StarTalk Podcast: Cosmic Curiosities with Neil deGrasse Tyson

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- [Neil] This episode of StarTalk is brought to you by Storyblocks. Hello YouTube-iverse, you're in the right place, and at the right time to catch our next episode of StarTalk, a Cosmic Queries edition. (upbeat music) This is StarTalk, I am your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and we have a Cosmic Queries edition, but now it's kind of the questions, that kind of land in their own category, and so what do you do, when you put questions together, that belong each in their own category? You gotta kind of grab back, a kind of a Cosmic Curiosities, all mixed together, and I got one guy, who's a cosmic curiosity himself, Paul Mecurio. Paul! - How are you? - [Neil] Well, thanks for being on StarTalk. - Absolutely, sweet-- - I've been on your show. - Yeah! - The Paul Mecurio Show, multiple times. - Yeah, you were great. - Yeah, thank you. You say that to all. (laughs) - No, no, no, no. Actually, I didn't think you knew much about science, but I was surprised. (Neil laughs) You actually killed. - No, I loved being on your show, because you're curious, and your fans are curious, and I like being amid curious people, because then I can fulfill my prime directive as an educator. - I told my wife, that if I had you as a science teacher, I'd probably be doing something in science. - Really? - Because I do think, the message is the medium in some level, and the person communicating, and I had this guy, this big, hulking, bitter guy. He was in it 30 years, and he would smoke. - Bitter teacher, bitter teacher. - He would smoke, like, all right, we're gonna make a battery today, and I'm like, okay. (both laugh) - What an exciting thing! - I remember eighth grade, I remember like this is the worst, I got a C in chemistry, but anyway. The way, you, and I know, you'd come on with Steven Colbert a lot, and work on a show he just loves. - Right, right, your warm up guy. - Yeah, but he brightens up, when you come on, like in rehearsal, who are we having there? Oh, god, that's great, I don't have to do anything. I'll just ask one question, he'll talk for two segments. (Neil laughs) So, you have a big fan over there. - Yeah, that's excellent, excellent, so, you collected all the questions. - I did, yes. - These are questions I gathered from the internet. - Right, along with-- - They're not specifically solicited, because they're leftovers, really. - Oh okay. - This is like the leftover podcast. (laughs) - I'm a leftover guy, this is about right. - What did you wanna call this? A cosmic? - Cosmic catch-all. - Catch-all, yeah, the cosmic catch basin, cosmic trash bin. - Well, how about Paul's pathetic leftovers? - (laughs) Okay, Paul's pathos. - Yeah, exactly. - All right. - They all have mold on them and everything. No. - No, the people, they should be rewarded for asking questions, that fit no category. - Yeah, and they're very good questions. - There aren't enough people like that out there, who walk at a pace, that no one sees or understands. - (laughs) That's a good way of putting it. - No, no, there's a quote from Nietzsche. This is one of my favorite quotes ever. "Those who were dancing were deemed insane "by those who could not hear the music." - Wow, that's heavy. - Yeah. - I think, we should end the show there. - (laughs) We're done. - I don't think, anything's gonna top that. - Think about it, if you're looking through a glass wall, you don't hear the music, what are people, in their-- - That's so true. - They're just jumping up, and down, waving their appendages. - All these people having seizures. - (laughs hysterically) Seizures, and if you don't know, they're playing music, and you can't hear the music, you'd think they're insane. - It's definitely a good point, because-- - So, therefore I respect people, who think differently. In fact, one could define genius that way. A genius is one who sees, what everyone else sees, but thinks, what no one else has thought. - Were you always like this as a child? (Neil laughs) I'm not making a joke. No, no, no, because you're one of the most-- - [Neil] You're psychoanalyzing me, Max? (laughs) - No, no no, I'm just curious. - Tell me about your parents, that's what this sound. - I know. - What, what? Okay, go ahead. - No, I know, I'm curious, because of how you're so well-versed, not just in astrophysics and science, but in pretty much everything, and I'm just curious-- - No, there's stuff and plenty of stuff, I'm not versed in. I just don't talk about it. (both laugh hysterically) It's a huge, gaping hole, but if I don't talk about it, you don't know, how unversed I am in it. - That's good PR. - Yeah, I'm just saying. - No, I just, anyway. - You know, what it is? You know, what it is? - And I mean it as a compliment, I'm not trying to be funny. - Yeah, it's hard to know it for a couple. (laughs) - No, I'm sure. Carol, did I just compliment him? - He's asking his wife in the peanut gallery. - Yeah. - Was that a compliment? Of the spectrum of comments, that come out of your husband's mouth, that counts as a compliment? Okay, I'd hate to be in your home. (both laugh) - Oh gosh. - All right, no, we got three segments of this. We got more, okay, let's get some first questions going. - Okay, all right, we're starting with our Patreon folks. - Patreon folks, got it, got it, got it, thank 'em. - Priority people, gotta love 'em. - The priority Patreons. - This is John Callahan. Is the name Big Bang a misnomer? From what I recall, we don't actually have any evidence, the Big Bang started with an explosion like a supernova or a black hole merger. - Yeah, so, first of all, the Big Bang was a name given to this idea, that the universe started in this one primordial explosion. It was given pejoratively to this idea by proponents of what at the time was known as the steady-state theory, hypothesis of the universe, but when the universe always was and always will be, even though it's expanding, it's always been expanding, and matter is spontaneously created in the vacuum to fill in for where space is getting thinner. So that you'll always see a universe, that looked about the same. This was called the steady-state hypothesis. You could get that out of Einstein's equation of gravity, that was allowed, but another solution was one, where we're either collapsing or we're expanding. All three solutions were allowed. The Big Bang itself, it was an equal competitor to the steady-state theory for decades, until we finally got some evidence to support the Big Bang, and that was the famous cosmic microwave background. This is a leftover signal, signature, from an explosion, that started in one hot, primeval fireball. - 13.8 billion years ago. - Thank you, sir, you don't