StarTalk Podcast: Cosmic Queries – New Year

[Music] this is star talk cosmic queries edition for the new year chuck nice co-host jack hey neil happy new year buddy happy new year 2021 2021 yay yeah we made we survived we made it did you have doubts did you i really did to be honest it was many times during 2020 where i doubted i would see 2021. there was a turbulent year on many fronts and but i try to sort of take stock in the measures of turbulence that we experience and then i i look back you know during the second world war you know how turbulent those times were i mean i could quantify it i i was not there so you weren't there okay but there are books that's why we have books you can go without being there i'm sorry that's why i have you okay everybody else has books [Laughter] all right so between 1939 the beginning of the war in 1945 1 000 people per hour were killed wow because of that war that's um per power thought to say the least one of the great low points of civilization was the second world war that at a time when people thought the first world war was the war to end all wars so so that's one measure another measure i think of the 1960s 1968 in particular with two assassinates two you know highly um significant assassinations with with martin luther king and bobby kennedy who was then you know declared a candidate for president right so it wasn't simply another politician or influential figure he was trying to become president and to the assassinations there was campus unrest there was uh riots in the inner cities and wait a minute now are you sure that wasn't 2020 so here's my point so you look at all this and let me tell you something in my circles the way we think of 1968 oh by the way let's just set it straight that deaths in vietnam peaked in 1968. okay we were losing 100 servicemen a week basically that and the tet offensive this is the great sort of resistance that was put to our presence there on the the chinese new year where no one thought that they would be trying to fight back on a day that everyone would be celebrating called the ted offensive all that happened in 1968 okay and so we uh oh 68 i think was also the melee massacre okay do you remember that this is with you know what so it was it was terrible ugly that's the better word it's an ugly year and i would declare it just by my own metrics to be the the most turbulent bloodiest year of a decade that was the bloodiest year on american soil since the 1860s in the civil war itself that's where so so that's what 1968 represented however all right in my circles what we know is that in december 1968 we left earth for the first time right we went to the moon in 19 so people forget this we left earth and went to the freaking moon in 1968 apollo 8. now no one remembers them because they didn't park on the roof they didn't get out they they didn't land it's tough to do a drive-by nobody it's a drive-by it's a drive-by nobody nobody nobody nobody gives you credit for a drive-by for not getting out of the car that's right remember remember when bush flew over katrina oh okay right all right yeah so so what he so what we did we went to the moon circled it a dozen 15 times and then came back but in those orbits that famous photo taken by a hasselblad camera by the way nasa was not gonna miss an opportunity they got the best cameras available in the day hasselblad camera bam earthrise right over the moon and there it was earth not as we see it in the school room globe i've talked about this often you know you you go to school and there's earth and the countries are color coded the states are color coded for goodness sake all right and there's no clouds it's just color-coded countries on this ball and there it is in all of its natural majesty a float adrift in space in the darkness of space and you see ocean and land and clouds that picture comes back and the astronauts got all emotional and someone who's religious read from genesis okay and and some people complained you know ardent atheists complain we're using tax money to put religion in space i'm thinking they're the first ones ever to go to moon let him read whatever the hell he wants exactly i have no i don't care what he does okay he's the one that went to the moon and you didn't okay so it what was written about that because that happened at the end of december because they were there during christmas okay okay is that nasa saved 1968 wow so wow nasa saved 1968. last night a dj saved my life and nasa saved 1968. that's pretty cool yeah and so when i think of 2020 i think uh are you gonna is there a way that nasa saved 2020. i don't know if the please they're not specific please is there a way um but i think space has a way of having us all look up oh by the way that image of earthrise over the moon right um for me the most potent statement to come out of that whole era birthed with that photo is we went to the moon to explore the moon and we discovered earth for the first time that's a beautiful statement yes and hopefully one day uh the statement will be i went to the moon and all i got was this lousy t-shirt because that means that that means that space travel will be so common so casual so casual that what you complain about right like yeah that would that that would be a very cool day all right so so what what happened so there was a total solar eclipse in the second week of december in and that crossed the bottom part of south america