- This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal Astrophysicist, and I'm here today with
comedian extraordinaire Russell Peters. Russell, dude!
- Neil. - First time on StarTalk! - First time, first time
caller, longtime fan. - Oh, well thank you, for
your enthusiasm, and-- - It's real. - I believe it's real. I heard rumors that you
were on some other show and said who'd you want
to have dinner with, and I came up in the list. - You were the number one person. - [Neil] Okay, well we're
testing you on the show first before we make the dinner plans. - Okay, go ahead. (laughing) Go for it, yeah. Yeah, before I invite you out. - So thanks for doing this. Today is an episode of Cosmic Queries. Every now and then, we gather questions that we've either solicited or trickled in from our fan base, and the topic today is
Everyday Astrophysics. You didn't know there
was such a thing, huh? - Well, I mean, would this
be astrophysics for dummies? (laughing) - I don't know, actually. You've been handed the
question, I haven't seen them. - Oh, I've got the questions. - You've got all the questions. - These are actually really good questions from what I can see so far. - Okay. Well that... - I'm impressed and I'm like oh good that's a question I
would like to know as well. - Well that's good. You can pick 'em that way. But before we get into that, remind me. You're on the road all the time touring. - Constantly. - Constantly. - It's all I know, 30 years of this. - Where is home? Or is it in some bus somewhere? - Well, technically, home is... Well, I guess technically home is Toronto. - [Neil] Born and raised in Toronto. - Born and raised in Toronto. - [Neil] Okay. - But I've been living in
'Merica for 13 years now. - [Neil] 'Merica. - 'Merica, 13 years now. - 13 damn years. - I'll tell you what boy. - Tell you what. - I'll tell you what, you
need the H in front of it. (laughing) - Boy. So no, it's great to know
that you're out there and you've been doing this a long time. So just trying to... Make comedic sense of the world for us 'cause we need some laughs. - Lemme tell you something, this world definitely needs some laughs. (laughing) It needs something. It needs laughs before
that asteroid hits us. (laughing) - And when you're done with this, get the hell back out there. - That's right. - Get back to work. So what do you have for us? - All right, you ready? - Yeah. - Renee Douglas-- - We are duty-bound to make sure the first question is from a Patreon. - Oh yeah, absolutely,
that's what I'm reading. - That's what are you reading, okay. - Renee Douglas from
Patreon would like to know why do you think Mercury
and Venus don't have moons? - Ooh. Ooh. Hmm, well Mercury's pretty small. Mercury is... Mercury is, I forgot whether
it's just slightly bigger or just slightly smaller than our moon, but it's small. It's much denser, it has a huge iron core, so it's much heavier than the moon. So it's got planet mass
but its size is small and it's hard to have
something else orbiting you when you're small. Jupiter is huge, has more mass
than all the other planets in the Solar System and it
has 60 plus moons orbiting it. - 60 plus? - It's own mini planetary
system, if you will. But the act of being small
doesn't preclude having moons, it's just harder when you're that small and orbiting that close to the Sun because then you have a
gravitational tug of war. Who's your daddy? Who's your gravitational allegiance? - Who's your gravity daddy? - Who's your gravity daddy? (laughing) So by the way, Pluto and is all so small. They're like six moons in the
Solar System bigger than Pluto but Pluto has multiple moons. The point is that far
out in the Solar System there's very little sort of
gravitational disturbances from other objects. So you can sustain orbits
however delicate they are. - I always thought was
thought sizes indicative of whether it was allowed
to be a planet or a moon. - No. Well sort of, okay. So it's turns out if
you're really, really small your gravity loses to
the structural integrity of the object. So the rock will take
whatever shape it wants. So below a certain size
stuff in the Solar System looks like Idaho potatoes. - Yes, I've seen those. (laughing) I've seen the pictures. - You've seen the pictures? You've seen... in fact I used to have one here. Yeah, in fact right up there. Can you reach up and grab that. You can reach up. You get it. - [Russell] Lemme grab your potato. (laughing) - Just grab that, this is a precise model. Anyhow so this is a model
of an actual asteroid and this is sufficiently small, that it takes whatever shape
the rocks demand of it. Rocks take their own shape
based on the chemistry and how they formed. But if this object were larger then the gravity of the object says I'm trying to get everything
as close to the middle as I can and there's only one shape you take if everybody tries to
get close to the middle and that's a sphere. So to be a planet you got to be big enough and have enough mass to be a sphere. But that's not the only rule. Pluto is big enough to be a sphere. Now we say in your orbit
we want you to be dominant. We don't want anything else
competing with your orbit. So Pluto it's orbiting what
we call the Kuiper belt, there's thousands of other
objects orbiting out there with Pluto. - It's littered, right? - [Neil] It's littered, great word, just like the asteroid belt. - Correct. - Littered, so nobody in
the asteroid belt owns the space of objects so
they're all asteroids even though one of the asteroids is big enough to be a sphere and Pluto's big enough to be a sphere. So the rules are are you
big enough to be round and significant enough in your-- (laughing) - I'm a little sensitive, but thank you. - Big enough to be round
and are you dominant enough in your orbit to have cleared it out so basically you're the only game in town? And you have to satisfy both of those then you're a legit planet
in the in the rules. - Are we... could we effectively be
seen as all our planets as moons for the Sun? - I don't see why not except because the Sun
is alive with energy we have a different designation
