- This is StarTalk. We are going to talk about the science that exists, or the absence of science that doesn't exist. - Yeah, probably the latter
more so than the former. - In the Marvel Universe, specifically a entire show of spoilers on... - Marvel Endgame. - Endgame, Endgame. So if you haven't seen Endgame yet, just shut off the program now. Now. - You should not be watching. - Now, okay. Now who's left? We got the tight-- - All right, now that
those people are gone. (laughter) - Now that they're gone. - [Chuck] Now that they're gone. - All right, so let's
just talk about it, Chuck. - Yeah, so first of all-- - Don't get me started. Hold me back. - That should be the name of this. Don't Get Me Started. - Hold me back. - I saw the movie, of
course, and unfortunately I didn't get to see it in IMAX. Did you actually go and see it in IMAX? - Yeah, I saw it in IMAX
three days before it opened, and I Tweeted, do you remember my Tweet? - I saw your Tweet, where you said, "I didn't know there were
so many Marvel characters." - I didn't know there
were so many Avengers. - Yes. - Maybe they're not all Avengers? - That's a weird question. - There were just so many, and-- - 'Cause no, 'cause the
Guarden of the Galaxys are not. Well no, 'cause they're Avengers. - Yes, they're Avengers. There are blue ones and
red ones and silver ones and green ones and three of them were named Chris, you know? - That's funny. - What's up with that? So here's, let me just say something nice about the Marvel Universe
before we get all up in it. - [Chuck] Okay. - Okay. Of all the communities of
superheroes that exist, the Marvel superheroes, more than not, derive from some kind of
science or scientific principle, if not the people
themselves are themselves scientifically literate. So you look at Spiderman. He's really Spiderboy, right? - Spiderboy. Spiderkid. - [Neil] Spiderkid. - Right. - He was in his science class, and he gets bitten by a radioactive spider. So it's not that sitting with Miss Muffet sitting on her tuffet. He's in science class when this happens. Dr. Banner is a medical
doctor, he becomes the Hulk. Ironman is Ironman, he's a total genius, unlike Batman, not to
pit DC against Marvel, but Batman is smart, but he's not the one inventing the stuff
that makes him powerful. - Exactly. He's got his company. - He's got his whole company that's-- - Producing all of his stuff. - A military contracting company with engineers in the
silo doing their work. So Ironman is doing all his own work. So I applaud Marvel. I don't know where the
science is in Hawkeye, okay? He's got no powers. (laughter) And I love watching Black Widow. Who doesn't love some good martial arts? But we don't have to talk about the science of that, 'cause that's. - Well, yeah, and they don't have powers. - [Neil] They don't have
powers, superhero powers. - They're just very good shots. - Yes. (laughs) - Both of them. They'd be great for
like, maybe the biathlon. (laughter) America once again
brings home Olympic gold thanks to Hawkeye and
Black Widow, but yeah. - The ninja biathlon. - The ninja biathlon. (laughter) - So, all right. Oh, you have notes on this? - No, I have questions. - Questions? - Actually, so what we did was-- - So this is kinda like a Cosmic Queries. - It is kinda like a Cosmic Queries, 'cause we went online and we
solicited questions from-- - You didn't tell me that. - From people who. Well you know. - [Neil] All right, all right, all right. - But people who wanted to
know some of the science and your thoughts on it, they got to us. - Now, I didn't read the comic books. - [Chuck] Well you don't have to. It's not really about the comic books. - No, but they go to see these movies and they complain that something
was in the comic that... It's like the people who read the novels before they becomes the movies. They're the ones who really should never, not be allowed in the theater. (laughter) Because whatever I say about a movie is not as obnoxious as a person
who read the novel first. - I gotta tell you you're right. So one of the things
that people don't know about this is, in the
movie, in the comic books, Hulk becomes Worldbreaker Hulk. And so in the movie Ragnarok, where Hulk gets sent away to another planet. - This is Thor: Ragnarok. - This is Thor: Ragnarok. That's actually a storyline where Hulk becomes this Worldbreaker
Hulk and he becomes this kind of like, gladiator, right? But then after that, he learns how to separate Bruce Banner from the Hulk while they are merged as
