Extended Classic: Holiday Lights

Neil Tyson celebrates the cosmic significance of the season, from the solstice to the Star of Bethlehem. Leighann Lord and Chuck Nice co host, with Seth MacFarlane and Brother Guy Consolmagno. Now with 12 minutes of Neil, Bill Nye and Steven Soter in the “Cosmic Crib!”

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Welcome to StarTalk. I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And I'm also the director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. I have two guest hosts with me today. Comedian LeAnn Lourd. LeAnn, thanks for coming back.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 0:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To StarTalk Radio.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 0:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You were in our first season.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  I was.

• 0:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we couldn't resist bringing you back. And for the first time. Yes. And his debut appearance, Chuck Nice. Hey, man. Chuck. The newbie. Good to have you. It's good to be had. This is...

• 0:48Speaker 01

  A lot went on off the air. You have no idea.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have no idea how I got this job. So, this is gonna be like sort of Neil deGrasse Tyson's house party. It's a holiday party. And I'm just gonna sort of be Professor Tyson and just talk about everything I know about the cosmic significance of the holiday season. This is going to be a week-long show. Are you down with that?

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Settle in, cats and kittens.

• 1:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Settle in, baby.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  We're in delivery.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I am my coach of Iman Herkap. So, let me start out by saying, in the wintertime, we always associate certain constellations and stars of the winter sky. And, by the way, stars are up all year round. It's just whether they're up before you go to sleep. And so, when we talk about winter constellations, we're talking about constellations and stars that are up after your dinner and before you go to sleep. Sweet. Yeah, and so, the most famous of those is Orion. But we're gonna get back to Orion towards the end of the show, because I have a lot to tell you about. It's the most recognizable constellation out there. Right. But, what I want to lead with, even before that... Is the solstice. Yes. Solstice. Yes.

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lot written about the solstice. First, it's Latin. Right. Sol meaning sun. Right. Stis meaning stationary. Remember arm, remember armistice?

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, remember?

• 2:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, remember armistice? If you're a hundred years old, yeah. Uh, armistice, it's stationary arms. No one is fighting anymore. Right. Armistice Day became Veterans Day. Right. Solstice is where the sun stays still. Right. Now, not in any biblical sense where it just stops in the sky. No. What actually happens at the solstice, I don't know if you pay attention, between summer and winter, but what, what goes on is Mm-hmm. every day that you get closer to the winter, the sun's arc in the sky gets lower and lower.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that makes the days? Shorter and shorter. Exactly. Gotcha. In fact, the shortest day of the year is the solstice, December 21st. And that's typically, we call that the first day of winter, which means every day of winter gets longer. Days get longer in the winter, not shorter. Which takes us to our, my favorite day of the year culminating after that, which would be?

• 2:56Speaker 01

  Kwanzaa?

• 2:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The equinox. Kwanzaa? Equinox.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  I'm sorry?

• 3:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The vernal equinox, right? Isn't that the longest day of the year? No, no, no, no, no. Wait, wait, wait. You have to come back for that one. Equinox, vernal equinox is March. That's three months from now. I'm sorry. No, what's the longest day of the year? That would be the, that would be the summer solstice. The summer solstice, not the, not the vernal equinox.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  The longest day of the year technically, gentlemen, is April 15th, which is Tax Day.

• 3:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 3:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For the, for the accountants only there. Right, so the summer solstice. So here's what's going on. In the solstice, in, on December 21st, ancient peoples saw the sun get lower and lower in the sky every day, and this worried them. Right. Because when you're agriculturally driven, if the sun goes away, you die. Right. Your crops die. Right. You, there's, you, you, you're scared. So a few days later, you figure out the sun is no longer dropping in the horizon. Mm-hmm. On its arc across the sky. It stops and then reverses and it's on its way back. It has. It takes a few days to figure this out by about December 25th. Right. Ah, well, that's an interesting date for this to happen.

• 4:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, and so what went on was Christianity, when it wanted to take a foothold among pagan celebrants of the, of the return of the Son after the solstice, they said, well, let's take this uncertain day called the birth of Jesus and put it on a day that everyone else already cares about. And that way, that would increase the likelihood of getting converts to the new religion of Christianity. And so they put the birth of Jesus right on a day where everyone was already celebrating, December 25th. Because nothing sells a religion like a party. I guess. And that's what I'm talking about, you know? And you know something? We've got, I, I have a special link to the Vatican, do you know that? No, we didn't.

• 4:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got peeps in the Vatican. Sweet. You got a hotline to the Pope? I got a hotline, well, not to the Pope, but somebody who has audience with the Pope. Well, that's just as good. There's a colleague of mine, Brother Guy Consolmagno, he's an astrophysicist, and I think, I think he's a Jesuit brother. Wait a minute. Yeah, they got him there. I was gonna say. I'm gonna bring him on. In the Vatican? In the Vatican, in the Vatican, we're calling the Vatican right now. Guy, are you on the line?

• 5:09Speaker 02

  I am indeed, listening to you guys.

• 5:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Guy, and you're in the Vatican, it's like midnight there right now, correct?

• 5:14Speaker 02

  That's correct, it's just a couple of minutes past midnight.

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, well, thanks for calling in, and just to, to field our questions, just a few questions, I don't know if I'm the only one that has them, but do they let you believe in Santa Claus at the Vatican?

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Hey, I, anybody who knows the history of religion knows about Saint Nicholas, and how could you not believe in Saint Nicholas, which is of course what Santa Claus really is. Now, maybe all the stories you've heard about Saint Nicholas aren't exactly what you, you know, what the truth is, but then that could also be said about all the stories you've heard about Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 5:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and another thing, the, there's all this talk about what the star of Bethlehem might have been astronomically, and you can look at the records and you find out there are a couple of conjunctions of planets, and we'll talk about those later in the program. But while I have you on the line, I just want to know, do you and like fellow astrophysicists at the, at the Vatican commissary argue over stuff like this, over the Christmas holidays?

• 6:12Speaker 02

  Well, actually, we do, because every year, some crazy reporter calls us up and wants to know what the official Vatican word is. There isn't an official Vatican word. We don't know any more than anybody else does.

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, but you have-

• 6:23Speaker 02

  It's great fun to, uh, to speculate about it.

• 6:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you have access to, uh, programs to tell you what the planets, stars, and moons were doing, right?

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 6:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, what would you say was the best guess, or were you just gonna say it was divine and go on with the next question?

• 6:35Speaker 02

  You know, for, for all we know, it could be a divine miracle, for all we know, it could be a pious story. My favorite is a theory that Michael Molnar came up with a few years ago, saying that it was actually the helical rise of a conjunction of planets.

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and helical is where a group of planets are together in the sky, and they rise just before the appearance of the sun in the morning sky?

• 6:55Speaker 02

  And that would explain why no one except the astrologers knew what was going on.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, because they're the only ones who paid attention to that sort of thing.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 7:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I see. And so, but I'm wondering, conjunctions where you have Jupiter in the sky, or Saturn with it, or Venus, even the crescent moon can join them, those are not actually rare. People like to think they are, but they're not.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  No.

• 7:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, so if you want to try to pin a not rare, but nonetheless beautiful event, on something that you want to be signified a change in all of religion in the world, you'd think you'd come up with a better cosmic phenomenon than just a conjunction.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  Right, and, uh, that's what Molnar has done. He's come up with a whole bunch of these guys, all in helical rise, at the same time, about four or five different things, and all in the same constellation that signified the country of Judea.

• 7:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which countr- which constellation was that?

• 7:44Speaker 02

  Which would be Aries.

• 7:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aries, I see. So they got this all figured out.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, in fact, he's got it all figured out. He hasn't convinced anybody else.