for it because it's hot. (laughing) - It's warm. Hot's a little overrated, but it's a little warm, it's warm. - Yeah you would vaporize. - It's muggy. (laughing) - I could take the heat, it's
jUst the humidity on the Sun that I can't handle. So you can think of it that way and not to like over run this answer, but people wondered a
hundred years ago or more, you know the turn of the previous century, wait a minute, if the Solar System has a
star and planets that orbited and planets have moons that orbit them, atoms have nuclei and
electrons that orbit them, maybe it's that all the way down? - That's fair. - Or all the way up, right? So we have a galaxy, there's
a center of the galaxy, and our whole Solar System
is orbiting the galaxy, maybe it's just Solar
Systems all the way down. But you get to the size of the atom and there's nothing smaller than that, there's nothing smaller than the particles that make up the nucleus. So. - Except for antimatter. - No there's a-- (laughing) You wish. - See what I did there? - Yeah. (laughing) So there isn't some other
structure of the natural world that we have yet discovered
nor that we think is there. If you probe the atom
and look at the nucleus and say oh, there's another
layer right on down. No, we ain't finding that. - Well that was Renee
Douglas from Pittsburgh. - Okay. - You want this one, you ready? - [Neil] It's up to you. You don't even have to go in order. - Okay, well that's good. What would the climate be like on Earth if it wasn't for the axial tilt? That was from Michel Grote. - Oh, yeah. So that's a good one. So this is someone who
knows that earth is tipped on its axis relative to
our orbit around the Sun. So it tips like this. Tipped 23 and 1/2 degrees. In fact, this is tipped
at exactly that angle. - That's an Asian one. - In case you were wondering. Got Earth back there. Let me get Earth, hold on. - [Russell] That's the one I remember. - Yeah so this is... so I'm holding in my lap for
those who are only listening, a map of Earth-- - Actually a globe. - [Neil] Thank you. (laughing) - Let me help you out with this there. - [Neil] Thank you, thank you. - Hang on there astro fella. (laughing) - It's a globe and it's
the kind of globe we see in social studies class because all the countries are color-coded, but of course Earth from space
shows no such color coding. - I know, it's weird how they did that. (laughing) I tend to believe this globe much more. - So we're tipped on our
axis and it turns out that because of that tipping
for one part of the year the Northern Hemisphere
is tipped towards the Sun and six months later that same hemisphere is tipped away from the Sun. And if you tip towards the Sun your rays are much more intense and there's much more
heating of the ground and you get summertime. And around the other side,
we're tipped away from the Sun, their Sun angles are low,
angle of rays is low, and we experience winter. Now since we're part of the same Earth as the Southern Hemisphere, if we're tipped towards
the Sun in the north, they're tipped away from
the Sun at the same time. So we experience summer when
Australia experiences winter, that's all. So that's all that's going on. - So then how does the equator
stay warm all the time? - Oh! Well! If the equator is exactly
between the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere then they are switching always
between summer and winter then the equator has no seasons. - Interesting. - It can't. - Wouldn't it... - It can't have seasons. - When it's even on the other side? - It can't have seasons because it is always exactly between all other seasons. The only way to be that is
to have no season at all and what they do is they say
oh, it's the rainy season or it's the the stormy season. - To make them feel good about it. - Just so they think
they're having a season, but temperature-wise the
equator has no seasons. And it's largely true for all the tropics, but might want to be precise, the equator does not go through seasons. So if you want to undo the tilt and have Earth's just
pointing straight up and down, no seasons. - But it would still rotate, right? - We would still rotate on our axis and still revolve around the Sun, we'd still have years
but there be no seasons. - For anyone? - Again, unless it's just
rainy season versus not. There'd be no temperature based seasons of any significant measure. - Would we still have
cold and warm and hot? (laughing) That's what I'm trying to figure out here. - Yeah, hot water out of the faucet. - No, no, I mean cold weather
and hot weather or just? It would just be warm all the way around? - Well no, so you would have... Oh sorry, so the farther
away from the equator you go the cooler would get. Right, now the whole earth
is not the same temperature but a given latitude
you don't get seasons, that's all I'm saying. So the hottest part would be the equator and then you move away from
the equator to the poles and that would be the coldest spot. - I don't think you should
blame the Polish for this, but whatever. (laughing) The poles have done nothing to you. Let's see. - If the poles are people from Poland then the Polish are people
that are sort of from Poland? - Yeah, their kind of. Their from Chicago. (laughing) - I'm pole-ish, yeah. All right, what else you got? - Let's see, if we were just
plopped onto a gas giant, such as Jupiter, like they
needed to explain that one to you (laughing) what would happen to us
assuming we could survive? Well if you... All right, I will just keep reading but I'm not an astrophysicist obviously but even I'm looking
at this going come on. Come on Jeremy Small,
you're better than this. - The word assuming I think carries-- - Assuming we could survive, there isn't a solid
surface we could stand on, so where would we go? - Good question. So if I plunk you down on Jupiter you would just descend through the clouds. Okay? Jupiter gets denser and denser
and denser as it goes down, if you have a pressure proof
suit that you're wearing you will continue to fall until you are about the same density
as the surrounding area and then you just sort