one, and then he becomes kind of Bruce the Brulk. He's Bruce and Hulk at the same time. - Mm-hmm. - And that's what you see in this movie. - Yes, in Endgame. - In Endgame, thank you. That he is... So that kind of stuff you do see happening in the movie, which I think is kinda cool, and that should make-- - Well, this is connective
tissue between storylines. - Between all the storylines, and that's what they did really well. - So Marvel has upheld the
storytelling end of this. - Yeah, and I think they did a great job with the storytelling, and I think Marvel stories are better
than DC stories period. I don't know if they
just hire better writers. - Blood drawn. - I'm sorry, I mean, I don't. If you're a DC person, good for you, but I think all their storylines in Marvel are just so much more
captivating and compelling. The DC storylines tend to kind of have a more magical, mystical kind
of crap stuff attached to it. I don't know, that's my
opinion, that means nothing. That's how I feel, but-- - Wait, wait, wait, excuse me. You telling me the powers
that Wonder Woman wields are not differently mysterious and magical from those of Captain Marvel? - Yes, because Diana is a
god, goddess, basically. - [Neil] Yes. - And what's that mean? I mean, that's such an easy thing to. Well, the only person
who's like that is Thor. - Yes, okay. - Thor is a god, okay, we get it, but. - So therefore, he does god stuff. - Yeah, he does god stuff. And when you create a
god, I mean, it's like, okay, well yeah, I can do that, I'm a god, and to me, it's kinda lazy. - Ooh. - I'm just saying, it's
a little lazy, it's like. - All right, I don't
have a rebuttal to that. - Yeah, it's like, okay, I'm a god. Yeah, I did that because I'm a god. It's like, okay, so that's
where all your powers come from, the fact that you
are this deity, all right. And to me, I'm like, okay, whereas although the science is not tight or there's no real fidelity
to the science, at least-- - [Neil] In Marvel. - In Marvel. - [Neil] There's a premise. - At least there's a premise. Like for instance, gamma
radiation creating the Hulk. Gamma radiation, from what
I have learned from you and every other scientist
that has been on this show. - It will kill the host
essentially every time, yes. - There's no way that
you could ever experience gamma radiation... - And come out walking out saying, oh, I'm just a little different today. - I feel great. (laughter) God, it's so refreshing, that gamma ray. So anyway, that's the way I felt. - Gimme some question. - And we always start with Patreon. - [Neil] Do it. - And here we go. Frank Cane. "Which movie actually
represented time travel "more consistently with modern theories, "Endgame or Back to the Future?" Wow, they picked one of your favorite. - Yeah, I gotta go with, well. Maybe the stuff that happened in Endgame that I didn't fully understand, but Back to the Future, Back
to the Future tried to be as consistent as it possibly
could at every turn. I'm talking about Back to the Future One, not Two and Three. - Not Two and Three. - And so... - Marty, there's something
wrong with your kids! (laughter) Marty! - What, do I become a jerk? No, it's your kids, Marty! - No, it's your kids, Marty! - So... - [Chuck] Get me some garbage! All right, sorry. - So, so... I think, now what was the question? Now you con... - I messed you up. Which movie represents time travel better? - Time travel, right. - [Chuck] Endgame or Back to the Future. - Okay, so Endgame, if I'm to make that internally consistent, it requires a much more complex set of timelines branching off of one another than what happened in Back to the Future. All that happened in Back to the Future is they created a single
alternative timeline. - Correct. - Which is kind of the timeline we wanted there to have been all along, right? And so it had very
satisfying elements to it. In Endgame, let me just think about the multiple timelines here. Forget the fact that Captain America decided to hang with his woman and not do all the saving that he
did in the other movies as Captain America in present day, okay? There's still the present
day element of this that now is lost to some timeline that doesn't now exist in the
timeline we are left with. He's sitting there as
an old man on a bench, and we're happy for
