Neil deGrasse Tyson Answers Science Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

so I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson your personal astrophysicist and I was invited in with these fun props like inflated planets to answer questions your questions about the universe so bring it on [Music] questions from the internet I got one here from Cain Jackson how many stars are born per year how many died well it's about a hundred a year in our galaxy we've had like a stable amount for the last several billion years and where you calculate that is we have about a hundred billion stars in the galaxies and universes ten or so billion years old about a hundred a year maybe ten and a hundred a year so you got it next up from Maccabees dude love questions that begin with dude there's literally a quark called strangeness because nobody freaking knows what the hell it's doing but what is going on damn I hate physics that's not a question we have quarks named up-down bottom top strange and charmed we don't see them directly we can't tell you what we can't show you a photo of them so they're just placeholder words for them so just like just get used to that all of quantum physics transcends our personal life experience so to describe it we have to sort of invent words one of them is just strange that doesn't mean we can't describe it and know what it how it behaves in and of itself and with other quarks so don't put too much meaning in the word itself it's the idea that matters next Jordan is it just a coincidence the two major hurricanes a spreading wildfire and now in 8.4 magnitude earthquake followed the solar eclipse yes by the way there's solar eclipses every 18 months or so find something to happen there and you want to blame it on the eclipse okay go ahead people did that for millennia no no what do we have here a dagger a p.m. if dark energy makes the universe expand it makes it might make more or new space can we use that space to make dark energy um I I don't know by the way dark energy is not so much making us expand we were already expanding it is making the expanding universe accelerate that's what's going on evidence shows that dark energy is not being created in the expansion of the universe so I think the answer to this is no but if one day we could control dark energy in a lab maybe we might discover interesting properties in its relationship to dark matter I don't know to be determined watch this space next up on Twitter charles william johnson if the Higgs boson etc forms an essential part of reality which it does why can't it be found in our front room or all around us there's certain parts of our fundamental reality that you only gain access to under certain conditions of pressure and temperature and energy you don't experience a proton in your life but it's a fundamental part of nuclei that make up the atoms that comprise your body so just because you don't see it feel it touch it taste it or smell it does not mean it does not exist and part of the entire purpose of why we have science at all in particular the methods and tools of science is to decode that which is true about nature that otherwise transcends your sensory perceptions that is what science is you wouldn't need the tools if our brain sensory system accurately decoded the world around us but it doesn't and that's why science tries to find any way it can to remove your brain ie R nose mouth touch from the operation and the more we can successfully do it the less bias shows up in the result just get the human out of it so yeah reality is not what you perceive it's what the methods and tools of science reveal next up Wow across the universe is a musical I don't know is it I love musicals if it is I'm embarrassed that I haven't heard of it but it ought to be seems to me the universe would be really good next Marilyn Baker what is a quantum particle is it like say a quark where's an electron what quantum physics is the study of everything that matters on that scale electrons quarks neutrons nuclei themselves atoms themselves molecules themselves there is no understanding of what they do without quantum physics that's how small particles roll in this world hope that answers your question within these hundreds of newly confirmed exoplanets how many are possibly habitable by the actual scientific method we have so you look for exoplanets planets orbiting other stars some fraction of them are in the Goldilocks zone not too close if it had liquid water would evaporate not too far they haven't had liquid water would freeze now you can calculate what that is for any star and so there's a subset of all the thousands of exoplanets there's a few hundred that orbit in the Goldilocks zone life as we know it could thrive there haven't found life still looking for life but it could thrive there by the way there are other sources of heat sources of heat from tides that are created from the main planet Jupiter for example on to its moons so there are moons of Jupiter Jupiter's way outside the Goldilocks zone the moons of Jupiter are kept warm by this sort of gravitational massaging it's called tidal heating tid Al tidal heating so you might have life as we know it on the moons of planets that have tidally heated those moons so that opens the net forecast a much wider net in a search for life in the universe I'm not sure if anyone has asked or answered but I'm curious where was Neil Tyson for the solar eclipse hopefully it was a clear sky thank you for those warm wishes it was a state secret where I was right up until the Eclipse I was at deadwood lookout 7,200 feet up in the mountains of Idaho checking out the total solar it is the universe expanding into a space bigger than the universe itself is there a clear limit to the expansion so yeah we're expanding but if that's what we define all of space to be then there's higher dimensions into which this is happening in principle you can go outside of our universe and look down on it or up to it but then you're in another dimension so we don't have access to that dimension so we're stuck we did dimension you're given three spatial one time dimension get over time for just a couple more whatever a Donnie yell if aliens exist how do I know I'm not one well if you visited another planet with life you'd be an alien to them clearly you're probably not an alien because you share all the same organs in the same place with the same biochemistry and highly common DNA with the person sitting across from you and everyone else walking this earth you have DNA in common with yeast cells with an apple with oak trees so that's some of the best evidence we know that you yourself are not an alien Jacob Warren you all believe in quantum mechanics or a theory of relativity which one is better you don't have that choice they each exist and work and make predictions that are verified they're both kind of crazy but they apply to reality now it turns out we already know the limits of relativity it can't describe the center of a black hole so we know relativity will have to be extended or modified in those extremes to understand that quantum physics quantum mechanics it works every single place we have ever applied it every single place so in that regard it is the most successful theory of the universe that has ever been put forth it could be possible that in the future quantum physics will subsume relativity entirely to get you to those singularities the center of the black hole and the beginning of the universe but right now they both work and we're completely happy with them last one naphthalene Twitter so the theory of relativity the prediction of the effects gravitational fields in space than peace I think the rise of science has promoted greater peace and prosperity in the world certainly prosperity and often where there's prosperity there's less of a need to take your neighbor's stuff if you look at the era of science and look at the kinds of wars people fought and what fraction of people would die in a war of a culture in spite of even these aberrations such as the first and second world war a much smaller fraction of all humans died in those wars than who died in tribal wars if you go back thousands of years you could lose a third of your men fighting in a battle just to gain access to a property that does not happen in organized war no war is good of course but it may be that science as a path to prosperity and health will remove many of the reasons why we ever had war in the first place so a theory of relativity has another branch physics science in general peace yeah peace yes so very impressed with the cosmic curiosity out there keep them coming and as always keep looking up guys know about this especially a thermometer it's a closed system in this air in here room temperature is generally cooler than your body temperature this is why we have to eat continuously as warm-blooded creatures to maintain this temperature difference we're basically 100 degree organisms right air is 70 degrees so if I warm this air then [Music] cool

Channel: WIRED

Views: 6,636,154

Rating: 4.9099598 out of 5

Keywords: neil degrasse tyson, tech support, twitter, ndt, startalk, universe, universe questions, universe question, questions, twitter tech support, neil degrasse tyson tech support, neil degrasse tyson twitter, neil degrasse tyson science, neil degrasse tyson questions, question, dark matter, science questions, questions about the universe, science information, neil degrasse, science support, cosmic support, science, answers questions, wired, wired.com

Id: JcI8yn7xQWo

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 03 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/mscott8088]

What thing? The thermometer?

[u/Greycloak42]

It's called a hand boiler.

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