Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Mercury in Retrograde

Chuck is that time again oh you say oh it's explainer time oh it's later time I thought it was performance review or something oh you know the principal's office so what we got here is every now and then the planets mercury in particular seems to get all the headlines goes into retrograde oh my goodness I used to go out with a girl who used to say that her communications are all messed up because mercury is in retrograde and so the emphasis there is used to go out it's true it's true so I just thought I spent a few minutes explaining for what ritual grade is is that so wrong so here's here's what's going on through most of human history human civilization prescience as manifested by methods and tools and experiment and hypothesis okay that goes back only about 400 years so before them the world was what it looked like to people and it or what it felt like to people and the urge to test an idea wasn't really a thing yet this is how you can get Aristotle to say that heavy things fall faster than light things in proportion with how heavy they are so if you have two rocks one is ten times as heavy as the other do it fall 10 times as fast he just said that and everyone believed it and it never occurred to anyone to test that to test it they take a heavy rock and a light rock and drop them they will fall it exactly the same rate and hit the ground at exactly the same time so this experiment did not require a grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct so I cannot overstate the importance of of the value of a hypothesis and an experiment to verify it and what role that played in in catapulting civilization forward so Aristotle must have been a very charismatic person because he's just you know just like you know if you have a rock and you have a smaller rock that's about ten times he said you know that the bigger 100 10 times faster believe me right so yeah it's just well he was influential everyone knew he was smart he's unimpeachably smart right so so there you have so now here's the thing if everything is what it looks like then if you look up at the night sky earth is in the center of the universe okay it's clear that that's the case this Sun rises over there and sits over there and the moon rises and all the stars rise and set the Bible you know it is it's earth is like not subservient to the Sun in the birthers like there and later on you create the Sun in the moon okay so if you look at the time sequence as described there so in Genesis in the opening phrases so that had great influence on public's belief and understanding of the world so we're in the middle of things okay so then the Greeks notice well anyone who looked up would have noticed that not all the stars are just stationary there that is some stars move against the other stars okay everything rises and sets but there's some objects that move what are those objects that group the Greeks call them Wanderers okay because they just moved and by the way if you call something a wanderer implicit in that label is the statement that you don't know what the hell they're doing right yeah they're just wanders they're just wandering okay so let's let's count the wonders there is mercury we have Venus Mars Jupiter Saturn the Sun and the moon these are the seven Wanderers and wanderer in Greek translated is planet s that's where we get the word planets there you go okay and so back in ancient times there were seven planets the Sun and the moon included that all went around the earth and do you trace the names of the seven days of the week to these seven planets mixture of Norse legend Germanic and Roman gods but they all correspond ok point is if you're at the center and everything is moving around you it's odd if anything ever decides to slow down stop and then go backwards forgot something it's like what what are you doing you're Jim you what are you doing ok all planets all planets have this motion at some point in their orbits relative to ours ok it just mercury does it more often than the other so there's more occasion to speak of this happening with mercury than with others the point is if you think they're moving against the background stars and you're in the middle of it all right you're gonna come up with a word for this and your word is retrograde you think the thing is moving backwards right do you think it is so why not have a word for it you think the Sun is actually coming up above your horizon so you have a word for that it's called sunrise you think the Sun is disappearing behind the horizon in the West you're gonna call that sunset there's an entire vocabulary we have that is pre Copernican Copernicus put the Sun back in the middle of the known universe it's there's a hope that we retained to this day retrograde is one of those words so it's not that complicated now that we know in the era of science and experimental testing that the Sun is in the middle of the known universe all planets now the Sun is no longer a planet it's that it's the star that we go around so that got taken off the list the moon is not a planet because it goes around us that got taken off the list so we went from seven planets to six okay so how did we do that we lost the Sun in the moon but the planet count gained what us right gained earth began earth right yep because earth is now just one of these others that goes around the Sun so the planet count has not been constant you know the history of civilization yeah well from seven down to six we lost two gained one so here's earth just one of one of the planets are the launderer so what does this look like if you are in this sort of race track around the Sun the laws of gravitation show that planets that are closer will orbit faster they not only move faster they complete a year in their lives faster than planets that are farther away from the Sun than us okay so here we are and here we see mercury catching up to us on this side of the Sun moving against the background stars it overtakes us and now it's going around the back stretch so when it overtakes us it goes back that it's good it looks like it's going the opposite direction as it passes us and goes around the Sun it looks like it slows down stops and goes back you don't see this in three dimensions on the night sky you just see a line trace its way back but this is just the natural thing that any one of these planets will do and in fact one of the retrogrades for the outer planets is earth going around the Sun okay we go around the Sun and our angle of view on it changes in such a way that it looks like they went backwards so the retrograde motion for the outer planets is because of Earth's motion and the retrograde motion for Venus and Mercury are because of their motion and it's all because of what it looks like to us and it's no different from you being like you've ever been on a bus or in a train and is another train right next to you and then and then you start moving but it's really smooth and it looks like the other train is going backwards yes right you see you've seen this all right it's not actually going backwards you are overtaking it okay that's how that works that's cool that's a great way to put it because anybody who's been on the train has had that that chance and it looks like the Train is absolutely going in the opposite direction like and who's