StarTalk Podcast: Cosmic Queries - ALIENS! with Jake Roper (@Vsauce3) and Neil deGrasse Tyson

this is Startalk cosmic queries edition Chuck hey Neal people love them cosmic query they do and we have a lot of inquiring minds that's a good that's a good thing is a good thing plus actually in cosmic queries we bring in other people who are the experts and I just get to sin listen ah I learned too so there you have it they who knew you were still capable of learning okay there's very well okay today today's subject aliens in film and TV OH subject that is a big subject big subject huge subject for something for which there is no data aliens now I got my own thoughts about aliens but the people out there who are more alien fluent than I am all right before we get to our alien fluency do you believe in aliens it's not about a bleep no okay do you believe that we are alone in the universe is now is that one of the questions no I just asked I'm asking you personal okay I it would be inexcusably egocentric for anyone to suggest that we on earth are alone in the universe given how all the universe is the prevalence of the chemistry that manifests in life we see that biochemistry that organic chemistry all across the universe and how long it took life to show up on earth they're pretty quick about a hundred million years sounds like a long time so I'm an abyss and an of the universe so it would be astonishing if we were alone okay that's all I'm saying all right very diplomatically placed without actually saying yes or no yeah I I know exactly what you mean so it's great that's all given it's a good answer so I'm giving all right well what we have who we have here yes is the one and only Jake Robert Joe Jake oh I got your resume here host of vsauce3 science channel on YouTube Vsauce could you guess that he's got a youtube pillar Oh different okay and you host the youtube series could you survive the movies that is a brilliant concept putting people through what goes on in the movies right right that's a brilliant concept and uh so you just never leave home and you watch movies all the time would you like study this in school I mean it worked well because yes like my job is to watch movies then explore them scientific it's just job that's it well what a great job Tommy pays you to do that pays you to watch movies I don't know how do you get my son that job he's actually doing it for free so in cosmic queries we solicit questions from our audience and they've been primed on this subject that's right so they're coming in and they know you but many of them if not most are fans of yours so then we could do this in a star talk way absolutely let's do it Chuck all right well can I start with my own personal question for you is that way all right before you asking him if it's okay yes you have my permission Thanks the first question all right so I just want to know in your estimation what is the easiest movie to survive the easiest movie to survive if we're talking physically yes I would say of what of what genre okay alien movies yes like any alien film of an alien film hmm the easiest one to survive you'll be et well so so here's the thing I would say ET that's a really immediately popped in my head but then you do have that whole segment we're like oh we need a quarantine because who knows what bacteria or viruses that's right and that is kind of interesting thing you have this foreign creature here on earth right we don't know what we have no idea I don't know what it is susceptible to or what where's this I don't - from it so yes so at the end of the movie but in reality when the kids get them back to the ship what they don't show you is five weeks later when they all have these horrible Routh's besides of their faces and yeah but he's already gone yeah and the movie ended yeah then they were like no I can't make a sequel cuz all the kids have horrible tumors so I have two reflections on this okay one I've had Steven Spielberg in that chair over there in my office tell me okay upon being asked something related that et what he imagined et as a vegetable and not as an animal so he's a plant based life-form plant based life that's correct catches which is how he would have that relationship with the plants remember oh yes it would rebloom and so that it was imagined but since it's walking and talking and has eyeballs and shoulders you the natural way to think of them is as living right as animal animal rather than plant land life that's my first day yeah second point wow that is a really cool really cool guy can you say what are your sources party smackdown you know this but et is actually a plant leaf plant based life yeah where do you get that from Steve yeah it's I've had people come up to me to say what what wiki page did you get that information from and I for other calculus calculations I said I calculated it somebody actually creates information that goes on right here right also you can ask what are the chances we would catch an ET disease if he comes to earth what's the chances of having a zit and here's the problem the kind of diseases we think about and know about tend to be very specific to the life forms right think about it so an oak tree is not gonna get whooping-cough correct right and just like there are certain viruses that will you know that will not will not be what's a transmitted trance species cross species they have to mutate that so the idea that an alien from another planet is has something that's contagious to us is kind of it's kind of low because a lot of things that are contagious to other life-forms on earth with whom we have DNA in common are not contagious to us that's all I'm saying okay but still we got to be cautious just as you said all right well let's get to the queries now on the horse we always start with a patreon