Things You Thought You Knew – Rocks Float

What would happen in a world with too much oxygen? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice break down how rocks actually float, warm blankets, and why oxygen isn’t actually flammable.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hey StarTalkians, Neil here. I've got another Things You Thought You Knew episode coming right up. This time Chuck and I explain how rocks are light, not heavy. Warm blankets and oxygen. Check it out.

• 0:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:32Chuck Nice?

  I'm excited to know what we've got going today.

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna just talk about oxygen.

• 0:37Chuck Nice?

  Aw, man.

• 0:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's the matter?

• 0:41Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, normally you come to me with some like, super exciting stuff like, you know, today we're gonna talk about the moon and albedo. Do you know what albedo is? No, man, what is that? That sounds really cool.

• 0:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm sorry oxygen doesn't excite you, but maybe by the end of these 10 minutes it will. That's all I'm saying.

• 0:59Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Give it a chance, dude.

• 1:01Chuck Nice?

  Well, listen, I give oxygen a chance every day.

• 1:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Many people who have never had atmospheric chemistry.

• 1:11Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They know that we breathe oxygen for, to survive. We know this.

• 1:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 1:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But not everyone knows how much oxygen is in our atmosphere.

• 1:21Chuck Nice?

  Okay, well, already, now I'm interested.

• 1:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so the first guess is, well, it's all oxygen. Of course, we're breathing, that's not the case. Most of the air we breathe is nitrogen.

• 1:32Chuck Nice?

  Nitrogen, okay.

• 1:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which has no value in its gaseous form as we inhale it. So we just inhale it and then exhale it.

• 1:40Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 1:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nitrogen is 78% of the air we breathe.

• 1:45Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 1:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's most, most.

• 1:48Chuck Nice?

  Did not know that.

• 1:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did not know that, okay. So now, oxygen is between 20 and 21% of the air we breathe. So it's about a fifth of the air we breathe.

• 1:57Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 1:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so, just let me put that out there, first of all. Second, as you know, trees and other photosynthesizing life makes oxygen.

• 2:09Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 2:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One of the, the, the delusions of the Star Trek, the early Star Trek series was, they, you, you ever notice, I've said this in other explainers, they never wear spacesuits when they visit planets.

• 2:23Chuck Nice?

  Every time they come down to a planet, they're just like, "Well, isn't this nice?"

• 2:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, so they check, it's oxygen, nitrogen atmosphere, Captain.

• 2:32Chuck Nice?

  It's a Class M planet, Captain.

• 2:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, so then they go down, it's got oxygen in it, as though, in the mix of all the planets that are out there, some of them will just happen to have this mix, and so it'll be just fine to be human and then walk down on its surface. Okay, all right. But if you think it through, the entire source of our oxygen is green plants. If you take away the green plants, oxygen is highly reactive as a chemical element. And so the oxygen that's in the atmosphere will glom on to other ingredients on Earth's surface, and it will systematically drain out of the Earth's atmosphere,

• 3:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  leaving us with none. So if you find a planet that has sustained oxygen.

• 3:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is evidence of something generating that oxygen, and in our case, it's plants, that may, could be some other mechanism, none we have ever dreamt of or divined, but if you find a planet with oxygen, it's gonna have plant life.

• 3:39Chuck Nice?

  Wow, right.

• 3:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or something that is generating oxygen in real time, and, and in the planets they went to, that was never discussed. Cause I think they just believed in the planet lottery, some planets have oxygen and others don't.

• 3:52Chuck Nice?

  And you know what's funny, that you say that, many of the planets that they beamed down to were very Mars-like.

• 4:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes.

• 4:01Chuck Nice?

  They're very rocky.

• 4:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rocky.

• 4:04Chuck Nice?

  There's not, there's no vegetation at all.

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I think the rocks are easier for the prop people to make. Then whole trees with plumage.

• 4:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it was very barren. Correct. You remembered this. So that's one little thing about the oxygen I put out there. Okay? Also, by the way, on the planets they landed on, they were never sort of bounding the way the astronauts did on the moon. Those planets all had about one G, just like Earth.

• 4:28Chuck Nice?

  Right. Yes.

• 4:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the atmospheric pressure was about that of Earth.

• 4:32Chuck Nice?

  That same as Earth.

• 4:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are some planets that are the same size as Earth and the same gravity as Earth, but the atmospheric pressure is a hundred times that of Earth. So they'd beam down and get flattened.

• 4:42Chuck Nice?

  Flattened like a, like they got hit with a fly swatter.

• 4:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, basically.

• 4:49Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 4:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Okay, so, more about oxygen. There's this belief that oxygen is flammable.

• 5:02Chuck Nice?

  Okay, maybe that's because every oxygen tank I've ever seen has the word flammable written all over it. That might be why people believe that.

• 5:15Chuck Nice?

  You go to any hospital, you're gonna see a tank, you'll see a tank in a corner and on that tank is gonna be a little fire emoji with the word flammable.

