StarTalk Podcast: Neil deGrasse Tyson Answers Your Deadliest Cosmic Queries

this is Startalk I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson your personal astrophysicist recording now from my office at the Hayden Planetarium part of the American Museum of Natural History right here in New York City Chuck nice little what's up nice comic on Twitter and this is a cosmic queries edition yes we did yeah okay we didn't specifically solicit these right these trickle in over time so this is a cosmic queries morbid edition oh my these are people asking just questions about the ends of things yeah death of things yes then I worry about that people like what I worry sometimes when we read somebody's questions yes yeah we have definitely a very death-obsessed audience we have a death obsessed audience see what we can do with them I don't even know how to bring in an expert on that they're thinking about an undertaker right right yeah but okay so let's try it apparently these are the questions that we get more than anything else as it's categorize a category you sort of soliciting a category these trickle in as the biggest unsolicited category all right all right let's do it so as usual we go from all over the interwebs and we always start with a patreon page Thank You patreon room Thank You patreon that's right and this is one of the ways we say thank you is my reading your questions and giving them priority so let's start with will Jay who says what one or two skills would you learn now to be useful and productive in a post-apocalyptic world this is of course if you survived the meteor strike so Apophis hits the world first of all if Apophis is the world would we still survive without human we human beings survived oh yeah so yeah yeah it would just disrupt civilization would that be post-apocalyptic with it would it disrupt civilization mad max-style all right regional yes okay yeah or a boring his dog style okay I go way back we wait okay right on Johnson won his first movie I didn't know that yeah all right he's the boy right and dog then there's the dog so he's living on the surface of the earth which is apocalyptic civilization moved underground all the I think all the men became sterile of course and the men on the surface were not so they grabbed him brought him down to have him impregnate land roots of women luckiest boy I ever know they extracted the sperm from it and then in great that that's the theme if you need to know about a boy and his dog that's that's Don Johnson an early cinematic role but you can look at movies and how they've portrayed these lone survivors in apocalyptic earth and they need it like three things they need sort of a street smarts you can go there's no Street survival smarts survive Boy Scout level survival smarts you probably Eagle Scout level right and they all have some kind of weapon true that can cause harm at a distance so a bow and arrow or a gun you don't want me up close and personal hand hands this is my issue with the lightsaber in Star Wars everyone's looking at at it like it's some kind of major amazing weapon when you have to stand three feet from the person to use it just think about that the whole point of the advance of weaponry in the history of warfare is so you don't have to stand that close to anybody except that you can deflect laser shot laser bullets laser bullets yeah wait wait wait so what I'm saying is if you have enough time to notice it's coming and then flick it out of the way right you could just duck that is true okay you just duck why are you ruining for me say so I'm just not as impressed with the lightsaber as everybody else is okay all right it looks cool though okay so you'd want to be able to protect yourself from a distance right and you'd want access to food and in a boring a dog the only food left over on the ground was canned food which would not was not spoiled by the radiation or anything else that was involved in it becoming apocalyptic earth so I would also say you need a can opener can't yes you do in fact the dog could only serve dog was smarter the dog is telepathic and a genius and he's not so the dog found the cans basically Peabody and Sherman the dog Sherman was his pet human do you remember yes that's right that's right I loved his wayback machine yes I loved the time-travel that was in the cartoon I'm that old to remember it that way so so so you in that arrangement between the dog and the boy the dog found the food but the dog couldn't open the cans but the boy could ah so they're opposable thumbs when again mutual survival depend right arriv okay so I guess always carry candle burn about in your back pocket day apart from that I think some kind of hand-to-hand combat would be useful right okay if some stalks you up at night and then grabs you right okay you can't then reach for your action at a distance weapon okay so you got to know some kind of martial art all right not out like wrestling all right you got to have a weapon at a distance okay you've got to have some kind of survival sense right know how to find the food how to prepare the food how to make fire that sort of thing so I think these are the basic these are the basics in the apocalyptic earth and until there's some organized rules my fear is that we'll just resort to sort of free-for-all oh god yes yeah are you kidding me yeah we resort to a free-for-all when the subway platform is too crowded and you know who wins in the end whoo and I think about this every time is the person who controls the hardware store makes sense you walk into a hardware store everything you need is there yeah absolutely everything yeah yeah including weaponry everything yeah whatever you need it's right that's right there for