• 7:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's kinda what it is to publish your research. You believe it and no one else does.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 7:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, Guy, thanks for calling in. It's been great to have you. It's been a while since I've seen you back here in New York. But make sure to give me a holler next time you're stateside. And I was checking on your Wiki page, and you have a book on what it is to be a scientist at the Vatican, right? What's that called?

• 8:15Speaker 02

  Well, we've got a couple of ones. The most recent one came out for the Year of Astronomy. It was called "The Heavens Proclaim", and it's the history of all the different astronomy that the Vatican supported over the years.

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got you. And the International Year of Astronomy was 2009. That was the 400th anniversary of Galileo turning his telescope to the night sky.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  And for all you've heard, remember, Galileo was a good Italian and a good Catholic.

• 8:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, is that right?

• 8:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's not often credited with being a religious guy, but of course he was. He just had some disagreements with the Pope.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, he wouldn't have been the first Catholic.

• 8:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, that's right. Well, plus, I actually think he was, you know, are you smart or stupid to disagree with the people who have power over you? I don't know. That's something that historians always grapple with.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Again, he wouldn't be the first one.

• 8:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. So, Guy, thanks for calling in. Guy Consolmagno, and you're a brother in the Jesuit Order, correct?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  That's right, that's right.

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the Jesuits are the one who persecuted Galileo?

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Not.

• 9:08Chuck Nice?

  So, basically, he's doing penance.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Hey, it's thanks to them that the Vatican actually pays a bunch of astrophysicists to just do good science for the world.

• 9:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent, okay. So, there's hope in the world. All right, Guy, thanks for calling in on StarTalk Radio.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  And have a great Christmas, all you guys.

• 9:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Will do. Thank you.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Bye-bye.

• 9:25Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that was cool. Yeah.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got cool people out there.

• 9:28Chuck Nice?

  You really do. I gotta give it to you. Oh, my God.

• 9:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you want to find links to his book and more on a biography of Guy Consolmagno, you can join StarTalk Radio's Facebook page. We will give information about him. And on our website, we have links to him.

• 9:43Chuck Nice?

  I learned a new word: heli-ical.

• 9:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Heli-ical.

• 9:46Chuck Nice?

  Which is like the heli-ical rise. Like, that rise was heli-ical. Sounds like it was funny, you know? Dude, you are heli-ical.

• 9:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That could be another use of the word, heli-ical.

• 9:56Chuck Nice?

  Put it on a t-shirt. Right.

• 9:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a heli-ical moment.

• 9:59Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 9:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, H E L would be the sun, Helios, and if something rose just before the sun, it was a sign that there was something magical about to happen. And later on, we'll talk about Sirius rising before, the star Sirius, rising before the sun.

• 10:15Chuck Nice?

  That's a heli-ical dog.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  You know what, I gotta say, I love when he said that the Vatican, we don't know more, any more than anyone else does. I'm like, wow, really? Can they quote you on that too?

• 10:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're gonna save that one.

• 10:27Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 10:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're saving that one. So, a couple of other things, there are people, if you want to believe that there was some kind of star that the three wise men saw. And you, they, we, people, religious people have turned to astrophysicists.

• 10:42Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 10:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From the beginning.

• 10:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To ask us, is there anything that we know of that occurred back then? And so, we go through the list, you say about when was he born? Turns out, it was not year zero, you know?

• 10:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wonder if Jesus knew that, he wasn't born in the year zero. Typically, three, four, or five B.C. is bandied about for when he would have been born.

• 10:59Chuck Nice?

  When he would have been born.

• 11:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so we comb the records of the sky, which we can do, because we have laws of physics that tell us how gravity operates on the movement of bodies in the sky for thousands of years in the future, and thousands of years into the past. So, it's actually quite an empowerment of the ability to calculate. In fact, scientists are the only breed in the world that can predict with accuracy what's gonna happen in the future.

• 11:24Chuck Nice?

  What's gonna happen in the future?

• 11:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 11:25Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  So, scientists are women, is what you're saying?

• 11:29Chuck Nice?

  I thought you-

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Touch your subject, touch your subject.

• 11:31Chuck Nice?

  I thought you meant scientists were Miss Cleo, you know?

• 11:35Chuck Nice?

  Call me now.

• 11:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I said with accuracy.

• 11:37Chuck Nice?

  Oh, with accuracy.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:38Chuck Nice?

  You put a caveat on it, okay.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  See, that's hell yeah.

• 11:41Chuck Nice?

  I understand. So, wait a minute, so now, since scientists can look backwards.

• 11:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We do.

• 11:46Chuck Nice?

  In time. We do. And see events that have transpired in the heavens.

• 11:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:51Chuck Nice?

  Are there any events coinciding with the time that we're talking about that may point to a very bright star being in the sky above Bethlehem?

• 11:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, here's a, well, a bright star in the sky would be above everybody in the world if it was.

• 12:04Chuck Nice?

  True, true. If it's a bright star in the sky.

• 12:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody's gonna catch it.

• 12:07Chuck Nice?

  Correct.

• 12:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wouldn't have to be just above Bethlehem.

• 12:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 12:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, my sort of best guess.

• 12:11Chuck Nice?

  Thanks for making me feel stupid.

• 12:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  That's why we're here, man. That's the point of the show. Back to you Neil.

• 12:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm serious, I wanna know.

• 12:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, one of my best, if I, as I comb through the list of candidates, the Chinese kept excellent records of what was going on in the night sky. Back then, the astrologers, who were sort of the court-appointed advisors to the, those who were in charge, they were tasked with trying to understand what forces of the universe might operate on culture. And so they kept really accurate records there. So Chinese astrologers commented on a new star that appeared in the constellation Capricorn in 5 B.C. Now that's right around what we're talking about. That's right around when we're talking about. 5 B.C., so that's around the right year. And it turns out that new stars got the name Nova. Nova's Latin for new. Okay. Turns out, later on, we would learn, basically in the 20th century, we would learn,

• 13:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  that stars that appear out of nowhere, these are stars, we call them novas, as because they're new to you, but they've been there forever and they're dying. So they're exploding. They're exploding their guts into interstellar, into interstellar space. So we're late to the party. What we're seeing is the explosion, the death of a star. The death of a star. And so they caught a new star, a nova, in Capricorn, and we can see the remnants of this with telescopes today. And so, that looks to me, there are others where Jupiter and Saturn got together in the sky. Right. And as Brother Guy, I'll call him Brother Guy. Brother Guy. Bro. What's up Brother Guy? What's up Brother Guy? As he correctly reminded us, constellations, conjuncions in the sky are not rare.

• 13:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. They're common enough, you probably wouldn't pin the birth of your religion on it. Right. We've gotta take a quick break, but more StarTalk when we return.

• 14:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. And with my two guest hosts for this holiday episode, I've got LeAnn Lord. Comedian. How you doing, LeAnn? I am excellent. Excellent. And Chuck Nice. Hey. You're with me, man. Yes, I am. Comedian Chuck Nice. Correct. You might have seen him on NBC, The Today Show, and MSNBC. They always bring him on to talk about what's going down. This is true. And like I would know. That's what kills me. But I show up, I don't care. So, this is, this is sort of me hanging out, just reflecting on the science of the season. And one other point I wanted to finish out with, after that first segment, there, if you take Halley's Comet, which comes around about every 76 years, and extrapolate it back,

• 15:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and factor in Jupiter messing with its orbit and things, you find out that Halley's Comet was around in 12 B.C. And the Chinese made a note of a new comet in the sky at that time as well. They didn't call it Halley's Comet, of course. Right. I'm sure it was like Confucius's comet. The C.C. Yeah. So, C squared. C squared, everybody. So, so, with that, that would have been too early for what other guesses are for the year that Jesus was born. So, they wouldn't, while it was there, and something to talk about, they wouldn't. Didn't jive. Didn't jive. But so, we got, so, I want to make this segment about Santa Claus. A little more about Santa Claus. Right on. And I, you know, I don't know if you know, but NORAD tracks Santa. Did you know this? Of course. Oh, you know.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, because they have it on the news. Yeah. Okay, well, we'll get to NORAD in a minute, but guess who I have on the phone? Who? Actually, I'm not sure who I have on the phone. Either Seth MacFarlane, or Stewie. I don't know.