• 5:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that what's on tanks? Emojis? I didn't know that.

• 5:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so, so, um, I should clarify what's going on there.

• 5:39Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 5:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 5:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oxygen promotes combustion.

• 5:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why they have those labels there. So, if you, this won't happen today, ever, but in the day, you walk into a hospital smoking a cigarette. Okay? If you go into a hospital room.

• 6:02Chuck Nice?

  Wait a minute. Now I'm just seeing a doctor. Smoke, smoke, smoking a cigarette.

• 6:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Scalpel.

• 6:08Chuck Nice?

  With a, with a hole through the mask.

• 6:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Scalpel. Wait, let me quarterize this.

• 6:14Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Hold on. Ah, there we go. Oh, Jesus. I think I dropped my butt in this guy's open abdomen. Anybody seen a cigarette butt?

• 6:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you've got this smoker's voice too.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 6:31Chuck Nice?

  Oh my god, your doctor sounds like a diner waitress.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Well, listen dear. I don't want to give you bad news, but here's the low, here's the low down hun. Let me get you a coffee and then we'll talk about this.

• 6:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The smoking New York diner.

• 6:57Chuck Nice?

  Diner doctor. Oh man, okay.

• 7:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, so here's what happened. It promotes combustion. So, if you're in a room of oxygen and you bring in a lit cigarette, the cigarette would instantly go up and smoke.

• 7:14Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 7:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Instantly. I mean, it would go from the lit spot, but it would go and the whole thing would just ignite instantly.

• 7:22Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 7:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But you're not going to ignite the gas in the room. That's my point.

• 7:27Chuck Nice?

  Aha.

• 7:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The oxygen itself does not burn.

• 7:32Chuck Nice?

  So oxygen, because no, I was about to say, it's like a non-burning accelerant.

• 7:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I, I can, yes, sure.

• 7:41Chuck Nice?

  I mean, that's, I'm trying to make sense of this because it's like-

• 7:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'll allow that, but I think in firefighter talk, accelerant-

• 7:47Chuck Nice?

  Accelerant burns.

• 7:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Might, might mean something else. Right. So, uh, this is what happened Apollo 1.

• 7:54Chuck Nice?

  Uh oh.

• 7:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Apollo 1. Alright, nobody's ever heard of Apollo 1 because it never went anywhere. It was, that through Apollo 6, I think it was, was a set of designs of the capsule that would take three astronauts to the moon. There they are, on the launch pad, testing, on a testing pad. And in the capsule is pure oxygen.

• 8:18Chuck Nice?

  Whoa.

• 8:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's why. Because if they had an oxygen nitrogen mix, you would have to pressurize the inside to equal atmospheric pressure.

• 8:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that you'd have the right amount of oxygen that you're accustomed to breathing. If you do that, you have to overbuild the strength of the capsule.

• 8:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 8:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To contain one atmospheric pressure against the vacuum of space.

• 8:43Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 8:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So all the the joints, the bolts and the hinges and the door closures and the windows would have to be extra strong. So they said, why burden ourselves with this? Let's instead put in pure oxygen. Then we don't need to have to have it at full pressure.

• 9:05Chuck Nice?

  That's actually kind of brilliant.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's brilliant. It's brilliant. Now we can go at much lower pressure, but it's all oxygen. So now you take in a breath. It's less total air, but it's the right amount of oxygen.

• 9:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That your body is expecting. Okay? All right. In that capsule, there was an electrical fire.

• 9:24Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a spark that immediately burned all of the insulation, the thing, their suits. And they could not open the hatch in time. All three astronauts were burned to death.

• 9:39Chuck Nice?

  Oh, gosh.

• 9:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep.

• 9:42Chuck Nice?

  That is just awful.

• 9:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, it's terrible. It's it. So. Again, it's it's accidents like that where we think the oxygen was burning. But that's not what was burning. The oxygen enabled everything burnable to burn.

• 9:57Chuck Nice?

  To continue to burn.

• 9:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The astronauts themselves. Correct. We lost three astronauts. In that fire.

• 10:03Chuck Nice?

  Damn, that is, oh my God, that's just terrible.

• 10:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right.

• 10:07Chuck Nice?

  So now what did they do to? Listen, because let me just tell you, let me just say this. First of all, it's a tragedy and I would dare never uh uh infringe upon the sanctity of those men's and their lives.

• 10:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, mhm, mhm.

• 10:21Chuck Nice?

  But I will say this, if I'm the next three astronauts, I just quit the space program.

• 10:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, what's up? Here's what they did. Instead of saying, okay, let's try Apollo two, okay? No, what they did was they scrapped six Apollo designs and came up with Apollo seven. I think it was seven or eight, no, Apollo seven. And so th- they were nowhere near what that design was by the time they had the next vessel in place.

• 10:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay, alright.

• 10:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would have satisfied you, I think.