of bob there and float. That's what would happen. - So you would find your floating point. - Your floating point. But if you didn't have your pressure suit, you'd be crushed by the atmospheric
pressure that was there. - [Russell] But don't they... - And you would vaporize because it gets very hot very quickly. But ignoring the vaporizing
and avoid getting crushed, you'll find your place, your zone. Yeah. - So is that what happened to Cassini? - Oh, so Cassini, oh, you did... my boy did some did some homework. - I'm a nerd for this stuff. - [Neil] Oh, very good. - And just a quick side note so you know, in 2017 I went to Chile... - Get that he's pronouncing
that all like he knows Spanish. - Like I'm a professional and stuff. - Chile. - Chile. - I'm a Chileno. (laughing) I went to... - They have observatories there. - The European, the European Space, ESO. - Yeah, European Southern Observatory. - Yes, I went there
and I spent two nights, three nights there. - [Neil] How? - I have a friend. - [Neil] You knew somebody? - I'm friends with Nile Rogers. - [Neil] Okay, all right, you know people. - And Nile, this guy
had invited us all down and last minute Nile bailed
but the rest of us all went. - Isn't it magical? - It is ridiculous. - It is ridiculously magical
at the top of a mountain when it gets dark and you see out and it's just you and the cosmos. - But I thought that I was
gonna look through telescopes and see things 'cause
they've those giant-- - There's no lenses. - Yeah, no, they just
shoot lasers and I'm-- - Lasers another thing we can do. Yeah, yeah. The two reasons why
you would shoot lasers, but we can save that for another question if it ever gets asked, but it is truly magical to
be on a mountaintop at night. - It is pretty wild. They did pull out like a little
rinky-dink telescope for us. - [Neil] Well 'cause we don't look through telescopes anymore-- - No, apparently not. (laughing) I found out. - You thought there'd
be this giant eye piece waiting for you to walk up to it. - Yeah, like I thought like this-- - [Neil] And you see the
gates of heaven through it. - I saw the pictures and
I was like oh my god, I'm gonna look through those and like you don't look through those. (Neil laughing) It just sends us data and I'm like well, how's that help me? (Neil laughing) I could have read the data at home. - All right. - Can I sneak mine in? - Oh sneak, go on. - Lemme sneak the one I wrote last minute. - You got your own question? - I do. - Is that allowed? - I don't know, I'm doing it. - Engineers is that allowed? - I'm doing it. I brought a question. - Okay go, go for it. - Is the Big Bang Theory only
for the observable universe or does it encompass like
the entirety of everything? - Ooh. So first it's a TV show
finishing it's last season. - Highly successful and I've never watched
one episode in my life. - Really? Yes, one of the most
successful shows ever actually. So if you type the Big
Bang Theory into Google, the show comes up first. - Right, it's a far more important. (Neil laughing) Far more important. - And then next I think
there's a K-pop band called Big Bang. - Is there? - Yes and then they come up next. Then the origin of the universe. These are our priorities. - Is it still considered a theory? - So a theory is the modern word we use to describe successful
understandings of the operations of nature. So quantum theory, relativity
theory, evolutionary theory, so people will say oh, it's just a theory. That's the word we use to
describe stuff that works. If you have an idea that
hasn't been tested yet, it's a hypothesis. Okay? So it's Einstein's theory of relativity, it's Russell's hypothesis if
you an idea about something. - I have no idea. (laughing) - Until it's put out and
then it gets fully explored and investigated and tested
and has other predictive value then we're good to go with it. So the Big Bang is our
understanding of the existence and expansion of the
universe in which we live and it goes not only to the
edge of the observable universe, but it would include the
universe beyond that. It's just that it's hard to get answers to that which is beyond our horizon. So colloquially we say it is the theory of our understanding of the
of the visible universe, but technically the whole
universe came into existence even the parts you can't see
in what we call the Big Bang. - So from nothingness
comes something-this. - Yes. And by the way just to
put you at ease with that, because the way you said
that was all pejorative, just want you to know. - It was, it had a
little pejorative to it. - [Neil] You copped a
little attitude on that. - I did and I was like and
I wasn't really excited with the answer. (Neil laughing) I was like it didn't really
answer anything for me. - How do you get something from nothing? So let's say you have, oh you know, let me save the answer to
that for after the break. - The answer this Mr. Bender, next week. (laughing) - When we come back on StarTalk, we'll find out how you
get something from nothing on this edition of Cosmic
Queries, Everyday Astrophysics. (upbeat music) We're back on StarTalk, Cosmic Queries Edition,
Everyday Astrophysics. And helping me answer is my co-host today, visiting for the first
time, Russell Peters. Russell. - Hey, I'm back. - I can't go to Netflix
without seeing your face. They're trying to get me
to watch all your stuff. - Yeah, don't waste your time. (laughing) Listen, you're an astrophysicist,
you're smarter than this. - I love your rapport with the audience, it's great, it's great. You just make them all feel
like they want to be there. - Well hopefully. (Neil laughing) I'm not holding them captive, you know. Unless they have Stockholm Syndrome and I don't know about it. - So you've got questions? - [Russell] I've got questions. - And it's on everyday
astrophysics, bring it on. - Actually, you left
me hanging on the last, it was a big cliffhanger that we left on and you didn't finish it for me. - Ooh, I forgot. - And I almost forgot too
'cause you greased me out of it. - Oh yeah, I did. I said nice things about
