Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast The “Bang” in Big Bang with Charles Liu About this episode Could slowing time increase mass? Do particles ever collide or do they just get really really close? Did anything go “bang” during the Big Bang? Neil deGrasse Tyson, co-host Paul Mecurio, and astrophysicist Charles Liu tackle these cosmic questions and more!
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Paul, those are some fun questions and a cosmic queries grab bag.
0:03 Paul Mecurio? And from all over the world, literally.
0:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All over the world.
0:06 Paul Mecurio? And you know, what I think what people are going to see in the upcoming episode is that we pretty obliterate time.
0:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Time.
0:13 Paul Mecurio? Smush it.
0:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Time is succumbs to our logic and rational thought. Coming up on StarTalk.
0:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And they got with me as co-host today, Paul Mecurio. Paul, welcome back.
0:46 Paul Mecurio? Uh, thanks, thanks for having me. Great to be back with you, buddy.
0:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, this is the attorney, stockbroker turned comedian.
0:53 Paul Mecurio? Yes, attorney, investment banker turned comedian.
0:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's nothing funny about lawyers and stockbrokers.
0:59 Paul Mecurio? No, exactly.
1:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
1:01 Paul Mecurio? I have other way to like run from it as fast as I can.
1:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right. So Paul, we're going to do grab bag cosmic queries.
1:07 Paul Mecurio? We are, we got some great queries here.
1:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I don't trust myself in grab bag mode.
1:11 Paul Mecurio? Uh, yeah.
1:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I need backup.
1:13 Paul Mecurio? Yes, you did.
1:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I gotta go for the big guns.
1:15 Paul Mecurio? You need your Starsky, your hutch.
1:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Starsky and Scott, yeah. I get my 70 to get that reference.
1:23 Paul Mecurio? He did pull up in a Ford Torino.
1:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Charles Lu, welcome back to StarTalk.
1:28 Charles Liu? Hi Neil, it's great to be back.
1:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Charles, long time friend, our families are friends and colleagues.
1:33 Charles Liu? Yes.
1:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You were here when we built the new Rose Center for Earth and Space.
1:38 Charles Liu? Yes.
1:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? 25 years ago.
1:39 Charles Liu? Has it been that long?
1:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's been a quarter century.
1:41 Charles Liu? Geez, it feels like yesterday that I came over here and this place was a hole in the ground.
1:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, it does feel that way. And it was, you have intellectual and sweat equity in what we built here. So we're thankful for that.
1:52 Charles Liu? Ah, it was fun.
1:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And.
1:54 Paul Mecurio? That's weird, because when we were talking, he wasn't here, you said he didn't do much.
1:58 Charles Liu? You took a lot of the credit.
2:00 Paul Mecurio? I don't know.
2:01 Charles Liu? You know, he's not wrong. I was just hanging out here all night, having a great time. Yeah, that's all it was.
2:08 Paul Mecurio? Just jump right in?
2:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, all right, let's do it.
2:10 Paul Mecurio? This is Galaxy. Hey, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Lou.
2:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But Galaxy is the person.
2:15 Paul Mecurio? Uh, yeah, Galaxy.
2:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Galaxy, okay.
2:18 Paul Mecurio? I am Brian from Roseville, California. I just recently joined the Patreon and I'm excited to have my question answered.
2:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome.
2:25 Paul Mecurio? Yes.
2:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right. Welcome to the universe.
2:32 Charles Liu? We dim the lights when you do that?
2:35 Paul Mecurio? I have always wondered how giant gas clouds and nebula exist in space. Shouldn't the vacuum cause all gas to disperse evenly to the point of not being even even being able to see it?
2:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I love that because on Earth, any cloud of gas disperses.
2:52 Charles Liu? That's right.
2:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As as dogs know.
2:55 Charles Liu? That's right.
2:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Dogs will smell you from far away because whatever is your stank.
3:02 Charles Liu? One minute and he says the guest has stank. Uh, this is a lesson anybody watching on how not to host a show.
3:09 Paul Mecurio? At least it's not smell avision.
3:12 Charles Liu? Goodness gracious.
3:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so it does dissipate.
3:16 Charles Liu? It's a great question.
3:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You look at blood in the water and that that.
3:19 Paul Mecurio? Does it dissipate evenly?
3:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, it's a diffusion equation where you have molecules. It wouldn't happen in solid because all the molecules are just rigid, but in a in a fluid.
3:32 Charles Liu? They can vibrate.
3:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, but you're not going to move it through the system.
3:34 Charles Liu? There's a phase, there's a phase issue.
3:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm saying it's not going to move through the system.
3:38 Charles Liu? Just trying to get technical.
3:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, and.
3:40 Paul Mecurio? Wow, this is getting tense already.
3:42 Charles Liu? Well, he called me skank. I mean, what am I supposed to do?
3:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I didn't say skank.
3:46 Charles Liu? You know what?
3:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I said stank.
3:47 Charles Liu? We don't need this. We'll do our own show.
3:48 Paul Mecurio? There we go.
3:49 Charles Liu? Okay, Paul, we out of here.
3:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so the diffusion equate, so you have a molecule that can move like all the others, and it just works its way through.
3:59 Charles Liu? Yeah.
3:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In my high school, we had, there was a diffusion experiment where they, there's a long tube, it was one of these display, because we didn't have any athletic trophies. So you got to put other stuff in your hallway, display cases.
4:16 Charles Liu? There's a hall of beakers?
4:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, one of them is a very tall beaker, yes, about this tall, if I remember correctly. That was littler, not much littler, but I think it was this big, and there was ink at the bottom, and they carefully put water on top of it. And throughout the year, you got to watch, because the ink is slightly denser, but still they're both fluids, and so you get to watch the ink work its way up real slowly.
4:44 Charles Liu? Yeah, at my high school, they had diffusion experiments every afternoon after the school lunches were served bean soup. And in every classroom, there would be an experiment of different particles suspended in the atmosphere, moving from one side of the classroom to the other, after you first heard that something was coming.
5:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And people didn't figure out to not eat the bean soup.
5:05 Paul Mecurio? Right, exactly. And that's where you got your name, Skank.
5:07 Charles Liu? Stank, stank, stank, stank.
5:10 Paul Mecurio? So did you, um, but would, could you do that same with the ink? Could you do it with oil, like cooking oil?
5:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, it's harder, no, because oil would float, and the missibility between oil and water is very different between, because ink is, has, is, most inks that we use today are water-based anyway, so the water is finding the water molecules.
5:32 Charles Liu? Yeah, so, so Brian, your, the answer is basically, the conditions out in space make it so that these gas particles tend to disperse unless they have a reason to collect, okay? Here on Earth, you have different kinds of things like buoyancy involved and things like that, that also happens in space, but in space, when the temperatures are very low, say 400 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, gravity can actually overcome a lot of the emotional, sort of, dispersive, diffusive.
6:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Emotional?