• 10:49Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 10:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So anyway, so that's another thing with oxygen. Now, here's, here's another one, you ready? In the movie Jaws.

• 10:54Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a tank of oxygen.

• 10:57Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 10:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On deck, at the end.

• 11:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the captain, I think, uh, Richard Dreyfuss' character bumps into it and he's, "Watch out! That's oxygen." Okay. All that mattered for the movie was that what was in the tank was compressed gas.

• 11:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they're saying, "Watch out, it's oxygen."

• 11:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oxygen. So what happens? How do they finally defeat the great white shark? Okay, I forgot which, it's been a while since I've seen the film. One of them, I think while the shark is munching on the boat, takes that oxygen tank and shoves it into the mouth of the shark.

• 11:38Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then dives off the boat. I'm making some of this up because I don't remember the details, but the shark, you can see the tank in the shark's mouth. The guy takes his high-powered rifle, shoots the tank, and the tank explodes, blowing the head of the shark off, and then peace reigns in Nantucket, or wherever the hell this was.

• 12:00Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 12:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, what mattered there was not that it was oxygen, but that it was gas under pressure, and when you punched a bullet hole in it, probably it just would have been a hole and would have gone pssss.

• 12:12Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, the shark should have just shot off into the distance.

• 12:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, he would have had a little, little retro rocket.

• 12:18Chuck Nice?

  Little rocket mouth. Shark has rocket mouth now and it's just like.

• 12:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that's probably what would have happened, um, but, uh, if this tank is not structurally sound and it can't accommodate a hole, it could conceivably blow up. But it blew up not because it had oxygen in it.

• 12:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because it was gas under pressure. So, that's different from if you leave your gas in your stove on and all your windows are closed and you go out and you come back.

• 12:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now there's gas everywhere in the house. A spark.

• 12:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Won't just burn what sparked. The, all the gas will now ignite and explode.

• 12:59Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's the difference between methane gas, which is flammable, and oxygen gas, which is not.

• 13:06Chuck Nice?

  Right, right. And, you know, and the other difference is normally that's kind of like, um, insurance fraud, but.

• 13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yes, yes. Okay. In the old days, I don't know if there's as much of that, uh, today.

• 13:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, they got too much, uh, forensic science now.

• 13:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Too much science, yes.

• 13:22Chuck Nice?

  Too much science. It's your people, your people screwed it up.

• 13:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We can science the shit out of whatever you just did.

• 13:29Chuck Nice?

  Right. I can't collect the insurance on my failing business now, thanks to you, but you guys.

• 13:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ass in jail. Uh, so, a couple more things, okay? Um, as you may know, plant life likes carbon dioxide.

• 13:45Chuck Nice?

  Of course.

• 13:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It absorbs it, okay? And that carbon becomes part of the fibers of the wood and out comes oxygen, which we breathe, okay? If you have too much plant life.

• 14:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it creates, let's call it excess oxygen.

• 14:08Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 14:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's say thirty percent oxygen in the atmosphere.

• 14:12Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 14:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And there are calculations that do this, which I can't quote precisely, but just some number above the twenty-one percent that we now have.

• 14:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 14:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take it to thirty, forty, fifty percent oxygen. Imagine a world where plants are just pumping this out and they're loving it, okay? In that world, forest fires never end.

• 14:35Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that makes sense because they have, they're being fed by oxygen all the time.

• 14:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By oxygen, correct.

• 14:41Chuck Nice?

  So you have the fuel of the wood and then the oxygen is also, you know, fueling it too.

• 14:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So in a way, it's self-correcting. Too much plant life creates too much oxygen, so the next lightning strike will take it out, preventing more oxygen from coming in.

• 15:00Chuck Nice?

  Oh, well, it's its own check and balance.

• 15:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct, correct. So it's just interesting to think about how you end up pegging oxygen at one level versus another.

• 15:12Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 15:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One other thing, and I think we talked about it in our surface area explainer.

• 15:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Insects don't, most of them don't have lungs, the way we think of, we breathe in and we have lungs and that's how we get our oxygen. Insects, many of them rely on absorbing oxygen through their surface area.

• 15:34Chuck Nice?

  Right, which is why they never need breath mints.

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right, is that right? I, thank you for telling me. Okay, so they, and so, if you have more oxygen in your air,

• 15:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  this is like rocket fuel for them.

• 15:50Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 15:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they can grow bigger.

• 15:53Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 15:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because when you're bigger, your surface area to volume is lower. But if you have, we did that in an explainer, you have to dig that one up. If you're bigger, you have more volume to your surface area. So now you're not going to get enough oxygen to feed your fat body. But if the oxygen levels are higher, you can. And so that's why you had those huge dragonflies back at the time of the dinosaurs.

• 16:18Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, oxygen levels were higher back then. You had these huge insects. So oxygen levels have consequences in the biota of Earth.

• 16:30Chuck Nice?

  Wow. So who knew that all of this? Who knew all this about O2?

