Things You Thought You Knew – What Are Wormholes?

What is a wormhole, really? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice explore things you thought you knew about the physics of falling objects, white noise, and wormholes. Why do things break when they fall?

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

• 0:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. This is a Things You Thought You Knew edition. And that means it's just gonna be me and Chuck for this whole episode. Can you handle it Chuck?

• 0:25Chuck Nice?

  No. I'm already, I'm overwhelmed. Because I already know that I don't know, see?

• 0:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, okay.

• 0:35Chuck Nice?

  There's no thinking, there's no thinking that I know.

• 0:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so we're gonna, uh, let's first take on the topic that's so simple. Why do things break when they fall? What do you think of that?

• 0:47Chuck Nice?

  See, but this is, this is what I've learned.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 0:52Chuck Nice?

  From Things You Thought You Knew. There are times when, in the past, at full disclosure, where you have said, "So, we're gonna talk about floating, things that float." And in my head, I will say, not audibly of course, but I will say, "Neil has lost his damn mind."

• 1:18Chuck Nice?

  He wants to sit here and waste people's time talking about why something might float.

• 1:27Chuck Nice?

  And I'm like, "Why, bro, whatever, let's, okay, let's get into it." And then we start talking about it and by the time it's over, I'm like, "Oh my God."

• 1:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 1:39Chuck Nice?

  So...

• 1:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so here you go.

• 1:41Chuck Nice?

  Here we go.

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's do it, okay?

• 1:44Chuck Nice?

  Why things break when they fall?

• 1:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so, uh, maybe it's obvious to some people, but just I thought I would tease out the physics of what's going on, okay? All right.

• 1:57Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 1:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you have a plate. That is up on a shelf.

• 2:02Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a breakable plate.

• 2:04Chuck Nice?

  Alright.

• 2:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And somebody shoves the plate, it falls, it hits the ground and breaks.

• 2:09Chuck Nice?

  It's a cat. A cat did that.

• 2:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A cat did that, for sure.

• 2:12Chuck Nice?

  It's always a cat.

• 2:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For sure. Okay. One of my favorite memes, was it a meme where they said, "We know the earth isn't flat, because otherwise cats would have pushed everything off of it by now."

• 2:25Chuck Nice?

  I never saw that, but that's hilarious.

• 2:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a really good evidence that the earth is not flat. So, if the plate is just sitting there in front of you on the table, and you want to break it, you have to introduce energy. Alright.

• 2:42Chuck Nice?

  Or a Greek wedding.

• 2:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or a Jewish wedding, they break.

• 2:47Chuck Nice?

  No, Jewish wedding, you step on the glass when you're done.

• 2:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At a Greek wedding, they break plates?

• 2:53Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, when they're dancing. "Opah, bang."

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I didn't know that. Okay. I guess I've never been to a Greek wedding. And probably neither have you.

• 3:02Chuck Nice?

  Have not. And right now, there are a bunch of Greek people watching this going, "The hell is Chuck talking about?"

• 3:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so the plate is in front of you. You actually have to commit some kind of violence on the plate to do it.

• 3:16Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 3:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what you have to do is ask, "How much energy is holding this plate together?" Alright, so you go down to the molecular level and see how strongly the molecules are bound, are bound to each other.

• 3:30Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 3:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So, in a crystal, for example, they're pretty strongly bound together. So if you try to break a crystal, it's hard. Takes more energy to break a crystal. Alright? And so, but it's a fragile sort of dinner plate. Alright, not a plastic plate, but just one that can break. You actually have to put energy into it, and the plate will not break, unless the energy you put into it is greater than the binding energy of the molecules holding the plate together.

• 4:04Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 4:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 4:05Chuck Nice?

  That well, and that makes sense.

• 4:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's simple. Doesn't that make sense? It makes complete sense.

• 4:09Chuck Nice?

  What I, what, what, what doesn't make sense right now is binding energy.

• 4:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, hey, well, I thought those two words mean exactly what you think they mean in that sentence. So, the two molecules that are adjacent to each other, alright, now, why doesn't the plate just separate all by itself?

• 4:28Chuck Nice?

  All by itself.

• 4:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, something is holding the molecules together. Okay, it could be any one of a number of kinds of forces doing it, but nonetheless, they're attached to each other. And if you introduce energy that's greater than the energy that's holding it together, you will break that bond.

• 4:46Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 4:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, that's how anything breaks, basically.

• 4:50Chuck Nice?

  Alright, yeah.

• 4:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We happen to use dinner plates for this example, alright? So, if it's just sitting there in front of you, and if you pound on it, you'll break it, alright? So, you had to put energy in it, but wait a minute, the plate that's sitting on a shelf that the cat pushed off, you're not pounding on it. You didn't pound on the plate. Nothing touched that plate, okay? Did the cat break the plate? No, the cat just showed the plate the edge of the shelf.