you, hey, it's all about me. (laughing) - I was like I'm listening. - So the question was how do you get something out of nothing? So the thing is with energy
you can have positive energy and negative energy, it's
not just an emotional thing, it's actually a real physical
thing in the physical universe and each of those have
consequences on space, time, and matter. But if you bring them together,
it sums to no energy at all. So how does this happen? So think about it. Let's say there's level ground and then I have a shovel and
I put ground from this part and I stack it over here. So I'm digging a hole and making a mound. Well I can keep doing
this and I can have a hill as arbitrarily as high as I want and I can climb to the top
of the Empire State Building, but there's a hole next to it. So how did I get that high? How is that even possible? I took the dirt over here
and I put it over here. But I put the dirt back in
then everything's level again. So it's a way to think about what it means when you have negative
energy and positive energy. A lot of things we do where
you started with nothing, but you ended with something, something that you care about. But in the total picture it sums to zero. - See, now that's a good explanation. That I can walk away with
a go okay, I get that. - [Neil] And not lose sleep tonight, good. - Yeah, I would have, I
would have lost sleep. Tonight I'm gonna be
sleeping going ah damn it, I should have asked him. Let's go with, I haven't read this one, I'm just gonna read it
now and see what happens. (laughing) - And see what happens. - Let's see what happens. It might be a crappy
question, we don't know. Vincent Zimmerman wants to know-- - [Neil] From where, where is he? - At Twitter. - [Neil] Twitter, sure. - From the town of Twitter. what's the most distant star you can see with the naked eye? - Ooh. So that's an interesting question. I can answer that two ways. So one of them is the most distant thing you can see with the naked eye is our nearest red-blooded
galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy. And for the longest, well
until the early 1920s, it was called the Andromeda nebula because it was just this
fuzzy thing in the night sky among the stars that trace out
the constellation Andromeda. So he named it after Andromeda. And it was a nebula. A fuzzy thing. And then with better
and better telescopes, wait a minute this thing
is composed of stars. Wait a minute, this thing is far away. Wait a minute, this is
an entire other galaxy. It's not just a fuzzy
thing in the Milky Way. It's another Milky Way. Well how far away is it? It was not close, quote,
close like these stars we see in the night sky. This is outside of our entire galaxy. The stars you see in the
night sky are tens, hundreds, thousands of light-years away. The Andromeda Galaxy is two
million light-years away. And you can see that with the naked eye. - I believe I saw that
when I was in Chile. - You would have, well, no, no, no. That's too far north. There are other fuzzy
objects in the night sky. - I saw two. - That's called, those
were first described and written about by Ferdinand Magellan. - Mm-hmm, that guy was no
Magellan I'll tell you. (laughing) - He was, sorry, what I should say is Western folk first learned
of these two clouds when Magellan did his
round-the-world voyage. Clearly Aboriginal peoples of Australia knew all about the Magellanic Clouds. So they named it in his
honor, the Magellanic Clouds, and they were called clouds at the time. They are galaxies as well. Except they're closer. - There's a small one and a big one. - And they're called the
Small Magellanic Cloud and the Large Magellanic Cloud. - Yeah, they really went out on the names. (laughing) - We tell it like it is. - No, they blew the bank on that one. - So those are relatively nearby. A couple hundred thousand
light-years away. The Andromeda is two
million light years away. You're not seeing an individual star, you're seeing hundreds
of billions of stars. The muddled muddied light, the blended light of
hundreds of billions of stars that comprise the Andromeda Galaxy. That is the farthest object
visible to the unaided eye. And you can't see that from New York or any light polluted place. Just go out in the country
side, it'll be there. - Would you venture to think that if there are people there, that they could see us the
same fuzzy way we see them? - Oh, by all means. Oh yeah, I think about that all the time. In fact if there was
intelligent life there and they had detectors and
they're looking our way, they would see us not as we are, but as we were two million years ago. Because that light is only
just now reaching them. - Wow. - [Neil] So they would not see signs of what we would call intelligence on Earth. - If they saw us now they
wouldn't see those signs either. (laughing) - So yeah, the Andromeda Galaxy. There it is. - That's pretty awesome. - Yeah. I think the word awesome shouldn't have qualifiers in front of it. Something either is or is not awesome. - It's not pretty awesome? It's not similar to awesome? It is not a simile of awesome? (laughing) I'm pretty awesome, I'm
gonna go with pretty awesome. - All right, all right. - I mean it's awesome, but
it's also pretty awesome. - Oh, pretty awesome. - This is a completely
different type of question, let's try this. This is slightly angry Lugia, Lugia? I don't know, that's
their name on Twitter. Why do sodium and chloride, two extremely toxic and harmful chemicals combine to form normal table salt? - This is the beauty of chemistry. So you think that of things properties are somehow inherent in the thing, but the property is what manifests after you combine it
with whatever else is... So you combine sodium,
which is a lethal metal that you can cut with a knife. That's how soft it is and it
reacts violently with water. Add that to chlorine, which would poison you if you breathed it. Okay and put them together and you get completely
necessary table salt. Necessary for life. So when you put them together, all the chemistry, it's a new chemistry. It's a new thing. Don't think of it as it probably has some of those properties