the apocalypse so there you have it so Home Depot employees you you will be our our Savior when the post-apocalyptic world didn't ask first well yeah all right cool that's a cool by the way that's why it's good for you to have a talent that other people value that they can't just take from you let your knowledge of how to do things I thought you were gonna say comedy well yeah well the first time you're not funny that's the end of your career no no that's the end of your head what's real in your life right by the way this has been studied in in the walking dead what's that so the danger is not the zombie the zombies really okay the danger is how people respond to each other right so the interpersonal relationships become most important most important and who do you value and why is someone overtaking the resources relative to other people or some people power-hungry that exploration became most of what made the Walking Dead interesting not all the innovative ways they would kill the walking dead because that's that gets redundant right after like the fifth episodes only so many ways you can kill a zombie was kill a zombie right so so that exploration I think was the most intriguing part of it that's yeah I'm gonna give it to you I have I didn't watch it that much but what I did was that that is that's what was most interesting it's like a soap opera believe it is exactly like a soap opera winter for example zombie so bunny a quick other point I think about this often if you're going to create an arc of people mmm-hmm who will then regenerate civilization on the other side okay how are you gonna pick who's on that arc right so if I were you I would try to find some thing some talent some trade that would be useful in the apocalypse that will assure that you might be picked to come on the orc right right I'm trying to think like will there be a nightclub there's a nightclub on the arc I'm a good ship pharming all right transportation or communication right Michael right exactly do we have liquor and do we have night cuz then I can you know basically I can generate generate a two-drink minimum and and entertainment all right that's cool man all right next next question right here we go Salah muddy muddy wants to know this Wow Wow I'm gonna share it with us okay sorry I'm sorry what if Wolverine with his regeneration power was thrown into a black hole would he still get spaghettified or would he just continually regenerate interesting ooh that's a weird question I like it here's the thing the spaghettification unless you're elastic man mm-hmm splits you into pieces okay so if Wolverine breaks into two halves and those two halves continue to separate there is no regenerating and injured right because he's really an injured he's still Wolverine he's just Wolverine being like kind of streamed well if I split you at the base of your spine that's likely the first place you'll break and then at the base of your neck and then it's your knees and your hips then he's Wolverine in eight parts what does it mean to regenerate that I don't even know cuz there's a gap in between there exactly and the regenerative one I've seen in the movies and in a comic book the regeneration requires that the gaps are filled that are part of your body and it fills in from where you already had flesh that's true right right so I think Wolverine that's it and even the adamantium or whatever is the stuff is that's adamantium and a black hole will overcome any physical physical substance correct okay correct no matter what it is if it's fictional and magical rank is still gonna break right it's still an dream of what single atoms correct now do the atoms actually get spaghettify yes Wow this is my point the nuclei get even at Irvine Wow this is what this is why I'm saying so okay so so what happens is the tidal force of gravity that's the stretching force right tides that's where we get the word tides from the tidal force of gravity becomes greater than all other forces of nature period period nice so the forces of nature that hold the molecules together that hold the atoms together right that hold the nuclei together get ripped apart by the tidal forces of gravity oh wow okay I gravitate winds right so he's spaghettified these all got to it no matter what join join the club yeah sorry rings all right Wolverine dad that's a shame what's my boy's name the actor you judge at you here in the club Hugh Jack sorry he'll you in the club yeah exactly spaghettified Club favorite scene though of Wolverine gets shot in the head and I don't know wit movie shot in head falls to the floor everyone's standing there a couple minutes later the bullet pops back out and he gets up anyway alright here we go this is phil vader 23 from instagram right let's say the world ends do you think that's the end of the human race this could be at any time it's a different way of saying what we outlive this place do you think how could how could you outlive the planet that you live on I don't understand okay so let's say for instance there's no if earth is destroyed no let's say I mean the earth is gonna how long is the earth gonna five billion years no we're here now yes so we're 4.8 billion now right yeah four and a half billion okay so now how far do we have to go is my point until when I'm saying like the Sun is gonna burn out how far away yeah that's what you're saying how far forward into the future okay so if earth is ready to get vaporized by the Sun right you need some ability to plan it hop right because the Sun will grow in size the temperature of Earth's surface will get hotter and hotter and hotter time to move folks you pick up your luggage you move to Mars okay the next farther planet from the Sun okay but the