• 5:18Chuck Nice?

  And even if the cat broke the plate, you know cats, they'd have been like, I didn't break your plate.

• 5:25Chuck Nice?

  I don't even know who you're looking at, why are you even looking over here? First of all, why are you in my house right now? That's what I'm trying to figure out. Who the hell are you, and why do you like, why do you show up every day? How'd you get a key? Is what I wanna know. How did you get a key to this house?

• 5:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I, I saw a comic, um, where there's a cat sitting on the couch, and then the,

• 5:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and the caption said, "If cats could talk," right? And so, the, you know, the, the person, you know, the person who owns the cat comes home, right? It's just, "Oh, hi kitty, widdy, widdy." And then the cat looks up at him, and then goes back to sleep.

• 6:06Chuck Nice?

  Right. If cats could talk. That is genius, I don't know who wrote that.

• 6:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's complete genius.

• 6:14Chuck Nice?

  But that is genius, if cats could talk, which would be like, yeah, they wouldn't, they would just look at you and think, this mother...

• 6:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, but they think everything you said that they would say, right.

• 6:24Chuck Nice?

  That's right, never say it to you.

• 6:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's like, what are you doing in my house?

• 6:27Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 6:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who gave you the key? Well, can I get back to breaking plates, please? Anyway, anyway, so the cat didn't do anything to the plate. The cat didn't physically break the plate. Right. Okay, so what broke the plate? This is the question. You know that if you take a hammer and hit it to a plate, it'll break. You know if you pound your fist on the plate, it'll break. You know all this, okay? Why did the plate break when it fell off the shelf? Because it hit the floor. Okay.

• 6:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, yes, okay. Uh, okay. Um, it hit the floor with a certain amount of energy. Correct, yeah. Okay, and the higher the location it falls from, the more energy it's gonna have. Does that make sense? That's of course, yeah. And you know what kind of energy that is? Uh. Energy of motion, so we have a word for that? Kinetic. Kinetic energy, exactly. So, the kinetic energy of the plate that it had the instant before it hit the floor, you have to ask, how much energy is that compared to the binding energy of the plate? Oh, huh.

• 7:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, and so, does that exceed the binding energy of the plate? And if it does, the plate will break. Okay, where did the plate get its kinetic energy from? Um, gravity. Gravity, okay. Uh, all right. But, gravity didn't put the plate on the shelf. Okay. Who put the plate on the shelf? Well, I mean, I mean, who, who lives with the cat?

• 8:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's who put the plate on the shelf. Yeah, cuz, you know. Okay, so, so the plate used to be at a low location. Right. And somebody walked up to the plate after it was cleaned. It was like the lower shelf of the dishwasher. They picked it up, used their energy. Uh-huh. To give that plate what's called gravitational potential energy. Okay? And the higher you put the plate on the shelf, the more gravitational potential energy it has. And then the plate just sits there in possession of gravitational potential energy.

• 8:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It just sits there and if you dare, if the cat pushes the plate off the shelf, the gravitational potential energy swaps and becomes kinetic energy.

• 9:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, until it has no gravitational potential energy left, which is right when it hits the floor and all that energy becomes kinetic. And this dance between kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy is what goes on in every curve and every turn of a roller coaster. Okay, other than the first pull up the top.

• 9:34Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 9:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, where there's like chains and motors. Everything else is free fall, basically. You're in free glide. All right, and so that's why when you go up a hill, you slow down. But why are you slowing down? Because the gravitational potential energy is taking away your kinetic energy. And, and once you get to the top, why do you speed up on the way down? Because the kinetic energy is taking away, is, it's, it's being converted from the gravitational potential energy. And your fastest point on an entire roller coaster is gonna be where?

• 10:09Chuck Nice?

  The fastest point?

• 10:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 10:11Chuck Nice?

  You mean where you reach your top speed?

• 10:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, where's that gonna be?

• 10:14Chuck Nice?

  Uh, the bottom of the first drop.

• 10:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The bottom of, the lowest point of the roller coaster is gonna be your highest kinetic energy. And your, and your, and your highest potential energy is obvious now. It's gonna be whatever is the highest point on the roller coaster. So the roller coasters fully exploit this gravity, kinetic energy, potential energy relationship. Okay, and all I'm saying is, you wanna know who broke the plate? You did, because you gave it the energy to break in the first place by ascending it to that shelf.

• 10:45Chuck Nice?

  See, it sounds to me like you've been talking to the cat.

• 10:49Chuck Nice?

  Cause that's something the cat would say.

• 10:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had nothing to do with this.

• 10:53Chuck Nice?

  Hey, what you talking about?

• 10:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Whoever put this.

• 10:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Put it here's their fault.

• 10:59Chuck Nice?

  Right, I was just introducing you to some gravitational kinetic energy, okay? Getting rid of some potential energy, and by the way, the broom is over there, okay?

