House Science & National Labs Caucus: Neil deGrasse Tyson

from the Library of Congress in Washington DC you thank you all for being here my name is congressman Randy Hultgren and I am fortunate to be one of the co-chairs of the newly created bipartisan house science and national labs caucus many of you are probably familiar with Neil deGrasse Tyson but for anybody who isn't he is basically the Chuck Norris of science not just a PhD astrophysicist he's a ballroom dancer with several dozen honorary doctorates nearly a million Twitter followers all of us politicians are very jealous and a vest collection that is legendary his Twitter feed alone is in my opinion one of the most fascinating things available on the internet ranging from the fact that in 1492 it took three months to cross the Atlantic Ocean but in 2010 it took 15 minutes for the Space Shuttle to do the same thing to the more humorous observation that while Mars in the Milky Way and the moon all have candy named after them no one yet has yet decided to name food after Uranus it's not hard to see why dr. Tyson was named as one of Time Magazine's hundred most influential people in the world before dr. Tyson begins I want to just say a quick word about the science and National Labs caucus representatives Fattah Lujan Nunley and I founded this bipartisan caucus because all of us are inherent inherently believe that basic research and scientific exploration are embedded in our national DNA and with pervasive economic uncertainty it's more important than ever that we reinforce our national commitment to these vital endeavors because science is a part of the identity of who we are as a nation we may not know precisely what impacts these activities will have but we know from past experience that an improved understanding of the universe enhances our lives in ways we can't even imagine as a people we strive not only for economic growth prosperity and job creation but also for exploration at both our mental and physical frontiers pushing ourselves against the boundaries of both our capabilities and our understanding with a pedigree spanning a half-century it is self-evident that basic research drives our understanding of the universe and from that understanding the payoffs are incalculably high which is why science drives techno why science driven technology is accounted for more than 50% of the economic growth of the US economy during the last half century but science is an ecosystem and we must not pollute it with political expediency because this will always come at the expense of fundamental long-term scientific research in which this nation needs to invest so I hope that members of Congress and their staff here today take a look at our new caucus because it's time for a cultural change here in Congress with respect to the understanding and appreciating the role that science plays and our quality of life and that change is what we hope to accomplish in the caucus I'll quickly wrap up by noting that over in the Rayburn building there is a line from Proverbs engraved on the wall in the Science Space and Technology Committee and it says where there is no vision the people perish and while that seems hyperbolic in terms in I think in terms of the American spirit it becomes exceptionally true and there is no person this country better able to inspire a vision than the astrophysicist dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson so please join me in this bipartisan co-chair of the science national labs caucus and while welcoming dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson thank you no I just like messing with the sound guy keeping them awake should I get put my gum out uh thank you for that warm welcome and all of you to come listen to my cosmic and scientific musings today I understand there's some voting going on in the in the house so I try not to take it personally if the members need to leave and vote bubble talk about you when you leave I promise uh I want to begin I want to begin by talking about a an observation I made about 15 years ago which changed my life and it changed my relationship with the public and with government and with agencies I was minding my own business in the manicured lawns of university land and I was asked to write a chapter for the Columbia history of the 20th century as Columbia University as a publishing arm and this was to reflect on and interpret events of the 20th century not it was not a an accounting of events so much as it was an assessment of what it meant the reason why I was at I was not their first choice this is 1996 their first choice was Carl Sagan but so Carl Sagan had taken ill he would die a year later and they came to me next and these are awesome shoes to fill just what now I have to write in something in some way that would match or rival that which you would have gotten from Carl Sagan so I thought long and hard about this they wanted me to write about discovery and I said okay I don't know and I scratch my head and weeks later I said all right here's what I'm going to do I'm going to write about the transition from the discovery of places to the discovery of ideas and that's an important transition in our species because it used to mean oh let's discover a new land and you'd build a boat or you'd hike there or you ascend them out and navigate the valley and then you found a new place that's it was discovery not until the earth got mapped did the urge to discover take us to another dimension and it was the dimension of thought the dimension of thought so I said to myself all right what are tell me about all the activities that the human species has engaged in in its in its history because you know because personally I want to go to Mars all right well I'm a little too old but I want us as a species to go to Mars just it's just it's a side thing I have this don't you don't have to want to do that too it's just what I want to do and I thought to myself well that is a place it's not just an idea but it's it's a place plus ideas there might be life there we might learn something there are new discoveries in the new places so I said alright how what did people do in the past to engage in expensive projects because we go to Mars that's going to be expensive and somebody's going to have to write the check if we did such a thing can is that even justifiable to do this actually we put the money in the bank and then they write the check okay that's how we're all family here that's how that works alright so I here's what I'm gonna do I would look at all the things humans have done throughout time find out what it cost as a fraction of the GDP of the day and then ask how much does it cost to go to Mars today and then line that up in the chart and find out what motivated them to do whatever was this other activity and maybe we can duplicate that in modern times that's how we would then engage in major funded projects I thought to myself so I thought this would easily fill the chapter talking about ways people were motivated to do great things I was going to different chapters on all the different ways people justified it and here is what I found there were only three motivators in the history of human culture three motivators that drove nations and states to do great things great as in large unforgettably magnificent or unforgettably devastating just an investment of human and financial capital we can make a list of what would go on that list of what would be there so the pyramids that's big and expensive and they still around the pyramids by the way do you know the next thing in human culture that was built that was taller than the pyramids Eiffel Tower the Eiffel Tower was at 1818 right 5,000 years later we figured out how to make something taller actually there was a cathedral in the 1400s but they didn't quite know how to sustain domes so it was a short-lived so all right the pyramids would be on there of the Great Wall of China the Manhattan Project the Apollo project the Columbus voyages we'd all agree these are expensive things undertaken by nations what did they have in common only one of three things the greatest driver of them all is obvious it's the I don't want to die driver all right the war driver that's where you get the Great Wall of China that's where you get the Manhattan Project time and time and again the conduct of our species has demonstrated that if you feel threatened money flows like rivers to minimize that threat or eradicate it all together no matter the project is another driver the promise of economic return that's how you get the Columbus voyages and Magellan voyages the Lewis and Clark you get you get investments where people say I don't want to die poor okay there's a third driver there's less of today less of it today the common centuries ago and that's the praise of royalty or deity that got you the cathedral building in Europe whole episodes where most of the GDP went into building 'kathy most big chunks of the deep GDP went into building cathedrals the pyramids that's praise of royalty there's less of that today hardly any of that today