so chile and argentina got a piece of that so good for the rest of the americas there and but not only that on december 21st the solstice the the december solstice yeah we the planets jupiter and saturn and saturn got so close if you took off your glasses you'd think there was one object on the sky it's pretty wild man you know what for me what was good about that was the last time anyone saw something that close in the sky for those two planets was 800 years ago the dark ages or maybe the middle ages i get my ages uh confused but back then that is not a time you wanted to live in for sure about that yes exactly all right it was even hard on white people to be living back there that's when you know times are rough that's when you know i said you know times are rough okay and so you go back then so we talk about the year 12 23 or 26 somewhere back then these two planets got that close together on the sky so so to me that says wow you know it forces you to think back in time when someone else saw the same kind of conjunction it's called that you are in that there was some guy laid out on iraq being tortured and he looked somebody was just like is that jupiter all our stereotypes of that error [Music] everybody was on the rack all right guys being tortured hey look at that hey that's kind of interesting so so uh so i think if it gets you to look up and there's a common thing everyone in the world can see then i think that has value it if you want to think if we if we can't escape our own tribal roots if tribalism must gurgle up maybe we can instead uh think of a tribe as all of the human species well see then we need an alien invasion to make that happen oh you mean like covid oh yeah so maybe if a virus came to earth and affected everybody maybe we would all get together and fight it in harmony oh yeah yeah good thought chuck clear clearly there's no hope for us okay this is okay so that was the low point for me it wasn't even specifically covet and the economic and social and personal damage it was causing it was that it was recognizing that we as a species did not mobilize coherently to fight a common invader that for me was the testing grounds for an actual alien invasion in case the aliens wanted to kill all humans like they do in every science fiction movie where bad aliens show up oh man so that's that i was upset by that and i thought higher of humanity i thought we could let's aspire to higher goals higher higher positions of of of wisdom on how we would treat so what it is we just tribalized again oh i'm an anti-masculine i'm an anti-vaxxer and i'm an anti-this and you're that and my my favorite bit of insight to come out of that was just or educational insight is you tell someone you know one state is going to open its borders and the other is not and one country and this and that but we're all still traveling a little bit right what's going on and so like i said it's like designating a peeing section of the swimming pool okay guys i'll be right back um no you guys stay right here in the deep end i gotta make my way down to three feet and take care of a little business okay and then i'll come back right and i'll see you when i yeah that's that's brilliant exactly i agree and so it's insight into how futile it is to say for one country to say i'm not going to clean up this water uh because it's my problem not your problem it's everybody's problem because water travels air travels okay viruses travel right and in fact viruses have the benefit that we invented airplanes just for it there's no other way a virus could cross the atlantic okay virus let me get on this airplane look at that it's amazing it's like back in the day so viruses have the most frequent flyer miles that's right just like these human beings are amazing guys look at what they've done for us look at all the things they've in venice to get us where we need to go was a gary larson comic when you need one because that would be cool just the virus express exactly wow so so i think um there's there's a saying if someone says oh it's raining so heavily yeah it probably that means it will rain a little less heavily an hour from now right i mean you know if something is at its worst pretty much it can things can only get better not a hundred percent of time but most of the time in fact this is why weird medical uh cures exist at all right so you take regular medicine it's not working for you you got some intractable problem and you get worse and worse and worse and then you get to some bottom station i can't take this anymore i'm not gonna i'm not gonna do the prescribed mess i'm gonna do i'm gonna have crystals rubbed above my body when i'm sleeping okay and then you start getting better okay because your body all right well at the low point you either keep going and die at which point you don't write the book about this new cure that you found or you start getting better by natural causes but you want to credit whatever you happen to be doing while that happened so this is the susceptibility of our belief systems when that happens but when things hit their worst you think maybe they'll get better so i can't imagine 2021 being much worse than this the and and kudos to medical researchers for coming up with a vaccine on record time yes record time right okay and i was surprised to learn because i'm not a medical professional i'm looking up in the journals and most of these vaccines for like smallpox