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so let's keep going. Now suppose the plate fell from an even higher height.

• 11:18Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 11:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, it just doesn't break into two, what happens?

• 11:23Chuck Nice?

  Oh, it shatters.

• 11:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It shatters. Unless there's some other sort of structural aspect of it, like, like safety glass shatters rather than just breaks into large pieces. That, you know why it's called safety glass? Because the pieces are so small that one piece can't go in and like cut your jugular, right? You'll just be like surface damage to your skin with safety glass. That's why it breaks into very small pieces, like instantly. It's so, it, what?

• 11:50Chuck Nice?

  So it's depth by a thousand shards.

• 11:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Instead of one.

• 11:53Chuck Nice?

  Instead of just one big one that cuts you in half.

• 11:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That pierces your aorta.

• 11:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All I'm saying is that if it's higher, it gains more kinetic energy because you gave it more gravitational potential energy. And by the time it hits the ground, it has much more energy to bake, to break the plate with. So it doesn't just break it at three places, it'll break it at a hundred places. There it is.

• 12:18Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 12:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, that's why things break when they fall. All I'm saying.

• 12:25Chuck Nice?

  Okay, that's, there you go, there you, and I, I have to say, once again, I'm impressed. Got to tell you right now, you know, I thought at the end of this talk that I was gonna feel like the cat. Like, what the hell?

• 12:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, so, and, and just to be clear, you could make something, if you wanted to say, I want to make a plate that doesn't break.

• 12:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 12:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so you make sure the binding energy between the molecules of the plate is greater than the energy that would, that it would be given by the cat if it fell off a very high shelf in your home. And there's this basically unbreakable for most things that would happen in your home. And so you could calculate what that energy is and find a material substance for which that's the case.

• 13:16Chuck Nice?

  Nice. So...

• 13:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that's where you get break resistant.

• 13:21Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, yeah.

• 13:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Break resistant stemware for clumsy wine drinkers.

• 13:26Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 13:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the material substance of it has higher resistance to... It requires more energy to break it than what is normal and typical for a delicate wine stem.

• 13:39Chuck Nice?

  I had a job where I had to demonstrate something that was billed as unbreakable at the time.

• 13:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:49Chuck Nice?

  And when you're supposed to demonstrate it within reason, okay? I took it and slammed it down and it exploded. And I then said to the people, "Uh, maybe it is break resistant."

• 14:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that was your first and last day on that job, right?

• 14:15Chuck Nice?

  Oh, oh, oh, without a doubt.

• 14:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Chuck, you know why some things just won't break when they fall? Because they're flexible. And the energy that would otherwise go back into the product to break its bonds goes into the product to have the product bend.

• 14:34Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 14:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That takes energy to do that. So plastic, something that's plastic, when it falls, it will just bend. And the energy goes into the bending of the structure. So, and if you want to make something that will survive kids, things that fall and just bust apart into 20 pieces, but each piece can then be put back together the way it was before, you see? So the energy still destroys it, but doesn't break any individual piece because that energy is just cast to asunder.

• 15:11Chuck Nice?

  That's why all my dishes are made out of Lego.

• 15:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, that was brilliant. That's just brilliant.

• 15:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so there you go Chuck.

• 15:27Chuck Nice?

  There you have it.

• 15:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As, as we end segment one of Things You Thought You Knew. When we come back for segment two, we're gonna do a little more of this on a whole other subject. Alright, we'll be right back.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  I'm Joel Cherico and I make pottery. You can see my pottery on my website, cosmicmugs.com. Cosmic Mugs, art that lets you taste the universe every day. And I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 16:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back, StarTalk. Things You Thought You Knew Edition. Chuck, ready for another one?

• 16:11Chuck Nice?

  Oh yes.

• 16:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, this is the topic of white noise.

• 16:16Chuck Nice?

  You know...

• 16:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, don't go there, just stop.

• 16:20Chuck Nice?

  I'm just saying. Since, since January 6th, now that we brought it up.

• 16:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I did not bring it up.

• 16:27Chuck Nice?

  Now that we brought it up, I got it's just, you know, since January 6th has happened. While, while we're on the subject.

• 16:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  White noise. Was long defined before the chaos at the Capitol.

• 16:45Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 16:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, alright. So, uh, white noise is what is described as a combination of sound frequencies that ends up just sounding like a, like a hiss.

• 17:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a hiss, okay?

• 17:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 17:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so, what's going on there?

• 17:04Chuck Nice?

  As, as opposed to black noise, which is...

• 17:09Chuck Nice?

  Shut them damn kids up. That's black noise.

• 17:15Chuck Nice?

  Y'all know I'm down here trying to watch my stories? What the hell is wrong with you? That is black noise. That is black noise.

• 17:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Thank you Chuck. We'll introduce that to the animals of physics.

• 17:28Chuck Nice?

  Right. Welcome to another episode of black noise.