you don't see whole nations investing huge amount of money in the service of God or their king just doesn't happen much anymore so they're two drivers to drivers if you want to do something expensive and it does not fulfill one of those two drivers it's not going to happen period unless you're going to claim that you live in a very special community that differs in its outlook on the causes and effects of investment and human dreams if you have to say that you are different from every civilization that has come before you I don't see evidence of that three drivers all right I'm gonna get back to those in a moment this new caucus that was established science and National Labs most people never heard a National Labs no offense here but I think I'm right all right what is a national lab you've probably heard of a few of them their names kind of resonate in the history in the 20th century history books Brookhaven lab Lawrence Livermore labs Stanford Linear Accelerator you know you get these places and you knew some big physics was going on there it is a community of centers where big research takes place a lot of them owe their birth to sort of 20th century sort of military it was like we knew that physics physicists are experts in matter motion and energy and war is about putting energy that is here there that's all it is okay if there's a target you don't want that target to exist anymore you take the energy that you created here and you put it at the target that destroys the target that is war reduced to its most fundamental laws of physics all right well I understand that you can build centers because you feel threatened there's Cold War sure I understand that even though I'm an academic I understand that 1989 peace broke out in Europe we almost had the largest accelerator in the world superconducting supercollider started construction on it in Texas in the 1980s it was the next frontier in physics if you go into place in enter in energy that no one has been before you're going to discover something it's that simple because you're stepping where no one has stepped before that is exploration in the laboratory so here we are riding a century of American leadership in particle physics do you know the periodic table of elements if I put the national flag on the box according to WHO disk what nation discovered each element there's quite a few there most of them are Western European nations America is strongly represented but you know where we're best represented down at the bottom the heavy elements after uranium neptunium plutonium we have californium we have burkle IAM all right if you if you discover stuff you get to name it what a point of pride that was continuing that tradition the physicists said let's keep going 1989 comes around by the way you can analyze this in other ways I'm not going to stop you but what I'm going to say is that when peace broke out it became harder for people to justify particularly those writing the checks why you'd be spending this much money on physics anymore Soviet Union was gone budget got cut to zero and that knocked out the frontier of particle physics in America well interesting thing about science that continues anywhere else in the world you don't have a monopoly on it so CERN this Center that's the French spelling of the European Center for Nuclear Research but I'm told that in French it spells the word CERN thus into European research new keys of that anyhow they built the Large Hadron Collider the large the most powerful particle accelerator in the world and they discovered the Higgs boson page one story even here we had American scientist there by the way and they're actually significant scientific contributions from scientists based in fact at Fermilab who contributed to that discovery but that fact got lost the American contribution to that discovery got lost in the news cycle because it got discovered on European soil so it just didn't it's hard to take pride in something that someone else announces on in another country what they discovered was the Higgs boson you know what that is it's got a weird name you know the Higgs it's you know it's it's a particle that grants mass there's a particles whose field grants mass to other particles in fact it's been colloquially called the god particle because if you hand out mass you're in charge all right of the particle physics you're like you you're you're the one and so the way it hands out may I give an analogy I've heard this given but I think I've improved on the analogy but the origin of this example I don't take credit for if you think of a party in Los Angeles the East Coast West Coast Los Angeles party and it's very crowded and a really famous person walks into the party so what happens everybody crowds around the famous person so the famous person then cannot move very quickly through that party no matter what they dictate it they're sluggish through that party they have a very high party mass and if you're a nobody by Hollywood standard then no one will crowd around you and you could just walk freely through the party uninhibited sealed is like a party in Los Angeles you have a high party mass a low party mass and this is the interaction of the higgs field with other particles is important it's an important discovery Nobel Prize will probably be given for it we would have discovered that particle twenty years ago our accelerator was three times the power of that one so that would have come out first day okay turn on the switch pop there it is Higgs boson for you all right like a vending machine so so uh now why do I mention this well war isn't the only driver economics is - it's a huge driver if we have a suite of centers that previously were in the service of defending the country in some way because you hire physicist and physicist is the physics of nuclei that led to the bomb that leads to advanced weaponry understand that but economics matters to imagine if you took this suite of National Labs and said the country has needs the country has we want to engage in projects that are too big for a university university is like a professor and maybe a lab some things require the government and it's not immediately it's not immediately lucrative to do it so corporations their R&D can't justify it there's this zone that can only be touched by the government dollar if the government cares about its future look at the problems that energy and battery technology and nanotechnology and biofuels and and and and maglev and you just go down the list I won a country where you have a lab system where you walk by to say oh they're working on solving this problem that still befalls us that'll feel good then you've created the country worth defending we're not waiting around for some other country to come up with our solutions by the way you can't require a lot you can't say okay I want a more efficient transportation system and I need it in a year and a half okay the engineers will work hard but somewhere in there you need the scientists doing the basic research the kind of research that a corporation can't really justify because they've got the quarterly report they've got the the shareholders and they're looking for the return and the return is 40 years from now they're not investing but the country is here forever at least in our minds if we want it to be here forever so somebody's got to make the investment that goes longer than the timescale of the corporation so you have the engineers working on the new physics the new sciences but you need the science as well what are some examples of this in the 1700s we started to study the concept of heat energy in the days of Isaac Newton my man Isaac Newton 1600s the concept of energy was not was not formulated scientifically it was not well understood it would take another century then you get like the steam engine and you start figuring out how to convert energy from one form into another mechanical energy chemical energy energy of gravity gravitational potential and all these forms of energy can be converted into one another with the right machine thus was born the Industrial Revolution and the nations that embrace the Industrial Revolution led the world in every metric that mattered and that mattered in civilization mattered to a civilization so what would next happen middle 1800s Michael Faraday playing with electricity on a tabletop he takes a wire and moves it through a magnetic field and a dial jumps that the wire is connected to well if you do this over here and something else happens over here that's really intriguing to a physicist you're almost like a cat you know looking at the laser beam on the floor you know the physicist is you know it's kind of like a and people said Michael the name of Michael Faraday what are you doing what are you wasting government money for here's a famous reply to that he said sir because I think was a member of parliament who came and asked is this what we're paying you to do to make these tabletop toys he says I don't know of what use this will one day be but I guarantee you sir one day you will tax it passing the