and mumps it took decades to develop right decades so so it's not simply that a vaccine exists it's that the system sped up that process and ideally in the future vaccines will just be waiting on the shelf so no matter what the thing comes in you just tweak something real fast and bada-bing doesn't stand a chance right so that'd be kind of cool the day that happens so we need to at least celebrate how quickly this turned around absolutely i i can't wait to get my vaccine i don't care what anybody says i'll take it publicly you know i as a matter of fact i'm i wish i could take somebody's place right now let's just jump in front of the line i wish i could cut the line because i would do it in a second did you see some of the early vaccine videos i think the russians had some early version but people were concerned about the side effects so someone was there and they're speaking to you and they get the russian vaccine and halfway through they start speaking russian yeah halfway through the interview that's pretty that was pretty funny i like that um so anyway so with this is ostensibly a cosmic queries yeah we want to be future leaning on this okay and so you got you got any for me i assume we we're still honoring our patreon absolutely supporters so of course the uh we'll call it a new year grab ad for this one and uh how about this we'll start off with gordon vu from patreon hey dr tyson and dr nice uh i am wondering i called you dr nice he called me dr nice to meet you gordon you're a good man thank you sir don't don't do that though don't do that brother chuck in my book you're a doctor of comedy oh that's all oh you got me man look at that i i didn't know how that was right and i bet the fan base will agree i'm just saying okay you got me that was you get that i'm serious that that that was unexpected thank you okay uh he says i am wondering if a light particle will travel forever in space if unhindered does light particles obey the second law of thermodynamics so so the is is it is it emotion and continually in motion okay so this is forever this is a question that very much concerns itself with the future the future of a particle of light what we'll do we'll take a quick break and when we come back to the new year's edition of cosmic queries we'll go straight to that question on star talk we're back star talk check nice jack hey so you tweet at a chuck nice comic right yes sir thank you very much okay you know what's the the funnest times when i follow your tweets is when you were live tweeting some some important sporting event you just you're all up in it i love it he dropped that pass what's wrong with him and i can hear you just railing on all what's going on my favorite is when i'm following my home team the philadelphia eagles uh and you can hear the absolute um devastating disappointment in the angst and anguish yeah because honestly that is the fun of being uh an eagles fan learning how to take disappointment and make it fun this was this was true for the boston red sox for so long but then they started winning and their whole raison d'etre which was oh we're we almost get there but not and that's what bound bound people together when they started winning it was like that got lost yeah you can't say it anymore i'm hoping to have that experience one day with the eagles and for old timers they remember was it susan lucci who had the record for never winning a uh daytime emmy for her uh for the soap operas that she had appeared on and so that became the thing right right yeah you know are you not going to win an emmy again this year you know exactly and then she wanted emmy and then that whole that whole stick and her whole career was over just killed her so uh we left off with a question about the faint of a particle of light so won't you give me the who asked that again so gordon bill and he says i'm wondering if a light particle will travel forever if left unhindered does a particle of light obey the second law of thermodynamics right so um the a particle of light uh if so a photon just call it a photon right uh if the universe were static okay so if it were just stationary not expanding not shrinking and it's just there and if it were infinite and then out comes a particle of light that particle that photon will travel forever unhindered and unimpeded travel forever okay it's not gaining complexity it's not losing it's just travel however we live in an expanding universe and in an expanding universe the photon which also can be thought of as having a wavelength of light as it moves through an expanding universe that wavelength gets stretched embedded in the fabric of the stretching universe itself and when you stretch light you give it longer wavelength the distance between crests right when i say wave i mean the natural thing you think of in a wave there's you know there's a hill and a valley so the distance from crest to crest that's a full wave length that stretches that reduces the energy of the photon so the photon in this universe approaches lower and lower energy and if it started out as a blue photon you then become uh it goes backwards back through the spectrum becomes a red photon then a microwave photon a radio photon and then in the very distant future its wavelength could be miles long you know far out of your capacity to see with the naked eye or any of our equipment and and the fate of the universe uh just descends into this a long