him 'cause he went back to the true love of his life. - Found his woman. - You can't, we're not gonna-- - You can't hate on that. It's very hard. - But how about whatever crime he stopped in the episodes he was in? What of that? Well, that's just some other universe that's unfolding that way at this point. Because you didn't change the timeline, you branched the timeline. That's the modern concept of what happens when you change time. And so, plus, I didn't like the fact that they interacted with each other. He's admiring his own ass, okay? (laughter) - I can't really blame him for that. - Chuck! (laughs) - I mean, first of all,
he's got a fantastic ass. - He's admiring... And by the way, when I saw that scene where he's knocked down on the ground, of course he's gonna get back up, and the second version of him walks by. So yeah, the American ass is a good ass. I looked at the ass and I said, that ass looks a little too big
from what I remembered it to look like when he's walking around. - You think they had a stunt butt? Stunt booty? - Well, they put butt inserts. I said, that looks a little too large. And I said, that looks suspiciously large. They're probably gonna comment on it, and sure enough he comments on it. - Nice. - So I saw that coming. So anyway, you can't
interact with yourself, 'cause you don't know what
influence you would have on the world that was gonna happen that you're trying to stop. - Right. - So that's just outright dangerous. - Yeah, it doesn't make sense to do that. - And with Marty, he sees himself, Marty in Back to the Future. Lets go to the very end of the movie, where he comes back, he's at the rim of the parking lot,
sees the future unfold. He's not interacting with himself. Not technically. Yes, light beams are
exchanging and molecules are there, but in any
traditional storytelling sense, he's not interacting with himself. So you can get away with that, but here is Captain America
walking right by himself, and more than one of
those kinds of moments happened in this movie,
so I didn't like that. - A lot of those moments
happened, so I don't blame you. I will tell you this much though, I did appreciate him being in the elevator and going, "Hail Hydra." That was pretty cool. - Okay, whispering that and then-- - Whispering that, and
then, that was cool. - Gimme some more. - All right, here we go. "Where do you believe vibranium falls "on the periodic table of elements? "Why would it be so strong, then?" So vibranium, the mythical
material found in-- - These people know what
we're talking about here. - Oh, that's right. - Excuse me. - That's right, I forgot who's asking. - We're the inner sanctum
here of the Marvel Universe. You don't have to be Mr.
Explanatory Chuck Nice, which is very pedagogical of
you, but not in this moment. - Here we go, so vibranium. - Are you familiar with the periodic table of fictional elements? It's online, go check it out. - Get out. - Yes, it's all there. - [Chuck] I gotta look this up. - So finkilium is there. - Finkilium? - Finkilium, that's an element on the original I Dream of Jeannie. They needed an ingot of finkilium, okay? There is the stuff that was in
The Absent-Minded Professor. The, what is the? - Flubber. - Flubber, flubber's on the periodic table of fictional materials, and it's full. They got a full periodic table. - [Chuck] Cool. - And so I love it. Oh, but they also have unobtainium from... - Avatar. - From Avatar. So all these elements are there. So people have thought about
how one might organize them. I can tell you this, one
of the remarkable things about this universe and the periodic table of elements in particular, is that from element to element, the properties can be so different from one another. That it is not completely
crazy that you just have an element that has all
the properties of vibranium. You could take a cubic inch of gold and hammer it so thin that you could gild an entire football field with it. So gold is the most
malleable element, okay? And I gotta double-check
my calculation on that. If it's not a football
field, it's some area nearly as big, okay? And that's why you gild
things with gold, okay? Because you don't take of much of it and it looks like you have a lot. - I mean, you can make it so thin that you can actually
brush it onto surfaces and gold-leafing. - Yeah, so you get gold leaf, okay? So you look at the diversity of properties of elements on the periodic table. Not only that, the diversity of molecules you can make with the elements. Here we have sodium, which is a metal soft enough that you can
cut with a knife, okay? And it's poisonous and it will explode if you put it in contact with water. Add chlorine to it, a deadly gas, and you have table salt. (laughter) Okay? I have oxygen, which