wire through a magnetic field is how we generate electricity today it is the foundation of all generators turbines anything that turns creates electricity and something else makes a turn you're moving wires through magnetic fields that was in the mid 1800s we didn't Electrify cities until turn to the century the early 1900s it took 50 years for his tabletop experiments in the hands of clever engineers and technologists to transform the world and how we lived now you just flick a switch on the wall all the lights turn on what intrigues me is that so respectful of that error we are that our lights even look like handles you say Sarge so in the back we still have can't we still look at that right it's just a 20-person you know and I know this is an old building but you can by candelabras with electric candle bulbs in them right so um but it took about 50 years you know what happened in the 1920s other than Hubble discovering the expose of the man there was a guy who came before the telescope just so we understand in the 1920s Hubble discovered that the Milky Way is not the only galaxy in the universe the billions more and that the universe is expanding cool but that's not why I'm telling you about the 1920s the 1920s was the birth of quantum physics you can't get crazier than quantum physics oh my gosh particles pop in and out of existence we you you try to measure it and it's not there anymore but you saw it there a moment ago and it was intriguing once again it was the physicists following you know the bouncing ball weird crazy things were going on inside the atom weird things it's a curiosity enlightened Nations funded that research at the 1920s fifty years later we would see the birth of the information technology revolution do you realize that like the last time I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation it was something like a third of the world economy is based on knowledge of quantum physics because information technology requires quantum physics in the design it in the creation of data in the acquisition the storage the dissemination of information that's why it's the IT revolution it's not a computer revolution Computers is there it's all about what we're doing with information is no longer on a printed page here's the information no no I was on the airplane yesterday and I got a note from a program installed on my father's computer that he's running out of disk space I then sent an email to my sister's husband said check out my father's computer something's dumping data onto he goes and checks it out oh there's a program run awry we fixed it everything's fine I said fine and I did that while flying 200 miles in distance at 31,000 feet odd that's information moving that requires called quantum physics that was basic science which at the time surely there were people say what are you doing I don't understand it why is that putting food on my plate is there some new weapon I can use to defend myself people were surely asking these questions of quantum physics but we had people who are curious about the nature of the world and they pursued it and they were allowed to buy lighten governments and now no part of the modern economy isn't touched by the fruits of the investment that went into those discoveries this goes on and on and on and on but and that time delay was 50 years not two years you know what I wonder maybe there should be a new law I know we have too many laws but a new law we're every congressional session what do you call the unit of two years in Congress that's called something a session termed every congressional term you've got to pass a law that enriches benefits the country on a timescale longer than your reelection timescale you have - wouldn't that be a great law and then say now we're thinking I'm not going to be an office then but I now have to care about tomorrow imagine what effect that would have my physics professor in college he'd like gas clouds between stars yeah okay everybody likes gas clouds between stars he studied the behavior of the nuclei among the atoms in those gas clouds and he hypothesized that in the presence of a strong magnetic field that it would deflect radio waves that came by he discovered the principle of physics called nuclear magnetic resonance as applied to the universe then a clever engineer said wait a minute if you can find out what kind of atom because the nucleus is the identity of the atom if you know what kind of atoms are out there by this method maybe I can make a machine down here and I could put you in the Machine and I could find out what kind of atoms are moving around your body his discovery which was awarded the Nobel Prize became the magnetic resonance imager in every major hospital in the land today was he thinking about health no no in fact every machine in a hospital with an on/off switch that is brought into the service of diagnosing the health of your body is based on a principle of physics discovered by a physicist who had no interest in your health the cross-pollination of the sciences is a fundamental part of what it is to progress in society I hear people saying all the last century was the century of the physicists but this century is a century of the biologist okay shut down all the physicists and you'll be using the same machines today as you'll be using a hundred years from now because you're not inventing the machine you're not an engineer if you're the biologist you're not an engineer you're not inventing a new principle of physics on which you would base a new the design of a new machine all of this has to happen and you can't sit there and say how is that going to benefit me we don't know in advance but every time discoveries have been made it has benefited us we've got the track record to demonstrate it I'm screaming at you I'm sorry I'm just getting me started here October 4th 1957 what happened Sputnik gets launched and we freaked out some of you are old enough were like cognizant at the time we freaked out as a nation perhaps justifiably because it wasn't just a satellite yes it had the nice named Sputnik you know what that means it means fellow traveler who isn't that nice fellow traveler it's just a it's like it's just the basketball words with sticks sticking out of it who can why should that matter Sputnik was a hollowed out intercontinental ballistic missile shell that was a shot across our bow the Soviet Union had the new high ground they were flying over our heads and was nothing we could do about it then came that I don't want to die driver we said we need we need me one of those we gets get let's get one of those let's start our let's so we created among other things NASA a year in a day later I'm born the same week that NASA was founded I feel NASA we're like together just moving through life well we're weird conjoined our souls are one NASA civilian Space Agency sign into law by an act of Congress but who were the astronauts there were military pilots so waiter if it's a civilian agency I'm Mila what's going on here of course NASA is created in reaction to a threat and money flows like rivers the war driver is in effect the war driver it's not how we remember it we say NASA we explored the moon we're discoverers we're Americans this is what Americans do we're explorers in the day everyone has said we're going to the moon though Mars is next Mars is next no it's not next it would be next if you go into space because you're an explorer if that's why you went into space Mars would be next did I mention exploration as a driver no it's not there it's nowhere it's way down the list of drivers it's an insignificant driver it's in the it's in the noise we go to the moon because we perceive a threat we go to the moon then we find out Russia is not really getting there Soviet Union is not we stop going to the moon altogether and there people say oh we stopped going because we need leaders and carers of people with charisma like Kennedy and it's like no that's delusional well look at Kennedy speeds we will put a man on the moon return her safely to earth before the decade is out that was stirring work those were stirring words given in a joint session of Congress May 25th 1961 he had charisma you'll say his charisma on the list of why we did things no no go to Kennedy Space Center in Florida there's a bust of Kennedy right at the front entrance and a granite wall behind it and chiseled in the wall are those words we will put a man on the moon and return him safely to earth and you just feel your spine tingles when you read they say wow that was an era where we really go back to his speech go back two paragraphs before he said let's go to the moon he comments on Yuri Gagarin who had just come out of orbit safely the first human mammal in space he was the fifth living thing in space by the way case you want I treated this just go back to you'll find it uh I said congratulations you know Yura Garin the anniversary of his orbit v mammal to achieve this feat is what I said people oh I didn't know that well there's a dog a couple of chimps there was some lab rats this sort of thing