Live at the Bell House, The Astronaut Session (Part 2)

In part 2 of our December 2011 Bell House show, we discuss the dangers and dilemmas of current and future space travel.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 2:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk Radio. We are live at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York. Kings County, that is. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist with the American Museum of Natural History, where I also serve as Director of the Hayden Planetarium. And I'm here with my special guest, two-time Shuttle astronaut, Mike Massimino, and my co-host, Eugene Mirman.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 2:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've got your two special guests.

• 2:50Speaker 03

  Our two wonderful guests, Kristen Schaal and John Hodgman. Hello.

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hello. We're talking about space and what it is to be up there and some of the latest discoveries, one of which is the Kepler-22b Goldilocks planet. And so, with the bartenders, we concocted a special drink for this evening called the Kepler-22b, okay? That drink has blue curassow, because that planet is in the Goldilocks zone where it can sustain liquid water. And so perhaps it has oceans, perhaps it has land, perhaps it has...

• 3:22Speaker 03

  And alien bacteria.

• 3:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a mixture of blue curassow, green Midori, some vodka to make that sit up straight, and some...

• 3:33Speaker 03

  Dirt.

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dirt.

• 3:35Speaker 03

  Earth, like our planet, symbolizing exactly what it literally is.

• 3:40Speaker 04

  And a core of molten magma.

• 3:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's got some ginger beer, and this will not be served with ice, because the Goldilocks planet is at the right distance to not have ice. But it will be chilled, shaken, poured into a glass, and it'll be ice cold but with no ice.

• 3:54Speaker 04

  I'd like to snorkel in that.

• 3:55Speaker 05

  Can I have one? I'll use my drink ticket.

• 3:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they gave me a drink ticket, too.

• 3:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'd like to.

• 3:59Speaker 05

  Maybe a round for the panel?

• 4:01Speaker 03

  Sure, let's do it. Yeah, you might not be allowed to drink in space, but you can totally drink here.

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you.

• 4:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, let me ask you, Mike. This icon image of The Right Stuff. Did you have to do all the things that we saw that the astronauts did in the movie The Right Stuff?

• 4:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, did you have an enema and everything?

• 4:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Yeah, what did you have to go through to be, to become an astronaut?

• 4:21Speaker 06

  The enema question is about when.

• 4:23Speaker 04

  Earlier this evening.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  I don't remember The Right Stuff that clearly.

• 4:29Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, enemas every day.

• 4:32Speaker 03

  I may be thinking of the wrong movie.

• 4:33Speaker 05

  That's why the movie was so long.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what, so what did they make you do? Did you have to like, did you need desert training? And you have to eat salamanders? Like, what did you have to do?

• 4:43Speaker 06

  No, we didn't.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  Because that's the only food in space.

• 4:47Speaker 04

  We don't really know what you're gonna find up there. But we have a feeling it might be salamanders.

• 4:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Reptilian.

• 4:54Speaker 04

  And hallucinogenic mushrooms. So, we're going to put you in a sweat lodge. I would imagine for you to actually come to the decision, "I am going to seriously pursue a career in astronauting", was a big decision. How old were you when you made it? The for reals, not the like...

• 5:12Speaker 06

  The for real, like, "I want to pursue this", I was about 21 years old.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  And what was your background at that point? You had gone to college?

• 5:18Speaker 06

  Actually, I saw the movie The Right Stuff. My wife is here, she saw it with me, she can attest to that. We were, yeah.

• 5:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 5:27Speaker 06

  And that, that got me thinking again about what I wanted to do with my life. And I was a senior in college at that point. And I decided to...

• 5:34Speaker 04

  What were you studying? Literary theory?

• 5:37Speaker 06

  What?

• 5:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is this guy talking about? Yale words.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  He was studying mechanical engineering.

• 5:43Speaker 06

  Actually, I think this is why I became an astronaut. Because the English stuff, I couldn't handle. I don't even understand what he's saying, and I think he's speaking English. So I liked the math better than I did the English stuff. I need a dictionary.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  Mike became an astronaut in order to get as far away as possible from you nerds.

• 6:01Speaker 04

  What were you studying in college, sir?

• 6:03Speaker 06

  I was an industrial engineering student.

• 6:05Speaker 04

  Okay, and you decided that you wanted to be an astronaut, and so you...

• 6:09Speaker 06

  Right.

• 6:09Speaker 04

  It's a strange career path to pursue.

• 6:10Speaker 06

  It is, yeah, and you realize that it's probably not gonna happen, because lots of people apply and very few are lucky enough to get selected, but you figure, let me give it a try.

• 6:18Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 6:19Speaker 05

  You gotta follow your dreams, right?

• 6:20Speaker 06

  Gotta follow your dreams, just like you guys are doing, right?

• 6:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. I actually had a very similar thing, because when I saw the Bourne Identity, I really wanted to forget everything and become a special agent.

• 6:31Speaker 06

  And?

• 6:32Speaker 03

  And now that's what I am! I don't know why, but I'm so good at cooking!

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, were you aware at the time of the dangers you might face? Because I think when they tell little kids, "Do you want to be an astronaut?" They're not thinking, "I could get hit by an asteroid, or a micro meteoroid that'll blow a hole through me, or that radiation from the sun will sterilize my gonads." This is not in...

• 6:57Speaker 06

  What? I never knew any of that! Now they tell me.

• 7:01Speaker 04

  As a father, I say that to my children all the time.

• 7:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you're up there spacewalking. I did a whole segment for Nova on micro meteoroids going 18,000 miles an hour. And something this size going 18,000 miles an hour will put a hole through you like it's nobody's business. So, were you thinking about this at the time?

• 7:22Speaker 06

  No.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  How likely or common is something like that? Are you just trying to retro freak 'em out?

