Cosmic Quandaries with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson

good evening ladies and gentlemen I'm cold will born on the executive director of the Palladium theater here at st. Petersburg College on behalf of our president dr. Karl Cutler and the faculty and staff of st. Petersburg College I want to welcome you all to the Palladium tonight and to cosmic quandary we're really proud to be partnering with our good friends at W edu tonight I just want to ask quickly how many of you have never been in the Palladium theater before great I love this hundreds of potential members the Palladium just turned 10 this year and we present the best in jazz blues classical gospel opera and musical theater we'd love to have you guys back to see us in the lobby afterwards there are cards you could fill out and we'll put you on our mailing list we only sell that to people who give us lots of money so you won't have to worry so please fill out the card we would love to have you get our monthly mailings and see what goes on here at the Palladium we want to move on quickly because we're on a time schedule and you didn't come to see me ladies and gentlemen a few things you ought to know this is going to be kind of a QA program so and you will be able to ask some questions so get your questions ready as you saw when you came in they're going to be books for sale in the lobby there is no intermission so if someone needs to go the restroom let them how let them go we'll be going for about it but around an hour and a half so and finally it's a real treat to be working as I said with wdu and with my good friend who is the president and CEO of this great public television station that so many of us grew up with ladies and gentlemen will you please welcome dick Lobo thank you Paul and on behalf of the W edu board and staff it's my pleasure to welcome all of our W edu friends and supporters here tonight as well as our special guests from Boston and New York representing one of PBS's most popular series Nova ScienceNOW and I also want to welcome our area scientists from the Bishop planetarium and the st. Petersburg College planetarium this year W edu celebrates its 50th year of broadcasting excellence in West Central Florida and we began as a small educational Channel in 1958 and today we're proud to be one of the most respected PBS stations in one of the most dynamic communities in the country W edu has grown and changed significantly over the years but we've stayed true to our educational roots as you're going to see tonight during our exploration and discussion on cosmic quandary x' and i'm pleased to announce that due to the popularity of Nova ScienceNOW hosted by dr. Tyson the program the program is now going to have a new dedicated time slot in primetime beginning Wednesday June 25th at 9:00 p.m. an excellent time period for this excellent program we hope you'll watch and stay tuned in addition just before you all arrived tonight w edu produced a special half-hour interview hosted by our own Rob Lurie with dr. Tyson and is executive producer Paula Apps L that's going to be airing sometime in June so keep an eye out in the listings for that program and then tonight's discussion will be streamed on our website WD u dot o-r-g probably in a couple of days so please be on the lookout for that tell your friends about it and let me thank my good friend Paul will born the Palladium Theatre in st. Petersburg College for partnering with W edu on tonight's terrific event I want to thank all of you again for your generous support of W edu over the past 50 years and I invite you to join us as we move on to multiple media platforms in the new digital age to come thank you for being here good night Thank You dick what a great asset the wdu he's been all right let's move on to our program we first going to introduce our two panelists dr. Jeff Rogers dr. Rogers come on out he is the director of the Bishop planetarium and director of education at Bradenton South Florida Museum he began his career at American Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium next dr. Craig Joseph dr. Joseph come on out he's received all his professional degrees from the wonderful Ohio State University a local favorite obviously he did his dissertation on stellar evolution and computer modeling of stellar interiors ladies and gentlemen I'm here representing the English majors of the world he started Bowling Green and southern Missouri State University and since 1996 he has been at Saint Petersburg College as planetarium director and professor of astronomy thank you very much and they're going to have some questions for our special guests a little later on now I'd like to introduce miss Paula Apso in in PBS circles Paula needs no introduction she is legendary for a woman so young Paula come on out Paula is the senior executive producer of Nova and director of the WGBH science she has built this incredible program into just the program it is today I believe the interesting part was you were hired out of Brandeis University to type the public broadcaster's daily television program logs she has moved up from there ladies and gentlemen along with Nova she has overseen production of the eight part miniseries evolution which I understand when it was broadcast in Florida was called evolution maybe maybe not I sorry about that in 2005 she introduced the Novus spin-off Nova ScienceNOW and that's what brought you here tonight and now are also other special guest dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson respected scientist author and director of the Hayden Planetarium in the Rose Center for Earth and space at the American Museum of Natural History we're going to let Paula talk a little bit more about our special guest when he's up here giving us his cosmic perspective so let's have a hand for dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson when when we were given several dates to hold for this event I asked well how should we what how should we what should we call the event on our hold and I was told just market sexy astrophysicist ladies and gentlemen you be the judge he's married Paula would you like to come up and introduce our special guest thank you very much Paul and thank you all so much for inviting me here to w edu into this fantastic theatre I have to say that the weather certainly beats the weather in Boston but mostly it's a treat for me to spend time with folks who support Public Television and W edu and make programs like Nova possible now I hope that all of you are familiar with Nova but I bet many of you don't know that this year is Nova's 35th that's an eternity in television my daughter who's a soap opera fan is pleased to know that General Hospital has a safe lead went on the air almost 45 years ago but no that has outlasted many classic television franchises including shows like Seinfeld I Love Lucy mash and Friends and despite the influx of cable networks since the 1980s Nova remains unique on the television landscape is the only weekly documentary series dedicated to telling important science stories in fact after the journals science and nature Nova is the nation's most trusted source of science news according to a National Academy of Sciences report this puts us ahead of such venerable print sources as the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and you can bet we really like that well in the TV industry it's always better to show than to tell so to start off our discussion let's take a look at this selection of clips that gives a pretty good sense of the breadth and excitement of the science that we cover in our series one slip and that's it you're gonna die here gonna pull off everyone with my first reaction when I saw this mommy was oh my god it's a bearer for NATO will see why tornadoes form in this beautiful vision that the flying machine would bring about world peace there's real value in seeing a corner of the world that throws ordinary existence on its head this in fact was the first flower in the world we can help shift the world onto a path it is one of shared prosperity it is the key to curing disease well that's history right there we live in an era when technology moves like never before advances in biology are changing the way we understand life climate change could alter our whole existence and whole planets have been known to drop out of the solar system we're lucky tonight to have with us one of the people responsible for demoting Pluto from coal two dwarf planet he is of course Neil deGrasse Tyson and when he's not busy picking on tiny faraway objects Neil is an astrophysicist and director of the hidden planet or Hayden Planetarium at New York's American Museum of Natural History simply the best ambassador of science that I know Neil is also the host of our new magazine series Nova ScienceNOW which begins its new season on June 25th so that you can see Neil in action I brought along a promo we've been airing recently to remind people about our new season of shows coming up this summer let's take a look I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson host of Nova ScienceNOW you ever wonder what would happen if you dug a hole from one side of the earth through the center out the other side and then jumped in before we show you a few disclaimers if there was any air in the hole air resistance would slow me down so let's ignore that Earth's molten core is 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit on the way past you'd simply be vaporized so let's ignore that too we would also have to ignore Earth's spin which would make me ricochet from side to side down the hole and please don't try this