StarTalk All-Stars Live! – The Science of Star Trek

this is Startalk welcome to Startalk I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson your personal astrophysicist and tonight we're featuring our spate of Startalk Allstars led by Charles Liu a friend and colleague and he's our geek in chief with all things obscure and all things geek especially as it relates to Star Trek this 50th anniversary or the first run of the series I'm old enough to remember back then I remember sort of celebrating what that world was little discs that had data on it you put it in a box and and information would come out the other boxes where hot food would come out instantly you know these things that were we're in so far distant future you you can barely imagine that they'll ever occur I also tried to had pretty strong grip at the time I tried to grab people's shoulders and paralyze them the way Spock did never worked so that's the only part of that I didn't believe that and the fact that doors would open automatically I thought that was an impossibly far prediction for the future how can a door possibly know that you're walking up to it he can never know that so anyway y'all have a good time tonight and start talking all about learning science in the context of pop culture that's exactly what's going on so I leave you in good hands I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson signing off as always bidding you to keep looking at I am Charles Lou I am an astrophysics professor at the City University of New York's College of Staten Island and this is Startalk Allstars live this is our first live all-star show and we're really excited to do it here I cannot think of a better place to do it than here at the Star Trek Mission New York on the 50th anniversary of the original series of Star Trek so thank you all for being here we can't wait to hear your questions and your comments but right now let me bring on our wonderful panel joining me tonight first as my comedic co-host mr. Chuck nice Chuck how are you buddy I am well thank you and thank you all for coming it's a pleasure to have you all here and we certainly appreciate Neil beaming in from his Catskills hideaway Catskills did you see all those trees in the background I don't know where he was hidden much yeah there's only the Catskills could there be that many trees absolutely there's only two places in the world where there could be that many trees the Catskills is one of them Central Park is the other maybe I was actually thinking Brooklyn Park you know oh man okay all right good well Chuck you are a regular on Startalk we've done many episodes together right and now we can add all-stars to that list absolutely and it's very lot of fun right yeah okay and you know you may not realize just how much Trek this gentleman has flowing in here well we don't need to go into that yes we do no yes we do yeah I'm a huge truck huge trekker I've been a fan since as long as I could remember and I I feel very good that I'm in a place where I really don't have to hide it you know it's very cool yeah you know we have two wonderful wonderful science guests today the first one a friend of mine whom I've known for many years my first time sharing a microphone with her from Columbia University please welcome summer ash summer I know is this great in addition to being on Startalk snoo Allstars right and being a host to Startalk all-star host you're also an astrophysicist a director of outreach for the Department of astronomy at Columbia you're a freelance journalist and in-house astrophysicist for various cool television type things a blogger a writer a Twitterer and you totally understand what it means when we fuse science with fiction and put it on television I hope so yeah if it's not you I can't imagine who else would do it I'm so glad that you're here thank you thank you and all the way from Canada William Shatner's home country may we add there is someone that I just met today I'm very very very happy to introduce you all to the person who wrote this book Star Trek the official guide to our universe and roof is akos Andrew thank you so so much for coming in the audience may or may not know already that he is the night-sky guy you are a TV broadcaster Andrew a syndicated radio columnist you write the weekly starstruck column for Nat Geo news and since William Shatner wrote the foreword to this book I think it is only fair that you spend a moment describing what is now the official guide to our universe from the Star Trek perspective let us know what you were trying to tell us and then we'll get right into science from that book and others go well yeah I mean this is a labor of love for me I mean I'm I am in heaven with this because I guess about ten years ten years I've been working on this thing two years of you know hard labor watching Star Trek episode Oh hard labor yeah movies you know scene by scene and and you know what I've done here is cherry picked episodes and movie scenes that really reflect I think the the science of the real science so well particularly astronomical science my my kind of my schtick is really showing people the night sky that's what I've been doing for I don't know about 30 years now and since I was a little kid I've been taking out a telescope and trying to get people excited about the night sky you know like grab them and say that would do it what you just did there made me want to grab a telescope and get out there see that's what I'm talking about that's so that's really what I love about this and this book sort of I guess what I like to call it is a Vulcan mind meld of two of my passions right this stargazing and Star Trek coming together in one-one volume here you are thoughts to my thoughts Andrew threw a mine to his mind where is yelling all c'n in the sky way air is Cardassia Prime where is Romulus where are these things what is the answer to this question you guys are the astrophysicists the answer very basically is they're all in our Milky Way galaxy you've heard of the quadrants we live in which quadrant alpha right and what is in the Gamma Quadrant the Dominion what is in the Delta Quadrant Voyager well no they came home they came home they came the Borg mm-hmm so what the heck is in the beta quadrant does anybody know Rigel hmm what are these quadrants summer what is a quadrant in a galaxy what is the quadrants of our galaxy and why do we only go in our galaxy why don't we go beyond our galaxy because it's huge compared to us is it is it huge or is it huge it depends on if Donald Trump is talking about if Trump says it then it's huge well Bernie also said you that's huge huge okay that's the Brooklyn huge everybody remember we are in New York after all yes just tell us what is the size of our galaxy and how come even with warp being able to go up to nine point four when we're trying to chase down the Borg in the best of both worlds part two why don't we exit our galaxy because we can't even extra exit our solar system yet the galaxy is so big it's at least a hundred thousand light-years across we're about two-thirds of the way from the Sun so each each half of its about 50,000 light-years and the farthest that we've sent something right now is one of the Voyager probes and that is pretty much still around like what twenty three hours away 23 light hours of 23 light hours early a light day Wow so 50,000 years not happening and you know we could go up or down but that at least that's on the scale of hundreds of light years still so anytime first of all this is just a fun fact point of information anytime somebody shows you a picture of the Milky Way it's not the Milky Way it's a very nice artistic impression of the Milky Way or it's an example of a spiral galaxy and it's a picture of another spiral galaxy that we can see from our galaxy because we just can't even send something out to take a picture like that yeah you got to remember that we are in the galaxy right we are our viewpoint here from Earth is embedded within one of the arms the the humdrum suburbs of the galaxy right because you sort of like a pinwheel shape right so we're on one of the arms that are spreading out from the central bulge of the galaxy and we're embedded there inside this this arm and our view points really is only of a partial partial of the galaxy I don't have we actually seen the entire graph we've been able to map the entire galaxy we haven't mapped every single star but there are projects that are doing that so there's Gaia and there's a new one that I can't think of but Gaia is a project that is trying to map hundreds of thousands of stars in our galaxy and we can take pictures so actually one picture there's a one picture exception and it's if you see a picture of the Milky Way that looks like a strip that's basically a panoramic that somebody has taken from Earth and it looks like a dusty plain with stars and can't see through through the middle because there's actually four as empty as space is like the vacuum of space there's still a lot of stuff in it and most of it is gas and dust and it gets in the way and it blocks starlight from us when we're trying to look with optical wavelengths like our eyes but the Milky Way looks gorgeous