and they all survived then we send up a human and the human becomes the hero but like how about like a the dog right then well I got a quick aside all these like animal rights folks it's a because like a-- there's no plan to bring like a back alive and if you knew that did you know that it's kind of sad actually however like it was like a street mutt in moscow he gets lifted up and gets put into space and dies there that he's like the most famous dog ever since lassie you know and the dog was gonna die anyway at some point in its life so i'm thinking it's the toast of dog heaven now no regrets they're sorry they had nothing to do with so was I saying before I interrupted myself yo thank you so Kennedy is on the for a joint session of Congress and he says because six weeks earlier Yuri Gagarin had come in and out of orbit he says in the same speech where there is the granite words he says if the events of recent weeks doesn't even mention the guy if the events of recent weeks are any indication of the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere that we need to show the world the path of freedom over the path of tyranny that was the battle cry against communism that was the war driver a speech without that in it would have said I was nice but we got other real problems here on earth we felt threatened money flowed like rivers President George Herbert Walker Bush 20th anniversary of the Apollo landing he said I want to give us feet I don't I'm not in his head but I'm imagining some of this was in his head I want to give a speech like what Kennedy gave just to get everybody excited the 20th anniversary it's an auspicious day I'm going to give the speech on the steps of the the National Air and Space Museum an auspicious day an auspicious place I don't sophistication he said let's go back to the moon on to Mars and make a space station and we're going to take on space in a big way 1989 got costed out Johnson Space Center day so let's see what this will cost let's take about 30 years and will cost 500 billion dollars it was DOA why was it do a wait but you know what NASA's budget is every year it's about 17 18 billion dollars times 30 that's 500 billion dollars mass is getting that money any way you can't now tell me you can't afford this plan if he was getting that money anyway in the flow Luque so so so why was it just DL a something else happened in 1989 peace broke out in Europe so of course we don't do it I'm going to appeal to you in a way that most people don't I'm going to tell you things other people are not telling you you get people who are space enthusiasts let's go into space it's a destiny that's our next great nations do it and I look at history and I say no you don't know what you're talking about here's what we got to do we've known since the Industrial Revolution and earlier that innovation and science and technology yes it will help defend the nation but when you're not at war you know what else innovation and science the technology does it is the engine of tomorrow's economy the engine when Einstein wrote down his equation for the stimulated emission of radiation which is the foundation of the laser was he thinking to himself barcodes this is innovation in science the applications of his ideas into machines requires the clever engineer creative investors and and dynamic CEOs turned it into product don't ever tell me why are you studying this how is it helping me you know I don't know how it's going to help you I have no idea neither did Faraday he just knew you attacks it neither did Einstein needed it anybody who made great discoveries about our understanding and our relationship to nature do you know who you're remember statistics the method of least squares to solve to put a line through points that was discovered by Gauss a mathematician who applied it to the orbit of the first ever discovered asteroid the asteroid went behind the Sun it's in the glare you can't find it he says well did this over here look over here in four weeks there was no methods to figure that out he invented a new kind of math to do that he was inspired by space the stuff NASA does inspires people if you look at the NASA portfolio lately it's got biologists chemists physicists astrophysicists structural engineers we build stuff in space the International Space Station the size of a football field built in zero-g the latest addition to the National Labs the International Space Station I might add so if you have all these scientists so here's the task I stand up in front of class of 8th graders and I say who wants to be an aerospace engineer so that you can design an airplane that's 10% more fuel efficient than the your parents flue there's some people who will require that of me as I stand up in front of that class instead what I want to save who wants to be an aerospace engineer so that you can design the airfoil that will navigate the rarefied atmosphere of Mars everybody's standing up everybody wants to do that we're a free country you can't require people to do anything where you can inspire them to completely rise to their intellectual and academic potential without that carrot we will wither on the vine it's not good enough just to have a good science teacher you need something at the end of that pipeline when you're hatched out of the educational system now what do you do it's a noble goal to have high-speed Internet in the future and and and you know public transportation sure but all those the big dreams that get you running to school each morning to want to accomplish I don't think so here's what happens when science has funded big all the sciences by the way all of them but there's one in particular that is an actual force of nature and that is the vision statement of our future in space that's a force of nature that Stokes the pipeline it gets people interested in science and all the sciences and you know something even if you're not interested in science you're interested in science let's say you want to become an attorney but you've been sort of baptized in this grand quest to explore the cosmos then you're gonna say hey I wanted to study space law I want to find out who owns the materials on an asteroid on the moon can you homestead there it's a whole law frontier oh I'm gonna be a screenwriter I like the story I like I want to write a story on a mission to Mars or mission to the asteroid or killer asteroid when you do that big everybody becomes a participant in it everybody I brought with me Huhn Colliers magazine who remembers it you have to be over 60 to remember it can we get to Mars is there life on Mars 1954 there's already talked about going to the moon so took it a step further because it thought that this was going on because we were just explorers the v2 rocket designed by Wernher von Braun in the Second World War used against London and other targets was the first intercontinental ballistic missile it was the first missile to leave the atmosphere and come back in wait a minute you're gonna go into space you better study what that techno after the war ends if there's any way you going to go into space you better study that rocket that's why every rocket in science fiction stories in the 1950s look like the v2 it had fins it was bullet shaped did you just take a picture of me like this okay so so the influence was huge people's visions of space the spaceship had fins and you know what else had fins our cars had fins if you go to the designers they're not going to say oh I did this because Rockets have fins it was in the air exploration of space became part of our culture the first time we ever left Earth was Apollo 8 doesn't get the attention it deserves relative to Apollo 11 these three astronauts were men of the Year 1968 Anders Borman and Lovell they orbited the moon Apollo 8 they took this picture I'm almost done here so I know you got a vote or something we'll go somewhere is that if you have a healthy science program in your country you guarantee your economic future you're innovating then you don't have to have arguments about tariffs regulations on products you don't have to worry about jobs going overseas because they don't know how to do it yet cuz you just invented it I can't stand it when I hear these discussions about our job force I have to close my ears yeah you can put up some tariffs yes you can complain about their paying their workers less you sure okay but you as long as you understand why you're in that situation it's because you've stopped innovating everyone else is caught up with you and it's if you have a global a global economy it's the job of the corporation to make it for as cheap as possible so they're going to make it overseas that's what they're going to do doing it's incumbent upon them to do so but if you keep innovating the stuff stays here the job stay here you don't even need to have tariffs because there's nothing to tariff you assure the economic stability of your future so when I hear people say oh we can't afford NASA can't afford it we can't maybe we can it's like you can't afford not to otherwise you're putting band-aids