experiment on the actual earth all right here we go I fall gaining speed as Earth's mass pulls me towards the center 14 minutes into my fall halfway to the center I have accelerated to more than 15,000 miles an hour here there's only half the force of gravity than on the surface so I'm still gaining speed but in a slower rate than when I first jumped in twenty one minutes into my fall and I'm at the center of the earth going my fastest about 18,000 miles an hour as I passed the center gravity now works against me slowing me down and by the time I make it halfway between the core and the other side of the earth I'm back down to about 15,000 miles an hour it'll take only 42 minutes to make the entire trip to the other side at which point I'll slow to a full stop just like when I started all of Earth's mass it pulled me back towards the core unless somebody catches me I'll fall down the hole again and yoyo back and forth forever thank you no problem Nova ScienceNOW returns this summer all right I have to admit the t-shirt the jeans the eye thing with John Stewart sexy and we're going to do QA to start off with here and sort of go from there dr. Rogers with you I'd like to start us off and you were in fact the one responsible for that opening salvo in the pluto wars back in 2000 when you put the planets up there you failed to put Pluto up as one of the major planets since then this has played out on the international stage over that fact I have not welded those of us little out there we hear it all the time we've since decided that debate what I want to know is are you satisfied with the end of that debate and if so what have you got to say to all those who delivers out there I just so I get a sense of this who here is a poodle lover among us what I have found is that among food 11 who retain some deep level of disturbance over this decision most of them do not know for example that there are six moons in the solar system bigger than Pluto did you know that I got some ham - okay let's go starters don't you begin there then we find out Pluto is more than half ice by volume so that if you brought kudo to where earth is right now heat from the Sun would evaporate that ice and it would grow a tail that's no kind of behavior for we have words for objects with tails we call them well other than tailed mammals we call them comics okay so what happened back in the 1990's because we did our homework on the 1990s research in the outer solar system discovered other objects with orbits that kind of looked like Pluto's because Pluto has a weird orbit it's tipped it's oblong the crosses the orbit of Neptune it's a misbehaved object in the solar system it's always been didn't recently become that and so you discover these other objects in the outer solar system running up into the hundreds will shortly be in the thousands they all are icy like Pluto you all have cocked orbits like Pluto three of them are bigger than Pluto and so we realized in the 1990s that Pluto was the largest of a new swath of real estate of objects out there and so in our exhibit tree rather than enumerate the planets as is so common there's no science in the enumeration of the planets you have school teachers giving exams say what is the name of the fourth planet from the Sun and all the students dutifully memorize you know my very educated mother just served us nine pizzas recite that clock out number four who did it's the answer as though that science that's not science that's a parrot could do that and so what we did was rather than enumerate the objects we group them by like properties creating a family families of objects that populate the solar system the innermost terrestrial objects Mercury Venus Earth and Mars we have more in common with each other than any one of us has with any other object in the solar system there's a class right there then you get the asteroid belt separating Mars from Jupiter craggy chunks of rock they have more in common with each other than anything there has with anything else in the solar system the gas giants Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune huge load answer gaseous and then Pluto and the rest of its newly discovered brethren so I think it's happier no it's one of the kings of the comments it used to be like the puniest planet so so so our exhibit tree simply didn't count the planets we showed the solar system as this grouping of families and some people just never got over that and but we were that was a trend line that was already in progress we were the first to do it publicly then we got raked over the coals by the newspaper page one of the New York Times Pluto not a planet only in New York and so so I got this minnow people people saying oh hey Pam came into my office from like third graders in crayon you know why did you kill my favorite planet you know cup cover letters from science teachers you know pack and packaging the letters together all Angry all saw you know solve elementary school I didn't know they can get that angry I didn't know never had anything Hank about which to get angry until this happened so so now they're all in high school man okay with other issues to worry about in their school day and so the next turns out the next generation of third graders are now born into this new awareness that Pluto has it has has family out there and so the hate mail has stopped good I'm happy to report correct but can I say I just just last week submitted a manuscript to my publisher called the Pluto files loads emails and epitaphs in the name of a fallen planet and it's got the hate mail I've had to put it out there I had to show people and it's not just the kids they were like adult fighting about this as well Colleen's you know took sides so it became a sociological phenomenon remarkable that people would get that bent out of shape and Americans cared more about it than the Europeans I've had well that was our planet well bar goes up you're not going to demote an American planet like Stephen Colbert took that same attitude it's our planet discovered by Americans for Americans by golly but I think that it's clear why it matters more to Americans than to Europeans because I think most Americans don't know that an American discovered Pluto but they do know clean up that Mickey has a pet dog that's cool this audience wouldn't know that okay because this is a PBS audience but everybody else knows you know is Mickey's dog and so you start messing with Disney characters that those are fighting words in the American culture just let me know and while we're on the subject I just you started this but while we're there I would tell you I was deeply disturbed to learn that Pluto was Mickey's dog because I work in a museum the American Museum of Natural History I happen to be in the astrophysics group but I have this osmotic connection to the rest of my colleagues there in mammalogy and paleontology and so there's something wrong with the mammalian order of the world that a mouse can own a dog so I was deeply upset aside because I'm writing this I'm doing the homework on so I call the busy I said what gives here and they had the answer do you know the answer no you wouldn't know because you're PBS arts right I don't know no Disney okay so why is that the case because if you are Disney creature and you wear clothes you can own other creatures that don't so Mickey Mickey's got that jacket and sometimes got that bowtie sometimes yeah he was close Pluto runs around butt naked Mickey can own food oh but but Goofy wears clothes and he talks so he can own other pets so that I know you were burning to know that but so that's the story the International Astronomical Union seven years six years later ended up basically agreeing with our point of view and that all floated some of the anger that was coming our way and it went to them which I was happy to report on so let me get to straighten mammalian order I mean I want to talk to you about that a little okay I like that phrase that's good dr. Joseph I think you've got the next question oh yeah so first of all on behalf of everybody here at st. Petersburg College welcome to palladium that's happy happy to be here thanks gorgeous one of my favorite pet peeves is Hollywood science and I can read a lot it on don't get me started all I can rattle off any number of science fiction movies out of Hollywood betray really really bad science and I think many if probably most people's perception of science comes from what they see in Hollywood movies perhaps and everything oh well yes okay that that's absolutely right that's absolutely right now would do you have any favorite Hollywood movies watch I know you have one favorite at least with favorite bad movie or favorite bad science movies he started it he I'm not accountable henceforth okay because you started this off first of all let me be clear there are movies out there where the director just doesn't care and if they don't care why should I care all right I'm okay if they don't care it's when there's a premise of accuracy and precision that they just mess up that okay can I give you an example please what back I was in graduate school when the Disney movie the black hole came out one of my 10 worst movies ever on all house worse than Armageddon all again was at least fun even though they even though the asteroids and Armageddon seem to have really good aim you know run hit the Eiffel Tower you know another one hit the Hoover Dam I'm thinking these are like asteroids with GPS you know what's going on here so so space shuttles launching to Rachel can't leave low-earth orbit they got everything wrong so much wrong that you can't you just got to let that