need me for this. - No. (Neil laughs) That was the only thing, I remember. - Sure, about 13.85, you're showing off now. - (laughs) No, no, I-- - You're showing off. Okay, so, it was given as a funny, pejorative name, but it stuck and if it fits, it fits. Now, it's not clear, how much noise it would have made, because just the expansion of space itself, that's not associated with noise, and space is vacuum anyway, noise doesn't propagate, so, if you don't wanna call it the Big Bang, because it was probably made no noise (laughs). - You'd think it fixed that by now. - (laughs) No, you call it, how about the main event? (both laugh) - Let's get ready to blow up! - Yeah, I'd think the big event, but the main event. - Yeah, when you talked about laws and theories, and what used to be called laws, we call theory, right? - You remember that, thank you, that's a subtle point. In the old days, we come up with an understanding of the universe, a new law has been discovered, that's a very exciting time in science, when that happens, and then you learn later on, that with better instruments, and more tools and deeper thinkers, that what you came up with as a law was a smaller subset of a larger understanding. So, you shouldn't call it a law, but it works, so, we just use the word theory for everything, that works now, and if you just have an idea, that hasn't been tested, we call hypothesis, Paul's hypothesis. - Right, well, there's a lot of those. Paul's BS hypothesis, but there's somebody, who said, right, exactly. There's something you said in this context, you said, as I quote you, "What happened in the 20th century, "that we came to learn, that whatever we determine "to be true about the universe may only be a subtext "of a larger truth." - Yeah, that's right, not that would later shown to be wrong, so it's not like science goes from one truth to another truth, discarding previous truths, not the physical sciences at least, not since the 1600s have we been in that situation. Before the 1600, that's about, when the methods and tools and practices of what we now call modern science, were forged, Galileo, Francis Bacon, folks, that if you have an idea about how the world works, you should test it. (Paul laughs) I don't care, how it looks, I don't care, what your senses tell you. Come up with an experiment, that goes a little beyond your senses, or extends your senses. Galileo had a telescope, Leeuwenhoek had a microscope. You start seeing directions, that were previously inaccessible to your sensory system, your eyes, your sense of touch, taste, smell, and so the universe comes to you now outside of the experience of your senses, and the experiment then becomes the measure of what is true, not whether it makes sense, and one of my recent books, the front piece, I mean, the epigraph, epigram, epigram or epigraph? I always forget, what they're called. (laughs) - If you don't know, I'm not gonna help. - I just said, I just baptize people into this by saying the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. - Yeah, but we're always in a state of subtext then, in some way? - Possibly. There's some things we might know completely, but let it be open enough to say, this is a subset of a larger understanding. Newton's laws of motion and gravity worked. Did he experience anything faster than a running horse? - Well that's, you-- - Or the gravity of the Earth? And so it worked. In fact, he got us to the moon and back, but then we have particle accelerators, and we got close to the speed of the light, and we say, you know, Newton's laws are this weird thing. - Your knowledge is limited, by what you can do at that time and the ancient systems. - Correct, and Einstein came up with his laws, or his theories of motion and gravity, and we learned, that it's a deeper understanding of reality, that still has limits. You know, where Einstein leaves us high and dry? At the singularity of the black hole, and at the singularity of the Big Bang itself. It's like dividing by zero, remember, you're not supposed to do that in math class? - Oh right, yeah. - Right, right, okay, so there's a poster, that said, or a T-Shirt by now, that said, a black hole, the center of a black hole, is where god is dividing by zero, right, okay. (Paul laughs) So, I thought, that was cute. So, singularities are now a frontier of string theorists, and others, who are trying to take it to the next level. - Got it, just one other thing on this. Hawking said, the boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary. Is that sort of what you're alluding to there? - That's a way to think about it. I think, it's a organizational thought for you, okay? You can say, what is, here you go, ready? Holding flat-earthers aside, I assume you agree, that Earth is a sphere. - Yeah, it depends. - (laughs) Okay, so, so, if I say to you, start walking and call me, when you get to the edge of the Earth, you say, I'm not gonna do that, because Earth has no edge. Meanwhile, you can walk forever, and never get to an edge. So, what are the boundary conditions of the Earth? Is there an edge? No, there's no edge. - Right, right, so-- - So, you can have things, that have no boundaries, they're real. The surface of the Earth is one of them. - And so if you can have that on Earth-- - Now you go to higher dimensions, and you can just go to a whole lot of places with that, and imagine an entire universe, that has no edge and no boundary. You can have no boundary in time, we'd live forever. As a universe, there's no boundary at the other end of time. - I gotta tell ya, I love you, your job is annoying, because there's never an answer at the end of it. - No, we got some, no, no, no. I take you to places, where we don't have answers, because that's where things are coolest, but there's plenty of stuff, we have answers to. - No, I know. - Like the age of the Earth, where humans came from, I got this, okay? - You know what I like about astrophysics, it's like the names you come up with, other sciences-- - We got the coolest names. - Well, wait a minute. Other sciences like zoology, whatever, it's like Latin phrases. You have like quark spooky action and Big Bang. Is there Beavis and Butthead naming these things? - Yes, no, we call it like we see 'em, okay? (Paul laughs) We, we, okay? The beginning of space time, energy and the universe, Big Bang. One syllable communication. - For people like me to get it. - Okay? If there's a region in space, where you fall in, you don't come out, light doesn't come out, black hole, okay? (Paul laughs) There's a crater in Arizona made by a meteor, we call it meteor crater, okay? All the other sciences come up with these huge, Latin, Greek derived words. - Crustaceous paleo-- - Paleo, the deoxyribonucleic. - You would call it dinopocalypse. - (laughs) I