• 16:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, exactly. And oxygen wants to combine and so combines with itself best. So you have an O2, two oxygen. And one last thing. People talk about humans wrecking the earth. Uh, you know, the only species ever to change the ecosystem of the earth. That is just false. Um, the creature that had the greatest effect on the climate and conditions of the earth were the cyanobacteria.

• 17:04Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 17:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of when was this? Three and a half billion years ago, something like that? At that time, earth's atmosphere was mostly carbon dioxide. Hardly any oxygen at all. They take in carbon dioxide and spew out oxygen.

• 17:18Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 17:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And they built the oxygen supply of our atmosphere to levels that were caustic to animals that don't like oxygen.

• 17:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this killed off entire branches of the tree of life who were doing just fine in their carbon dioxide atmosphere. But it enabled other forms of life to rise up that would exploit the oxygen for their own benefit.

• 17:49Chuck Nice?

  Wow, wow. So why can't we just use cyanobacteria as a carbon scrubber for our current situation where we have to mitigate the amount of carbon in the atmosphere?

• 18:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's, that's a good, um, okay, so sure. You have to watch out for unintended consequences.

• 18:10Chuck Nice?

  Right. Because guess what? We already saw one unintended consequence of cyanobacter. Thanks cyanobacteria.

• 18:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, I mean, it's, uh, uh, who knows? That we get, should probably get people to look into that. To have biological CO2 scrubbers, which is what plants are, right? But again, they're putting more oxygen in the air and that also has consequences. So, yeah.

• 18:35Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that was great.

• 18:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Anyhow, you got it, dude.

• 18:39Chuck Nice?

  I started off saying oxygen was boring, but you know, I was wrong.

• 18:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, and by the way, if oxygen were actually flammable, every time you lit a match, it would just burn. Your air would burn out.

• 18:52Chuck Nice?

  That would be, actually, that'd be kind of cool.

• 18:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, if you just pump oxygen through your, through the gas, right? Your gas stove, but no, we don't because it's not flammable. That's all I got to tell you about oxygen.

• 19:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do we have any good reason to think that aliens would be evil? Where did we get that idea from? Aliens could be the most peace-loving creatures the universe has ever generated. Yet our representations of them tend to be diabolical. Which gets me to wonder that these representations of evil aliens are not based on how we think they will behave, that maybe they're really based on how we know we have behaved to one another. Especially when there's a conflict between a higher technology and a lower technology. So exploring the topic of aliens can not only give us insights into all the ways of being

• 20:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  alive in the universe, it can on occasion hold up a mirror to our greatest fear, which might in fact be ourselves. That and more in my latest offering, Take Me To Your Leader: Perspectives On Your First Alien Encounter. I narrated the audiobook, that's available with the print version, and I'm kind of thinking you should get it now. It'd be too late if you have your first alien encounter and have not yet read the book. You want to be ready.

• 20:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got one for you, ready? Go ahead. That rocks are light. You mean penguins? No, rocks. As in? Rocks. Little titties? Boulders, I don't care, I don't care what size. I don't care. They're all light. What I mean by light is that they're low density. Now, you might say, no, they're not. Yeah. I was gonna say, okay, Hercules.

• 21:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rocks are so damn light, boulders, like...

• 21:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, we went over weight and density on another explainer. Yes, we did. We can say a big tree is heavy, but you, but it floats. Okay, so how heavy could it be if it floats? Well, there you go. So... A battleship floats, too. Battleship floats, so the average density of a battleship, or even an aircraft carrier, is less than water, because when you do a cross-section through an aircraft carrier, it's mostly air, okay? Okay, most of a ship is ever air, and so that's why, great discovery, by the way, to realize you can make a boat out of something that itself, the material doesn't float. Float, right. You have, it's the design of the hull that... I guarantee you, that guy was not well-received. No, what he did, it transformed naval warfare.

• 21:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You didn't have to make a ship out of wood anymore, you can make it out of steel. Just put enough hull in there, and, and you're good, so... God, that would have been cool to be on the first steel battleship going up against wooden dudes. Yeah, you would just plow through, that would, that's called asymmetric advantage in warfare. Nice. Okay? I like that. Yeah, so the first person with a gun, when all you have is a bow and arrow, asymmetric advantage, okay? Also called winner. Winner. You won that battle, okay? If you're there with a bow and arrow, and somebody's shooting you down, you say, okay, we're good, we good. That's like, like aliens with ray guns and you up there with a pistol shooting at it's like, no, can you just see the situation here?

• 22:35Chuck Nice?

  I am so glad you said that because I hate when they do that where

• 22:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the movies.

• 22:41Chuck Nice?

  When the movies, when the earthlings go up against the aliens and the earthlings are shooting bullets and the aliens are shooting like laser beams.

• 22:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Laser beams that vaporize their homes, right?

• 22:51Chuck Nice?

  And I'm like, really? Come on. And we win? Come on. Come on. All right. Bought a, bought a pistol to a laser fight. Get out.

