Dr Neil DeGrasse Tyson - The Amazing Meeting 6

one of the nicest things about being the MC is that a lot of really remarkable people who I admire tremendously are compelled to interact with me against their will and I get to meet these remarkable folks and one of them is our next speaker dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson dr. Tyson is the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York and I will tell you as a former high school planetarium director the Hayden Planetarium is the big-time we call it the show he's written eight books but I think his most remarkable accomplishment is in the year 2000 People magazine named him the sexiest astrophysicist alive that contest was free Phil Plait and since the contest was rigged it would not have mattered Phil he did ultimately lose out to Brad Pitt but we are delighted we think he's a much better keynote speaker ladies no man please welcome dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson well first of all I was duly impressed by the number of laser pointers chasing each other at the beginning of this session and I I couldn't have think of something more geeky than that that was just so but then I did actually because I want to establish my geek credentials in this audience will everyone please take out their laser pointer and do you see the arch in the back of the room above the exit sign in the middle please touch that region with your lasers okay I will now touch that region with my laser okay there we go all right so I would claim and I am projecting farther than your lasers am I not okay so just to establish my geek credential well until the screen comes up allow me to make a few comments of course you can allow it because I'm standing here for this you have no choice in the matter first of all i'm i'm not a professional skeptic i'm a professional scientist and what I meet why the reason why I'm distinguishing that is normally when I'm invited to a conference I talk about science and so - now speak to talk about science to people who don't know any science so now I'm invited to talk skepticism to people who are skeptics all right there in was my challenge for this talk this morning so I've going to leave you want to leave it with it oh that's good we're good we lose a couple of letters on the edges I could probably live with that okay so I that's that one do that one sorry we'll get there I need to clarify this People magazine distinction sexiest astrophysicist alive consider the category first of all it's astrophysicists I don't know who was in the running was it Stephen Hawking you know I don't know I I don't know I just it's hard to get big-headed about that distinction that's all I'm saying actually they're the liberated the microphone so this it there's a lot of science and literacy out there but what I'd rather do is change the title of my talk to this brain droppings of a skeptic so I I the reason why I do count myself among your ranks is because when I do appear in public and I do talk about science next come all the questions about Bigfoot about the moon hoax about you know babies under full moons about astrology and so I got a be sort of up on all of this so what I'm going to do is share with you my brain droppings from what I have accumulated over all these years some of which you know and you'll be comfortable with because you've done it yourself but I guarantee you will be some stuff here you've never thought of or done okay so we got the green we're okay all right now by the way often keynote talks such as this or nothing more than like veiled commercials for some book the speaker has to sell her on this talk is no different from okay no no actually actually this talk has nothing to do with any of the contents of any of these books also allow me to tell you that I am a scientist and the things I could have talked about but I'm not because this is a skeptics comfort I could talk about a search for life in the universe the demotion of Pluto from Planet to poo toyed and I had a little bit of something to do with that by the way get over it that Pluto is a just move on okay a big bang dark matter dark entity bill Phoenix on Mars but and there's a killer asteroid headed towards Earth if there's time maybe we can talk about that but right now let's get right into it okay brain droppings there's no coherence to this talk because it's just droppings okay you ready let's start UFO sightings here you go you ready ready all right someone says they saw a UFO remind them what the U stands for okay unidentified because then they say I saw a UFO I saw what did it look like oh it was like a spaceship and acclaim from another planet and then and I said you just said you didn't know what it was because you said it was unidentified and so we have this urge this irrational urge which we all know is called argument from ignorance where you don't know something and then you invent something you go from not knowing anything to knowing everything about it just by an invention of a comment or a thought so what I found when people claim they've seen a UFO you just get them to describe it and then you get them to the edge where they then want to say it's an alien and then you simply tell them you started out by saying you did not know what it was end of conversation you have no evidence to say that you know what it is now here's where it gets interesting if you want to get abducted that's the fun part so they get abducted now they tell you that they were abducted you tell them I'm sorry your eyewitness testimony is not worth anything to me because no matter what I witness testimony is in the court of law it is the lowest form of evidence in the court of science and so you need something better than that so the next time here's what you do so you tell the person it's what you do you tell them next time you're abducted and to do in the sex experiments right you're on little slab because this is what aliens do when they abduct you and they're poking your organs this is what you do tell the aliens hey look over there right and quickly grab some off-the-shelf that's on the spaceship but ashtray or something I don't no matter what okay because I can tell you no matter if they flew here from another galaxy no matter what you pulled off the shelf it'll be some unlike anything we have here on earth there is stuff we have among us that was unlike anything else on earth five years ago three years ago two years ago okay I pull out my iphone there's nothing like I would be burned at the stake 10 years ago for pulling this thing out okay and this came out of our own culture so so then you just tell them give me just grab something off the shelf next time and until that happens please leave me alone okay there now meanwhile in this United States the 21st century you can buy this book how to defend yourself against alien abduction this is a real book I bought it I read it and I heated its advice I remain unobjected the things like don't drive a loan down a dark road way there's that that kind of the book is all about what not to do actually I think would be kind of cool to be abducted by aliens right I mean Lydia would not want to we all want it but you won't want to meet the aliens right if they're out there of course we're not anti alien we just anti your account of the alien that's all now what pisses me off inept aliens okay good you read so here are aliens from another planet another galaxy they traverse interstellar space in their spacecraft trillions of miles and they get to earth and they clash thinking I wanna meet these aliens here they can't land on earth forget bring me somebody who knows how to navigate okay and not they'll have a conversation with those aliens until then stay out of my face okay I don't like stupid aliens next Oh remember Close Encounters of the Third Kind was here's the mothership you all we all saw the movie if you haven't go ahead who's the fifteen-year-old here have you seen that movie yet Close Encounters of the Third Kind put it on Netflix it okay alright so the mothership comes and they all knew the mothership was coming they all knew it was a flying saucer they all knew it came from another planet through the vacuum of space and so what do they do to the left of the of that monument they set up runway lights and I'm thinking if you could travel through the vacuum of space you don't need runway lights when my lights are like if you're using air for lift aliens would not need air for lift so the people were not thinking this through those were inept producers okay conspiracy theory again this is brain droppings conspiracy theory here's what you do a conspiracy theorist is a person who tacitly admits that they have insufficient data to prove their point just tell this to their face okay because the conspiracy is the battle cry of the person with insufficient data until they produce sufficient data they gotta claim this and so just say come back when you have the data then we'll have this conversation but they're going to claim conspiracy but but just tell them they're missing data just tell them that and then walk away that conversation should be five minutes long as they say if a conversation last if an argument last more than five minutes both sides are wrong all right keep that one in mind astrology this is what you do get a classroom of people a