Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Nothing

Chuck we're at it again indeed we are this time I just want to talk about nothing oh my god I show up what's the deal with nothing we're doing a show about nothing all right that's you want to talk about nothing let's do this so it's official we're married now you know that right somebody hands you a birthday gift right and it's a box and you open it and and there's nothing in it you say there's nothing in it if it's if it's empty you say there's nothing in it correct yes and I'd also probably say again really guys again with the amp with the empty box thing you know I don't I get into your social personal family issues okay how your family members treat you that's another show okay all right so so of course there's air in the box but generally we think of air and nothing else as nothing right right there's nothing in the box but of course there's air in the box right and I think we think of air is nothing because you can't see the air at air is just molecules right we have oxygen molecule two oxygen atoms together make the oxygen molecule we have two nitrogen atoms together make the nitrogen molecule that's 98% 99% of all the molecules you are inhaling there's others a little bit of co2 trace amounts of other atoms and molecules but the main ones are oxygen and nitrogen and they are transparent so you don't think of it as being something but you can have another gas and they're like smoke you open up the box there's smoke in the box okay because you can see it so often what we sense or what we declare is or it is not is based on just how our senses receive the environment you go up to a window and so it's it the window is transparent well if you could if you could see with microwaves right the whole room would be transparent because microwaves pass right through the walls you know how you know that because you pull out yourself which uses microwaves and you get a signal even if you're in the bathroom not with my carrier oh you need special bathroom coverage it's trying to tell you all right so so huh how many molecules are there so there's about 10 to the 25th power one with 25 zeros worth of air molecules in a cubic meter that's a lot a little bigger than a cubic yard okay it's a lot of molecules that's a lot of molecule even have that that number has a name a septillion sep tell you septillion that's right so now you want to do better than that let's create a laboratory vacuum okay okay but if air is something more than nothing then let's get rid of the air let's go ahead and do that so suck it out suck it let's get one of the best laboratory vacuums there is okay so that can pump out the molecules and leave you with about 10 billion molecules per cubic meter wait a minute after you suck everything that's that's what kind of the best you can do with the best you could do you still got 10 sorry I'm sorry Chuck I took it from 10 to the 25th power to 10 to the 10th are we using the Dyson Dyson vacuum may totally kick ass we might do better okay let's call Dyson co-sponsor this this big yeah I'm sorry you're not happy with 10 billion molecules per cubic meter where we started with it's 10 septum okay sorry about that okay so is that nothing you might ask okay well let's forget laboratory vacuums let's leave Earth to interplanetary space the vacuum of space okay that's a thousand times less dense than the best laboratory vacuum that has about 10 million molecules per cubic meter we just dropped by a factor of a thousand molecules I'm sorry I didn't know you'd be that hard to please Chuck I'm trying to get to nothing we're on our way there oh by the way there is the very best vacuum there ever was on earth and it is it is the it is the track that the hadrons travel in the Large Hadron Collider in the CERN particle accelerator in Switzerland CERN cer in the acronym the Center for you European nuclear research okay alright and or research knew Pierre is France you know so they got to flip the order so alright so it turns out that vacuum is the best ever made and that's a better vacuum than in interstellar space I'm sorry interplanetary space so you want the the most nothing place in the entire solar system is in the tube where they accelerate the particles because they don't want the particles accidentally hitting some other particles when it's trying to hit the target that you have that's gonna probe the origins of the universe and looking for you know exotic particles that might even include dark matter but anyhow let's go from interplanetary space to interstellar space okay that's even less now we're down to a half a million particles per cubic metre okay that's pretty wild all right half only a half of 500,000 five million correct this is leftover it's a row meter it's a reminder that the universe this stuff in the universe all right and they're places where it has collected and gathered that's where you get stars and planets and people where it hasn't collected and it has a gathered it's much more scattered much more tenuous okay so that's interstellar space now what would you imagine would have less than interstellar space intergalactic intergalactic space because galaxies are gatherings of matter right so there it would be hard to find a few atoms of anything for every 10 cubic meters that's so but it's still not nothing I'm on my way there damn you the most impatient this thing only lasts 10 minutes and you can't even just we're all the way out into intergalactic space okay yes I am light-years away from home and it's like driving between here and like Vegas there's just a lot of nothing going on and I'm still at not at nothing though you're still not at nothing okay so now let's so rather than give real live examples let's give examples that we would imagine you could produce which is get rid of those half a million atoms per ten cubic meters just figure out a way to have not have them okay so now we have a completely empty box empty of all matter okay now we ask is that nothing yeah because there's nothing about sect quantum physics there's such a thing as virtual particles that come into existence and then go out of existence in less time than you can actually measure their existence and totally empty space is seething with virtual particles okay so the best nothing you can ever you can ever make would have no ordinary matter but would still nonetheless be seething with virtual particles okay Wow now let's ask a question suppose you could step out of our universe so that there's not even for X well the no matter and there's not even the virtual particles I'm willing to do that okay so that's there's not even nothing right so we could get lazy and just call it nothing nothing but I I think there's a greater nothing than even that and this is what I want to leave you that this is this is where I want to deposit you the grater nothing then you ready imagine you take away all matter and somehow configure way to where there's not even virtual particles right you would still have the laws of physics okay it's a region of space nothing if the laws of nature still apply inside that space so you're thinking of nothing as substance and I'm thinking of nothing as not even anything that is anything about anything so if you systematically remove all laws of physics all laws of nature then you have a region of out of can even call it space because space is a thing space can bend according to Einstein relativity that's a thing of space the fabric of space no matter what's in it will Bend with or without virtual particles it's still a thing right okay so if I get rid of all particles get rid of the very laws that describe nature then there's not only not matter there's not energy there no laws of physics there is no time itself there you go no time now Chuck put that in your box open it and now you have my permission to say there's nothing about nothing and what do we call that I'm gonna call it something what because it's the nothing that is something which is nothing you said like a twelve-year-old kid just something there's nothing there's something I think it's something there's nothing so it's just something separate that that's pretty intense to think about though because what where you got me is because no laws of physics now you can't even have time now you really there really is no thing they're a direct correct and you know you could take this one step higher and say the fact that I can describe it as being nothing has given meaning to the thing allowing me to say that it's not nothing because I can describe it as having nothing right so yeah so now that so philosophically right it's I mean it's partly a language issue partly a physical issue what does it mean to be able to describe something at all that is nothing that means you've described something that is a thing right now let me say let's not even have anything that you can describe right now you got nothing what now you got nothing and what do you call that see you can't call it anything cause you just contained it right you've just turned it into a thing that's a thing that's right oh man see that's pretty wild there you got it that is why oh so okay now for those of you who would like to now go smoke your marijuana this is what I am saying to you but for what it's worth there's one of the layers of multiverses because there's several layers where their laws of physics as we know them don't even apply at all they're not just different they just don't exist yeah and so that's another thing we'll talk about the multiverse in another explainer video but we got to go check the multiverse smoking weed that's not smoke weed yeah all right this has been yet another Startalk explainer video Chuck always good to have you Neil deGrasse Tyson meeting you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: StarTalk

Views: 952,237

Rating: 4.9225044 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, Chuck Nice, Explainer, What is Nothing, nothing, true nothing, air molecules, interstellar space, intergalactic space, quantum physics, virtual particles

Id: lcYPL3s2Mmw

Length: 13min 45sec (825 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2020