patron because they support us yes love them for it this is a jb from patreon who says hi Neal and Jake this is Jessica from Arizona in 2005 the movie War of the Worlds starring Tom Cruise these machines driven by aliens start eviscerating people with white laser beams effectively turning them into ash would it be possible to harness light this way into a kind of super laser if so where would you go to stay safe which would be in defense again defense against a yeah so Jake yeah Jake all right so just to clarify they're asking if the weapon that the world the world's aliens use could be possible well she's saying yes is it possible to use light in this manner so that is a different way of saying is that weapon possible and in that way you could you could fight with a weapon equivalent to what they're using perhaps okay or you could defend against it right well actually this is funny because if we just spoilers for everyone that hasn't seen the movie yet didn't give you a second okay the movie 14 years old is forgettable I've never seen a movie yet I don't care go well hopefully they just heard the original War of the Worlds from back in the day when you were a kid anyway exactly so the way that they destroy the alien to defeat them is by like a virus a human virus gets them ill and they all just died right so this kind of goes back to the et conversation where we actually are the this contaminant that kills them we're the web anywho yeah we are the weapon just us existing and that's kind of the part the course for humans anyway so I mean I would say it is possible you can't I mean I've harness light is that what they're harnessing we don't really know you could generate enough energy where you could just completely eviscerated person I mean that's possible true well I mean if it's just a matter of energy right lighting is a form of energy right now laser beams are kind of cooler than other forms of it but it's just energy right so you know a bow and arrow is putting energy here and taking energy over here and putting it over there right a laser has got anything here and put it over there right up a bullet I got energy over here it's in the Gunpowder and now the energy so if you can abstract this question to just say what are the ways you're gonna have energy over here and put it over there and you have more energy than they have that's kind of what that comes down to right but I wonder maybe yes what do you think the question was what does it take to turn them into a pile of ash well do you think maybe that was the question so that's what I'm thinking right now in it in that regard I mean it would have to be whatever this beam is let's say this energy beam it would have to encompass the entirety of the person's body for all of them to instantaneously turn to ash Roy just focused here well then it would just pop a hole right three and the same way that a bullet when it impacts doesn't blow apart your whole entire right sternal body internal does so I guess would be so if we just go by heat so hot then it would immediately vaporize all of the moisture in your body all right just completely dry you out to such a degree that you are just dust afterwards absolutely Yeah right Jake is mentioning an important point because it's hard to burn something that has a lot of liquid in it right look what you got to first get rid of liquid then you can burn what's left right so you talked about ash it's gonna be a pile of ash but your blood had to evaporate in some way before you even get to the ash so so the instant ain't instant Tenaya T that were nice it's it is now insta Tenaya T sounds like a great a great Quaker Oats commercial [Laughter] today an instant today it's delicious all right so so it would require enough energy to instantly take your blood to a rolling boil and then evaporate battery get rid of all the liquid and then and then consume the rest of the material and that seems to me I have to take a little longer than how long that took in the movie yeah right because the other thing too is if you're talking about that kind of energy it only did that to the person the beam didn't as it continued it didn't like shoot holes into the ground we didn't take our buildings right or the plantlife light behind okay only the people so all right so maybe was attuned to human chemistry then well that's a good thing I see you think about this stuff okay so the military and large municipalities have what's called non-lethal weaponry okay okay yeah and the Taser is an example of one right but another one is this truck that rolls around with this huge beam it sends microwave waves into a crowd and you're burning you feel like your skin is burning so you want to get out of that beam and basically they aim it for the focus points wherever people are gathering and getting them getting the most ornery so they can disperse the pretty bit to disperse the crowd so the cool thing about microwaves is water responds to microwaves which is why your plate doesn't get hot but your food does in the microwave oven so if you have one of these weapons that targets human molecules then you could have a beam that's sort of wide enough to just enclose you right that could that convey per eyes you but not the stuff behind you oh right epsilen right would you how do you think of that I mean I think that that sounds fair because they do have those specific things they able to microwave weapons that you're talking about I mean I remember reading an article years ago about how in the UK to stop teens from loitering in stores stores could play this frequency that only teenagers could hear I still had those hairs in there right so here the frequency going to them yeah all folks just don't even hear it and so we can show that's great all right well that's a great question Jessica that was