would say big tooth animal, that's what we call it. - (grunts) Maybe make that noise. - Make it onomatopoetic. So, I think it's wise, so much of our vocabulary has been absorbed and adopted into the marketing of products. Pulsar watches, I don't know, if they still make 'em, but that was a watch, and a quartz brand TVs and microwave ovens in the old days, but today I think it's the second, the third highest category of where you draw names from to name cars. - Astrophysics? - Yes, yes, yes. - Seriously? - So, science leaning astro, let's start off, okay, right, all right? Wait, aren't you supposed to me asking me questions, because okay. - Yeah, I got questions. - All right, all right. - You want me to go to it? - I count you as a questioner, you too, okay, so fine. This counts as Paul's questions. - No, no, I can go to the next question. - Paul's question, fine. - I'm sorry, wait, do you want me to ask the next question? - No, we're doing Paul's question and make everyone pissed off at you. - Oh, I'm sorry, I'm done, I'm done, I'm done. - That's fine, that's fine. - We go to the next question. - So, the number one in car names, I think, are names, that don't mean anything like the S class for Mercedes. They're just letters and digits and numbers, okay? The M class and then with a number, okay? Then you have locations, like Yukon or Denali. - Totally right. - Oh yeah, these are places, that okay, I think third is like science names, science astrophysics names. - That's stupid. (laughs) - And I made a whole list of them. - Is that right? - Yes, let me read, I got it right here in my pocket, okay? (Paul giggles) Wait, okay, give me a sec, I pull this up. - I swear to god, I'm happy to go to the next question. - No, no, no (laughs). The audience will be pissed off at you. - I feel like-- - That's fine, that's fine. - [Paul] They're gonna be mad at me. - They'll be pissed off at you, not me, okay? So, here we go, cosmic car names, you ready? Here we go, okay, ready? Okay, between 1973 and 1975, what had just finished? What did we just finish doing, just before that? - Getting rid of Nixon? - That's true, we just (laughs) finished going to the moon. The car called the Apollo. - Oh, I forgot about that, yeah. - You forgot, it was a Buick, of course General Motors, okay? And then I got 2008 to 2009 the Saturn Car Company, start there, okay? - Wow. (laughs) - They had a car called the Astra, which is basically star in Latin, okay? I got that, this could go on and on and on. You just tell me, when to shut up. 2005 to current, the Chevy Equinox, I'm taking it. - Wow. - Equinox, did you know, okay? I keep going, here we go, another one. Saturn, going back to Saturn, which the car company does not exist anymore, but Saturn from 2003 to 2007 had the Ion, I'm taking it, the Ion. It's chemistry, the sun is a ball of ionized gas, called plasma. - Oh, so, you're good there. - All stars are ionized. - All right, I give you, it's a cousin, really. - Excuse me, most of the universe is ionized, I'm taking it. (both laugh) Okay? Not giving that to you, okay? The famous one here, 1962 to 1979, and again, 1985 to 1988, the Chevy Nova, oh! - Oh, that was the car we made out in. - Wait, for those only listening, you should say, who you were making out with. (laughs) - Oh. - Not you and I. - No, my wife Carol. - Who is in the peanut gallery of this studio. - Yeah, we went to high school together, and-- - And you made out, the Chevy Nova is not all that large. - We had a Chevy Nova, and we would go to-- - Okay, bench, front seat, so you can. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - You can do, it wasn't bucket seats. - You could move the steering wheel up there. - He's got the biggest smile, that I-- (Paul laughs) I don't think, people know, that a nova was a star, that had just blown up. I think, Chevy had they known that, they might have thought of. - Well, sounds to me, it's no go. - No go in Spanish. - In Spanish. - I got another 20 cars in this list, that is proof. - I just wanna say, by the way for those listening, he's has it on his phone, and he has so many, that he must have hit about 70 swipes, he just kept going and going and going. All right. - Plus, ask me, what gum I chew. - Trident? - No. Eclipse! - Oh god, there you go. - Or Orbit, Orbit I prefer the harder gum rather than the softer, right, so. - You're really committed to your craft. - So, and there's Moon Glow Bath Beach, you got Celestial Seasonings tea, you got Milky Way candy bar, Mars candy bar, even though this is the name of the family, they named it Mars and it's red, okay? (Paul laughs) The packing is red, I'm taking it. (laughs) - And that's all the time we have for today everybody. - We have 30 seconds left and then, what's the next question? - Next question is from another Patreon fan. - Now that part blew the entire first segment, okay. - One Height Gazette asks, will space to resume require some fundamentally new technology to make it affordable for everyday people? This is Patrick Paulus in Milkweed Washington. - And we will get to that question in the next segment, when StarTalk returns. - [Narrator] You may not know this, but we actually have a pretty small team at StarTalk. We don't have a full-time graphic designer or video editors, so we use Storyblocks for many of our visuals. The Storyblocks unlimited plan gives you all the four case studio quality video, you could want. Do you need space exploration footage? They got it. Do you need a video of bananas? They have it, and yes, you guessed it, they have puppies, lots and lots of puppies. Check out the link in the description to learn more about Storyblocks video, that's storyblocks.com/StarTalk. Oh, puppies. - StarTalk, we're back, the Cosmic Queries edition, where it's really a grab back. Paul Mecurio, my co-host today, thanks for being on, Paul. - Yes, absolutely. - From the Paul Mecurio Show. - Yeah, podcast. - Podcast, iTunes, I've been on it several times, and it's always fun being on that with you. - Thank you. - Thanks for coming to have this talk. - Thanks for having me. I've been a big fan of the show, it's really like an honor, yes, to do this. - And you collected not out of one category, you got the drags of everybody's question. - Yeah, but I think, it's cool, because it's a mixed bag, it's fine. It's not just one topic, like dark matter, we've got this. - Yeah, I think, we got some of the best questions, right? - Yeah. - They don't march to it. - There's several dark matter in-- - Beat of a different drummer. (both laugh) So, you call this Paul's what? - Cosmic catch-all. - Catch-all, there you go. - There you go, all right? - So, read me that question before we exit another segment. - This is a Patreon person in One Height Gazette, Patrick Paulus in