• 23:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, back to rocks.

• 23:03Chuck Nice?

  Rocks are dense or not dense?

• 23:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, they're light. They're light. Now here's why. Earth was once molten.

• 23:10Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 23:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When, in the early days of formation, right? When you're molten and you're as big as the earth.

• 23:16Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Gravity will do things to that molten mixture. Okay?

• 23:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That makes sense, right? So, so you, if you're denser, if you're heavier, if you're denser, you will sink to the middle.

• 23:30Chuck Nice?

  Right. That makes sense.

• 23:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you're lighter, you'll float. This happens with any, if you're mixing oil and vinegar for your salad. Um, okay. You're mixing anything.

• 23:38Chuck Nice?

  Layered cocktails?

• 23:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Layered, for example. And that generally, well, always, the lower density stuff will float on top of the higher density stuff. Some things you can mix and it'll stay mixed for a while. That's cool. Uh, but that's how things work. Okay. So, why is it that when you walk around Earth's surface, you find rocks?

• 24:04Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 24:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Earth does not have rocks in its core. You know what it has in its core? Iron.

• 24:11Chuck Nice?

  Iron.

• 24:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nickel.

• 24:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Magnesium.

• 24:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. It's got heavy metals in its core. Because all the heavy stuff sank to the middle and all the light stuff floated to the top. So, Earth's crust, where the active ingredient is rock, is the lightest stuff in Earth when it formed.

• 24:39Chuck Nice?

  So the, oh my god.

• 24:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sorry, sorry, sorry. It's the third lightest. It's the third lightest.

• 24:43Chuck Nice?

  Third lightest.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The very lightest stuff are the gases, okay?

• 24:46Chuck Nice?

  Okay, yeah.

• 24:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So they're floating over your head.

• 24:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and next is the water.

• 24:50Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that, alright.

• 24:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the water sank to the bottom of the gas.

• 24:56Chuck Nice?

  Makes sense.

• 24:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's Earth's surface, alright. And what sinks to the bottom of the water? Rocks.

• 25:01Chuck Nice?

  Rocks.

• 25:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what sinks below the rocks? All the rest of the crap that Earth is made of that's heavier than the rocks.

• 25:07Chuck Nice?

  So rocks are the third lightest thing that came about in the creation of the Earth?

• 25:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, basically, basically. And it's made our crust. Now, everything didn't solidify in the same instant.

• 25:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 25:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, and plus you have volcanoes that communicate lower layers with upper layers and things. So there is some of this, but that's why if you're looking for iron, you gotta find the iron ore. Okay?

• 25:32Chuck Nice?

  The iron ore what?

• 25:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know exactly.

• 25:37Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry, I had to do it. I had to do it. It was so bad, but I couldn't resist.

• 25:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was so bad, it was good, okay?

• 25:44Chuck Nice?

  I know.

• 25:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was so bad, it was good. Okay, so there's iron ore, nickel ore, so, so it's not everywhere, there are these places where these, these veins had been preserved at the point Earth was solidifying. Okay, so you get this remnants of this stuff. You wanna find out where most of the iron is and most of the nickel is on Earth? It is in the center of the Earth, and the universe has a lot of nickel and iron in it. So Earth got its, plenty of its share of those two ingredients, and it's in our core. And you might say, well, how you know? You've never been there. Let me hear it.

• 26:18Chuck Nice?

  Well, how do you know? You've never been there.

• 26:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that accent you brought in, that, that, that was the obnoxious kid in the classroom.

• 26:25Chuck Nice?

  How do you know, Mr. Asshole physicist? You've never been there.

• 26:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we have geophysicists who, anytime there's an earthquake?

• 26:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 26:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They can time the passage of the, of the, um, of the earthquake signals through the different layers of the Earth. And depending on where and when they receive them at other stations, they can map the density profile of the entire Earth. They know what because because the the wave moves through dense materials differently

• 26:58Chuck Nice?

  differently

• 26:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  through from light materials and once you know that you can figure that out and bada bing we've got an iron core.

• 27:04Chuck Nice?

  That's amazing.

• 27:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have it so so we think we're about the density of water. All right, approximately some people float, some people sink that

• 27:11Chuck Nice?

  right.

• 27:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  humans are about the density of water. So so we think of rocks as heavy and relative to us, they're heavy relative to water, they're heavy relative to air, but not relative to the rest of the earth. That's why you don't have to have a mining operation to find rocks.

• 27:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're sticking out of the side of the mountain.

• 27:32Chuck Nice?

  They have floated to the top.

• 27:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Floated to the top and they're they're there for the taking.

• 27:37Chuck Nice?

  That's so.

• 27:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, that's why it's so hard to find meteorites on earth's surface. Because most meteorites are rocky. And so it'll land and it just looks like any other rock. So you gotta go to places where they would stand out. And there are two kinds of places where that happens. One is the desert, sandy desert.