really cool are you ready for another one here we go yes sir this is Siobhan Siobhan Srivastava srivasa yes Siobhan srivasa Siobhan shear estava Syros hope so oh so you're gonna you on yes [Laughter] she says hi dr. Tyson do you think and organizations such as mi big or men and black can be established secretly if the government finds aliens I'm also really either to know what changes will you and Jake would you and Jake like to make in the movies so they are more bound to reality ooh thank you for your encouraging science education so Jake it can mi bebé real would it would it be real for a first is it real second would the government do it if in fact we were sort of shielding aliens but what's your I would say yes I mean everything right now is just hypothetical but I would assume that yes they would create an organization would it be as cool and sexy as men in black probably not here's what I want to know from both of you do you think the government the scientific community especially which shield the public from the knowledge that we are not alone I'm gonna ask Jake about okay I I mean I think this is a tough one because we are hunting for life out there in the universe right that's we're actively doing when we go to Mars where we just are trying to go to Europe all these different missions that is kind of the point but that is a different kind of life then I think what most people assume life to be we think of life as sentient human beings that can walk around move around have conversations think for themselves not microorganisms so when it comes to that level of I assume an alien is this living breathing thing that can move around and shake my hand that I would kind of assume that the government if it did if it were happening now they would hide from us because it kind of is a disruptive thought or disruptive information to know so with an MIB kind of secret keepers she would agree not not as cool as miv I don't think we have like fancy alien weapons and like cool cars you know they're done all these action is giving birth to a lian's on the like side of the room s way or whatever but right like I do think if aliens well you okay aliens exist I think well in men in black one of the aliens was he was like bug life right I mean he was like roaches so it's not now all of them were fully manifested as humanoid forms he was a monoid but he was still made of bugs or or I have a strong theory that if we go to the deep ocean that all tania's alien it looks so foreign from what we experience here in our world of on land that it is so different like that could be aliens for all we know actually a totally different environment yeah yeah I'm gonna say no the DNA overlapping to you say but otherwise it's fun to think about exactly we gotta take a quick break when we come back more with Jake on aliens in the universe yes Startalk we're Startalk cosmic queries aliens in the movies and TV yeah something as big as the universe itself did you know what it probably did then I got a groper on thank God we got Jake world I know right cuz he thinks about this stuff all the time professionally professional get somebody pays me let me take his your parents should be so proud of what your son - my son talks about aliens on YouTube and they pay him I love it alright so what's your question what you got a next question is Matt's question list right this is a Jason Jason Muggeridge Jason says hey what's up guys what's yours Niels and Jake's favorite fictional alien movie or a game and wha oh nice question that's a good one I go on dig you you go first okay so I'm gonna give you my favorite movie I'm here and it's gonna be very pedestrian because you're gonna say it's just the it's the it's the oldest trope ever don't tell me what I'm gonna say about you or alien okay you're right you're right about that alright alright the alien the alien in there in the movie in the alien that is my bad thing is amazing first of all it's super cunning and intelligent okay secondly we don't know what motivates this thing it kills everything but why why is it doing it third it loves to fight what are you so angry bro down the third it's got a mouth in a mouth amazing what is that tiny little mouth for why I didn't know you felt this way you cut it and it bleeds acid come on this thing is awesome whoever thought of this alien I'm telling you they put a little bit of time and that's all I'm saying and scurries when it escaped down the hallway and by the way look at its transformation it's it goes in you as who knows what you're just hosts a little drab monster actually grabs you by the face and puts the baby alien in you and then it comes out as a little snake man time to think now are you so distracted by Chuck's like that was that was great [Laughter] I mean okay so alien is fantastic I'm wearing an alien hat Nostromo the ship for the first one that's what I do love alien but actually in a similar vein to alien because uh I think I would think of alien as a parasite right the whole entire way that it just stays summer is that it is this parasitic relationship so with that in mind the thing is my favorite alien the theme of the movie the thing I forgot what the same thing is the thing to like the blob what is the thing no sort of the thing but don't get an ogre thing with them cuz then we answer them with their hands and ask them is answer all right so back on track check come on okay sorry the thing is a well the remake was which is one of this most popular is this 1980s movie with Kurt Russell Drake by John Carpenter and the thing is this organism that takes the shape I saw it I whatever the host is I didn't realize that that was I what I was watching but it's a shapeshifter and you don't know who it is because it can be anything and then at one point it became the dog or something