group of people who are believers and don't do what they were this is what you do go to the horoscope that day pluck one at random read it to that audience and say whose horoscope did I just read two-thirds are the hands will go up okay which we know is not whether what's how that's supposed to work this should really be 112 if it had any sense at all that's the simplest test that I know to demonstrate to someone that it's just bunk other than the rational arguments that you might spend time offering like where the Sun was when you were born doesn't match where it was two thousand years ago when this got laid out and the fact that there are fourteen constellations in the zodiac not twelve one of them is Ophiuchus any Ophiuchus here okay some people know they're old freaking the Sun after passing through Scorpio spends more time in Ophiuchus than it did in Scorpius so if you thought you were scorpion you're Oh free you can and although few cans and scorpions are currently libras that's how that plays out so birth rates and full moons one of my favorites there are a couple of municipalities where the birth rates jump a little during the full moon and everyone says oh it's the gravity and the full moon yanking the baby from the room you know and I'm thinking maybe there's another explanation so if you if you look at the gestation period of the human female it's basically about 295 days not from the date of mist period but from when you actually got pregnant that's the number that matters here okay 295 days hmm how long is the average cycle between consecutive full moons 29 and a half days so take twenty nine and a half days multiply by ten you get 295 days so if your child was born under full moon that just simply meant you got knocked up under a full moon that's what that meant okay and no one argues the romantic effects of a moonlit night okay what about behavior I told you this was brain droppings I've warned you in advance behavior and full moons this one is classic people say oh they acted crazy must the moon pulls the tides the tides are made of water the human body is mostly water the moon must affect the human body until you actually do the math and when you do the math you could ask the question what is the tidal force of the Moon on your cranium how about that calculation you could do that calculation the tidal force of the Moon on your cranium because if that were severe the kabisa that could be messing with you right alright so you do the calculation it turns out if you're one of these people who sleep with like a lot of pillows and one of the pillow is kind of leaning on your head overnight the pressure from that pillow on your head is a trillion times greater then the tidal force of the moon across your cranium but nobody talks about the effects of down pillows on your behavior the next day why not I love the talk we just had on medicine I have a comment about that something I just find astonishing remarkable I'm so impressed by this are you ready here's what happened someone is diagnosed I'm making up a very common example for this for the purposes of this explanation somebody's diagnosed with terminal cancer the doctor says you got six months to live you say you mind if I get a second opinion course go ahead go to a second dog you got five months to live go to a third doctor seven months to live so basically you can be dead in six months plus or minus okay what happens you are live a year later okay you're alive two years later three years later the cancers in remission five years later it's gone from your body you happen to have been a religious person and over that time you were praying people were praying for you here's what's astonishing is that if you are that person you are more likely to believe that God cured you this invisible force creator of the universe cured you then that you had three idiot doctors diagnosed you I am astonished by this fact the American Medical Association said with the coal AMA has got to be the most powerful organization in the world because no one questions those diagnosis they'll credit whatever else was going on because they were sure they were going to die and I can tell you this I taught physics to pre-med students who became doctors not all of them are smart I assure you not only that to all trained in the same system so three separate doctors at all went through the same system of medical schools it's not actually three different opinions it's the same opinion just nuance by the flate what the person had for breakfast that morning it's not three different opinions now just to confirm this there's a colleague of mine in the front row have you taught physics to pre-medical students you have not so you know I don't have a second opinion on what this is but so I'm just impressed that it's impossible for people to think that they just had idiot doctors diagnosed them or that it was a diagnosis of diagnostic failure I'm just I'm sorry saying in what okay we have a physics 101 professor here who said he's failed more students who are pre-med than those who are pre-law yeah it's astonishing it's astonishing who ends up at being our doctors I got to keep going I have way more to come okay Swamy levitation we've seen this okay now it turns out it turns out the now don't criticize it it turns out there is no law of physics that prevents this okay this is physically possible and so you do the calculation of how to make that possible and the only way you can make that happen is by invoking Newton's second law of motion and by doing that you have to consume mass quantities of bees by my count about a thousand cans then your anal sphincter has to be really tight to hold in the methane effluence --is that are ready to burst forth at which point you let it go and then you levitate for as long as you have gas to provide it that's by the way how the space shuttle tech nut with beans but its gas coming out one direction the recoil goes in the other direction now that I found this picture on the internet this is like combines everything I just said it's a levitated can of beans I thought that was kind of cool the moon hoax we had people out there who say we never went to the moon first of all first of all we should be proud that we live in a culture that has technology's so advanced that some members of that same culture are in denial of it that's a statement of how advanced we are so we should be a little more sensitive to their disbelief because it's a story it's just we do astonishing things and some people are so astonishing they just can't believe it so here's what you do this ladies and gentlemen is the Saturn 5 rocket launching once again sending gas out one side and the recoil up the other just to remind you how this works I'm sorry I can't point to two at one moment at the same time but all of this is fuel and the astronauts are right there okay and that little bitty capsule right there that's where the astronauts are they're sitting on a controlled bomb alright so all you have to do is calculate how much fuel is there invoking the rocket equation because when you invoke the rocket equation you learn that most of the fuel you're burning now is just to launch to a higher point the feel you have yet to burn this is how that works so for every increment of distance you have to go you've got to have that much bigger spaceship to enable it to carry the fuel you have yet to burn and so you do this calculation and you show that this is enough fuel to carry these three astronauts and their Rover out of low Earth orbit to the moon and back all the fuel is there where else do you think this was going okay - like the A&P grocery store what is this what what do you think this thing is doing so the moon hoaxers just challenge them to learn the rocket equation and apply the math to do the math and then they go away and they never come back by the way to show you how big this is that's huge okay these are people right here standing approaching one of the rocket nozzles of the five at the base of the Saturn five rocket okay this thing is huge all fuel all fuel more the Mars virus this one most of you probably don't know about Phil and I know all about it okay it started innocently enough for years five years ago 19 2003 Mars as you may know is in an elliptical orbit sometimes closer to the Sun sometimes farther so are we in an elliptical orbit sometimes farther sometimes closer if you look at the combinations of our orbits what situation do you need for Earth to be closest to Mars what you want is earth farthest from the Sun and Mars closest to the Sun that pinches that distance as the most you can and then you get you really close okay in 2003 we were closer to Mars then we had been in 60,000 years while all people paid attention to was the word close and the words and the number 60,000 in years and it just took off and people said Oh on that particular night in August Mars will be the size of a full moon all right and so this went on it even captured page one story okay close up and in these pages it talks about you might need sunglasses at night because Mars will be so large and bright now I'll tell you how that worked you ready here's how it goes it's not go away are we now we're in like Vegas which way is west and we know which way west is that way thank you so let me come over here now why did I believe you sir