6:04 Charles Liu? Emotional.
6:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Emotional?
6:06 Charles Liu? Yes, it could be emotional.
6:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's very moving.
6:12 Charles Liu? That's right. You tear up. You start crying a lot.
6:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Emotional, I never heard that word.
6:17 Charles Liu? About to become a star. Oh, my gosh.
6:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. Yeah, some guys start to become stars, yeah.
6:22 Charles Liu? Yeah, when it's cold, the random motions of the gases are actually overcome by the mutual gravity that they exert on each other.
6:29 Paul Mecurio? Does it happen, is it dispersing in an even nature evenly?
6:33 Charles Liu? Not at all. Everything is turbulent. If you go see, for example, beautiful pictures of, say, the Orion Nebula or other interstellar clouds, you see that they're streaky and strange and unusual shape. They look like horse heads, they look like helixes and cat's eyes and things like that. And that's completely because the turbulence is still going on.
6:52 Paul Mecurio? Is it that or because you're smoking something funny?
6:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That too. You know? Both work.
6:56 Charles Liu? We gotta ask these stars that are emitting their planetary nebulae, what are they smoking? I think that would be a very, very good idea. But the bottom line is that in space, you have gravity holding these clouds together long enough for them to do things like form stars and planets. But there's always these forces and these different energies and so forth for trying to disperse them. And so you get beautiful combinations, and that's why you get beautiful nebulae, and you get things like stars and planets.
7:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I will add that you have a gas cloud that makes a family of stars. So that eats up most of the mass of the gas cloud, but there's part of the gas that didn't participate in the formation of the planets.
7:38 Paul Mecurio? A little snooty, like you were in high school. A little standoffish.
7:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It just wasn't there. And that gas doesn't always land on a star.
7:48 Paul Mecurio? Do we know why, in all seriousness?
7:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, now, the gas doesn't have enough gravity to make it a next star. We're done.
7:55 Paul Mecurio? No, but at the time, and I'm not trying to be funny.
7:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, no, it's too far away. So watch out.
7:59 Paul Mecurio? That gas, like all the other gases, had an equal opportunity to be part of that.
8:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's not an equal opportunity system. If you're a little too far away, you might not feel the strong enough gravity to participate, and the stars form without you, and then the whole galaxy is rotating. Okay? So your whole system with your stars and your gas is moving, and this... Other stuff, so your gas can get stripped and scatter into the galaxy, never to make another star.
8:26 Paul Mecurio? So that gas just continues as gas throughout the universe?
8:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And this is, these are the particles that comprise the interstellar medium, even between the gas clouds. It's not completely empty.
8:38 Paul Mecurio? Okay.
8:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
8:39 Paul Mecurio? And can that gas marry with other gases?
8:41 Charles Liu? Eventually.
8:41 Paul Mecurio? Eventually and sort of possibly be part of another?
8:44 Charles Liu? It depends completely on like what Neil was saying. What is the rotational shear? What is the temperature in the environment? How much of it just happens to gather at this moment? Whether it can actually collect or not collect? It's really beautiful and fascinating. But the funny thing is, it is very, very sparse. Right here on Earth, we have trillions upon trillions of particles of gas, even in the tiniest, you know, eker or vial. But out in space, just even a couple of hundred miles above Earth's surface, we're lucky if we even get one gas particle.
9:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It'd be the best vacuum ever created on Earth.
9:19 Charles Liu? Yeah.
9:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is what, just space.
9:21 Charles Liu? So people who study interstellar clouds are literally studying nothing.
9:24 Paul Mecurio? Yeah.
9:25 Charles Liu? And yet that's the nothing from which we come.
9:27 Paul Mecurio? Right, so it's endlessly fascinating.
9:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Such is the layout of this cosmic ballet.
9:33 Paul Mecurio? Well said.
9:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Choreographed by the forces of gravity.
9:36 Charles Liu? It's more like a Martha Graham kind of ballet makes it too orderly.
9:41 Paul Mecurio? I don't know, I'm feeling Alvin Ailey.
9:43 Charles Liu? Ah, okay.
9:44 Paul Mecurio? I'm a little Alvin Ailey going on.
9:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, we go Alvin Ailey.
9:46 Charles Liu? I've been bugged.
9:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wins every time.
9:49 Paul Mecurio? All right, we're moving on. A great question, great answers. Christopher Nguyen, hello, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Lou. I am Chris Nguyen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. I'm new to the pre- and love the show. My question is, during the Big Bang, what went bang? If we don't know, what are your best guesses?
10:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's only one answer here. It's the universe went bang.
10:08 Paul Mecurio? Right.
10:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, next question.
10:12 Charles Liu? I could take that.
10:13 Paul Mecurio? Well, we know the idea.
10:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I've got that one.
10:15 Paul Mecurio? We know the idea of personal space was blown. That's right.
10:19 Charles Liu? Look, the term Big Bang was actually coined by, or attributed to.
10:25 Paul Mecurio? But it's so misleading because it's about expansion, not about bang.
10:28 Charles Liu? It's attributed to.
10:28 Paul Mecurio? And why don't you guys fix that?
10:30 Charles Liu? I've tried.
10:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We, we, there's a lot of legacy language.
10:34 Charles Liu? Yeah.
10:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That, that permeates our field and it's, makes it historically interesting.
10:41 Paul Mecurio? Can I ask a question?
10:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No.
10:43 Paul Mecurio? So. In all seriousness, how would that process work within the scientific community if you wanted to sort of take on the task of changing the terminology?
10:53 Charles Liu? Oh, you mean like if you change, uh?
10:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Put up, don't even say it. Stop it. Stop it. I'll kick you out of this office and throw you off the roof.
11:00 Paul Mecurio? No, say it.
11:01 Charles Liu? But I'm already stank, so what do you mean? Why not, right?
11:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Come on, stank.
11:04 Charles Liu? No, no, no, no.
11:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, no, no.
11:06 Charles Liu? Go ahead, go ahead.
11:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Two very important points here.
11:07 Charles Liu? Yeah.
11:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So finish your Big Bang story.
11:09 Charles Liu? Okay. The Big Bang term was attributed to a guy named Fred Hoyle. It was an interview done early on in the middle of the 20th century and.
11:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Back when ideas for the beginning of the universe were still uncertain.
11:21 Charles Liu? Right.
11:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And they were still contesting.
11:23 Charles Liu? Right. And so he himself did not like the idea that the universe started from nothing or something very small and became something big. And so the journalist that he was speaking with or interviewer or whatever says something like, so you're thinking the universe is kind of like a, like a big bang of some kind? And that just stuck.
11:39 Paul Mecurio? Did he do it to make science in all seriousness sexy, like sort of to get people to sort of more excited?
11:44 Charles Liu? Today, no one really knows. I've seen it historically expressed as it was derisive or that it was spectacular, one or the other. But yes, the right answer is it's an expansion of space and time from something small to something big. It was not an explosion.