• 16:00Speaker 04

  I'm a little tired, I'm a little exhausted. I'm not going to go into this whole thing like this. But, no, it's me.

• 16:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Seth MacFarlane!

• 16:10Speaker 04

  I'm being lazy today. How are you?

• 16:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How you doing, man? Thanks for calling in to StarTalk Radio.

• 16:14Speaker 04

  Anytime, anytime.

• 16:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh. You know what I want for Christmas? I want Stewie's plans for his time machine.

• 16:20Speaker 04

  Really?

• 16:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 16:22Speaker 04

  You could, you could, you see, see, you're, you could probably do that yourself.

• 16:28Chuck Nice?

  That's so true.

• 16:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know, but his was pretty cool. I, you know, it was working. It was like, and, and my favorite part of that was, he didn't have a timer, he didn't have a date stamp on where they landed up. And Brian complained, Brian, the, the dog, said, "What? You don't have a ti- a timer on your, on your time machine?" And so he said, "Oh, oh, d- does your time machine have a..."

• 16:51Chuck Nice?

  That, that indeed is a classic line.

• 16:53Speaker 04

  I've got a way better time machine than me.

• 16:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, one, one would hope that, that, that, that your time machine would not have, have all the big funny like, plastic like vacuum, vacuum cleaner looking tubes that, that ours seems to have.

• 17:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, no, but if it's a time machine that no one's ever built before, it's gotta be made out of stuff you had in your garage, I think, right?

• 17:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is, it is a little bit of an, of an, of an A-team cobbled together look to it.

• 17:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and, and, and so, so Seth, on so many of the Family Guy episodes, there's, I, I detect a, a deep representation of science literacy in there. And I, and I know it's coming out of some part of you. What, what, what in your life led you to be, to, to, to have that as a sort of shared mission statement with making people laugh?

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Well, you know, I mean, it's, it's, it's something that, that is, uh, you know, has, has always been important to me and something that, you know, certainly my, my, my parents when I was growing up stressed the importance of rational thought and, uh, you know, questioning everything, asking why things work the way they do instead of just accepting things at face value. Um, you know, like, like yourself, I was a, I was a big, uh, great admirer of, of, of Carl Sagan and, you know, kinda devoured his, his writings, um, uh, over the course of my, my childhood and even up, even up to this day. And, uh, you know, it's, it's, it, it, it's, it's something that

• 18:20Speaker 04

  we are, uh, losing touch with very much in, in this country. And I think, you know, even in the context of a comedy show, if you can wave the flag of science a little bit and remind people that it's, it's, uh, arguably the most important discipline on the planet, then, then, uh, you know, I think that can only be a good thing.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's important because our, our, the, our security and our future and our economic health is all wrapped into it.

• 18:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. More important to our survival.

• 18:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's pretty much everything. That's everything.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 18:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's everything.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  And we're done.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Likes the universe and everything.

• 18:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, you know, your Christmas special, I think everybody, everybody sees your Christmas special and, but I have a gripe about your Christmas special.

• 18:59Speaker 04

  There we go.

• 19:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stewie goes to the North Pole to, to have an encounter with Santa Claus. The North Pole has like mountains and trees there, but we know there's just a polar bear on that one ice floe. That's all that's left. I thought you knew this.

• 19:13Speaker 04

  I knew, I knew I was gonna take it from you.

• 19:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I think a lot of people, just in general, don't know that the North Pole has no land. It's just, it's just the Arctic Ocean.

• 19:22Chuck Nice?

  Right, it's frozen up.

• 19:23Speaker 04

  But it doesn't bother you that there's elves and, and man-eating reindeer?

• 19:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I was cool with that. Yeah.

• 19:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well Seth, we look forward to many, many more years of Family Guy and Stewie just telling it like it is while occasionally sucking his thumb.

• 19:41Chuck Nice?

  Yes. May I do something, Neil?

• 19:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck.

• 19:44Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, Seth, this is something I've just always wanted to say to you forever, and that is, wouldn't it be marvelous if I turned out to be a homosexual?

• 19:54Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 19:56Chuck Nice?

  No, seriously, man, I'm asking you, wouldn't it be marvelous?

• 19:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the tension that he puts into the ambiguity there.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Ambiguity?

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Alrighty then, I must not understand the word.

• 20:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well Seth, thanks for calling in, taking time out of your day in LA to be part of our sort of holiday show here.

• 20:15Speaker 04

  Anytime, Neil, anytime.

• 20:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Seth, we'll catch more of you another time.

• 20:18Speaker 04

  Alright, sounds good.

• 20:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks.

• 20:20Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 20:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Seth MacFarlane.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  That was great.

• 20:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's pretty damn cool, yeah. He's my man, he's my man over there in LA. So let me tell you about Santa Claus and NORAD. Do you know, do you know what NORAD was invented for? Okay?

• 20:32Chuck Nice?

  Now that I don't.

• 20:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was, it was the, it was the North American Air Defense. At a time when we believed that any invasion, any attacks to us would happen through airplanes flying through the air. And we felt our coasts were covered, Pacific and Atlantic, we were worried that Russia would come to us over the poles.

• 20:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if they come over the poles, they'd have to fly over Canada. So we said, let's band together with Canada, create a defense system that protects us from anything coming over the poles. Then we learned that, hey... With intercontinental ballistic missiles, these are missiles that don't fly through the air, they leave the atmosphere, fly in the vacuum of space, then re-enter. So they said, hey, we need a more grand name for it. So now it's the North American Aeroface.

• 21:17Chuck Nice?

  Aerospace?

• 21:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aerospace Defense.

• 21:20Chuck Nice?

  Not to be confused with Aerosmith.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  Not at all.

• 21:22Chuck Nice?

  Or Aero Face.

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so what's funny here is that it was initially to track what was coming back over the poles. And so one thing they do in December is they track Santa Claus.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  But, but, but wait, can we step back a minute? Is that why we left out Mexico? She's on her own? We don't care if the attack's coming in that way.

• 21:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If somebody's gonna get bombed, they're gonna bomb somebody long before it reaches Mexico.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 21:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I promise you there.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  I'm just saying.

• 21:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, so what we have here is Santa, who takes off on New Year's Eve, and NORAD, if you go to their website, NORAD Santa.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 21:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It tracks Santa through the air. Now, we should be glad that it tracks it rather than just taking it out of the sky.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Shooting it down.

• 22:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, thinking, oh, bogey. That would, that would make a bad headline the next day.

• 22:07Chuck Nice?

  That's pretty cool.

• 22:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  NORAD shoots down Santa by accident.

• 22:10Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 22:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you have here is a, but you have, there's some issues here, though, because there's certain, um, you have to think about what Santa has to accomplish.

• 22:20Chuck Nice?

  In order to make this happen.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  He has a, he has a big job.

• 22:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got a big job. Cause you think, how, how many Christians are in the world? There might be, uh, billion, billion and a half. And so, um, how many Christian households might be anywhere between three and 400 million?

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Wait, you also gotta count the agnostics, who are hedging their bets.

• 22:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 22:39Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 22:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  I'm just saying.

• 22:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They make the Santa list. Okay, add them in.

• 22:45Chuck Nice?

  And not to mention the Christmas Jews.

• 22:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Christmas Jews.

• 22:49Chuck Nice?

  There are a lot of Christmas Jews.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  That's why they're Jewish-ish? Is that what we're saying?

