To Boldly Go Where No StarTalk Has Gone Before with Charles Liu

Could we create warp drive someday? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Chuck Nice team up with astrophysicist Charles Liu to dive into the science, technology, and legacy of one of the most influential sci-fi franchises of all time: Star Trek.

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

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, we finally did it. We did it. We finally did it. We pulled in our geek in chief. We pulled him in. We did an entire episode on Star Trek. Just Star Trek.

• 0:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was great. A cosmic queries and that's coming right up here in my office at the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History. We'll see you then.

• 0:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

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

• 0:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist, and this is a cosmic queries edition, which means we got Chuck Nice in the house. That's right. All right, Chuck. What's happening? Now, your questions today are not random. They are not, indeed. They are all on one subject. That's right. And that subject is? The only subject. Star Trek. Star Trek. Star. We are overdue to have a Star Trek episode. That's right. And but I I am, I could get a little ways on that topic, but we have to get go to our geek in chief. We called him and said, make it so.

• 1:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles Liu, welcome back to StarTalk. Thank you, Neil. Hello, Chuck. Charles Liu, for those of you who don't know, is a friend and colleague. He's a professor at the City University of New York, still at Staten Island, but you're in the Graduate Center as well. Yes. Yes. Yes. Which interacts with graduate students and things, right? It's a combination. Yeah, good, good. And you have your own podcast. It is called The Luniverse. The Luniverse.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can't take credit for it. My family told me to use it. I was like, really? And they're like, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's good. That's good. We give them that one. Okay. And I just learned, my boy here, I'm so proud of him.

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I can say that because I'm 10 years older than him. So I get to say that. He just came out. I don't, is this, is this out yet? It is out. It is out yet. There's the Handy Answer Book, which is a series. Okay. Okay. And then this handy, put in your favorite subject answer book. Right. Okay. This is one that where's it been all our lives? Okay.

• 2:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The handy quantum physics answer book. Oh my gosh. Everybody who is claiming to invoke quantum physics to explain stuff they don't understand needs this book.

• 2:39Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. And there's a little Schröder cat right on the bottom.

• 2:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, you got a cat, right? And you got the little atom. And, oh my gosh.

• 2:48Charles Liu?

  That's so cool. Look at that.

• 2:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because so this is, if you've, now you don't research in quantum physics.

• 2:53Charles Liu?

  That's right. I use quantum.

• 2:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You use quantum physics.

• 2:55Charles Liu?

  Every day.

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a user's guide.

• 2:57Charles Liu?

  That's really what it is. Yeah. The answer book is not designed to sort of reveal the most detailed, deep in the weeds research results, but it's kind of like, we all know quantum is there and we wonder about it. So we got a little question, got a little answer. There's a whole bunch.

• 3:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's a whole biology section here. Okay?

• 3:14Charles Liu?

  How does quantum work in biology? A lot of us don't understand.

• 3:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's very cool.

• 3:17Charles Liu?

  Our eyes work because of quantum.

• 3:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, they do.

• 3:21Chuck Nice?

  Why?

• 3:22Charles Liu?

  The photons that come hit our eyes, they have to activate certain cells and the rods and cones are activated when you have a quantum reaction from a photon and a cell.

• 3:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So those are molecules that are absorbing the photon. Something happens when the photon gets absorbed.

• 3:39Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 3:40Chuck Nice?

  That's, yeah.

• 3:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's called sight.

• 3:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You got a chapter on quantum entanglement?

• 3:47Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 3:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You've got bios on people who contributed here and

• 3:53Charles Liu?

  And

• 3:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What is the size of the electron? That's my favorite.

• 3:55Chuck Nice?

  I love it.

• 3:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 3:57Chuck Nice?

  And what is the size of the electron?

• 3:58Charles Liu?

  It's at most 10 to the minus 18 meter in diameter, but the thing is

• 4:03Chuck Nice?

  18.

• 4:03Charles Liu?

  Right. So it's a billionth of a billionth of a meter.

• 4:05Chuck Nice?

  Why are we putting it in the minus? What, what, what measurement would it be in positive? Like, why you gotta be all negative?

• 4:12Charles Liu?

  Fair enough. A billionth of a billionth of a meter.

• 4:18Chuck Nice?

  A billionth of a meter.

• 4:19Charles Liu?

  A billionth of a billionth.

• 4:20Chuck Nice?

  A billionth of a billion.

• 4:22Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 4:22Chuck Nice?

  Now, a billionth.

• 4:22Charles Liu?

  At most.

• 4:23Chuck Nice?

  What is a nano? What's that?

• 4:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a billion.

• 4:25Charles Liu?

  That's a billion.

• 4:25Chuck Nice?

  That's just billion.

• 4:26Charles Liu?

  So, this is like a nano nano.

• 4:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Get your THs in there.

• 4:28Chuck Nice?

  Billionth.

• 4:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And a nano is 10 to the minus 9.

• 4:31Chuck Nice?

  That's 10 to the minus 9.

• 4:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, 10 to the minus 9 times 10 to the minus 9 is 10.

• 4:35Charles Liu?

  A nano nano.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  10 to the minus 18. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:37Charles Liu?

  It's a work of.

• 4:38Chuck Nice?

  As opposed to.

• 4:39Charles Liu?

  A work of nano nano.

• 4:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nano nano, nano nuno.

• 4:43Chuck Nice?

  Nano nano.

• 4:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Nano nano, okay.

• 4:45Charles Liu?

  The thing is, though, the electron is so small and it has such a weird profile that its size isn't really determinate.

• 4:53Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 4:53Charles Liu?

  You can, it, depending on how you try to measure it or try to do things.

• 4:57Chuck Nice?

  Wait a minute. So, if the size is indeterminate, how do you measure it to get that number?

• 5:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, he didn't say. You didn't, you weren't listening to him. He didn't say this is the size of the electron. He said it's smaller than this size.

• 5:08Chuck Nice?

  Ah.

• 5:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that was the smallest size we are capable of measuring.

• 5:12Chuck Nice?

  We can't measure anything smaller than that, but it's smaller.

• 5:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it might mean that the electron has no size at all.

• 5:18Chuck Nice?

  Could it be?

• 5:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For all we know.

• 5:19Chuck Nice?

  So, could it be that the electron is?

• 5:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's in the book. We gotta get to the show.

• 5:22Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's right. This is not, this is what he did.

• 5:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is.

• 5:25Chuck Nice?

  What happens? This is not the show. You mess with the quantum, man.

• 5:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you mess with the quantum, you get the horns.

• 5:32Chuck Nice?

  You get the horns, baby.

• 5:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my God.

• 5:34Chuck Nice?

  Tangled. Those horns are in.

• 5:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay. Star Trek. I'm old enough to say that the first round of Star Trek occurred in my living memory.

• 5:44Charles Liu?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's how old I am.

• 5:45Charles Liu?

  That's cool. I didn't see Star Trek until reruns.

• 5:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I saw it when it came on weekly. I wasn't allowed to watch TV during a school week.

• 5:53Charles Liu?

  Oh, you.

• 5:54Chuck Nice?

  So, most. You have some good parents.

• 5:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, most of the episodes I would ultimately see would be in reruns.

• 5:59Charles Liu?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 6:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I was around when people were talking about Star Trek and what it meant to the people and to culture.

• 6:05Chuck Nice?