because twenty other hands pointed the same way it's not that I have that much confidence in you per se okay I did a quick average and it's this way all right so here we go I'm in Vegas so yes we were closer than we ever been in 60,000 years by how much here's how it goes ready I'm standing here as opposed I did this you ready I have never before been this close to Japan that's so it was a needle closer than it is any other time Earth and Mars swing around in their orbits and here's what happened that started on the internet every August the same news story circulates they forgot that it only happened in that year and they forgot that it was a nothing event anyway so you're going to see it again I call it the Mars virus because people want to send it around fear of numbers oh don't get me started okay again 21st century America people who make the iPod people who launched the Saturn 5 rocket this is the country we live in except 80% of all the buildings on Broadway in Manhattan I could have done it for any Street but I did it for Broadway 80% have panels that look like this there is no 13th floor not only was that true in 80% of the buildings in New York that's true of this hotel so what does it say for our future when we have people afraid of a number what does that mean I don't know but it scares the hell out of me not only that we fear negative numbers why do you have to go into a hotel go into a elevator of a tall building and it's the fighters 4 3 2 lobby SSB SSB they can I buy a vowel please I don't know what the hell these things are they're afraid to go negative just say negative 1 negative 2 negative 3 people afraid to do that the afraid to do that on financial Ledger's the net like the number is in parenthesis it's like you what's your problem we got a bleed we got a symbol for this it's called negative so I really that to many of us fear numbers for the future of America now future of never is not secure it's not what it's not I worried we're fading we're fading fast we're fading check this out you go around the world liberal famous scientists in the past in all the countries any country that had a had an academic tradition they've had they've had famous academics okay at one point or another in the past go around the world how do people are there scientists they put them on money there you go you put them on money so that everybody can see it so that everybody is reminded of how important these people are everybody we actually have a scientist on our money with the fella who just spoke really where did he go did he leave did you have to leave where did he go the fellow from The Guardian Oh way in the back okay do you remember who was on the one pound note and not anymore as it doesn't say they won't remember who was once on it when it once did that's okay because you're a medical doctor that's why I'll forgive you it was Isaac Newton and you'll put the famous scientists on bills that are uncommon Lee transferred you do it on the common bills okay the one pound note was Isaac Newton Isaac Newton Einstein is there I got a whole collection of this money I only show you a sampling here Einstein is in Israel where all the folks who are honored we haven't honoured any scientist yes Ben Franklin is on the hundred dollar bill yes he was a scientist but there's not a trace of that fact anywhere printed on that bill there's not even so much as a key on a kite string okay he's there because founding father not because he was a scientist would it be kind of cool if Americans knew that Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod that he had one of the most important treaties in electricity and magnetism in his day that was read world over wouldn't be kind of interesting to know that he saved lives by putting lightning rods on homes and on churches would it be kind of interesting to know that he was criticized by some pastors for thwarting the will of God you get hit one lightning bolt somebody up there does not like you Ben Franklin says carry this lightning rod and all as well more money look at that we got oiler in Gauss and Faraday and Pascal and there's there's your one pound note with Isaac Newton so maybe you're just too young to remember IDE when he was that could be it that could be it and of course Galileo up there in Italy let's zoom in on on Gauss the audacity of the Germans to put a mathematical distribution function on their money okay the day we have a mathematical function on our money then I know we've been saved but until then excuse me periodic table of elements I love this thing okay you remember this mysterious chart of boxes that hung in your chemistry class there it goes well let us show it a couple of different ways I have a really nifty Pte program where you can show the elements in all different ways so here they are color-coded for melting point okay that's kind of cool so low melting point is light and high melting point is darker red and so you see the elements grouped together you have Wolfram here tungsten and osmium iridium tungsten is used in incandescent lightbulbs so that it doesn't melt okay so had edison had access to this he would have come up with tungsten immediately rather than having taken him all the time that he did in the trial and error of testing different ingredients carbon by the way has the highest melting point of all elements so this is just the right think cool things you can do you can also code them well who which elements were known to the ancients everything blue there was known to the ancients so they're not no one is credited with having discovered them they're familiar carbon sulfur lead tin mercury gold etc you could move forward in time sorry you can move forward in time look backwards in time ads see so you can look at the discovery Year color-coded and so I've not this - 1869 so everything in gray was not yet known so no one had discovered the the noble gases over on the right now they were unknown in 1869 so Darwin Origin of Species none of that was known only at rest and yellow had been discovered fine but here's what's the cool part we can code these by country who discovered the element and it's very telling take a look at that country who discovered the element and you can rank them United Kingdom leads the way 24y got UK in the house okay 24 why because England invested in particle physics at the turn of the century they were doing things that no other country knew to even do and so those investments before the Empire fell were fundamental to our understanding of atoms of particles the electric the all the sort of the pre quantum mechanics understanding of the behavior of matter are traceable to the United Kingdom just take a look at that Sweden is second in the list but for really for a reason that is they slipped in on this list and I'll tell you why in a moment so so this German II France and United States is down there but look at where we show ourselves check this out you come all the way down to the heavy elements and there you go look at that right after uranium neptunium plutonium and so since we discovered them we get to mean them so if you look down here there's americium this burg Liam this californium we had the naming rights for these elements and not only that plutonium discovered in 1931 one year after the cosmic object that shares its name was discovered which is why it got that name so Pluto became an element on false pretense by the way look so that plutonium became the fissionable substance in the second of our atomic bombs so our government knew and understood the value of this enterprise for war and hence these investments went through so you get two main things if you invest in them whatever was the driver in this case war that's our physicist was so important to the 20th century which is why the person of the century was Albert Einstein a physicist let's let's figure out what happened with Sweden Sweden there's a little town in Sweden called you to be okay you to be happens to have a cave that was very rich in undiscovered elements and so they said well let's try to let's sort of vary the word to try so so the you to be so they discovered element number 39 aquarium named after year to butor B but then they found another element a few years later what do you call that well is it to be let's call that terbium okay let me try the number on it how about erbium okay then they're the terbium okay then you're like say alright enough is enough alright so but they're still discovered up there in Sweden where Sweden and Scandinavia so call it scandium okay so all these elements came out of this one cave in Sweden and sew that up their numbers higher than it would otherwise be so these are just naming rights where when you invest in society and culture you get to name the products is there a cost to society if you don't I think there is yes there is a bad cost I spent a lot of time in school not living the same place long enough to be tracked by the jury duty people or whatever whatever is the agency that calls you for jury duty I finally got called it was walking distance from where I live I live in lower Manhattan and so there I was proud to serve at the time I was teaching at Princeton in the astrophysics department that the seminar on in fact the evaluation of evidence and what that meant so I'm there none there you know and they get to the the Q&A part