wavelength uh graveyard wow have a nice day yeah sorry photon sorry folk time but i gotta throw this out there i gotta throw this out there you may know from relativity that the faster you go the slower time ticks for you as seen by others who watch this so this is relative to the relativity of time so it travels ticks slower and slower and slower so the faster you go the slower time takes and this just continues and continues and continues right if you hit the speed of light time stops no time right no time for you for you right it'll look like everything else around you is speeding up okay so the photon has no cons itself has no concept of time so if a photon is emitted by your flashlight even and you point it out in space okay that photon will travel forever until it hits something right and the moment it hits something the photon will say to itself boy that was quick i was just admitted by a flashlight right exactly because no time elapses for that photon so it doesn't matter how long it travels as far as it's concerned it was emitted and absorbed instantaneously in the same instant look at that that's very cool freak freaky photons who knew we would get all that out of gordon booze that's amazing all right all right keep it coming let's go to josh uh josh v he says uh hey dr tyson how did star talk come about and how did you get chuck involved [Laughter] i i don't know if he's about to lodge a complaint or not yeah that's unclear that is unclear right we don't know and then he says uh how many folks work behind the scenes to bring us these episodes can you give a shout out to the folks off the camera who makes star talk uh possible and this is uh um andrei so there you go wow wow okay i would do better if i had a list so that i can just rattle them off what i can say is um and in fact i'm i'm a little disappointed in myself because i was on a podcast just recently in fact i was on uh nagin farsad's part podcast yeah yes and her podcast is fake the nation and at the end of the podcast she went through the list of everybody who makes that show the producers the writers i hate when they do that and i said i don't i hate when i'm listening but now i'm thinking i got people we got people who make this happen exactly and i never read their names on the list well listen there's a reason why you're behind the scenes okay okay let's just all right run some credits run credits at the end okay and do like they do with tv they just fl critics fly by so uh start so it's a great question thank you for thinking about this because you know there are people behind the scenes so a star talk was an idea that came about about 12 years ago actually and helen matsos who's a co-executive producer with me and there's a third fellow named david gamble who's not no longer part of the organization but the three of us um applied for a grant from the national science foundation the three of us applied for a grant from the national science foundation on the grounds that we think we can create a radio program that can bring science to the public and have sponsors want to support it there were already radio programs that dealt with science but they're like on npr right and so every quarter you've got to beg for money and so how why do you have to do that oh because it's that science is good for you but not good for good for marketing okay so we were living with this expectation that you could not sell science but i said to myself i've seen people react when i talk to them about science and cool things and black holes and and i know this but not only that there's science everywhere so maybe let's fold in some fun celebrity guests real celebrities like authentic people that everybody knows of and talk about the way science has touched their lives so instead of a journalist interviewing a scientist let's have a scientist interview folks pulled in from random places that scientists would meet and then bring the other and i know from my life trying to educate is that if you make people smile no not and make them smile that sounds like it's a force if you if if you if they enjoy the moment they're more likely to remember what happened in that moment so we said to ourselves we want to combine celebrities with comedians and i will have the steering wheel on this conversation and i will have also dials to dial up or down the comedian and up or down the there and i will we can deliver a a a persistently uh reliable combination of content with gravity and content with levity and that would then become the dna of star talk we thought we'd get uh become commercially viable in three years as a three-year grant but it would take an extra two years and which we got an extension grant from the alfred p sloan foundation which is very big into science and and the public and at in the fifth year we finally drew in enough money from advertisers to pay all of what we have so we have uh producers we have writers what the writers do is they come up they say okay we have this guest why don't we talk about this and so they're not scripting words that are coming out of you and my mouth but they're it was their idea to to have the topics that we um identify so for example we just posted uh at the end of last year we posted an interview with olivia munn okay i knew of her as an actress and but i didn't know her whole profile that then the work she did in an x-men and she's a geek herself so we got researchers who establish