• 7:29Speaker 03

  Or is that like a real thing that's like you're prepared for?

• 7:31Speaker 06

  I'm glad I'm hearing about this on the ground. But, even at the Hubble Space Telescope, when we got there, the antenna dish, for example, one of the high-gain antennas, has a hole in it. What's that?

• 7:41Speaker 04

  Was there a lot of graffiti on it?

• 7:42Speaker 06

  Graffiti, yeah. Alien graffiti, right? No, that's secret, I can't tell you about the graffiti. But, no, it had a hole in it. It had a hole in it, John, about the size of a quarter. So, something had picked off that mirror. And, if you ever get a chance to see the White Field Camera, I don't know where they have it, Neil, I think it's probably in a Smithsonian somewhere, maybe in a back room, but if you ever see anything like that that's been in space, that's been exposed to space...

• 8:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It has battle scars.

• 8:04Speaker 06

  It has battle scars on it, and it's lots of dings, like Neil described, these small little rocks that hit the outside of that instrument. Its radiator was on the outside of the telescope when we removed it, so it was exposed and it got pegged.

• 8:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Hubble telescope has what's called a safe mode, because...

• 8:20Speaker 04

  Airplane mode?

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it has to be completely off. All your cell phones gotta be completely off in space. You wanna take any chair play notes?

• 8:29Speaker 03

  Can't even play words with friends?

• 8:31Speaker 05

  Are you?

• 8:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we have the sun. We have Earth in orbit around the sun.

• 8:37Speaker 04

  Or so you claim.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I assert, it is true whether or not you believe in it.

• 8:41Speaker 03

  Alright, Ayn Rand, keep talking.

• 8:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, as Mike noted, we share space with a lot of other things. In fact, the solar system is a shooting gallery with movements choreographed by the forces of gravity. Now, among those objects that orbit the sun are comets. Many of their orbits are highly elongated. They cross the orbit of the Earth. Comets, when they near the sun, heat evaporates their ice and they deposit debris that had been mixed in with the ice along its entire journey. But near the sun, it gets shaken loose. And so there's a debris trail that is behind it and precedes the moving comet.

• 9:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, even though these comets cross Earth's orbit, we don't hit them necessarily, but we'll go through the debris trail. And every time we go through a debris trail, it is a meteor shower. That's why certain nights of the year, and it's always the same nights of the year, like the Perseids in the summertime in August, because that's the time in our orbit where we are crossing the debris trail of a comet that had passed by. The Hubble telescope, when we go through debris trails, goes into what's called safe mode where the lid covers the mirror and we angle it down and we expose the better side of it to the universe.

• 10:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that it won't actually hit the sensitive electronics and the mirror. A safe mode. And so, we anticipate that in these periods of high meteoroid flux, that we gotta protect the hardware.

• 10:22Speaker 05

  So when you go up, Mike, then you would go up on a calmer time, right? Can you factor that in? Or are you...

• 10:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You did go up. Whether or not they told you, they waited for like the stuff to end.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  Have you been hit by debris? Like, is that a thing that they talk about or that you are aware of?

• 10:36Speaker 05

  They're like, "Duck, Mike!"

• 10:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Watch out, here it comes.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  This is Houston, duck!

• 10:42Speaker 06

  We do a couple of things while we're out spacewalking. We'll angle the shuttle at such an attitude that if, you know, we'd rather not get a person hit. So the shuttle will try to protect us, but we don't like the shuttle getting hit either. That's not a good, that's not a good thing.

• 10:54Speaker 04

  Was that the motto of your mission? We'd rather not get a person hit?

• 10:56Speaker 06

  We'd rather not get a person hit. We also have four spacewalkers, so if you lose one, you have three others.

• 11:02Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 11:02Speaker 06

  Now, that was a joke.

• 11:03Speaker 04

  They're like, they're like, they're like R2 units.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  How many people go up per trip normally?

• 11:07Speaker 06

  Uh, we had seven on my cruise and four spacewalkers and three other guys.

• 11:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the space station actually has maneuvering capability when the air force alerts them that there's a particle that would otherwise damage it structurally.

• 11:20Speaker 04

  The universe is firing a bullet at you. Put up the astrodome.

• 11:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, anything about the size of a softball, bocce ball size, we can track. If that's in the way, you can avoid it.

• 11:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can actually track smaller than that, but it's classified.

• 11:32Speaker 06

  Sorry, I didn't know that. So smaller stuff.

• 11:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, we don't tell astronauts.

• 11:36Speaker 06

  But it's a really small size, that's right. Apparently not. I was less to know.

• 11:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the smaller stuff we don't know about. The particles are really there. Some of them are paint chips from long-lost dead satellites. Some are...

• 11:48Speaker 03

  That was like from like houses?

• 11:51Speaker 03

  Paint chips from walls that fly around space.

• 11:55Speaker 04

  What is the one thing that you think would surprise people about life in space?

• 11:59Speaker 03

  Ooh, yeah.

• 12:01Speaker 04

  Because we know about the floating. I would imagine the boredom would be considerable, but no, maybe not.

• 12:06Speaker 06

  Actually, no, because the thing you have is you can look out that window.

• 12:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 06

  And it's non-stop entertainment.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  Plus, you probably have trivial pursuits.

• 12:14Speaker 06

  Trivial pursuits, we had movies.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  You have movies?

• 12:16Speaker 06

  We had movies. You know, we were very busy for two weeks, but we got a couple of extra days in space because the weather was bad in Florida. We couldn't land. You had to land in California. We did. How did you know that? Did you do some research? I know all about you, Mike. Wow!

• 12:34Speaker 06

  That's amazing, I'm impressed. We did land in California. But those last couple days, we didn't have anything on our flight plan specifically to do, except just hang around.