okay any lawyers in the house wouldn't code the Q&A part has some other name that obscures it what is it sir why dear you could have just called you QA but you didn't could you want people to think that what you're doing is complicated to take cues from the astrophysicists what do we call spots on the Sun sunspots thank you okay what do you call big red star red giants regions of space you fall in you don't come out like this black hole origin of space-time Big Bang we are simple people in astrophysics the universe is complex enough now kind of laid out a lexicon so you think what we're doing is more complex than it actually is have to get that off my chest I'm sorry the raw da part the lawyer asks me I see you're an astrophysicist at anybody's listen everybody's listening I'm they're eager to serve and I say let's you take the laws of physics as discovered on earth apply them to the cosmos so okay and I says here you teach that at Princeton what do you teach and so I teach a course on evaluation of evidence and the relative unreliability of eyewitness testimony then I was out I was on the street five minutes after that they didn't want to hear that that I understood how to evaluate evidence I was gone until the second time three years later I said okay I'm not going to tell him about this class so what happens I go in there I make it to like the top 15 they've taken it down to 12 I made the first cut so all squeezed into the box and there's like a couple extra chairs next to it and the defendant is there sitting right there with the lawyer and the judge and I forgot what this part is called sir I don't know what it's called but the judge reads the facts of the case maybe there's another French word for that okay once again broad year all right so I'm there the judge reads the facts of the case the defendant was found in Upper Manhattan in possession of two thousand milligrams of cocaine this is undeniable this is we are trying him for the possession of those drugs and I'm there and by the way there's like a maid there's like a like janitor these are like regular people in the real world up there with me among the 15 and I miss nice and the judge says well do you have any questions about the facts for the case do you understand them as either I signed you I got a question sir why did you read why did you read the cocaine possession the way you did so what do you know I said you said he had 2000 milligrams of cocaine that's two lambs the milligram is one thousand divided by the families two Lambs less than the weight of a penny why sir did you say it just that way and then he looked at all this just because that's how it's written here he didn't know what he was meaning didn't understand what he was reading and so there I am and I and I said could it sounds like you're making the position sound worse than it actually was I'm concerned about that there I was back on on this together here's the fun part of that one was I think I contaminated the entire journey I have still yet to serve jury duty math I've seen these headlines very depressed half the schools in the district or below average okay kind of learn a veridian's isn't it kind of sort of you kind of need about half to be blow technically that would be the mode but fine so there so this person had no clue about statistics what a poly meant was half the schools were below standards or below but not below average they just didn't understand these are mathematically illiterate headline writers we got some more here 80% of airplane crash survivors had studied the locations of the exit doors upon takeoff so you read that statistic and you say I'm going to need where the exit because you honor 80 percent that's pretty good it won't be in that 80 percent so you pull out there in the seat back pocket and you read where the exit doors some maybe behind you until you think about this statistic for a nanosecond and you realize suppose 100 percent of the dead people had studied where the exit doors were on takeoff you would never know because they're dead so this is a completely meaningless statement you don't know what the dead people did and until you do you can't use this information here's one the state lottery is a tax on the poor we've heard this one because poor people spend a disproportionate fraction of their salary on the lottery and on Vegas no doubt okay I thought about this I tried to believe this but I don't the state lottery is not a tax on the poor it's a tax on all those people who never did well in mathematics what is don't underestimate that why do all these new stories about the subprime lending disaster okay they talk about predatory lenders and and the economy and this and that whoo why isn't it just that the people who borrowed the money couldn't do the math couldn't say what happens if the interest rate goes up via so it's really a man illiteracy problem not any other kind of problem because therein is the defenses that you can put up against the charlatans of the world I got one this shows up even in lose copy this is bear the folks would make Bayer Aspirin this was a actual advertisement that was taken out in a magazine quote physics today and here's what it says but whether they're boasting that their scientists actually go into schools to get kids excited about science as part of their job to do so says you're on try to get them interested oh by the way they show a black kid and a girl okay so in their mind these are the challenging cases okay the black people and the girls okay and I thought like who's president is he black or girl no I don't think so okay he's my view of the two so [ __ ] try to get them interested in white light of things for faster than heavier things and how come on it's your turn so these are just so they'd actually did eventually fix it and so now it says try to get them interested white lighter things fall as fast as heavier things that's what Galileo that's the Galileo experiment they finally fix that okay moving on okay now what's odd is I haven't said anything yet it's just his name let's back up for a moment I live in lower Manhattan I live closer to Ground Zero than the height of the towers and I was there September 11th and this is these are strange from my camcorder outside my window the North Tower is on fire if you look very carefully in that picture you might not be able to see in the back row but the South Tower had just been hit and you can see some material punching forward you see the flame that's the fuel igniting the fuel doesn't ignite instantly it actually has to spread get atomized and then it ignites and that's what's happening in that picture and then the entire building is engulfed to put this in context they see the black building standing in front that sleek black billith that building outside of the island of Manhattan would be the tallest building on the eastern seaboard okay it's a very tall hotel that's called the Millennium Hotel and so the Trade Towers are huge two buildings an acre per floor of office space times 107 floors per now here's what happens George Bush within a week of this gave us a speech attempting to distinguish we from they and who are they these were sort of the Muslim fundamentalists and he wants to distinguish we from they and how does he do it he says okay he says our God of course it's actually the same God let's but that's a detail let's hope hold that minor fact aside for the moment Allah of the Muslims is the same God as the god of the Old Testament so but let's hold that aside he says our God is the god he's loosely quoting Genesis biblical Genesis our God is the God who named the stars okay okay now I actually took this picture from the west wing actions the east wing I was there this is they medal ceremony you see if you look carefully in the photo their medals on a platform they're for the awarding of the National the Presidential Medal of Science I was on the committee to tell him who to give the medals to and they just did what we told him which was good now what he did not do he did read the citations got somebody else to do that he put the medal around people's necks but I was invited to the ceremony here's the problem with this comment say our God is the God who named the stars the problem is 2/3 of all stars that have names have Arabic names I don't think he knew this that would confound the point that he was making Arabic star names ok you ready here they are okay screen one screen too every one of these stars among the brightest stars in the night sky are Arabic Arabic and you say how does that come to be how did that happen well first he said that before I was on his rolodex because I could have hooked them up they said no say something different okay not that because it's just wrong let's go back in time how do these stars end up getting Arabic names we have to go back a thousand years to Islam ad 800 to 1100 oops I can't use ad in this audience so see CEC Common Era I have a problem with aid it's just culture right I don't have an issue with that I don't I'm sorry okay I'm okay with that I'm okay with saying oh my god I'm okay with that all right I'm I like listening to Handel's Messiah okay I think it's beautiful music so but there's more about that we'll get more men so what happened in this room Islam the crossroads while he was disemboweled heretics in Baghdad over that period work