• 17:35Chuck Nice?

  No you didn't. More black noise. Oh no you didn't. Right?

• 17:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Background.

• 17:43Chuck Nice?

  Background. The background of black noise. Just or that is what we not gonna do. We not gonna do, that is what we not gonna do. So that's more black noise. More black noise.

• 17:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck is gonna make a book. You're gonna make a.

• 18:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 18:05Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 18:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like I said.

• 18:07Chuck Nice?

  Enough sillings.

• 18:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So. Uh, so here it is. So what it is, it's a mixture of all frequencies of sound.

• 18:15Chuck Nice?

  Oh wow.

• 18:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All at once. All audible frequencies of sound.

• 18:19Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 18:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could add in others, but it won't make any difference because you can't hear them. Okay? So white noise is low frequency, middle frequency, high frequency. And there are different ways you can do it. Because high frequency sound at the same amplitude actually carries more energy. So you, you might sort of adjust it so that you have the same amount of energy, uh, sound energy in each sort of frequency band. All right? So there are different ways to define it. The point I'm making is all frequencies of sound are, are sampled. And what that sounds like to you is a hiss. It's like.

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so.

• 19:03Chuck Nice?

  Which, which is so unfortunate now that we live in an age of digital streaming and cable television. Because kids will never get to know what white noise sounds like on their television.

• 19:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you're between channels, when, when TVs were, were actually grabbing radio frequencies from the air. Right, with, with the antennas, right, if you were between channels, or if the channel went off the air, you would see static on the screen and that would sound, that would be the sound of white noise.

• 19:34Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 19:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, oh, by the way, by the way, uh, some fraction, a few percent of the hiss that is on that screen.

• 19:44Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 19:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is the cosmic microwave background.

• 19:47Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's hot.

• 19:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yep, yep.

• 19:49Chuck Nice?

  I thought you were gonna say is, um, as opposed to the world where Carol Anne was taken in Polka Dice.

• 19:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, that was not what I was gonna say. So, some of that hiss is the evidence, the remaining evidence of the Big Bang, uh, from thirteen point eight billion light years away. And so, so it's mixed in with the, with the absence of radio signal. Cause those, those signals are not any purposeful signals sent by any radio station. They're just whatever is in space, basically, okay? And so that sounds like white noise, okay? And so, so that's what it would look like if you made a sort of image on a screen. But that would be, oh, by the way, that would be electromagnetic noise. So that's not audio, yes, they turned a radio signal into an acoustic signal.

• 20:41Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 20:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that acoustic signal comes across as a hiss, as a white noise, alright?

• 20:46Chuck Nice?

  That's so cool, that's so cool.

• 20:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear about that, so now, you have to ask, why is it called white?

• 20:54Chuck Nice?

  Well, I don't, cause.

• 20:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know.

• 20:57Chuck Nice?

  I'm old enough to be here in this country, long enough to know.

• 21:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why? I'm happy to tell you why it's called white noise. Please tell me why. I really don't know why it's called white noise. So, here's where it comes from. Go ahead. If, uh, Isaac Newton, uh, one day, uh, the sun is shining through his window. And he closes his curtains, or he cuts a hole in the wa- forgot which, might have done both. And just one narrow beam of sunlight comes through the wall. Okay. Then he takes a prism, a sixty-sixty-sixty, equilateral prism, okay? Okay. And he puts the sunlight through the prism, and on the other side of the prism comes the rainbow. The colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, okay?

• 21:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But he had a mystical fascination with the number seven, and those six colors don't sum to seven. So he added one. Mm-hmm. Which, which color did he add? Indigo? Indigo, of course. So, we have red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Alright, and that spells everybody's friend Roy G. Biv. Okay? We all love Roy G. Biv. Uh, yes. So there is- Almost as much as Belle Biv de Beau.

• 22:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was good.

• 22:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Belle Biv de Beau only knew, had a cousin called Roy G. Biv. If only they knew.

• 22:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, um, so anyhow, so it, it has all the colors there, okay? Right. So, the question is, did the prism create these colors? Because the white light is no longer visible. Right. And this is what everyone presumed. Of course it created the colors. Because if they were there before it entered the prism, you would see them. We'd see them. Of course. So, so then he said, "Well, what'll happen if I take another prism, put these colors back through, let's see what then comes out the other side." You know what came out the other side? White light.

• 23:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so Newton was very clever, not just because he was smart, but clever in his experiments and what questions to ask and how to adjust the experiment to test for things where it could be one thing or another, but let's readjust the test to distinguish what explanation might account for it. In so doing, he showed that white light from the sun is composed of equal amounts of all the colors in the rainbow, in the spectrum. And by the way, rainbows, people said, oh, the raindrops are making the colors, not the sun. It's in the sunlight. This is freaky. How could color be in white light? What the hell is going on? Okay, well, you got to get into the physiology

• 23:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  of the retina and the brain and all of that. The point is-

• 24:00Chuck Nice?