• 12:43Speaker 05

  Go to the moon?

• 12:44Speaker 06

  Go to the... no, we couldn't...

• 12:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, are you allowed, if you have a day off, like say, like for me, I had a day off somewhere, I could like drive to Ohio, but you, could you go to the moon?

• 12:52Speaker 06

  I would have loved to.

• 12:53Speaker 03

  We have two days to kill.

• 12:54Speaker 06

  Please, can we go visit the space station?

• 12:56Speaker 03

  Do they leave you enough fuel to...

• 12:57Speaker 05

  You didn't have enough gas, right?

• 12:58Speaker 06

  No, we don't have enough fuel to get there.

• 13:00Speaker 05

  So what movies did you watch?

• 13:02Speaker 06

  What did we watch? We watched Apollo 13, which is probably...

• 13:08Speaker 06

  Which probably isn't the smartest thing, as we're like kinda stuck up there to be watching. But we did watch that movie. And we watched Star Trek. It was actually when...

• 13:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which Star Trek?

• 13:19Speaker 06

  The one that came out, the kinda the new one, the one that came out two years ago.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  The awesome...

• 13:23Speaker 06

  Actually, it came out when we were, it debuted in theaters when we were launching. And whoever, I forget who it was who made the movie, the...

• 13:30Speaker 04

  J.J. Abrams.

• 13:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, I know, he, the company, I wanna give him credit.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  Bad robot?

• 13:34Speaker 04

  Paramount.

• 13:35Speaker 06

  One of those people sent us the movie. And we were able to watch, you know, like they, we got a...

• 13:40Speaker 04

  What do they send to you on, like DVD or...

• 13:42Speaker 03

  Did you become a little afraid of Romulus?

• 13:43Speaker 04

  They send a VHS up there for you?

• 13:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, the platform.

• 13:45Speaker 06

  I worked on a computer thing where, you know, it was loaded onto our computers.

• 13:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a DVD?

• 13:49Speaker 06

  DVD.

• 13:50Speaker 04

  Do you have a, do you have internet? Do you have wifi?

• 13:52Speaker 05

  You had the first tweets from space!

• 13:54Speaker 06

  Not when I was there.

• 13:55Speaker 03

  Did you tweet from space?

• 13:56Speaker 06

  I did, I had the first one to tweet from space.

• 14:01Speaker 05

  What was your first tweet, like, "I'm in space"?

• 14:04Speaker 06

  The first tweet from space, what I did tweet, it actually got mentioned on Saturday Night Live. Which my kids were in, they're here too. And they can attest, they're in here. But, they're not really so excited about this astronaut thing, I'm just annoying dad at home, right, kids? Yeah. Alright, so, thanks Daniel. But when they mentioned the Saturday Night Live thing, that got you guys excited, didn't it, kids? When the Saturday Night Live mentioned my tweet, and I said, well, they made fun of it because I said...

• 14:32Speaker 04

  Did you say, "It's full of stars"?

• 14:34Speaker 06

  I said, "No, I said, "Launch was awesome." I said, "Launch was awesome, I'm feeling great." But what they said on Saturday Night Live was, "Here is the first tweet from space, "Launch is awesome." You know, we've gone in 40 years from, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind", to "Launch is awesome." If this idiot ever, this would be the first one to find life on another planet, like, "Jeez dudes, aliens."

• 14:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that was that first tweet, but what really was monumental is that my kids finally got excited about me being an astronaut because I got mentioned on Saturday Night Live.

• 15:06Speaker 06

  There it is.

• 15:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I did tweet that we were all gonna be talking here tonight, too.

• 15:10Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, like over and over again. I read it. I'm following you now.

• 15:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just before. Really?

• 15:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wow.

• 15:17Speaker 05

  You are not following me.

• 15:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow!

• 15:19Speaker 05

  I love these bartenders.

• 15:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Kepler-22b just got delivered to each of us.

• 15:28Speaker 04

  Thank you very much.

• 15:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I would like to propose a toast to Kepler-22b, the first of many planets we expect to find in the universe that could contain life, for better or for worse, just like us.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  To our eventual enslavement. May we all find a good hiding spot.

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• 20:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio in the Bell House.

• 20:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got two-time shuttle astronaut Mike Massimino, a local boy from Nassau County, Long Island. We got you. Eugene Merman, we're in your house here, the Bell House.

• 20:54Speaker 03

  Yes, at my house. I live in a performance space.

• 20:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kristen Shaw, welcome. You told me backstage, you're recently engaged. Congratulations.

• 21:05Speaker 03

  Sorry, guys.

• 21:08Speaker 03

  And John Hodgman.

• 21:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The one and only John Hodgman.

• 21:11Speaker 03

  He's been married for years.

• 21:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we've got Mike who fixes our telescope. But the telescope has a purpose, and other telescopes have purpose. And so, we design him, we build him, we launch him, we service them. But at the end of the day, it's about discovering the universe. In there, we also have a telescope that is specifically tuned for finding Earth-like planets orbiting Sun-like stars. And it's named after a famous German mathematician from 400 years ago, Johannes Kepler.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He was the first guy, you're not gonna read about this, it's there but no one says this. Kepler was the first person-

• 21:52Speaker 03

  He's the original drummer of the Rolling Stones.

• 21:55Speaker 04

  Literally, I promise you, you will not find that.

• 21:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kepler was the first human being to write down an equation that enabled you to predict phenomenon in the universe. After Kepler, and then a little later, especially after Newton, the universe became a knowable place. Before then, everything was mysterious.

• 22:20Speaker 03

  Tell that to the moon god.

• 22:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, Kepler has recently logged hundreds of planets.

• 22:29Speaker 04

  Kepler, the telescope, not the immortal guy.