one go all right you let it go and the black hole they could have called me up I could have hooked them up big time with cool black hole stuff and clearly they didn't care and I looked in the credits I want I'm a credit watcher no science advisor okay I could hook them up but that's not even what I want to tell you about you got me started I may have been one of the last people in the world to see the film to pay to the go to the movies to see the film Titanic okay I was like one of five people in the theater at the time I figured time came I got it see them everybody else in the movie three times I shouldn't least see it once so I'm there watching it there it goes fine much about this movie to remind you was widely marketed as having precisely captured the details of the ship because Jim Cameron's the director Howard is submersible went down found the chip okay looked at the designs of the wall sconces and the china patterns in the the staterooms captured all of that in his movie so here's somebody who cares about detail I'm going to hold them accountable so watching the movie okay the ship sinks so I gave away case anybody out there didn't know we know the day the time the longitude the latitude the date the we know everything about how when and where that ship sank okay there's Kate Winslet on the on the plank singing deliriously as her boyfriend just sinks to the depths of the ocean why didn't he like try to get on there with her you know you think they could have worked something out you think there she is looking up there is only one sky she should have been looking at and it was the wrong stop worse than it it was not only the wrong sky the left half of the sky was a mirror reflection of the right half of the wrong it was lazy and I'm thinking this is wrong because I'm walk cause I noticed we noticed you two own stuff like this you know the sky but you know the sky you know that you the sky is your backyard if it's not it should be and for a couple of dollars you can buy a planetarium program on your computer check out the sky when the Titanic sank it was not Jim Cameron sky so I pulled out my finest of letterhead the one that has all the degrees and all the titles I wrote a letter to Jim Cameron politely saying how could you mess up the sky got no reply figure no reply five years later I'm on a committee I'm on a committee that intersects a committee that he's on he was an adviser to NASA for a while by the way not about the sky about other thing about exploration okay he's a big Explorer by the way and so I'm in the room with him I said here's the big chance so I said Mr Cameron I wrote a letter to you some years ago he never got it I said did you know that your sky was just wrong and we know what that sky was and everything else about your movie was so accurate and he says I didn't know that I didn't know in fact that happened in post-production and so then that was all he said and I was just completely immature about I wanted him to grovel for forgiveness at my feet but he didn't do that and so somehow I was deeply unsatisfied by this three years after that he gets an award from Wired magazine they rent out our planetarium to give it to him now he's in my place all right so in my irrational immaturity I bring the subject up again all right it turns out I was invited to a dinner with him after that event the only eight of us he and a few of his friends the wine is pouring we're all kind of chillin so I say here we go I said Jim cuz now I could call him Jim Jim I wrote you let this story will end I promise very shortly I said what you later about the sky and then you didn't get it right and I why how could you do that any answer he said well last I checked Titanic worldwide has grossed 1.3 billion dollars imagine how much more it would have grossed had I gotten the sky correct I couldn't leave well enough alone that just shut me out I said that's I can't follow that I can't nothing I can do so I went home tail between my leg two months later I get a phone call from some guy I forgot his name some guy called me up say hello I say hello he said I'd work post-production and Jim Cameron studios he's releasing a 10-year anniversary director's cut of the movie and he's adding new footage and he tells me you have a sky he can use it is possible to influence these things as what was the case then and there but otherwise I don't I don't cry about it because you just get really annoying to the people who sit next to you in the theater I think we're going to do a couple of questions from the audience as well is that where we are now I think we've got a microphone over here when to the mic so you'll be on TV okay thank you I was only if you could please comment on the mapping of dark matter and how it's being done and what you think dark matter might be okay dark matter you may not know or maybe you do that 85% of all the gravity of the universe has a source that is completely unaccounted for we look around at all the electrons protons all the favorite particles that comprise us and earth in the Sun we find and we know where they are we can we know how to detect them and when we do and we look at the gravity that they exhibit that's like 1/6 of the gravity that's actually exhibiting itself out there in the universe we don't know what's causing it so we have this placeholder term called dark matter we don't know if it's matter there many of us who assume it for other cogent reasons but we don't know if it so we could have just called it Fred all right it's just a placeholder turn okay so we are completely ignorant of what accounts for this extra gravity it's really dark gravity that's what it is we call it dark matter now is the old saying if you are a hammer all your problems look like nails because we have dark matter as an outstanding problem if you're a particle physicist they all think it's some mystery particle awaiting our discovery if you're a sort of gravitational dynamicists you might think that maybe our laws of gravity need modification you just applying the law the wrong formula to calculate how much gravity should be coming out of this matter put in the right formula corrects it all on I'm agnostic there I don't my favorite idea not my idea but it's circulating comes from the multiverse hypothesis that we are one of many universes which has important historical and philosophical foundations for suggesting we might be one of multiple universes but there's no evidence for that yet but let's go with that assumption for the moment if there were multiple universes they would exist in a higher dimension so you have these universes coexisting with us in a higher dimension not intersecting it turns out if you do the calculation gravity can permeate the membrane of one universe and be felt across the membrane of an adjacent universe so it may be that what we're calling dark matter is regular matter in a parallel universe whose gravitational field we are feeling and so it's it's not always wrong to hypothesize look it's not always wrong to i pathi size things that you cannot measure directly because you may be able to measure them indirectly you can hypothesize that a bear is walking around your cottage in the mountains even if you've never seen it because after a snowfall you see bear prints outside your house okay well okay maybe that's an impostor but then you see like a big pile of bear poop okay and so now you've got it all right and so now you don't have to have seen the bear to suggest to yourself that maybe you should move somewhere else so there are forces of nature that can reveal themselves without actually seeing them directly that's my favorite hypothesis but I'm not sort of I'm not like lobbying for it I just think it's the coolest among the hypotheses suggested so that's dark matter and whoever discovers what it is that's a Nobel Prize waiting and waiting to be handed right there and that's not the same thing as dark energy that's not the same thing as dark energy that's another aspect of the cosmos about which we are completely dumb stupid there is four times as much dark energy as there is dark matter of which there's six times as much of that as there is the matter that we know and love so we are only four we only understand 4% of that which comprises the entire cosmos so you can't be an astrophysicist and be big-headed about it because super bit we are staring ignorant in the face and dark energy isn't this is this pressure that exists in the vacuum of the cosmos that takes our expanding universe and has turned it into an accelerating expanding universe the gravity of all the objects want to sort of slow things down the dark energy is speeding it up we don't know what's causing it and it will very shortly completely overrun all the power of the gravitational force there is in the universe and all the galaxies of the night sky will accelerate to beyond our horizon and cosmology as we know it would cease and the cosmologists are the future since they will have no galaxies to gaze upon because the expanding universe took the out of our horizon all the universe will simply be the stars of the Milky Way galaxy of the night sky and they will look at old texts from previous years and they will say well this is what people used to say about the universe about the galaxies that were in the night sky had there not been these books telling them about what used to be there there would be no understanding of a big bang or cosmology or the origin of the universe so by the way and so dark energy we don't since we don't know what that is we could that could be just like we have Fred and Ethel right dark matter dark energy they're just