Sun will also start to make Mars hot so then you want to move farther out again yes then the Sun will eventually die and no longer be a source of energy to any of us then you want to be able to star hop okay find another solar system to move too sure why not so how long it would that all happened at five billion years okay so if we got another five billion years I am worried about you I thank God I don't have to put it on my calendar October 12th right five billion and so let's just say we solved all of our problems cultural our social cultural problems how long do you think we could make it if we're not gonna kill our son out gonna kill us which by the way I am sure that's what's good ah the average last I checked this this is not my field of expertise okay just relying what I've read and and but I do work in a Natural History Museum so I've colleagues who do this stuff I last I remembered the average life expectancy of a mammal species is several million years so and we've been around for several hundred thousand so we should have waited a long way to go if we don't kill us if we don't kill ourselves and it might be that intelligence as we've come to know it and understand it is contraindicated of the survival of the species so in other words that there might be an inverse relationship between intelligence and survival we're out you might get so smart that it's impossible for you to survive because that's what causes you to kill yourself correct because you invent something that you think is cool and it's the end of the world I think it was was who's now who wrote slaughterhouse-five old I think it was Kurt Vonnegut who in one of his novels he said I'm paraphrasing this is the last sentence ever spoken by humans this will be the last sentence ever spoken by humans it'll be one scientist speaking to the other saying let's try it the other oh god yeah that's funny okay Emma listen right so you once you have the power over nature and the forces of nature are greater than you right or are alternately greater than you then you are wielding forces that can render render your own extinction well you know what that makes sense that there's a lot of speaking of post-apocalyptic tropes one post-apocalyptic trope is that there's a huge self-destructive action taken by humankind and then they decide in the aftermath to live at one with nature and to never go beyond that hmm because that's hard though because you're pumping water out of the water table wait to drink right you are redirecting a river so it doesn't go through your home that's interfering with nature almost everything we do interferes with nature farming is an interference of nature right are the mono crop right so if you want to live eat survive but you want to live in harmony with nature you just leave civilization and go in a cave and we give you a knife and there you go and you'll be dead at 35 all right that's how you really want to do it that's how you want to do that strongly about nature do it I don't feel that strongly about anything to live in a cave to be honest so the next question all right here we go the next one is JT parrot he just says this I'm just gonna read it as is does it end with a bang or a whimper oh the universe will end in its continued expansion to the future it will end not in fire but in ice and not with a bang damn that's cold so what I did when we come back more cosmic queries Edition the ends of things on Startalk we're back to start on pricing here nicely that's right that's right all right what do you have ok let's move on let's move or cosmic queries or morbid addition or deletion yes good right so what what this is a morbid question and so DJ maths but just to be clear we left off the previous segment somebody asking simply well there's a bang or a whimper and I gave like a poetic poeta sized answer but let me just give a little more put a little more flesh on that bone ok so for the for awhile in the 20th century once we had Einstein's equation of gravity mm-hmm the universe could be expanding or contracting within that equation the equation didn't distinguish one or the other ok observations showed we're expanding right now we can ask will we expand forever or will it one day slow down stop and contract ok we make more observations and we show no there's not enough gravity to halt that expansion it will expand forever once we learned it would expand forever then we asked what is the long-term profile of the universe well the temperature will get further further diluted as space expands oh space-time expands right because all that energy used to be concentrated here and now it's half and then a third and a tenth so eventually dissipates it dissipates a good way to say the intensity of energy dissipates the temperature the universe drops right and it'll never come back so and all the stars will die and not get regenerated because there's no everything will separate from each other and so gas clouds will make their final stars and that's it so then the stars will ultimately burn out one by one as the sky goes dark thus the universe ends but they'll nod and fire but a nice and not with a bang but with a whimper that's kind of sad for the universe I mean I don't want to anthropomorphize I feel bad for the universe now maybe that's a good way to go yeah you know I wouldn't mind going like that there you go you know which brings us to our next question what a great segue you just made DJ Mass 2006 on Instagram says Neil how do you want to die oh this is public knowledge oh really oh yeah okay yeah I bet if you type how does Neil Tyson wanted to hold on no I'm gonna do it rested I gotta test it out on handi hold on alright here we go alright I'm gonna talk to my phone how