  I can't believe they got the show where there's a black woman who answers the phone, but she's actually sitting next to all the other white people on the bridge. It's crazy.

• 6:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's spend a minute before we get all racial on it.

• 6:17Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 6:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's find out, um, what about the technologies do you find most intriguing? And remind us, what year is it the original season took place in what year?

• 6:28Charles Liu?

  The original season supposedly took place around the year 2260.

• 6:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that would have been 200 years in the future.

• 6:34Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 6:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the 1760s looks to the 1960s, surely what the 1960s would look like, the 2260.

• 6:42Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 6:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Surely, that's a completely rational thinking there.

• 6:46Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 6:46Chuck Nice?

  I mean, it could be, I mean, uh, however.

• 6:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look, in 76, they have Conestoga wagons and in the 1960s, we're going to the moon. Thank you.

• 6:54Chuck Nice?

  But I'm just saying, there's kind of a hockey stick, um, element to.

• 6:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, there's not, no, no. You didn't read my recent book. No, you think it's a hockey stick. It's not.

• 7:04Chuck Nice?

  You think that we're going to have faster than light travel.

• 7:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I'm saying the hockey stick.

• 7:11Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 7:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is deeper than you know. The answer is, it's always a hockey stick.

• 7:19Chuck Nice?

  I like that.

• 7:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I'll get, I'll get to that.

• 7:21Chuck Nice?

  I see where you're going.

• 7:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so Charles, you, you are an impressionable kid. You are a technologist culturally, uh, you're a scientist. What in the science technology of Star Trek really impacted you?

• 7:37Charles Liu?

  Well, I always feel that I have to think back to Albert Einstein, who said that creativity and imagination was more important than knowledge. What you could imagine to.

• 7:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Einstein, you can say that.

• 7:48Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 7:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's some dumbass people.

• 7:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No.

• 7:53Charles Liu?

  Once you get to a certain stage.

• 7:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck has been, been influencing me.

• 7:59Charles Liu?

  A basic level of knowledge is of course extremely important. But in order to really make advances, you really have to imagine something. Before it can exist, right? So what we

• 8:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To dream it.

• 8:10Charles Liu?

  Yeah, yeah, so what we come from Star Trek. We fans of Star Trek. Look at Star Trek and say, wow, they imagined that you could travel hundreds of times the speed of light. They imagined that you could flip your little device in your hand and talk to someone thousands of miles away.

• 8:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hello, Mogo.

• 8:29Charles Liu?

  They imagined, yeah. They imagined you could walk up to a door and it would open without you touching it. So all of that technology is incredible.

• 8:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When Star Trek came around, automatic doors weren't Of course not.

• 8:38Charles Liu?

  No.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you, did you hear, I've said it a hundred times, I'll say it again. When I saw Star Trek, that was the least believable part of it to me for the future.

• 8:48Charles Liu?

  I remember you said that once.

• 8:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, that's why, that's what I'm saying. I, I said, how does the door know?

• 8:53Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 8:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, I, I was good with the photon torpedoes, the phasers, the communicators, the tricorders, and I

• 9:02Charles Liu?

  But the automatic door was just

• 9:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was not happening.

• 9:05Charles Liu?

  Like, come on, guys.

• 9:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The best we had, the best we had were pressure pads.

• 9:10Charles Liu?

  That's right, going into like supermarkets.

• 9:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Going into supermarkets because you've got groceries and things.

• 9:14Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 9:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You'd step on the pad, but you needed room for the door to swing open. There were no pocket doors or anything.

• 9:18Charles Liu?

  Right, right.

• 9:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so tell me.

• 9:20Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 9:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where, where, where were you with the technology?

• 9:24Charles Liu?

  Well, as a kid, I didn't know yet how revolutionary all this stuff was. I just naturally assumed it's like, oh, okay, in the future, they'll have these phaser things. Uh, and it was really cool with the phasers that you could set them on stun. I just really liked the fact that they were designed not to be lethal.

• 9:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you're a kid, and that's just the future.

• 9:46Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 9:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But they're thinking that future 200 years. I don't know that they're thinking that it's in their near future, in the future of the lifetime of people alive at the time of the show.

• 9:57Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 9:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because you go down the list, they had tablet computers, we got, got that.

• 10:00Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 10:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Check, checklist, okay?

• 10:04Chuck Nice?

  In my hand right now, a tablet.

• 10:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, we're not getting paid by Apple for him to hold up the logo in front of it. Apple call.

• 10:12Chuck Nice?

  Now I gotta read everything like this.

• 10:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Tablet computers, handheld communicators.

• 10:18Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 10:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In fact, we went through flip phones and now that's old.

• 10:20Charles Liu?

  That's old. That's old news.

• 10:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's old. If they try to go back with the, who's got the, Samsung has the foldy thing.

• 10:26Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 10:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The Z flip. I think they're, they're trying to still feel the flip. But telepresence, so.

• 10:32Charles Liu?

  We can zoom with everybody and we can meet with everybody.

• 10:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  AT&T was already on the heels of that with their video phone. And I don't think people realized at the time that when you call someone, they don't always want you looking at them.

• 10:49Chuck Nice?

  Well, yeah, we learned that the hard way in the pandemic.

• 10:52Charles Liu?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 10:54Charles Liu?

  You know, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, there was already a video phone, right? Right? The beginning of the movie, somebody's calling their child.

• 11:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it was AT&T.

• 11:02Charles Liu?

  AT&T says, you know, your cost is a dollar seventy. Thanks for calling.

• 11:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. So, so the 2001 film was shot in 1968.

• 11:13Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 11:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which was within just a couple of years of Star Trek.

• 11:16Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 11:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so they're imagining video phones, not 200 years in the future.

• 11:20Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 11:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just 35 years in the future.

• 11:22Charles Liu?

  They got it more correct.

• 11:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, they got it a little more correct there.

• 11:24Chuck Nice?

  Well, clearly, everybody got it correct because no matter where you went in the galaxy, and no matter what species you encountered, Lieutenant Uhura, put on screen. And then the person would come up on screen and they'd be like.

• 11:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Charles, where's the camera? Get putting them up on screen.

• 11:39Chuck Nice?

  Exactly.

• 11:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where is that?

• 11:41Charles Liu?

  It was a backlit screen. It was probably OLED or something like that. A lot of those technological things were actually done for entertainment, storytelling purposes, right? Not for scientific imagination.

• 11:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You mean in our world?

• 11:54Charles Liu?

  Yeah, The Transporter was a classic example. They didn't want to spend a lot of time shuttling people back and forth on little boats. And so they just immediately, instantaneously brought someone from over here to over there. It was only after that became such a cool feature of the entire show that people started to retcon it. And retroactively try to figure out what was the physics behind it. And they ran into all kinds of problems. So they just sort of said, yeah, it just sort of works.

• 12:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You give them a hall pass on that one.

• 12:22Charles Liu?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, cuz I heard that the cost, I don't, I just heard this once and I didn't verify it. But it seemed plausible that they costed out what it would take to have a ship land, have people get off the ship and they get back on a ship and go back and dock.

• 12:41Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 12:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So there's a, there's a cost, given how many times they're going back and forth to planets, to have to stage the landing of a spacecraft and have it take. So they just pulled this out of an orifice to make it happen. And now, like, what's the word you use?

• 12:56Charles Liu?