like that right yep yeah okay I saw that movie I can take any form and it's the thing that's scared to me that is one is it really is a parasite but an intergalactic parasite and it just takes a pond like you have things the jewel wasp here on earth right which is more similar to the xenomorph an alien where impregnates the cockroach basically and then a larva bursts out it becomes a full-on wasp flies away but the thing I love because it brings up this conundrum where does the person who it took the body of the form of is it aware that it's not human or does it think that it's human but it has something else controlling its mind and I think that's a really nice conundrum ronique in the mirror the mirror tells you you're human right right yeah yeah so so you like the fact that you could be infested with this parasite or occupied by this parasite and still think you are you but just going about your life but really you're just a puppet of a galactic parasite and you have no idea potentially the people around you have no idea that you are no longer you right right it's pretty clear I think that's pretty spooky whereas with like traditional aliens or an alien you know it's nailin like okay you're terrifying you're not you're not friendly but if it was just kneel we're like oh how you doing and it for all this time he's been this parasitic alien what's the difference between them and invasion of the body snatchers fundamentally so that's a great question there isn't much okay okay I think it's just we known in a style and what these alien creatures that take over humans I think an invasion of Body Snatchers its motivation is much more clear it's there to take over the planet right in the thing they just find this crashed spaceship from like thousands of years ago and there's no reason as to why it's there or what the purpose of this alien is they only never expresses its intent it's just this vicious force okay that's a good one all right Neil III have a good answer in a cop-out answer oh my good answer is I think the blog is the best alien ever the blob because it didn't walk it didn't talk it didn't have two eyes shoulders mouth nose feet you know as much as we like alien versus Predator yeah the predator was great right but it's still very humanoid yes even the approximate height of a human you took looks you know Ahnold straight in his eyes he run right here right kill me if it bleeds we can kill it okay so I'm thinking this was the most creative alien Hollywood has ever come up with because it was not an actor in a costume okay and people forget but what color is the blog you remember red red except when it first landed was completely transparent Oh after eight its first person then it was red oh I gotta go back and check today yes yes did you did Jake did you know that I didn't know that what I just showed my girlfriend the blog because she'd never seen it we just watched it the other week okay so it's fresh it stretches might be yeah it might be Steve McQueen's first movie or very early in his yet in his repertoire I think that's the most imaginative put it comes through the grill right it comes to everything of the air conditioning duct any any opening any opening opening who's it's yeah yeah so that and favorite alien I think is from uh contact contact with Jodie Foster so you mean when she was inside of that not a portal you never see the alien that's why it's my favorite alien all right because he says I've taken on this for him to make you comfortable no no yes yes sir but the alien you do not know what the alien looks like the alien that exists in some way that is not material that does not lend itself to material presence for your eyes okay so I and that way and by the way 2001 and its sequel 2010 neither those showed the alien either right so I like it when they don't show it to you okay that's all that's great like that this actually brings up I love your thoughts on this I always like to think that if we were to see an alien that we wouldn't really be able to comprehend it which is why I always think that the old school looked like the the gray alien you know big head black eyes because we only understand things in the shapes that we can currently comprehend but if something we're not bound by our understanding of the world could it look entirely different in a form that we just don't understand have to put it into a form that we do understand no I would I don't think so if you're open enough to what can be it's just a thing that now know you that you'll have a reference for it but it's a new thing that you make new references for it so for example in Star Trek you have the Horta mmm the Horta is basically a rock right and it's alive as a raw right that doesn't look like any alien anyone's dreamt of before but it can move through silicates like we move through air because the rock is silicon based most of them so I thought that was could you agree that was a creative attempt that is really creative just to think outside of the box the Horta cool cool very cool no that is a sorry just back to the bob the real quick I know we get more questions well that's to your point what makes the blob so great is that it isn't this traditional flesh and blood looks like a has legs and arms kind of characters this blob this shapeless form that just moves around and go through objects or things that we can't physically or that a physical being could plus a bullet doesn't stop it right it's not and not because it's impervious it's just irrelevant right it is like shooting water yeah all right so shall we move on to Ryan Rambo ER and Ryan wants to know this in the movie arrival the government sends two different scientists from two different fields of study if you had to choose two people who would you send into an alien spacecraft interested just