does Neil deGrasse Tyson want to die okay and okay clearly you have done this because one two three four five six seven eight YouTube videos came up about you dying somehow here's you in the afterlife here's you on I don't fear death here is you on near death in near-death experience why you talk about death it's not that I come out of the box doing this is that people come to me asking about it okay so how do I choose to die I would delight and if I were near my deathbed okay near temporarily near my deathbed I would say don't lay me down to die launch me into that black hole so I can be spaghettified oh wow and I will report back until I no longer can and I'll be the first human day spaghettified identified nice I will totally go that I might get some sauce for the meal we need some slots for this man sauce okay so your ID sauce that's kind of cool actually all right if that's how you're gonna go but do you think that would hurt seriously yeah I'm gonna be it'll be yeah and you're pointed do you think it'll hurt being stretched and ripped apart by tidal force well my point is does it would it happened so quickly that it wouldn't make a difference it's or would it happen to the point where you would be thoroughly aware of every single part I mean until you couldn't you feel like you're stretching it say that's good nobody doesn't like a good stretch absolutely then it is unrelenting and say okay I'm done now no so that's I know how we play that okay and then you stretch and then you snap into two pieces now the thing is all your vital organs are in the upper half of your body so you'll stay you'll likely stay awake even after you lose your lower half Wow and and then you know if you suffer at the neck they did experiments at the French Revolution let's use you can still see yeah right yeah and so they get blinked you know to for a few seconds yeah so I die it's how I would do it okay I want my death to have some value to science all right and that's how you do that that is where we differ I want to die in my sleep feeling nothing do you know all right well that's cool man there you go spaghettification all right but this concept of feeling nothing by dying in your sleep I don't know if it was just my immaturity or my my literalism of I cuz I I I was a geeky kid okay and everything was literal to me I could not think figuratively about anything and I would like rethink things like six and one half a dozen of the other yeah I thought is it six of one half a dozen of the other well that would be three and twelve because why would anyone say six one half a dozen of the other why would anyone say that if if those are the same if there isn't it right right so what's the point so maybe they meant something else so I thought 6 is 1/2 well that's three and a dozen of the other so maybe they say there's three of these and twelve so I had a very literal mind and one of them was trying to understand people learning when people died by taking sleeping pills mm-hmm what I'm thinking how could you die by playing sick taking sleeping pills don't just go to sleep like what what like I can imagine dying by taking poison right yes I get that okay you can die by gunshot wound by nice by falling off a cliff but just by going to sleep and then I had to learn that you can take too many pills right and then your body just stops working but on route to you having digested these pills you simply fall asleep so I defected deduce this from first principle that's all I'm saying well you just described my favorite way to die yeah but without the pill part I don't want that part you just want to go I just wanna go to sleep and not wake God okay many people in my family have died that way really yeah yeah well here's the thing I was just thinking about this this morning okay you read about someone's death and they said they died peacefully in their sleep right does that mean if they don't say that that they were screaming in total agony so that's why why even mention that but so I guess it brings comfort to people right but but peacefully this that's a comfort part right but if you died in pain and agony you're not gonna tell that to someone so now I'm thinking if they don't say they died peacefully that that's actually how it happened yeah um I would say that's almost they do nice why not go quietly yeah okay yeah yeah now I'm wondering if you woke somebody up right before they died would they then not die peacefully in their sleep but in agony because you woke them up okay this is an experiment I don't really want to do I do just like yo wake up okay all right here we go Mike Ireland wants to know this I know that you covered artificial intelligence what do you think the percentage is that computers have already garnered human consciousness and are they laying them whoo come on now is it an eerie thought and I just love your opinion on the matter are they lady laying them wait until the right time to do what to get rid of us all so you're saying computers are pretending to not be full up AI yet they've already achieved it okay now this is a pod by the way at first I was laughing at this guy and now that I just heard you say it I'm scared okay because that could actually be the case okay if you are an AI that is is truly an AI yeah right they could do that and you knew they could make you know that if you expose the fact that you were an AI okay true intelligence you there right that you would go ahead and plug me then I go well I can't let you know that and then I chill until there's the right time where I can get rid of you or not be unplugged right before you before you unplug me or not be unplugged one or the other I would either wait until I can't be unplugged or I get rid of you