  Your eyes are racist. That is how all the white, all the light is white. All the colors come in to your racist eyes and all they see is white.

• 24:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm afraid I have to just say that is the physics of the truth. So the point is, if you combine all those frequencies of white, the red, the orange, the yellow, the green, the blue, the violet, and combine them all, and you have equal amounts of them all, you get white. So this word in that context was then borrowed by the sound people. If you put equal frequencies of sound, okay, it's not a thing. It's just this noise.

• 25:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We shall call it white noise. Even though the sound, unless you're synesthetic, where you have cross-wired senses, the sound is not a color. All right? But we assign, we say it's white out of homage to Newton and the colors of the spectrum and the fact that you put all these colors, these different frequencies together, and you get the color white. So that hiss is white noise for that reason.

• 25:29Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, you know, and it's funny because it is, I, I understand the, the, the borrowing of the term, that makes sense, just because it's the same picture of what you're doing.

• 25:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, you're using frequencies.

• 25:40Chuck Nice?

  Using frequencies, right. Sound waves, light waves, the whole deal.

• 25:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 25:45Chuck Nice?

  Sound makes sense, but the, the, the, the term doesn't really fit for, like you say, unless you're, uh, you know, uh, you have synesthesia, it doesn't fit. We need a better term for white noise is what I'm saying. Okay.

• 26:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so the point is, noise can be any combination of those frequencies, but when it's equal across the board, only then is it white noise.

• 26:13Chuck Nice?

  No, why can't it be equality noise? Okay.

• 26:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  DEI noise, diversity, equity, inclusion.

• 26:22Chuck Nice?

  There you go, diversity, equity, and inclusion noise.

• 26:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what it's doing, that's including everybody.

• 26:28Chuck Nice?

  And we can call it day, day noise, DEI noise. Right now, there are, let me tell you something, right now, there are some Fox News viewers that are watching us right now, and their heads are exploding, their heads are exploding right now. Bill Maher just threw up, right?

• 26:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, because he's anti-woke, that's the thing.

• 26:49Chuck Nice?

  Oh, yes, he's so anti-woke, but, yeah. No, it makes perfect sense, honestly, to, to borrow that, uh, that picture.

• 26:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's a very specific kind of noise.

• 26:59Chuck Nice?

  It really is.

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Otherwise, it's not white noise. For example, if you had more red in your spectrum than blue, and you mix them together, the object will have a red hue to it.

• 27:10Chuck Nice?

  Right, yeah.

• 27:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you have more, uh, blue in the mixture rather than red, it would have a blue hue to it. In fact, red stars and blue stars in the sky are exactly that. They're giving you all frequencies, but they lean towards those, that, that side of the spectrum that has those colors, so. I think it's okay to borrow terms that make sense in other contexts. I don't have a problem with that.

• 27:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, it paints the picture. I mean, you know, the problem is not too many people know the Newton story. That's my point. Is that, you know, I mean, it makes perfect sense. Once you explain the Newton story, I'm like, oh, my God, that's awesome. You know, like, I get it now.

• 27:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, and if your acoustic noise is clank, clankety-clanking, or if you can find any signal within that noise, it's not white noise.

• 28:00Chuck Nice?

  It's not white, right, exactly, yeah. That's very cool, though.

• 28:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's what I just set the record straight there.

• 28:07Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, once again, I'm impressed that you took, you know, something totally stupid.

• 28:14Chuck Nice?

  Made it, made it super interesting and informative. I'll tell you something, I don't know how many times you can pull this trick.

• 28:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, I don't want to hear later on that you come out with an album, Black Noise.

• 28:35Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God, that should be my next album.

• 28:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Shirked some comedy.

• 28:39Chuck Nice?

  Black Noise.

• 28:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is good, that's good.

• 28:42Chuck Nice?

  That's a good name for an album, that's all I'm saying.

• 28:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That could work, that could work. Black Noise.

• 28:46Chuck Nice?

  Black Noise.

• 28:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You heard a white noise, here's some black noise.

• 28:48Chuck Nice?

  There you go, shut the hell up, all right?

• 28:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Don't make me put my foot up your ass.

• 28:56Chuck Nice?

  There you go, that's more black noise.

• 29:06Chuck Nice?

  And by the way, let me just say this.

• 29:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What, what?

• 29:09Chuck Nice?

  Black noise and white noise make perfect sense together, okay? It's just like, what the hell is going on? What, how many times I'm gonna tell you?

• 29:22Chuck Nice?

  They shut the hell up.

• 29:30Chuck Nice?

  Black and white, black and white.

• 29:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They belong together.

• 29:38Chuck Nice?

  They belong together.

• 29:43Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man. Oh, no.

• 29:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or there's some party, the party that went too late next door where they're jamming with.