• 22:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kind of being Jewish?

• 22:56Chuck Nice?

  That's kind of.

• 22:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kind of being a Jew, you're Jew-ish? So, those who have Christmas trees, I would suppose.

• 23:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 23:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Would be the target of Santa's visit.

• 23:04Chuck Nice?

  Probably, yes.

• 23:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, this is a lot of people to visit.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He has to travel very fast.

• 23:08Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very fast. We're looking at about 2,000 miles per second, which is about 1% the speed of light.

• 23:16Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 23:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  That's quick.

• 23:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're talking about some, some awesome reindeer here. And so, maybe Santa finds a portal through the space-time continuum.

• 23:25Chuck Nice?

  He would have to.

• 23:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or, actually, they did in the movie, uh, what's the movie where they go through the door? Monsters, Inc. Each door in a child's room.

• 23:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Was actually a, a portal through the space-time continuum.

• 23:36Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Connecting the factory to the home. So, maybe this is what he's gotta do. I don't, I, I don't know. But, if you calculate all of this.

• 23:44Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, it's, it's a huge task for Santa to, to do. And NORAD tracks the progress of Santa.

• 23:49Chuck Nice?

  Wait a minute, how can they track something going at 2,000 miles per second?

• 23:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm not authorized to say.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Just understanding your tax dollars are being well spent, sir.

• 24:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  That's all you need to know.

• 24:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A quick history of that, they, uh, it started in 1955.

• 24:07Chuck Nice?

  Right on.

• 24:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where a regional, uh, in Colorado where NORAD is, it's in Cheyenne Mountain.

• 24:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 24:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cheyenne Mountain.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Yay, Cheyenne Mountain.

• 24:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's that, that hole in the mountain where they got the big door.

• 24:16Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 24:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  That's where Stargate is.

• 24:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's where Stargate is.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Yay!

• 24:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, you remember. We'll talk more about that after the break. But, I want to, what, what, so in there with NORAD, what they did was, a local Sears in Colorado posted a phone number to call Santa. And they accidentally gave the wrong phone number and it was NORAD.

• 24:34Chuck Nice?

  NORAD's phone number.

• 24:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  NORAD's phone number.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Wow, somebody got fired.

• 24:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 24:38Chuck Nice?

  Accidental, air quotes.

• 24:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, from that point on, they decided, well, why not actually turn this into something real? And we have all these tracking mechanisms, these tracking capacities. Let's do it for Santa, do it for the country, do it for the world.

• 24:52Chuck Nice?

  And oddly enough, you can buy all of that tracking, uh, uh, equipment at Sears and Roebuck.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Dot com.

• 25:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so if you want to just learn more about all of what we're talking about, you can join us on Facebook. Easy to find us, StarTalk Radio on Facebook. And you can actually follow us in the Twitter-verse. Our Twitter handle is StarTalk Radio. And so when we come back, we have another phone call with one of my favorite people in the world. Bill Nye will be with us. We'll see you in a bit.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back on StarTalk. I've got with me LeAnn Lohr and Chuck Nice. And LeAnn, you were joking with me recently about the computer voice that's about to tell you the world is going to end, but the voice never acts frightened or anything. Is that... This concerns you? What are you doing, Hal?

• 26:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Launch Colonial Viper One. So... I think that computer's a little too sexy. I was about to launch something else.

• 26:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was nice, Chuck Nice. That was nice, Chuck Nice, right there. So, anyhow, so with NORAD, so that's what they do. They're responsible for the defense of North America, and they're deep in the mountain that protects themselves from nuclear holocausts where the rest of us die, and they'll protect whatever's left, and themselves. How do you get that job? And also, Stargate. Stargate. Stargate. SG-1, yes. They went through the door. They lived in the mountain. They lived in the mountain. That's right. And I actually had a cameo in Stargate Atlantis. No way! So, I had a cameo with Bill Nye. The two of us were like... Get out! We saw we're on that! And I... My acting talents suck. I just wanted to know. But you were fabulous in The Big Bang. I was gonna say, you were the only person there who actually knew what the hell you

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  were talking about. I know what this button does. Right. But I was on Stargate Atlantis with Bill Nye, who's a friend and colleague, and I think we have Bill Nye on the line. Bill Nye, Bill, are you there? Neil, greetings. Bill, you're calling us from LA. Thanks for taking time out of your day to be on StarTalk Radio. Are you kidding? For you? Okay. Bill, this is-

• 27:22Speaker 05

  I could see your lips move.

• 27:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, this is our holiday show, and so I wanna know, Bill, cuz you're kind of an unusual character out there, in many ways, I'm not gonna list them, you know what they are. Among them, we wanna know, like, what did you ever want as a kid for Christmas? Was it something weird?

• 27:36Speaker 05

  For Newton's birthday, you mean?

• 27:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Newton, say, say, what'd I tell you guys? No, okay.

• 27:41Speaker 05

  Uh, so, uh-

• 27:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When was Newton born?

• 27:43Speaker 05

  I didn't know it. But one year, Santa brought me a bicycle big enough for an adult to ride. And I had reached this point in my life, I had made this transition to adult leg length.

• 27:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 27:59Speaker 05

  And man, I could crank that thing, gosh, it was fun. And so, as you may know, I, I'm down now, I, I'm, I'm okay, I could quit if I wanted, I have five bicycles now.

• 28:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Five, so you have bicycles on the brain and then the body right now. Plus, I, I happen to know separately that you're a, a big bike enthusiast, and you're buddies with, who's the famous bike guy?

• 28:17Chuck Nice?

  Neil Armstrong?

• 28:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Neil Armstrong.

• 28:19Speaker 05

  I'm not really buddies with Neil Armstrong.

• 28:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. How about Lance then?

• 28:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lance, yeah, buddies with Lance.

• 28:25Speaker 05

  Oh, Lance! Lance.

• 28:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so you're a big bicycle fanatic, and so you did get a bike for your birthday, but you also said-

• 28:32Speaker 05

  I did not know, it was for Newton's birthday.

• 28:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Newton, so Newton was born on Christmas?

• 28:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I checked the, the, I, I looked at the records, and he was born on Christmas in England, who had not yet adopted the Gregorian calendar, put forth into the rest of the Catholic world in fif- in sixteen eighty, uh, fifteen eighty-four. So, what are you saying, he was born on Christmas? He's really born, like, January fifth or something?

• 28:56Speaker 05

  Fourth, I think.

• 28:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fourth, okay.

• 28:58Speaker 05

  But, uh, but it's fun. I always claimed that Isaac Newton's mother pr- pretty much was thinking it was Christmas Day, that's my claim.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so whatever the mom says, that's what it is?

• 29:07Chuck Nice?

  Or, or either Newton is the Protestant baby Jesus.

• 29:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Protestant-

• 29:11Speaker 05

  Well-

• 29:13Speaker 05

  He made a contribution. He just made some remarkable discoveries.

• 29:17Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 29:17Speaker 05

  But he was a significant guy.

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Newton was my man. He discovered the laws of optics and the laws of gravity and the laws of motion.

• 29:25Speaker 05

  And he makes a great computer. Viscosity, Neil. I'm talking fluid mechanics. He was all over it. He was an investigator.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And fluid mechanics and viscosity is all about riding a bike fast and all about Santa trying to deliver presents on Christmas Day fast.

• 29:40Speaker 05

  And he's, but the thing is Santa has something else that I don't think Isaac Newton had.

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's that?

• 29:45Speaker 05

  He's magic.

• 29:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, thank you.

• 29:48Speaker 05

  And that is a huge time saver when you're gonna go worldwide.

• 29:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bill, I don't come to you to explain the natural world by saying it's magic, you know?

• 29:55Speaker 05

  The natural world, I think you're talking about Santa Claus.