11:59 Paul Mecurio? Right.
11:59 Charles Liu? And now we have this problem where we think, oh, if the Big Bang is an explosion, what did it explode into? You know, things like that.
12:05 Paul Mecurio? Well, the key part of that.
12:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or did it explode from? Yeah, there's a lot of other.
12:08 Paul Mecurio? And then there's this thing called, this is called cosmic inflation, right?
12:11 Charles Liu? That's right.
12:11 Paul Mecurio? Which, which happened in the first tiny fraction of a second.
12:14 Charles Liu? Which is an expansion within an expansion.
12:17 Paul Mecurio? Right.
12:17 Charles Liu? You know, imagine if you're blowing up a balloon slowly and then suddenly someone slaps you on the back and your air all goes out at once, you know, and it blows up. And we call that inflation, which gets mixed in with all kinds of other things.
12:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? During the Jimmy Carter era, hyperinflation that existed at the.
12:32 Charles Liu? Just before, Nixonian times.
12:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are you sure?
12:36 Paul Mecurio? But there is a theory.
12:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But it was like 10%.
12:38 Charles Liu? It was in the 7.
12:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, 10% inflation.
12:41 Paul Mecurio? When this happened, okay, this cosmic inflation, there is a theory that a gas cloud formed the initials win, which is with inflation now. Jimmy Carter. Come on, that was good.
12:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
12:53 Paul Mecurio? See how I brought that back?
12:54 Charles Liu? It's historical, though.
12:55 Paul Mecurio? Yeah.
12:56 Charles Liu? Right?
12:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, by the way.
12:57 Charles Liu? Everything is historical.
12:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just while we're on the, how does it relate back to?
13:01 Charles Liu? Yeah.
13:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Society. I came of age, I'm a little older than you. I came of age.
13:06 Paul Mecurio? You're a lot older than me.
13:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When people.
13:09 Paul Mecurio? I think I heard him whisper, "Your oldest dirt." I didn't think it was a very scientific term, but that's what he used.
13:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think I'm 20% older than Charles here. Plus or minus. So, he, I came of age when we applied computing power.
13:25 Paul Mecurio? Yes.
13:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To what galaxies would do to each other when they encountered.
13:30 Paul Mecurio? Classic paper by two brothers, Alar and Yuri Tombrey, in 1972.
13:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Tombrey and Tombrey. Yes.
13:36 Paul Mecurio? Terrific paper.
13:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
13:37 Paul Mecurio? What kind of data are you inputting into the?
13:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, we saw these weird-looking galaxies out there. This is just in analogs, I don't want to spend too much time on it. Really weird-looking galaxies. And there was someone in our field who compiled them into one catalog.
13:51 Paul Mecurio? Chip ARP.
13:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Called the Atlas of.
13:53 Paul Mecurio? Hecular galaxies.
13:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, these are galaxies, they're just weird. They don't match any form. So, I don't know why, but here they are. And everyone's saying, "What could make these galaxies? Are they born that way?" And then Gerard de Volcker, who was a galaxy guy.
14:10 Paul Mecurio? I call him Jerry.
14:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
14:12 Paul Mecurio? We're like this.
14:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He, he was very French. He.
14:16 Paul Mecurio? Very.
14:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He was pretty sure that a crashed Lexus is not a different kind of car. It's still a Lexus, okay? So, he, that was his analog.
14:27 Paul Mecurio? It becomes a Toyota, actually.
14:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, he becomes a Toyota. Good one, good one. So, the idea that, no, they're not peculiar. They changed because they had these encounters, these collisions.
14:38 Paul Mecurio? These galaxies collided.
14:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, and they're colliding all the time.
14:41 Paul Mecurio? Right.
14:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. Now, I forgot why I was even gonna mention this.
14:45 Paul Mecurio? Cosmic inflation.
14:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Where was I gonna go on inflation? Oh, yeah, yeah.
14:47 Paul Mecurio? Chip ARP.
14:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, at the time, at the time. This is now in the eighties, okay? This is your people now, in the eighties. We called this.
14:55 Paul Mecurio? Wait a minute.
14:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, you'll understand why in ten seconds.
14:59 Paul Mecurio? Come on, Eileen.
15:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, we called it in our field, mergers and acquisitions.
15:03 Paul Mecurio? Oh, my God.
15:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We did.
15:05 Paul Mecurio? Are you serious?
15:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, gouncy mergers and acquisitions.
15:09 Paul Mecurio? Oh, my God, because that was so hot then.
15:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It was so hot, right out of Wall Street. So, we have inflation and mergers and acquisitions.
15:16 Paul Mecurio? And now, look where we are.
15:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, that's right.
15:18 Paul Mecurio? We were Dr. Stank.
15:35 Speaker 03 Hello, I'm Alexander Harvey, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.
15:54 Paul Mecurio? The big bang within the bang, big bang at the tiny fraction of that moment when it happened.
15:58 Charles Liu? Yep.
15:58 Paul Mecurio? Is there still yet an explanation as to why that had happened?
16:03 Charles Liu? There are numerous competing hypotheses, but we don't have the experimental evidence to show the initial burst or the thing that caused it to happen. We're pretty sure it did happen now.
16:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And we got close to that energy. The bigger part is our particle accelerator. The earlier in time it can, it can see, not see, but represent.
16:27 Charles Liu? Right.
16:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In the temperature density in the particle accelerator, you can say, in the first microsecond or the first nanosecond of the universe, what was the temperature? Oh, my gosh, it was this high. Have we ever reached that temperature in the lab? No, not yet. The day we do, we get to say, we think we have sampled what the early universe would have looked like. Do new particles pop in? Is there a dark matter particle that shows up? We don't know.
16:50 Paul Mecurio? But do you both understand this brilliant scientist that lay people like myself are looking for, in all seriousness, solid answers, right? Like, I'm... I'm still trying to figure myself out.
16:59 Charles Liu? Yes.
16:59 Paul Mecurio? Hang on a second. Trying to figure myself out through counseling, therapy, whatever.
17:03 Charles Liu? Yes.
17:03 Paul Mecurio? The universe hasn't been able to figure itself out in 13.8 billion years. Can you guys get on the stick?
17:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, hold on.
17:10 Paul Mecurio? And give us an answer?
17:11 Charles Liu? I would like to. I would like to, but this is the... You've hit the key point in the difference between...
17:17 Paul Mecurio? Thank you.
17:18 Charles Liu? You've hit the key point between what I think is the difference between scientific truth and non-scientific truth. With scientific truth, we always put in the "but maybe we're wrong" part. The "we don't know for absolute sure" part. And that's really, really important, right? Science could not have progressed if somebody said, "This is the right answer." And then everyone just, "Oh, okay, okay."
17:40 Paul Mecurio? People would have stopped exploring.
17:42 Charles Liu? Right. It's incredibly important to recognize that we have ignorance. Neil has a terrific term for this. The perimeter of ignorance. We have to understand that there's a space beyond which we don't know the answer yet. Or even what we think we know could be wrong because of this, this, this, this, and this.
17:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Which is why, Paul, you need to love the questions themselves.
18:03 Charles Liu? Oh.
18:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In your search for answers.
18:05 Paul Mecurio? That is too profound, dude.
18:06 Charles Liu? Too profound.
18:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, that's Rayner Maria Rilke in a poem. Yes. Plus, I have to adjust what he just told you here, okay?
18:15 Charles Liu? Like a chiropractor.
18:18 Paul Mecurio? He's gonna...
18:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Adjust one word. I need a different word.
18:22 Paul Mecurio? He's gonna straighten your mental back out.
18:25 Charles Liu? Crack.
18:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Your mental vertebrae. Yeah, so I put a lot of thought and energy into defining what true means. And I've settled in a way that I think is highly defensible and should be adopted.
18:41 Charles Liu? Mm-hmm.
18:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay?
18:42 Charles Liu? Okay.
18:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, scientific truth is that which has been established by repeated observations and measurements. When that happens, it is not later shown to be false. So we can talk about it as an objective truth. Equals mc squared is not one day going to be found to be false. That earth goes around the sun, that the sun is hot, that the sun undergoes thermonuclear fusion is not going to one day be found to be false. Where Charles is referring to, we have to have some acceptance that we could be wrong. Yes.
19:18 Paul Mecurio? About things that we are not definitively.
19:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Correct. On the frontier, we're wrong most of the time.
19:23 Paul Mecurio? But there are some.
19:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Ninety percent.
19:25 Paul Mecurio? There are some things that we've reached.
19:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? At least.
19:27 Paul Mecurio? The community is comfortable saying, you're saying that there are some things equals mc squared, etc., where we're not questioning that anymore.
19:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There are huge things, huge swaths.
19:37 Paul Mecurio? Otherwise, you can't do.
19:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Otherwise, we're not flying airplanes.
19:39 Paul Mecurio? Otherwise, you can't do the exploration into the things that you don't know.
19:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Airplanes wouldn't fly. Rockets don't go to Mars and land exactly where we tell them.
19:46 Paul Mecurio? You could continue to research that there's another rationale, but I think what you're saying is.
19:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, no, hold on, let me finish. I'm almost done.
19:51 Paul Mecurio? Okay.
19:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It doesn't mean that we will not one day find a deeper truth in which the experimentally verified truths are embedded. Such was the case with Newton's laws of gravity and motion. Those laws in the realms in which they were tested are still valid. We went to the moon using Newton's laws and not Einstein. Okay? There was no relativity in the Apollo voyages. It was all Newton's laws of gravity and motion. We then learned that at high speeds, high gravity, Newton's laws break down. Holy shit. Do we discard Newton? What's going on?
20:32 Paul Mecurio? Well, there's gravitational weight.
20:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Einstein finds a deeper understanding of gravity and motion. And he gets his theory of, theories of relativity, special theory and general relativity. Guess what? When you plug low speeds and low gravity into Einstein's equations, they become Newton's equations. People say, "Oh, we've Newton out, Einstein in." That misrepresents what's actually happening here.
20:57 Paul Mecurio? Well, they call you, you can't have, it's chicken and egg. You can't have one without the other.
21:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, well, no, I mean, in terms of the pathways of discovery, you get the restricted case before you discover the general case. My only point is, the uncertainty that a scientist brings to the frontier is in the realm of things that we have not yet experimentally verified. And it's, it's completely uncertain at that level. And we're just duking it out at conferences and the like. And the press eavesdrops on the conferences. They say, "Oh, scientists don't know what they're talking about." And then people say, "I don't trust science." Yeah. As they're on their smartphone, talking to someone a thousand miles away. I don't trust science, you know? So, I just want to clarify that. And two other truths, there's your personal truth. Like, is Jesus your savior? Is Mohammed your last prophet?
21:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is, is Beyonce your queen rather than Taylor Swift? Right? So, that's a personal truth. And then you have political truths, which are things that become true in your head simply because they were repeated so often.
21:53 Paul Mecurio? Yes.
21:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Which are the foundations of...
21:55 Paul Mecurio? Or because you read it on Twitter.
21:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. No, it's how many times you read it. It's not, it's how many times. And so...
22:00 Paul Mecurio? Is that any different?
22:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Those are the foundations of propaganda.
22:02 Paul Mecurio? But is that any different than commercial advertising?
22:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, exactly the same thing.
22:05 Paul Mecurio? Right? You're gonna show you this toy Toyota 50 times, and by the end of the week, you're gonna be like, "I gotta get a Toyota." That's a great thought.
22:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And no matter what they're telling you, that becomes true.
22:13 Paul Mecurio? Right.
22:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, those are the three truths.
22:14 Paul Mecurio? Right.
22:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I will never speak of, of an absolute truth, because it's not what science does.
22:19 Charles Liu? Newton's gravity was proven to be wrong is true. It was wrong because in certain conditions in the universe, it was not correct.
22:31 Paul Mecurio? But that, that's an eye-opening moment.
22:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But those are extreme conditions, well beyond the experimental realm.
22:36 Paul Mecurio? But that expands our... No, it's a good thing. When a bad thing happened like that, it's a good thing because it expands our base of knowledge.
22:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And we don't call it bad. We don't invest emotions in it. Some people do, but it's not good if you do.
22:48 Paul Mecurio? Right. Well, I talk like a six-year-old.
22:50 Charles Liu? No, so do I.
22:51 Paul Mecurio? Well, this is perfect, because this next question is about gravitational waves.
22:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No.
22:56 Paul Mecurio? I'm telling you, this is eerie, that, okay. This is Mitchell Ransom. Mitch from the UK. I would love to know more about what we can learn from gravitational waves. It's cool, we can detect them, but what can that do for our understanding of the universe?
23:13 Charles Liu? Marvelous question.
23:14 Paul Mecurio? Perfect.
23:15 Charles Liu? Marvelous question.
23:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You take this out back cleanup on it. Okay, go.
23:20 Charles Liu? I will be the one Soto to your otani.
23:25 Paul Mecurio? And then I'll be the guy who shouldn't steal second and doesn't gets thrown out and ruins the inning.
23:31 Charles Liu? Well, if Otani were stealing, he'd actually make it.
23:33 Paul Mecurio? Oh, my God, yeah.
23:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or if you're gonna steal second, do it deep into the count of a batter you want to see come up again the next inning.
23:40 Paul Mecurio? Yes, also that's true.
23:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, because they get fresh.
23:42 Paul Mecurio? Right.
23:43 Charles Liu? This is fundamental baseball, which doesn't get talked about nearly as much as it should.
23:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We should do a whole thing on baseball.
23:49 Paul Mecurio? Oh, my God.
23:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, my gosh.