placeholder words we have no idea what they are some of us know even less than go ahead yes sir my question is in even in your talk just now when you talk about being pulled down into the black hole and what in the reading they talk about this I thought the black hole was like this this mind you you know miniscule point right and there's not a down into it so if you have an accretion disk from what I've read you show an accretion disk and being pulled into that and it's all coming in a circle whatever is going to be flying over top of it and look down in other words what's below and above that plane that that disk is on or the galaxies that are not spiral like ourselves do they have an accretion circle or how does that work I mean equation sphere sphere yeah so wouldn't it so this is bring angst to you you kind of like getting all gesticulating and I worry maybe you don't sleep well at night until this is resolved but I should preface this by saying I'm very pleased you all here this evening because I don't know if you knew the numbers but there's about 6,000 astrophysicists in the world and there's about six billion people if you divide those two numbers you get one in a million so if you ever have the occasion to be in the company of an astrophysicist that's the time to ask all your questions we'll never know when that will happen again okay just wanna let you know all right sir let's get a few things straight about black holes when you are in the vicinity of a black hole no matter where you are around it down is the direction towards the black hole if you're below it down is that way you're above it down is that way you'll get down is that way and it's the same way on earth down is whichever way the center of the earth is so let's clarify that second we call it a hole it's actually a three-dimensional hole you think of a hole in the street or a hole that we dug through the center of the earth and you jump in normally you can sort of look at a hole from the side and below because a hole Olmo as we've kind of defined it in the dictionary is a cut through a two-dimensional surface that's well the hole is no one says put a hole in the middle of this room that wouldn't make sense to you I say put a hole in the in the floor that's a two-dimensional surface a black hole is a hole in three dimensions every direction you approach it is down and you falling into it the actual content of a black hole has collapsed to what we call the singularity that's where in Einstein's theories we divide by zero you know it's bad to divide by zero so Einstein's theories fail at the center of a black hole that's why we know there's something beyond Einstein's theories there's got to be if the universe is a knowable organized place Einstein's theories have a limit and that's the singularity it gets you right up to it but it won't get you there meanwhile the operational definition of a black hole is the region of space around it within which if you fall you will never come back out and we call that poetically the event horizon love that the event horizon I kind of feel you shouldn't that's once you go and you never come out it should be like the death horizon you know the Death Star but it's not the event horizon so when we think of the size of a black hole it's not the size of the matter that occupies it it's just the region of space where if you cross that boundary there is no hope of ever coming out because the fabric of the universe has curved back on itself and there's no trajectory you can take to get out of that region light can't even get out that's why we call them black and light is the fastest thing we know so you're not coming out especially after the what happens to you I gotta say after the station right one way to do to delay the spaghettification is if you like tumble really quickly like a rotisserie because then you can't it can't systematically stretch you in one way talking a roll tuck and roll yeah yeah a new a new Olympic diving maneuver the the anti spaghettification spin you know we will work on that but spaghettification only applies to small black holes right if it's a big supermassive black hole you could pass right oh oh so actually the spaghettification for some black holes will happen before you get to the event horizon for others will happen after you pass through the event horizon but it will happen on route to the singularity and it's a one-way one-time experiment yes we've got one here once you go over to the microphone okay my question is the next round of budget cuts has come through and they've decided that NASA NSF everybody gone we got other things to concentrate on and you go to Washington and beg and plead and they say okay you can have one project and with with you in a position where you're you sort of got one foot in the scientific community and one foot in the public what would you pick is that one project good question I would say to myself that something has gone horribly wrong with the country if if the country cuts the budget of all its science agencies which in that case would be the NIH which funds health the National Science Foundation which funds the major branches of science that you learned in high school and in college NASA which funds our dreams as far as I can describe it if you remove all of that then there's nothing left to inspire a next generation and if I'm only allowed to pick one project it would be to build me a boat to sail to the country that has decided that they do want to spend money on this and I don't know if boats have rearview mirrors but there will be America in the rearview mirror as people move back into the caves I think we've got a student over here you and you can someone help me get the mic down to earth - is there we go like a black hole be able to suck in another black hole not past your bedtime I'll just cry can I ask what what grade you're in and tell me your name - second and my name is Clayton Oh your name is Clayton Clayton hi Clayton you're in second grade and you're thinking about colliding black holes yeah you belong in like 12th grade okay don't tell your teacher I said put you in 12th grade okay so it turns out while I was in college there was a graduate student at my college at my university whose PhD thesis this is what you do to get to become a doctor not a medical doctor but a professional research doctor in astrophysics his PhD thesis was on the subject of colliding black holes and what makes it an extraordinary problem to solve is that the distortion of the fabric of space and time around one black hole also exists for the other black hole so you have black holes entering each other's event horizons so I opened up that thesis I didn't understand a single page and it's an extraordinary disturbance in the fabric of space and time and it turns out while I cannot reproduce the calculation it's a level way beyond what I was doing at the time and even what I'm doing today but I can tell you that there are people who have recognized what severely distorted space does is what the effect that's severely distorted fabric of space and time if study what effect that has on the passage of time and it turns out there is a there is a path you can take around to moving black holes that haven't quite collided yet where you can end up in the past of when you started that journey so it's backwards time travel according to calculations from Einstein's general relativity is enabled by this severely distorted fabric of space and time such as what you would get with black holes that came in their own proximity and so beyond that you really want to sort of watch that from a distance and so you say what happens they they will eat each other and they'll make a black hole that's twice as large as the one they started with but it's but it'd be quite arrive for any material that's swirling in its vicinity so excellent question thanks I guess name the movie's phrase kick you back into the Ice Age oh yeah yeah kick you back kick you back before you were born by the way if you go back into your past you don't want to like prevent your parents from meeting each other that'll kind of mess things up then you wouldn't exist to then go back in time to prevent your parents from meeting each other yes my question to you is arthur c clarke just died and of course he was a great scientist before he was a great sign fiction writer and i have a feeling that any science fiction movie you see you'll be unhappy with so how about writing one that is actually crossed my mind however um my writing training is more in sort of the exposition of science rather than in this other dramatic interplay of personalities and love stories and that sort of thing so I don't claim the talent that an actual storyteller would have to convey a science fiction story what I would I would be happy to serve as a science advisor to a writer who actually has that talent in that interest I could play that role extremely well so but doesn't mean I couldn't learn how to sort of be a creative writer in that regard but I would have to save that for all of my copious free time that I had in the day so it might be like a retirement project for me but I I think it's not anytime soon and but like I said I'd be happy and I do advise writers I don't need credit for it even I just like the celebration of science and some science fiction writers are part of this this buoyant force that keeps science alive in the hearts and minds of the public so I get calls and emails all the time I'm thinking about a story on a starred and explodes what will happen to the spacecraft let's say it'll vaporize okay well what will happen to these and so we go through a