on all your problems do I have this here this is my wallet I would do this but they wouldn't let me carry my scissors on the airplane you can take a dollar okay and cut off this edge but don't get into the ink okay then cut off the other edge but don't get into the ink those two amounts of this dollar that's the Rd budget of the United States and the rest is everyone complaining that our economy is losing ground in the world your urge is to get to get the solution your urge is almost never let's invest in something that will pay off in 50 years do you know the culture that ensued in the 1960s the world fair was all about tomorrow we were going into space we knew we needed scientists and engineers and mathematicians there the folks who dream up a new tomorrow that's how that works the World's Fair didn't create the 1960s the 1960s created the World's Fair and there's the 1960s the most turbulent decade in American history since the Civil War assassinations the civil rights movement a hot war in Southeast Asia a cold war with Russia yet we time to go to the moon motivated by war for sure but our economy was pumped the GDP per capita from 1950 to 1960 made the highest jump across a decade then it has since then the change in GDP per capita has been dropping ever since the 1960s but nobody notices that oh they over animal GDP would say it's the we gotta fund this Factory and this thing and everybody's trying to micro analyze it yet there's an elephant standing there in front of you not only did it stoke our economy this something else that it did is something else see this photograph its most recognizable photograph ever Earthrise over the lunar surface taken in 1968 by apollo 8 1968 the bloodiest year in the most turbulent decade since the Civil War this photo was published do you realize that until that photo was published nobody thought to draw earth with clouds on it every representation of the earth before that photo was just earth that's kind of interesting we didn't think clouds were part of us that's not those are clouds in 1962 Rachel Carson published Silent Spring which was a many environmentalist credit that book for starting the environmentalist movement they're wrong plain and simple they're wrong you can do a Google search on words the frequency of words used in all published books in any Guinea give an interval of year and you can ask what's the frequency of the word environment that's a word that would show up if you care about it and let's watch the frequency of that word across 1962 it was a best-selling book it makes a little bump then it comes back down again when that photo is published the word environment the usage of the word environment triples in published literature when that photo was published by the way earth does not rise on the moon the moon always shows the same face to earth so the earth is just simply always there so it's miss named earth rise it's easy to want to believe that earth rises on the moon the way the moon rises on earth is that's just false so it was rising because they're in orbit around the moon and when you orbit something stuff Rises that wouldn't otherwise do so just a disclaimer there this gets published it's the first mission to leave low-earth orbit a year later Apollo 11 they land and walk on the moon Steve Jobs is 14 years old Bill Gates is 13 years old just an FYI ARPANET begins 1969 so what else happens now that we see this moon and Earth rising above it here's the list you ready 1970 a comprehensive Clean Air Act is passed by Congress December 1970 the first Earth Day in San Francisco on the spring equinox 1970 the first National Earth Day April 1970 the Environmental Protection Agency is formed in 1970 we are still at war in Vietnam students are getting shot on campuses there's no accounting for this except that photo you might remember the hellström Chronicle it was a pseudo documentary movie that talked about insects going out of control from overuse of pesticides there's an organization founded in Switzerland in 1971 called Doctors Without Borders where'd they get that phrasing from when we saw this moon rising we saw earth rising over the moon earth revealed it to us as Nature had intended not as a color-coded map that designating nations and States but of oceans and land and clouds Garneau borders you look at that picture without that picture they would have said oh international doctors referencing nations this picture references no nations at all by the way if you asked any one of these people they'll say oh it just felt like the right word oh it just made sense space was in our culture so deep that you just think stuff up and you think that you just thought it up DDT a big issue in Rachel Carson's book in 1962 it was not banned until 1972 we're still going to the moon the Whole Earth Catalog uses this photo as its cover thinking of earth as a whole not earth as an assembly of Nations the comprehensive Endangered Species Act December 1973 the first catalytic converter for cars 1973 unleaded emission standards were established 1973 why didn't all that happen ten years earlier five years earlier it happened after that and it started immediately our culture transformed the we were saying we're going to explore the Moon yes driven by military money it stoked our economy we're going to explore the moon we got to the moon and we looked at earth for the first time it established a cosmic perspective that completely transformed who we are how we relate to one another and how we think about our future so I submit to you that what a lesson this was we embarked on an activity that was driven by military motives and out the other side came economic gain at a new perspective on who we are in this universe turns out you don't need the military motives once you know there is an economic driver that's a good driver too history shows so all it takes is a little bit of foresight be a little less parochial not only in region but in time and this nation can rise up and become again what I remembered it to be and perhaps had taken for granted of what it was because if we don't act we're just standing still and the act of standing still is the same as moving backwards when everyone else is in motion all around us around the world so it's a it's an economic battle cry if you will I don't doubt our military resolutions if China said they want to put military bases on Mars we're there ten months later what we're so they're all right if I they could probably pull that one off because Mars is already red you know so so the marketing of that would be easy for them but I want to go to China just tell them to leak a memo they want to put Miller and then we just would go for it so it just takes a few extra steps to see the economic drivers that are at work here you are pumping into your society people whose ingenuity creates new economies that's got nothing to do with spin-offs yeah we all like the spin-off LASIK surgery and cordless power tools all came from NASA grooved pavements in the road so you don't roll your car on a turn that all came from NASA but that's not the biggest thing to come that comes from research NASA is like the is the poster child for discovery and what it can do for a nation because no one ever stood up in school to say when I grew up I want to be an NIH researcher it just does they don't do that right so so you need the poster Explorer Discoverer and then the lawmakers will know if you do that you pump our economy the kids will do it because they it's fun they want to stay kids the rest of their lives as I have and we will we will rejuvenate the nation with that ambition and we can enter the 21st century as leaders we were coming into it and that's my message for you today thank you thank you thank you I think I went a little long and I'm sorry about that but I have a little bit of time if you I'll write you a Hall Pass if you have to get back to your job I want to take questions from you and because that's that's my favorite part because pretty much I already knew what I was going to say so just raise your hand but thanks for coming if you have to go and get back to solving the problems of the world a question yes sir I'll repeat it if you can't hear it go yeah we've got a microphone thank you I was wondering how far away you think we are from an industrial application of fusion power how far are we from an industrial application of fusion power you know to fusion is the most common production of energy source of produced energy in the universe we can make fusion - we're really good at it it's called a bomb right and so the whole challenge here is to control the fusion not the simple act of getting fusion so applications of fusion what you really asking there is when will we have applications and not to put a question in your mouth but I don't care that fusion is the bringing together of atomic nuclei I care that fusion is a source of energy for us so the real question is what are the prospects for other sources of energy in the world in the future that's really the question there and Fusion is a contender solar power I