Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Flying Cars

[Music] we're back chuck yes we are i don't let this alone you know there's too much stuff out there that people i think that need some explaining that's you guys explain it to the neoliberal explaining to do i got it thank you ricky ricardo yes no that was actually my mother-in-law all right so i thought it was time to talk about flying cars okay well now that we're on the subject since you bought it up okay uh you and your kind all of you people okay uh what the hell where is my flying car my people yeah you people you know you people the scientists and engineers you science people that's true that is true no one will come up to the comedian and say where's my flying car exactly nobody's coming up to me and complaining okay you believe it man all these years i said we're gonna have a flying car and what did you do chuck you didn't do a damn thing no okay it's you guys who were supposed to have us in flying cars all right here you go i have an unorthodox account of this are you ready go ahead okay so first uh i we already have flying cars they're called helicopters okay um but you don't think of it as a flying car but it kind of is it lifts up goes through the air drops down they're really noisy notice and if the engine fails and the rotors fail on a helicopter it becomes a brick whereas if your engine fails on your car you just roll over to the side of the road so there are dangers there is noise there is well where you're going to land it how are you going to park it so they're practical issues related to it but that's not why i called this session with you okay okay i want to say we already have flying cars in ways you haven't thought about and here it is ready uh-oh this sounds to me like how my father told me why we didn't go to disneyland because we already been to disneyland because great adventure it's just as good as disneyland okay we didn't even go to great adventure and he's like well guess what hershey park is great adventure and great adventure it's disneyland as far as actually park has rides they all got rides you've been you've been to one you've been to a mall all right then i should stop now that one sounds like your father all right here it goes go ahead go ahead let's unpack why you want flying cars in the first place okay all right yes so i'm gonna tell you all right imagine a road that's only two lanes one in one direction one or the other so here you are you're driving and a car stalls in front of you right that backs up every single car behind you absolutely that's not wise no it is that's not good that's right it's because you're traveling in only one dimension okay you're traveling along a line the line has one dimension it only has length and you say to yourself let me be clever let's travel in two dimensions okay is that just on the shoulder of the road to get around exactly so instead of one lane road for you let's give it two lanes that way if a car stalls the traffic can still move that's it oh my gosh what an advance on transportation that is well i got to tell you the nascent stages of transportation development those people were really stupid no no they were very excited let's not just have a one-lane road let's have a two-lane road and then as this got good to people they say well let's make the two dimensions even bigger so now you have three lanes four lanes the 405 in la is six lanes plus shoulders on each side okay so if any one car is slow or pokey or stalled all the traffic can move around it fine so now we have so many people with cars we have clogged our two-dimensional system of travel right it's clogged so you say to yourself you're stuck in traffic i wish my car could elevate and then move through the air so what you want now is a third dimension yes okay so not for one dimension of one lane not the two dimensions of of multiple lanes you want the third dimension of space i love air the air above that's really what you're after correct that's correct okay because when you do that you're no longer in the traffic okay and you can just bypass the traffic entirely okay so okay the quick sign what i got to just say this what you just said is exactly the case because i happen to be with somebody who owns a plane and we went down the pacific coast highway on a friday night and there was nothing but red tail lights for miles and miles and miles and he was like this is why you have a plane okay look at those suckers okay so hold on but just to be clear you don't want a flying car to go from new york to l.a we have airplanes for that okay the flying car i think is entirely motivated by avoiding traffic yes okay i think i understand this correctly yes you don't say i wish i had a flying car to no to to go to europe no we have fast airplanes fine so let's get back to being stuck in traffic in the 12 lane 405 in downtown l.a so now you want to say let me go up to a third dimension yes that will solve everything you say to yourself okay so what you're after is not a flying car you're after a third dimension okay new york city has already done that new york city has flying cars it's called the subway oh come on man it's called that's what it is i just want my blind car to smell like urine so there you are stuck in traffic and you say let me go into a third dimension it is not above it's below so you go down to the third dimension and you bypass all of that traffic the smell of hobo p frustration and anger oh you you talk like hobo p smell different from your pee no well you got me there [Laughter] so my point is anything that takes you into another dimension is the dimensional equivalent of a flying car and we know this that's why the interstate does not have stop lights any road that crosses it goes into the third dimension to get where it's going so you have underpasses you have crossovers bridges right so that your traffic is not stopped i'm telling you society fundamentally has invoked the principles of flying cars without the noise and the danger of it wow okay that sounds very much like i know that this burger is made out of tofu but because we call it a burger it's a burger no [Laughter] no so so what the future needs is more bridges and tunnels all right so what do you think about the hyperloop then the hyperloop so that's that's for traveling longer distances like between cities that it would replace trains and short uh flight so i i have my skepticisms of the of the technology and to make it practical but if if elon is dreaming it up i'm not going to stand in the way of anyone who dreams about a future because even if it doesn't work there's other stuff that they're innovating to make it happen that could end up spinning off and completely transforming our lives for the better as this does anytime anyone has done it before so i'm not in his way keep going for the hyperloop it's so it's a tube it's a tube that uses interesting physics so that you can have very high acceleration at high speeds right much higher than a a a a train and it rivals the speeds that planes reach when they're going to nearby cities like new york to boston new york to dc or la to san francisco those distances are not so large that the plane would get really high and go very fast right so it doesn't it so it keeps