it used to have, no. All that matters is what
are its electrons doing when they talk to your electrons? And if the configuration is different, that's all that matters and the electrons that
manifest themselves to you in table salt are differently configured than the electrons that
manifest themselves to you as either sodium or chlorine. And for me the best way to say this, I had a little paragraph
of this in one of my books, it was let's take hydrogen. Hydrogen is explosive. If you have a ball of hydrogen
and light a match to it. - So is Mexican food. Carry on. (laughing) - Thank you for that
clarification in case we didn't... So hydrogen will explode
if you light a match to it. A ball of gaseous hydrogen. Oxygen promotes combustion. If you have a flame and add oxygen to it, it'll burn faster. Combine hydrogen and oxygen you get water that puts out flames. There you go. - You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of George Carlin's old bit about halfway dirty words. Words aren't dirty until
they're put together. - Oh, okay. So he has a follow-on to
the seven dirty words? - Well this is old great material, but he said cock isn't a
dirty word, it's in the Bible. And if you go to the dentist or the doctor and they give you a sucker. But when you put them
together you got a bad word. (laughing) - Okay, so a good point. So alone those words mean things, you put them together it
means something else entirely. And so I think you can only get nice words that combine to make bad words. I don't think you can take bad words that combine to make a non-bad word. - Yeah, no. Well I mean, it's the same. It's the opposite. - Well maybe, a jackass. But jack is not a bad word, ass is kind of like a vulgar word. - Is a donkey. - Yeah, so it's the same thing. Meaning is everything in language. And if two words together
have a different meaning, deal with it. Don't say wait a minute, take it apart, and those have their own separate meanings therefore that word together has a, no. That ain't how it works. - So it's the same as the
sodium and the chloride. - [Neil] Exactly the same
as the sodium and chloride. - But it works in the opposite way. Where sodium chloride can form
together make something nice. - And make something beautiful, yes. - Gotcha. See what I did there for you? - Mm-hmm. - You're welcome kid. - [Neil] So what else you have? - Let's see, Raul Solonarajo at... - [Neil] You can do better than that. Try that again. - Raul Solonarajo. Nah-ran-ho, nah-ran-ho. Nah-rah-jo? Listen. It's on Twitter, what am I doing? No, it's not a good question. What would be the single
most alarming thing that I could see with the naked eye? I don't know. - Oh. Ooh. - I mean that's... - No, I got this. I got this. - [Russell] I guess that's
up for interpretation. - I got this. Okay, you ready? I didn't know what's the
single most alarming thing I could ever see with the naked eye was until I saw it. Which meant I did not anticipate it. Okay, you ready? - [Russell] Yep. - This is 1999, I'm on the Brooklyn Bridge at two o'clock in the morning and I'm looking up. 'Cause that's how we roll. - That's exactly how you roll. - And it's November. I remember this because
there's a meteor shower. Okay, meteor showers are best
typically after midnight. So there I am and
Brooklyn Bridge is a nice, you're away from lights,
it's still very lit, but you're away from
lights as good as you can. I'm a city person, it's the best I can do, and I'm there and I'm looking up and I'm seeing this meteor shower. It's called the Leonid meteor shower and you see the streaks of
white, they're shooting stars. It's beautiful. We're getting like three
or four per minute. This is a good rate. Okay. Then I saw a new star in the sky. I said I don't recognize that star. And it just got brighter
and brighter and brighter and then it disappeared. Then I saw a puff of smoke and I said whoa, whoa! Okay, so you know what just happened? - No. - [Neil] You don't know
what I just witnessed? - It sounds like a firework. - It was a meteor that was
headed straight towards me. - Oh wow. And it disintegrated. - And it disintegrated
straight towards me. There was no streak. There was no and I thought to myself, this is the final moment of my life. - It's the best way you could go. In all fairness. I mean it's the most appropriate way. - We are so accustomed to seeing
streaks of light in the sky and some of those are gonna
be headed straight for you and they're not gonna make a streak. They're just gonna get brighter. When I realized a split
second after that happened, what I just witnessed, I freaked out. I mean not in a psycho, I just
intellectually freaked out and I said damn, that's
what that's gonna look like. So that's the most terrifying
thing to look up and see. - Well there you go Raul. It's definitely the most
terrifying thing Neil saw, but what about you? What could... - All right, what else you got? - Let's see. Can you explain why some
of the planets in our-- - But who said the question? - This is Ramona Vaughn on Facebook. - Ramona Vaughn. - Ramona, Ramona Vaughn. - Ramona. - Ramona Vaughn. Can you explain why some of
the planets in our Solar System rotate in the opposite direction? Retrograde is what they call it. - Yeah, yeah, so the
planet Uranus for example, its axis is tipped 98 degrees. So it's rotating upside down. - But what determines that, oh because it's going backwards. - Well no, you're asking... I was hoping you we're
gonna answer that question. That's a very intelligent
thought-out question. So if you take something
turning and then I turn it and then I flip it, it's still turning. Who am I to say that's upside down? That's basically your question, right? It's 'cause the right hand rule. - Okay, but Uranus doesn't know that. (laughing) It's not like hey, Uranus is like Earth, what's going on there? Oh okay, I'm a lefty, I'm a lefty. - It's called a right hand rule. So here's how you do it, okay? So hold up your right hand in front of you like you're gonna shake someone's hand. Good. Okay, now stick your thumb up. That's the axis of rotation. Now curl your fingers. Your thumb is pointing north. - Yes. - I'm declaring that by tradition. Okay, so if you go to the planet and curl your fingers in