all that and they prepare those notes for me and i drive the bus from and i know which way to turn from the notes that we have a team of writers do for us and researchers so there's that then there are people who maintain the internet we have someone the name is jeff simons who is the cultivator of the patreon community all right so and he also writes the fan page for star talk telling you what's coming up what just happened what to look forward to so the whole fan interactive dimension of that uh is covered there we have someone else who posts to to twitter and to the and to instagram and to facebook and we only recently opened up tiktok uh so uh star talks tick tock is primarily me but we're gonna find ways that others can contribute to that who are part of the the family so all told there's about 15 people uh behind the scenes and i have not only chuck as a comedian but we have three or four other comedians that are kind of out in the wings if chuck can't make it because he's got his own he's got a day job check do you have a danger yes i work at payless shoes okay they went out of business i think that's why okay okay maybe they didn't i don't know but the one across my street that's why i said this because they went well that's why you said it so chuck we can't have chuck every minute of his life so we have some other comedians and you've seen them and you've heard them and we love them all eugene merman was an early comedian in this but then he moved out of town up to boston and we tapped into the eugene merman's comedy festival which gave us access to other comedians and so uh and the very first comedian for star talk was lynn coplets uh and uh and so so that's what we've been and over that time of course the landscape has changed where um terrestrial radio which is where we began then gave way to uh podcasts and then we had a stint on siriusxm and so now we have our youtube channel with more than a million followers so the radio show concept is grown into of course we video all of our radio shows now so that you can consume them in both media so so that's that's the total um structure of this and the one closest to what you're experiencing now is lindsay walker lindsay's behind the scenes one day maybe we should take a family picture and then we'll put it up and have little uh you know face identify everybody so there's not only lindsey walker but we also have lucy long who uh does some of the sort of normal star talks but then she does all the rest of the star talk sports editions so we got people all plugged in to the operations of the star talk enterprise and so it's it's an entire community and i mean i was embarrassed that i have never read that list and so what i might here's what i'll do uh i'm gonna we're gonna run credits or at least part of a show i'm going to devote at least five or ten minutes to just introducing each one of them and they all come on and say hi to everybody and that way you'll get to see the star talk family we'll do it do a show just of that okay i'm i'm just where did we find chuck he was uh he was panhandling on this street i was tell a joke for five dollars no uh neil met me on the subway i was like excuse me ladies and gentlemen of the subway i mean you no disrespect my favorite joke from the the homeless subway comedian have you seen him my favorite joke of his was i'm so broke i can't even pay attention right that was good yeah so uh my my guy uh so uh that guy is on the b train oh you already know what train the dudes that guy's on the b train uh the six train dude is just like what's the best nation in the world a donation hello hello yeah well i figure if they can make me laugh you know i don't mind give him a couple of dollars i mean if i pay to see a comedian in a comedy club um if he doesn't happen to have access to a comedy club right or his comedy club is the captive audience of a subway train i don't mind slipping them a couple of dollars i hate all the cops and okay where it comes from we don't like it so give me give me another fast one before we take a break oh man that's a tough one here we go fast here it is uh john jacobson what would the impact be to the current theories in cosmology if the speed of light at the beginning of the universe was faster than it is observed to be now and even slower in the distant future oh wow okay i like that i like it so much we have to take a break and we'll come back so when we come back we will find out the implications of a change in the speed of light on star talk cosmic queries we're back star talk cosmic query is the new year's edition we're trying to think of the future trying to leave the past behind us yes water under the bridge please yeah so a question was what would be different if the speed of light were not constant so let me let me make a very stark statement here okay first we have never measured the speed of light to be anything different than it is in the laboratory okay now because when we look out in space we look back in time we have ways of measuring the speed of light in those locations right back in time so so we can make measurements that apply at a different place at a different time when we measure the speed of light there and then it's the same value that we get on my uh in my laboratory i believe that's why they call it a constant the constant to end all constants and so you might say well how do we measure the speed of light way back there's