• 30:00Speaker 05

  And this is a product, I'll claim, and I don't think this is extraordinary, it's a product of humans.

• 30:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, yeah.

• 30:06Speaker 05

  Okay, and it's not a bad thing.

• 30:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but I just calculate how fast he'd have to go. He'd have to go 2,000 miles per second and traverse 200 million miles to deliver presents to all the Christian and agnostic and...

• 30:19Speaker 05

  But he's done that, done like estimations of house to house?

• 30:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, exactly. House to house, and he scattered them all around the world.

• 30:27Speaker 05

  There's another thing, Dr. Tyson.

• 30:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's that?

• 30:29Speaker 05

  The guy used to come to my house, he would eat the cookies I left and drink the hot cocoa.

• 30:37Speaker 05

  Okay, that's... You're telling me he did that at every house?

• 30:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why he is so large.

• 30:42Speaker 05

  So he's magic.

• 30:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the calorie content of the cookies he eats is greater than the calories he burns getting from house to house. There it is.

• 30:51Speaker 05

  A little bit.

• 30:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how that works.

• 30:53Speaker 05

  Uh huh, huh. Well, who knew?

• 30:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Bill, I have to tell everyone, you are Executive Director of the Planetary Society.

• 30:59Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 30:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do I still get to call you the science guy in that?

• 31:01Speaker 05

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 31:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so do so.

• 31:04Speaker 05

  Uh, so the Planetary Society, we promote, uh, space exploration.

• 31:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is. And by the way, I don't, I'm not alone to know this, you're not only the science guy, you're the engineering dude too.

• 31:15Speaker 05

  I am, yes.

• 31:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And these are your, those are your roots and that's, and we feel great to have you out there, just carrying the torch.

• 31:22Chuck Nice?

  Very, very technical, uh, uh, titles, I have to say.

• 31:25Speaker 05

  Our engineers use science to solve problems and what else? Make things. Everything in your world, somebody, somebody thought of it. Came out of somebody's head. How about that microphone? How about these radio signals? Somebody made that up. It's cool. It's exciting.

• 31:41Chuck Nice?

  And I, I disagree with you there, Mr. Science Guy.

• 31:44Speaker 05

  Uh-oh.

• 31:44Chuck Nice?

  I, I believe radio signals existed before we did.

• 31:48Speaker 05

  Uh, I don't think so. Uh, I think the-

• 31:51Chuck Nice?

  How do we receive them from space then?

• 31:53Speaker 05

  I don't wanna get all geeky. Through our magic machines. But I don't think anybody was selecting radio channels a- and, uh, making them into amplitude or frequency modulated signal stuff.

• 32:02Chuck Nice?

  Oh, you mean that kind. Oh, oh, it's that kind of-

• 32:06Speaker 05

  I say, bring it on.

• 32:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck Nice just got owned. But if you had to get owned by somebody, let it be-

• 32:12Chuck Nice?

  Let it be Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

• 32:14Speaker 05

  Into the cosmos. Maybe somebody out there is enjoying the Dick Van Dyke Show.

• 32:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 32:21Speaker 05

  Cause somebody should. Or, uh, or the Bill Nye the Science Guy Show. I'm just shooting from the hip. Way out there. Picking a random show. They can't quite tell what it is, but, but they wonder.

• 32:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I would rather they got the, the Bill Nye Show than like Howdy Doody or I Love Lucy as the emissaries of our culture.

• 32:41Speaker 05

  Uh, I think it's too late. But there might be a physical phenomenon that we don't understand. Maybe, maybe the Science Guy got there ahead of it. Maybe there's some crazy, uh, interstellar, uh, you know, in that four percent of the, um, of the dark matter, the dark energy that, that reverses things. And science things end up in front of the storytelling.

• 33:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be, that, that's a little, that's still a bit fantasy, I think.

• 33:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, I'm jamming.

• 33:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, so what you're trying to say is that which we don't know about the universe works in favor of putting the Science Guy signal ahead of I Love Lucy.

• 33:17Speaker 05

  I'm saying-

• 33:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's wishful thinking.

• 33:20Speaker 05

  On behalf of regular people, might I say huh? It's agnostic.

• 33:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Sir William, as I call you affectionately, Bill Nye the Science Guy, thanks for calling in and being a friend of StarTalk Radio.

• 33:31Speaker 05

  Oh no, it is we who must thank you!

• 33:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nah, and those of you who are regular listeners know that Bill Nye puts in a minute every now and then to just because he's got a rant and get it off, something off his chest. And we'll be hearing from him, uh, later in the season. So, Bill, thanks for taking time out of your day.

• 33:46Speaker 05

  Thank you, I gotta fly, Bill Nye the Planetary Guy!

• 33:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There you go, there you go. That's my Bill.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Oh, so many titles.

• 33:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so you like Science Guy and Engineering Dude, that was what you-

• 33:58Chuck Nice?

  Those are, I love those titles, Science Guy, Engineering Dude.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  And those are two separate business cards, completely.

• 34:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, there's another movie that showed, uh, NORAD, and it was Independence Day.

• 34:08Chuck Nice?

  No!

• 34:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, guess what happened in that?

• 34:10Chuck Nice?

  Is that where the aliens?

• 34:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they totally took it out.

• 34:13Chuck Nice?

  Sweet. Those bastards.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  I have a movie question, wasn't it in Terminator 3? Isn't that where they went? Uh, at the, at the end? Was that, it looked like it was a Cheyenne-type place.

• 34:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was, it was a Cheyenne-type place, but I don't think they had like the-

• 34:28Chuck Nice?

  No, I think that was in New Mexico.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 34:30Chuck Nice?

  I don't know where it was though.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  I'm mixing my geek references, I apologize.

• 34:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you know, we just try to get that, get that. So, when we come back from our break, we have another break, when we come back, I'm gonna tell you about what parts of the night sky are always there in the holiday season. And have you learned much more about it than just to call it a constellation?

• 34:47Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, we'll be targeting Orion, Orion the Hunter. Do you know about Orion?

• 34:53Chuck Nice?

  I know about his belt. I saw Men in Black.

• 34:57Chuck Nice?

  The universe is in Orion's belt.

• 34:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was, yeah, it was the galaxy.

• 35:01Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's right, sorry, the galaxy is in Orion's belt.

• 35:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On Orion's belt.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  I dated a dude named Orion, but I don't think that's who you're talking about.

• 35:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I met someone named Orion.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Did you really?

• 35:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, in a restaurant, he was a server. Was, was your guy a server?

• 35:14Chuck Nice?

  That is too, that is too far of a magnanimous name to, hello, I'll be, I'm Orion, I'll be your servant.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Like, no, let me sit down and serve you.

• 35:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, just like, my name is Caesar. I'll be bringing you your Caesar. Your salad. I'll be bringing your salad. What, what I didn't know is, I mean, I've learned later his name was Orion. I showed me his business card. He like convinced, he's Orion is the guy's name. He said his mother, he said he was of the age where he might have been named Moon Unit or something less. Yeah, so he got named Orion. So I said, take Orion any day.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  He dodged a bullet.

• 35:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're listening to our annual holiday episode. When we come back, we'll be talking about the night sky.

• 36:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. This is the holiday show. Yes. And I'm just sort of waxing on about all the cosmic significance of the season, if I may. You please do. May I?

• 36:28Speaker 01

  It's your show, son.

• 36:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, for example, constellations. People think of winter constellations or summer constellations. You can catch practically any constellation at some time of the night, any day of the year. So what we mean when we say it's a winter constellation is that it's up high in the sky between dinner and when you go to sleep, in the winter. In the winter. Okay, typically. But you can find a winter constellation in the summer. It's just up at like four in the morning when you're not awake. So that's all. You mean when you're not.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was about to say. Comedians have a slightly different schedule.