• 22:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not the guy who's now dead, right. So, we named this telescope in honor of Kepler because he first wrote down the equation for the orbits of planets around the Sun. So, here we have this telescope. In the old days, we would look for planets by the effect that that planet had on the movement of the Sun around which it orbited. Because the planet's too dim, you can't see it. So, you'd see the star jiggle. Okay?

• 23:01Speaker 04

  I don't know that I'm ready for that chili.

• 23:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a jiggle.

• 23:04Speaker 05

  And that jiggle don't lie.

• 23:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That jiggle don't lie, okay? So-

• 23:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The best kind of planet to find is the massive kind because that's tugging on the planet all the more.

• 23:16Speaker 05

  You said it.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  You definitely look...

• 23:17Speaker 05

  You said it.

• 23:18Speaker 04

  Okay, okay.

• 23:19Speaker 05

  That is the best planet.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  Your gestures also look like you're having sex with one of those giant creatures from Avatar.

• 23:25Speaker 04

  Or a butter churn. All right, all right, let's go.

• 23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so...

• 23:29Speaker 05

  You're back to the massive planet.

• 23:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The massive planets jiggle the host star. So, our first 500 planets...

• 23:35Speaker 04

  So you're saying that huge, huge planets cause the star itself to move?

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To move, and it's the movement of the star back and forth. From our point of view, we measure, in fact, the Doppler shift of the planet. In not a fundamentally different way from the way police measure with their radar the speed of your car. So, the first 500 planets in the catalog are Jupiter-sized. But we really, at the end of the day, we want to find Earths. Kepler's designed to find Earths, so it's a different method. So it watches solar systems that are... star systems that are oriented edge-on. And when they're edge-on, planets in that system then eclipse the host star. So you monitor the light of the host star, and then it takes a dip. And it stays dipped for a while, and then it comes back out. And that dip, the depth of that dip,

• 24:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  the width of that dip, gives you the size of the planet and the orbital period. And that will tell you exactly where it is in orbit around the host star, enabling you to calculate how big it is and whether or not it is in the Goldilocks zone, the habitable zone where water, in the presence of an atmosphere, would remain liquid. Too close, you vaporize. You become steam. Too far away, you freeze. And life as we know it requires liquid water. So the holy grail in the planet search is an Earth-like planet in the Goldilocks zone. And three weeks ago, Kepler, the telescope, the 22nd object in its catalog, the second planet in the star system, Kepler 22b. A Goldilocks planet, the first ever.

• 25:06Speaker 04

  Not too hard, not too soft, not too hot, not too cold.

• 25:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not too hot, not too cold.

• 25:11Speaker 04

  Just right. The perfect temperature for a young girl to fall asleep.

• 25:17Speaker 03

  So also, you're saying there's no steam aliens?

• 25:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we don't know. All we know is to look for life as we know it.

• 25:23Speaker 04

  How far away is it?

• 25:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is 600 light-years away.

• 25:27Speaker 04

  Let's build a generation ship.

• 25:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So-

• 25:31Speaker 04

  That's all I needed to hear.

• 25:31Speaker 03

  I think we already have a captain for it.

• 25:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the right stuff would include fertility tests in a generation ship.

• 25:38Speaker 04

  Apparently.

• 25:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, I don't know if you want to do this because the fastest ships we've ever built that didn't even have humans on it, just hardware, with no intent of bringing them back.

• 25:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because machines don't care if you bring them back.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  Are they faster than a Porsche Cayenne?

• 25:59Speaker 04

  That's really the slowest of the Porsches you understand.

• 26:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, in fact, actually. So the fastest the astronauts go is like 5 miles per second. We've sent hardware 7, 10, 15 miles per second out the solar system. Okay, at that speed, if we could put you on that, in your generation ship, to go to Kepler 22b 600 light-years away?

• 26:20Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 26:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you do the math, comes out to be somewhere about 40 million years.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  Wow, so we would have to fold space to really do this?

• 26:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you'd have to be

• 26:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  really fertile.

• 26:35Speaker 03

  You'd have to be really fertile or fold a lot of space.

• 26:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 26:41Speaker 03

  Or you'd need a Stargate like the kind in Buck Rogers.

• 26:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you need to warp space. In the sheet of paper I have here, you want to cross a vast gap in space. You warp it so that one edge comes close to the other. And then you have to cut a hole, like a wormhole, through space. Then you unfold it again, and there you are, far away from where you once were, and you got there during the TV commercial.

• 27:05Speaker 03

  Is that a-

• 27:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's what Star Trek did.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  Is that within the realm of physics as we understand it, or no?

• 27:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, it is not precluded by laws of physics, and the only limits are on engineering and our capacity to wield extreme sources of energy.

• 27:20Speaker 03

  So we need a nuclear space folder?

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  That I'm going to build-

• 27:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so right now-

• 27:25Speaker 03

  In part slow.

• 27:26Speaker 04

  You need a bucket of energy.

• 27:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's the problem, right now, our energy, we're like extracting it from fossil fuels beneath our feet.

• 27:33Speaker 04

  Right.

• 27:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is as primitive as it gets.

• 27:35Speaker 04

  But it is American.

• 27:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is American.

• 27:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Next.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  We would have to send Iran itself into space.

• 27:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the next level here is if you master the forces of energy that Earth exhibits. So imagine tapping a volcano for the energy that it contained and using it for our purposes.

• 27:53Speaker 04

  A volcano space folder?

• 27:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we're getting there. It turns out that's not even enough energy.

• 27:58Speaker 04

  You need to build a lava drive, is what you're saying.

• 28:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you have lava, now hurricanes come and ready to level a city. You tap the cyclonic energy of the hurricane to drive the energy needs of the city that the hurricane might have otherwise leveled. Imagine that power over nature. We are far from that at this moment. So all the energy on Earth is insufficient. The next level of energy is you find a way to capture all the energy from your star. That's not enough energy.