to remind people in arrival the recent arrival we survived we arrived sorry I just got here a particle physicist and a linguist okay would you've done Jake would you send different people in I totally would have sent little people in who what would you have said other than yourself who would you send I mean I think but that was also a very specific thing where they they chose a linguist because they knew there was some kind of communication happening and I needed someone there to help decipher it right after the family started it's a tuna after the fact okay okay but what you say so first I'm starting from that point then I think that kind of a particle physicist doesn't seem like when she wants some sort of biologist yeah I do that's what I would have sent an astrobiologist okay and a cryptographer and a cryptographer right right right that makes sense so I agree with that and or I would have sent like a theoretical mathematician what's what's wrong with that because I mean listen if for them to get here but had to use math sure right sure and I think that math would be the same for us but but astrobiologist no math so we're good here okay part of our curriculum haunts see you know just think that physicists are so damn great who did an astrobiologist and a cryptographer the cryptographers gonna know math too right Jake cryptography no survey of course here's my question to you Jake yeah how do they know that the septa pod or whatever is called yeah that the thinking thing was communicating in the direction they are looking hmm rather than in his own direction and they should then be studying their mirror image of it yeah flipping it Wow well it's not too hard about that you just ruin the movies my parents right it's writing what it thinks it everyone is thinking that's its its own right somebody's got a we need a mirror in there at some point Jake what's your opinion is your take my opinion is that the aliens are very considerate look so they were like we're gonna make it easy for you guys we traveled all this distance we are smart enough to know that we're gonna flip it for you we're gonna draw right backwards I would tell you if aliens come up to me and they put it as a glass window right I am writing shit back I'm not writing and this is my only faces yeah my only problem with the movie is this what if you are smart enough for intergalactic travel are you going to tell me that you can't learn English in a few days I'm just saying yeah I agree yeah they're problem that was my problem with with with Close Encounters of the Third Kind okay do you remember that scene where they figure out where they're gonna land you remember that scene it's the teletype gives the the longitude and latitude it says wait a minute that's a coordinates on earth and then they go get the map and if it's Devil's Tower it's like oh my gosh and I've hidden you don't my issue here Jake it's our latitude goes from zero to ninety who thought that up okay and between zero and one and one and two it's split into sixty parts okay and the longitude is an act of politics that put the prime meridian through Greenwich so if you were an alien and you know our coordinates is if you come up upon her there's no grid lines on earth right it's a planet made my world man you have to understand our weird sexagesimal counting system for angles and you have to know the politics that put the prime meridian going down through Greenwich and if you knew that much about human culture you just say hey what's happened what's happening left the devil's tower right at 4:30 this afternoon see you then bump now did you tell Steve the spill burned that when I was here what's next question go nope okay next question the next question here we go all right this is oh I like it this is 72 underscore oh five underscore 72 and thank you so much for that name by the way if our planet was being attacked by aliens what's the first thing you would do now this is an attack guys not a visit and attack okay what's the first thing you would do we don't have time in this when we come back we're gonna find out what's the first thing Jake is gonna do when aliens attack and start talking or terry's we're back to start talk segment three of cosmic queries aliens in the movie that's right hey just discu this one he does yeah awesome it's a great job it's not only what he does that's all he does oh that's too funny okay so before we went off here's the question seventy-two underscore oh five s underscore seventy-two says this if our planet was being attacked guys by aliens what is the first thing you would do not a visit and a top Jay first thing I got to do is probably just relax you know what what could I do to help stave it off I'm just gonna chill turn on some star talk radio all right nice Merlot I think that's one and then just glass of wine and chill yes instead of Netflix until alien attack and shit interesting I tell you what I would not do which is what they do in the movies you should shoot your gun at it go outside and start shooting at the sky it's a mother shit right and you think you did right all right so so what would you do so Jake you have you have you have surrendered to them correct well if they're attacking like I'm sorry so I guess my assumption was that it's the ship that's attacking us if they set ground troops and we're going like house-by-house door by door to door then yeah I probably fight back but if there's just a giant mother ship blasting earth someone to Independence Day then I just hang out and hope that it all clears man yeah I'm kind of let's do yeah I mean listen like you know I'm not good like when you bought up Independence Day the scene that really burned my shorts was when all the people got on top of the Capitol Records building to look at the aliens yes to get a better than