tweeted yesterday you know I'd be embarrassed to show an alien that we kill each other to extract energy sources beneath the sands when the universe is full of limitless amounts of star light and by the way someone was reading my tweets someone's asked when I compose my tweets am i high so it was fish one time I like I was distracted by a doily and I was I was concerned that not enough people pause to reflect on the beauty and majesty of a doily right just think about what a Dhoni is and it's just to sit under your cup and so I got a tweet some about that now I hang on a sec let me do this just be a moment that's right because I'd already start so so my response will be to those who asked am i high knowing that the sky sits the sky sits above the entire earth that should tell you that the study of the universe is itself a state of natural high tweet okay uh there's no service here so it'll go out in an hour so another question and get through yes sir on the corner on the side there's been a decrease in funding and NASA progressively and then other companies trying to private companies take up the slack and that do you think that will hinder or help NASA in the long run that other private companies are trying to take the place of NASA Thanks there's like four different things going on in that in that very simple question and I want to separate the variables as we say in math and I'm gonna hit them one at a time the relationship between NASA and private industry has been around since the beginning Grumman on Long Island made the LEM the lunar excursion module it's still a point of pride you walk down the streets the engineers from that era are still talking about it anybody was a participant in that era forgetting that it was completely driven by war were nonetheless enchanted by the fact that we were going to the moon so there's always been private enterprise participating in NASA's needs that's not a new thing the difference is will NASA have the private enterprise as a link between where they are and where they need to go they got to get to the space station to use a shuttle or let someone else take you there that should have been happening 20 years ago does the post office have its own airplanes no you rent space on the belly of a commercial carrier put the mail on there and it gets you there faster cheaper better with the efficiencies of private enterprise NASA knows how to get to low-earth orbit it is not a space frontier save NASA for frontier work and by all means farm out the routine parts of what it is you need to do by all means should have happened long ago here's the difference private enterprise will never lead a space frontier and I've gotten into arguments with people about this and then they walked away because they didn't want that to be true except it is fundamentally true space is large it's dangerous and if it's space we've never been before the frontier the risks are unquantified when those factors converge you cannot create a capital market valuation of that activity there are no investors oh let's go someplace you might die we don't know if you're going to come back we don't know how much it'll cost and we don't know your risk give me your money now that's not how capitalism works okay so the people who take the risks are government's government the first Europeans to the New World we're government-funded Columbus drew the maps check the Tradewinds found out who are the the nice Indians and and bad Indians and and as their food over there and what are the safe routes and the armful routes he brings that back that gets disseminated then the Dutch East India Trading Company comes in behind them there is no case in the history of Commerce where corporations capitalized by investors did something that was hugely expensive and dangerous and unquantified risks so by the way there a couple of companies one recently announced that one of mine and exploit asteroids we've been asteroids we know how to do that it's an engineering frontier to figure out how to scoop it up and bring it and exploit it and use it and take it to the moon bring it back to earth sure that's within the the invest of latitude of a company to attract interested venture capitalists sure but if we had never been to an asteroid before no no Newt Gingrich even made that mistake when he said give the money we've given to NASA to the private industry we would have had colonies on the moon on Mars by now no well yet sure if you pay someone but then it's not a business model yeah it can be a vanity project go get Bill Gates bill take us to Mars he could do it it's private money it's not a business model he's not making money doing that sure you can just spend the money and do it but if wanted to turn a space program into a space industry there's got to be some return on that investment and that has historically been the role of governments so you can't have one without without the other more power to all these companies that want to participate I foresee the day when the entire solar system is just our backyard and whatever nobody's done before that's what NASA's doing yes on the side that's did you hear what he just said no he said I don't need a mic on it Oh dick is on now you can hear yes among the things that I would think would be a leading driver towards I don't want to die is being hit by an asteroid being hit by a comet being hit by any hit by an asteroid couch's I don't want to die yes yes and yet no no that one's I don't want my species to go extinct yeah that's a good one yeah and and yet somewhat inexplicably you keep seeing proposals for asteroid Defense Research asteroid defense programs not getting the funding they won't and I was wondering if you might have an idea as to why because the election cycle is shorter than the asteroid impact cycle why would you spend money in your electorial why would you spend your sessions dollars on something that doesn't affect your session so it's a short side it's a cultural short sightedness but I have a better solution oh by the way there's a great comic where one dinosaur is saying to the other now is the time to invest in an asteroid deflection system so I have a better solution your space activities are not simply what do we do now oh let's all go to Mars okay what next oh let's go to Venus no that's not a exploration program those are one-offs the moon was a one-off what you need to do is have a suite of vehicle as my suggestion here we got the engineers to make this wheel you get a suite of launch vehicles they can be combined in different ways different strap-on solid boosters liquid whatever is the combination so that I can walk up and say today I want to go to the back side of the moon oh that's three of these rockets two of those four these will launch in a week I want to do science on Mars well that's these three rockets and this and you need this life-support system because you're not coming back the three and fine the military says well this new Sicily nurse pace it's the new high ground but the space between Earth and the moon's orbit we need to set up some laser tracking places in sort of trailing orbit to the moon around the earth okay that's this satellite this launch pattern is there's an asteroid coming Oh check with the mining guys they have ways of tugging an asteroid from one location to the other because they've done it to bring the rare elements the rare earth elements too by the way elements that are called rare earth are common elsewhere okay they're just rare on earth they're asteroids where they're common and so then you just you phone up the guys and say we got a new orbit on asteroid 2782 it's going to hit Earth in 37 years can you deflect it a few centimeters that'll buy us another 50 years and we're worried about it then that's the spacefaring future that I foresee that we don't yet have and we're far from it yes oh thank you I have a radio program called stark hawk it's kind of irreverent and and but it's we're just really having fun with something so thanks for the plug yes sure what direction would you personally like to see the House Science and National Labs caucus go in the realm of physics yes I think you know I'm partial to physics because there is no understanding of chemistry without physics and there is no understanding of biology without chemistry so every century is a physics century as far as I see it because the rest of the sciences derive their greatest discoveries from it so you got to fund them all and I see the labs which have historically been physics why not bring them to bear on all the nation's Grand Challenges that'd be from that that befall us and when we're not at war that gives you the opportunity to solve other kinds of problems but you need the cadre of scientists they're just studying the limits of knowledge and you want to be able to transfer the freshly discovered knowledge into product so you want to develop a community of technologists who guys say wait a minute you need those folk plus you need folks who who who visit one Center to the next if I had an oven that with coal like a a Franklin