promotes combustion, okay? Promotes combustion, then I have hydrogen, an explosive gas, put them together, you make water that puts out fire. So this diversity of
properties does tell you that vibranium is one
of the most inventive, realistic things you
can think of on there. It's got all these properties
that nothing else has. That's true with anything
else and its properties that nothing else has. - Right. - I'm cool with vibranium. - That is a great answer, and you-- - Plus it came from the mother continent. (laughter) - The mother of us all. - The motherland. That's right, well, that is true. - Okay. Chuck, we gotta take a
break, so when we come back, more spoilers of Avengers:
Endgame on StarTalk. So to help us answer so many questions, because Thanos messed with the world. - [Chuck] Yes, he did. - In a big way, I've got
a friend and colleague of mine from the American
Museum of National History, Rae Wynn-Grant. Rae, welcome to StarTalk. - Hi, thanks for having me. - [Neil] I think this is
your first time, right? - Very first time, not the last. - So this is, you are a
large carnivore ecologist. Which I don't even know what that is. - Wow, I kinda dig that though. I'm not sure what it is
either, but I like it. - But more broadly, you
care about the environment and the intersection
of life and food chain and this sort of thing, and
so we've got some questions. And by the way, everyone is assumed to have seen the movie
here, so don't worry about spoiling anything. This is advertised as spoiler alert for Avengers: Endgame, and that's where these questions are coming from. - But I hope I don't get kicked off, because I haven't seen it. - Haven't seen it yet? Call in the authorities. - That's gonna make this so much better. (laughter) - Am I a bad scientist? Does this take my credentials? - [Chuck] No, not at all. - We'll carry you on this. Okay, go, what do you have? - So guess what, you'll probably be able to answer these questions anyway just from your professional point of view. All right, Billy Games from Instagram wants to know this, Rae. "I think you're gonna
need more than one episode "for this topic," is what he says, "and more specialists in
different fields, L-O-L." What the hell was that? - Wait, so where's the question? - He didn't finish it. (laughs) - Wait, so what's the question? - There is no question,
this is, it just goes off. - [Neil] That's it, okay. - So see how easy that was, Rae? - I'm the best guest you've ever had. (laughter) - All right, here we go. - Next one, go. - Ian Abby from Facebook says, "So, what would happen
if, to the ecosystem if "half of all life was
suddenly disappeared?" - 'Cause the bad guy on
the Avengers: Endgame, well in the previous
movie, he snaps his fingers and half of all life goes away, and in his warped sense of justice, he's trying to help the other half survive so that there's sufficient
resources for them. Now, they didn't make it clear whether they killed half of
all plant life as well. - Right, yeah, he just. - 'Cause plant life is also alive. - But if his-- - Then is he killing half of all worms? - I was gonna say if his reasoning is that he wants to increase resources, then you wouldn't want to kill half of all plant life, because that's a resource. - Right, for the animals. But he's also killing half the animals. They didn't make that
clear, and I don't know what they did in the comic book, but let me just ask
you, if you take half of any animal species that's in equilibrium with its environment, let's start with an equilibrium case. You take away half of them, what happens? - That's a good question. Yeah, just like that. Yeah, we're in perfect balance and then you just cut that balance
in half, what happens? - Sure, a lot of things happen, and I just wanna be clear, this is just the animal species, right, not plants? - Let's assume he didn't
cut the plants in half. - Yeah, let's leave the plants alone. - Makes a big difference. - Yeah. (laughs) - So. (laughs) So it's actually a
phenomenon that might be potentially very helpful
to the planet, because-- - That's what Thanos said! - And that's what he said! - That's what Thanos said. - Well, the movie is fairly accurate in terms of how it's portrayed,
from what I've heard, and what would happen is that everything would be cut in half, so
we'd see a tremendous loss. People would be traumatized. There would be a lot of
other large-brained animals that would traumatized,