• 27:57Chuck Nice?

  Sand.

• 27:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One problem is that sand will cover it over often. However, sand will also blow away. And if you see a rock sitting in the middle, because you can scan, you can scan like many square miles at a pop. Okay. So you say, oh, there's something sticking out of the sand over there that just got revealed go it's probably a meteorite.

• 28:14Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 28:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, A, B, another place you can go is um glacier ice sheets in Antarctica and in Greenland. So most meteorites in the in our collections, in our modern collections, come from Greenland and Antarctica for just that reason. Because every other place on earth is made of frickin' rocks.

• 28:31Chuck Nice?

  Right. So there there's probably tons of them there, but they're just hanging out.

• 28:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 28:36Chuck Nice?

  The rocks.

• 28:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because and some people ask, how come all the meteorites are aiming for Antarctica?

• 28:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or that's like that's like the thing. Um, how come I only find my car keys near the lamppost?

• 28:48Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At night. Right? Well, because that's the only place you would have seen them.

• 28:54Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 28:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but we're good.

• 28:58Chuck Nice?

  Wow, that was cool, man.

• 29:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, the rocks are.

• 29:00Chuck Nice?

  Rocks are light.

• 29:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Rocks are light.

• 29:02Chuck Nice?

  Rocks are light, people.

• 29:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And pumice is even lighter because it's got air in it. Air is helping it out. Yeah, that's the, that's the fast, uh, solidifying rock from a volcano when it hits the ocean.

• 29:13Chuck Nice?

  It's also great for taking dead skin off your feet, but.

• 29:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I don't want.

• 29:19Chuck Nice?

  That's.

• 29:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, that's why God put pumice on this world.

• 29:22Chuck Nice?

  Exactly, man. It's the best, that's the best use of it.

• 29:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Never mind that God could have made it so that you never got rough feet in the first place. Okay.

• 29:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I didn't perfect that, that foot thing. Let me give you something else to help that. Okay. That's the second round of creation, right? Okay.

• 29:44Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly. The first round was, you know, the, the, the, the actual body and the second round was cosmetics.

• 29:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For those days where even God couldn't help you.

• 29:57Chuck Nice?

  Right. Yes, yeah. It's like, hmm.

• 30:01Chuck Nice?

  I can't even do anything with this.

• 30:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here, take some pumice.

• 30:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 30:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Take some of this other stuff.

• 30:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You do it.

• 30:07Chuck Nice?

  L'Oréal, baby. I can't help you. You need Max Factor. I cannot help you.

• 30:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You need oil of old age, you know.

• 30:31Chuck Nice?

  I'm Brian Futterman and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I got a topic for you.

• 30:47Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 30:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Warm blankets.

• 30:50Chuck Nice?

  All right. What is happening to us? What is going on that warm blankets are a topic?

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a topic.

• 31:02Chuck Nice?

  What's the next, what's the next explainer going to be snuggling?

• 31:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just saying, there's physics everywhere and I just want to sort of. Bring warm blankets, the time has arrived to come to understand warm blankets.

• 31:18Chuck Nice?

  First of all, warm blankets sounds like a new emo band. And secondly, I am so.

• 31:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's an underused title for something out there.

• 31:27Chuck Nice?

  It is, yeah, warm blankets. But I will say that I'm excited to see the physics in warm blankets.

• 31:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so here you go, you ready?

• 31:36Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go.

• 31:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 31:38Chuck Nice?

  Here we go.

• 31:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you look at a coat or blanket or an item of clothing, so that's a warm item of clothing.

• 31:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Obviously, when it's sitting on the hanger, the temperature of the clothing is the same as the temperature of the air.

• 31:51Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 31:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay? So you don't say, oh, that's a, if, if, if there's a blanket sitting on the tile floor, you don't say, oh, that's a warm tile. You say, oh, that's a warm blanket. But they're the same temperature, right? If they're just sitting out there in the air, they'll, they'll be the same temperature as each other. So why are we thinking the blanket is warm, but the tile is cold when they are the same temperature?

• 32:17Chuck Nice?

  Interesting. And the funny thing is, we do make that distinction because you will look at the blanket and call it warm and call the tile cold or cool.

• 32:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even though.

• 32:31Chuck Nice?

  Even though they're sitting there together.

• 32:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're sitting there together at the same temperature. Okay, so here's the thing. If the blanket were actually a source of warmth, you could put it over the tile, wait a while, peel back the blanket, and then the tile would be warmer than the surrounding tiles.

• 32:48Chuck Nice?

  Uh, now I just picture tile on the floor just going, oh, man.

• 32:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Snuggly tiles.

• 32:55Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that was so good.

• 32:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm tired of people calling me cold.

• 32:58Chuck Nice?

  Why did she do that? Why did, put the blanket back?

• 33:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so the point is, the blanket doesn't make anything warm. It, it, it is completely passive in this, it, it, it's, it's not a source of warmth. If it were, you could put it on something cold to warm it up.