the crossroads they were Jews Muslims Christians doubters they were the word atheist didn't exist back then they're all sharing ideas great advances were made in engineering astronomy mathematics these three words are Arabic words algebra algorithm our numerals are called Arabic numerals those are the numerals we use all traceable to that period because they basically invented algebra there okay that went on until the 12th century you read history books they say the Mongols sacked the libraries and bagged debt and there be explanations but they tend to leave out was another force at work and that was the efforts of this man al-ghazali it was a Muslim cleric who was to Islam what st. Augustine was to Christianity what he did was he took all these ways people were practicing Islam put him together codified it said this is what you need to do to be a good Muslim okay just as what Augustine did which included how do how do exactly burn the witches that kind of thing so it was all in their role in and in there was the statement that manipulating numbers was the work of the devil and that cut out the kneecaps of the entire mathematical Enterprise of that period because he gained cultural power and political power with his philosophies and you know something Islam has not recovered from that since and there been times when it has risen to great culture over in Spain this law moves to greater cultural Heights no scientific or engineering discoveries in that period it's tragic how many Muslims in the world is 1.3 billion billion let's do some analysis the Nobel Prize 1902 2007 okay take a look at how many Nobel Prizes were won by the Jews how many Jews are in the world 15 million tops let's take a look doing it for sciences of course biomedical chemistry physics economics 25% 1/4 of all Nobel Prizes in the sciences have gone to Jews I so two people are back going at high five back there the Jews did not invent the high-five okay I just want to make that clear let's understand that one okay do something else just know we happy to share the high-five with you so let's look at what practicing Muslims are you ready here we go zero zero one one and in fact the one in physics was a Pakistani Muslim not a Middle Eastern Muslim and if you count economics as a science it's like one one and a half to eight point three percent of the total you want to look at the relative impact relative impact here it goes the Jews were 180 times more Nobel Prizes than the Muslims they had male 180th of that population that would be 6400 times the impact I lament I celebrate the Jews but I lament what might had been discovered at 1.3 billion Muslims had the cultural drive to discover as what happened a thousand years ago if that had been the case no prize if that tradition had continued but it is gone it's not there and that is a loss to the world especially given the legacy that it enjoyed a thousand years ago so I fast forward to the United States of America early 21st century and I asked what forces are operating to somehow squash our scientific curiosities and then you find billboards like this the Big Bang Theory you've got to be kidding signed God okay now maybe we should be impressed that somebody actually spent money to pay for the billboard well here's one here's a a bumper sticker this one is more sort of an intelligent design bumper sticker it says the Big Bang Theory God spoke and bang it happened so that puts God like right before the Big Bang where we have no clue what that is is signs of intelligent design this movement you're all familiar with it you all tracked the stories but it's not just innocent meanderings it actually affects for example advertising all right the 2004 ad campaign for an SUV in the world of rugged SUV is a survival of the fittest right but then the intelligent design was gaining power and then what happened to that same ad a year later you ready its features are nothing short of a miracle right so it affected advertising now I think intelligent design gets a bad rap it gets a bad rap and let me let me explain let's go back in time to an unimpeachably brilliant scientist Claudius Ptolemy author of Almagest the pinnacle of the geocentric understanding of the universe appears in that work an Olympic name meaning the greatest protected in the Middle East while Europe was in the dark ages and translated into Arabic at the time Ptolemy wrote as he was coming up with these epicycles he looked up and said as I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies I no longer touch earth with my feet I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia he's driven to poetic utterances in the face of not fully understanding what the planets are doing that's intelligent design he's crediting Zeus for what's going on even though he doesn't understand it Galileo is not doesn't write that way he's more candid about his ignorance every time Mars comes around it tugs us every time Jupiter comes around it tugs on Mars which tugs us and you have the system that gets impossibly complex for Isaac Newton at the time he knew enough to say that if you continued this system it would go unstable and fly apart but it hasn't but he known as his equation works for any pair of objects how do you reconcile that God steps in and corrects things every now and then that's he in his book it is the God of the gaps intelligent design argument he got to the limits of his brilliance put God in and said God fixes it there you have it this kept going and by the way Newton I counted as the most brilliant guy that ever was on it's up to you whether you want to aspire to become Newton because when he died he was a virgin so there's a cost to being the most brilliant person there ever was christiaan huygens in a book called Cosmo theless brilliant in his generation one of the most brilliant scientists of the day he wrote about the planets and moons laws and and then he got to biology and didn't quite understand why there was life and and then he invoked God in all the places where he didn't understand what he was talking about so now here's the now we get to Laplace celestial mechanics Laplace looked at Newton's problem and said that's kind of cool I wonder if I can solve that this multi-body problem where everybody's tugging on everybody else but there's one main force of gravity at work so he writes a five volume tone called celestial mechanics and in there he pioneers perturbation theory that's the theory we have one main force and in other little tugs how do you treat that mathematically he pioneers that solves it for the solar system demonstrates that the solar system is stable far beyond anything Newton had imagined this work was called up by Napoleon Napoleon was not only everything we know him to be he was a great reader of mechanics and physics books so that he would know not only how to make the Cannonball he would know where the Cannonball would hit when he shot it and so he summoned up this five volume tome read it said tool applause this is a brilliant piece of work but you make no mention of the architect of the system making direct reference back to Isaac Newton and the pluses reply was Sir I had no need for that hypothesis so what worries me is had meaning not stopped and seeded his brilliance to God he could he easily come up with prohibition theory even invented calculus practically on a dare perturbation theories just an extension of calculus relation to it's a it's a nice elegant extension but you know Newton could have knocked us out in an afternoon you know this okay so my problem is not that people have invoked intelligent design brilliant people have done it before they'll keep doing it I don't have an issue with that I really if it prevents you from making further discoveries I don't want the intelligent design person to be the one looking for the cure for Alzheimer's because they'll get to their ignorance and say well not only can I not figure this out no one else in the lab will fear no one else will ever be born we'll figure this out it is intelligently designed then that person is removed from the set of people who would solve that problem and so I say sure there's a lot of beautiful things in the universe but don't sweep under the rug the fact that you have evidence of stupid design completely stupid design stupid stuff no one would come up with more body okay let's look at humans this leukemia hemophilia sickle cell multiples for epilepsy Parkinson we have a narrow view of the electromagnetic spectrum we're practically blind compared with what's out there in public if you could see microwaves everybody self someone would be like a glow you know and you can say what's that in your pocket are you enjoying the show you know you can like have total access to radiation of all wavelengths we exhale most of the oxygen we inhale it's a very inefficient process that's why you can breathe in and out of a paper bag and not suffocate you can keep that up for like 20 minutes this goes on and on and on we can't detect deadly ionizing radiation radon us we can't smell CEO or co2 the scales can smell co2 we can't ok I'm not asking for much here ok what am I asking for we eat drink and speak through the same office in our body guaranteeing that some percentage of us will choke to death every year we can do better than that dolphins do better than that they breathe