  Retcon, retroactive continuity.

• 12:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that's a thing.

• 13:00Charles Liu?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've never heard of that.

• 13:02Charles Liu?

  It's very common in comic books. Something happens and then you have to go back and say, oh, this is what actually.

• 13:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why it happens.

• 13:08Charles Liu?

  Why it works.

• 13:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You have to stitch it back together.

• 13:10Chuck Nice?

  You reverse engineer the science.

• 13:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what it is.

• 13:12Charles Liu?

  Pretty much what it is.

• 13:12Chuck Nice?

  That's what you're doing.

• 13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Yeah, and so what about warp drives? That was it, that's really what blew this open for me.

• 13:20Charles Liu?

  I think so. We all want to travel.

• 13:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They didn't say, oh, we just go faster than light. No, they didn't do that.

• 13:25Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 13:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because they knew that's not allowed.

• 13:26Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 13:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is tipping their hat to Einstein in a very important way.

• 13:30Charles Liu?

  They call it a warp factor, whatever.

• 13:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 13:32Charles Liu?

  Right. And that warp drive eventually became also a significant storytelling thing. Because then that meant it was a, an engine and that engine had to be worked with exotic materials. There was a new thing invented called dilithium.

• 13:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dilithium crystals.

• 13:50Charles Liu?

  And the crystals were somehow important in making all of the matter, antimatter transaction work properly. Although the terms matter and antimatter weren't used all that much in the original Star Trek.

• 14:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, they weren't.

• 14:01Charles Liu?

  Yeah. And then later on, the so-called photon torpedoes were also revealed to be basically big chunks of antimatter that were in torpedoes that you could fire at people.

• 14:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:11Charles Liu?

  But the ideas did come from this sense that we gotta get from point A to point B and we know they're far away. So we have to find some way to get from here to there. And that takes you somewhere that's not the usual dimensions of space. So that led to all kinds of wonderful stories, numerous episodes where some sort of warp drive failure or some sort of transporter failure would lead to a storyline.

• 14:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A whole story.

• 14:37Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 14:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, that's true. Very.

• 14:38Charles Liu?

  Really good stuff. One of the, one of the most. revered episodes is called Mirror Mirror, where a transporter accident accidentally brings several members of the bridge crew into a parallel universe, something that we might think of in the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, right? And in this parallel universe, everyone was evil. Evil Spock and evil Kirk.

• 15:05Charles Liu?

  Marvelous stories, right? And you could tell how the evil Spock was because he had a goatee. Whereas the good Spock was clean shaven.

• 15:30Speaker 03

  I'm Ali Khan Hemraj and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 15:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that in the old days was a white hat and a black hat. But the goatee, because the devil has a goatee.

• 15:53Charles Liu?

  That's right. That's right. So wonderful stories.

• 15:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why wouldn't they? So let me, I had some issues with things that maybe they could have thought about a little more deeply.

• 16:04Charles Liu?

  For sure.

• 16:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So for example, the phasers that came out of the ship.

• 16:07Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 16:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If it's a directed energy weapon.

• 16:09Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 16:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like a variant on a laser, of course, phaser. You should not be able to see it from the side.

• 16:18Charles Liu?

  Correct.

• 16:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Unless someone, you know, hit chalkboard erasers to make a cloud for you to see it go through. It is the vacuum of space.

• 16:29Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 16:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It should not be visible from the side.

• 16:31Charles Liu?

  That's right. And that had to be retconned also. The idea that

• 16:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, so they have an, okay.

• 16:37Charles Liu?

  The idea that phasers and lasers are completely different things was addressed later on in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where they showed that lasers were extremely weak. Compared to phasers, phasers are a whole different kind of energy beam weapon.

• 16:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 16:53Charles Liu?

  And as a result, they could be seen from the side. Furthermore, they dissipated over time so that if you missed, it wouldn't keep going.

• 17:01Chuck Nice?

  It wouldn't keep going forever.

• 17:03Charles Liu?

  And truly, you know, take out a planet or something.

• 17:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By accident.

• 17:05Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, six years later, there's just some ship just that explodes.

• 17:10Charles Liu?

  Houston, we have a problem.

• 17:11Chuck Nice?

  Off of smoke.

• 17:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so, so what you're saying is it's so powerful, there's some energy leakage sideways that you could then see it.

• 17:18Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 17:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what that would mean.

• 17:19Chuck Nice?

  And you know what's funny, I read a great thing about Gene Roddenberry when they were coming up, they originally were gonna call them lasers.

• 17:27Charles Liu?

  Ah.

• 17:28Chuck Nice?

  But, they said, well, lasers are a real technology.

• 17:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We, we gotta futurize this.

• 17:33Chuck Nice?

  Right, we gotta make sure, who knows where lasers will be in 10 years?

• 17:37Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 17:37Chuck Nice?

  And we'll look kinda stupid.

• 17:39Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 17:39Chuck Nice?

  And so we gotta, we gotta future-proof this.

• 17:41Charles Liu?

  That's really smart.

• 17:42Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 17:43Charles Liu?

  Because indeed, lasers wound up in everything that we use.

• 17:46Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 17:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, it was a day when Laser Floyd was the big attraction in the evening hours on the weekend at planetariums.

• 17:53Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 17:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, and that's the 1970s, by the late 80s, lasers were like impulse items at Kmart, so no longer could you say, let's go see lasers.

• 18:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It lost the draw.

• 18:06Chuck Nice?

  The laser light show, this Saturday night!

• 18:08Charles Liu?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 18:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One last thing, and then we gotta go to Q and A, because that's the whole point of this.

• 18:14Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 18:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's hard enough, having a conversation with somebody on the moon. Because the light travel time

• 18:24Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 18:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Delays like 2, 2 and a half seconds.

• 18:27Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 18:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So you can't have witty repartee.

• 18:29Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 18:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're talking to people halfway across the galaxy in Star Trek.

• 18:32Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't know that that was addressed in the, in the original series.

• 18:36Charles Liu?

  In the original series, it really wasn't addressed.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We just accepted the fact.

• 18:39Charles Liu?

  We just expect, yeah, you could do it, okay, your transponders, your communicators were just instantaneous. In the next generation, they came up with this idea of subspace communications. It was more properly addressed, that the communications did not go through regular space, in fact, it had almost a different dimension, or kind of sidestepped the dimensions of ordinary space that we went to.

• 19:05Chuck Nice?

  Some kind of communication wormhole that they were able to.

• 19:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, okay.

• 19:08Charles Liu?

  This kind of communication was instantaneous, it was way faster than even the fastest starships.

• 19:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So my sense of Of the transporter.

• 19:16Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 19:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is because I get this question every now and then. And they say, well, how close are we to transporters? And I say, sometimes your goal is solved by a different solution that might be more creative or simpler than when you think is necessary.

• 19:30Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 19:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so I foresee a day where we do get command of wormholes. And you just step through a wormhole.

• 19:39Charles Liu?

  Yeah, you don't need a transporter.

• 19:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't need to disassemble your.

• 19:43Charles Liu?

  Your entire molecular construct. Uh, and makeup and put it back together.

• 19:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And put it back together correctly.

• 19:50Charles Liu?

  Yeah, right. Well, in that sense, right, you're dependent on the network. Right. The Star Trek Discovery series focuses on something called the mycelium network.

• 20:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 20:00Charles Liu?