• 33:24Chuck Nice?

  True.

• 33:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all I'm saying.

• 33:25Chuck Nice?

  It is not a source.

• 33:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is not a source, even though our language calls it a warm blanket, or warm mittens, or warm anything else.

• 33:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, what we really mean when we say a garment is warm, is that it does not transmit heat energy.

• 33:47Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all we mean, even though that's not what we're saying.

• 33:52Chuck Nice?

  Well, that, that, first of all, that doesn't sound very comfortable. God, I just wanna get under a blanket that doesn't transmit heat energy.

• 34:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sweetie. A new catchy ad for the blanket commercial, right?

• 34:08Chuck Nice?

  Come on under here and let's get under this thing that doesn't transmit heat energy.

• 34:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, there's the point. If you put the blanket on the tile, there is no heat difference between them, so nothing is happening. There's no, okay. So now, watch. Now I put it on you.

• 34:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you are warmer than the blanket, if you got the blanket out of the closet, or on the shelf. Okay?

• 34:37Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The blanket's just room temperature. You are warmer than the room, than the blanket. And right now, you are radiating heat to the air.

• 34:45Chuck Nice?

  Yes, I am.

• 34:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Losing heat.

• 34:47Chuck Nice?

  Cause I am hot, baby.

• 34:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You are radiant.

• 34:50Chuck Nice?

  I am coming in hot. Coming in hot, that's what I am.

• 34:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you come on in, and so you feel cold because you're losing heat to the air. Okay? And then you say, oh, there's a warm blanket, let me go get it. So now you bring the blanket, and now the blanket doesn't let you lose the heat to the air.

• 35:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You keep that heat and you interpret what's going on as the blanket being warm. When all that's happening is that you are no longer losing the heat you were a minute before you put on the blanket.

• 35:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, you might say that's just semantic. No, okay? Because, let's say you you brought in some cold beer, okay? And so you you don't have any ice yet, but you got it out of the refrigerated cabinet. It's cold beer that's sitting on the floor and you say, I don't want the beer to warm up. Let's get a warm blanket to put on it, okay?

• 35:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, because because how does a beer get warm? It's taking heat from the air, okay? Because the air is warmer than the beer. So what you need is super blanket that does not transmit heat energy across its thickness. So you take a blanket, put it on the beer, it'll keep the beer cold. By preventing heat from coming from outside of the beer from entering the beer.

• 36:21Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man. So.

• 36:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the point is, so the blanket that you're calling a warm blanket is also a cold blanket.

• 36:27Chuck Nice?

  It's a cold blanket too. Now.

• 36:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, we have another word for things like that that you carry around and it's called a thermos.

• 36:36Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that's true. Right. Yes. Whether it's a thermos cooler or a thermos for liquids.

• 36:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's it's it's the thermos keeps hot things hot and cold things cold.

• 36:46Chuck Nice?

  Cold, right.

• 36:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The thermos is the ideal blanket for the food that's contained within it. So if you wanted to, if you wanted the best bed of them all, turn it into a thermos. It's just not cuddly, but boy, you will stay. You in fact, you'll become too hot because your body needs to actually cool off. Otherwise you'll overheat. So I just wanted to clarify the fact that warm blankets are simply blankets that don't transmit heat energy. And it'll work keeping your beer cold or you warm. And and more broadly, it'll maintain the temperature of whatever it is it's covering.

• 37:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is.

• 37:27Chuck Nice?

  And if you're not having a good time, then that's a wet blanket, but that's a whole nother explainer. Whole nother explainer.

• 37:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's another, another, whole nother, another. So, so basically, this is what insulation is. Insulation, we don't think of blankets as insulation, but that's what they are. And if one blanket is not working for you, you get a second blanket.

• 37:48Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the two combined make it even harder for heat to transfer from one place to another.

• 37:56Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so now, how does that, how does that explain why, no matter how many blankets I put on my wife, her feet are still cold?

• 38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We have top scientists working on that right now.

• 38:13Chuck Nice?

  How can your feet be cold? You're wearing boots, thermal socks, and three blankets. How are your feet cold? It's impossible.

• 38:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we may have talked about this in another explainer, Chuck, I'm not sure. But you will feel cold if you are losing heat to your environment.

• 38:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you will feel warm if you are gaining heat from the environment, or if your heat does not lose to the environment, has a hard time leaving your body going into the environment.

• 38:47Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we talked about that during wind chills.

• 38:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, wind chill, we did talk about that.

• 38:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we talked about that during wind chills.

• 38:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had some memory of that. So, warm mittens? You know, what makes mittens warm? They're keeping your fingers touching each other.

• 39:01Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In a mitten, when one finger loses heat, it goes to the next finger.