23:50 Paul Mecurio? It's I mean, I think I think the pitch clock, while it's helped speed the game up. I mean, stealing is so much more interesting and fun to watch because you go over there twice, you know, you're gonna get, you know, you can't go back at third time.
24:04 Charles Liu? That's right. They're very interesting. Rules are always fun, too. Talking about rules.
24:08 Paul Mecurio? It's the most interesting sport to watch, I think, baseball, because of all of the machinations. But anyway.
24:13 Charles Liu? Yeah, okay. Well, here's the deal. Gravitational waves are essentially to the universe and space and time as, say, ripples are in a pond. So if you see ripples going on in a pond or any body of water, you can deduce things about that pond. What is the water made out of? Is there duckweed on the top? How deep is it? Is there ice? You know, things like that, all the different things about that puddle.
24:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? By the way, the depth is affects the amplitude of the ripple.
24:46 Charles Liu? Completely, right.
24:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So it's why when you're at the beach, how come, you know, you see a swell sort of out there, but then it gets closer to the shore, it becomes a big wave. So the energy that is out there in the ocean, which is shared vertically to the bottom of the thing, as you get shallower and shallower, that energy has to manifest somehow, and the height of the wave grows. And so the energy is the same, but the height and how you experience it as a beachgoer.
25:15 Paul Mecurio? But where does wind come into this? If I'm, like, so, because wind can create a ripple, right? Wind can also create a ripple.
25:21 Charles Liu? That's right. The top has an effect, the bottom has an effect, and the side has an effect, right? Where is it coming from?
25:28 Paul Mecurio? In other words, it's bouncing off the sides of the wave.
25:30 Charles Liu? Right, uh-huh. The edges make a difference. If you're in a bay, or if you're just hitting a wide shoreline. Also, what is the material of the beach? Is it rocky? Is it sandy? So gravitational waves literally have the opportunity, if we're sensitive enough to detect them, to tell us about spacetime, the structure of the universe, the things that these ripples go through.
25:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Got to add real quick. Charles is talking about things you would know beyond just the simple detection of the wave.
26:00 Charles Liu? That's right.
26:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's one thing to know that there's a wave there. Now, what's the amplitude? What's the wavelength? How many of these are there? Are they coming from this direction? There's different layers, but the Nobel Prize went to, basically, the first time it was ever discovered. And then you can keep asking more detailed questions when your telescopes become better to do so.
26:19 Charles Liu? That's right.
26:20 Paul Mecurio? But this gets to Newton's law of universal gravitation, right? Which does not provide for the existence of gravitational waves. It asserts that gravity has instantaneous effect, which is wrong.
26:31 Charles Liu? That's right.
26:31 Paul Mecurio? Because I dropped a 1982 bottle of Chateau Lafitte Rothschild, and I, it fell in slow, in slow motion.
26:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Did you seriously do that?
26:40 Charles Liu? It landed on a pillow, I'm sure.
26:43 Paul Mecurio? And it fell in slow motion. Everything slowed down. So, he's, Newton's wrong, huh? No, but so now, so that's where Newton and Einstein, right? Are sort of...
26:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, wait, wait, just to be clear. Newton did not have a strong investment in any expectation that things happen instantaneously. His big concern was that it was action at a distance, and there was nothing in between. That was just a little weird. He knew it worked, but he couldn't explain it in any way. But he was not deeply invested.
27:12 Paul Mecurio? Put an example of that for me. So there's something in the distance, but nothing in between.
27:16 Charles Liu? Let's say I turn off that light over there. It actually takes a fraction of a second for that light material, for that information to get to me that the light is no longer shining.
27:26 Paul Mecurio? Right.
27:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Except for Muhammad Ali, who, you know what he said? He said, "I'm so fast, I could turn out the lights and be in bed before it's dark."
27:38 Charles Liu? He also floated like a butterfly, stuck like a bee. That guy was pretty amazing, yeah. So, um, that speed at which that light and that dark travels to my eye is so fast that I, as a human being, could never detect it. But if I had a very sensitive camera that could really stop down time to billionths of a second or trillionths of a second at a time, you can actually see it getting darker as it moves forward.
28:07 Paul Mecurio? Oh, to your eye.
28:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Light moves one foot per nanosecond, per billionths of a second. So you just need billions and you can catch, catch.
28:16 Charles Liu? Yeah.
28:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? From the side, if you look at it from the side.
28:19 Paul Mecurio? You would, you would literally see it, there's, right now, there's a straight white line of light and then you'd see it getting darker, darker.
28:27 Charles Liu? Well, there, there's also background light, right? Remember, our light is, is primarily illuminating.
28:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you have a laser and put chalk dust in there and you see it, and then you do this.
28:34 Charles Liu? That would work. That would be a great way to do that, absolutely.
28:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But people don't know what chalk dust is.
28:42 Paul Mecurio? Go to a baseball game.
28:43 Charles Liu? There you go.
28:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah, yeah, for the.
28:45 Charles Liu? So, so Newton really didn't get the sense or understand that there was a time lag, right? Einstein.
28:53 Paul Mecurio? Which is what gravitational, gravitational waves is all about, right?
28:56 Charles Liu? Right, right.
28:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, they, they move at a speed.
28:57 Charles Liu? Einstein showed that information in the universe, especially carried by light, right, and waves, has a speed limit. And then folks wondered.
29:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's not just a good idea, it's the law.
29:10 Paul Mecurio? It's a great commercial.
29:14 Charles Liu? Dad joke.
29:15 Paul Mecurio? What is going on in your brain?
29:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a dad joke.
29:18 Charles Liu? I love the dad joke-ness of that. It's really very good. So, so what happened is that Einstein showed that there was this reasonable sort of speed limit to the universe, the speed at which light travels in the vacuum. And then folks said, well, you know what? If that's the speed limit of light, maybe that's also the speed limit of these things, these other things, any information at all, you know? And so-
29:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Like gravity.
29:41 Charles Liu? Yeah. So maybe gravity only travels at the speed of light. And that's important to know. When we see gravitational waves, we infer the existence of little tiny particles called gravitons that travel through space in order to have this wave happen. We still have never detected the existence of gravitons in the laboratory. We may never be able to unless we can get a particle accelerator the size of the solar system. But what we can do is to say, well, this proves that speed of light and speed of gravitational waves and so forth are so close to one another that there's a, there must be something there. So that in itself, I guess, is another discovery, right?
30:24 Charles Liu? By gravitational waves existing, you start putting strict upper limits on the mass of the graviton.
30:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just to be clear, before we knew anything about photons of light, light was described as waves. And then we learn that the wave particle, you know-
30:39 Charles Liu? Dual.
30:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It can be, it can manifest as a particle, the photon, or as, that you can detect, or as waves, which you can also detect as waves. By analogy to that, gravitational waves are granted a particle counterpart, the graviton.
31:00 Paul Mecurio? Which is, which is a counterpart, you know?
31:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To the photon. Correct. And you need different mechanisms to detect it in that mode.