from inside and I have to say I think we're in the prettiest suburb I've ever been in mm-hmm so really we are like little tiny fish in a vast ocean trying to map the ocean we would be like Nemo trying to find Dory a lot of toys with not with or without sigourney weaver's assistance I just love the fact that you're mixing mediums here so it's totally cool this is what we do on Startalk we mix everything so again Nemo's finding dory we are finding Vulcan right we're looking for Cardassia we're looking for Bajor all these wonderful places that supposedly exist and let me ask you the following if we find them how will we know that they are habitable what is the classification Andrew how do we know something is a world where actually there's something never mind the the you know sort of fictional way of saying Oh anything can live anywhere right which is true but non fictionally what do we need to look for to make sure that life actually can live somewhere on a planet well right now one of the big criteria out there that scientists use is looking at this habitable zone around a star right so this is what we affectionately call the Goldilocks zone right it's not too hot not too cold and on the surface of a planet that is meaning that how far away it is from its parent star so in terms of liquid water being able to exist on the surface so if if the planet would be too far away from its parent star then the water would basically freeze out on the on the planet right so this most recent discovery of Proxima be right those of you heard this Proxima Centauri is a probably the closest star to us a mere four and a quarter or so light-years away from Earth most recent studies after literally decades of people trying to find a planet around there seem to suggest that there is a planet there maybe one to two times the mass of our planet orbiting in what we might consider that habitable zone is there life there at this point I don't think we can we can just it's speculation right and we haven't really we have to remember we haven't actually observed the planet we haven't actually directly imaged this planet or where we're detecting the the effect that the it has on its parent star right in this case we're looking at wobbles of the star caused as planets go around their post star the star actually ends up wobbling because of the gravitational pull and tug of that of those planets and what's amazing is that we have such exquisitely sensitive enough instruments today that we can actually take those wobbles measure them and and understand like what how many planets are orbiting around that star what their masses are but to take it to the next level is what I think would be it would really take is understand like does it have an atmosphere we know that it's one to take in Proxima be a case we know that it's one to two times the mass of the Earth and with our understanding of planetary physics we think that it's a it's a it's a rocky terrestrial type planet so has a rocky surface someplace solid we could land on right but does it have an atmosphere we don't know that some are how do we find out whether there's atmospheres around other planets is there a technique or techniques that actually will give us that scientific handle on whether there's gases surrounding a planet yeah absolutely but it requires a chance alignment because so the method that Andrews talking about is making use of this wobble but there's another method that's called the transit method which is when the star actually goes sorry the planet goes in front of the star and blocks the star's light from us and we see a dip in that star's light but that can only happen if you know that solar system is in line with our point of view and in theory the stars and all of their potential planets are in random directions from us so not every star is gonna have its planets going between us and them but when they do the cool thing is that you can actually monitor this star's light not just the brightness but actually the content of That star light the metallicity sort of the spectrum of That star what type of elements it has and when the planet goes in front of it if there's an atmosphere some of that light goes through the planet's atmosphere and then that changes what the star light that we is and we can subtract one from the other because when the planet goes around the back of the star then that signal goes away so you can figure out what the atmosphere of that planet what elements it's likely to have and Chuck what would you do if you found a comedy club on Proxima B I probably would make sure they have air first yeah and then maybe I might take a booking no the first ever stand up in space Andrew you had something else that on first I just think that I'm so excited when I hear that the idea of being able to have this this chemical fingerprint of the atmosphere because let's take that to the next step if we could actually detect the chemistry of an atmosphere of an exoplanet we and we could tell what what's there imagine if we found things like methane or wait wait methane is like cow farts why would I be excited about finding cow farts cows are on the planet oh it's also the funniest planet let's be farts do make everything funnier right just last I mean it's it's just a rule yeah okay exactly think of it it's a potentially a sign of life right potentially and are things like chlorophyll mmm that wouldn't that be interesting or how about greenhouse gases or something like that so there could be some very interesting findings that could indicate very clearly that there would potentially be life on these planets wonderful and I just say that I think it's really funny that the nearest star to us is the one that took us so long to find a planet around it's kind of like when you're like looking for your glasses and you can't find them and they're on your head that is an excellent point yeah no I think that's a very good point sometimes the most difficult things to find are the things that are right near by but faint próxima be you were there all the time haha wait isn't there a song from the 1980s like that the search is over you were with me oh so you all are here thank you again for joining us for our star talk all stars first live show here at star trek missions New York on the 50th anniversary of this wonderful show Star Trek and everything has come as a result of it we're gonna zoom out a little bit now and talk a little bit about some of the science about the cosmos that shows up you've heard now about the planets about the earth about point now let me ask you about the universe itself and the first thing would ask you is warp drive we have to know about warp drive obviously the only reason you can get from one place to another in any reasonable time before the show gets cancelled is warp drive right so how can warp drive actually work does space-time actually warp summer it does well we've cleared that up now you can move on with your lives because warp drive works oh she says base warps but can we use it to drive because I want to mention a Mexican physicist in a little while that came up with something but please summer first tell us how does space warp exactly oh so space warps because like Charles said space and time are kind of this thing together and they're this fabric of the universe we say but one of the things look props yes so here's the fabric of the universe and anything in the universe that has mass is gonna warp that fabric by the way the fabric of the universe is a fine silk just in case you were wondering it's about 70 cents a yard yeah so things with mass actually this is what Einstein theory of gravitation tells us basically says that because space and time are one an object in in space time warps the area around it and so that's why objects that get within a certain distance of something more massive than them will fall towards it and eventually go into orbit around it and so this will happen I mean you're warping space right now yes certain gravity on everybody else I thought I suppose that thing as personal space but none of us are big enough to outweigh the other thing that's attracting all of us which is the earth beneath your feet so it's warping space so we're stuck to it all right well that's nice I have here by the way my original series era communicator right which we will use as a prop to define gravity okay so there is the communicator warping space and time so why can't we just use warp drive why can't we just warp space and time in front of us and before us and just drive on through I don't know do you have enough mass just sitting in your storage area to do that so we need mass that's my Chuck I'm fresh out of mass but thanks man Andrew got any mass you can spare no I need or everything I can get how much mass precisely what we need to warp space in time to such an extent that we actually travel okay well let me tell you something that somebody said in about 1994 there was a Mexican and physicist named Miguel Alcubierre a Miguel Alcubierre I wrote a paper speculating that it might be possible for something in a bubble to move faster than the speed of light through space even though you cannot move through space at or