• 28:23Speaker 04

  What?

• 28:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To tear a wormhole where the sun don't shine?

• 28:28Speaker 04

  What if you blow up a sun inside a black hole?

• 28:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so here's what happens.

• 28:32Speaker 04

  And then shoot it with a rifle.

• 28:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need the energy of all the stars in a galaxy channeled to tear a hole through the fabric of space and time. We do not wield that much energy, nor will we in any time in the foreseeable future. So this wormhole concept...

• 28:53Speaker 04

  Wait a minute. You find this beautiful planet.

• 28:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:55Speaker 04

  You name a drink after it. You put it up there, like, "Look at this. This great investment of our blood and treasure, the Kepler telescope." And now you're sitting here depressing me, saying, "No human can ever get there, no robot can ever get there."

• 29:07Speaker 05

  Can't you just shoot your ship up a little bit higher?

• 29:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good idea.

• 29:11Speaker 05

  A little bit higher and then you'll get there sooner.

• 29:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sooner than 40 million years?

• 29:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:15Speaker 03

  So what's the energy you would need to do this? So there's no known energy that you're aware of?

• 29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's about the energy of all the stars in all the galaxy.

• 29:22Speaker 03

  That would take to fold space?

• 29:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, in this way, to tear a hole in space and keep it open while you travel through it.

• 29:29Speaker 05

  It seems like that might hurt us.

• 29:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it collapses down on you.

• 29:36Speaker 04

  Look, I'm glad to know that it's there, I guess. There are a lot of things in my life that I cannot have. But what do we gain by knowing that this planet exists?

• 29:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so what do we gain? The knowledge that perhaps we're not alone. Sometimes the knowledge itself can be transformative. Consider, for example, the first image brought back from NASA of Earthrise over the lunar landscape. That image didn't otherwise put food on your plate. It didn't otherwise directly affect anything, but it changed how we saw Earth. Here was a mission to the moon, and for the first time, we saw Earth. A change in perspective and a change in attitude can galvanize a nation in a way that, in fact, you can trace the modern conservation movement to the day that image was published.

• 30:26Speaker 04

  Are you talking about the climate change conspiracy?

• 30:32Speaker 03

  Or are you talking about Woodstock?

• 30:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ideas can be deeply influential on a culture.

• 30:40Speaker 03

  Name one idea that's influenced.

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's imagine life on the Goldilocks planet, Kepler-22b. It's two and a half times the diameter of the Earth. And the math works out so that, in fact, if it had the same sort of density as Earth, but was two and a half times bigger, you'd weigh two and a half times more.

• 31:00Speaker 03

  And they'd beat us up. I see everything as conquering. So if they came here, not only would they be able to have all the power of all of the stars in the universe, but they'd punch us very hard.

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, if they're accustomed to supporting that much weight in their moving bodies, we would be trivial to conquer, for sure. But there are other creatures where their weight doesn't really matter, like fishes. They're neutrally buoyant. You know, insects, bacteria, they don't care what they weigh.

• 31:26Speaker 03

  I definitely hope that on that planet there aren't insects that could come here and beat us up. That didn't go so well in Starship Troopers.

• 31:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, it did not.

• 31:34Speaker 03

  And I don't know that we would benefit from it.

• 31:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, when we come back, I just want to get a sense of what the future will bring, in space or not.

• 31:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 31:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to StarTalk Radio. You can like us on Facebook.

• 31:50Speaker 05

  Good try.

• 31:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Find us at StarTalk Radio. And we'll be back in just a moment. We are live from the Bell House in Brooklyn.

• 32:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. We're continuing the broadcast of our second live show, recorded at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York, on December 18th, 2011. Joining me that night were my co-host, the comedian Eugene Mirman, the comedians Kristen Schaal and John Hodgman, and Mike Massimino, a NASA astronaut who flew on two space shuttle missions to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. So in this segment, I just want to talk about the future. Mike, you've been in space, but now we don't have a vehicle to get out of low Earth orbit. Do you still dream about going into space? Culturally, personally, what?

• 32:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think we are a spacefaring species. We have grown up with people going to space, you know, when I was a little kid, to the moon. Right now, we've ended the shuttle program, but we're hopefully going to be getting a vehicle to launch people, not only to the space station, we have some private companies that are coming very close to being able to launch people to the space station, but we're also going to be looking to go beyond low Earth orbit as well. So I think right now, we're, you know, we're flying with our friends, with our Russian colleagues, and so we still have access. We have Americans in space right now.

• 33:20Speaker 04

  If you had said in 1980, that in the year 2011, which is what this is, Americans would not be going into space unless they're hitching a ride on a Russian space vehicle, Ronald Reagan would shoot you in the head.

• 33:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, all right, and John, it's worse than that.

• 33:37Speaker 04

  Well, thank you.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  Worse than Ronald Reagan shooting you in the head? Go on.

• 33:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's worse than that. In the 60s and 70s, there were two spacefaring nations. In the 2010s, there are still two spacefaring nations, but one of them is not the United States.

• 33:55Speaker 05

  It's China.

• 33:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is China.

• 33:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is the tragedy of this history.

• 34:00Speaker 05

  You hate Chinese people.

• 34:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know how we can get to Mars?

• 34:07Speaker 03

  Practice, practice, practice?

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got a whole book on this coming out.

• 34:19Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 34:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  February 2012.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, when's it coming out, Neil?