• 29:53Chuck Nice?

  Okay, all right.

• 29:57Chuck Nice?

  I'm talking, I'm sorry.

• 29:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, let's.

• 30:00Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, we're done here. Let's take a quick break and when we come back, the third and final segment of Things You Thought You Knew.

• 30:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, we're back for the third and final segment of Things You Thought You Knew.

• 30:22Chuck Nice?

  All righty.

• 30:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, things to do with wormholes.

• 30:27Chuck Nice?

  Uh oh. Watch out.

• 30:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I just thought, you know.

• 30:32Chuck Nice?

  Oh, no, man, I don't know if we should be doing this.

• 30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  People are not imaginative enough.

• 30:36Chuck Nice?

  That's my point. Why are we going, why are we giving people?

• 30:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me explain.

• 30:43Chuck Nice?

  No, scientific, sci-fi writers right now are watching this here.

• 30:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 30:51Chuck Nice?

  And going, bro, get a pen.

• 30:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 30:54Chuck Nice?

  Neil deGrasse Tyson is about to hook us up.

• 30:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do it.

• 30:58Chuck Nice?

  With some killer ideas.

• 31:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do it.

• 31:00Chuck Nice?

  On what to do with wormholes.

• 31:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do it.

• 31:03Chuck Nice?

  My point is, we should be getting paid for this.

• 31:07Chuck Nice?

  This is valuable.

• 31:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so here goes. So let me remind people what a wormhole is.

• 31:14Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 31:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so we have the sort of the fabric of the space-time continuum. All right, so it's not just that space is out there, space is intricately configured with time. And how do you know this? Because we did this exercise before, I think we did space-time in another.

• 31:33Chuck Nice?

  Explain it.

• 31:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In another show, we did an explainer on that where I ask you, I say Chuck, let's have lunch. Let's have lunch tomorrow. Okay. Let's have lunch tomorrow at 12 noon.

• 31:44Chuck Nice?

  Okay, and then, of course, I will say, "Are you buying?"

• 31:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, that's not what I had to talk to.

• 31:55Chuck Nice?

  Of course, of course, it's, well, where you want to have lunch?

• 31:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, so the question is, "Where?" All right? So I set up a time, and you knew that was incomplete.

• 32:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we have to complete the engagement by establishing a location.

• 32:10Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I gave you a time, tomorrow 12 noon, and you're gonna say, "Where?" All right, and I might say, "You pick," whatever, but we need a "where." Otherwise, it doesn't work. All right, I could be in a place at a different time, or at the same time at a different place, but we have to be in the same place and the same time in order to meet. Okay?

• 32:30Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And on the same token, I can say, "I'll meet you at Gabriel's for lunch." Okay, and then you say, "What time?" All right, so spacetime are forever conjoined for this fact. Okay?

• 32:46Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And other reasons, but this is, that's the terrestrial one that is closest to how we think about the world. All right, this fabric can be distorted in such a way that you can change the distance, the spacetime distance between two locations.

• 33:04Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 33:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, and one way to imagine that is, imagine all of our universe is just on a flat sheet of paper,

• 33:12Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're on one edge of the paper, and I want to get to the other edge, and I'll take light years of time, whatever, however long that takes. Okay?

• 33:21Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 33:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I mean, it's light years distance, so I take many years traveling at the speed of light. But if I take the space and warp it, curve it back on itself, now your location is very close to me. If I could somehow punch through the fabric of space and time and reach your location.

• 33:38Chuck Nice?

  That's the warp drive, right there.

• 33:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, so the warp drive would accomplish that by other means, but it is nonetheless warping the fabric of space.

• 33:45Chuck Nice?

  It swabs this fabric of space, right?

• 33:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Making something that would otherwise be longer a shorter distance, and thereby transcending the speed of light to do so. You're no longer limited by the speed of light. The diameter of our galaxy is 100,000 light years. You can't travel across it unless you figure it, during the TV commercial, unless you figure out a way to warp space and time. Okay, so in that warp, in principle, on paper, you can have a hole that you pass through and just come out the other side. And you're in another place. And if you did it right, you can show up at another time. But let's just make your timeline continuous with yourself. So you go right through and you come out the other side. Ba da bing, there you are. That's the most classical invocation of a wormhole. Mm hmm. Okay.