faster than the speed of light if you have any mass at all Alcubierre a hypothesized that the mathematical equations of general relativity were flexible enough that if you could create an asymmetric bubble in space-time one part compressed one part expanded it would propel whatever's inside that bubble forward through space that faster than the speed of light or even slower faster doesn't matter right so that would be very cool yeah does that make any scientific sense Andrew it's theoretically possible but can we actually build a spaceship that would have enough power generate enough power to do that bend space-time well apparently all we need is some antimatter and a de list already need mm hmm is that a nice thing to do but in in true physics how much mass would be necessary would would a planet-sized object be enough to do that kind of warping of space-time Charles I'm an astronomer not a physicist that was very bones McCoy of you Jarret actually do you all know the difference between an astronomer and astrophysicist right when I am on an airplane and someone sits down next to me and says hey so what do you do for a living if I want to speak with this person I say I'm an astronomer and if I would rather be quiet and not speak with a person I say I'm an astrophysicist yeah that works every time but I know that you have a specialty in radio astronomy summer you understand things that produce radio waves out in the universe list they are cool can you give us a sense of say two or three such things that we have run into or by we I mean the enterprise X a b c d e okay yeah we'll stop there yeah well stars give off radio waves actually really yeah there's just not the brightest in the sky but like our Sun so any given star is gonna show up if you look at it with a radio type of telescope okay um and also I just want to clarify because this can be a source of misconception radio even the radio that most of us don't have anymore we have wireless we have Spotify and Pandora but the radio in your car the radio your old boom box for those of us that know what those are that radios light actually so your radio is picking up a light signal that's in radio frequencies and then it's turning it into sound that comes out of the speakers so when we talk about the radio universe we're not talking about picking up I mean we can pick up sound signs sorry signals that we can turn into sound but radio astronomy is looking at things with radio telescopes and you can see the coolest types of lights so you can see supermassive black holes and they look nothing like an actual galaxy so you can see a pretty picture of a spiral galaxy and then you put on your radio glasses and it looks like giant Jets just spewing out into space and shooting particles and hot plasma out there to like scales 10 times the size of the galaxy but can you pick up a classic rock station yes how about some classic extra galactic fm how about some classic surfer punk while you are driving an old starship through a whole bunch of drones that are heading toward a really really oddly gravitational Space Station how real was that how possible is it for those of you who haven't seen the most recent Star Trek movie Euler too bad sorry but is there anyone who hasn't seen the most recent Star Trek movie Oh No oh don't worry we haven't given up anything significant yet yeah okay yeah by the way just because you should have seen it by now Picard ends up pregnant sorry soomi right so that is a very interesting science that was shown in that particular space station right Andrew if you saw that movie you saw that people are walking up and down sideways left and right and so on was that some weird artificial gravity effect where can that actually happen in real physics that's a good question I will ask the non physicist astronomer person right come on summer you're a physicist as much as I am so actually I did not imagine a smorgasbord of weird things like going this way your escalator is going this way like an s cheryan painting and yet your hand is drawing your other hand while your brain is up here and the environmental system is spewing out this black stuff okay or not were you on anything when you were watching well the popcorn butter was pretty darn amazing I have to say it's true but yes tell us about artificial gravity is there actually physics - artificial gravity I believe there is so in some good examples of it are in 2001 hmm the spinning Space Station so the fact is that once you're spinning the you're forced away from the center of rotation and so you can put the wall there that then becomes your floor and I think it was also in Elysium dude and it was in interstellar um and so an interstellar they were like floating through the space station you could see the gravity change when they were going from woman come on man we need some atmosphere so is there a way to make artificial gravity the way you see it portray the most sci-fi without the spinning so the physics of the spinning of course that makes sense with the sort Intrepid of force but when you see a ship and it's just traveling and everyone is just not floating is there a way to feasibly create that environment no I am so sorry I questioned well okay I would love to have that well well what about gravitational waves that's a whole different ballgame yeah cuz we were talking about like warping space-time yeah and recently a very very big deal was made of gravitational waves can we not just surf along a gravitational wave and actually like travel where we own it how does that work actually what I would really like to get are the boots that Chatam Channing Tatum had in madera sending because as he described it they they changed differential equation slips so you can surf them which what's total sense right well it does to me gravitational waves are so Charles had this fabric of space-time right can I go to and gravitational waves are basically when there are two massive things that end up merging two black holes in this case so two black holes one was they were roughly both thirty masses one was a little higher one was a little lower many times the mass of the Sun yes exactly sorry 30 times the mass of our Sun and they were orbiting each other because actually most stars exist in binary systems our Sun is kind of an exception but we think two-thirds of the stars in the galaxy are roughly that I'm not sure if that's changed but binaries and a lot of times they they can evolve in lockstep or they can evolve one ahead of the other but you can actually get a cases where you have two black holes there was as the result of a binary at the end of their lives and they our warping space-time and they're actually losing energy so they're falling towards each other and then eventually they speed up speed up speed up swept and then merge and then all of space-time goes rippling out kind of like somebody threw a massive rock in a pond and so that ripple went through the earth and it was detected by two different observatories and when I say observatories in this case the these are not types of light whatsoever this is space actually stretching so these observatories LIGO it's called laser interferometer gravitational observatory are two two arms that are four kilometers long and at each end of each arm is a mirror and in the middle there's a couple different beam splitters and a laser and the laser is basically being split down each arm and bounces back off those mirrors and it's set so that when the light comes back it looks like everything's perfect they're exactly the same length but a gravitational wave passes through and one of those arms gets a little bit longer and then the light looks funny and the scientists can do the math and they can back that out this happened and the lengths that one of those arms stretched was the width of a proton Wow so and we detected that that's we're good that's a millionth millionth of a billionth of an inch on something that's more than 2 miles long and it was able to be measured this is what your tax dollars are paying for ladies and gentlemen and how cool is it that from that tiny tiny tiny little length we're like oh that's a black hole this big and a black hole this big and they're about in that direction and they totally collided it's amazing Andrew where is the nearest black hole to us oh my gosh well there's there's a few there's a few candidates and it's a very controversial exactly how far away but there one of them is near Sajid in the Sagittarius constellation uh-huh so you would be right now at this time of the year it's something that you would be locating in the southern sky late at night about a few couple hours after the Sun has set so you'd be looking low from here in New York and below in the southern horizon you try to get out of the city of course you want to see the and but and you'd be able to see and from a dark location maybe we are where Neal is in kills me and there is one that's a that's about six thousand light light-years away so what's neat is to think that when we are examining these objects right everything in space is so far away we measure we use the measure of light-years because that's how when we say something six thousand light