• 36:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excuse me, you work the nights. Yeah. 4 a.m.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Well, wait, that, that didn't come out right. Well, I've worked the night. Wait a minute. I'm a comedian, mom, really?

• 37:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, one of, one of everyone's favorite constellations, perhaps it's the, the most recognizable dude in the winter sky is Orion. Orion the hunter.

• 37:16Chuck Nice?

  The hunter.

• 37:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Chuck, you said you know Orion's belt, but then you made a movie reference.

• 37:21Chuck Nice?

  Yes, Men in Black.

• 37:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 37:23Chuck Nice?

  That's the only way I know Orion's belt.

• 37:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause.

• 37:24Chuck Nice?

  And here's why, the only way I know Orion's belt is Men in Black. Cause when I look up in the sky, I can't see any of those pictures that say that this is the constellation. How, who came up with these, like, that's a hunter, that's a bull, that's, that's a, that's a pair of scales. There's a lady in a dress. Where the hell did that come from? Cause I can't see any of it.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  Thank you. I thought I was the only one. I could not see it. Thank you.

• 37:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It came from opium. I just want you to know.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  I, cause I, I think you're right. To me, Orion actually does look like a woman wearing an A-line skirt, holding a credit card. That's not a sword. That is not a sword.

• 37:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All depends on, yeah, what you're.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  This is a matter of perspective.

• 38:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the Rorschach test for all of us. So Orion is a hunter, sometimes drawn facing forward, sometimes drawn facing away.

• 38:09Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 38:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you get different views of his anatomy when this happens. And.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  I'm sorry.

• 38:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Interesting. Well, one of them, for example, is Orion's belt is the three bright stars that form a line.

• 38:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a distinct pattern in the sky. And Ryan has a sword hanging from the belt, dangling between his legs, which for me, if I were a hunter, that's not where I would carry my sword. I just want to make this point.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Well, not since the dogs are right there.

• 38:33Chuck Nice?

  It depends on who you hunt.

• 38:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, I don't know. I'm just saying. I'm just saying, that's what that is. And so Orion is protecting himself from Taurus the bull, which is over to his side.

• 38:43Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Orion astrophysically is a remarkable part of the sky. Because it has a lot of cool astrophysical stuff going on in it. For example, Orion's shoulder is called Rigel. And no, no, sorry, sorry. I get the, how can I, excuse me.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  I'm about to say.

• 38:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yes. Orion, Orion's shoulder. Orion's shoulder is Betelgeuse. We have in a movie called Betelgeuse.

• 39:06Chuck Nice?

  Betelgeuse, really?

• 39:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Betelgeuse, and that's how you pronounce it, Betelgeuse.

• 39:08Chuck Nice?

  Betelgeuse.

• 39:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that is Arabic for armpit of the great one, in case you were wondering.

• 39:12Chuck Nice?

  Which honestly does not sound so great.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  And is my nickname for my husband.

• 39:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nice. So Betelgeuse is one of the largest stars known, so large that if you put it where the sun is right now, it would be larger than the entire orbit of the earth. We would be the cinder orbiting deep within its surface. Sweet. Very sweet. That is cool. It is so. That is a huge star.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  I feel so small.

• 39:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Bigger than our entire orbit. That's what I'm saying, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so then you go to his knee. Right. And one of the stars forms his kneecap, and that's the star Rigel, which is a blue supergiant star. Both of those stars will one day explode, become a supernova, and be the brightest thing in the night sky, and would even be visible in the day. So you mean, we will be on earth, and we will look up in the sky, and we will see this star in the midday sun? Yes, yes.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Technically, we will not be here.

• 40:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you, yes.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, that's a little bit far in the future.

• 40:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get your we straight. And where Orion's sword is, that's dangling between his legs, is a region that is a nebula, a cloudy region where stars are being born. It's a stellar nursery. It's called the Orion Nebula. Right beneath the sword, because he will kill them the moment they are born. So this is Orion in the sky, viewable everywhere on earth over the holiday season. Sweet. Now, the brightest star in the night sky is just off of the side of Orion. It's called Sirius. Right. Sirius. Sirius. Now, there are many things named Sirius, Sirius radio.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Sirius satellite radio, yes.

• 40:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, we're not on Sirius radio. No, we're not. But that's all.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  That's their loss, hello.

• 40:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. Do you know the icon? But they have been calling.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, the icon for Sirius is the little dog.

• 40:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a little dog, because Sirius is the eye of Canis Major, the big dog. The dog star. It's the dog star. Sweet. It is the dog star. And in fact, the dog days of August are so called because Sirius rises just before the sun during the month of August, the helical rising of Sirius. The helical rise of the dog!

• 41:14Chuck Nice?

  That's a callback, y'all.

• 41:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The dog days.

• 41:18Chuck Nice?

  The Snoop Dogg of stars.

• 41:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The dog days of August.

• 41:23Chuck Nice?

  Love that.

• 41:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is cool. And Sirius is popular in many cultures, is the brightest star in the night sky. So if a culture is gonna have it, they're gonna, you know, if gonna, if a culture's gonna have any star in the sky, that's a likely one. And the Egyptians worshiped the star. In fact, back when it was heliocly rose before the sun for them. Right. Thousands of years ago signaled the rise, the flooding of the Nile. So in fact, their agricultural calendar begins with the helical rising of Sirius. That, I gotta tell you, that's fascinating. I'm sorry, but I find it fascinating. Oh, yeah.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  And it sounds serious.

• 41:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's, okay. Is that what that is? Sirius. Sirius, the dog star. So these are, this is, those are things you'll see in the nighttime sky. And of course, the moon goes through. The, the full moon in December crosses the sky higher than any other moon of the year. So that's what, that's what creates this wonderful glow on the snow laden landscapes.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  And fewer crazy people?

• 42:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And lunatics? They're the lunatics at all phases of the moon. So I have come to learn. Okay. So I think we've come to the end of our house party. We are at the end of our helical rise. And in my, in my last minute.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Where's the after party?

• 42:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I have to give my tweet of the week. Oh, yay. Cause I've been thinking hard about this with Santa and all of this. And I'm wondering if Santa's moving 2,000 miles per second to visit the, to the more than 2 million, 22 million households to deliver gifts. Right. Uh, sorry, 22 million miles of the half a billion households that he's got to visit. This is, this is, I did the quick back of the envelope calculation, aerodynamics. Right. And, uh, Santa ain't gonna make it. I'm just saying. You mean he can't make it to every house or? For my tweet of the week, here it goes. For Santa to deliver gifts to all the world's Christians in one night requires hypersonic

• 43:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  speeds vaporizing his reindeer and sleigh.

• 43:24Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man. You killed Rudolph right before Chris Ari.

• 43:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This has been our holiday show and I want to thank my guests. And as always, I bid you to keep looking up.

• 43:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's it for this segment of StarTalk, but when we come back, special guests Bill Nye the Science Guy and co-writer of Cosmos, Stephen Soder, drop by the Cosmic Crib. Stay tuned.

• 44:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk Radio, The Cosmic Crib, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. In this segment, we just sit back and chew the fat on whatever subject is of the moment. I've got Bill Nye here, thanks for coming to my office.

• 44:18Bill Nye?

  It's so good to be here.

• 44:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Steve Soder, friend and colleague, and he co-wrote Cosmos with Andrea.

• 44:24Speaker 07

  Neil.

• 44:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, I just want to talk about asteroids. I love me some asteroids.

• 44:30Bill Nye?

  A big concern of mine at the Planetary Society.

• 44:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why?

• 44:35Bill Nye?

  Because if we got hit with one, it would be game over.

• 44:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would be bad. If we got hit with a big enough one.

• 44:39Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 44:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are a lot of little ones that hit, in fact, shooting stars every night.

• 44:43Bill Nye?

  Yeah, how many tons a day?