several ways but let me tell you an interesting one it's called the fine structure constant this is a ratio of other constants that tells us how the energy separates in the levels of atoms and so the separation of those energy levels if a light enters or exits the atom that affects the spectrum okay so if the fine structure constant were different in the early universe than it is today or any of those constants then then the spectral features of atomic elements in the early universe would look different from how they do today but they are exactly the same carbon in the first few moments of the universe is leaving the same spectral signature as it does today and that spectral signature has the speed of light built into it for it to give us what it is we see that is amazing it is it is a it's amazing it's it's it's not was not obvious and by the way this is we're not just assuming the speed of light was the same but we we we have we intermittently pose the question all right and consider that isaac newton wondered you know my my law of gravity is busting ass right it's got the earth around the moon around the earth and earth around the sun jupiter's moons going around jupiter it's a badass theory of gravity newton's theory of gravity then he said but does it apply beyond neptune the last known planet that does it apply to other stars so this was an open question until we could measure the speed of binary stars elsewhere in the galaxy and they were following newton's laws then we measured galaxies and we find out they were following newton's law so so when you add all this together yes these things are constant not only in place but in time and only in time but in place so so that's my first comment in response to that question my second is so fundamental is our understanding of the universe invoking the fact the observed fact that the speed of light does not change that if somehow the speed of light started changing up on us um to say how would it affect cosmology it affects everything everything i would sign we'd have to like start science all over again that's that's how that's how significant such a fact would be so i don't that's that's my answer you know it's not oh we'll have to rethink this but not that no everything right everything wow okay maybe biology probably wouldn't be different i i would suspect uh and but chemistry we'd have to understand the fine structure constant would have been different what would chemistry look like back then compared to now molecules would be different okay because the energy levels the energy levels of atoms of energy levels of electrons in atoms are what dictate how strongly molecules are held together right oh my gosh that's amazing so so thank you for making the very clear point that uh speed of light uses the symbol c because it is the mother of all constants yeah very nice e equals m c t squared there you go all right that sounds so cool man all right let's go to [Music] yolina no walk i think it's you lena you lena okay i hope that's your name uh we should take up a collection we should take patreon money and take up a collection to give chuck pronunciation lessons no no see here's what people don't understand people people send me all kinds of stuff they're like hey this'll help you with names and hey this will help you pronounce and here's what you're failing to realize i don't care okay if you want your name pronounced correctly send me the phonetic pronunciation of your name along with your name otherwise just have fun listening to me struggle as i tried to figure out what the hell your name is [Laughter] all right so all right next one she says or he says uh what would the advantage who yulina i think yulina nowak what with the advantages uh or disadvantages of living on a gas giant cheers from poland excellent uh excellent uh in fact being the advantages of living on a gas giant so my recent book was just translated into polish and i just did an interview on polish television nice regarding that yeah yeah they spoke they spoke english to me i don't know polish and they'll apologize and that the english wasn't good i say dude i don't know any polish at all so don't apologize to me for whatever it is you're doing the english okay guess what and and that's this is what lets you know you're american okay you go to any nation in the world and you try to speak their language and they look at you like look at how you butcher my language they tell you that in english look at how you put you in my language you come to america and you can only say five words all right but you're just like please you two tell me how to train bathroom yes to tell me how to and we go oh my god your english is so good why don't you learn to speak english because we know we can't speak their life but that's what we know that's what it is right all right all right so now i forgot the damn question gas giant advantages that's right so there are two ways you can think about that question one of them is maybe we could live on a moon that is orbiting a gas giant okay because they're moons we know moons that have atmospheres they're moons that have water around jupiter and around saturn so liquid water by the way that's way outside the goldilocks zone if you're orbiting jupiter way outside the comfort zone where earth is where we can sustain liquid water not too close you evaporate and not too far you freeze right out there it's freezing but there's