• 34:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  February 2012. It's called Space Chronicles. But in there, all we have to do, I do this. I'll go to China and go to the head of state and just whisper, say, "Leak a memo that says you want to put military bases on Mars." Just, it doesn't have to be true, just leak it. We catch a hold of that memo, we're on Mars 14 months later. Cause that's what drives us. We tell ourselves, "We're spacefaring, we're discoverers, we're explorers." We went to the moon because we were at war with the Ruskies. At war, that's what drove it. And you know what happened? When Bush Senior, in 1989, on July 20th, the 20th anniversary of the Apollo landing,

• 35:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  he got on the steps of the Air and Space Museum and tried to give a Kennedy-esque speech and said, "Let us go back into space, to the moon and Mars and beyond." It fell on deaf ears, you know why? Not because he lacked the charisma of Kennedy, not because people thought... I said, "It's not because of that." It's not because it cost a lot of money. You know, they'll say that that's why, but that's not the reason why. You know what happened in 1989? Peace broke out in Europe. The wall came down. There was no longer the motivating force.

• 35:38Speaker 03

  God damn it!

• 35:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why it didn't continue.

• 35:45Speaker 05

  So we have to shed blood to get back out there?

• 35:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so I don't want that to happen. I'm just saying, we should be honest with the original motivations. That's, you can say, "We did it because it's in our DNA, bulloni." Yes, it's in our DNA, but somebody's got the right to check, and it's not in their DNA. Another driver is just simply an economic driver. It's the one that I put forth. If you reinvest in NASA and think big, you go to Mars, okay? Everybody's, "Hey, we're going to Mars, and who's that astronaut class?" Well, they're in middle school now. Let's track them. Are they eating well, or?

• 36:20Speaker 03

  Now it's getting creepy.

• 36:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Team Beat will write about them. People want to emulate them.

• 36:25Speaker 03

  Team Beat ended in 1961!

• 36:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whatever writes about Justin Bieber will write about them. They become the astronauts who land on Mars. And the whole nation participates in that exercise.

• 36:38Speaker 05

  I just wish you were right, but you're so wrong. Because we can't even name the five women that won Nobel Prizes. One for economics, but we can name five supermodels who walked down Victoria's Secrets in bras.

• 36:52Speaker 03

  I can name neither.

• 36:53Speaker 05

  We're just off, we're off. Like, our whole culture isn't centered on intelligence and space vision. This is not gonna happen.

• 36:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was an error when, in fact, it was. That's why I think it can be reclaimed.

• 37:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, it's dead now.

• 37:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I wanna resurrect it.

• 37:04Speaker 03

  The hopeful Kristen Shaw.

• 37:06Speaker 05

  Give me a bra!

• 37:08Speaker 04

  But obviously, but obviously, the Chinese don't feel that way. Are the Chinese gunning for space?

• 37:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 37:14Speaker 04

  Because of a practical application? Or because of national stature?

• 37:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  National stature, primarily.

• 37:20Speaker 04

  Because basically, what you're saying to me is, "We're never gonna reach Kebler 22b."

• 37:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 37:25Speaker 04

  Mars is an arbitrary object, anyway. We're all just doing this for bragging rights.

• 37:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, I think, no, I claim that if it becomes part of our culture, once again, people will wanna become scientists and engineers. And even those who don't will be sensitized to the ambitions of a scientifically and engineeringally-driven culture. So you vote for the right people who allocate those monies.

• 37:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So then, then you galvanize the nation. And guess what happens?

• 37:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That culture fosters innovations in science and technology, even outside of space. And it births new economies in the 21st century, which are required, if you wanna compete internationally, with your economic strength. And, and war and economic drivers are the two biggest...

• 38:12Speaker 03

  We need an iPad war!

• 38:15Speaker 04

  War and economic drivers.

• 38:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The second biggest driver of human action after war is money.

• 38:24Speaker 03

  I thought you were gonna say porn.

• 38:26Speaker 05

  That's the third, I hope.

• 38:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Actually, did you know astrophysics, the study of the universe, is the second-oldest profession?

• 38:35Speaker 03

  Now I do. Apparently, you don't know about blacksmiths.

• 38:48Speaker 04

  I will say this, that we do know that innovation itself is extremely expensive. And that if you want to say something other than the touchy-feely stuff that you're talking about, there's a practical application, which is that a publicly-funded space program has traditionally driven innovation, and particularly miniaturization of computing power, right? Which obviously affects our life today very seriously. So, to continue that, you would actually publicly fund innovation in a way that would trickle down, to use a terrible term, to everyone. And in fact, innovation is so expensive, and in the private market, so not worth following, that it's actually, there's a real reason for public investment in these things. So, do you think the future of space exploration is going to fall in public hands, or in private enterprise?

• 39:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The moving frontier of space exploration can never fall in the hands of the private sector, because the frontier is dangerous and has uncertain risks.

• 39:44Speaker 04

  And unproven profit.

• 39:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there's nothing more fearsome to the investor than uncertain risks. So, a government takes that on, they get the patents, they take the risks, they have the failures, they create the charts and the maps, then they hand it over to the next generation of the entrepreneurs. And they then can exploit all of the now-known risks in the capital markets. And that's how it's always been. The Dutch East India Trading Company was not the first to get to America from Europe.

• 40:16Speaker 04

  They were the first to the moon, though. Let's face it.

• 40:18Speaker 06

  But isn't it kind of what's happening, hopefully happening now with low Earth orbit, not going beyond?

• 40:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, because we've already been to low Earth orbit. So, you hand that over. No reason NASA-

• 40:29Speaker 04

  Here you go, Richard Branson.

• 40:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No reason NASA should go...NASA been there, done that. Let somebody else do it, and he'll do it for less.

• 40:36Speaker 03

  Let's send Subway, the restaurant company.

• 40:39Speaker 05

  You're hungry.

• 40:42Speaker 04

  I hear ya, I hear ya.