moving which way and if you're sitting in a backward seat you get all confused okay so astrology predates the methods and tools of science so all of the astrological vocabulary and representations and language and and assertions traced to a time when earth was the center of the known universe and you would see planets entering areas of the Scott entering houses areas of the sky where there's a constellation because people believe that these stars were like put there for our benefit and they're they're just points of light on an inside surface of a of a dome an inner surface of a dome and that therefore they're real things but in modern science we shove these stars are scattered in space they're completely scattered they're not actual things so the hundred ways till Tuesday for why the foundations of astrology have no justification in a scientifically literate modern world but people still cling to it I think it's it's gives the gives them some something to do every morning it's calm read my horoscope yeah that's a way to offload accountability for things that are or will random things that are happening in your life it's a way to not take responsive so that way I see it it's it's great to have a reason the worst thing in the world for something happened with no reason it's like there you can't like there's something about being a human being where when to think that something is completely just random without meaning for some we can't accept that we can't accept it we're like kiddo no no no if was good then it was God was bad it was the devil that you got reason for it all because the Greeks had this because they had a God controlling everything right there the list of gods were all they were in everybody's situation my persimmon rotted right so so there's a God for that I've got an app for that we've got a God for that so I what's interesting is we study this in psychology where not only are we uncomfortable with random things happening without some reason that we can know and reach and touch the the the thing that happens and the reason that makes it have to be on the same magnitude right so it's not just some crazy person who kills John Kennedy it's it's the president that was shot oh it's happenin CIA and you need the Russians and any Cuba and you need this do you need an explanation commensurate with the thing that it is that you're trying to explain but of course Shakespeare had it best that said it best when he says The Fault dear Brutus lies not in the stars but in ourselves damn you William Shakespeare in York taking take what's the prob will you take responsibility for your own actions Wow yes so basically oh oh by the way oh by the way by the way mercury was not in retrograde during the corona verse but had it been then you'd have people say oh there it is there must have been and that's why you have explanations so in anybody's life which is sufficiently complex socially culturally financially there's always something good and always something bad unfolding that you can either ignore or embrace it or and match up with some other force that you want to then blame or credit for that happening and so what you need to do is look at the statistics if you really wanted to analyze you look at the statistics of good and bad things that happen to you all right and how often does that take place and then when it lands on an astrological event but what are the chances of that well it's a hundred percent chance that one of these is going to land on something is happening in the night sky and but think of the hubris of that that somehow the universe cares about you just think about that yeah with all that's going on out there have you seen earth in a photo from space is this dot the pale blue dot that Carl Sagan saying speaks so poetically uh yeah and if you you're gonna say all of these planets and all these things that dwarf do you not be earth is relative to Jupiter Jupiter has blemishes the size of Earth okay but you're gonna say that Jupiter in this constellation at this time of day affected you and you were born on this speck of dirt we call Earth that takes hubris and was hubris just thinking of yourself as being important relative to other things and usually without justification absolutely Wow so well with that I'm having that for dinner so I'm now I know you're batshit crazy so yes so there it is so there's always something bad and always something good happening and you always got something to blame it on if not yourself that's the real takeaway here blame yourself and by the way little children whose lives are not complicated yet they're not really into astrology they're inter exploring the world it's like when you get into middle school Oh does he like me does she like me or they were gonna be boyfriend-girlfriend are we gonna go out together is it but it don't have enough money is they like to learn how to drive well I get in an accident all that gets complicated and then that this is when you have the rise of astrology in people's lives right and you also have the rise of that little paper thing that you put together and pick a number and if you like me for everyone over 80 they remember no what are you talking about my son okay I'll open it up and you say the answer on it for you yeah I don't even know what they're called but she came home well not the other day so when school was still in she came home in one and she was like damn pick a number I'm gonna tell your fortune but they'd have to pick a color and then you put a number which is probably just as effective so yeah just let me end this by saying I think when people reach for things outside of themselves to bring meaning or understanding or solace and that's a real human need as a real human motion emotion and I'm duty-bound as a scientist to be to share with people who are curious what the objective truths are that the methods and tools of science have learned because that's the actual world we live in and so but I'd want to do it without giving people hope right you know the phrase luck comes to those who are prepared yeah and you have others there's one some coach a baseball coach there's some batter always blessed himself okay before he went to hat and the in the coach that works if you're a good hitter it's like funny it's you know it's just just you want to credit or blame things okay but I think at the end of the day you were seeding you were ceding control of your own life you're seeding your accountability your responsibilities and yes it's harder to shoulder those but I think in the end it's more rewarding because then you become master of your own destiny or a better master of your own destiny than you ever would have been for not having done so Wow all right we gotta call it quits there all right Chuck as always thanks for doing this with me or all right Neil deGrasse Tyson here your personal astrophysicist okay [Music]

Channel: StarTalk

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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, Chuck Nice, mercury in retrograde, ancient Greeks, planet, scientific method, experimentation, hypothesis, Earth, center of the universe, wanderers, astrology, universe, what does it mean when mercury is in retrograde, mercury retrograde, mercury retrograde june 2020

Id: VXQh1xFce7s

Length: 17min 58sec (1078 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 30 2020