dialogue sharpening and improving the storyline and so I've done that I've helped others out but thanks for that suggestion and you'll be waiting okay were you a fan of arthur c clarke yes I was although I read much less science fiction than others of my colleagues I was so thoroughly enchanted by science fact that there was no room left in me for science fiction and once I learned about black holes and expanding universe and colliding galaxies and the search for life and I was done you know I'm with what's left in me to then read science fiction but you still make anything up it right exactly so but I have no less respect for that enterprise no pun intended in the under breath and no I do have a you know I know the trek that I can hang the trek is out there my sideburns like check sidewalks they go on if you notice they go to the point go check them out just the Spock Star Trek thing that's my little homage to Star Trek generation but with arthur c clarke what distinguish him from other visionaries they're like the tech visionaries so in ten years we'll all have something in our car or in our home he wasn't that trite because he not only understood the trajectory of technology and science he understood human behavior and it is the intersection of human behavior with technology that is society and that's where he distinguished that's where his predictions and accountings for what the future would look like and smell like that's what distinguish him from everybody else that was out there just predicting what new gadget we would have in the future I think it's worth mentioning tuna with within days of passing of arthur c clarke we had one of the most enormous explosions in the history of the universe naked eye gamma-ray burst which is really quite extraordinary I think that's the universe reacting to his dad possibly I'm not like arthur c clarke was actually the first interview that i ever did when I started my career on Nova for film I made on artificial intelligence called the mine machines one tiny little anecdote you know his complete rank beginner I was going to New York to do this interview I've been shooting all day and I asked him where he was staying because I thought I'd stay in a hotel nearby and he said that he stayed at the hotel Chelsea way down town in New York now the Chelsea is not really all that pleasant to place in fact many people called it even though many literary works have been written there including Under Milk Wood it's kind of a flophouse so but I didn't know what it was I didn't live in New York so I went down there and the night before this interview when I should have gotten a great rest I was sleeping in a room with 12 unmade beds it was really kind of a creepy place but but Clark was he was completely made up for made up for that he wrote 2001 there and many other of his books and he had a sentimental ty as many authors do to the Chelsea that's why I stayed there he was a fantastic interview fantastic that's great spec we're starting to wind down so we got a cut I'm for a few more do I see some hands you got to get to the microphone who and we could balcony we need some balcony phone watch repeat that question do I believe in UFOs or extraterrestrial visitors I'm not authorized to answer that where shall I begin um UFO first remember what the U stands for in UFO now there's a fascinating frailty of the human mind that psychologists know all about and it's called argument from ignorance and this is how it goes you ready somebody sees lights flashing in the sky they've never seen it before they don't understand what it is they say a UFO the U stands for unidentified so they say I don't know what it is it must be aliens from outer space visiting from another planet well if you don't know what it is that's where your conversation should stop you know then say it must be anything okay that's what argument from ignorance is it's common I'm not blaming anybody psychologists know all about it and it may relate to our burning need to have to know stuff because we're uncomfortable steeped in ignorance you can't be a scientist if you're uncomfortable with ignorance because we live at the boundary between what is known and unknown in the universe unlike what's right you ever see journalist any journalist you go to journalism you have journalists all articles about science is going to begin scientists now have to go back to the drawing board as though we're sitting up in our office you know those mixtures of the universe as I hope somebody discovered some no we're always at the drawing board if you're not at the drawing board you're not making discoveries you're something else so the public it appears seems to have this burning need to have to have an answer to what is unknown and so you go from an abject statement of ignorance to an abject statement of certainty so that is operating within us let's start there second we know not only from research and psychology but simple empirical evidence in the history of science that the lowest form of evidence that exists in this world is eyewitness testimony which is scary because that's some of our highest form of evidence in the court of law but we know from second grade where's my guy from second grade get up to the microphone for a minute look grab the microphone grab the microphone in your classes have you done the famous experiment where you play telephone and you line up all your kids in class and one person starts with a story and then you hear it and you repeat it to the next person and the next word have you done that in class yet yes you've done that expect because what happened what happens by the time you get to the last person and they retell the story what happens it's like completely different it's completely different completely different okay because the conveyance of information was relying on eyewitness testimony which in that case is ear witness testimony and so let's thank you so we know that so he knows it the second grade all right so actually he should be in twelfth grade as units down so so now so now it wouldn't matter if you saw a flying saucer in science even if your tap something less controversial than a flying saucer if you come into my lab and you say you got to believe me I saw it and you're one of my fellow scientists I say go go back home go back they have some other kind of evidence that's not just you saw it okay because human perception system is right with all ways of getting it wrong okay but we don't like thinking of ourselves that way we have high opinions of our human biology when in fact we should not I'll give you an example of how it reveals itself we've all bought and enjoyed books called called optical illusions right well we all love optical illusions but that's not what they should call the book they should call them brain failures okay that's what it is there's a complete failure of human perception all right all it takes is a few sketches that are cleverly done your brain can figure it out all right so we are poor data taking devices that's why we have such a thing as science because we have machines that don't care what side of the bed they woke up in the morning don't care what they send to the spouse that day doesn't care whether they had their morning caffeine they'll get the data right okay so maybe you did see visitors from another part of the galaxy I need more than your eyewitness testimony and in modern times I need more than your photograph which Photoshop probably has a UFO button today on your computer so here's the here's that here's what you do I'm not saying we haven't been visited I'm saying the evidence thus far brought forth does not satisfy the standards of evidence that any scientist would require for any other claim that you're going to walk into the lab with so here's what I recommend here's what I recommend next time you're abducted because I'm ready for this I'm ready okay I get abducted I'm ready okay so you're there you're like on the slab because they always do like the sex experiments on you on the Flying Saucer and so there you are and then poking at you choose what you do you ready you tell the ant you'll be alien for this right so you're poking me all right so then I say I'm on this side of it okay so I say hey look over there and then he looks over there you quickly flight snatch something off the shelf put it in a pocket and then lay back then you're done you come back and say look what I got okay I like stole the ashtray off the shelf of the flying saucer and then you bring that to the lab it's not about eyewitness testimony at that point because you'll have something of alien manufacture and anything you pull off of a flying saucer that cross the galaxy is going to be interesting okay because even objects within our own culture I got this a device here okay the iPhone 10 years ago they would have resurrected the witch burning laws had you pulled this thing out and that's in our own culture our own culture produce this over a 10 years man so if there's some technology that crossed the galaxy that's going to be some serious stuff to look at in the lab then we can have the conversation until then I can't I'm sorry go ahead keep trying to find them I'm not going to stop you but get ready for that time you are abducted because I'll be looking for your evidence when that happens and and what my last point on that is there are people who have looked up who look up all the time like for example the community of amateur astronomers in the world I was an amateur astronomer we look up what we come out of a building we look up done mad where we looking up UFO sightings are not higher among amateur astronomers