years away means that light has taken six thousand years to reach us here on earth so we're observing that object as it appeared six thousand years ago but of course in terms of black holes and lifetime of stars they're there their lives are measured in in in hundreds of millions to billions of years so changes are not really that obvious unless we really get very exquisitely sensitive instruments right yeah oh it's wonderful I love babies by the way it is totally ok for that wonderful child to be making those noises are you doing a Donald Trump right now what the hell she believed her I love babies get it out of here like do not bring bring the baby up later I want to give it a Hello um I think one of the great things this is not exactly science but I think one of the great things about about Star Trek was in fact it's family friendliness right that there were actually children on the enterprise-d and things like that even though stodgy old picard was like you but III think it's a I think it's a great thing I'm really really a big fan of that what are you talking about I loved engine crossa yes he was a little child wasn't either mhm yes but yeah I think that's that's one of the ways you know and and of course there are panels here this weekend about the psychology and the sociology of Star Trek and how things have changed as well and I think maybe one of the things that has really helped is now there are children and workplaces and maybe that's because of the enterprise-d right wouldn't that be cool child labor you're blaming on the enterprise oh my god hey Apple it's ok have you seen the latest Star Trek you get in there and make that phone young man ok so let me just bring up two more things from the Star Trek episodes and then what I'd love to do is for people to to ask some questions of us things that we can answer from you about the science that has shown up in Star Trek a couple of times there's some microphones over here and over there so if you'd like to come up at some point and as your been modifying or thinking about whether we're talking about it here or whether you had this question in your mind for a long time and I just want to ask you two first Andrew then summer about two things that were mentioned in Star Trek The Next Generation which I still don't really know that much about okay so Andrew we'll start with you starting first in the Star Trek the motion picture and the word wormhole was mentioned right what the heck is a wormhole and then of course Star Trek Voyager is all about wormholes right it's like everything is a wormhole what the heck is a wormhole is there actually a scientific thing called a wormhole that actually exists I believe that theoretically right summer there is and some are you maybe you can elaborate but it's a it's like two black holes that are connected I believe in in in warping of space and time and there's this bridge that sort of allows you to travel very large distances very quickly yeah so physically it doesn't exist but theoretically it's possible is that what you're saying yeah and we haven't found any any sign of a wormhole no can I use one of your paper you may look it up oh yes please and I use your pencil Oh total oh here we go this is okay break up space-time again right let's just say earth and now we'll say volca drama yeah Vulcan welcome thank you ok alright earth and Vulcan we want to get from here to here this way we're all gonna die our next generation is gonna die the generation after that it'll be who knows how long but the secret way is this way Wow boom that was my paper dude wormhole oh man that's the theory that's what it allows you to do it allows you to not go the long way but to go the short way Wow but yeah and how about a hand for our very expensive visual effects here it starts off we spare no expense piece of paper and a pen science it just seems to me that it's a lot easier for us to bend ourselves and to bend space-time right but you know I'm just a physicist astrophysicist astronomer you know what do I know I just just my thought okay alright and let me ask you one thing and let's start taking some questions arise so please start coming up let me ask you the following question in the episode of the next generation entitled of the laws the enterprise is almost sucked into a cosmic string later later on in the series in these episode disaster the enterprise runs into a quantum filament and then as do you all know right counselor Troi's first to assume the bridge and then O'Brien is saying we ran into a quantum filament she says oh so that's like a cosmic stream and then oh resin no that's a totally different phenomena was I good that was okay right yeah so what is a quantum filament and are they actually different things do they actually exist I have no idea but the word quantum to me means really tiny yeah so a big ship running into something really tiny doesn't seem like a problem well my understanding is that they're just possibly remnants of the Big Bang when the universe was very small there was an imperfection in the actual expansion that universe at the moment of inflation or just after the Big Bang then magnified any imperfections that were tiny and turned them gigantic but I do not know so if any of you out there those of you who are in line waiting to ask questions you know the difference between a quantum filament in a cosmic string please inform us all and let's write a paper together thank you so so much ok so we are ready here on Startalk all stars live to take questions from the audience here at Star Trek missions New York the 50th anniversary it is a tremendous pleasure to be here let's start over here yes please what is your question and please feel free to move the microphone that will make it easy for you to use yes I wanted to know if it's true that in the future the transporter technology will become real great question Andrew you want to take a crack at that and then Chuck I want you to take a crack at that afterwards I can tell you I would never want to be in a transporter why I think that I learned I just even if they developed that I would not go I'm like I'm like McCoy I just hate those things I'll be damned if I get your molecular the the thing about transporters which I would say is that you have to get every single subatomic particle in its exact quantum state completely replicated right but there is this thing called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics which means that if you take a particle from one location and move it to another there is a certain amount of you don't know what's gonna happen no matter what so I personally think it would be a great idea to have a third head ok but I don't know that my hands would want to have become heads if I get transported so until we can solve the uncertainty question right and you've heard like oh the highs of the UH the Heisenberg compensators are not in flux we don't know what's going on and boom Picard becomes a kid right you've seen that kind of thing happening that's a very good question so at this moment I would say so the answer is probably not no no ok thank you for your great exam transporter going wrong is in Spaceballs Spaceballs oh no she's still enjoying the moment yes thank you yes your question please or comment hi how you doing very well thank you so my question is you mentioned earlier about the Voyager probe that was the farthest thing that we've sent out in space so far and I know that the motion picture feature is you know Voyager and that's but my question is about the real one where how far out can it go and still be able to reach Earth and will will be able to be in contact with it and receive signal and how do we receive the signal in the first place oh that's a great question summer do you know that great question yeah well it's got a radio transmitter on it it's actually not we can't actually send signals to it to tell it to do things anymore because it's just it's it's running on batteries it's too far from the Sun for any solar power so it's just gonna go until the batteries go and I believe there was either a malfunction or the batteries went on Voyager tube already cuz we're out I don't watch with that one yeah I mean it can go forever until it hits something which it's so small compared to things that's very unlikely and so it's kind of pinging us and it did it can ping us enough and tell us the composition of the space around it I believe because that's how we had the most recent news about it leaving the Sun's magnetosphere the sun's solar influence but not the gravitational influence so there's a hilarious comic it doesn't matter you know xkcd know yeah how do I not know it's one of the best ones is how many times has Voyager left the solar system because there's so many different ways to define the edge of the solar system and also Voyager has sort of gone through the a bunch of different transitional phases that we've never been sure like oh is this it is this it is this it and so now I think we think that it's confident that it's outside the magnetosphere but it's still not outside the solar system it is still gonna go it still hasn't passed the Oort cloud like that's hundreds of years away