  It's based on, you know, like mushrooms. Almost, yeah, right. And, and of course, mushrooms are now very popular in science fiction. It is the basis for The Last of Us, the zombie apocalypse.

• 20:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fungus more broadly.

• 20:12Charles Liu?

  Yeah, fungus more than mushrooms, but this mycelium thing.

• 20:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, fungus is a branch of.

• 20:20Charles Liu?

  In the.

• 20:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It is a kingdom of the tree of life.

• 20:22Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 20:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 20:23Charles Liu?

  As adverse and cool as animals, as plants.

• 20:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Correct. Within the fungus kingdom, you have things like yeast, but you also have mushrooms that we eat. And mushrooms that'll kill us and mushrooms that'll take, take you in your own subspace trip.

• 20:38Charles Liu?

  Right. The, the networks like that are very much like a public transportation network. You can only go to certain station, to certain places that you want, right? Transport allows you to go literally anywhere that you want to go, whenever you want to go.

• 20:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I'm saying you have a machine that opens up a wormhole. Like, like Rick and Rick and Morty, like, like Mr. Mr. Magic Guy and, uh, who's this guy?

• 20:59Charles Liu?

  Doctor Strange.

• 21:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Doctor Strange.

• 21:00Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 21:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He, he opens a hole wherever he wants and whenever he wants.

• 21:03Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 21:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So don't, don't try to defend transporters on that basis.

• 21:07Charles Liu?

  Then you're in magic, dude. You're not in science anymore.

• 21:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, Rick uses real, real science.

• 21:13Charles Liu?

  Oh, of course.

• 21:15Charles Liu?

  Well, of course, yes. Where's Doctor Strange?

• 21:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He uses magic.

• 21:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. And, and so we, we were duly informed that this whole study of the mycelium networks for mushrooms and mushrooms in general, fungus is mycology.

• 21:32Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 21:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Which I think is a pretty cool.

• 21:33Charles Liu?

  A wonderful area of study.

• 21:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Out there.

• 21:35Charles Liu?

  I recently heard. A scientist described the possibility that the reason that we mammals were able to evolve after the dinosaurs had their terrible extinction.

• 21:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 21:48Charles Liu?

  Is because.

• 21:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We had a better relationship.

• 21:50Charles Liu?

  We had a better relationship with fungi.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With fungi, really?

• 21:53Charles Liu?

  Our body temperatures allowed us to resist infections and parasitic relationships with fungi. Whereas, say reptiles, which are cold-blooded, were not. And so, over those 65 million years, the reptiles stayed, you know, like crocodiles, for example. They're still roughly the same as they used to be, whereas we are way different from those little tiny.

• 22:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Reptilian. No, Chuck still has a reptilian brain.

• 22:17Chuck Nice?

  Without a doubt.

• 22:17Charles Liu?

  We all still have reptility.

• 22:19Chuck Nice?

  Without a doubt.

• 22:19Charles Liu?

  Some of us are just bigger and some of us are just smaller.

• 22:21Chuck Nice?

  I also like the sun on a rock, so.

• 22:24Charles Liu?

  Oh, me too.

• 22:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With your belly.

• 22:26Charles Liu?

  Yes, exactly. Mouth wide open.

• 22:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I forgot, they do over their mouths, don't they? So if you look at the tree of life.

• 22:35Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 22:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What impresses me most, intrigues me most, is that the common ancestor between animals and fungus, between mushrooms and humans.

• 22:44Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 22:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Split later in the tree of life than its common ancestor split with green plants. Which means, humans and mushrooms are more genetically alike.

• 22:58Chuck Nice?

  Related?

• 22:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Either of us are to green plants.

• 23:01Chuck Nice?

  To green plants.

• 23:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ain't that some stuff?

• 23:03Charles Liu?

  Pretty amazing.

• 23:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's, that's why.

• 23:05Chuck Nice?

  Maybe that's why I love shiitake so much.

• 23:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm saying. And that's why, no one has ever accused kale of tasting meaty.

• 23:12Charles Liu?

  Right, that's so true.

• 23:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But people have used the word with mushrooms.

• 23:15Chuck Nice?

  Ain't nobody ever had a kale burger, but people have had portobello burgers.

• 23:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They had portobello burgers. And the umami that's been described is common in not only meats, but in mushrooms. The umami flavor.

• 23:26Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 23:27Chuck Nice?

  When you eat it and you go, "Ooh, mommy."

• 23:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, mommy. Is that where that came from?

• 23:32Chuck Nice?

  That's, yeah.

• 23:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In Japan, the first umami, because they came up with that one. I think it was Japanese, right?

• 23:38Charles Liu?

  Yes, absolutely Japanese, yeah.

• 23:39Chuck Nice?

  Aaron Jackson says, "Hello, Dr. Tyson, Starlord, and Dr. Luniverse."

• 23:47Charles Liu?

  Thank you.

• 23:47Chuck Nice?

  Aaron from Lake Balboa, California here. My question has to do with the space-time travel at warp speed. A planet A is 100 light-years from planet B. It would take the starship Voyager 100 years to arrive at warp speed 101. Now, my question is, doesn't it get closer or farther away from planet A over that duration of 100 years, depending on the respective trajectories? In other words, the expansion of the universe, does it take warp speed? Does that take into account the expansion of the universe itself?

• 24:18Charles Liu?

  I presume that it must, right? It's not hard to make that calculation.

• 24:22Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:22Charles Liu?

  And what we're talking about-

• 24:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The universe is not expanding that far in the time it takes them to do it during the TV commercial.

• 24:29Charles Liu?

  What we should keep in mind is that most of the travel, in fact, almost all the travel of Star Trek, happens within our Milky Way galaxy.

• 24:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Within the Milky Way.

• 24:37Charles Liu?

  And within that space, the expansion of the universe is completely counteracted by the gravitational pull that's of the object in the galaxy.

• 24:46Chuck Nice?

  So, just to make sure I got it clear.

• 24:49Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 24:49Chuck Nice?

  We're experiencing the expansion of the universe, but because we are coalesced by the gravity of our own galaxy.

• 24:57Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 24:57Chuck Nice?

  We're not experiencing it like we were outside of the galaxy. We're kind of all in it together, moving together.

• 25:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To make a stronger point, that the forces that keep your body together, the molecular forces, the gravity, our proximity to Earth and Earth's proximity to the Sun.

• 25:14Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 25:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the Sun's proximity to the center of the galaxy, that is tighter than any expansion of the universe would manifest on that scale.

• 25:24Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I got you.

• 25:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we win.

• 25:26Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 25:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We win.

• 25:27Chuck Nice?

  Right. Like, the expansion of the universe is never going to pull us apart until you get to that place called the Big Rip. Oh, Jesus Christ. Oh, God. Anyway, so, go ahead.

• 25:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a different-

• 25:38Chuck Nice?

  That's a whole nother show.

• 25:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's another show. That was an explainer in another episode.

• 25:42Charles Liu?

  Yes, right. And so, I wouldn't worry about that motion. It's something that we can compensate for easily.

• 25:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And you're sure he's not asking the question that in their, in Star Trek's version of the warp drive?