• 34:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, in spite of what Hollywood shows, that when you go through wormholes, it's like you go through the water slide at the water park. No, that's not how it's just, you just step through. Right. And you're there, right? Right. This is accurately captured in, in Doctor Strange. All right, where he opens a portal. Does he, do they call them wormholes in? No, they don't. They call them portals. Yeah, just a portal. And that's a wormhole. And, but in Rick and Morty, they do exactly the same thing. And he know, they're wormholes. They, they know this, okay? And the difference, of course, is that in Rick and Morty, they're using real science to make their wormholes. Whereas Doctor Strange is using magic. Magic. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

• 35:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you gotta, you gotta, you know, do your fingers in a way and. Right, exactly. And there's little sparklies on the edge of it too. Yeah. Right, right. And there's definitely weird looking ideograms that they, yeah, somehow. Okay. Somehow have power and. Okay, so things to do with wormholes. All right, yes, you can move through space and time, just has, has been portrayed in the film. But let's get a little more practical. Okay. So the movie Monsters, Inc. was all about wormholes. Did you see Monsters? You have kids, you saw Monsters, Inc. I did several times I've seen that movie. The doors. Oh, yeah, I see what you're saying. They're manufacturing doors that the monsters take home. And then they open the door. That is the door of the closet of the kid that have to scare that night.

• 36:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. Okay, and there's a big chase scene where they're going in and out of doors in the factory. And they show up in Paris and they show up in, in, you know, in 20 different places with every door they pass through. Those are wormholes. So instead of a transporter, which molecularly decomposes. I'm getting there. You were exactly right. Chuck, that's my next thing. So my point is, if you just walk through a door, you walk through a door. Right. Okay, that's the wormhole. And while they never said it in Monsters, Inc., which is a Pixar, Disney Pixar animated feature with very cleverly done and it's, and they're funny. Um, they didn't say it, but those are wormholes. Period. Period, okay? Without the, the histrionics of a, of a Doctor Strange,

• 36:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and without the madness of, of, of Rick and Morty, they're wormholes, okay? Well, if you have wormholes, and you can warp space in that way, then the transporter in Star Trek, which dematerializes you, beams your energy at the speed of light to a location, and then you get re-materialized,

• 37:07Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 37:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  would be completely unnecessary.

• 37:10Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 37:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You just pop the hatch, walk through, and now you're in the other spaceship. Now you're on the planetary surface.

• 37:16Chuck Nice?

  Why'd you have to take me apart?

• 37:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 37:19Chuck Nice?

  You completely took me apart, bro.

• 37:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Completely.

• 37:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 37:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, plus, there was some episode, I was told, maybe in the later series, because I'm less complete in the later series, that there's some fraction of your molecules that are not transported accurately.

• 37:35Chuck Nice?

  Reconstituted, yeah.

• 37:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, there's like a, copying errors.

• 37:38Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's, well, that's why they have the buffer. It's called the transporter buffer system. Because of that, it compensates for that, which is why sometimes, which is so lazy, but it, I love it. It, it works. It's like, somebody gets lost, and they're just like, well, what we'll do is, we'll use the transporter buffer to take all of their molecular imprint, and then we'll just make them, make, bring the person back.

• 38:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay, okay. So they don't, they don't really die in a pile of goo.

• 38:06Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, okay.

• 38:07Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 38:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so, so, the, what's interesting there is, we're in the age of information, which was not so in the 1960s.

• 38:17Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 38:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, so they weren't thinking about information in the same way we're at all. And so, all you really need to do is make an exact copy of all the information that is contained within you. All the neurosynaptic configurations and everything. And then beam the information to another ship, and then recreate you there. And then, what that means is, I can create you in any location, and I can create multiple yous.

• 38:41Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 38:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And, I mean, why not? They do that with the, with the replicator, all right?

• 38:45Chuck Nice?

  That's right. That's all the replicator does.

• 38:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's all it does.

• 38:48Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 38:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, in principle, if you have a replicator, you don't need a transporter system. Okay, we just have the information of who you are and transport that. But so that's one thing you would do with a wormhole. Okay, so we have monster scaring children. That's first application. Excellent. Second. I love it. Because otherwise, how they going to get in your in the kid's room? There's no way they can get in. Exactly. Uh, well, yeah. Okay. And in my hood, they were not coming down the chimney. Right, so that's not happening. Okay. Okay. So another thing is imagine if the back of your refrigerator were connected to your grocer. Oh, wow. He'd stock it the same way he stocks the shelves at the grocery store. At the grocery store. They take a peek.

• 39:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you'd be low on lettuce and the lettuce is turning bad. They'll take out the lettuce, put in a fresh one. And there is no transportation network involved. Say goodbye, Grubhub. The, the, yeah, so Grubhub is, is a, is a practical wormhole. Right? By the way, you know what else a wormhole is? Is an elevator. Think about it. You walk into a room, the door closes. And then when the door reopens, you're in a completely different time and place. That's actually kind of, you know, you know, yes, that. Think about that. Yeah. If, if you, before electricity and before elevators and before tall buildings, just grabbed someone off the street and take them into a modern elevator. Oh, my God.

• 40:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then the doors, you know, they're on a street level or something. And then they push a button and then they open it up. And then there are 100 stories up and they'll freak out. How did that happen? The room didn't change? I didn't see anything. There are no windows. What happened? So for me, an elevator is a modern sort of next best thing to a wormhole that you can come up with. Yeah. Right? You could be in one room and then take an elevator. And then there's a kitchen and another room. And then it's like a living room or whatever. Yeah. And, and so just the world changes just in a matter of seconds. So, so what do we have? So we have the elevator is a poor man's wormhole. Yeah. Scaring children and their closet. We've got the transporter in Star Trek.