right, like the whales and the elephants and the gorillas that we've noticed can exhibit emotions similar to people. - And also grieve, they grieve death. As elephants grieve death, so do gorillas, and other apes, but go ahead. - Right, right. We've even seen them shed tears and cry in sad situations. So there would be trauma, right? And so for some species,
that might actually impact what happens next in terms of the future of the species, right? But in general, what's gonna happen is a whole lot of reproduction, and remembering that
reproduction is different for different types of species. So something like a whale might reproduce only a couple of times in its life, but something like a bacteria, which is arguably one of
these small living organisms, will reproduce like that. (snaps fingers) And especially with extra space, which means less
competition for resources, we might actually see a huge spike in some populations of animal species. So if you think about if
you have a small population of deer or some kind of herbivore, and a huge meadow full of
food, full of plant food for them to graze in, they're gonna get bigger and fatter, and
in the ecological world that means more fit. And so when they're more
fit, they're better able to give birth, probably younger, probably more often in their lifetime and put more genes into the gene pool. So we'll see a huge spike in population, maybe even beyond what ecologists
call a carrying capacity. Carrying capacity is a term that we hear right now a lot when we talk about the human population of the world, and whether we reached carrying capacity, if we're past carrying capacity. The number of people, or the number of-- - This would be the
maximum number of people, you were saying. That's what you're saying. - Maximum number for the resource load, for the availability of resources, the maximum number to
stay in that equilibrium. So what often happens is
we'll see a population actually spike and
overshoot carrying capacity, and then we'll see another
kind of mass death event and it will get back into equilibrium. So it would actually
technically be kind of an ecologist's dream to see this happen, especially in theory, because we'd be able to test out a lot of our theories. - So it would overshoot. - It would overshoot, yeah. My prediction is that depending, different species and
different populations of organisms would overshoot
at different times. So like I'm saying, a deer population, herbivores would probably
get there quicker than whales or elephants or people, even. - And rabbits would get there first. (laughter) - Exactly. - You can bet on that, yeah. - But wouldn't you see,
so, I guess that means that you would not see the same resulting population explosion, or at least... - A different mix of animals. - Right, because for instance, if you see a proliferation of
rabbits or small rodents, then wouldn't you see
a proliferation of owls or coyotes or their
natural predators as well? Because these are guys are
now gonna be well-fed, too. - Absolutely. The animal community all
depends on resources, and when I mean resources,
I mean food and shelter. Seems like shelter isn't
gonna be cut in half, right? All of those abiotic resources. Water, ground, rocks, that kind of thing, that's all gonna still be there, so there's gonna be plenty
of shelter for everyone. All the owls, all the fox, all of them. But a lot more food,
especially in the terms of plants for the herbivores, and then more herbivores for the carnivores. So I think that life
would go on just fine, and it would be really
interesting to watch. - There was a part of the
movie, you may remember, where they said, well,
how has the earth been since this event? They said, well the water's cleaner, the air is cleaner,
they went down the list of all the bad things we humans have done to the earth, and that all got cleaned up. - Yes, just by us not being here. We didn't have to do
anything, just not be here. - Just the absence. - Exactly. It's like a asshole at a
party, you know what I mean? Once he's leaved, well, the party's great. Who knew that this guy was
ruining the party? (laughs) - All right, another question. - This is 33kyleford from Instagram, says, "If Thanos had used the stones to shrink "all living creatures to half the size, "would that theoretically
have had the same "positive effect on the
allocation of resources?" Interesting. - Ecologically. - So little people
don't use as much stuff. - Half as much resources. So do you think that would
have the same effect? - It would have a pretty profound effect, and again, it all depends
on if we're including plants as these resources, right, because-- - Let's just do animals,