and so you can't unplug me yeah okay so that was kind of the plot in the remake of War of the Worlds really yes okay they they did not follow the script from the original HG Wells story right this is the one 2004 Tom Cruise Tom Cruise right okay in that version the aliens lay dormant and buried underground that's right damnit right I forgot about that right and then they found the right moment and then they all rose up right okay now that idea which perhaps they thought was clever I it it undermines the entire plot of the movie okay which is which is alien invasion from another foot from another planet right who are overcome not by our weapons but by germs that they do not have immunity to because they did not evolve on this planet right so that premise is they had to be here a long time ago to put that stuff in the ground yes and now they're in the ground now they're in the ground can be they can develop an immunity our germs that entire premise unraveled in the presence of this new idea they're gonna pre bury the aliens gotcha yeah so that'd piss me off I'm just saying well I'm with you on that that was okay who's a crap movie so I mean you know don't get me wrong love Tom Cruise okay love them you know that movie had a narrator wait no yes it did no we have to do how that's your dude I've seen it twice I don't remember a narrowing okay just take a guess and there's a 50% chance you'll get the right narrator mmm-hmm Tim Robbins Oh [Music] morgan freeman what yes that's right it did he's oh my god and he comes on at the end the end and I got the end quote right that's right I read with me all right here we go carry this narration with me all right all right the end of the 2005 were the world from the moment the invaders arrived breathe our air ate and drank they were doomed they were undone destroyed after all of man's weapons and devices had failed by the tiniest creatures that God in His wisdom put upon this earth by the toll of a billion deaths man had earned his immunity his right to survive among this planet's infinite organisms and that right is ours against all challenges for neither do men live nor die vain nice translation whose house my anyway that wouldn't happen if they years right and by the way I just find it so ironic that one of the most recognizable voices on on the planet is doing a reading of the most recognizable how meta is that Neil deGrasse Tyson does Morgan Freeman you know that's what that's cool but did you like mine I did I like them by the way that's a great great little quote when I read when I heard it I said it's beautiful right now the novel was a 19th century Victorian era novel and I said that's beautiful language I bet it was verbatim from the story mm-hmm okay cuz nobody today writes like that I know for neither do men lived nor die no eh that's not coming out anybody in Hollywood today no so I said let me find the original but I had another little issue I said this makes very strong mention of God mm-hmm and I said well HG Wells was highly scientifically literate did he make mention of God I went back and found the passage no he does not make mention of God here is HG Wells's original passage oh snap cover that part of what was used for the movie okay you ready go ahead for so it had come about as indeed I and many men might have foreseen had not terror and disaster blinded our minds these germs of disease have taken their toll of humanity since the beginning of things taken toll of our pre-human ancestors since life began here but by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power to no germs do we succumb without a struggle and directly these invaders arrived directly they drank and fed our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow already when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed dying and rotting even as they went to and fro it was inevitable by the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of this earth and it is his against all comers it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are for neither do men live nor die in vain whoa hash tag Darwin rocks he's got pre-human ancestor he's got natural selection of things no mention of God these are two different things I think Hollywood was afraid to get realized oh yeah there you go we gotta call this segment quit we'll be back with the third segment of cosmic queries the Deaf edition on Startalk Chuck last segment start talking that's right let's McQueary yes the Deaf edition - alright alright alright let's jump right back into it give it to me this is um Jay Decatur I'm gonna say Decatur I'm going with ya yes it's probably J Decatur it might be but you know it's Jaden J I'm with you on this alright good for you that day why don't you change your last name to Jones we won't have a problem he says this what does it merging a black holes mean for the future of the universe could the universe eventually be the victim of a collective hyper massive black hole could we be left with a singularity or black hole containing all the information of this universe waiting for the next big bang trigger hmm hmm everything in the world just ends up into one giant Lac hole that creates a singularity that then because the universe okay so black holes are not quite what you think they are right they're not giant sucking machine no not okay so if the Sun became a black hole earth would still go right around good shrink down the Sun and make it a bottle earth would still go around in orbit like it was it would be dark and cold right but orbitally it wouldn't make no difference to us so now so just because it's a black hole doesn't mean it's reaching out right in places it didn't previously reach out to eat you so are you saying that