other hand, that life is statistically likely in the universe? And what sort of implications does that have? Either scientifically or philosophically?

• 47:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The day we discover life in the universe.

• 47:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Signal a change in the human condition that we cannot foresee or imagine.

• 47:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it is highly likely that life is thriving elsewhere in the universe. Not out of wishful thinking, but we're made of the most common ingredients in the universe. So whatever life was doing on Earth, it was highly opportunistic. A. B. Life got going almost as fast as it possibly could have. Within a hundred million years, this sounds like long, but it's short on the timescale of Earth. Within a hundred million years, we went from organic molecules, which are plentiful in the universe, to self-replicating life. And the universe is old. So you combine how long, how much time we've had, how quickly Earth managed to create life, how resourceful life is, and to assert that we're alone in the universe can only be done

• 48:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  based on some philosophy that has no foundation in science.

• 48:04Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 48:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look at this.

• 48:08Chuck Nice?

  That's it, man.

• 48:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it.

• 48:09Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 48:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it. And so if you wave, surely someone is waving back.

• 48:13Chuck Nice?

  Somebody waving back.

• 48:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it.

• 48:15Chuck Nice?

  And that.

• 48:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And your wave is not going to get to them.

• 48:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For, you know, a hundred or a thousand light, you know, years, traveling at the speed of light. What I do every time I'm out and I have my laser, I flash it at a star that's in the night sky. Like a, like a pulse. And then I turn it off. So there's a length of light. So if you leave the light on for one second.

• 48:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a beam that's 186,000 miles long.

• 48:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 48:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And so that is on its way to that, to that star and maybe to a planet.

• 48:46Chuck Nice?

  That is so cool.

• 48:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So it's my, it's my space graffiti.

• 48:50Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 48:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'd say Neil is here.

• 48:52Chuck Nice?

  And, and so when, when they show up.

• 48:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I want to get picked up. I want, I want to be the alien.

• 48:57Chuck Nice?

  When they show up and they're just like, we saw your green signal. And Neil will be like.

• 49:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, they say, who the hell's been waking us up in the middle of the night?

• 49:08Chuck Nice?

  We saw the signal. Oh, that was our, that was our man Neil. Uh, yes. And by the way, you are now all serving our god farm.

• 49:19Chuck Nice?

  What?

• 49:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Chuck desperately wants to write a screenplay. That's clear.

• 49:26Chuck Nice?

  It'd be kind of cool though, if like they landed and they were on their version of what we had as the Crusades.

• 49:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh.

• 49:35Chuck Nice?

  Except that they do it on an intergalactic basis.

• 49:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 49:38Chuck Nice?

  You know?

• 49:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 49:40Chuck Nice?

  Oh, well, anyway. All right. Tyler J says, hello, Dr. Tyson. Hi Chuck.

• 49:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where, do they say where they're from?

• 49:47Chuck Nice?

  Tyler didn't. Sometimes they do. By the way, Cameron, who just asked that last question, was from the UK. I did not mention that.

• 49:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was from the UK. Okay.

• 49:56Chuck Nice?

  Tyler J does not say where he's from. Hi, Dr. Tyson. Hey Chuck. Uh, what options are there to resolve the crisis in cosmology? I heard that new data from James Webb Space Telescope has further separated the two values we have for the Hubble constant.

• 50:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Yeah, this crisis is, by the way, when I was coming of age, I mean astrophysically, we didn't know the size of the universe to within a factor of two. The size or the age of the universe. Right. It's within a factor of two. Right. To show you how precise this modern cosmology has become. Okay. We are now arguing over a 10% difference between two numbers. Wow. And the reason why it's called a crisis is each of those two numbers is precisely known. So that the error bars, you know, the uncertainties do not overlap. Right. So that's, even though they're close to each other, especially compared to when I

• 50:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  was in school, they don't overlap and so it's called a crisis in cosmology. And crisis, I think, overstates it. It's an unsolved problem. Right. Every unsolved problem is not a crisis. It's just an unsolved problem. Right. And somebody's wrong. Okay? That's it. So, and there's the answer. Somebody is wrong. And, and, and... The more you're measuring two different things and you think it's the same thing. Exactly. Okay? Yeah, you can measure the tail of an elephant to the blind man and the feet and the tusks and the trunk and you could tell each other that each, the other person is wrong, but

• 51:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  maybe you're measuring the same thing, but in different parts, in different ways. And collectively, you all are describing one object and it's the elephant. Exactly. Exactly. You're both describing the universe, but maybe you came at it from different sides of the elephant. Look at that. I'm not worried about it. It makes good headlines. Yeah, yeah. I'm not worried about it. Yes, James Webb will help us address this. That's fantastic. That's wonderful. By the way, I think in cosmic queries, we do talk about the crisis.