• 25:53Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 25:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aren't they pulling the object that's in front of you closer? closer to you and then expanding the space behind you so that you're effectively moving fast that's not what he's asking

• 26:03Chuck Nice?

  that's that's the warp shell bubble

• 26:04Charles Liu?

  yeah that's the thing that Miguel Alcubierre suggested in his

• 26:08Chuck Nice?

  dude what is up with you man you are out of this world I'm telling you right now he's like we just mentioned warp drive you like Michelle Alcubierre

• 26:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm like where do you come up with that

• 26:19Charles Liu?

  I didn't come up with it Miguel did

• 26:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  who is Michelle Alcubierre no no he's a guy he there's a lot written about that idea

• 26:24Charles Liu?

  right

• 26:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  enabling okay that that paper would have been intriguing and interesting just by itself

• 26:32Charles Liu?

  right

• 26:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  in the scientific community

• 26:33Chuck Nice?

  okay

• 26:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  but sci fi people

• 26:35Chuck Nice?

  took it and ran with it

• 26:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  ran with it

• 26:37Chuck Nice?

  okay well you just opened up a whole new world for me

• 26:40Charles Liu?

  well enjoy it it's kinda fun

• 26:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  and by the way you pronounced it in a French way but he's Spanish or Mexican

• 26:46Charles Liu?

  Mexican

• 26:47Chuck Nice?

  oh really

• 26:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  yeah

• 26:48Chuck Nice?

  oh so it's just like Michelle what's up vato

• 26:51Charles Liu?

  Miguel

• 26:52Chuck Nice?

  Miguel

• 26:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Miguel

• 26:54Chuck Nice?

  Miguel

• 26:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Miguel

• 26:55Chuck Nice?

  Miguel

• 26:56Charles Liu?

  right

• 26:56Chuck Nice?

  mhm

• 26:56Charles Liu?

  so yes it is true that you pull space backward and forward but in the continuity of Star Trek the idea is after you've done the pulling it snaps back into place and you haven't noticed any change because it happened so fast

• 27:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  wow

• 27:10Charles Liu?

  so you don't have to worry about spacetime and distances distorting on a long term basis it just happens so quickly because you're traveling through spacetime

• 27:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  it was basically a rubber band

• 27:19Charles Liu?

  in this space bubble kind of

• 27:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  yeah

• 27:20Charles Liu?

  yeah treats space and traveling through space like that

• 27:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  okay okay

• 27:23Chuck Nice?

  amazing all right let's go

• 27:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  keep going

• 27:25Chuck Nice?

  here we go this is oh my goodness I don't know how to say this

• 27:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  you never know how to say anybody's name

• 27:31Chuck Nice?

  isn't that true

• 27:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  this is not some exception to

• 27:33Chuck Nice?

  all right I'm gonna call you Joe this is Joe Samuel Lopez um he says hello Star Talk Enterprise oh I see what you did there Joe uh J Lo here from Portugal here's my simple question what Star Trek characters do you identify with the most and thank you

• 27:52Charles Liu?

  oh my goodness

• 27:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I love that I totally have an answer to that

• 27:56Chuck Nice?

  you have one too

• 27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  oh yeah

• 27:57Charles Liu?

  okay my answer is kind of a cop out but actually the reason I like Star Trek is because I don't Affiliate with any individual character. I like the stories separate from me.

• 28:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a cop act.

• 28:08Charles Liu?

  That's what I told you. That's what I told you. No, no, no. What's yours?

• 28:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, Chuck.

• 28:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 28:13Charles Liu?

  Oh, Chuck, okay.

• 28:13Chuck Nice?

  So, the one I like the most is Mr. Spock because I loved how logical he was and I thought it would be so great to live your life without emotion and never be affected by things. Just be able to assess them and analyze. But the one I truly identify with the most is Scotty because he's always freaking the hell out. You know, I'm gonna come through it, I'm sorry. She's gonna blue cop, I'm gonna come through it. He like, and he always did it, which is more like who I am. He always said he can't do it, but then he always did it, you know? So, it would be Scotty for real.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh, so, for me, it's, it's James Tiberius Kirk.

• 28:50Charles Liu?

  Really?

• 28:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. Because, you know, I've been in leadership positions and you can lead in many different ways.

• 28:58Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 28:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right? One of them is you can just lead by example. Another one is you can just follow what everyone wants you to do.

• 29:05Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 29:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, you're their leader because you're actually following them.

• 29:07Charles Liu?

  Yep.

• 29:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right? That's technically what our elected officials are supposed to do.

• 29:11Chuck Nice?

  Well, that's right.

• 29:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, then you're managed rather than, okay? And so, there are different ways to do that. For me, Kirk would get into his own fights.

• 29:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  John Luke Picard, did he ever go into fisty cuffs with anybody?

• 29:26Charles Liu?

  Oh, yes.

• 29:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How, as much as Captain Kirk did?

• 29:28Charles Liu?

  He didn't have to.

• 29:29Chuck Nice?

  There was always a flashback, though.

• 29:30Charles Liu?

  There were certain plenty of times. Oh, you're referring to Tapestry?

• 29:34Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 29:35Charles Liu?

  Yes, the episode where he gets stabbed through the heart by an angry Nausicaan over a pool fight.

• 29:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 29:40Charles Liu?

  Well, Dom Jock, technically.

• 29:41Chuck Nice?

  But it ends up, it ends up being the defining and pivotal moment of his life that allows him to be the dynamic decision defender person that he is, but...

• 29:52Charles Liu?

  Sort of.

• 29:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, yeah. I, I like the fact

• 29:55Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 29:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That Spock could not beat Kirk in a game of chess because...

• 30:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kirk made decisions that were not always, not always logical.

• 30:08Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 30:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And if you, and that means he was more human. And being human and fully experiencing everything that makes you human means the emotions have to flow through you in some way that you can manage and control perhaps, but certainly express.

• 30:26Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 30:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. And so, so the fact that he would fight his own fights, he could outsmart computers. I always wanted that power. Okay. Uh, you know, the computer said, uh, uh, this is the prime director. We must do this right. But wait a minute. You are yourself a contamination on the.

• 30:45Chuck Nice?

  Error, error, error.

• 30:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sterilize. Yeah. Yeah. So that's right. The sterilized episode. So he would put it into a do loop and the computer couldn't get out of it. And the smoke would come out of the computer.

• 30:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. But I think that that's really something that William Shatner had the writers put in more.

• 31:05Chuck Nice?

  I just got a feeling that William Shatner was like, I am not going to be dumber than a computer.

• 31:12Chuck Nice?

  And I certainly am not going to be dumber than Nimoy. So you're going to make me win at chess and beat the computer like.

• 31:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That is a little weird to come after the fact and beat the guy at chess.

• 31:23Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who, okay. So I identified immensely with his character.

• 31:28Chuck Nice?

  Wow. Right. Well, that's cool. Okay. That's cool. I love, yeah, that's cool. There's so many of them now. Like you, it's hard. That's a hard question, you know, cause.

• 31:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, by the way, was it Sotheby's? Christie's had a, a, a Star Trek memorabilia auction.

• 31:41Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. And, uh, so I, I attended, it was a multi-day, it was big. And I attended and one of the things they saw, this is obscure fact. One of the things they sold, they auctioned were foam phasers.

• 32:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is the phaser on the hip of the stunt doubles.

• 32:03Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 32:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In those scenes.

• 32:04Chuck Nice?

  That makes sense. Wow.

• 32:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that they don't get hurt.

• 32:07Chuck Nice?