through a hole or someplace else no dolphin has ever choked trying to laugh as it breathed ok get me some flipper flipper laughs you know so this is what humans are earth volcanoes level cities where the Indonesian tsunami killed 200,000 people oh the Christians say oh well that was mostly Muslims that was God saying you're Muslim until you look back at 1755 and Lisbon the holiest city one of the holiest cities in Europe at the time it was Sunday morning All Saints Day ten o'clock in the morning everybody was in church and a magnitude 8 earthquake struck Lisbon killing 80,000 people mostly in churches as they worshipped that was basically the birth of the modern atheist movement is traceable to that event that's true Voltaire and all these guys wrote inspired by that event floods tornadoes lightning strike we can't live on two thirds of people talk about earth is some cradle for life excuse me 90% of a life that ever lived is now extinct if you actually look at the evidence it's clear that Earth is actually trying to kill us the universe most Planner orbits are unstable on very long timescales longer than what Laplace would show it's it you know we could we're about to collide with Andromeda in seven billion years so don't worry about that one just yet so one way universe well a supernova could go off and fly our ozone layer I'm just saying if you look you don't have to look hard to find out everything in the universe that's stupid stupid defined by not good for us okay and so if there is a designer the designer is equally stupid as intelligent you have to accept that fact I like the best socket in the shoulder that's a good idea right you can move it around in a circle can't do that with your like your knee okay uni doesn't bend this way not on purpose at least but your shoulder could that's a good deal I like that design I call that intelligent design something I would call stupid design is like what's that going on between our legs got like a sewage system mixed with an entertainment complex you know it's like design design okay we're riding him down here okay I want to make an important point this is not all people in the world this is Americans religious people the dependent will study again they asked do you pray to a personal God these numbers vary but they're high and they're up around 90 percent okay there might be 85 that's actually not important that difference is not important for the point I'm about to make it's high okay in the West in America 90 percent hey what percent of religious what percentage of educated people are religious the number drops I'm talking about graduate degrees here among all people with masters and PhDs the religiosity drops somewhere around 60 percent might be 65 the point is it drops with education level now let's bring in scientists how about what percentage of scientists in America are religious you average over all the branches it's about 40 percent maybe 35 percent in there there's a range of course biologists physicists astrophysicists are lower the sort of engineers and mathematicians are higher so you did averages out to about 40 percent so this looks like this looks like scientists are 40 percent down from 90 percent from the general public but that's the Roton no it's 40 percent down from 60 percent because all scientists have graduate degrees so the graduate degree in any subject gets you halfway there the science is the increment from the educated degrees I mean from the all educated people that takes it down to 40% now you go to the scientists this is a well-known number seven percent are religious claiming a personal God to whom they pray and intervene in their lives I submit to you that with the current atheist fervor that has taken on over the past several years I would say launched the modern atheistic hold launched by the Dawkins book and Hitchens book and the and the Sam Harris book and the like and I was just in Borders recently couldn't believe I was where I didn't how I didn't have a camera borders books there was a section called atheism it was like oh I've never seen that before there is that enough critical mass of books to make a section so here's my problem here's my concern when you're educated and you understand how physics works and you're mathematically literate and you understand data and you understand experiment and you go up to someone who doesn't have that training and they are religious and you ask them why are you religious and believing in invisible things that influence your life what's wrong with you okay that's unfair it's not only unfair it's disrespectful for the following reason until that number is zero you've got nothing to say to the general public these are scientists among us in the National Academy of Sciences who are religious and pray to a personal God and I know some of them and you're fighting the public for the religious beliefs figure that one out first because maybe there's an asymptote maybe you can't change everybody maybe that's telling us something maybe there's something in the brain wiring that positively prevents some people from ever being an atheist if that's the case in a way they can't help it and you'll never know it because you're not one of them so I ask you first for compassion with the public but you should target your exercise and your experiments on understanding that number because that's not zero yes it's low but it's not one percent it's not one half of a percent or tenth of a percent it is seven percent one out of fourteen if this were the National Academy of Sciences with nine hundred you have a hundred people in here do that right simply carry the to look 65 so are seven times nine yep so six yeah you have sixty five people in here I'm gonna lead scientists praying to their personal God so now I don't care I actually personally don't care what people want to believe this country was founded on religious freedoms that's kind of that's what that's how that happened okay and would enable the religious freedoms is that a constitution makes no mention of God at all which means nobody's God reigns supreme over anybody else's and therein as the religious freedom that attracted all these waves of immigrants for centuries and so I don't have an issue with what you do in the church but I'm going to be up in your face if you're going to knock on my science classroom and tell me they ought to teach what you're teaching in your Sunday School because that's when we're going to fight and I'm going to tell you something there's no tradition of scientists knocking down the sunday-school door telling the preacher that might not necessarily be true that's never happened there no scientist picketing out front of churches there's business coexistence forever so to have religious communities knocking down the science door there's something wrong there and I think back to al-ghazali and the 12th century and the fall of that intellectual Empire and it's got me scared in America I wrote to remember that case in Jersey where this middle school kid of forgive me I forgot his name I met him Matthew macclare remember this it is in his history class the teacher was saying that Jesus is the only one in true saving Christianity is the only one in True Religion and if you were not you were damned to hell he pointed to a Muslim girl and says she's damned to hell already there's too late for her and that Noah's Ark carried dinosaurs on it and that the Big Bang and evolution are not scientific he recorded this and submitted it to the New York Times and became a whole expose on this teacher and then what happened the ACLU came out and separation of church and state and it's a violation of separation of church of state and I said you know I don't normally get in those arguments because I got other I got the universe to worry about I don't normally I let that go but then I thought no people are missing something here it's not a it's not a case of a separation of church and state it's not it's not okay I looked at the comments and the transcript I ignored the part about Jesus being your Savior I ignored the part of Christianity being the one true religion I paid attention to the statement that Noah's Ark carried dinosaurs okay and so I said I wrote a letter to the editor of the New Times that they printed it I will read to you to the editor people cited violation of the First Amendment when New Jersey school teacher asserted that evolution and the Big Bang are not scientific and that Noah's Ark carried dinosaurs the case is not about the need to separate church and state it's about the need to separate ignorant scientifically elimin the ranks of teachers let's fix this one once and for all okay let's just let's just fix this okay once and for all yes Einstein and God were like that okay it's like God doesn't play dice with the universe it turns out God does that's what quantum mechanics is all about he was wrong about that okay he mentions God a lot and all the religious people like cleaning him because he's famous and he's unimpeachably smart and if you get famous smart scientist in your camp that boosts your camp okay but let's straighten this out once and for all here's a letter from Albert Einstein I was in his later years 1954 couple years before he died I wasn't it was of course a lie would you read about my religious convictions a lie which is being systematically