a lower speed to do that and that's fine it works for you so i'm just telling you chuck we've already delivered you the flying cars and it's called the new york city subway system man no and you don't sound very satisfied by it i just i'm not set i want to i want to fly my own car and i want to be george jetson the black george jetson the black one effects how does that go thank you do that again let me hear it so so yeah and all right but a flying car they had flying cars they were like flying saucers really flying cars saucers with a little radio transmitter out the back here's the point have you ever heard a drone that you can hold in your hand uh hover in front of you yes you basically can't conduct a conversation with anyone else in the room because of the noise the propeller blades are making and that's the noise it's making to provide enough thrust to hold up a simple gopro camera okay now let's hold your ass up in the third dimension how much noise are those rotors making we still have the noise abatement problem that is not solved i'm going to say when it comes to flying cars hearing is overrated where do you what's what school of comedy will you trade the macabre school of comedy well now that's a very good point i never thought of it that way because the i i have seen these very small drones and you're right it is hard to hold a conversation if a drone is hovering and two of them you can't hear yourself so correct that okay almost every almost every youtube commercial or any other commercial where they show drones moving around and they're talking to you you can't hear the drone you can't hear the drone yeah okay so now let let me ask you this because they'll remove the soundtrack of the driver you can't have that conversation there's never been a drone shot where you hear the drone that's how loud they are you're absolutely right uh yeah you okay all right let me ask you this real quick because i know we're uh we're out of time okay we're out of time is there any way that in sci-fi movies that the earth's magnetic field can be manipulated to create flight because that is the premise behind all hovering vehicles in the future is that somehow they are able to take the magnetic field of the earth and just rest upon it in such a way or focus it in such a way that it can create flight okay so you remember compasses remember those yeah the needle points north okay remember that okay if you remove the cover of the compass okay so the entire strength of earth's magnetic field is operating on that little needle and it's got it pointing north take your finger and just spin it it'll spin okay yeah it'll go crazy it'll spin like a roulette wheel you could spin it like a roulette wheel which means the strength of earth's magnetic field ain't okay your finger can override what it's trying to do to a needle it ain't well they use the excuse no no no that that listen that's right there so the the strength of magnetic field on maglev's maglev's is way stronger than that of anything earth's magnetic field is creating the magnetically levitated trains right so then you would have to create that infrastructure in order to have that so there we go correct and i'll tell you something quick i was visiting china and the world's largest telescope there when we were filming for for um cosmos and the nearest large airport there is shanghai so i'm there and there's all these you know it's like any other airport it's big and airy and there's all these signs with symbols for things so you know what the bathroom looks like that symbol and food it's got a knife and fork or chopsticks whatever and so there it is and then in there there was a symbol i didn't quite understand and it was right next to like the bathroom symbol and the food symbol and i said oh my gosh that's the signal for the magnetically levitated train so a sign that china is actually living in the future in ways that we have yet to connect not to not to worry american exceptionalism one day we'll have maglev toilets that's that's the sign you'll see at jfk take that china as i float above my throne oh that's so that way your butt cheeks don't even touch the toilet seat i have no problem using public bathrooms because i use a maglev toilet that is brilliant chuck except you have to embed your butt cheeks with a magnetic uh you know you have to be magnetized somehow so you need surgical implants yeah we're still working out the details [Laughter] i can just picture this go to the maglev bathroom and everyone is just floating there above the toilet there you go right and we all have spectacular asses because of it that means it's time to end this explainer okay all right everything you never wanted to know about mad what what the hell were we talking about yes we're flying cars flights how do we end up with maglev toilets from flying cars i'm gonna tell you this i accept your uh explanation on the transportation aspects that we have conquered that part you know in the dimensions all right in the realm of dimensions we have conquered that yes i totally do not accept the idea that that's equivalent to a flying car i'm sorry i've been cheated your people have cheated me okay do you remember the hoverboard okay from back to the future part two i still want one okay however and then someone came out with a product they called the hoverboard except it had wheels wheels yeah all right and i'm thinking who are you fooling here this is not why you calling it hoverboard then i thought about it i thought about it go ahead the hoverboard and back to the future um it doesn't work if you ride it off a cliff it doesn't work over water it maintains a few inch distance above the floor the ground okay just like a skateboard so the hoverboard was not really much of an advance on anything it's like saying let's make exactly what a skateboard is except it's not touching the ground but you can't do anything different with it than you did with a skateboard so where's the invention why did you waste my time i'm just saying hey all right well you know what it's like a flying car that can only hover a foot off the ground it's not a flying car give me wheels no you got me you got you got that one right you're absolutely okay so i was initially harsh on the battery operated hoverboard and then i said it's doing exactly what the one does it back to the future and who cares if their wheel's touching the ground it's the same thing true true and and it makes for really good instagram videos where people fall and break their arms so again the macabre school of comedy that's from rich chuck i'm sorry yeah what's wrong with me today all right we got way over time here okay all right all right we good that was flying cars check so don't ever bug me about that again all right flying cars equals the new york city subway this way you're in soaked subways all right this has been a star talk explainer neil degrasse tyson here

Channel: StarTalk

Views: 153,323

Rating: 4.9353771 out of 5

Keywords: startalk, star talk, startalk radio, neil degrasse tyson, neil tyson, science, space, astrophysics, astronomy, podcast, space podcast, science podcast, astronomy podcast, niel degrasse tyson, physics

Id: 06RAHoj3kEY

Length: 17min 4sec (1024 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021