• 40:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Innovation, yes, it's expensive, but you need a driver to have everyone participate. And I'm just submitting that when your vision is big, so too are your ambitions. And it's the synergy of that folded into the operations of our culture that will establish what our future is going to be as a nation.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  Do you think we could fold space on simply your love of science? Because I believe we maybe could.

• 41:14Speaker 03

  You will single-handedly get America to reinvest in public space programs.

• 41:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm trying.

• 41:22Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 41:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Guys, we gotta wrap this up.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 41:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you know, actually, we're gonna have a Q and A session with you guys.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A quick one, a quick Q and A.

• 41:30Speaker 03

  A four-hour Q and A session, yeah.

• 41:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right in front row, yes.

• 41:35Speaker 05

  My question was with generational travel, wouldn't it seem if we did send, say for example, a ship out there, that by the time it was a quarter of the way through the journey, wouldn't we be zipping past them in the ultra-upgraded ship that is now 200 times better than that? Kinda like the horse and buggy versus, you know, they'll be flying fast in like a Pinto or something.

• 41:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so what you're saying is, if it takes 20 million years to get there.

• 41:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I send you on your route, then in...

• 42:00Speaker 04

  10 million years from now.

• 42:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, oh, in a mere 10 million years, we'll get there in a few seconds and just whiz by and see.

• 42:07Speaker 05

  So would it even make sense to do any kind of generational travel at that point? Because we don't have the...

• 42:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's the problem, that argument was given about going to the moon. They said, "Why go to the moon now, it's so expensive, let's wait 30 years when it's really cheap."

• 42:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At some point, you just gotta do.

• 42:24Speaker 05

  Just do.

• 42:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, while you may be right, what I would imagine is, 10 million years, you pick 'em up on the way.

• 42:32Speaker 05

  Right.

• 42:33Speaker 03

  Honestly, I think what we know is, we should definitely wait till we can fold space.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  Come on, people!

• 42:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what's curious to me is, what we don't know is, when you send a fertile community forward, that becomes an isolated human gene pool.

• 42:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 42:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, it's susceptible to all the things that could happen in isolated gene pools.

• 42:54Speaker 04

  Everyone grows antlers, is what he's talking about.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  They're gonna honestly have some pretty cool community theater, someone worry.

• 43:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, no, they could speciate, or we could speciate differently from they, and then we would just branch, have two different branches.

• 43:09Speaker 03

  Like Vulcans and Romulans, you know?

• 43:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When StarTalk Radio continues, we'll have more audience questions from our live show at the Bell House in Brooklyn, New York.

• 43:26Speaker 01

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• 44:42Speaker 05

  Perception Box. One's own perception of consciousness. And the Perception Box. Hi, I'm Elizabeth Koch. What's a Perception Box? You could think of it as a kind of reality filter that's constantly shaping how we see ourselves, other people, and the world around us. Yet we often don't even recognize it's there. Your face is a mask, and you're behind this mask.

• 45:02Speaker 06

  Science of Perception Box. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

• 45:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Let's get right back into some audience questions posed at the Bell House during our live show with Eugene Mirman, Kristen Schaal, John Hodgman, and NASA astronaut Mike Massimino.

• 45:27Speaker 03

  This question's for Mike. So during your mission, you're replacing some sort of panels, and there's this handle, and you had to unscrew the handle and one of the screws stripped. Stuck. And so, no, it was this PBS special. It was on tonight. But the engineers were trying to figure out how to fix this thing, and they said to break it. And you basically broke this handle off of the Hubble telescope. And how'd you do that?

• 45:58Speaker 06

  There's a long explanation as to why that happened. But basically, in order to repair this instrument, which had panels that we had to remove, and we had to remove a circuit board and put a new one in, there was a handrail in the way. We thought it was going to be very easy to remove. It had big screws, which were usually easy to undo.

• 46:13Speaker 03

  You spent two years practicing.

• 46:15Speaker 06

  Spent two years practicing. It wasn't a problem in practice, but we had a problem with one of the screws. Three of them came out easily, and one couldn't budge. And we could not repair this instrument, which was going to unlock the secrets of the universe and try to find these Earth-like planets or whatever. We couldn't do that until I could get this handrail out of the way. And these engineers on the ground had to act very quickly because, you know, the clock was ticking, and they just told me just to rip it off. The way I did that, what I thought of when I grabbed my hand around that handrail, was I thought of my Uncle Frank, when I was a little kid, was having trouble with an oil filter in his car, right? Comes across the street, and it's all greasy, and he's looking for my dad. My dad goes down a basement and grabs a gigantic screwdriver and tells me, "Come across the street, maybe you'll learn something." And he knocks the screwdriver through the oil filter and gets out of the way. My Uncle Frank grabs a rag and grabbed

• 46:59Speaker 06

  the big screwdriver and starts yanking on this thing. So finally, and he was cursing, of course, until he finally could get the oil filter to budge. And I swear to you, that's exactly what I was thinking of inside the Hubble Space Telescope. I was like, "This one's for you, Uncle Frank."

• 47:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I was thinking of. The oil filter and my Uncle Frank.

• 47:14Speaker 06

  Let's hear it for Uncle Frank.

• 47:19Speaker 06

  Next question, right here ma'am.

• 47:21Speaker 05

  Hi, so I'm about to finish my PhD. I studied planetary volcanology and I want to be an astronaut. So I was wondering if Mike has any advice for someone who might want to apply for the astronaut program, how to get noticed?

• 47:33Speaker 06

  Well, you know, right now, we are taking applications. Does everyone know that?

• 47:36Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 47:36Speaker 06

  This doesn't happen all the time. It used to happen when I was a planet, it was about every two years. We had a class in 2009, we'll probably have another one in 2012, probably, hopefully. Get your applications in now. I don't know, the deadline's coming up, I think, too.