the direction it's rotating your thumb is going to
point north on that planet. Okay? So if I take Uranus with my
thumb up and fingers curled and I then tip my thumb
so it's pointed downwards, Uranus is turning back the other way, but the north still has
to have that relationship to that rotation. So that's what defines
the north of an object, the right hand rule just by convention. That's how we can say Uranus
is rotating upside down. Now why do we think that happens? - So their south is our north? - [Neil] Correct. - So they're Australia. (laughing) - No, why'd you get me to
agree with you on that. Your north is their north. Their north is their north. It just happens to be in everybody else's, occupying the same area as everyone else's Southern Hemisphere. That's all. But Uranus doesn't have issues here. - Well Uranus doesn't have much. (laughing) - So we think in the early Solar System because all the planets would have formed in the same sort of circulating cloud and so you don't get
upside down things in that, all the planets are going the
same direction around the Sun, that's the direction the Sun is rotating, that's the direction Earth is rotating, so everybody's turning the same way because that's the rotational
energy of the original cloud out of which we formed. If you rotate the other way, the way we explain that is you had some bad stuff
happen to you early on. You got slammed by some other object in the early Solar System
that tipped you on your axis. - So possibly during-- - We think likely, not just possibly, but even likely. - From the Big Bang. - No, no, way later when it's
forming our own Solar System. Big Bang made the whole universe, wait 10 billion years then
you get our Solar System. We're a little late. - We're the dust settling so to speak. - Very good. - There we go. - Very good. So it got slammed in
the early Solar System and then it got tipped that
has been that way ever since. So we got take another break and when we're back more Cosmic Queries, Astrophysics Household Edition. When we return. (upbeat music) StarTalk, we're back. third and final segment of Cosmic Queries, Household Astrophysics Edition. Is that what we called this? Household? Everyday, Everyday Astrophysics. - Household sounds like a cleaner. (laughing) Like these are like tips for you to get the stove shiny again, you know? - Using cosmic principles. So Russell Peters great
to have you on the show. So you got all the questions there. - I got all the questions. - Give them to me. - I don't know if that's a real name. I see bank Carl. It's an Instagram name. Anyway, what is a
fascinating fact or thought that makes your appreciation
for the universe overflow? - Wow. - [Russell] That's a deep question. - It's beautiful. That's a beautiful question. Let me just hear that question again. - I feel we need sax
playing in the background when you do it. (laughing) What is a fascinating fact or thought that makes your appreciation
for the universe overflow? - Hmm. - A fact and a thought are
two different things though. - I know, I know, here it goes. Here it goes. I bask in our collective ignorance on the frontier of the unknown. I long to look out, look behind me and say hey, we got that and look in front of me and say we have no idea what that is. And so what keeps me awake at night and has me run back to
my office every morning is the prospect that we
could be on the heels of a major discovery, answering a question that
we might have posed already, but possibly revealing a question we had not previously known to ask. That's my muse, my cosmic muse. - I feel you overflowing. (laughing) - I had to give an overflowing answer. - You're like in LA when it rains. The LA River is overflowing. - All right Russel, give me more. - All right. Harry from California. - [Neil] Harry, no last name? - No. - Just Harry? Do you know Harry in California? - No but scary leavened
bread is his Instagram. - Okay. (chuckles) - Harry from California wants to know what do you think the single
most important discovery in the history of physics is and why? - Oh. Ooh, I got this. Okay. Now physics or astrophysics,
are they two different things? - Astrophysics is a subset of physics, but we good, we good. Some years ago I wrote an essay. It won an award from the
American Institute of Physics, a writing prize award, and
the title the essay was In The Beginning. And you're in the chair that I won and it's stenciled on the back. Plus I got $3,000, which is totally cool. - $3,000 is always a good thing to get. - Except I don't have the $3,000 anymore, but I do have the chair. - Because you bought
this damn chair with it. (laughing) - So here's what I
celebrated in that essay. In that essay I celebrated the existence and the consequence of E equals MC squared on the arc of the universe. There is no understanding
of matter and energy in the universe without that equation. Stars would not produce energy. There would have been no Big Bang. Everything we take for
granted in this universe owes its foundation to
E equals MC squared. The equivalence of matter
and energy in the universe. For me that was the greatest discovery because of how much it
enabled us to understand. Combine that with quantum physics, had a lot of good folks
working on it in the 1920s. A watershed decade in the history of human understanding of the universe. Quantum physics is a theory of the small, atoms, molecules, nuclei. Coming to understand
how the universe works on its smallest scale made us badass. Not only could we have now well, bad, good and bad, bad. Take the word bad in both contexts because that empowered us to
end civilization as we know it. The foundation of the nuclear arsenals. - The atom bomb. - Exactly. Exactly. Yet it gave us our deepest understanding of how the world works and is the foundation to the entire information technology revolution. There is no creation storage
or retrieval of information in the IT universe without an