• 44:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Couple hundred tons of star dust.

• 44:48Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 44:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A couple hundred tons of meteors Earth plows through every day. So, most of it just burns up and you say, "Oh, a pretty shooting star." There you have it. But the bigger ones can make it through, right?

• 45:00Bill Nye?

  Yeah, this is a deep concern. When I was in astronomy class, when Steve Soder was one of our teaching assistants, Carl Sagan talked extensively about what...

• 45:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's name dropping now, come on now.

• 45:12Bill Nye?

  Well, but isn't that the idea? He talked extensively about what at that time was called the Tunguska event. Nowadays, I like to refer to it as the Tunguska airburst. And then, sure enough, a year and a half...

• 45:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is 1908. There was an asteroid, mid-air explosion over Tunguska.

• 45:32Speaker 07

  A little one.

• 45:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A little one.

• 45:34Speaker 07

  It wasn't a town, it was a...

• 45:35Bill Nye?

  Middle of nowhere.

• 45:36Speaker 07

  The wastes of Siberia.

• 45:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and so, how big was that, was that impactor?

• 45:41Speaker 07

  Well, it was equivalent to the Hiroshima bomb in terms of the energy.

• 45:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, the size of a small house, then? I think I've seen some numbers on this.

• 45:50Speaker 07

  Well, the asteroid itself, yeah, but it leveled thousands of square miles of forest.

• 45:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 45:55Bill Nye?

  Yeah, knock trees down in every direction. And then.

• 45:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, just to be clear, thousands of square miles of forest.

• 46:02Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 46:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's like, that's like fifty miles on a side.

• 46:04Bill Nye?

  That's correct.

• 46:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, just to, just to get.

• 46:06Bill Nye?

  If it burst over.

• 46:07Speaker 07

  Trees were all pointed away from the center.

• 46:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Away from the center, like something bad happened in one spot.

• 46:11Bill Nye?

  Yeah, but it was high in the atmosphere, and it blew up.

• 46:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it was an air, air blast.

• 46:15Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 46:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And of course, in Hiroshima, it was an air blast.

• 46:17Bill Nye?

  That's correct.

• 46:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like a kilometer up.

• 46:18Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 46:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, so.

• 46:21Bill Nye?

  About two.

• 46:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Be proud of me if I said kilometer.

• 46:23Bill Nye?

  I like it.

• 46:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's shut you up for at least a minute.

• 46:25Bill Nye?

  We're looking forward to you embracing kilometer.

• 46:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can't use feet and inches without you jumping all over me.

• 46:30Bill Nye?

  Well, you're supposed to be an astronomer.

• 46:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just want credit when I use, when I say kilometer. Just say, Neil, you did good.

• 46:38Bill Nye?

  Neil, you did well, if I may use the adverb.

• 46:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I want to do gooder next time. Okay, go.

• 46:43Bill Nye?

  With that said, we at the Planetary Society, in collaboration with.

• 46:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You are CEO of the Planetary Society.

• 46:49Bill Nye?

  I am. Collaboration with the B six twelve Foundation.

• 46:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They've changed, they're now called Sentinel.

• 46:54Bill Nye?

  Sentinel's the name of the spacecraft.

• 46:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 46:57Bill Nye?

  So we are gonna celebrate Asteroid Day on the thirtieth of June.

• 47:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next year.

• 47:03Bill Nye?

  Next year, when we hope henceforth.

• 47:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And why is that day plucked from the three hundred and sixty five?

• 47:07Bill Nye?

  It was the day reckoned in the modern calendar when Tunguska airburst occurred. Now, my Russian's not very good, Tunguska.

• 47:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tunguska.

• 47:15Bill Nye?

  Or something. Airburst occurred, and it is worthy thing to consider, if that were to happen over Paris or Tokyo or New York, that would be the end of any of these places.

• 47:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, I read, Steve, is this right, that Tunguska was at the same latitude as Berlin, so that, and if Earth had rotated an extra six hours.

• 47:32Bill Nye?

  Something like that.

• 47:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Some, some number of calculable hours, that it would have then killed a million people, the air blast.

• 47:38Bill Nye?

  That's the worst case we're talking about.

• 47:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The worst case.

• 47:40Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so, some asteroids are harmless, we call them meteoroids, and they make shooting stars. Others can create severe local damage. Still, others can disrupt civilization, but the ones we really care about are the ones that could render us extinct, right?

• 47:57Bill Nye?

  Well, any...

• 47:58Speaker 07

  Well, that's a hundred billion year time scale, that size. The ones that could do it...

• 48:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're not worried about the ones that'll make us extinct?

• 48:03Speaker 07

  Uh, not as much, because a hundred billion years is an awful long time.

• 48:06Bill Nye?

  No, but you guys...

• 48:07Speaker 07

  But the ones that can wipe out civilization are like one every million years.

• 48:09Bill Nye?

  I just gotta remind you that just because some...

• 48:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to clarify, what is wiping out civilization? You mean disrupting the...

• 48:15Speaker 07

  Collapse all of agriculture.

• 48:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Agriculture...

• 48:17Speaker 07

  For a couple of years.

• 48:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Transportation...

• 48:19Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 48:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Food supply, water supply, okay.

• 48:21Bill Nye?

  I just gotta get, I remind you all, as a... Not as an expert on statistics, but just to remind you, a low probability event does not the same as a low consequence event.

• 48:34Speaker 07

  Right.

• 48:34Bill Nye?

  If it happens once, we're done, that's it.

• 48:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 48:38Bill Nye?

  And it could be any moment. And I have held in my little hand a meteorite that killed a dog.

• 48:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 48:46Bill Nye?

  In Huntsville, Alabama, yeah, the guy let me hold it. This is, talk about an unlucky dog.

• 48:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That ain't right.

• 48:51Bill Nye?

  You're walking down the street.

• 48:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That ain't right.

• 48:53Bill Nye?

  Trotting down the street, plam, and then you're done. You're a dead dog.

• 48:57Speaker 07

  What's little appreciated, though, is that mega volcanic eruptions that could destroy civilization happen at about the same frequency as asteroids that could do it, maybe even more frequent.

• 49:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So as I continually say, Earth wants to kill us?

• 49:08Speaker 07

  No.

• 49:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Earth and the universe want to kill us?

• 49:10Speaker 07

  It's very infrequent. I mean, in any given century, it's a very low probability.

• 49:15Bill Nye?

  Plus, you'll hear them coming.

• 49:18Speaker 07

  Well, the volcanoes, you'll have, a mega volcanic eruption, you'll have warning, but there's not much...

• 49:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mega means what?

• 49:23Speaker 07

  Means like a thousand times bigger than the biggest eruption.

• 49:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Has any of those happened during civilization?

• 49:29Speaker 07

  Uh, one came close, it was Toba. No, no, no, not during civilization, no. But during hu- the human tenure on the planet, there was one seventy-four thousand years ago that might have cut down the population of our hunter-gather ancestors.

• 49:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what's this supervolcano they're talking about in Yosemite?

• 49:44Speaker 07

  Oh, uh, not Yosemite.

• 49:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, sorry.

• 49:47Speaker 07

  It's Yellowstone.

• 49:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, Yellowstone.

• 49:48Speaker 07

  Yeah, no, that would, that would, that's happened every few million years, that one blows. That would, that would qualify.

• 49:54Bill Nye?

  We're talking about asteroids. But I just want to remind everybody, if, for some reason, you have not been to Ashfall State Park, Nebraska, I encourage you...

• 50:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Count me among those who have never been.

• 50:04Bill Nye?

  I encourage you to go by there.

• 50:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To Ashfall State Falls.

• 50:07Bill Nye?

  Ashfall State Park.

• 50:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  State Park, Nebraska.

• 50:09Bill Nye?

  Near Orchard, Nebraska.