Andrew do you know how long the batteries will last I know that we receive the signals using our deep space network active decay right that's it's being powered by radioactive Jets right all right so I thought they were energized or something yeah yeah I think it's coming close to the end I mean then there may be another decade so they're 40 years out now so maybe 10 more years I believe the radio thermal isotopic thermoelectric generators were supposed to last 20 years and it's already after 40 so we got our money's worth apparently NASA does build them like they used to right thank you very much for your question thank you and I just want to add to the Deep Space Network because if you haven't seen it you should google it and JPL there's a guy at JPL who made it Jet Propulsion labs propulsion laboratory who made a visualization that's actually up on the screens in the Mission Control room at JPL and it has the Deep Space Network antennas that are on the ground and it can show you which antenna is talking to which space probe and it shows you whether it's talking we're talking to it or it's talking to us and if it's sending data or were sending data it's kind of the coolest thing out there I know that the Voyager signal is now weaker than one ten billionth of a watt by the time it gets to the earth so it's pretty amazing technology yes go ahead we talked a little bit about lasers already yes using lasers for my new tasks whether it be a laser pointer whether it be surgery etc yes how about phasers is there any scientific ability to take lasers or something to that extent and have them impact and cause damage to something possibly the size of this building the island of Manhattan etc are you an evil genius laughs just looking for ideas that's a great question one thing that I'm pretty sure is gonna happen is that phasers will not evolve from lasers because lasers are a specific kind of coherent light beam and you're exactly right they're their micro type things they're very precise whereas phasers clearly are like you know Deathrays of the olden days right but are there beams are there energy beams that can be harnessed in that way to cause damage on a physical level summer do you know Andrew do you have any ideas military DARPA I think are working on laser based weapon mm-hmm but the lasers that I add more interest as the idea of communication extraterrestrial communication using laser beams for that that's their searches now aren't there I think you looking at lasers powerful lasers powerful enough to to cross the cosmos and be able to communicate so wonderful there's also a science about using lasers to either cloak your transit signal or make it so it's clearly artificial and doesn't look like realistic so you can announce your presence if another planet is watching nutrients wonderful thank you we have so many people who have questions let's let's get as many of them as we can into that is wonderful yes sir over here and lasers as propulsion - oh yes that's true the pressure of the light can actually push something forward in the in in the no friction' environment of space that's right which actually would cause the problem if part of my next question we're actually true whenever they go through an asteroid field in Star Trek wars in cosmos even there was show the asteroids really really close together and that's something that's bothered me for a long time because it's just not true I was wondering from the panelists what's something from Star Trek or related that has bothered you that's really kind of scientifically inaccurate but makes for better writing oh great question okay can I just go first yes okay do it in the next generation episode starship mine at the beginning of the episode yeah Captain's Log whatever whatever whatever no sir the enterprise is at the space station so that it can have its excess baryons removed okay and baryons are protons and neutrons so if you're removing the baryons everything's gone everything well that's why if you get and the baryon field you die I know right but that was just so funny I saw them was like yo exit removing excess baryons from the ship and I was like look that the person I was watching the show with together at the time who happened to be an astrophysicist who got his degree from MIT we stared at each other and we died and my poor wife was like you guys are morons that's my favorite story thank you anybody well so I have one from the original series they because I just re-watched it again recently the episode nomads where there is a space probe yes that sort of has been altered in its mission but they bring it aboard and they are trying to communicate with it and so Kirk says if I show you like our star maps you know but you you can see where we're from and the star map was literally a poorly drawn version of our solar system that's not gonna tell you anything about where we're located somebody got that matter right okay yeah I got it you got it okay because it's from that episode exactly yeah okay and so instead though what they could do speaking of Voyager is that they could have used the Pulsar map which obviously had not been created at that time but the Pulsar map that's on the Voyager record that's on the Voyager probes is there to show where earth is in relation to the pulsars in our neighborhood of our galaxy because the pulsars have such precise timing that another civilization should be able to also have observed some of them and then like kind of triangulate eventually that's why that was put on the plaque exactly yeah the golden records they here we are how they can please find us take our natural resources that's a great idea hey you a lien life-form clearly superior to us because you can get to us why don't you come on over yes and so in 1977 in my home state of Ohio the WoW signal was recorded curious I mean it sounds like since it was discovered there's really no consensus of what it actually was and I'm curious if you guys have an opinion on that or what your what your thoughts has there been any advanced the literature for the WoW signal yeah there's been recently ice I remember in the last couple of years that they think it might have been a satellite or something a signal signal bouncing off us uh so it's more of a terrestrial origin that kind of reminds me of what we just heard in the news with the other alien signal right yeah from the Hercules constellation the the the planet about ninety four light-years away supposedly it's turning out that the latest information from the Russian Academy they put out a statement I think just a few days ago saying that they think it's terrestrial in origin unfortunately so all our parade sorry yes we're still not quite there yet right Chuck we just need a little more time to prove that they are out there and well they're out there you know they're just they're just hiding that's all you sure I'm positive I've spoken to them oh that's a home that's another episode I think we're good with that thank you very much yes question good evening hi there was an episode of next-generation yes that dealt with the idea that using warp drive repeatedly in the same area of space might cause a rupture which is kind of an obviously a comment on environmentalism but in Star Trek yes indeed obviously that idea would be so far ahead of us to even think about but is there any way in which environmentalism in our interaction with space has come up in any of the technologies and space exploration thing oh I I will say that when the Deep Impact mission was going to launch a chunk of metal into a comet tempel-tuttle I think it was yeah that's and then there was somebody that tried to sue NASA saying that we were messing up the environment the the vibes of the universe by messing up that particular thing I don't know that did anything come out of that no the person actually ran out of marijuana and gave up on the case but there is the idea forward contamination for planetary missions oh that's a big issue right that's a bean point you know you get some microbes hitching a ride on one of our spacecrafts and we send it to say Mars right this is a big thing of sending our our little germs there and then how do we detect life for real on these planets and we're contaminating the Cassini spacecraft when its mission ends where was it's not going to go just let it go right now they will not be pollution instead because they don't want to contaminate Europa right sorry Enceladus Enceladus but do you know they're doing the same thing with Juno around Jupiter that when it's done they're plowing it into Jupiter to not contaminate Europa so the answer is I guess we are environmentally aware of the solar system and maybe the universe thank you there's a NASA office called the office of planetary protection hey hey hey all right yes I'm curious to hear your theory you know science fiction a first contact was a realistic thing to happen in our lifetime how would you imagine that would play out what type of intelligence would we be dealing with and what would it take on Aaron to be able to really conceptually establish communication Wow I just want to tell you that on April 5th 2063 I will be in Montana ok I'm just