  They don't get hurt by that. Yeah.

• 32:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right.

• 32:08Chuck Nice?

  Or break the phasers. Cause you know, like they only had six. That's right. Let's be honest.

• 32:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I just know it's cool. Say thought of everything, right? When you're filming, you gotta do it.

• 32:17Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. Very cool.

• 32:39Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. This is Bryant, and Bryant says, "How close are we developing a warp-drive engine so that humans can have the ability to travel faster than light?" So, first of all, is faster-than-light travel, is it possible? I mean, period?

• 32:52Charles Liu?

  We were just talking about Miguel Cubier's warp-drive idea, right? Where you can warp space. No object can travel through space faster than light. It's a straightforward rule.

• 33:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Object is distinct from energy and photons.

• 33:06Charles Liu?

  If you have other things, though, right, then they might be able to travel faster than light.

• 33:10Chuck Nice?

  Now, what about the whole idea of warping space, bending it? So you're not traveling through the medium of space faster than the speed of light. What you're doing is you're bringing points of space together and then unfolding it, so that you have traveled faster than the speed of light, but you have not broken the speed limit itself. What about that?

• 33:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aren't you effectively moving through a wormhole to connect those two points, though? We're still in wormhole world here.

• 33:35Charles Liu?

  What people are talking about when they're traveling faster than light is about moving from point A to point B, right, at a speed faster than 186,202 miles per hour, per second, excuse me, right? It's that kind of thing. So what you were describing is exactly what you'll describe, some sort of passageway that makes a difference. Can we actually move from point A to point B at those speeds? Still, no. But can we make space allow us to get from a point A in space to point B in space faster than light?

• 34:03Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 34:04Charles Liu?

  Would have taken us to get there. That is still mathematically possible. The energetics of it, though, are way off the scale.

• 34:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you mean mathematically possible?

• 34:12Charles Liu?

  Well, Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, right, shows, the Einstein field equations...

• 34:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like the way he says it, "Dude, Einstein showed this."

• 34:20Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 34:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do I have to explain this? Okay?

• 34:24Charles Liu?

  I didn't mean it that way, Chuck. I'm sorry. I'm just saying that with Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, his field equations, basically, only at this moment, even 100 years after they've been written, only have a few solutions that we understand. You can manipulate the mathematics of it in many, many different ways, most of which are nonsensical physically, but some of which might actually show that there is a possible way of moving through space and time with that sort of faster than like warping technique. But in order to do it with enough energy to move in motion and kinetic stuff, that's the part you get stuck.

• 35:07Charles Liu?

  Because the math shows you ways you can warp space and time to make it happen. But actually getting a piece of mass like you and me, or a spaceship from that point to that other point.

• 35:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did you say a piece of ass or a piece of mass? What did he? A piece of mass like you and me. I swear that's what he said.

• 35:23Charles Liu?

  Well, both statements are true.

• 35:25Chuck Nice?

  I accept the compliment no more.

• 35:26Charles Liu?

  What? Okay. Both statements are true, but I said mass.

• 35:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But he's referring to the mass.

• 35:34Chuck Nice?

  I'm like, I question not Charles's taste.

• 35:38Charles Liu?

  Thank you. Okay.

• 35:41Chuck Nice?

  Okay. Okay, here we go.

• 35:43Charles Liu?

  Yeah, so that's how it works. You can move space and time, but moving a piece of material from one point in space and time to another point in space and time, that requires a lot more than just having the mathematical ability to do it.

• 35:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's settle that here. So it's not a matter of new physics. It's a matter of technology working within a solution to that already known physics.

• 36:04Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 36:05Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 36:05Charles Liu?

  And I think we're very, very far away from it.

• 36:08Chuck Nice?

  Far away.

• 36:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 36:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. But possible is what I heard.

• 36:11Charles Liu?

  It has not been ruled out completely.

• 36:13Chuck Nice?

  I love it.

• 36:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 36:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go.

• 36:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got a few more minutes, see how many we can slip in here.

• 36:17Chuck Nice?

  So this is Opal Lehman Space Nerd. Opal Lehman Space Nerd says, hi, my name is Opal Lehman. For Chuck, that's Lehman, okay?

• 36:28Chuck Nice?

  I'm a 14-year-old. Really, 14, too?

• 36:30Charles Liu?

  Hey!

• 36:31Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man. I'm a 14-year-old Atlanta, Georgia. Who? And I was wondering how the antimatter warp drive containment system works. I read somewhere in the Space Chronicles book that they would need to hold the antimatter in a chamber made of antimatter so it wouldn't have to interact with the matter. But I was wondering how the antimatter containment system would be held. Would it be suspended in a field of magnets or what?

• 36:56Charles Liu?

  That is correct. And by the way, I love that a 14-year-old is thinking about this.

• 37:00Chuck Nice?

  That's cool, yeah.

• 37:01Charles Liu?

  This is just a wonderful thing.

• 37:02Chuck Nice?

  I love that a 14-year-old just dissed me.

• 37:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or a thought ahead of you to know that you

• 37:08Chuck Nice?

  That I would need help there.

• 37:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what we're saying here is matter antimatter of course annihilates

• 37:15Charles Liu?

  When they touch.

• 37:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In contact, but if it's contained within a magnetic vessel.

• 37:21Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 37:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A magnetic bottle of some kind, then it would basically bounce off the sides of the bottle without ever touching the matter that its exterior touches.

• 37:30Charles Liu?

  You would make need to make sure that your antimatter is charged either positively or negatively and then you would create the bottle with that same kind of charge and it would be contained wins inside this so-called bottle, but it's not actually a physical bottle.

• 37:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's not a physical. By the way, the charges.

• 37:44Chuck Nice?

  The field is the box.

• 37:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm getting the

• 37:46Chuck Nice?

  The field is the box.

• 37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The charges interact with the magnetic field and why do they do that? Because it is one force, the electromagnetic force.

• 37:55Chuck Nice?

  Yo, that's

• 37:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They go together.

• 37:56Chuck Nice?

  That's really cool.

• 37:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why they're not just separate entities.

• 37:58Chuck Nice?

  That is so cool.

• 37:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why they can talk to each other.

• 38:00Chuck Nice?

  That's amazing.

• 38:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's good.

• 38:01Chuck Nice?

  And then because they're like charged, they're it's kind of bouncing off of it.

• 38:05Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 38:06Chuck Nice?

  Dude, that's amazing.

• 38:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly.

• 38:08Chuck Nice?

  I love it.

• 38:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm hmm.

• 38:09Chuck Nice?

  God, even even science fiction is awesome as science. That's so great.

• 38:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 38:15Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Um, this is Brian Lacy. Brian says, hi, guys from Baltimore. Brian from Baltimore here as our technological needs increase, so does our need for strong and reliable power grid in Star Trek. They're powering giant ships and even bigger space stations. I know fusion is always 20 years away, but in the far future, what are they using? Also, how are they powering similar, smaller devices like phasers?

• 38:43Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 38:44Chuck Nice?

  It's amazing because a phaser is very small, but a huge power source.

• 38:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So where yeah, where's all the power come from? And don't just say dilithium crystals.

• 38:52Chuck Nice?

  Because I don't have enough, Captain. I don't have enough.

• 38:55Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 38:57Charles Liu?