• 52:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The cosmic, uh, I think it's in there. In the, in the future of the universe.

• 52:10Chuck Nice?

  Crisis of cosmology.

• 52:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 52:12Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it's called a tension. It's called a cosmic tension. Tension between these two different measurements. So, again, in, in cosmic queries, I hate to sound like a ad for the book. But, yeah, I mean, it is an ad for the book. We put a lot of effort into that book.

• 52:28Chuck Nice?

  A crisis in cosmology, not to be confused with the crisis in cosmetology. Okay. Which is, how dare you put that eyeshadow with that lip color? Mm, mm, mm.

• 52:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, you know the crisis in cosmetologies? I wrote about this in, in, in Starry Messenger.

• 52:47Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 52:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  An alien comes to visit. And they see.

• 52:51Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 52:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That people with, with straight hair curl it. People with curly hair, straighten their hair. People who are short wear heels. People who, uh, if their body is not, the muscles are big enough, they try to make them bigger. If their, there's something else about their body, they'll, they'll change it. They, they, they do all these things. And so the aliens will say, "You guys must deeply believe that you are irreconcilably ugly."

• 53:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 53:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Given how much money is spent on the beauty industrial complex.

• 53:27Chuck Nice?

  They, uh, they'd be right.

• 53:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They'd be right.

• 53:30Chuck Nice?

  They'd be right.

• 53:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They'd be right.

• 53:32Chuck Nice?

  If they were to make those, uh, assessments, because they're not even assumptions. They're just assessments.

• 53:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you got the, you got, you've got eyelash thickener, where you don't like your eyelashes. You got, uh, um, a powder on your cheeks, where you're, you don't like the color of your cheeks. You, you, you know.

• 53:50Chuck Nice?

  It's true. It's true.

• 53:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got, you got paint around your eye, your eyelids, and you don't like the color of your, what? So, yeah, they'll run back home and say there's no sign of intelligent life on Earth. Plus, they all think they're ugly.

• 54:03Chuck Nice?

  Well, you, you might think I think I'm ugly. Maybe I just think I'm fabulous.

• 54:12Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 54:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, I don't think we have time for anywhere. Throw one more, and if I have time, I'll do it.

• 54:16Chuck Nice?

  Okay, let me just, let me find something very quick. I'm gonna just.

• 54:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't know how quick my answer is gonna be?

• 54:21Chuck Nice?

  Well, I'm gonna make it a quick question, because that way, okay. So here we go. Hello, Neil and Chuck from NAU and Flagstaff. I was wondering if you've heard or know about the idea of black hole stars? I've seen videos taking this hypothetical star that has an insane mass, and it could explain black holes in the middle of galaxies. I asked you this question, I didn't even realize, a weird, a few weeks ago. But, any thoughts on that?

• 54:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I don't know what a black hole star would be, other than just a star that became a black hole.

• 55:00Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 55:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, I don't know.

• 55:02Chuck Nice?

  So, but no, what you told me is that we know of nothing that has the mass that would create the black holes that we see at the center of galaxies.

• 55:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, correct, yeah, that's still, that's an unknown. We don't know what phenomenon is necessary.

• 55:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 55:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To funnel mass to whatever black hole began there, for it to become, to have hundreds of millions of times the mass of the sun.

• 55:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 55:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's still, and James Webb is gonna help us figure that out.

• 55:30Chuck Nice?

  Figure that out.

• 55:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all, it's a frontier.

• 55:32Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 55:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and notice, I'm not calling it a crisis. It's just something we don't understand yet.

• 55:36Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, that's right.

• 55:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We don't get all emotional about it, it's just, let's work on it.

• 55:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so there you go, pull yourself together, man.

• 55:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Pull yourself together, you can get through this.

• 55:45Chuck Nice?

  Get through this, man, pull yourself together.

• 55:49Chuck Nice?

  Well, hey, thanks, Steven.

• 55:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, that's all we got, that's all we got time for.

• 55:52Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 55:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love grab bags, those are fun.

• 55:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, always, so much fun.

• 55:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cosmic Queries, grab bag. Chuck, always good to have you.

• 55:59Chuck Nice?

  Always a pleasure.

• 56:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neil deGrasse Tyson here for Snap Talk, Cosmic Queries.