31:09 Paul Mecurio? When we say particles collide to create virtual particles, do they really fist bump each other down at the Planck scale, occupying the same voxel at the same time? Or do they just get close enough and then, you know, magic happens?
31:23 Charles Liu? Great question. They get close enough. As an undergraduate, I learned some about a very technical silly term called the impact parameter.
31:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Love it.
31:34 Charles Liu? And that means that if you have two things coming toward each other, how close do they have to be before they impact each other, affect each other?
31:43 Paul Mecurio? They don't have to touch each other.
31:44 Charles Liu? They don't actually have to touch.
31:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If, what?
31:46 Paul Mecurio? So like if I did this to you, right? I'm not touching you.
31:49 Charles Liu? Hey!
31:49 Paul Mecurio? I'm not touching you.
31:49 Charles Liu? He's not touching me!
31:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait, wait.
31:51 Charles Liu? Stop not touching me!
31:52 Paul Mecurio? I'm annoying you.
31:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, I, we, let's go a layer deeper.
31:54 Paul Mecurio? Alright.
31:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We did a whole episode of Cosmos on this. Because of electromagnetic forces which hold your body together. When I go up to Charles and I touch him, if you actually analyze what's going on at the molecular and atomic level, I'm not actually touching him. There are forces in a field surrounding the particles, and it's the forces that are bumping off each other.
32:17 Charles Liu? But I-
32:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And this impact parameter exists when there are fields that surround the objects that are coming near each other.
32:25 Paul Mecurio? Hang on a second, I can see my finger, my skin touching that surface.
32:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So?
32:30 Paul Mecurio? So you're telling me that I'm, what I'm seeing-
32:33 Charles Liu? At a very microscopic scale.
32:35 Paul Mecurio? There's something between that plastic and my skin.
32:37 Charles Liu? There is space between that plastic and your skin. But what happens is that the fields transfer energy. So your skin still feels as if it is physically touching something.
32:50 Paul Mecurio? But that's something coming from the bottle and the bottle's coming from the skin.
32:55 Charles Liu? Right. So, so there is a tiny bit of space in between? And there is stuff passing between it?
33:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Otherwise, your finger would just pass through the plastic.
33:01 Paul Mecurio? So there's a space, like my emotional, like my emotional relationship with my wife. There's a sliver-
33:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We don't want to get into-
33:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, so I love this, I love this, what Charles says, because we don't hear that term much, but it's kind of, it's almost self-explanatory. It's the distance within which you can declare there was an interaction between the two objects.
33:24 Paul Mecurio? Is there a way to, there's a way to measure that?
33:27 Charles Liu? You can put it in the mathematical equations and say, okay, well, I have some force field in my finger. You have some force field in that plastic container. When they come together, how close do they have to be before I feel the force of those container particles pushing on my finger particles?
33:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's more precise than that. So you have two, I'm pulling this out of my 30-year memory.
33:53 Charles Liu? 30?
33:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You can ask, okay.
33:55 Charles Liu? 30.
33:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So if two objects, two gravitational objects would come by, and one just gets pulled a little bit.
34:02 Charles Liu? That's right.
34:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You can say, "All right, what does that mean?" But you can define, just for conversational and mathematical purposes, the impact parameter is the distance within which its trajectory will be altered by more than 90 degrees.
34:19 Charles Liu? It's pretty cool. So that's why when we talk about, say, colliding galaxies, the stars in the galaxies actually never hit each other.
34:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They never touch.
34:27 Charles Liu? Almost never have direct collision.
34:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Passes through.
34:29 Charles Liu? But they go by each other, and as they go by, it's like a swarm of angry bees.
34:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In fact.
34:35 Charles Liu? And they affect each other.
34:36 Paul Mecurio? To the point where there can be an explosion.
34:38 Charles Liu? To the effect where, at times, you will have an explosion.
34:41 Paul Mecurio? That's right. So if I'm touching this, is there a force that's strong enough or can be measured at which I can push those magnetic fields apart, and I'm actually touching it? Is it ever possible to eliminate that field that's between the thing, my finger and the pen?
35:02 Charles Liu? It is almost never possible, because there is a limit
35:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No.
35:09 Charles Liu? beyond which the math breaks down. You see, in the quantum structure of the universe...
35:14 Paul Mecurio? By the way, I feel like I'm asking to use the car, and he's saying maybe, and my dad's saying, "Go ahead."
35:20 Charles Liu? No!
35:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's back up for a minute.
35:24 Charles Liu? Keep it under 30 miles an hour. You'll be all right.
35:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Back up, story time, real quick.
35:27 Paul Mecurio? Okay.
35:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay? I'll be reading from Merlin.
35:30 Paul Mecurio? Do you have some milk?
35:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, I can cook it.
35:32 Paul Mecurio? Warm milk, hot cocoa? Can you get some hot cocoa, Alex?
35:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Merlin's Tour of the Universe. "Dear Merlin, is there a chance that another star will one day collide with the sun?" Yes, but you should know that if there were just four snails randomly carousing across the continental United States.
35:54 Charles Liu? Snails don't carouse.
35:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Do they?
35:56 Charles Liu? Stales cruise.
35:58 Paul Mecurio? What are they, alcoholics?
36:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Hey, Stales, how's it going?
36:03 Paul Mecurio? Drug addicts.
36:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's more likely for two of them to accidentally bump into each other than it is for another star and the sun.
36:11 Paul Mecurio? Seriously?
36:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To collide. Yes, and then my artist brother drew two snails colliding here.
36:18 Paul Mecurio? One of which has a bandana and a gun. Really weird. It's a carousing, that's a carousing.
36:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's mostly empty space, so two galaxies colliding, the stars just passing, but they definitely affect each other gravitationally.
36:28 Paul Mecurio? So this star, this star's going by, there's enough, there is enough energy there that it can cause each to explode?
36:35 Charles Liu? Not necessarily. They'll cause each other to change their trajectories. But once every four seconds or so in the whole observable universe, this is an estimate made a few years ago, there is actually a direct collision. Okay? This is most likely to happen in dense clusters of stars.
36:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very dense.
36:55 Charles Liu? Okay, like globular clusters.
36:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And near the center of the dense cluster.
36:57 Charles Liu? Right. In the center of the star, where, say, for example, in the space, which is normally, say, a few light years between me and us and Alpha Centauri, for example, there could be a million stars in that space. When the over densities are a million to one compared to, say, our solar neighborhood, you can actually have stars hitting one another, and they could actually explode. But the chances of even a collision causing an explosion are tiny because stars are mostly made out of gas. So imagine, like, a star going through another star, you're basically just having gas clouds smashing into gas clouds and go through. You need the cores.
37:34 Paul Mecurio? But there are molecules within each gas cloud that could sort of collide, no?
37:38 Charles Liu? They could, but then they don't cause a collision because they're so small, right? They're so low energy. But if you can get the core of a star, hit the core of a star, then you can actually create a star happening, and you create collisions and explosions.