telling you that it's gonna be a great vacation we're gonna drive out there enjoy Yellowstone whatever and then on April 5th I'm just gonna stand there and I'm just gonna stand there and I bet you you all will stand there with me right April 5th 2063 yeah actually is there a realistic scientific way to deal with first contact well I think there's a protocol that they've put together Oh for that and you know yeah that's right of how we would go about doing that but it's very controversial too because do we want to announce like if we and you have to remember if we do get a signal let's say we're supposing we're looking at radio signals now how far away these are I mean it's it will it's more more more likely a one-way conversation I mean they're gonna go high and that may take what if it's 500 light years away it'll take us the safe high that's another 500 it's like what kind of conversation can we worst remote delay ever Wow that's that big issue right yeah in terms of communicating so so actually yes a job a guy at SETI has that's called like director to Nisshin of message composition oh yeah are you looking for a job he's also deciding what we're gonna say that's great I hope he says no no no no but you know thank you great question yes so there was an episode of Voyager I think was the second or third episode where the Voyager crew finds himself in this time loop and they actually see and receive a transmission from themselves about like a couple of hours in the future yes and I was wondering how scientific is that phenomenon is that based on a real theory is that complete TV that's a great question your ears are awesome by the way well done um here's what I know about that and and then please add in if you understand when radio signals get sent out they get scattered all over the place right and if you have an appropriate environmental situation like a highly ionized cloud of gas or something it is possible to reflect some of that off of that and come back alright there is a time delay that happens as well for example around supermassive black holes if you have a kind of a graphite dust or other kind of dust that has a special orientation to it and then you have magnetic fields that hold that orientation they almost act like a side mirror sort of like spider-man's you know vision thing on the side so the light goes to you gets to you first and the light going out sideways bounces off and then comes to you later right that's a time delay thing and that's also this light is polarized so you can see all kinds of neat things that that are unusual so there is possible to get multiple signals like from various physical sources of doing that that particular episode might have had more details than that is there anything that you'd like to add to what I just said in terms of getting multiple signals or getting a time delay in what we had in the past I think we're pretty good Chuck yeah I think you covered it I'm gonna go with what he said okay thank you very much yes my question may be simple compared to some of the other ones no no question is too simple we love this can you guys explain stardates stardates stardate come on official guide do well you know from my book - you know I was looking at star dates and I I would I was confounded with how they came up with it it's all over the place and the last I found the most sense in this in the reboot series it was very simple it's the year and thought the day the day the the date of the year of the the number of the day of the year you know so in 2016 dot two hundred and you know 24 or something like that for the day of the the year itself but it's based on the you know yeah because the day of the year would have to be based on a revolution around our sauna so it would be yes so it's the date it's a day but but just don't say May or June but but my guess is that all had to be retroactive Lee continued read chondrite to make it work because I have no idea how they work either I think it's just stuff people saying stuff which is really cool so we we are basically out of time but but I want to get to all your questions so so let's get to all the questions that are in line and and then we will call it a a show does that sound like fun okay thank you all really we very much appreciate if you have to go you know you've really got to catch the line forty-five minutes of Star Trek to the Wrath of Khan 4k I completely understand but we've got some great questions coming up and we're gonna finish this up coming up here yes please go ahead question I'm not Italy impaired no you're not no no no no no no no no remember I'm a professor I have to tell you this nobody is scientifically impaired science is beautiful and it's wonderful and you are all good at it it's all a matter of whether you've got the training to write it down it's like you know I could be Swahili impaired right because I don't speak it but that's not because I can't do it it's just because I haven't done it yet that's where you are now in life always remember that okay always remember that thank you please ask you a question thank you I've always been curious in any way shape or form can the shuttle's going up or rockets going up mess with the weather oh it so happens I tend to notice that's just me when a shuttle used to go up because I live in Florida shuttle or rocket we had some weird weather so I always wonder like okay are they here you know that's a great question Andrew do you have any insight on that nope okay so I don't think that there is a cause causal effect there could be a correlation but correlation does not equal causation and probably weird weather you're more prone to notice and a shuttle is something you're also more prone to notice so it just might be sort of observational bias but there are people that do study sort of rocket plumes and they you know the exhaust of rockets and what they do to the atmosphere but it's a very local phenomenon and you know they dissipate within a certain amount of time and probably nothing on the scale that could could really affect strong weather patterns okay yeah no problem educated guess that that's very likely to be true and and because clouds formed by nucleating around things you can imagine that an exhaust plume could cause clouds to nucleate right so locally as says it may actually have a good effect so that's a very good question see it's not at all not at all bad question now go ahead and write your first science book here let me let me let me mention a couple of science books while we're at it we have to show this is available downstairs in the exhibit hall so please remember that this is Andrews book StarTrek the official guide to our universe okay and this is Startalk the book with Neil deGrasse Tyson alright and this will be available also downstairs and feel free to enjoy these these and many of the questions that we've had are in these books and we're here all day right yeah okay so let's get to the rest of the questions please your question okay so subspace is largely a fictional concept yes very interesting hypothesis that subspace discrete subspace layers are represented by the work function number so that you reach a threshold and then continue to the next layer and the energy goes up like like the seven layers of hell we've already kind of covered like going through wormholes and warp drive so I was thinking how did how would they justify that within the idea of subspace communication because in theory it which would take a long time for the signal to go and then to get a reply you know Picard to be sitting there waiting for a reply to happen yeah they kind of use the narrative device to speed up the production of having instantaneous communication so how would subspace communication work in a more practical standpoint if you all don't and you want to crack about something okay subspace if it exists and is basically our space-time or some version of our space-time right because string theory does allow for the existence of other space times in parallel with ours if you are going through these boundaries that get us from one space-time to another through say membranes or some other kind of string or structures supersymmetry or something like that each membrane has its own threshold but those thresholds we have no idea if there's actually any physics involved with them do they have actually an entropic barrier are they just so separated that they never come across or are they instantaneous under the right circumstances so in that kind of context I can see that there could be an effect but there doesn't have to be right and then the issue of total internal reflection or partial reflection between layers if that's how happens but this is something that I really don't have a good answer to but that's a good question though yeah because we're thinking about the district's played a big role in and start allows us to see a wonderful you know episode yes and allows those stories to move forward I mean that's the same idea with transport or system the warp drive it allows us to have these wonderful stories play out mhm mhm very true and and that's why we're all here right yes question over here I love your hat by the way I don't know if