to get a better view of the aliens and then of course they were all incinerated by a particle beam white like I don't get that what do you I don't I don't I don't want to meet aliens and that's that you realize Independence Day is war the world really how do we attack how do we triumph over the aliens with a fire so biological a virus and a psychological virus okay so so I like Jake and I like keeping him around so I'll put him in with his bottle of Merlot okay I'll get him a good bottle of Merlot right get you a Chateau Petrus okay from maybe mercy 1989 would be a really good bottle of Merlot for you okay right now look that one up and so then I like him what keep around and I'll go out and try to figure out how to kick some alien ass okay Neil is full of it because what you don't know Jake is that Neil has many government connections many many government connections it will be in a bunker safely secured okay with a couple generals who will be consulting him what we should or should not be doing with his head people know him and I don't think Neil was lying when he said that he would you know check on me and then when he did leave though yes he would go to his bunker hanging out smoking cigars living as best-laid cool a Chuck what's an expert all right here we go this is a zippy coming to us she's a YouTube fan what is the most believable depiction of aliens you've seen in modern sci-fi good question yes the most alien let's go moderate let's define it 1980s Arnold yeah let's say may eighties on okay I mean the first thing that pops my head I think would be arrival okay I think the way that they handled it the way that the interactivity live did the aliens interacted with us depart that didn't disturb you at all because I think no the issue that I have with most not an issue is I do enjoy them but with both alien invasion films when they come to earth is why do they always want to destroy us why is that their immediate instinct is like let's just kill everybody that's because there's no realization we landed on their planet in fact that's what we've done to each other when we land on each other's continents hmm so that's why I think though we write it that way because that's what we would do so we put our own self in those scripts when we write aliens if they were smart enough if they could traverse these incredible distances with their first action be aggression mmm yeah I mean III think only if we were food with it because otherwise who serve men right right you got yep to Twilight Zone episode yeah to serve man what is it there was like its resource gathering they do a lot of that but I feel like a rival had a pretty in my mind good depiction where obviously took liberties with some of the science but it felt still in this world of science realism or at least they were trying to obtain that and I really appreciated that what about The Day the Earth Stood Still ooh the either well either I mean there was the robot in the first one but that wasn't really the alien right there's something else controlled something else so could you try to uh oh I got it I got you here okay in that same vein I'm gonna go back to contact because it was that I thought that was an authentic representation of we as a society would react to the knowledge that there's an intelligent species out there so I agree with you you want some authenticity that isn't always violence right right but then wait if you're creative enough as the screenwriter whereas the storyteller you would put some of those authentic reactions in it as I agree they did with arrival see I think when you said The Day the Earth Stood Still is even even more so because it is a it is a non biological life-form like I think our first contact if we send something out it's not gonna be a human being we're gonna send something out there so that would be the encounter that from the opposite way all right next question all right here we go this is Wes Miller would you rather aliens be far more intelligent than humans or far less intelligence and then humans here's the thing if visited us they're clearly more intelligent yeah that's why I'm trying because I guess again we're assuming aliens are these life form style creatures and we're not finding them to your point you know they're like coming to find us so yeah I guess they just intrinsically would be more intelligent but then I guess sorry now I'm just being pedantic but like what is intelligence do they don't know more than us about certain things but I'm sure there'll be different verticals of information that we are much well-versed in than they are Jake if they got here in a spaceship of course the intergalactic space they know more about everything that we've ever known about anything that's probably the case unless of but are we gonna know about delicious like tacos and nachos Neil will they know that they will once they take over the earth but what if they're like what was the movie wall-e wall-e well and they were escaping a planet put on a ship that was run by an AI that took care of their every need and they just became dumb fatties floating around on chairs right then they arrived someplace you just ruined dumb fatties riding on chair but then instead of trying to wait until their planet was healed it just takes them on an intergalactic mission so here are people living in this enclosed society for all these like that could be millennia if you wanted it then they get someplace which is Earth they find us and what we end up seeing is incredible technology with a bunch of dumb fatties chairs sure why sorry unless they want to say about aliens I will go back to ET though as a consideration where ET was able to get to earth yet didn't even know what Reese's Pieces were what an idiot okay next all right here we go run a shorten time see if we get a