stove which runs on wood and ice I give you a billion no too much I'll give you a million dollars make me a better stove and you're an expert in heat transfer and thermodynamics and you you know you're good you're good all right and so you you design an oven that's insulated and it's temperature controlled and self-regulating no matter how much time I give you and no matter how much money I give you you will never invent a microwave oven because that came from military research and communications with microwaves and we kind of stumbled on the effect of microwaves on food because water is a major ingredient of food and microwaves tickle the water molecule rendering it hot and then someone say hey if it does that to water it'll do that to my food let's make a cavity and call it a microwave oven somebody's got a walls among the camps someone clever and ambitious and maybe has a nose for profit that always helps as well the second biggest driver ever that I don't want to die poor driver oh you have a question hi hello how old are you eight you're eight that is such a cool age to be you know when I was nine that's when I discovered the universe but you're here already so you've already discovered something I like your shirt okay so what's your question well the question me for the last question answer gave me a question so the asteroids coming us why don't we try to fly get it to orbit around the earth like the moon yeah so you want to save the world is what you know that's that's really a good thing to want to do well there are people out there who see here in America we're really good at blowing stuff up okay and we're less good at knowing where the pieces land afterwards so yeah we've got some leftover missiles and we could try to destroy the asteroid right so that would be Boulder sucker out of the sky you know that's the the macho the you know that's a testosterone way to do it but the kind low gentler way would be exactly what you said to deflect it it's still there it could harm you another day but to deflect it takes so much less energy and you could test it to see if you have succeeded there are plans on paper to ditch me know how to do it we think but no one has given us money to build the spacecraft to actually do it so here's what will happen the asteroid will come it's too late to vote money to create the spacecraft and then we all go extinct holding the piece of paper saying how we would have the other papers like sticking up above the ground and I don't want to be the laughingstock of the galaxy with all the aliens looking to earth and say those stupid humans they had opposable thumbs they had a space program but they didn't deflect the asteroids which makes us no better than the proverbially pea-brain dinosaurs who came before us who themselves did not deflect that asteroid because of course they had pea brains so it's a great idea and you're the right age so that if one comes around I want you to save the world okay and then they make movies about you and you'll be a hero we're already hero for asking that question that no one else in this room thought to ask god watch out when you ask questions around adults now you can embarrass some grownups that way that's it but don't worry about it okay they need more to be embarrassed much more often than they are another question right here sir um when you did the interview but you began that sentence with an um this is Washington DC we are educated people I'm nervous I'm apologize okay you gave an interview with the New York Times a while ago or you were asked about the most astounding fact is that still the most astounding fact or has higgs-boson changed that yeah thanks for asking about that a reporter came to my office in New York and asked me ten questions the last of which was what's the most astounding fact that I know and so there it lived you know on the internet for years and somebody took my answer then somebody decided they liked the answer and they took it and made a youtube video of it with some exciting visuals to match my words the video went viral it's like got a couple you know it's not as viral as the kitten falling off the piano but it's as viral as any science video that I've seen has gotten and I invite you to check just look Tyson and astounding that ought to land you right on it they asked what is the most astounding fact that I know and I just went off on it and I will not tell you the answer and I know you so many of you have seen it you must have because it's went viral but yes that's still my most astounding fact sorry about the rest of you can haha yes if I think is rising through two million views and I was four million views so I'm very moved by that fact it means there is an untapped hunger that my activities serve because that's what I am I'm a servant of the public appetite for the universe and occasionally I might awaken an appetite you didn't know you had but really I'm just a servant showing you the universe that's already there yeah yes hi um you are obviously exemplary in your ability to communicate science and science stuff to non-scientists how in your opinion would it best how can we best inspire other scientists to follow in your example Wow the problem is might our community is not rewarded by their ability to communicate with people who don't already know their vocabulary and their jargon there's no return to the community on that and for the longest while you were looked down upon in fact there's blood on the tracks from Carl Sagan's era for the fact that he reached out to the public when he appeared on Johnny Carson what a scientist on TV on entertainment television not just on a documentary and chatted exchanging jokes with a comedian and so we've come a long way since then especially my field astrophysics in no small measure because of the efforts of Carl Sagan so I can stand here and do this and I can host a radio show with comedians and we crack jokes all the time there's scientifically literate jokes but we just slap wit and I can still be invited to Caltech and give a seminar go to MIT and meet with their advisers so my field has reached that level of I would call it political and cultural maturity there are other fee fields that have not I've seen it many branches of physics that is not the case geology that's not the case and so more evidence that I think we're pretty good at this is go to the bookstore and go to the science section most of the science books not including health and human human health and nutrition most of the science books our universe books and you can tell because all that binder the bindings are dark because it's some cosmic photo some Hubble photo on the on the binder on the on the jacket so I think we're doing pretty good and I'm a cog in a very big wheel and by the way the State University of New York at Stony Brook Long Island just created a new branch of itself to Train science professionals to communicate science so so the trend line that the vectors are in the right direction and have the right slope I think but it's hard and to change it a culture always takes effort and so I'm not as pessimistic as you are perhaps okay that was a two thumbs up yes back row there how did you sorry how did you learn the question again sorry so besides being clever enough to be born after Carl Sagan and choose astrophysics that was culturally ready for your skills how did you develop those skills and what advice do you have for other scientists to - who want to follow in your footsteps I think I think being socialized matters you guys just know how to have a conversation with somebody and many other academic branches do you know literature majors and history majors and all the majors that lead to you becoming an attorney for example you need social skills to communicate your ideas to argue - so I don't think it takes much I don't you just have to be able to talk to somebody and not put them asleep and then you grow that audience from one to five to ten and it's not a matter of are you afraid that someone in the audience knows more than you do if you come from academia you know more than everybody in the audience that's that's a given alright so it's really a social force here not some other kind of anxiety and I think I've been socialized my whole life my father as a sociologist was active in the civil rights movement in New York under Mayor Lindsay my mother was a housewife went back to school became a gerontologist so I was there like nerd kid there Astro nerd kid but every time I came home I understood what it meant to be sociable and to interact with other people so it's quite natural me for me to take what I love the universe and just talk about it it's not it's not an extra effort it's a natural effort it's like asking what does your livingroom look like well I got a couch here and a picture there in a area rug here what does the universe look like well it's they get a 13 by 10 billion I can it's my living room and I'm sharing it so I don't think the challenge is as hard as people think now it is a little different I do some things that I don't expect anybody else