than they are in the general public in fact they're lower you say well why is that so well because we know what the hell we're looking at we know do you know because we study this stuff do you know there was a UFO sighting reported by a police officer because we think that because you have a badge or you're a pilot or whatever that your testimony somehow better than that of an average person it's all bad because we're human okay so there was a police officer who was tracking a UFO that was swaying back and forth in the sky okay reported I'm not on the hunt there and one of the would he call the cop the squad car chasing a UFO and UFOs moving back and forth like this okay later it turned out the cop car was chasing Venus and he was driving on a curved road but was so distracted by Venus he thought Venus was the one moving and he wasn't even thinking that he was doing this so I have seen things which without my background in meteorology and astronomy and looking up I would have reported to the police department I would have liked orographic clouds that form above huge mountains that are circular and they're the above a tall mountain which means wherever you are the Sun can set for you before it has set for the cloud darkening the skies yet this cloud is now illuminated by sunset colors which are what red yellow orange and so and it's circular they've been reports of hovering circular UFOs with light beings on them because people are looking at this cloud formation on top of mountains so maybe we have been visited by an maybe they've even landed but why do they land in like the farmers yard and not like Times Square all right then I worried like maybe they had landed in Times Square but nobody took notice no good I'll be good that's the really big problem there and so what so this is they have a huge incident because there's a lot built in it so here's another concern I had oh you said about movies earlier memory Close Encounters of the Third Kind absolutely remember that and the airline's come in this big flying saucer sure okay and what do we do we turn on runway lights for it I'm thinking fly sources don't need runway lights they're flying saucers were good to say if you put any put a bull's-eye or something you didn't need it when we landed on the moon don't put runway lights for this thing then would you go to Roswell and there's like crashed flying sucks I'm thinking if the alien came across the galaxy and couldn't land the damn spaceship I don't want to meet the aliens there's stupid aliens all right you land on earth for goodness sake we'll tell me you came across the galaxy you can't land on earth go home bring me somebody who can then they'll have the conversation anyhow so those are my opinions on the Sun we've got about five more minutes so five more minutes and maybe time for one or two more questions yes so try not to be on the fence here are you for or against string theory string theory well you know I was all for it back when they started that adventure back in 1980s in 1982 and in fact at the time I was at the University of Texas where some of the leading thinkers at the time were based and you know that string theory is like the theory of everything it would get you in understanding where Einstein's theories end and pick up at the it would allow you to divide by suit by zero legally okay that's what string theory would allow you to do it allow you to describe the universe at the moment of the Big Bang which is where right now our theories can't get us there possibly even before the Big Bang it would unify the science of the large general relativity with the science of the small quantum mechanics all right if that's the case fine I asked them how close are they so a couple years away we're almost there so 1985 rolls by how's it coming we're going low how I'll click up ELISA way let me say it a couple years for 27 years 26 years so I'm kind of losing confuse II Azzam but they're the only game in town and they're really cheap to fund like a pencil a pad throwing a laptop be good you send them off to their office let them do their thing I don't have a problem with that because they're the only game in town I'm not going to stop them but I'm losing my enthusiasm because and you ask them they say it's a very hard problem now again the book was titled optical illusions not brain failures so a string theorist will not say we are all just too stupid to figure this problem out but maybe we as a species are too stupid to figure it out ah if it's cheap I will yes I'm gonna start directing funds from other research that might be have a shorter time horizon for the discovery of what they're after I'm yanking it like that but like I said they're inexpensive and there aren't many of them and they're harmless so yeah the question yes well those are like the particle physicists you know you always got to give the particle of physics through next accelerator and they're driven by more than just whether they find the strength theory particles but yeah I'd like to ask you kind of a hypothetical if black hole like falling into a black hole was not hypothetical only hypothetical like a beanie aliens was not ever that sir you're not the only hypothetical question this evening okay well I just thought I'd preface it that way okay if black holes didn't exist with the universe as we know it exists and if that's the case is that just another example of a finely tuned universe the black holes as far as we know don't play any fundamental role in the universe much of the most of the universe goes on just fine without ever looking at thinking about smelling a black hole so what black holes do is enable us to explain a lot of what would otherwise go unexplained like the engines that drive what we call active galaxies these are galaxies that are the engines of quasars for example we have no accounting for those but for black hole the behavior of stars in the Centers of galaxies we need black holes to account for them but if you took away all those black holes it's not obvious the universe would care at all it would still could happen just the way it did so they're rare enough so that it's hard to think of them as fundamental we get closer to the to the microphone except that maybe that's where the dark matter is oh well yeah because black holes aren't dark and things however we've already counted for all the black holes in the ordinary matter part and then because black holes are ordinary they do things too light and dark matter does not interact with matter or energy or light or anything that is in our universe in any way at all it says no we're not even there it's quite embarrassing actually but we're completely ignored by it so in no way could save like nano black holes or micro black holes account for the you know missing matter the Nano black holes would evaporate very quickly and we would see them explode we would see sort of bursts of those around the universe and we don't see that so nano would be small that's how you're using that adjective so no you can't hide it in ordinary matter a dark matter is a completely different species of object we've accounted for all the ordinary matter that there is I'm sorry where this one right here and then we're out your phrase even the curvature of space-time what is the shape of the universe if if space and time are curved what is the topology in the shape of the universe well the universe given the distribution of matter which is relative statistically uniform so that the observable universe is a sphere you look at every direction you hit our horizon at about 14 billion light years out and it's artificial in the sense that when you're at a ship at sea and you look out to your horizon you're not saying that's the whole ocean right there no that's the ocean that you can see if you move to another spot more ocean comes into view if we were in another part of the universe we'd see a horizon correspond to that spot rather than two hours so in that simple sense we are spherical our rate of expansion however is such that if you want to think of the geometry of the curvature we're in a one-way trip expanding that'll never come back and that is what we call positively curved so negatively curved universe and a negatively curved space is like a is what we call a saddle shape when you're negatively curved there's no coming back on itself so that's our shape I think we're going to go into your closing a little puzzle I appreciate like a thing you got a great teacher that's why I'm being so pushy I'm supposed to hand em a second grade teacher that's cool teachers are like they worked really hard on these letters and I just wanted to deliver them these are letters to me mm-hmm oh that's sweet thanks for nothing only hadn't we only had one okay okay so that's the science lecture version of tossing flowers on what I was deeply shocked they were upset that you were getting such negative letters and so they wanted to write you letters from other scientists and to come up with a question for 27 year olds was hard they just wanted to know what are you most passionate about my job what did my job and my most passionate about and I know we're in a hurry but if I didn't deliver those I would be dead okay thank you uh most passionate why I have several passions in life but I would say one of them is on the public side is trying to raise the level of science literacy a few notches in the electorate I think that's fundamental to the future of the nation have a hand for our handler you got one more Navy view that you may that disturb being thought that will keep everyone awake at night please do may I okay you sure I'm not accountable if