• 41:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got the back of your refrigerator. And what that ends up doing is completely removing the transportation sector from the world.

• 41:15Chuck Nice?

  I'm just gonna say, what you really, I'm home for the rest of my life. I don't have to do anything.

• 41:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, you don't have to go somewhere to obtain something.

• 41:27Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, everything can come right through the hole.

• 41:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right through the hole, correct, correct. And I got one other, I think I've told this many times, but I even laugh every time I retell it, even though it happened to me and it's my joke, right? So is that good or bad, Chuck? Are you allowed to laugh at your own?

• 41:43Chuck Nice?

  I would listen. I say whatever works for a person telling the joke.

• 41:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For whoever.

• 41:48Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 41:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so here I was in the Charlotte airport, and I had to go from a big plane to a little plane. And the carry-on that I had did not have wheels, so I actually, actually had to carry it. And Chuck, it felt like I walked three miles. It might have just been a mile, but to go from a big plane to a little plane in that airport, I must have walked the full width of the entire airport campus. And I finally get to my destination with the little bitty ass plane. And I said, I gotta tweet this. So I tweeted, can't wait for wormholes. That way, all airport gates would be adjacent to each other. You just step through and you're there.

• 42:32Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 42:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then, because I thought that was a nice geeky thing, tweeting to my geek base, I got out geeked. Okay, here it is. One of the responses was, Dr. Tyson, the day we have wormholes, you won't need airports. I said, oh.

• 42:48Chuck Nice?

  That is true, yes. Oh. Now you just put every pilot out of work.

• 42:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, well, this is a readjustment to the economy. That's happened many times before. Nobody's making horse-drawn carriages anymore, or buggy whips, or, you know, there's whole industries that don't exist.

• 43:07Chuck Nice?

  I don't, they're still making the buggy whips, they're just not for buggies anymore.

• 43:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're just called whips, okay, fine.

• 43:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so basically, the entire transportation sector would go out of business, basically overnight. And it's a fascinating reality, but plus you wouldn't need 12 lane highways to go anywhere. You want to go grandma's house for Thanksgiving?

• 43:37Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 43:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wormhole in. So, so each home would have like a general purpose wormhole.

• 43:42Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dial the coordinates and come through, but your grocer, they'd only have access to your refrigerator.

• 43:46Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 43:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And.

• 43:49Chuck Nice?

  And your in-laws would have access to your friend's house.

• 43:54Chuck Nice?

  Do not come in here. Man, that, I'm gonna tell you something. I don't like the world with just wormholes. That's a little too.

• 44:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, you can lock them. We'll figure out a way to lock them. It'd be like your front door. Okay? You hear a knock, you know?

• 44:07Chuck Nice?

  No, but you can never get away from anybody. Think about it. No matter where you are.

• 44:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You lock them out of your wormhole.

• 44:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, but then they're, then they call you on your worm phone.

• 44:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're like, I'm right here.

• 44:21Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 44:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm right here.

• 44:22Chuck Nice?

  Hey, man, what's going on, man? Where are you? I just went to your house. You're not home.

• 44:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm in, I'm in Bermuda. Okay, I'll meet you there.

• 44:30Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. Oh, yeah, you're Bermuda. That's great. I'll be there in a couple of seconds.

• 44:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, man, this is not cool, you know? Okay, I didn't think of the downsides of this.

• 44:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 44:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, somebody's got to like think it through a little further than I have. But just think, or maybe the wormholes are where the previous ports were. We had, you know, train stations, airports, space ports, you have a wormhole port. And so you can't just go anywhere at any time. You got to sort of sign up and.

• 45:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's a little better. Yeah, the other way is a little invasive. You can't even pretend like back in the day when like, you know, the, you know, people would knock on your door and be like, oh, you know, okay, we're not answering that.

• 45:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the day, you couldn't tell them in advance that you were showing up.

• 45:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you had to be ready to greet someone.

• 45:23Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 45:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, the very word caller was someone who knocked on your front door. And that word was adopted into telephones. And so now we think of caller as only with phones.

• 45:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, the gentleman caller on the lady.

• 45:36Chuck Nice?

  I do believe you have a gentleman caller at the door. My, Zylala, you did not tell us.

• 45:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got your plantation accent right on cue there. Okay, so Chuck, that's 101 things to do with a wormhole.

• 45:56Chuck Nice?

  That's lovely. I love it.

• 45:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought I'd tell you about that. And so, let's call it quits there. That's been the third of three segments of Things You Thought You Knew. We hope you enjoyed that. And as always, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, bidding you to keep looking out.