Milkweed, Washington, asks, will space tourism require some fundamentally new technology to make it affordable for everyday people? - Yeah, so that's a really good question. What's interesting about access to space, is, if you remember your Ekon 101. We think, the demand is completely elastic, okay? And an elastic demand would be, if you drop the price, more people will do it. If you raise the price, fewer people will do it, but there's always a demand at a price, okay? That's one of the measures of whether something is elastic. If it's inelastic, it doesn't matter, what price you charge, everyone has to buy it, and you can drive some people bankrupt or whatever, but elastic is like most products, you want them to be elastic. It's a healthier economy, okay. Tourists seats have already been sold on the space station by the Russians, because the Americans wouldn't do it, and how much were they? They were $20 million. - Why wouldn't we do it? - 'Cause it's not how we roll, this is America, yeah. (both laugh) Not for our greatest of frontier, no, so, we have the right stuff. (Paul laughs) If you just buy the right stuff, it ain't the right stuff. So, our image of going into space had some of that right stuff. - Yeah, you don't wanna sully it, right. - Yeah, you don't wanna sully, yeah, exactly, I think that was, that no one would say that, but I think, that was part of-- - But don't you think it's inevitable, that-- - No, I'm getting there exactly. - All right, sorry. - So, no, no, don't apologize for interrupting, this is New York. (Paul laughs) If you interrupt me, that's my only evidence, that you're paying attention to me, okay? - I'm sorry, who are you again? (both laugh) - So, so, you can drop the price. So, if you made it $10 million, there might be 10 people, who would go up. If you have $1 billion, $10 million is lunch money, right? There're a lot of billionaires today. Make it one million, then you have all the, like, 100 millionaires, okay, so, as you go down the economic ladder, the number of people, who, I think, would be interested in this, would continue to go up. Plus, I bet, I don't know your budget, I don't know, what you do on holiday, I'm not gonna ask, but I bet you would save two years of holiday expenses to go on one space trip. - Absolutely. - And you stay home, and watch TV on all the other holidays, when you might have gone to Aruba or wherever. - Does my wife have to come? - (laughs) Yes, she's in the room now, the answer is yes. - Can I go on a craft called Nova? (laughs) - So, I think, there's a price, that you just keep doing this. Then, if there's a price below which you can't go, make a lottery. - Oh, interesting. - Yes, yes, so, let's say, you can't get it below $1 million, so you sell a million lottery tickets for $1. You could do that every single time. - How low-- - Every single seat will go for $1, but you can sell for $1, and you get the one person, and that's the $10 million, that pays for that one person's seat. You could do that every time, I'm certain. - How low do you think the price could go, realistically? - It's tough, you getting into space, it really is. I don't know, it's tough. - Do you trust the technology on the private side to get it right and do it right? - Do you mean to not kill you? - Yes. (laughs) - No, people will die, that's what happened with the first airplanes, people die. Right now, people-- - You're a bad commercial for this. - (laughs) No, it's just how this works. - Go to space, die. - No, go to space first, die. (Paul laughs) People say-- - At least you went. - People said, if Elon Musk has a space craft tomorrow, would you take the first spaceship? I said no, I wait til after he sends his mother. (Paul laughs) Wait, and brings her back, right? If he can do that, then I'm going on the trip. I'm bringing this in, get a good Netflix account, and occupy the nine months together. - Listen, I believe in science. If you can make Disney in Disney World affordable, then I know, we got something on. - So, I think you have to do a lottery, if the ticket doesn't come down to $1,000 vacation, that you would all take, paying for an airplane and rental car and a hotel, to go to a beach. You drop in anywhere between one and $5,000 for a family, that you might have saved up to do, and I don't see it coming at and getting that cheap. I don't see that happening. - To me it's coming faster than I thought it would. It seems like we just talked about a few years ago, and suddenly, like, we're close to making this happen. - Yeah, so as a thing, well, watch the rich people do it first, by the way, rich people were the first to fly in airplanes. - Fair point, it's a good point. - The first president to do it, that was headline news. President flies in airplane. - Okay, quick prediction and we move on. How many carry-ons am I allowed? - (laughs heartily) I think, you, right now? - Yeah. - Access to orbit costs $10,000 a pound, no matter, what it is. - Wow. - Yes. - So I can't do that fake I have an emotional problem, can I bring my dog line? - Well, then you pay $10,000 a pound for your dog. Still a lot of chihuahuas around this trip. (both laugh) And the great Dane. - We have a great Dane on a weight loss program. You wanna go to space? You're on. - There you have it, so, $10,000 a pound. Elon Musk is trying to get that down, but I don't think he's gonna get it to $1,000 a pound, and what do you weigh, 100 and? - 50 pound. - Yeah, so, that'll be $150,000, way less than a million, but, and I bet, if you weighed 160, but you could drop to 150, you'd do that to save the $10,000. - Absolutely. - To go into space, so. - I'd go on naked just to save the weight on clothes. All right, we're gonna move on. - So, you're talking about carry-ons, there will be some seriously important carry-on. - Can I take my bowling ball? That's gonna cost you $15,000. - Right. - All right, we're gonna go on to another question. - Bowling would be hard in space, by the way. Just, there's little for going there. Leave your bowling ball at home. - If you get a strike in space and you don't hear it, did it happen? - If you got a strike in space, and you didn't hear it, you'd be bowling in a vacuum with a space suit on, and that'll be weird. We would bake a place, where there's air, and you could breathe, okay? We would do that for you and your bowling ball, alright? Okay. - And one other thing real quick, I saw you talked about the movie "Gravity". You made the point, that Sandra Bullock's bang do not-- - The bangs always pointed down. - Which is hilarious. - [Neil] The bangs knew, where gravity was. - Everything's floating around. - Everything floating around, the bangs didn't budge. That angered me, irrationally, I'm sorry. - And whoever cut it, like, immediately went to her face and there she looked