• 50:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As they say, there aren't too many brothers hanging out there.

• 50:14Bill Nye?

  No. But uh

• 50:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In Nebraska.

• 50:16Bill Nye?

  No, that aside, there are dead rhinoceroses and camels and three-toed horses, not camels, three-toed horses, and rhinoceroses that were buried by ash from a supervolcano in what is now Yellowstone National Park.

• 50:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And how far away is that?

• 50:33Bill Nye?

  Uh, fifteen hundred kilometers.

• 50:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay, good.

• 50:37Bill Nye?

  Thousand

• 50:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thousand miles.

• 50:38Bill Nye?

  Miles, yeah.

• 50:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, good.

• 50:39Bill Nye?

  Or maybe less, only eight hundred.

• 50:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you can be buried by ash a thousand miles away from a supervolcano?

• 50:45Bill Nye?

  Really fast, when it's big enough, yeah. But a really big one will have global climate impact.

• 50:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we should be more worried about the volcano, or equally worried about the volcano being asteroid?

• 50:54Bill Nye?

  Equally worried. No, asteroid's a lot more serious.

• 50:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, accept that.

• 50:57Bill Nye?

  It's a lot more sexy.

• 50:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. We have, on paper, ways we can think of deflecting an asteroid, even though there is no funded project in the world to do so. Right now, we have no power to influence the fate of a volcano.

• 51:12Bill Nye?

  I don't, but they don't just show up.

• 51:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Am I right, Steve?

• 51:14Bill Nye?

  Yes, that's correct. They don't just show up. Volcanoes don't just happen.

• 51:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they're there and we can like pray to them and hope they don't?

• 51:19Bill Nye?

  Some rumbling

• 51:20Speaker 07

  No, we'll have some warning, but there's nothing we can do about it, but we could deflect an asteroid.

• 51:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What would be the warning? You hear the rum, rum tummy?

• 51:24Speaker 07

  No, you'll have seismic activity.

• 51:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you hear the rum tumble of the tummy.

• 51:28Speaker 07

  For a really big one, you might have considerable warning.

• 51:31Bill Nye?

  Like decades.

• 51:32Speaker 07

  Decade, well, years maybe, but you wouldn't, you couldn't do anything to stop it. But you can deflect an asteroid.

• 51:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's what I'm saying, Bill. That's what I'm talking about, the asteroid.

• 51:40Bill Nye?

  So while we're ending the world, let's, let's set aside the volcanoes and worry about the asteroids, to your point. So what we'd want to do is maybe build a spacecraft so massive, just its mutual gravity with this object, or this group of objects would tug it off course. But we at the Planetary Society, the trouble with that idea is you need a tremendous amount of fuel, huge amount of fuel, hauled up in space. Uh, more fuel than anybody's ever

• 52:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So is the Planetary Society actively planning such a mission to deflect an asteroid?

• 52:12Bill Nye?

  Actively planning a different mission, where we, yes, actively planning to deflect an asteroid with the laser bees. So we would build spacecraft that have solar panels that make electricity to create lasers powerful enough to oblate Or evaporate, or if I may zap.

• 52:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Zap is a good word.

• 52:30Bill Nye?

  The surface of the asteroid. And the ejected material has momentum. So if an asteroid's.

• 52:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it recoils from this ejected material.

• 52:39Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 52:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now suppose the asteroid is a rubble pile.

• 52:41Bill Nye?

  Well, that's it. That's the great advantage. You can deflect its center of gravity, and if they're still have enough gravity to hold together, then the whole thing will get deflected.

• 52:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you could possibly break it apart by doing this.

• 52:54Bill Nye?

  Uh, yeah, but you gotta think.

• 52:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then you have to evacuate two coasts. Bill!

• 52:59Bill Nye?

  So this is why you generally don't want to send explosives or Bruce Willis is, uh...

• 53:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Explosives or Bruce Willis, or both.

• 53:07Bill Nye?

  There's the possibility of, uh, creating a shower of these objects. And this is one more reason that we need to continue to explore asteroids and understand them. Rubble piles, marshmallow-y things. Puffy ash, giant solid rock. Piece of stainless steel, piece of ice. These are questions we need answers to as a... to prevent the only preventable natural disaster.

• 53:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Steve, let me just get some basic facts about asteroids. When was the first one discovered?

• 53:35Speaker 07

  Eighteen hundred.

• 53:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eighteen hundred. So we've known about them for two hundred years?

• 53:38Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 53:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, and, uh, initially they thought they were planets, right?

• 53:42Speaker 07

  That's right. In fact, the first one was discovered in a big gap between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, where it was expected there would be a planet, and so it was assumed to be the missing planet.

• 53:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So all forces said this is a planet?

• 53:52Speaker 07

  Right. The next year, another asteroid was discovered in a very similar orbit, and then others, and more and more. So.

• 53:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they said something else was going on here?

• 53:59Speaker 07

  Right, these were asteroids.

• 54:00Bill Nye?

  But did ancient peoples have a sense of asteroids?

• 54:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 54:03Bill Nye?

  Shooting stars, ancient Greeks?

• 54:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We had no idea what they were.

• 54:06Bill Nye?

  No.

• 54:09Speaker 07

  They're called meteors, which is literally, in Greek, it means something in the air. They were thought to be very close.

• 54:15Bill Nye?

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:15Speaker 07

  Comets, uh, even were thought to be.

• 54:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Atmospheric phenomena, yeah, yeah.

• 54:19Bill Nye?

  Do you know the etymology of the word "bowied"?

• 54:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't.

• 54:23Bill Nye?

  But a bolide-

• 54:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love me some bolides.

• 54:25Bill Nye?

  No.

• 54:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the meteor that comes in. Bolides, no bigger than a golf ball. That's big enough to come through the atmosphere. You see a streak, then explodes at the end of its path. And this is what people call the police when they see it.

• 54:37Bill Nye?

  Well, that's what happened with Chelyabinsk.

• 54:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Chelyabinsk. Well, we need another word. Other than bolide, for what happened in Chelyabinsk. Back in February.

• 54:47Bill Nye?

  Oh, you don't like, how about airburst?

• 54:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, it was way bigger than a bolide. I mean, we need a... The vocabulary we currently have. We don't see those often enough to have vocabulary for it. I guess that's my point.

• 54:57Bill Nye?

  Anyway, just to refresh your memories. This thing blew up in the sky. There's so much insurance fraud in this part of the world that there are dozens of dash... Maybe hundreds of dashboard camera images of this thing.

• 55:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 55:10Bill Nye?

  And everybody goes to the window to look at it. And then the sonic boom takes almost three minutes to get to the ground. Pow! Blows the windows in everybody's faceses and they go to the hospital.

• 55:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The big Band-Aid.

• 55:22Bill Nye?

  Nobody was killed.

• 55:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nobody was killed.

• 55:23Bill Nye?

  By that much.

• 55:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, sixteen hundred people went to the hospital. And nobody... The shot across our bow.

• 55:28Bill Nye?

  That's what I'm saying. It's a cosmic shooting gallery. Let's get to work, people. Let's deflect an asteroid. Let's identify asteroids and so we can deflect one if we need to.

• 55:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we can have... Live a little longer.

• 55:38Bill Nye?

  Yeah.

• 55:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Than other species that didn't.

• 55:41Speaker 07

  Species lifetime... Mammals have a typical lifetime of a few million years.

• 55:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh huh.

• 55:46Speaker 07

  We should aim at that.

• 55:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At least go to... Match the records of other mammals that we might have. All right.

• 55:52Bill Nye?

  That's not the only reason.

• 55:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know. Guys, we gotta call it quits. This has been-

• 55:57Bill Nye?

  Big fun, Neil.

• 55:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Cosmic Creed. Thanks for joining us. I'm Neil the Gas Tyson. We'll see you again.