repeated I do not believe in a personal God and I've never denied this but if it can't have expressed it clearly if something is in me which can be called religious then it's the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it case closed so anyone says Einstein was religious just show him this letter okay I'm way over time I'm way I went way long well I gotta ask the man here I got it oh you know we going Katie it's okay we got the kid go inside all right I'm sorry I okay I got something I got to get off my chest another one you ready a cosmic perspective I'm going to tell you something that Phil and I live and breathe some people in the public have read enough to feel it as well but not enough people but there's a twist at the end bear with me there's a point to this okay this is the number one 10 to the 0 P all geeks you know what that is 10 to the zero is one if you spelled it out would be one:1 this is not an unfamiliar number up by a factor of a thousand you get the number a thousand metric prefix kilo kilo by the way drug dealers were metric long before America was alright because so people have meant that but with air we're basically there whether our money is metric our car engine displacement is metric our Pepsi is metric we buy you know buy a quart of soda you buy leaders so we're basically slowly becoming metric even though people are kicked some are kicking and screaming in the process we know a thousand population most cities is represented in thousands and okay fine up by another factor of a thousand get a million ten to the six mega mega used to mean something in computer worlds now you're up to whoo yeah this know if you had megabytes go home you know your city has 8 million people living in it that's my all my neighbors there it's millions millions the more millionaires now than ever before in America but by another factor of a thousand you get a number made famous by Carl Sagan and I'll tell you why that's a famous number because if you put your chin out everybody put your chin out and on three say this word with me with your chin dot ray on three one two three billion so you've met a beautiful it's a it's a beautiful word Giga there's six billion people in the world but it is about six thousand astrophysicists so you divide those two numbers we're actually one in a million just in case you're wondering just obviously I'm just let let you know just so if you ever are in the same room with an astrophysicist that's your chance to ask the questions okay so billions Bill Gates there's a Bill Gates wealth clock on the internet link to his Microsoft stock shareholdings and it fluctuates by billions of dollars per day but it's up around 40 to 50 billion McDonald's has sold 100 billion hamburgers anyone here eat in McDonald okay the rest of you are just lying okay they've sold 100 billion hamburgers tell you how big that is I did the math take the hundred bill hamberg line on the side to side will across America yes it will will cross the Pacific yes it will cross Asia yes your the Atlantic can come right back here to Las Vegas yes it will you'll have some left over after you've gone around the world laying your hundred billion hamburgers end to end what will you do the rest of them will go around the world another 51 times you still have some leftover what do you do with those the board was going around the world so now you stack them how high is that can you make after you've been around the world fifty-two times you can make a stack high enough to reach the moon and back and only then would you have used your hundred billion hamburgers this is terrifying news to cows okay uh-huh but by another factor has a trillion a trillion you can actually count to a billion anyone here 31 years old in the room 31 this year you will live your billion second I celebrated my billion second okay with champagne because that's much more significant than just how many times earth goes around the Sun that's just so provincial you know can you know hasn't been around once since it was discovered right so the year is just arbitrary for the planet but seconds you get 31 you get a billion seconds so if 31 years you count to a billion that means you can never count to a trillion it would take you thirty one thousand years to counter trillion so do not try that so a trillion between seconds ago we were in caves fried squirt by another factor of a thousand quadrillion one of my favorite numbers actually a hundred quadrillion is you estimated number of sounds in words ever uttered by all humans who have ever lived okay I knew your pause on that one fine okay goodbye another factor of a thousand quintillion we were billion trillion quadrillion quintillion that's about the number of grains of sand on an average Beach and I did the math and it's even the sand that comes home in your groin you know in your bathing suit and all that up it's in that number we go up by another factor of a thousand we get to sextillion a thousand times bigger than the number of grains of sand on an average beach itself a thousand times bigger than the number of sounds and words ever uttered by all humans who have ever lived a thousand times bigger than all the McDonald's hamburgers sextillion that that is the estimated number of stars in the universe other some say God are so much I got got stars in the universe it's staggering are we alone probably not unless you're inexcusably egocentric especially since you look at what were made of if you're made of some isotope of bismuth you have an argument that maybe we were rare in the cosmos but we're not okay let's look at the universe the number one ingredient in the universe is hydrogen helium in order oxygen carbon nitrogen and the most famous element of them all other okay now life on Earth number one ingredient in my father a biggest molecule is murder h2o what's in water hydrogen number one element helium by the way is chemically inert we don't have it okay you can inhale it and sound like Mickey Mouse that's about it okay next in life oxygen next carbon we're carbon-based life next nitrogen next all together class other there we go we all run for one the ingredients of the universe not only that carbon is so chemically fertile more molecules can be constructed with the carbon atom than all other molecules combined so it's not surprising that the most complex chemistry we know called life is based on it and only science fiction stories well how about silicon is right below carbon on the periodic table so why can't we make silicon base life carbon is five times more abundant in the universe than silicon you don't have to invoke it in order to say there's life out there in the universe using earth as some kind of template the point of all this is we had a space show in New York that zoomed out from Earth earth got little solar system got little nooky way got little you lost it you learned that we're part of the universe the ingredients are in us we're in the universe and we're just all out there in space the next week after we opened got a letter from a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania okay what did he ask me I'll read it to you I'm assistant professor of social cultural psychology at UPenn I'm writing to discuss the possibility of a research project in collaboration my research focuses on the psychological experiences associated with feelings of insignificance bummer of a job there man okay I recently saw the space show at the planetarium and needless to say it was the most dramatic elicitor of feelings of smallest and insignificance that I have yet encountered I submit to you he has an issue with the universe because he came into the room with a needlessly an unjustifiably large ego to begin with if he understood how we fit into the cosmos you can actually celebrate that fact that it's the human mind that came up with the laws of physics that gives us an understanding of it you can celebrate that fact you can celebrate the fact that my molecules are up there and that we're all came from stars there's a sense of participation and belonging that is almost spiritual in the feelings it elicits that if you go in saying here the top of the heap oh I'm human and we're the top and we're the best and we're that it can only depress you and so by the way of course you learn in biology one centimeter of your lower colon lives and works 100 billion bacteria so who's really in charge of things when you think about it just think that one through my last two slides in the Bible there's this phrase and the meek shall inherit the earth this is in Psalms that the rest of that goes and live they were in a world of peace actually so to associate peace with being meek that stands to reason because meek people don't bomb cities okay so there's a correlation to that fact but I went back to the original Hebrew and I studied enough Hebrew to translate this directly and they mistranslated they got it wrong what it really says is and the geek shall inherit the earth I'll leave you with one slide a leading one slide the American Physical Society in 1984 had their annual meeting here in Las Vegas this was the newspaper headline physicist encircle corpus take it thank you all and enjoy the conference thank you all hoping will remind you of how grateful we were to hear your words and how much we hope to see you again thank you sir