great. You're right, they were down, they were perfect, they were straight, everything around is floating. - Now, was I wrong to go there? - No, you were totally right. - I'm doing my thing, let me just defend myself for the moment. If you look at any picture of somebody in space, who has long hair, the first thing you notice, is that their hair is everywhere. This is the first thing. - That's a good point. - The women who go out will all their long hair, and they don't tie it in a thing, sticking straight up. - Is that why Kelly, the bald guy, (Neil laughs) he wants to keep you guessing, if he's in space or if he's on a sound stage? - Mark Kelly, right? - Yeah, the one-- - The twins. - I think, it might be Scott, I don't know. - Scott, which one of them we interviewed on StarTalk? We had one of those two twins. We had the better looking one, apparently, that's how he introduced himself. Scott Kelly, I think, it was. Yeah, maybe he had long dreadlocks. (both laugh) - I'm gonna screw with their heads and shave myself. - I'm not gonna be a fool in that photo, let me mess with them. - All right. So we're gonna go on to another Patreon supporter. One Height Gazette, this is the same gentlemen, this is Patrick Paulus. - He's getting two questions in, all right. - Yeah, apparently. Dark matter seems to be a placeholder for unexplained gravitational forces in the universe. Is it possible, that our understanding of gravity is incomplete, could gravity work differently on galactic scales? - Not likely, it's an excellent question. First, it's not so much a placeholder. It is a placeholder, but it's not. We measure this thing out there, that has gravity associated with it and we don't know, what it is. Come up with a name, call it something, call it Fred. I don't care, what you call it, it's a thing. It's got gravity, we measure its gravity. It interacts with matter by gravity. So, we happen to call it dark matter, and then we think, oh, is it matter, isn't it? It's really dark gravity. - Oh. - Dark matter implies it's matter. If we would have labeled it correctly, just like the Big Bang, we'd have to call it the big event. (Paul laughs) The silent, the main event. (laughs) If it didn't make any sound, with dark gravity is the accurate thing, we should be calling it, and we don't know, what it is, but we can calculate with it and you can put it in the equations and it works. There's a term, here's the extra stuff, the dark matter. - Is it 85% or something like that? - Yeah, so 85% of all gravity in the universe is of unknown origin. - Anything-- - Gravity, that we measure. So, yeah, it could be, that we need a deeper understanding of gravity on larger scales, but we have examples of colliding galaxies, and you can run the numbers on it, and regular gravity accounts for that, and then you throw in dark matter, account for some other things, that are going on. So, I don't, we think, it's not that, yeah. - How slow-- - By the way, there's a subculture industry of people, who think, we just have to modify gravity, modify Newtonian gravity, and they abbreviated that M-O-N-D, modified Newtonian, and they're called MOND, the MOND people. You type MOND in Wiki, you'll get all this description of taking Newton's gravity and adding a term to it for large scale thing, and then you can fit a few things, but there's some things, you can't fit with it. So, we think it's something else, that we simply don't know, what it is. - You said, this is something you said, "You don't know if it's made of matter. "It's a misnomer to send people in both directions, "that's not right path." - I don't say, it's not the right path. You don't wanna mislead people, you don't wanna prejudge, what it could be, because then people use the word, and then they get caught up in the word, and then the word becomes the thing rather than the idea. - Are you a WIMP proponent? - [Neil] A weakly interacting mass of particles? - Yeah. - Yeah, sure, the possibility, what role they could play in the universe, sure. I mean, in the universe, astrophysicists were open to anything. - Is there-- - We're so ignorant of so much stuff. You got an idea, bring it on. (Paul laughs) And give us ways, we might test it and we'll test it. - Is there a process of elimination, are you all like crossing things off the list? - Oh yeah, you wanna come up with a hypothesis, that has enough detail in your predictions, that we can rule it out, if we make the experiment. If you just say, oh, it could be just something, that's there, when you don't look at it, but then it's there, further, then give me a prediction. If you don't have a prediction, it's not useful. - Okay. - So, the hypotheses, that are put on the table, the more fuzzy wuzzy they are, the less useful they are. You just discard them. It's the ones, that say, if this idea is correct, you should find this, if you look in that direction, and then we do it, we find it, hey, you're onto something. Give me another prediction. Oops, that failed, okay. Should you modify your hypothesis, and by the way, if your predictions keep coming right, we elevate your hypothesis to a theory. That's how you get to theory of gravity, the quantum theory, you get relativity theory, you get evolutionary theory. These are ideas, that started out as an hypothesis, elevated to a working understanding of how the universe works, that has predictive value. - Is it possible, that our understanding of gravity is so vague, that my bathroom scale could be off? So that I'm actually lighter, than I appear to be? - That's the part of gravity, we understand precisely. (both laugh) - Damn, all right. - Yeah, I'm just saying. - Okay, we're gonna move on, another-- - Oh, by the way, people don't talk about this, because of the centrifugal force of the rotating Earth, you weigh less on the equator than you do on the pole. Because the Earth is trying to spin you off, and so you actually weigh a little less at the equator. You weigh less here than you do in Canada. - Really? - Yeah, yeah. Not only, that Earth is slightly wider at the equator than it is at the pole, so you're farther away from the center of the Earth, so you weigh less for that reason as well. You also weigh less, because you are immersed in a fluid called air. There's a buoyancy, that you have in air. - Air is a fluid? - If it takes the shape of its container, it's a fluid. You can have liquids and gases are fluids, and so fluid dynamics, which is an entire branch of physics and engineering, involves the movement of things, that are, so, the movement of water around bridge embankments, the movement of air over the wings of planes, it's all fluid dynamics. So, why did I talk about that? Where was I going with this? - Because I asked you, if the laws of gravity are so vague, that my scale could be