  It is a question that hasn't been satisfactorily answered. Uh, the idea must be that they have some sort of amazing battery. Right? Some sort of power supply that they can store enough power in like a phaser.

• 39:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You don't see them refueling anywhere.

• 39:12Charles Liu?

  That's right. You can you can wipe out entire buildings with something that's just in the palm of your hand.

• 39:17Chuck Nice?

  And that makes sense because they can actually set phasers to overload, which I don't know why you would ever include that.

• 39:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What happens in overload?

• 39:24Charles Liu?

  They blow up.

• 39:24Chuck Nice?

  They blow up.

• 39:25Charles Liu?

  Like bombs. You can use them as detonated devices. Right. Oh, yeah.

• 39:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's that sound it makes that.

• 39:32Charles Liu?

  Yeah, yeah, okay. Just so you know, it's about to blow. Yeah. Right? Yeah, so the, the, the way that you draw power out of something like that must be through some sort of a battery or a capacitor or something like that. But it has never been properly described, just how that could be put into something.

• 39:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just quickly tell everyone what a capacitor is.

• 39:49Charles Liu?

  Capacitor is basically two plates of conducting things.

• 39:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Like metal typically.

• 39:54Charles Liu?

  Yeah, and you can store charge on one, waiting to jump onto the other. Basically, it's a, it's a something that can work like a battery, but transfer a huge amount of electricity very quickly. So for example, defibrillators have a capacitor in them. You have the battery charged with capacitor, and then when the defibrillator goes off, the capacitor sends thousands of volts in a fraction of a second. And that's how that works.

• 40:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  From one, from one contact to the other.

• 40:19Charles Liu?

  Correct.

• 40:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it goes through the heart ideally to, to.

• 40:22Charles Liu?

  Right, to, to reset it. Unfortunately, the power sources of these devices have never been properly described.

• 40:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In any of the episodes.

• 40:30Charles Liu?

  In any of the episodes. How convenient. You just have to assume that some battery or some capacitor has incredible power.

• 40:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So Chuck, I don't know much, we've got time for like one more question.

• 40:38Chuck Nice?

  Really? Aw, man.

• 40:42Chuck Nice?

  Doggone it, here we go. This is Steph, and Steph says, Captain's log, 2024, Alpha, Omega. Greetings, Dr. Tyson, Lou, and Lord Chuck Nice. And that's, that's enough of that from me. He says, as we reflect on the world of Star Trek, which is set around the year 2260, I wonder about the feasibility of achieving the advanced technology depicted in the series by that time. Considering how Back to the Future 2 envisioned the technological landscape of the early 2000s and how closely it aligned with our actual progress, aside from the absence of flying cars.

• 41:20Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 41:20Chuck Nice?

  What are the prospects of realizing similar advancements as portrayed in the Star, in Star Trek by the year 2260? So, you know.

• 41:30Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 41:31Chuck Nice?

  What, what, what are we looking at? Are we really looking at, okay, I'll put it to you this way, to call this down. What percentage of these technological wonders that we see in Star Trek will actually exist by the year 2260?

• 41:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or within 200 years.

• 41:43Charles Liu?

  Within 200 years. Um, my prediction, uh, 1%.

• 41:48Chuck Nice?

  Dead.

• 41:50Chuck Nice?

  That is so disappointing.

• 41:52Charles Liu?

  Not at all. 1% of all the stuff that was shown out there.

• 41:55Chuck Nice?

  That's true. That's a lot of great stuff.

• 41:57Charles Liu?

  Think of what's already happened, right? Communicators, video calls. We were talking about this earlier, right? There's a lot that's already existed. We've basically hit the point in star tech, technology, where we are doing stuff that are regular.

• 42:12Chuck Nice?

  Did you just make that up, technology? Because that's really cool.

• 42:15Charles Liu?

  No, no, that's a long, long... No, technology is a long, oft-used phrase. Don't worry.

• 42:20Chuck Nice?

  Okay, technology. Where have I been?

• 42:22Charles Liu?

  I can take no credit for it. I can take no credit.

• 42:23Chuck Nice?

  That's great. Well, go ahead. Anyway.

• 42:24Charles Liu?

  Yeah. So, we've reached the point where the stuff we don't know how it works yet basically needs physics we don't understand yet. So, if one out of 100 of the physics we don't understand is resolved, I'm happy. I'm psyched.

• 42:39Chuck Nice?

  I got you. I see what you're doing there. So, you're relating it back to the actual science. The discoveries that we may make that will allow these technological advances to come true.

• 42:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's why I made the point earlier. Are we missing physics or are we missing technology? And one has to come... Generally, one doesn't occur without the other. In a scenario where you've got technology doing amazing, fun things. Right. You need the attendant physics to go with it.

• 43:06Charles Liu?

  I think that's where we are now. And I'm excited because we are doing amazing things in our discoveries, in our studies. And once we break through that physics level, you know, what is dark matter? What is dark energy? Just to start with.

• 43:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dark energy is opposite gravity. Everything it does is what gravity does not want it to do. And so, if we can harness that, oh my God.

• 43:28Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're talking about an entirely new realm of physics opening up.

• 43:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Realm of physics.

• 43:34Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, that's just... Wow, now I'm excited.

• 43:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Think about it.

• 43:38Charles Liu?

  It's a good thing.

• 43:38Chuck Nice?

  That's a really exciting way to look at it.

• 43:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Other realms of physics in 1900 and a little earlier were the first hints of something unusual going on inside of atoms. And we are now in the centennial decade. Of the development and discovery of quantum physics.

• 43:55Charles Liu?

  Interesting.

• 43:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A whole realm.

• 43:56Charles Liu?

  Whole realm.

• 43:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That enabled computers.

• 43:58Charles Liu?

  Absolutely.

• 43:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There is no storage, creation, storage, or retrieval of information, digital information, without an exploitation of the quantum. Quantum physics.

• 44:07Charles Liu?

  Right.

• 44:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh. What a segue that was.

• 44:12Charles Liu?

  Right back to the handy.

• 44:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Handy.

• 44:14Charles Liu?

  Answer book for quantum physics.

• 44:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 44:17Charles Liu?

  Yo, that's really cool, man.

• 44:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Now, here's something that clearly will never come true, because it hasn't come true yet.

• 44:24Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 44:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every sci fi movie.

• 44:26Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 44:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the future, everyone's wearing the same clothes.

• 44:30Charles Liu?

  Ah, yeah.

• 44:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Have you noticed that?

• 44:32Charles Liu?

  Mm hmm.

• 44:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Everybody, they've got these shoulder things, and they're all wearing the same.

• 44:37Charles Liu?

  I am gleep.

• 44:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. We have resisted that.

• 44:42Charles Liu?

  Yes.

• 44:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  To this day.

• 44:43Charles Liu?

  And I think that's because it's one of the easiest things to resist. We want to make things uniform. We want to make things predictable, but we want to keep ourselves unpredictable.

• 44:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  As individuals.

• 44:54Charles Liu?

  As individuals. And what's the easiest way to do that?

• 44:57Chuck Nice?

  The easiest way of self-expression as to what you, what you put on your body.

• 45:00Charles Liu?

  That's right.

• 45:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good, good. I like that.

• 45:01Chuck Nice?

  Or not.

• 45:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 45:02Chuck Nice?

  As, as anybody who has a young child knows, they will go to, through a phase where they're like, I'm going to be naked, and this is just how I am. You know?