there's a Pikachu Trek coming up but I sure hope it is soon gotta catch them all out of all the ways that they've traveled in Star Trek what's your favorite way like what way would you choose and why great Chuck what way would you like to travel you know unfortunately there's no buses in space no I mean I to be honest I think when to be able to travel at warp speed would be just unbelievable you know to be in that position I mean just to be able because the bridge has a visual so can you imagine the visual of traveling faster than the speed of light and what that would look like as you're sitting on the bridge of a ship watching that go by you I don't smoke marijuana but I am puffing a I'm puffing away while that's happening just to trip out on that okay cuz that's got to be very very trippy yeah if you're faster than the speed of light though all the lights behind you well you know what now you just ruined my whole day oh sorry Oh Android you have a favorite travel I agree I was gonna say warp because for me as a stargazer you know everything is remote write everything up in the night sky are these little points of light and you know I take my telescope and no matter how big of a telescope I get I'm still remote and then to have this capability to go to these places and have ringside seats you know this is what I love about Star Trek since I've been a little kid is Star Trek allows me as a space geek to get these ringside seats that are otherwise impossible and with today's technology right a film technology we have these hyper realistic visions of space and just like with the new movie I mean obviously you know there's some some elements that go well that's not realistic or something but it allows me like the the the portraits of nebula for instance you know even going back to like Wrath of Khan and the Mutara nebula that has stayed with that is my favorite nebula it is its harem of you and by the way that's kind of mall on the Orion the great Orion Nebula which you can see every winter it's my I told them I gotta have that because it's beautiful and it really does look beautiful I mean look at the Hubble Space Telescope a so well and they play an integral role in many Star Trek episodes and so having warp speed to get there and to just hang out and see these these objects would be awesome wonderful summer oh I just like the part of the hanging out like I would just sit next to a window of any ship and just look out because that's like my favorite thing to do if I can go to a dark sky it's just sort of sit underneath it and just look at it my favorite way of travel would be to go through the wormhole right next to Deep Space 9 and to go to the Gamma Quadrant and watch all those swirly things go around that would be my favorite way to travel think of all the things you could explore things that we that we would not be able to see otherwise without having that transports absolutely so this is what I'm gonna do everybody I did say we're gonna answer all your questions and we are going to answer your questions but what we're gonna do right now then is are gonna do two things the first thing we're gonna do is do a an ending of the show for the podcast right now while everyone's here like big loud clap okay and then we're gonna get your questions and we're gonna do it a second time afterwards sound good all right this is how we're gonna make this happen ready so this has been Startalk Allstars you can watch this entire episode commercial-free on Startalk all-access summer ash thank you and Rufus acres Thank You Chuck nice thank you so much I'm Charles little enjoy the universe everyone thank you so much [Music] that was awesome that was awesome well done okay let's answer these questions and then let's do a real wrap-up okay but I know people need to go and I want to thank you all for staying he's really really been such a great great time and anyone else wants to move closer so that your applause is louder later please feel free to do that too okay yes go ahead oh wait over here yes please go ahead so the the gaudi locked zone is that unnecessarily living in to our choices of candidates for possible life given our observations with sea vents and the moons out in Jupiter and Saturn and how much gravitational energy that's possibly biologically you know useful usable are we limited by just focusing on Sun energy on the surface in the atmosphere Andrew brain do you have an answer to that then summer can follow up so in terms of what we're you mean look searching for life where the wife could be because we have the tubes down and the ocean they get no Sun energy to speak of right and that could be happening out on the exactly and that's yeah and and that's something in our choices the ability to see exomoons not EXO plan the moons of exoplanets is something that i think we're just starting to that's really a big endeavor there's a race around the world amongst astronomers to really be able to see it we theoretically think just like we thought exoplanets were around you know you know the time when Star Trek started it was a theory but now you know it's really but the moons you know around say Jupiter or Saturn but with the high density of binary stars you have all that gravity is energy does that possibly a better way to focus yeah I think I think what Andrew saying is that we sort of have to start with what we can do and so basically what we can do now is see planets around stars and figure out how far away they are and then start figuring out if they have an atmosphere and if they're in a habitable zone but you're completely right that as far as the most likely place in our solar system for finding life signs of life right now it's probably Europa and then maybe also Enceladus and so that shows us that once we are able to see learn more about these other solar systems that then we can start thinking about EXO moons and also just extreme environments in general because I totally agree yeah there's actually an astronomer at Columbia right now David kipping who came from Harvard and he's originally from England and he does exome ins so he's he's he's going for it yes go ahead I have a simple question what is the Galactic barrier the galactic barrier which theoretically happened in a couple of episodes and then also at the in the fifth movie the final frontier the the one we owe at all well never mind that galactic barrier was supposedly something that we could not penetrate unless we had some sort of tremendous magical energetic push through that barrier is there's anything physical to that barrier what did that actually come from something that might be physically true and we shake it only thing the only thing that I've come across is the the fact that there's a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy just like it exists and probably most galaxies that we see mmm these monster black holes that measure you know billions of times the mass of our Sun and they belch out amended tremendous amounts of radiations right all kinds of radiation so there's those kind of things but I don't think there's any barrier per se right Chuck no barriers not in my life I'm barrier-free quite frankly thank you thank you very much yes all right I have a fun question good what emerging technology or scientific principle would you like to see explored in Star Trek discovery oh wow what a great question right question all right summer you're thinking hard thank you okay we'll give Andrew this first one I like medical stuff that's such a hot topic today is all you know teak let's see where we could go with what McCoy had right you know in the tricorder and stuff and we're living in in a time where we have wrist-worn medical devices right and there's this promise of being you know non-intrusive medical tests you know I've heard now there's a work on even doing like a glucose monitoring without any Wow diabetics a lot of said oh I want to see that that's great yeah Chuck you know uh III kind of like the medical thing too I mean when you think about it even it's all in the news now but when you think about the EpiPen and its delivery system the first time we saw that was in the hypo with bones where he would just and was just make that and I was like as a kid I felt like man if only it were that easy just to get a needle like that would be awesome so you know yeah it's a pretty cool thing I was thinking maybe like 3d printing because that's sort of something that's already like implied in in that universe replicator but it's sort of just like magically happens but I think that we're getting towards some of that you know the very edge of the beginning of that and even there's a 3d printer on the space station and so the astronauts can print a tool if they need it or if something breaks it's kind of amazing maybe one day they'll be able to walk up and go tea Earl Grey hot oh wait thank you very much thank you yes I have two questions about gravitons graviton zhuzh you're not talking about that old 1970s Marvel super villain right graviton no not that guy okay all right as far as I understand it gravity should have a particle yes and would two things if when we find it for the artificial gravity on the ship could they