wrong. - Yeah, yeah, no sorry, yeah, you started. - Me just being an idiot. - I'm saying, so here's it how it go. On the equator where you get the centrifugal forces, you weigh a little less than you would, Santa Claus would weigh less on the equator than on the North pole, okay, and you also weigh less on the equator, because Earth is slightly wider at the equator than it is pole to pole, and you also weigh less if you went to a mountain top, because you're farther away from Earth center, than if you went down in a mine, for example. - Okay, Carol, we're moving to an equator. I wanna be-- - Moving to a mountain on an equator, there you go. - Now we're talking. - Now you're talking. - Pizza every day. - Get your six ounces. (both laugh) When we come back with Paul Mecurio on StarTalk, we're gonna do more cosmic queries from the dust bin, when we return. - [Narrator] Okay, I was so distracted by puppies in the last commercial break, that I also started looking up videos of kittens on Storyblocks Video. If you wree working on a project, and need stock footage, you'll wanna use Storyblocks Video, and their giant library, because you get unlimited downloads. Try stuff out, if it doesn't work, try some more. Create like a pro with the newest, highest quality content, sourced from a select group of artists, that Storyblocks partners with. Check out the link in the description to learn more about Storyblocks Video, that's storyblocks.com/StarTalk. - StarTalk, we're back, Paul Mecurio unloaned from the Paul Mecurio Show. Did you allow yourself to be loaned out to us? (both laugh) Got to check the authorities on that one. - Yeah, I bought myself a car service, and I, yes, I got permission to be out just for the day. - [Neil] Just for the day, they let you out. - I said, please, it's Neil, they were like, all right. - And you brought your wife, she's in the studio with us here, welcome, tell me your name again. - Carol. - Carol, welcome to StarTalk. So you got some more questions for me, let's go. - I do. - From the dust bin. - We're sticking with dark matter, this is Kale Honeyset, Instagram, do you think, that once dark matter is discovered and understood, would it actually help in space travel? - So, I'm gonna answer a bigger question than that. Almost, by the way, we've already discovered dark matter, we just don't know, what it is, okay? So, let me, what she means there, is, once we know, what dark matter is made of, okay? We've already discovered it, it's there. - Can we then use it? - Okay? By the way, there's a long history of discovering things, that we don't know, what it is, okay? That is not the first time, you discover something. - The Kardashians. - (laughs) What is this, why am I watching this? - How did this come about? - How did this come about? - Poof, the magic. (both laugh) - That would be dark matter forces operating on our culture. - That's the 85%. - That's the 85%, so, once we find out, what it is, I can say more broadly, that practically, every scientific discovery, there ever was, when you have enough clever engineers and other folks in the pipeline, you find a way to apply it to our everyday life. In this case maybe space travel. Maybe we can exploit its existence as we move through space. Maybe we can isolate a dark matter particle here on Earth, and use it for walking through walls. Dark matter doesn't interact with ordinary matter in ordinary ways, in fact, it moves through it as though it's not there at all. - But how do we know that, if we don't know, what it is? - You can log the behavior of things. - Effects of things, okay. - Exactly. So, you say, here's this region of space. We don't see any matter, no light is coming out, except stuff is getting attracted to it. - Must be-- - Said stuff, that moves through it unimpeded with its speed. So, I'm attracted to it, yet it's not slowing me down. I'm not plowing into anything. So, dark matter and quote regular matter can move through each other with no effect at all. So, maybe that's how you make ghosts. Maybe these are the spirits of all the dead people. - Do you believe in anything? - No. (both laugh) Next question. (laughs) Okay, there's been about 100 billion people ever born on Earth, maybe a little less, that 80 billion. So, and we got about seven billion here now, so, let's, 80 billion minus seven, what is it, get you down to, so that's 73 billion ghosts out there. So, first, that's a lot of ghosts. People say, do you believe in ghosts? No, because it'd be so many of them, there'd be 10 times as many ghosts as there are people. That'd be so annoying. (both laugh) It's like, get out of here, we're busy. - Everywhere you turn is a ghost. - There's a ghost! - Enough with the ghosts already. - Great, Caesars ghosts. So, where was I? - We were talking about 70 million ghosts. - There's 73 million ghosts, so, here's the thing. The total number of humans ever born doesn't amount to that much mass, there's way more mass in the universe in dark matter than ever could be equaled by the ghosts of dead people, so, you can't appeal to the ghosts of dead people or lost socks in the (laughs) washing machine, space time continuum. - Jerry Seinfeld thing, where the sock is up against the dryer wall, trying to get out. Not, that we care. - Next question. - All right, by the way on this dark matter, real quick, did the idea, that you can't define it, you don't know, what it is, that's a good way to scare kids, like, if you don't go to bed, dark matter is gonna get you. You'd like freak 'em out. - Oh. - Did you ever think about that? - No, I didn't. Do you have kids? - Yes, we do. - How old are they? - I'm not sure. (Neil laughs) We're trying not to get too close. Okay, we're gonna move away from dark matter with a few of those. This is from Mike Parker, Facebook, when something explodes in space as it's shown on numerous TV shows and movies, is there really a shock wave in a vacuum? - So, good question. - It was mine. - So, this person clearly knows, there's no sound to move. You only get a shock wave, if energy is moving through a medium, and so. - Example of a medium would be? - Oh, anything, yeah, anything. It's how bombs work. A bomb works, because it creates a shock wave, that moves through air, then walls, then your flesh, okay? - Ghosts? - I haven't seen experiments on ghosts yet. - There's 73 million of them, you should get on it. - No, billion. (laughs) - Billions, sorry (laughs), oh, I screwed that up. Sorry, go ahead, so goes through these mediums. - And so, generally in a supernova, which is some of our best shock waves in the universe, the star, that was once there, had shed a lot of gas into the vacuum space and deep down is where you get the explosion, and so the explosion happens, sending a shock wave, rippling through the gas, that it