an energy source which is this sort of symphony of tidal forces among the moons and of the main planet that that that stresses the physical object that is the moon and when you squeeze it and unsqueeze it and squeeze it on screen you're actually pumping energy into it much the same way when you if you play racquetball you say let's warm up the ball by hitting it multiple times you deform the ball the ball recovers its shape and every time you do that you're pumping energy and you literally warm the ball that's what's happening to europa that's what's happening to io these are moons in the outer planets and in fact io has raging volcanoes from energy that have been pumped in by this thought this process so we have sources of energy so the gravity of the big planet or the jazz guy like the jazz guy the gas the jazz giant [Laughter] is causing the moon or the other body to undulate in such a way that it creates heat yes wow deep in its interior and so on europa which may have a kilometer deep layer of ice because it's sitting outside of the goldilocks zone right deep inside there's evidence that there's an ocean of liquid water that might have more water than all the oceans of earth wow so yes so what you do is you move to one of these moons and then maybe introduce an atmosphere or or go to one that already has an atmosphere titan one of the moons the largest moon of saturn one of the largest moons in the whole solar system has a thick atmosphere except it's an atmosphere of methane which is the gas that comes out of your stove um and so i'm sorry and [Music] thank you for the physiological addition to my car i just i just want to make a contribution thank you for your scientific addition you're correct scientific yes uh methane is the product of bacteria that metabolizes in the absence of oxygen and your entire gut intestines right on through uh it has there's no oxygen there so that's anaerobic non-um oxygen thriving bacteria and so one of their byproducts is methane so yes in camp when they wanted to light your fart on fire there's science behind that okay come on baby okay and those of you who are old-timers with star talk chuck you and i talked about this was it five years ago we talked about a new uh a new talent that superman superman could could exploit because if he's if he's a superhuman in every way then he would have super farts and yes if that's the case he could you know he would remember how he can blow on something and freeze it well if he lights one of his farts you can you can ignite an entire village my favorite probably to this damn still my favorite conversation we have ever had flap and the buttons on the back and you pull the flap down and you look back oh god it's amazing it's awesome it's science it's what it is oh god all right so let me talk science like this in school it'd be the best kids would never ever get turned off all right so why do we start talking about methane well because it's about so titan methane right and methane is only flammable if it's in the presence of oxygen so so people worried that the spacecraft would ignite the entire atmosphere of titan because we landed there uh europe had a probe that landed there called huygens and um but no not a problem but anyhow so you can live in a moon that orbits one of these planets provided it's been warmed by this tidal force because we need a source of energy for our own metabolism and we have to figure out you know is it plant life is it animal life maybe these oceans in europa have fishes swimming in them all right so you can go ice fishing there that could be fun so so that's a new opening of the goldilocks zone that we previously hadn't considered when we were restricting our search for just that golden distance um from the host star so in terms of the gas giant itself without a surface to walk on and with the um plus the gre and if he did have a surface the gravity is very high so i can't think of i can't i cannot endorse any urges to live in the atmosphere of a gas giant because most of their mass is in the form of gas oh wow look at that that's amazing yeah so chuck i think we have to end it there that went fast oh my god that was like some some fun questions just to begin the new year and uh so chuck a happy and healthy new year for you and your family thank you same to you my friend yeah i'm just trying to keep the universe bring the universe to try to bring the universe down to earth for whoever will listen all right there you go all right i'm neil degrasse tyson bidding all of you happy new year happy 2021 may it be better for you than it ever was for any of us in 2020 let me tell you something if your 2021 is worse than 2020 just give up yeah yeah it's time to give up on that time to give up go to another planet exactly it's like i'm out of here all right uh this has been star talk cosmic aquarius new year's edition neil degrasse tyson keep looking up [Music]

Channel: StarTalk

Views: 224,411

Keywords: startalk, star talk, startalk radio, neil degrasse tyson, neil tyson, science, space, astrophysics, astronomy, podcast, space podcast, science podcast, astronomy podcast, niel degrasse tyson, physics, 2020, new year, 2021, year in review, 1968, apollo 8, coronavirus, chuck nice, speed of light, europa, Io, jupiter, saturn, total solar eclispe, the great conjunction

Id: 5nP4sNa1n_c

Length: 46min 11sec (2771 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 07 2021