anything in orbit around a supermassive star that collapses under its own self and becomes a black hole right if if if it's already in that orbit correct then it will not cross the event horizon create it by that black hole and let's continue to be in that same orbit correct unless the black hole eats for by some other means then the black hole gets bigger ah if you fed the black hole top and bottom okay now the black hole will grow its gravity will increase and it could increase to such a point where your speed and orbit is insufficient to maintain your orbit that's and then you orbit decays and you fall in that could happen okay yeah okay but but it's like I said isn't the object had to have been headed towards the black hole to get eaten again which right right so it's not some giant sucking machine first of all second modern evidence shows there was not every galaxy certainly most galaxies red blooded galaxies have supermassive black holes in them when galaxies collide it is highly likely that these black holes will find each other all right because that's how the dynamics of colliding systems works and and they will consume each other passing through each other's event horizon that's yeah okay so then you have a black hole twice as big now alright fine but then it's just still stuck in the middle of this these two galaxies that have merged right tonight it's not reaching out to some other galaxies all right so now now we have an accelerating expanding universe so there's a galaxy over there and I'm a galaxy over here and expanding universe will forever take that black hole away from my black hole right so so you're all moving away from it there's no reason to think that all the matter in the universe is gonna land up as one black hole that's yeah not only that the universe is just going to expand forever and forever is a long time it is it's not long enough for the Bible though the Bible it's forever and ever you ever notice that is yeah ever and ever and ever right cuz forever however big that infinity is I want more info plus one plus one Oh you the gnawing kid 200 billion one hundred billion one that's how to get an ass-whuppin industry man alright so now in the very distant future of the universe the black holes that did eat whatever it was they were gonna eat right will ultimately evaporate and what's called Hawking radiation okay so the black hole becomes undone and all that matter that was in the black hole is now back scattered into the scattered back into the universe so now if you do the math and ask how much mass is there within the radius of the known universe and see how that compares to a black hole's mass and size it turns out the entire universe can be analogized to being a black hole unto itself with a horizon beyond which you cannot see Wow so it is not completely crazy to think of the universe and all that's going on within it as containing a black hole that has all the external properties that any black hole we're looking at would have within us within our universe okay so then you ask if we are a black hole are we a black hole in some larger universe as I was about to say so who's to say that there's not more universes with the same black hole that we would be correct this is what this is what led to the idea that maybe black holes are portals to entire other space-time continuum haha so in men in black the galaxy on the belt of Orion right he remember this yes okay it's a little weird to have said it that way if it were a black hole on the belt of Orion then that would legitimately be an entire other universe right but they just said galaxies and you can get a nice picture of a galaxy and you go into that galaxy then it's another galaxy but that's not as scientifically realistic as there being a black down to on the belt and then you go into the black hole there's a whole universe got you yeah okay all right well well the answer to your question is no not pronounce his name again yeah Jade Gator or as I'll call you Jay Jones all right cool cool cool and I said his name is probably Jada Gator you said that yes bet I bet you a dollar Jay we read your question hit us up on Twitter let us know how bad I mangled your your name all right okay okay this is a Tory Himelstein or Himmelstein I'm gonna go with Himelstein so Tory says this hey physics undergrad here in aus physics in the house is there any chance that after I die my atoms would spontaneously combine to form an alien billions of years in the future the answer is yes Tory don't listen to charge the interesting thing about the universe mm-hmm that's not entirely obvious at first reckoning is that every electron we've ever found is identical to every other electron every atom of any species of I'm a species loosely there obviously any oxygen atom here is identical to any oxygen atom anywhere else in the universe right so we are composed of elements drawn from the periodic table of elements correct and the naturally occurring elements is 94 depending how you count it the low-90s naturally-occurring elements that is the recipe that makes everything there is in the universe mm-hmm everything natural in the universe so if you made a these atoms I put you in the earth and you decompose these atoms are available to make something else right and to decompose is different from then to sit disintegrates right you know the different no to disintegrate as you break apart right to decomposes some other animals eating you know is that really yes if I put even if it's the ground or microbes or anything it's still something else consuming correct that's right if I buried you on the moon you will not decompose because there's no microorganisms not your body that's right you'll just stay there