had spread out into space. You see, these beautiful photos of these terribly disturbed gaseous regions, the shock wave had blown through it. By the time it gets out the other end of the material, then the shock wave can't propagate. So, then, what it does, it accelerates particles at the end with that leftover energy. You get very high moving, fast moving particles, it's a fun thing. - Is this, where Newton's third law comes into? - Newton's third law always comes in. (laughs) Oh, just there, but not with you. (both laugh) Yeah, Newton's laws apply everywhere at all times. - At all times, okay, my ass, my butt is pushing down on the seat. - And it pushes back, so, exactly, so, you have this energy moving through and it needs to manifest and at the edge of the gas, you get this acceleration. It happens at the edge of the sun as well. You get these accelerating particles at the edge of the sun, they're very cool. - Really? - Yeah, gets part of the solar wind, actually. - Does any of the stuff, that happens on Star Trek, is any of that true, because I mean, I learned Klingon, so I hope, that's not a waste of time? - You did learn Klingon, you're in the club, wow. No, I didn't learn Klingon, I'd said, I will use my brain for other things (laughs). I do enough back then, but that's how I should be using my brain. - All right, we're gonna do-- - Oh, by the way, the photon torpedoes or the phasers, the ship phasers, that we shoot forward, if they're directing their energy to the ship in front of them, you should not see them from the side. There's no energy coming out. - It's like when the speed armor is on your windshield in a really fancy car, you can only see it straight on. - Oh, because it's in a, well, okay, that's because it doesn't let you see it from the side, because it's in a cylindrical cavity. Oh, the digital ones, so, what they do is, they have like a polarized screen, so only the driver would see it, but that's not why this is the case. When you see a laser through the air, it's because the air is reflecting, particles in the air are reflecting the laser light to you on the side, but if it's star ship against Klingon ship in the vacuum of space and you send a light beam forward, you have no idea, the light beam is there. - Got it, you said that about Rudolph's red nose, that it doesn't emit light, it's reflecting. - It reflect light, but we can allow it to emit light. Why do you know everything I've ever written or said? This is a little spooky. - I'm just hosting, know stuff. It'd be nice. - This is bordering on-- - I'm sorry. - This is bordering on, what's the word, you have? Groupie. (laughs) We're at the five minute mark, which means we have to go at a lightning round. - Speed, okay, here we go. - Okay, so that means, I will answer every question. - And I will say nothing. - With a soundbite, okay. - And then I will move to the next one. - It gives me training for when I'm on the evening news, because they want soundbites out of me anyway. - I feel like this is a game show, this is for a car. (bell rings) - There we go. - Okay, Brian Ameral, Facebook. Hi Neil, can you please talk about why scientists are so intent on catching neutrinos on Earth, and what they can tell us about the universe? Thank you in advance. - Excellent, so every nuclear process, that goes on in the center of the sun, in the center of every star, every nuclear event, that happens, has neutrinos associated with it. So, for every hydrogen atom, that becomes a helium atom, there's a neutrino emitted, and neutrinos are hard to block, in fact they exit the sun without any trouble at all, and so, neutrinos are the signposts of intense nuclear activity, wherever you happen to be looking, and we think that there's a neutrino blast from the early universe, when the universe was formed, and we wanna create neutrino telescopes, that could see that. This would be for neutrinos, what the cosmic microwave background was for the Big Bang, and the rest of our understanding of the Big Bang. This would even take us farther back in time. So, neutrinos, they're where the action is. (bell rings) - I'm sorry, that's not the correct answer. - (laughs) Okay. - Thank you for playing. - (quacks) Okay, we're going to Miriam Sesans, I'm sorry if I'm butchering that, Instagram. - That's all right, Chuck Nice is usually here, and messes up every word. - At present, how accurately can we intercept possible signals from intelligent aliens? - Excellent, here's the problem. Let's say, you assert, that they're gonna communicate in this frequency, a particular frequency. Now you build a telescope. - Doesn't it matter on your cell plan? - Exactly. (laughs) - International. - Is it 3G or four? So, now, I'm gonna listen on that frequency, but which way am I gonna point the telescope? I'm gonna point it this way. Suppose, they're giving me a message on a different frequency. Well, how do I listen to that? Or how about a different frequency from there? Suppose, they're not in that direction. Suppose, they're behind you. - Are we eliminating possibilities? - Suppose, they sent the message 10 minutes ago, before you started listening. - Right, you were in the shower, you didn't hear it. - This is called the parameter space of communication, and are they using your frequency at your time from that direction? And it all has to match up, so you need a detector, that can listen to all frequencies. You need to look in all directions, and you need to look for all of time. - And we don't have that. - We're not there, we're not there. - Are we working toward that? - It's hard, it's hard, plus, suppose they send us a message and it came during the Roman Empire, and no one caught the message, because they didn't invent radio waves, discovered radio waves yet, and then nobody sent back a signal. They might conclude, there's no sign of intelligent life on Earth, yet, we had the entire Roman Colosseum and statues and what we call intelligence, so, yeah, to just, no. (laughs) (bell rings) Okay. Let's get some more in. - Yes. - These answers are too long, I gotta make 'em even shorter. - Luke, the inventor, Instagram, do you think, if people traveled closer to the edge of the universe with a huge telescope, they would be able to see past it to the other side, and will they see a giant fetus and then an old man in a white bedroom and what does that mean? No, I'm just kidding, that was my space phantasy. Yes, if travel, a huge telescope, edge, will we be able to see past it to the other side, and what would they see? - We are bound by the horizon, established by the speed of light, and so, if you could travel faster than the speed of light, you could then get ahead of the signal, that came from your past, and then see things-- - You just blew my mind. (both laugh) No, seriously, say