like my Twitter stream it's just completely weird stuff in there sometimes and I it's just weird other things I do on my radio show I am cavorting with comedians that's because I happen to be deeply respectful of the comedic arts deeply I think they carry the soul of our culture in their banter and so I'm very comfortable in the presence of an of witty comedians who are sharp clever and even barbed I when I give lectures have a handheld microphone because they have handheld microphones you know why because for example if I were describing the next asteroid that may render the west coast of the United States may will iterate the West roit Apophis I get to say it like this Apophis is named for the Egyptian god of death and darkness I get to do that with my microphone if it's a lavalier I gotta go you know you can't little things like that yes so you learn those and I've developed those over the years and it allows me to have a radio show where I talk to comedians and I have as guests actors politicians authors I don't have scientists on my radio show you know why because they're people who will not listen to a radio show if it has a scientist on it so I turn the table around and say I'm the host and I'm the scientist and you're going to follow your favorite person to that show you're a fan of that politician of that actor of that writer of that comedian and you know something that person is going to have a conversation about science with me their fan base follows them to that program I don't expect everybody to do that that's a lot of effort for me to pull that off but just talking about your research that's based funded if you resist that I don't know that you even have a right to be a scientist it's your obligation is your duty and if you're not that fluent socially fluid then create a website write an op-ed the lots of ways to intersect the public and right now hardly any of them are rewarded in the field so yeah I work at it when I'm called to otherwise I'd rather just stay home and watch the ballgame I'm perfectly happy there by the way let me take one last question and then we'll wrap it okay I'll write him in the middle yes you started with an um again one of the things that I'm aware that you're doing that I think is great for getting the public interested in science is working with the GZA on his album about space can you tell us about what's going on with that okay actually the Wall Street Journal got the story wrong I'm not collaborating with him at all next question okay well I don't know I do want another question because that was not she had she was misinformed I had the GZA who is a rap star a hip-hop artist on Startalk radio why because he's his next album the lyrics on his next album are inspired by cosmic themes he's rapping about the Big Bang and an expanding universe and gravity and dark matter and dark energy you know a subject has been embraced by pop culture when artists take ownership of it when that happens you become in the mainstream of thought you're in the culture and so that was one of our more successful episodes of star talk radio a rap star what's the stereotype oh the gun shootout said rap concerts right and here's somebody is actually making a difference with his rap lyrics and I didn't let that go unnoticed on my show so no but we're not collaborating but if he calls me up and said you know you got I need a word here you know I got cosmic word I can hook them up you know we got vocabulary good vocabulary too none of this stuff like geologists well this is orthoclase feldspar no I can't rap I can't rhyme that I'm sorry oh this is deoxyribonucleic acid can't rhyme that either big bang black hole quasar polska spots on the Sun Sun spots red spot on the Sun on Jupiter Jupiter's red spot we got vocabulary t'v to burn here I would say one last question it better be awesome because it's the last question is it awesome it will be the judge of that go sir and the last question thank you all for coming after this yeah I'm also a big fan of star talk and a couple of year a couple of months ago you would throw in a fact out there about black holes and that a black hole the size of a quarter could actually devour the earth sized planet North sized planet Oh easily and I've heard you talk about black holes have you not slept well since then no it's not that it's not that I would like to know what that would look like would our atmosphere be the first thing to go would things become oblong dand sucked into it like which you imagine or would it break apart just I mean how do you get something the size of the earth to fit into something the size of a quarter yeah so I i recently tweet well a year ago I tweeted we have these things called pulsars which are very dense matter it's like the densest matter there is before you collapse into a black hole so to put that in context how dense this material was I said take a herd of 50 million elephants and crammed them into a thimble they you get the density of the material on a pulsar so in other words scoop up with thimbles worth of pulsar material put it on a scale on a balance scale and then I say what do I have to put on the other side here to balance that thimble I have to put 50 million elephants here so that's an extraordinary extreme of nature in fact in my field we have to be parsimonious with our descriptive adjectives I can't say Jupiter's gigantic well it is compared to earth but it's small compared to the Sun I can't say the Sun is gigantic well it can hold a million earths if it were Hollow but fatal juice can hold a million Suns ok so so when do you say something's big and huge so I just I try to but now we're at the limits and I get to say this is an awesome number of elephants to fit into a thimble ok so now you go denser than that this thing collapses into a black hole and no matter the size of the black hole it's it's going to eat anything that comes near it so earth would slowly sort of what happens if you drop the black hole earth and the black hole will drop towards one another ok and earth will begin to funnel down towards it and so basically earth will begin to crumble as it gets ripped apart and it gets stretched spaghettified it's the act of spaghettification that occurs because the black hole is small and what it's eating is large that's what happens in a spaghetti machine is a tiny hole in a big blob of dough and at the end it's a spaghetti stream so it would not be pleasant it would probably happen very fast faster than you can communicate this information to the other side of the world so just enjoy it as it happens that so it's a one-way we're pretty sure we've got the inventory of black holes figured that this is not the most likely way to die but it'd be an awesome way to die at whether this this this lipping apart into a strand the two things are happening is ripping you head to toe earth head to toe and the funneling is another interesting feature because this space-time that it occupies is this tiny little narrow funnel essentially and that's where you get that's the concept of spaghettification and I wrote a book death by black hole oh she has the book right behind you saying yes death Vanna White thank you for showing displaying and in there I described in to you in detail what would happen if you personally fell into a black hole and yes it's a one-way trip but it's awesome and it's my choice of death like I want death well I said I want to die by black hole if I had the choice but it's much better getting hit by a bus all right it's a one-way trip and you get to do experiments all the way down thank you all for your attention it's keep it going here thank you thank you thank you so much dr. Tyson just phenomenal this was awesome thank you all for being here we do want to encourage you to talk to your members of Congress people that you know we'd love to have their help on the caucus we'd love to have your help on the caucus as well this is important and we've got to tell this story so thanks for being here have a great afternoon again dr. Tyson thank you one morning round of applause for dr. Tyson thank you this has been a presentation of the Library of Congress visit us at loc.gov

Channel: Library of Congress

Views: 351,958

Rating: 4.8310237 out of 5

Keywords: Library of Congress

Id: joARXZagTuM

Length: 102min 58sec (6178 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/underwatr_cheestrain]

Honestly, I could listen to this man speak 24hrs a day.

[u/dont_ban_me_please]

How did I not know about this? Damn you /r/neildegrassetyson , you let me down.

Anyways thanks for the old link.

[u/draconic86]

Currently watching it, not bad! Thanks! :)

[u/cheecharoo]

Such a charismatic and powerful speaker. I'm half way through. Thanks for the link.

[u/draftermath]

Republicans in Congress: what is Science?

[u/jsheradin]

Awesome, definitely worth the watch.

[u/backstept]

The whole time I was thinking "Don't step on the old magazines!"

[u/[deleted]]

Why couldn't it be as simple as NDT just running for president?

[u/usmcplz]

Neil deGrasse Tyson: The Chuck Norris of science.