understanding of the quantum. - Are you saying IT because I'm Indian and that's what my people excel at? - [Neil] Oh, that's your people? - That my people, we excel at IT. - Aren't you from Toronto? - Yeah, but I got to go
back to India for my family. (laughing) - You got fam in India? - I do. - Oh, cool. - Tons-oh. - Okay. So yeah for me, equals MC-squared. That's I think the most
profound fact of the universe. There's some close seconds
and thirds in that list, but I put equals MC-squared at the top. And what's cool is we learned
that in like third grade, that's your first equation, right? - Well I was never a good student. - [Neil] Oh, yeah? - I became more curious as I became older 'cause I always questioned everything. - [Neil] That's it. - [Russell] I know. - You don't need anything else. - I know but in the 70s and school, they didn't want you to question, they just want to accept
and I was like nah, I got questions about this. And they just boiled me
down to he's an idiot. - What do they say, what
are you, a comedian? (laughing) - One teacher told me I was
going to be a janitor so. I showed him. Now he's gonna say oh I
did that to motivate him, like no you didn't. I saw the look in your eye and I heard the tone in your voice. - [Neil] Right, right, right. - So wait, but did you find it, and not to go off topic here, but don't you find it fascinating that... so Albert Einstein they came up with E equals MC-squared, right? - Yeah, yeah. - But it's in such a short amount of time, like it took us how many
you know centuries-- - [Neil] Millennia. - Millennia to get there
and then from then to here we just did so much in
a short amount of time. Like why were we so dumb before that? (laughing) Like what made is so stupid before that and then all of a sudden like oh, bam! - Okay. It looks that way. It only looks that way. Okay? I have books from five years
before equals MC-squared, that would've been the year 1900. I have books. You read those books, science books. You read those books and say
the discoveries of recent years are so vast and so amazing. We are lucky to be
living in special times. Look at the steam ships across the ocean. We're laying telegraph cables. We can now communicate great distances. We have the railroads across the country. The world is smaller than ever before, what a great time to be alive. That's what they're
writing in the year 1900. So that's what you sound like today. What a great time to be alive. Look at all the discoveries we've made. All I'm telling you is when you're living in a great time, every year feels like you're
living in a special time. Come back in a hundred years, we'll say those idiots back in 2019. What the hell did they know? - Yeah, well yeah, you can go back to 1999 and be like a computer? It was you know? - Right or no, no, no. In 1999 no one has any
concept yet of a smartphone. - Yeah, well we had the
Palm Pilot I believe. - I had a Palm Pilot. - I had a Palm Pilot and I
thought that was pretty good. - Yeah, you thought it was great. I remember, I remember
1987 movie Wall Street. Okay? In that movie there's Gekko
on the beach in the Hamptons with a cell phone. And it's like shoulder-mounted
cell phone, right? I remember 'cause I saw
that movie in first run and I remembered wow, that's cool. He could walk and there's no wires and he's talking on a phone and any of us today looking that say what the hell were we thinking? - I remember my brother's
first cell phone was about... about the size of that book,
that physics energy book and you had to carry-- - Big fat book on my table. - It had a handle that pulled out and it still had like a receiver, like a-- - Uh-huh, uh-huh. - And the buttons were separate. - But it was portable. - It was portable. I used to sit in my brother's car and talk to my girlfriend
at the time like 1988, '89. - You're showing off in
front of your girlfriend. - No, because he had free
minutes after like nine o'clock so I would use it then and
it wasn't long distance, didn't matter then. - Right, right, right. So the evidence you're living
in special times is that at every moment you think
you're living in a special time. - Okay. Okay, but okay. Let's go with not just equals MC-squared. Let's say from like the mid-1800s to now, we made some big strides, but what was happening before that, that just we were not doing anything. It just seems like we were
not being logical back then. - In the middle of the 1800s
we discovered and perfected and harnessed electricity. - Right, that's what I'm saying. when all that started-- - You want to go before electricity? - Yeah, like before that. Like let's goes 1700s. - Oh, oh. - Like we were just
like, what were we doing? - The steam engine. Steam ships. Excuse me. - All right, all right. (laughing) All right, let's go 1600s. - 1600s, we've discovered that
Earth goes around the Sun. The Earth is not in the
middle of the known universe. - What was that guy's name again? That was Galileo? - Galileo. - Yes, see, all right. - Yeah, yeah. - Okay, just checking. - So no, there were discoveries. - Making sure you knew. Making sure you're legit. Make sure this isn't
just Internet's trickery. - It is true that discoveries
happened less frequently. It is less likely that there
was an engineering discovery that would change your life at that time. That is true. But think of the mindset. If any discovery changed
your life at that time, that was amazing, Because previously it didn't
change anybody's life. It would change it over generations. - Right, that's when things
were selling like hotcakes. (laughing) What I'm saying is people cared
about hotcakes at that time. That was the best part of their day. (laughing) - And you go later on, there
are advances in medicine and we discovered cures and there was... - Yeah, but I mean what I'm saying is like they were all farther apart, you know spread apart
more and they seem like-- - The 1700s into the 1800s,
we invent the chronometer that's seaworthy so we can
figure out longitude on Earth, which has precision navigation. This stuff, you think you