• 45:10Charles Liu?

  I remember those days. They were very freeing.

• 45:13Chuck Nice?

  Yes, and it's just like, we're at a restaurant. You can't do it right now. It's just like, I don't care about some food. I want to be naked.

• 45:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that how your children speak?

• 45:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had a 16 year old high school girl.

• 45:26Charles Liu?

  Yeah.

• 45:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In this office, in fact, that chair.

• 45:28Charles Liu?

  Oh.

• 45:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who was not even part of the original invite of who came to my office.

• 45:34Charles Liu?

  Uh huh.

• 45:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It was her boyfriend.

• 45:36Charles Liu?

  Oh.

• 45:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who was a big astrophysics fan, and he just dragged her. Only would I learn, because I like engaging everyone who comes into my office, because there were four of them in there. Because it was the kid, his sister, both their parents, and the guy's girlfriend.

• 45:51Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 45:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So she was just sitting there, and I just tried to engage everybody. And I'd say, what are you into? And I forgot what she said, but she said she really likes Star Trek.

• 45:59Charles Liu?

  Hey.

• 45:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said, she's 16. I said, whoa, like, by how much do you like Star Trek? She said, I bought you a gift. I don't know how she got it. This is the Federation trivia book.

• 46:12Charles Liu?

  Wow.

• 46:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mission one and mission two.

• 46:15Charles Liu?

  Whoa.

• 46:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is back when. This is like type, you know, typewriter.

• 46:20Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 46:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Typeface. So I'm gonna, let's do, let's see if Charles can maintain.

• 46:27Chuck Nice?

  Oh, he'll, he's gonna.

• 46:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's geekin' chief.

• 46:29Chuck Nice?

  He's gonna blow it away.

• 46:31Charles Liu?

  I'm not, I'm not sure, guys. I'm not that good with this sort of stuff.

• 46:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Fifty pages.

• 46:36Charles Liu?

  I'm not that good with this sort of stuff.

• 46:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 46:39Chuck Nice?

  There we go.

• 46:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here we go. Revised Second Edition, nineteen seventy-six.

• 46:44Charles Liu?

  Oh, my gosh. I don't know.

• 46:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who is DC Fontana?

• 46:48Charles Liu?

  Oh, she's a very famous science fiction writer who wrote a number of beautiful episodes of Star Trek.

• 46:53Chuck Nice?

  Look, what did I tell you?

• 46:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, okay, okay, okay, guys. What is Spock's last name?

• 46:58Charles Liu?

  You couldn't pronounce it.

• 47:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good answer.

• 47:02Chuck Nice?

  Well played. Well played.

• 47:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well played. Okay. What is Sulu's first name?

• 47:08Charles Liu?

  Hikaru.

• 47:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Damn.

• 47:09Chuck Nice?

  Look at you, man. Killing this.

• 47:11Charles Liu?

  Just getting lucky, guys.

• 47:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In what year was Flint born?

• 47:15Charles Liu?

  I do not know.

• 47:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Who's Flint?

• 47:17Charles Liu?

  I don't remember Flint.

• 47:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What happened to Scotty in the changeling?

• 47:22Charles Liu?

  I should know this, but I don't. He got changed, I guess, into a Ling.

• 47:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 47:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Name the woman Kirk cannot help loving.

• 47:35Charles Liu?

  Is that Joan Collins?

• 47:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, isn't that the nurse? Nurse?

• 47:38Charles Liu?

  Chapel?

• 47:39Chuck Nice?

  Oh, that's right. No, but it's not Nurse Chapel. They, they made him, they made him love her.

• 47:44Charles Liu?

  Well, there was one where, when he touched the tears of a particular alien woman, you would have to fall in love with this woman.

• 47:52Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 47:52Charles Liu?

  But unfortunately, they actually broke that spell because his one true love was.

• 47:58Chuck Nice?

  Is the Enterprise. I remember that.

• 48:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, my gosh. Oh, see, I'm wanting Kirk. I'm Kirk.

• 48:02Chuck Nice?

  He loves his ship more.

• 48:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A couple more, just a couple more.

• 48:06Chuck Nice?

  That's because he had, you know, sex with so many aliens, he.

• 48:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I know, right? Right?

• 48:11Chuck Nice?

  It was like, whatever.

• 48:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. Who is Jojo Krakow?

• 48:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles!

• 48:17Charles Liu?

  I... Sorry, guys!

• 48:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Charles, you know!

• 48:19Charles Liu?

  I'm not that into this sort of stuff.

• 48:21Chuck Nice?

  That's obscure. Jojo Krakow?

• 48:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 48:23Charles Liu?

  Sounds like someone from the Piece of the Action, but I don't remember the exact name.

• 48:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, that was one of my least favorite episodes.

• 48:28Charles Liu?

  Really?

• 48:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, totally. Okay.

• 48:30Chuck Nice?

  Worst gangster name ever.

• 48:33Charles Liu?

  Well, that was the point. They were trying to...

• 48:35Chuck Nice?

  Nah, see, I'm Jojo Krakow, see? Nah, that's right!

• 48:39Charles Liu?

  Okay.

• 48:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What was the planet in The Man Trap?

• 48:44Chuck Nice?

  It was the planet... Hey!

• 48:49Charles Liu?

  I'm sorry, I'm drawing a blank. I don't know that one. Alas.

• 48:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, you're not infallible. That's what we needed here.

• 48:59Charles Liu?

  Oh, please.

• 48:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Our geek-in-chief has some blind spots.

• 49:03Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, the blind spots that you would have to be a writer of Star Trek not to have. You have to be one of the writers to know these things.

• 49:12Charles Liu?

  I am happy to not know everything. I want to learn more. I want to gain more.

• 49:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so now...

• 49:18Charles Liu?

  That's the thing we do.

• 49:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Here's what we're gonna do. When I think of science fiction and storytelling embedded within it, often it's not just allegory for the challenges that we face in everyday life. At its best, it's that, yes. But for me, they also represent dream states of a future that if we try hard enough, that we can make happen. And we know it's not gonna happen without our collective investments, without our collective sense of what we want to be there waiting for us in the future.

• 50:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I ask myself, without science fiction, would we still be in the caves? Without somebody thinking about a future? And what role science, technology, invention, innovation? Without what role those could play in our lives?

• 50:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I don't want to live in that world. I want to always live, not just believing, but knowing that we will all be living differently tomorrow than we are today. And not just differently, living better. Star Trek not only gave us a glimpse into what the future of science and technology might bring, each episode at its best was also a morality tale. Because what good is the power of science and technology going into the future without the wisdom to harness it? To do right by it? To do right by your neighbor in the presence of such power?

• 51:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, if there's a world without science fiction, I don't want to live in it. Keep it coming, so that we can all dream about a tomorrow that's better than today. That is a cosmic perspective. The two of you professionally in your lives have served as radio announcers. Correct. That is true. Okay, so, I have not, but I've pretended I was at times. I want you, in sequence, to give me your smoothest radio voice saying, "This has been StarTalk. Keep looking up." Okay, your smoothest radio voice. We're gonna come down the line here, and the audience is gonna get it three times. Okay, go. Charles?

• 51:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  "This has been StarTalk. Keep looking up." "This has been StarTalk. Keep looking up." "This has been StarTalk. Keep looking up."