37:52 Charles Liu? Come on. At once every four secs?
37:54 Paul Mecurio? You guys are doing crazy stuff. Somewhere in the huge universe. Somewhere in the huge. That's higher than I would have guessed. I know. You guys are doing crazy stuff in the basement of this place. Let's make that happen. Okay, I have more questions. I'm not authorized to. I don't want to. I will say more to you.
38:07 Charles Liu? I don't have the clearance.
38:32 Paul Mecurio? Paul, time for a couple more. Oh, absolutely. Very good question here. This is from Morten Lirkjar. This is, I hope. Who? Don't make me say it a second time. This greeting is from Norway. Sorry, Morten.
38:45 Charles Liu? Okay.
38:46 Paul Mecurio? Morten. Sorry, Morten. Lirkjar.
38:48 Charles Liu? Lirkjar, yes.
38:50 Paul Mecurio? I hope you can help clarify something for me. If our sun is a third generation star, how is it that we can observe earlier generation stars? When looking back in time, since we are made up of the stardust from those earlier stars, wouldn't their light have already passed by?
39:06 Charles Liu? Perfect answer is the following. I am a third generation from my grandfather, but I can still see my great-grandfather if he's still alive.
39:16 Paul Mecurio? Right.
39:17 Charles Liu? The idea is that the generation in which you are created may have happened while those earlier generation stars are still alive. So our sun is about four and a half billion years old. But if a first generation star that created it was four billion years old, then the star that was before it was a few billion years old. But then there's a generation of stars that's 13 billion years old. We can still see them because they've still lived. They're alive still.
39:50 Paul Mecurio? But that first generation star is always gonna be mom's favorite. The third generation son.
39:57 Charles Liu? Yeah.
39:57 Paul Mecurio? You know, you leave the kid home alone, let him smoke cigarettes when he's 12. That third generation.
40:03 Charles Liu? You wipe the binky on the pants instead of sterilizing it?
40:06 Paul Mecurio? You don't care.
40:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? By the third kid?
40:07 Paul Mecurio? Yeah, by the third kid. You take the kid to the track instead of taking him to the zoo.
40:11 Charles Liu? You do.
40:12 Paul Mecurio? I'm sorry, I'm really putting on my personal stuff.
40:14 Charles Liu? My personal stuff coming out here, man.
40:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, Charles, I think you missed the point there.
40:19 Charles Liu? I did.
40:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think.
40:20 Charles Liu? Oh, no.
40:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think.
40:21 Paul Mecurio? Sorry, sorry, Morgan.
40:23 Charles Liu? I knew that, but I didn't want to say it.
40:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think, okay. The generation of stars that gave their lives to create the elements out of which we are made are not there anymore. You're not gonna see your grandfather if you were made out of the flesh of your grandfather or your great-grandfather. They're not gonna be there. They're dead because they gave their lives for you. What's going on here is there, we, as we look out in space, we look back in time and see the universe not as it is, but as it once was. So we can look far enough out into space to see the first generation stars do their thing. And, and, beautiful. We can look eight billion years ago.
41:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Eight billion years ago, those are stars manufacturing the elements, and they're about to die to make room for the second generation, and that light is only now just reaching us.
41:16 Paul Mecurio? But those elements continue to exist like my great-great-grandfather's DNA exists in me.
41:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, but he ain't around.
41:22 Charles Liu? He lives in you.
41:24 Paul Mecurio? Thank you.
41:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that Lion King?
41:26 Charles Liu? Yes.
41:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah, good, very good.
41:28 Charles Liu? We're mixing two points.
41:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I know, but there's two different points.
41:30 Charles Liu? One point is look back time, and the other is the age of things.
41:34 Paul Mecurio? Okay.
41:35 Charles Liu? Okay? When you have a generation of stars form, you have some stars that die quickly, but then you have a bunch of stars that live longer. So those that died quickly contributed their information or their materials to the next generation.
41:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Their elements, the elements that they made.
41:52 Charles Liu? Meanwhile, that first generation still exists. And then that generation goes, and then they form another generation, but those old stars from the first generation still exist.
42:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The stars that did not give their lives for us happened to live for a trillion years. So, yes, at least. So they're all still around in every galaxy, and that's not even about look back time. So, but some of them gave their lives for us.
42:16 Charles Liu? That's right.
42:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So the notion that we are second or third generation, generally that only matters because we have elements that earlier generations don't.
42:24 Paul Mecurio? Well, those elements, isn't it, the third generation star, the sun, is composed of heavier elements like iron and oxygen.
42:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes.
42:32 Paul Mecurio? So that, because they're heavier, they can exist longer or?
42:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
42:38 Paul Mecurio? They pass on?
42:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Low-mass stars live forever, and high-mass stars die. And first-generation high-mass stars died for us.
42:44 Charles Liu? The first generation of stars, like the very, very first generation of stars, may have only formed short-lived stars. This is something that has been speculated. We're not 100% certain yet.
42:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's like the zeroth generation star.
42:56 Paul Mecurio? I'm sorry, only formed short generation stars?
42:59 Charles Liu? Short-lived stars.
42:59 Paul Mecurio? Short-lived.
43:00 Charles Liu? Right. So it's possible that the original, the OG generation of stars, is all gone.
43:06 Paul Mecurio? Okay.
43:06 Charles Liu? Okay. But certainly, we can look back several generations and see that there are stars from previous generations that still exist.
43:14 Paul Mecurio? Going back to your sort of analogy of the great-grandfather, it's like, it's as if, if you can see those stars from previous generations that were, it's like your great-grandfather's still alive and you could go see him somewhere, even though it's been...
43:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, but he's not the one who gave you your elements. If you can still see him, they're not giving you the elements, if they're in your own galaxy. We have all, all generations of stars within our own galaxy, and it's nothing to do with look back time.
43:36 Paul Mecurio? Yeah, but the elements in that star that I can see, that's a previous generation to the sun.
43:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It'll have fewer heavy elements than we do.
43:42 Paul Mecurio? Okay, but it's, doesn't it share some of the same elements that the sun shares generationally?
43:47 Charles Liu? It might, yeah.
43:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, the sun has all of it, plus the next generation's worth mixed into it.
43:52 Charles Liu? Okay.
43:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
43:53 Charles Liu? Great question, great point.
43:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, good one.
43:55 Charles Liu? Okay.
43:55 Paul Mecurio? Minaid Shandegai.
43:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who?
43:58 Paul Mecurio? From North Wales.
43:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who?
43:59 Charles Liu? What?
44:00 Paul Mecurio? Yeah.
44:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who? What's his name?
44:01 Paul Mecurio? Minaid Shandegai, from North Wales.
44:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow.
44:05 Charles Liu? Wow. Where'd you learn your Welsh? That's amazing.
44:08 Paul Mecurio? Or, Michael is his name.
44:11 Charles Liu? Okay.