live in special times, just go back then and
you'll be celebrating that. I'm just saying. - No, but I'm saying, what I'm saying is is that I feel like every
day we're discovering something new that's
gonna change our lives, but now there's so many things coming in, there's so many things that
we're discovering that, that they hold back on us now. (laughing) It's almost like hold on a second. - This is too much for you. Yeah, we gotta be nice,
we gotta roll with that. - I was talking to a
computer guy the other day and he was tell me about technology that is about to be
introduced to the public. He said but we've had
this for over 12 years. And now they're introducing
it to the public. They make it seem like it's
the newest greatest thing, he goes but this has been around. - Because they have a
marketability of the other stuff and they want to get their
money's worth out of it. The RND that produced it. - Yes. - Yeah, yeah. - So there's so much-- - They're holding back. That's an interesting concept. So if we keep this up we
could be a century behind what we could be doing just 'cause they're trying to make a buck off of stuff that they invented a hundred years ago. - Exactly. - Okay, interesting. This is an interesting conspiracy theory. - I don't know if it's a conspiracy or if it's just a hypothesis. - We only have a couple of minutes left. We're go into lightning round, okay? So ask me five questions and I'll give you sound
byte answers to 'em. Okay? - All right, from these questions? - And they took my bell from me. We'll have to simulate this. Okay, ready? Go! - Okay, here, ready? When the Earth and the moon
become double tidally locked, what effect could that have
on tides and weather patterns? - Oh, excellent. So the moon is spiraling away from Earth at the rate of a few inches a year. One effect of that is that Earth is slowing down in our rotation. We have to put in leap
seconds every now and then. You know the moon is trying to do? - What? - It's trying to slow us
down so that one day on Earth equals one month for the moon. When that happens we will always show the same face to the moon. And when that happens there
will be no tides at all. Tides will end. - Really? - Yeah, well moon tides will end. We'll still have Sun tides, but the moon tides will end, yeah. - What are moon tides exactly? - The gravity of the moon across the Earth stretches the Earth. The part of the Earth close to the moon pulls closer to the moon. The part that's farther
away is farthest away and it stretches and Earth
rotates inside of those tidal bulges. You're at the beach and the tide comes in, the tide comes out goes out. Nothing's coming in and out, you are rotating on the solid Earth in and out of a tidal bulge
caused by the moon and the Sun on the ocean surface. - Is it like when you're
in a bathtub with water and you start rocking back and forth, the water starts-- - No, in that case it's just
the water that's moving. - Okay. - In this case it looks
like the water's moving, but it's not, it's you rotating into it. Hardly anyone knows that
because colloquially we talk about tides moving in and out, but we are rotating into the tidal bulge and out of the tidal bulge. And there'll be a point
where the tides won't, the tides will just be static
and they'll never change. - So that is inevitable. - It'll take longer for that to happen than the future life expectancy of the Sun so don't worry about it. - Okay. (laughing) Well that's a concern of mine. - I'm supposed give a short
answer to that question. - [Russell] Well I know but-- - I'll give you one last one, go. - How similar must an
exoplanet be to Earth in order to host human life? - Oh, you know I think
we can handle a planet that has slightly less gravity. What do you weigh here on Earth? 185 pounds? - Thank you, but 215. - 215, dude where you packing it? You're big boned, it's big bones. - You were talking about, nevermind. (laughing) Bulges. - If you go to a exoplanet
was slightly less gravity and your way 190 pounds,
you're not gonna complain. Slightly more gravity,
if your heart is strong, and you a 230, 240,
you're not gonna complain. - Don't take me back up there. - So there's a range, you won't be fatter, you'll just weigh more. Your weight is not only how
many molecules you have in you, it's also what's the force
of gravity operating on you. So you weight more but
you won't look heavier. You'll just be heavier. - So my mass will be the same? - Mass will be the same, correct. But your weight can be less or more depending on what planet you're on. In fact it's less or more on Earth. If you go to the equator
and the equator's spinning. On the equator you're moving
a thousand miles an hour. You weigh less on the equator than you do here in New York City. You weigh less on a mountaintop
than you do in a cave. - We should go to the equator guys. (laughing) They should have weigh-ins
for fights at the equator. - At the equator. And if you had a mountain on the equator you weigh less than any
other place on Earth. - That's it. I'm gonna propose it to the UFC. - But you have to ascend the mountain. - Eh. - You'll lose the weight
that you would have hoped you lose by being
in a lower gravity well just by climbing the mountain. So you better off just... By the way, it's not all that much weight. You pee out more weight
than you would lose by going to the equator. It's ounces, it's not pounds. - Well then I'd be pissed. (laughing) If I went through all that. - Russell, we got to go. - Why, this is so much fun. - Thanks, we got to do this again. - Yes, please. - [Neil] Next time you come through town. - Yes. - [Neil] Are you a world
tourist, a world performer-- - I come to New York all the time. - [Neil] New York's gotta
be in your soul somewhere. - It's definitely in my soul. - [Neil] Very good. - It's my favorite place on Earth. - Russell, great to have you. You've been listening to
and possibly even watching StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Thank you to Russel Peters. - Thank you. - The one and the only and as always as always I
bid you to keep looking up. (upbeat music)