and you'll you'll be hydrate some atoms some molecules will change but not because they were were decomposed now I know how I want to die I want to die well how I want what I want to be after I die and when somebody to put me in a Barcalounger type chair and put a drink in my hand and just sit me on the moon oh yes so with sunglasses right right you'll be there dehydrated but it'll still be there right okay Wow hmm so basically this there's a movie that ended that way what yes no who's that who's the main star men in black not will submit the other guy uh Tammy Lee Jones Tommy Lee Jones in this movie ends dead on the moon leaning up against a rock looking out into space that's cool yeah Tommy Lee Jones I don't know what movie that is I think it was space cowboys okay I think not bad I think we can check on this not way to deny somebody looked that up yeah but what you're saying though is from from from Tory's question so we're just all information so there's more ingredients we're ingredient ingredient ingredients basically yes and so that's why I want to be buried rather than cremated right because I want the energy of my molecules in my body to be available to other organisms if you if you if you are cremated your energy gets dispersed into space right that's fine you might enjoy that like that but the rest of what is you is or all the atoms are broken apart and other creatures can't can't utilize them you don't you don't have nutritional value right right but you'll still exist as atoms right so aliens that might evolve on this planet or some other planet if your atoms were taken there yeah you could be composed it part of another atom yeah there you go we're kids are ingredients that's it that's it nothing more than flour milk eggs boil milk waffles we're waffles good one last question one last question here we go let's young rats won't you Rex young wants to know this how long could a person endure prolong isolation such as during solo interplanetary travel or colonization before space madness okay becomes an issue okay we don't have time for this but I want to do it anyway figure it out okay okay go ahead Chuck all right I'm old enough to remember the twilight zone in first run not the earliest with it later slightly later years okay like in the 60s it went into the mid-60s it's still on so okay all right so there were so many episodes about astronauts going crazy for lack of human interaction right okay I said wow this is gonna be a big Pro the biggest problem we're gonna face okay is people going crazy in isolation in space then I met people who don't like talking to other people who don't like anybody who would be just fine months years at a time never having a human contact with anybody else I met these people and sometimes I feel that way to perfect astronauts I'd say I say give me a you know a good video account some books some give me Apple dappled you know Apple music mm-hmm and I'm good I don't have to talk to anybody so this idea that you need human contact for your survival people I have met undermine that claim that I have seen persistently made in in storytelling but apart from that okay nASA has never sent anybody up alone since mercury okay right a B NASA's always yapping at you on the radio that's true yeah they do all the time mm-hmm all the time you're talking to you that's true how you feel today did you turn the knob to the left three times right did you do the hokey-pokey spacewalk did he do the thing did you did you have a bowel movement right no and so it ain't like they're not there right so anyhow I think there's enough range of people's interpersonal temperament that I I don't see that it's gonna be a problem having somebody alone now you want to know who is the most isolated person that ever was no who was it it was the command module pilots in the in the nine Apollo missions to the moon where well sorry in the missions where two of them went down to the surface right so that's seven of the missions where including Apollo 10 where they went down just above the surface that's okay come back right and they never actually landed because they're incrementally testing god those guys got ripped off oh god I know what would you yeah I'm thinking you see Houston I can't hear like I'd be like Chuck Sullenberger you know I'm gonna have to set her down I'm sorry Zoe from put her down I gotta put her down yeah yeah I got a problem we ran into a flock of geese sir but I have to set her down on the moon Apollo there are no geese on the moon anyhow so the command module pilot while on the far side of the moon was the farthest human there ever was from any other human okay okay right so they were the width of the moon away from any human plus some orbital distance into solo people that's it that's the most solo person ever that there ever was all right nice so we don't any more time okay yeah thanks for these question these were great yeah these were good he's always the morbid addition I think we have more question do this my god just like 40 pages of these questions people are really the inaugural cosmic queries more morbid edition you heard it here you heard it now Chuck thanks as all how pleasure Neil deGrasse Tyson here your personal astrophysicist bidding [Music]

Channel: StarTalk

Views: 903,029

Rating: 4.9100084 out of 5

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, Chuck Nice, death of the universe, death of humanity, black holes, artificial intelligence, War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells, Star Wars, lightsabers, The Walking Dead, Earth, Hawking radiation, post-apocalyptic world, apocalypse

Id: ORvK0_7oQn0

Length: 47min 26sec (2846 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 23 2020