44:11 Paul Mecurio? Uh, given the relationship between speed and time, and the relationship between speed and mass, is there also therefore, a direct relationship between time and mass? In other words, if time were somehow to stop, would everything become infinitely massive? And would we be dragged by intense gravitational forces, back into singularity?
44:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Man.
44:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Man.
44:37 Charles Liu? Well, I love that.
44:38 Paul Mecurio? That's a drop the mic moment, everybody.
44:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The mic's on a mic stand.
44:45 Charles Liu? Amazingly thoughtful people in Wales, that are asking questions.
44:48 Paul Mecurio? Yes, that's incredible, right?
44:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, do you interpret that the way I do? He's saying, we know from relativity.
44:53 Charles Liu? Yeah.
44:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That as you go faster, time slows down.
44:56 Charles Liu? Yes.
44:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And your mass increases.
44:58 Charles Liu? Yes.
44:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, instead of having it happen that way, let's figure out a way to slow down time.
45:03 Charles Liu? Yep.
45:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And would that then, have associated with it, an increase in everybody's mass?
45:07 Charles Liu? That's right.
45:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's an interesting question.
45:09 Charles Liu? I think that's a great question. Um, I don't think that can happen. That's not how time works. Uh, because what we're doing, when we're measuring speed, is how fast you are going through space. Right? Uh, it's the distance you travel through space, divided by the amount of time it took you to get there.
45:29 Paul Mecurio? Is this question suggesting you could be dragged backwards in time, somehow?
45:33 Charles Liu? The suggestion is that you slow time down, right? I think. That instead of going at one second per second, it becomes .9, .8, .7, .6.
45:42 Paul Mecurio? Something becomes, everything becomes singular.
45:44 Charles Liu? Right. And I don't think that can work, because the physics of time, which is still mysterious at certain fundamental levels, suggests that you can't really manipulate time that way, the way you manipulate space. Or the way you manipulate your speed, traveling through space.
45:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's a good point. And my favorite thought about time, is that we are prisoners of the present, forever transitioning, between our inaccessible past, and our unknowable future.
46:11 Paul Mecurio? You just gave me a headache. I don't even know what you're talking about.
46:13 Charles Liu? You know, I know you'd like that, but I prefer Master.
46:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What, you're gonna, you're gonna mess with that?
46:18 Charles Liu? No, but I'm gonna provide an alternative from that incredible, deep document.
46:24 Paul Mecurio? Lofty.
46:25 Charles Liu? Kung Fu Panda.
46:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Kung Fu Panda.
46:27 Charles Liu? From Master Oogway.
46:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
46:29 Charles Liu? The past is history. The future is a mystery. All we have today is a gift. And that is why it's called the present.
46:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That was from Kung Fu Panda.
46:42 Charles Liu? Yes, it was.
46:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
46:44 Paul Mecurio? It ain't over till it's over.
46:47 Charles Liu? Yogi.
46:47 Paul Mecurio? That, that has a time aspect to it, if you think about it.
46:50 Charles Liu? Most profound of all.
46:52 Paul Mecurio? Don't look down your nose at that.
46:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That only works in baseball.
46:55 Paul Mecurio? No, if you think about it on a deeper level.
46:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you're in the Super Bowl and one team is down by 21 points.
47:01 Paul Mecurio? How about it's getting late early?
47:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And it's three minutes late.
47:03 Paul Mecurio? Don't you love it's getting late?
47:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The game is over, okay?
47:05 Charles Liu? It's not over. You still have to put the two-minute warnings commercials in.
47:09 Paul Mecurio? Exactly. Right, you gotta sell some soap, buddy.
47:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But the full significance of that comment can only exist in baseball where there is no clock. Except now there is with the pitcher.
47:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think that's all the time we have.
47:22 Paul Mecurio? No, really?
47:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, Charles, you finished a book recently.
47:25 Paul Mecurio? Yes.
47:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I loved it, the Quantum something.
47:27 Charles Liu? The Handy Quantum Physics Answer Book.
47:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To have the word handy and quantum in the same title, that's badass.
47:33 Charles Liu? The goal is to help everyone understand.
47:35 Paul Mecurio? Which we need, like this is basic levels, basic explanations of complex things.
47:40 Charles Liu? You know, quantum feels scary, it feels unknown, but actually we interact with it every day. And so, think of it as a handbook, don't think of it as a textbook.
47:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
47:47 Charles Liu? Yeah.
47:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Good, yeah.
47:49 Paul Mecurio? Nice reference, guy.
47:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And, and Paul, where, where, where can we find you next?
47:54 Paul Mecurio? Permission to speak, my Broadway show directed by Frank Oz.
47:57 Charles Liu? Wow.
47:58 Paul Mecurio? The original Yoda and all of that, and a great director. We are taking it on a national tour. We're gonna be in Florida, in Orlando, Florida, and in Fort Lauderdale at the Brower Center for the Performing Arts. Dr. Phillips Center in Orlando, gonna be in Rhode Island, my home state.
48:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? These are all the good places.
48:12 Paul Mecurio? Yeah.
48:13 Charles Liu? See your show rewatch.
48:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very nice.
48:14 Paul Mecurio? We got a set designed by the set designer for The Late Show, and we have animation.
48:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, because you, you also moonlight.
48:20 Paul Mecurio? Work at the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
48:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Stephen Colbert.
48:23 Paul Mecurio? Through that show.
48:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You warm up the.
48:24 Paul Mecurio? Warm up and do on, I'm gonna be making another appearance. I'm gonna be making another stand up appearance on the show after the first day or two. Fantastic. And so we got a really.
48:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, so you don't really warm with the audience. Occasionally he'll bring you on for the broadcast.
48:35 Paul Mecurio? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've done a bunch of appearances on the show or do sketches.
48:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But a few times you went on, you came and said hi to me.
48:40 Paul Mecurio? Yeah, every time. Yeah, absolutely. And he's like, don't make eye contact with me. I'm like, OK. And we got really cool animation in the set. It's J.J. Settlemeier, who did Beavis and Butthead. And all the SNL TV fun us, we created this. It's a multimedia show with a set with this really cool.
48:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're gonna look for you.
48:57 Paul Mecurio? It's really cool. So, yeah, so people can go to paulmecurio.com, get tickets, come out, support the show would be great.
49:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We got it.
49:03 Paul Mecurio? Thank you so much. Permission to Speak is the name of it. Permission to. This has been really great to be on with you. Hey, what fun. As I've read some of your work and it's really great. Thank you. Him, eh, but you.
49:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He never shook my hand. He never shook my hand.
49:13 Paul Mecurio? Come on.
49:15 Paul Mecurio? I love you, buddy. I love you.
49:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, that's all the time we have. This has been a Star Talk. Cosmic Query's Grab Bag. That was definitely some bag grabbing right there.
49:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, until next time, Neil deGrasse Tyson, bidding you all to keep looking up.
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