you can't get to sleep tonight okay it's right oh let's move back okay there okay I'm safer back here no okay all right I can see everybody we got him you guys over here you good troopers look at the back of his head here right yeah all right just a couple of thoughts one that's sort of deeply cosmic and another one that is fascinatingly disturbing I think you'll be the judge of this I'll consider a couple of fundamental facts that has been gleaned in the past 60 years that the ingredients if you had asked your chemistry teacher 50 years ago once you looked at that mysterious chart of boxes that sat in front of your class the periodic table of elements where did those elements come from the chemistry teacher would actually not have an answer for you let's say we dig them out of the earth that's not where they come from it took modern astrophysics to determine the origin of the chemical elements we observe stars we know what goes on in their center they explode laying bare their contents and what we have discovered is that the elements of the periodic table that which we of derive from the actions of stars that have manufactured the elements exploded scattered their enriched guts across the galaxy contaminating or enriching gas clouds that then form a next generation of stars populated by planets and possibly life and so when you look at the ingredients of the universe the number one ingredient is hydrogen next is helium next is carbon sorry hydrogen helium oxygen carbon nitrogen those are the top ingredients in the universe they say well okay that's kind of cool well when you look at earth because we like thinking of ourselves as special we say oh we're special but what are we made of but what's the number one sort of molecule in the body its water its water oh it's water made of h2o hydrogen and oxygen hmm are you an oxygen in fact if you rank the elements in the human body with the exception of helium which is chemically inert useless to you for any reason other than just to inhale it and sound like Mickey Mouse you can't die from helium unless that's all you breathe so number one in the human body is hydrogen matches the universe number two is oxygen matches the universe number three carbon matches the universe number four nitrogen matches the universe and for each of us the fifth element other is the same in both places okay other so we learned in the last 50 years that of course not only do we exist in this universe it is the universe itself that exists within us and had we been made of some rare isotope of bismuth you would have arguments hey we're something special but there are people who are upset by that fact saying well that would that mean we're not special it's special in another kind of way because when you look up at the night sky it's no longer we're here and that's there it's that we are part of that and that association for me is actually quite enlightening and ennobling and enriching in fact it's almost spiritual looking up at the night sky and finding a sense of belonging given what we've learned about the night sky and so so now we have ourselves though are we alone in the universe we're made of the most common ingredients there are and our chemistry is based on carbon carbon is the most chemically active ingredient in the entire periodic table if you were to find a chemistry on which to base something really complex called life you would base it on carbon carbon is like the fourth most abundant ingredient in the universe no rain you can make more molecules out of carbon than you can all other kinds of molecules combined so if we ask ourselves are we alone in the universe it would be in spite of my diatribe about UFOs I tell you in the same breath that it would be inexcusably egocentric to suggest that we are alone in the cosmic the chemistry is to which to declare that the universe too vast there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand in all the beaches of the world there are more stars in the universe than all the sounds and words ever uttered by all humans who have ever lived to say we're alone in the universe no we haven't found life outside of Earth yet we're looking haven't looked very far yet galaxies as big we looked about that bar but we're looking and how about life on Earth how is it hard to form just because we don't know how to do it in the lab doesn't mean eight had problems so it may be given that information that given the right ingredients which are everywhere life may be inevitable an inevitable consequence of complex chemistry if that's the case we look around our own solar system we look at Mars all the evidence suggests that Mars was once a wet fertile place an oasis they're dried riverbeds and floodplains and river deltas and meandering rip it's all bone-dry now something bad happened on Mars some knobs got turned in its environment that left it the way it is right now some bad knobs got turned on Venus to runaway greenhouse effect you saw the clip on that 900 degrees Fahrenheit on Venus some knob got turned there too people say why just lend money up there when we spend on it because up there we might learn about down here ok I don't want to runaway greenhouse effect here Venus is the best example in the solar system of a planet gone bad let's learn about that first so it turns out mark we learn that asteroid impacts when they hit can cast rocks in their surrounding areas into space with escape velocity so they never come back to the planet from which it was launched if Mars was wet and firmly before Earth was as all evidence suggests and if Mars had life before Earth had life it is possible for there to have been bacterial stowaways in the nooks and crannies of the rocks that were cast into space there's some Hardy bacteria that we already know exists on earth survives extreme temperatures pressures freeze dry reconstituted radiation the hostile environment of space would be nothing to some of these bacteria it may be that life on Earth was seeded by bacterial stowaways on rocks that were cast free from Mars this is a plausible scenario that's called panspermia the transference of life from one planet to the next if that's the case that makes all of us descendants of Martians that want to alert you in advance now let me give you a disturbing thought a fascinating lead disturbing thought and we'll leave you on that know if you look at our closest genetic relative to human beings and be the chimpanzee where we share like 98 plus percent identical DNA we are smarter than a chimpanzee so let's invent a measure of intelligence that make humans unique let's say intelligence is your ability to like compose poetry symphonies do our math and science let's say okay listen make that as the arbitrary definition of intelligence for the moment chibs can't do any of that yet we share 98 99% identical DNA okay the most brilliant chimp there ever was maybe can do a little bit of sign language well our toddlers can do that toddler's so here's what concerns me deeply deeply everything that we are that distinguishes us from chimps emerges from that 1% difference in DNA ester because that's the difference the Hubble telescope these grand that's in that 1% maybe everything that we are that is not the chimp is not as smart compared to the chimp as we tell ourselves it is maybe the difference between constructing and launching a Hubble telescope and it simpkin beining to finger motions as sign language maybe that difference is not all that great we tell ourselves it is just the same way we label our books optical illusions we tell ourselves it's a lot maybe it's almost nothing how would we decide that imagine another life-form that's 1% different from us in the direction that we are different from the chimp think about that we have 1% difference and we're building the Hubble telescope go one go another 1% whoo what are we today we would be drooling blithering idiots in their presence that's what we would be we would that they would take Stephen Hawking and roll them in front of their their primate researchers and say well this one is like the most brilliant among them because he can do sort of astrophysics in his head Oh hasn't that cute little Johnny can do that too Oh in fact Johnny just like that let me get it it's it's it's on the refrigerator door here he is in his elementary school class think about how smart they would be quantum mechanics would be intuitive to their toddlers whole symphonies would be written by their children and like I said just put up on the refrigerator door the way our pasta collages are on our refrigerator doors so the notion that we're going to find some intelligent life and have a conversation with well the last time you stopped to have a conversation with a worm or bird although you might have had a conversation but I don't think you expected an answer alright so we don't have conversations with any other species on earth with whom we have DNA in common to believe that some intelligent other species is going to be interested in us enough to have a conversation they'll look at our Hubble telescope what's ours in that quaint look it right there daily so I lay awake at night wondering whether simply we as a species are simply too stupid to figure out the universe that we're investigating and maybe we need some other species 1% 1% smarter than we are for which strength daily would be intuitive for which all the greatest mysteries of the universe from dark matter dark energy the origins of life and all the frontiers of our thought would be something that they would just self into it I'm jealous of that possibility because I want to be around for those discoveries thank you all