be manipulating gravitons to to keep them down and second if we do find it could we maybe make a warp field sort of based on graviton so we don't need we could just create and so instead of mass you would manipulate the gravitons to create that bubble you were talking about I'll just put a little bit of a particle physics background on that question and then I would love for summer to give this a shot I get the easy part obviously so according to the current model of particle physics there are four kinds of what are called bosons these are the things that carry force they mediate between the four forces of the universe the strong nuclear force has something called a gluon the electromagnetic force has something called a photon and the weak nuclear force has something called the intermediate vector bosons the W and Z particles is what they are and for gravity their thus should be a thing another particle because it's a four students called the graviton but the graviton has never been detected even though the other three particle kinds of particles have all been detected and even though we know that gravity works so there ought to be a graviton gravitons have never been found and so this is the point where we can now speculate from real science into science fiction where that's what Star Trek is basing its what's it I think it's interesting that they've taken something like that that's in the realm of theory and they've moved it forward is it is it possible to move forward from here we don't know but they have applied that yes this wonderful adventure it's really nice so summer gravitons for artificial gravity or for warp drive what do you think I don't know okay but it's like I mean we we knew that the Higgs boson existed or in theory we theorized that it existed and we had to build massive massive machines to attempt to just find a hint of it so maybe we'll just continue to do that and hopefully we'll have another international international collaboration that will come together to find evidence of the graviton wonderful thank you thank you very much yes well I have several questions okay pick one oh just one of for now yes well do one second okay well all the questions were good but I'll do just do one this time do more next time okay they've been doing research about how how possible is the warp drive yes it wasn't using me and that's and all that stuff mm-hmm what are the latest news about that is it's still like something that's fantasy or is it gonna be real but anyone know the latest information from NASA the last I heard was it is still fantasy but nevertheless there is some theoretical framework that as summer has demonstrated earlier that there is a possibility of warping space and time so now it's just a matter of whether we can warp it for our needs those gravitational waves that summer was talking about earlier where space at time was literally rippling because of a collision of two supermassive black holes those ripples which were less than the width of a proton over a multi mile stretch in order to have created that much energy to ripple across space-time it would have been like having our Sun use its entire energy output that it would have shined over ten billion years in less than a tenth of a second so if we can control that amount of energy than yes warp drive is very very possible would that be nice yeah 2020 sure let's stick it on to NASA's decade-old survey plants let's do it yes go ahead thank you for your question hi everybody hello it's my first Star Trek on ever all right all right can I do a two-part question not if you want to piss that die off go ahead and do two parts that are really close to one another how does do one alright this is one thing about is one thing that you know I love Star Trek my whole life but one thing about it just hit me a couple weeks ago and it actually happened when I wasn't watching Star Trek at all actually watching Man of Steel you ever see Man of Steel when Superman arrives on the Kryptonian ship that blows odd and he's nagging and children is not used to the atmosphere but that stuff tell me more it got me know it got me thinking all right every crew in Star Trek goes on all these different planets they can't all have the same type of oxygen and atmosphere and things like that for humans to breathe especially not Kronos you see all dirty Chronos is my bad that woman is from Kronos I'm using salted much love with the Klingons I'll bet you don't like Klingon opera either so opera it's not too bad so easy a little rusty like do they ever explain how human beings could breathe so really I think the better question is can you classify how they determine planets like Earth being a class-m planet and the other planets being different classes because that's really what he's talking about because clearly there only beaming down to class-m planets so how is that determination made yeah well I think right you're right like in the Star Trek lower there are those classifications of the ones that have the breathable atmosphere and so in theory I think to some extent it's very possible that there are millions of planets in habitable zones because there's a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy that's true and if in theory we're finding you know potentially statistically says every planet could have a every star could have a planet so out of a hundred billion you could easily have a million and that doesn't even exhaust the ones that they've been to and all of these you could easily have a hundred million yeah out of a hundred billion yeah and the elements to that we're talking about like we've discovering water is ubiquitous throughout the universe we're finding them in nebulas we're finding them all over the place and very unusual plate very distant yeah even other galaxies so I guess the answer is although it is impossible that every planet has such breathable atmosphere it is possible that there are enough breathable atmosphere planets that we actually can just fill 17 seasons of different Star Trek episodes that's a great question thank you that does make make the whole thing does make so much more sense thank you guys you're welcome and sir and the final question yeah so this is a practical question but I want you to like give me an estimate hypothesize a little bit about it the core of Earth and by extension of any extrasolar planet that still has an active core radiates right there is radioactive decay is it possible for us in the future this is not too much of a Star Trek question for us to build sensitive enough radio telescopes so that we can detect extrasolar planets that way hmm so instead of using transit or effects or direct imaging can we use ranges I guess that the elements that decay in the core are different from what you would get from stars you know yeah a resident radio astronomer similar theory that sounds to me like that would be something that would work but I would think potentially it's the resolution of the radio because that would be such a small source and like I said stars will emit from the radio so it's how sensitive can you get your instruments to detect a difference from what you would expect from the star but they already are looking for planets also within an infrared because basically you can see the heat signature of a planet reradiating the heat that it's absorbed from its star and so in theory I think then the next step would potentially be that but it's just going to take a you know a huge leap forward in our technology so all you have to do now is invent that equipment and you get your Nobel Prize that's it you're gonna be my partner you're gonna have three of them well this has been such a wonderful opportunity here to talk with you all to geek out just a little tiny bit but also bring some science down to earth into our kitchens into our homes here into New York I think it's fair to say that this is the very very best starch Star Trek emissions panel that I have ever ever moderated and hosted so I want to thank you all very very much Chuck nice my co-host thank you so much for being so pleasure you guys are amazing thank you each and every one of you for coming out and spending time with us and Rufus akos author of the book star trek the official guide the universe thank you so so much for being part of this wonderful thing coming down from Canada for this summer ash my friend thank you so much hearing you on Startalk all-stars and this is the book star talk with Neil deGrasse Tyson which is available down there if you want to go find it please do or otherwise this is Startalk Allstars a live episode thank you all for being part of it I'm Charles Lou enjoy the universe everyone thank you so much [Applause] this is Startalk [Music] you [Music]

Channel: StarTalk All-Stars

Views: 6,236

Keywords: Charles Liu, Chuck Nice, Summer Ash, Andrew Fazekas, Star Trek, Star Trek The Next Generation, Star Trek Voyager, Deep Space Nine, warp drive, phasers, transporter, subspace, stardate, Alpha Quadrant, Proxima B, Miguel Alcubierre, Alcubierre Drive, spacetime, replicator, USS Enterprise, Voyager 1

Id: dfytKyFL9ys

Length: 85min 29sec (5129 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 08 2019