• 39:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 39:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you want that heat. So, you're radiating to yourself inside the mitten, right? Whereas gloves, where all your fingers are separated, you, it's trying to prevent your skin from making thermal contact with the air, but you have all this surface area on each finger for each finger of the glove. And so, that's why it's harder to keep your fingers warm in gloves than it does in mittens. That's all this is ever doing.

• 39:34Chuck Nice?

  And that's a wonderful metaphor for where we are in America right now. America, the country that prides itself on being a glove, where each finger is independent of one another. When right now, what we really need to be is a mitten. Each one of us giving heat to one another, relying upon each other in order to be warm together. So.

• 39:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kumbaya.

• 40:07Chuck Nice?

  Oh shit, I'm sorry.

• 40:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, I didn't think you had it in you. Chuck, that was beautiful. That, that, that, that's beautiful.

• 40:17Chuck Nice?

  Kumbaya is great. I forgot about that.

• 40:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But, but what that, but what that means is, if you jump into, if, if you, if you have a partner in bed, who's been there for some time, holding aside your wife's feet, which top researchers are still working on. If you have a partner that's been in bed, under the covers, under the quote, warm blanket, and you've been outside and you feel cold, because you're losing heat faster than your body is comfortable, and you say, I'm gonna jump in bed. The moment you jump in bed, you will touch your partner and start taking heat from them.

• 40:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 40:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The moment you start taking heat from them, you feel warm. And you say, oh honey, you're warm. And what do you feel like to her? Oh my gosh.

• 41:03Chuck Nice?

  What I feel like to her is a call to her divorce lawyer.

• 41:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so you're taking heat from her, the fact that she's losing heat from you, means she feels cold.

• 41:14Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 41:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So two people cannot feel warm with each other at the same time. You can be neutral. One will feel cold, the other hot. One will feel hot, the other cold. But you both can't feel warm touching each other. Thermodynamically, that's not possible. Nor can you both feel cold touching each other. Somebody's, it's either neutral, or somebody's taking heat from the other.

• 41:36Chuck Nice?

  Right. Well, judging on my marriage, clearly, we know who's gonna be taking what, from whom.

• 41:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, what kind of heat energy, who's got what?

• 41:48Chuck Nice?

  I'm just saying.

• 41:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's it. That's all I gotta say about, about blankets.

• 41:53Chuck Nice?

  Alright. I'm, I'm, you pulled it off. I'm gonna give it to you.

• 42:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So think of it not as a warm blanket, just as a blanket.

• 42:02Chuck Nice?

  As a blanket.

• 42:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And serving as a thermos in your life to keep the cold beer cold. Or the hot, uh, or you warm at your, at your body temperature. Oh, one last thing before we wrap. Reptiles are the same temperature as their environment because they're cold blooded. That's what cold blooded means. It doesn't mean their blood is cold. It just means they don't regulate it and, and, and make it a higher temperature. So it's the same temperature as the air. So you could put a blanket on a reptile, but it'll be vastly yet less useful to it than if it were warm blooded.

• 42:37Chuck Nice?

  Well, now I feel bad about making my iguana wear a sweater.

• 42:42Chuck Nice?

  Damn, all that for nothing. All that knitting for nothing.

• 42:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, how much knitting could that have been?

• 42:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, and, and just quickly, if the iguana goes out into the cold weather, you're gonna wanna bring him a sweater. Because then they'll be losing their body heat to the air and maybe they don't wanna do that at that moment.

• 43:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, cuz they live that way, but maybe they wanna stay warm. And snakes, you ever see snakes in the summertime? They'll come out and, and sunbathe on the rocks cuz that feels good.

• 43:12Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they, but that's because a source of energy is being handed to them by sunlight.

• 43:19Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You can't just give a blanket to a snake and say, you don't need the sunlight, just snuggle up in the blanket. That, that, that's not gonna work.

• 43:28Chuck Nice?

  Right, and the, the reason why you don't give a blanket to a snake is cuz they're a snake.

• 43:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thanks for figuring that one out, Chuck.

• 43:37Chuck Nice?

  Right, they just, they don't deserve anything, damn it.

• 43:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't give a blanket to a snake because it's a snake.

• 43:47Chuck Nice?

  Cuz it's a snake.

• 43:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What kind of reasoning is that?

• 43:51Chuck Nice?

  I don't like snakes. That's where that reasoning comes from. It's that simple.

• 43:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 43:56Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's cool, man. Well, there you go. Um, and what I learned is this, if you are using a blanket to keep your beer warm, I invite you to a little place called Walmart or Target to buy a cooler.

• 44:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you wouldn't use the blanket to keep your beer warm. You use the blanket to keep your-

• 44:13Chuck Nice?

  I'm sorry, I said it wrong, damn it!

• 44:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn!

• 44:16Chuck Nice?

  I messed it up!

• 44:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn!

• 44:19Chuck Nice?

  Anyway. Oh well.

• 44:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, be good Chuck.

• 44:23Chuck Nice?

  This is great.

• 44:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk Explainer, over and out. Keep looking up.