Channel: St Petersburg College

Views: 3,185,677

Rating: 4.7306085 out of 5

Keywords: Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmic Quandaries, Sarl, Sagan, neil, tyson, time, science, big, bang, galactic, universe, astrophysicists, Human, Intelligence, KNL, KnowNoLimits, SPCOLLEGE, SPCSPCSPC, Palladium, in, St., Petersburg, 13.730.000.000, wmap, satellite, hubble, telescope, beyond, belief, gaps, education, educational, galaxy, stars, planets, students, teacher, teachers, professor, professors, community, college, career, degree, online, Florida, learning

Id: CAD25s53wmE

Length: 88min 0sec (5280 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2009

Reddit Comments

[u/IOnlyPostNonsense]

Thanks, watching the whole lecture :)

[u/PopeSnowball]

What if two equally sized black holes collide? Also, I wonder how much rotation direction and speed affects the outcome.

Anyone got any ideas?

[u/werealldoodshey]

screenshot

[u/ireedwutic]

any chance you could direct me to the point in the video that your title suggests? i plan on watching the whole thing, but i just want to see this part real quick.

never mind :] found it 45:00

[u/davidreiss666]

Tyson briefly demonstrates why I really like him. He admits to not fully understanding the paper he references. Lots of people will reference things like that and act like they understand it inside and out. Real scientists are more than happy to tell you they don't understand everything.

[u/anonymous54321]

Pretty sure this is how Han Solo did the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs.

[u/Fivecent]

That kid has no fucking clue what just happened to him

[u/[deleted]]

Spoiler alert: The ship sinks.

[u/Czarchitect]

My physics teacher in high school mention something about a study in which they found that black holes actively congregate and seek each other out over massive distances. don't ask me for a source though... maybe someone knows a little more about this?