that again. - But right now, we don't know, how to go faster than light. We don't have wormholes or anything. So, you're stuck in your present or and in your future, but the moment you can travel faster than light, you can get ahead of the light beam, that you created in your past, and be able to see your life unfold before your eyes. (bell rings) Next! - I don't know, if I wanna see that. - I don't know, what you've been into. (both laugh) - Chava Bellar, at Emily Lewis, Instagram, what obstacles do you think space tourism will face? - Here's one, no one talks about, okay? I send you up in space, you are weightless. How many of us have experienced being weightless? None of us, by the way, it's the experience you get on a amusement park ride, except, more so, and so, in space, if you throw up, all your vomit continues to float in the air and doesn't go into a splatter diagram on the ground, okay? You ever go, 3 a.m., throw up splatter. - You take the fun out of everything. - You walk the streets outside the bars, the floor pattern is very clear, okay? - They are different, but they're also generally there. - They're all different, but there's a general, recurring geometric pattern, okay? There's always some carrots in there in the middle somewhere. - That you ate seven years ago. - You know that, right. So, so, we trust gravity to gather the vomit in one place, but in space, when you're in zero G, it's everywhere. So, if you have all these newbie tourists throwing up everywhere, it will smell, it will get in your hair, it'd just be nasty. - But those, you have to put 'em in a centrifuge and get them all, like, that thing, and get them used to it. - That gives you extra gravity, when you're centrifuged. - You see, how I did the astrophysics there, I went (buzzes). - That's the sound, that you would not hear in space, right. (both laugh) (bell rings) - You really do ruin everything. - Give me one last one, really quick. - Okay, Julian Garcia, okay, we know, where the center of the galaxy is, but does anyone know, where the center of the universe is? - Oh, there is no center of the universe. The center is in fact everywhere. You want the center of the universe? Go back in time, 3.8 billion years (laughs). - Me, ask my wife. - I tweeted that one, I said, there is no center of the universe, so you can't be it. Okay? (both laugh) - That's great. - So, if you wanna think of a center of the universe, you have to go back in time, when we were smaller. 13.8 billion years ago, when all the universe was in the same place at the same time. Think of that as the center, but then we're all at the same place at the same time, so now, as we expand, the center of the universe is everywhere. - Yeah, and that place is like a fraction-- - No, no, I'm just saying, it is now everywhere. That center of the universe is now the entire universe. - Got it. - Because we were all at the same place at the same time. Now, that being said, just because a thing exists doesn't mean, it has to have a center. Where's the center of Earth's surface? Tell me. - The corner of 88 Park Avenua? (Neil laughs) (bell rings) - Paul, we gotta end it there. (both laugh) Paul from the Paul Mecurio Show. Thanks, I'm glad, thanks for coming to our show. - Oh, thank you for having me. This was really, really fun. - [Neil] And you got out the coolest gig in the world, warming up the audience for Stephen Colbert. - Yeah. - On CBS at Sullivan theater. - Yeah, it's a really cool theory, yeah. - It's always good to see you there. The several times I've been on the show. - Yeah, try and come by and say hi, Nice and up, they'd been on the show a bunch of times too, it's great. Yeah, Stephen and I go back to the Daily Show together, so, it's really great to see, how the shows come together. - Yeah, exactly, and he found his groove. - Yeah, because he's not a standup, that's not his thing, and he really like, he got it, and you're always so great on the show. - Thank you. - I know, seriously. - It is a high compliment. - And by the way-- - Did you seen them all? - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, because you know, when a guest is like, the staff hangs out around the TV, I don't, I'm not a big fan, but, no, they do, and like, you work and sometimes people are like, who's on the show? And I'm like, I don't know, it's like a job, right? But like, I just, you should know that, like, oh Neil's on and everybody standing around the TV. - Well, thank you, I try to say something interesting about the universe, I'm glad, sometimes. - Absolutely. - All right. We're done there, you've been listening to, possibly even watching StarTalk, and I your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always with you to keep looking up. - [Narrator] Okay, before we go, I wanna thank Storyblocks for sponsoring this episode of StarTalk. Like I said, Storyblocks Video gives you more clips, than you can ever need with their unlimited plan. Just like we do at StarTalk, you can use their content on YouTube, Instagram and anywhere you want to make yourself look like a pro, it's such a pain in the butt to record your own stock footage, like, let's say you wanna show an underwater experience. Now, you gotta get to the airport, you gotta fly to the Caribbean, you gotta get yourself a boat, you gotta get the hotel, you got of course stop at the bar, have a few drinks, okay? Then take some time on the beach, because you know, you need to relax before you get in that water. Now, you gotta get your scuba gear, then you gotta dive, finally you get to see the fish, or what you could do, is just do, what we did, and use the extensive library of Video from Storyblocks. Anything in the video member library is yours to download as much as you want, including HD and 4K footage, after effects, templates, motion backgrounds and more, when you sign up for the unlimited video plan. Check out the link in the description to learn more about Storyblocks Video, that's storyblocks.com/StarTalk. I'll see you in the Caribbean.
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Channel: StarTalk
Views: 495,187
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: StarTalk, Star Talk, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Paul Mecurio, cosmic curiosities, theories, laws, Earth, Universe, space tourism, dark matter, Star Trek, gravity, neutrinos, extraterrestrial life, center of the universe, Steady-state model, boundary conditions, the Big Bang, edge of the universe, nielsen degrasse tyson, space, science, astronomy, astrophysics, space podcast, science podcast, astronomy podcast, podcast, cosmic queries
Id: 9u_HCjyZQdE
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 51min 19sec (3079 seconds)
Published: Fri Oct 11 2019
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