Channel: ChristopherHitchslap

Views: 639,879

Rating: 4.9151735 out of 5

Keywords: Dr, Neil, DeGrasse, Tyson, The, Amazing, Meeting, Prayer, and, Cancer, Swami, Levitation, MARS, Virus, Fear, Of, Numbers, Naming, Rights, Jury, Duty, Stupid, Design, Religion, Science, Intelligent, Birth, of, Atheism, among, scientist, Bible, in, the, Classroom, Einstein, God, put, to, rest

Id: 8vfOpZD4Sm8

Length: 88min 30sec (5310 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 03 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Aquareon]

Perfectly explicable by youth brainwashing and the difficulty that even very intelligent people have in overcoming that.

So it is not remarkable that 7% of elite scientists are religious. The far more significant fact is that the rest of them aren't.

[u/self_defeating]

Playing devil's advocate in the title.

[u/OCPScJM2]

Neil DeGrasse goes out of his way to appeal to people who are religious as a way to reach out to them.

If it bothers you, just watch a few Richard Dawkins talks to even things out.

[u/GeebusNZ]

93% are not. Surely 93% is a considerable number. Too considerable to simply be ignored by focusing on the fringes.

[u/EnlargedMothballs]

Compare that to 99% of the 'elite inmates' that are religious.

[u/bluefisch200]

Okay...so what? Let them be that way...

[u/LtPoultry]

By this same logic you shouldn't try to talk climate change deniers and creationists out of their beliefs because some scientists disagree with the consensus. I like NDT for the most part, but I find his opinions on religion to be under-informed and even naive.

[u/ytsejam6891]

This guy is the Neville Chamberlain of atheism.