couple in here okay this is Prabhu hands-on talung says this if we ever contact an alien species is there a first contact protocol a true-to-life first contact protocol Jake I don't know if there is but if there was one what would you want it to be uh I mean I you know what I just really thought about this question before Oh we stuck Jake Wow Jake well because I always assumed because you have the light-cone right which would have to go to need you know but information there unless we can figure out tachyons always everything's there's a speed limit to how fast information can travel Technos trouble especially employment move backwards in time right far enough away to send us a message by the time you're able send anything back whoever sent it is probably long gone so I've never really thought about the idea of what would we say there has to be a protocol interesting you would send a radio signal if we were communicated that way but if they just showed up do you send your double set up do you send your diplomat you send your head of state oh let's hope not no I'd send like I said Paul Rudd everyone likes Paul that is an excellent likeable people very good we if you send the most likeable human then that's your best chain there you go let's send the deliverer Paul we go wrong that's a brilliant answer I like it to send the most friendly among us ray and if they think he's evil in some way then we're in truck give me another question last one last one okay here we go hi dr. Tyson and mr. Roper look at this this is you got a mister out of this this is hilarious Elias from London and I wanted to ask your thoughts on aliens like replicators from the Stargate series series robots who replicated themselves using available resources on every planet do you believe this is the most probable form of alien life that we will ever encounter Wow actually question real good Jake what do you have on that I mean this brings up what can I truck man shit earlier that it does seem more reasonable that if we were to get a first contact moment it would be with some sort of machine some sort of non or inorganic built thing and then also when it comes to replicating it this is the whole idea but the singularity that I always love or just advanced AI where if you were able to create an AI like a machine that is so advanced it no longer needs you to create it it can create itself now so I do think that could be a very real possibility because I mean I'm still stuck on that brilliant idea that Chuck had because Chuck is a brilliant attractive smart humble person which is that it would be some sort of robotic creature would probably the first contact okay Chuck very nice day well thanks yeah he complimented you he did yes both ways from Sunday and I'm telling them I'm gonna use every day I can so I want to just put some emphasis on that okay so the the Fermi paradox which is how can the aliens haven't been here well why would we expect that to happen because in the time of the universe they would have colonized every planet in the galaxy well how do you justify that well if you send a robot that can duplicate itself then it goes to a planet and then it makes two of itself and then they go to two planets and then they make two of themselves and they go to four planets and then 8 and then 16 it doesn't take many doubling times to have a robot on every single habitable planet in the galaxy that tip will take much less time than the amount of time the galaxy has been around and so either you bring humans there and duplicate themselves or you bring robots but there would have been some evidence if they really were of a colonizing species right so so yeah this idea that you can duplicate yourself that's really the only realistic that is the most real is the most realistic way fantastic right ask we speak English in the United States because England sent a colony that spoke English that's right alright so now we went to the moon not England right okay England sent the colony that then went to the moon right so that's you want to think about what what you've actually put into motion right and so yeah yeah that's good good stuff yeah Jake love you man that was fun Jake oh thank you guys so much this is great we got to do this again but we will we will find a way to get your ass back on here matrix do it I do a whole thing on just a matron well yeah and well cuz there's three movies no no there's only one makes the truth I don't know what happened the other something happened first one was my kids were over analysed matrix okay okay I've seen how many times you've seen the matrix too many too many yet me too yeah I'm kind of there too all right so you know that sounds negative not enough oh okay okay all right maître so this is the question are you Irish virus hi Jake we caught we gotta call it Chris there Chuck thanks for being always a pleasure Jake will find you again I don't know where you're hiding but we'll all right this has been Startalk cosmic queries aliens edition I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson as always bidding you [Music]

Channel: StarTalk

Views: 258,048

Rating: 4.8894486 out of 5

Keywords: StarTalk, star talk, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, Jake Roper, Cosmic Queries, Youtube, Vsauce3, Could You Survive the Movies?, aliens, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Steven Spielberg, War of the Worlds, Men in Black, The Blob, The Thing, Alien, Arrival, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Contact, WALL-E, Paul Rudd, intelligent life, science, space, astronomy, space podcast, science podcast, astronomy podcast, podcast, full episode, vsauce, sci fi, nerd, geek, vsauce neil degrasse tyson

Id: Jw8MW1J0ATk

Length: 48min 47sec (2927 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 30 2019