• 47:49Speaker 05

  February, maybe?

• 47:50Speaker 06

  Alright, well, you know, you've got till then, and then that's gonna be it.

• 47:53Speaker 05

  How do I stand out? How do I make myself look good?

• 47:54Speaker 04

  The real trick is the essay question. And I am...

• 47:58Speaker 05

  Maybe a video.

• 47:59Speaker 06

  Uh, remember that the people that are gonna be reading your application are probably people like me, astronauts, right? So try to make it easy to read, okay? If you can make it simple, what you did, there probably gonna be someone in your field that might read it, too.

• 48:11Speaker 04

  Use the word vertiginous as much as possible.

• 48:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, be careful with the words you use.

• 48:17Speaker 05

  And send him a peanut butter pizza.

• 48:20Speaker 06

  Yes. And remember, lots of people like me, and many others, are in the same position you were, okay? So there's hope. So try to be as positive as you can about it, represent yourself well, and hope for the best.

• 48:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And in case people didn't know, Earth does not have the most active volcanoes in the solar system. They are found on the moons of Jupiter, and if you're a planetary volcanologist, which is vulcan-amazing that you...

• 48:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just, power to you! There's a lot of volcanoes in the solar system, waiting for your attention. And do you also do ice volcanoes?

• 48:54Speaker 05

  I'd like to.

• 48:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Add them to your resume, they are the future of volcanoes. Because a volcano, we think of as hot, simply because on Earth, the gases that build up need to be heated. There are environments where all you just need is something to evaporate and put pressure, and there are liquids that go gaseous at deeply frozen temperatures. Pressure builds up at 100 degrees below zero, and they hurl chunks of ice. And you have an ice volcano, so keep those on your resume.

• 49:20Speaker 05

  I will. Thank you.

• 49:21Speaker 06

  Good luck.

• 49:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got it.

• 49:22Speaker 06

  Good luck.

• 49:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just a few more questions.

• 49:26Speaker 04

  Lightning round. This is a question for Neil. I know your favorite planet is Saturn.

• 49:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Indeed. Maybe Earth, but Saturn, close second.

• 49:32Speaker 04

  Okay. So I was wondering what your thoughts, or maybe even a hypothesis, of the hexagon located at the pole.

• 49:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The hexagon on the pole of Saturn?

• 49:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Remains one of the greatest mysteries that I've ever seen in the solar system, and I think is awesome. There's a hexagon in the structure of the gas clouds in the poles of Saturn. Clouds don't make hexagons. They're making it on Saturn. There have been some people who have duplicated that in the lab.

• 49:55Speaker 04

  Right.

• 49:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With very special conditions. But this is happening naturally, just on its own, so...

• 50:00Speaker 05

  Or is it?

• 50:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or is it? So it's a mystery. It's a fun mystery. Last question of the night.

• 50:06Speaker 05

  Mine's double or nothing.

• 50:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry.

• 50:08Speaker 05

  Mine's question is about the Ultra Hubble Deep Field image.

• 50:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 50:12Speaker 05

  It's with relativity and the expansion of the universe. What's happening 180 degrees away from the other angle that we took the Hubble Deep Field image? Are we seeing the same universe, or the same galaxies? Are we seeing different galaxies?

• 50:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Excellent. So, amazing photo that the Hubble telescope took, enabled by the handy repairs of this gentleman. That...

• 50:35Speaker 04

  He pulled the handle off a thing.

• 50:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With a screwdriver.

• 50:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we look out, we find what we think is a very uninteresting patch of sky, where there are no stars in our own galaxy to get in the way. And we take the Hubble telescope, open up its shutter, and just stare for hours and hours and hours. And we accumulate that light.

• 50:58Speaker 03

  Are we high at the time, or are we...?

• 50:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No. The camera stares, and we accumulate the very weak light signals. And as you stare it long enough, the weak signal becomes stronger and stronger in your detector. And so the dimmest things in the universe reveal themselves, and it's called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field.

• 51:17Speaker 05

  Right.

• 51:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There was a previous image called the Hubble Deep Field. We said, "Now that we know how to do it, let's go ultra." And it is one patch of sky, one one-hundredth the area of the full moon in one direction in the universe. And you see like a gazillion galaxies in this picture. This one packed, postage stamp on the night sky. And so you can say, "I'm looking at this small area, and there's this many galaxies. Let me multiply it by every possible one of these directions. I get a count for how many galaxies in the universe." You get about 50 to 100 billion.

• 51:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you might say, "Well, how do I know that? Maybe this direction is completely different. Maybe 180 degrees is different. Maybe this direction is the same as that direction in a looped, folded universe." We've actually done that experiment. So, there's a Hubble Deep Field north, and we went 180 degrees and went a Hubble Deep Field south. And it is statistically indistinguishable from Hubble Deep Field north, giving us the confidence that our inferences from this one direction, doubled up in a completely opposite direction, gives us a representative sample of what any direction would reveal in the universe. And we look for pattern recognition. Is there a pattern the same? Could it be the same but flipped? Left, right, up, down?

• 52:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is different. The universe does not loop back on itself. It is a one-way expansion. And the Hubble Deep Field is, in fact, probing the universe on scales never before seen that will soon be surpassed by the James Webb Space Telescope. Guys, this has been our second Bell House Live Star Talk. And Eugene, you invited us back here to do this.

• 52:55Speaker 03

  Of course. No, this was awesome. We had so much fun.

• 52:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You always bring in some great folks here.

• 53:01Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 53:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kristen, John. It's been awesome. And Mike Massimino. The man.

• 53:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've been listening to Star Talk Radio, brought to you in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

• 53:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As always, keep looking up.

• 53:46Speaker 01

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