just animals for now. - You know, that makes me concerned, because big plants like trees and such, and little tiny animals
might have a pretty significant mismatch
for a lot of the needs of those animals. I'm kind of putting humans aside because I think little humans
would probably be fine. We'd figure it out, but if little humans are eating gigantic carrots
and stuff like that, I think that might actually
be good for us, right? More food to go around. (laughs) But a lot of animals
depend on the right size and ratio of plants. So if you think of insects, right? I guess they're technically animals, and so if we have these
teeny, tiny little bees but giant flowers, it
might actually disrupt a lot of important pollination
that we as people depend on. So there is something very important about maintaining size ratios. - Ecologists think, this
is the kind of stuff you guys think about professionally? - I mean, if you're gonna subject me to a fantasy movie like this, I'm really gonna pull it apart, yeah. It's my job, it's my job. - All right, Rae, thanks
for being on StarTalk. - My pleasure. - Great to have you at arm's reach here, even though you're on Skype, you're in Washington right now, but next time you're in town we'll
get you live on the show and talk more about this stuff. - Thank you again, have fun you guys. - Excellent, take care, bye. So she's in Washington
'cause she's a fellow with the National Geographic Society. - Very cool. - As well as being a
visiting scientist here. - Nice, very nice. - [Neil] Got more for me, Chuck? - Yes, we do. Wellesley Tang says, "Hi
Dr. Tyson and Mr. Nice." Oh really? "I'm Wellesley, hailing from New Jersey. "The question is for both of you. "If you had the power of
the Infinity Gauntlet, "what would you do?" Wow, so the Infinity Gauntlet gives you pretty much the power to do anything that you can conceive of in your mind. - I know, so that's dangerous power. - That's dangerous power. - That's too much power. - That's way too much power. - It's unrestricted power. - It is, it's beyond godlike. - [Neil] Right. - Because even God has rules. The Infinity Gauntlet basically
says there are no rules, you can do whatever you want. - God created the universe
with the rules that are in it. This is like a Spinoza universe where there's the laws of gravity
and quantum-physics, and those are rules. And if you've got all the stones lined up, then even the laws of the universe. - [Chuck] Don't apply. - Do not contain you. - So you could do anything, that's wild. - Okay, here's what I would do, you ready? I would do all I can
to increase happiness. - Interesting. Now, but, now I'm gonna
get philosophical with you. Would you increase happiness as a result of circumstance, which means that everyone finds happiness in
their life on their own, or would you just make people happy? - Now you getting deep. - (laughs) Exactly. - I think, I'm very yin-yang on this. I don't think you can know happiness fully without having never seen sadness. - Interesting, and I agree. - This is why rich
people can get very upset over things that poor people can't even imagine having getting upset about. - My god, the Volvo's in the shop again. - (laughs) The Volvo, no, the Maybach. - Right, the Maybach, I
can't believe. (laughs) - Why do you sound like Thurston Howell on Gilligan's Island? - 'Cause that's my favorite rich person. (laughter) Lovey! - So it would be... I don't have the recipe for
how I would make that happen, but I know in my day, I try to make sure there's somebody out there
that's slightly happier because I exist in this world today. - Oh, that's nice. - And if it was just helping
them across the street, I don't know, anything simple. So it would be awkward. In the movie with Jim Carrey, with God, what's the name of that one? - Bruce Almighty. - Bruce Almighty, in that film, Jim Carrey becomes God temporarily
and he just helps people in ways with blanket
decisions, and realizes it has consequences,
and if you don't really think it through completely, the act of trying to help everybody
ends up hurting everyone. - [Chuck] Right. - So I'd have to really
think that through, but I would wanna increase the amount of total happiness in the
world, 'cause misery is something that humans have
lived too long with, yeah. - Interesting. I would make the 76ers win a championship. All right, here we go. - I'd have them play the
Knicks and have the Knicks win. The Knicks haven't won since
I was in middle school. - (laughs) Okay. All right, here we go. The one thing, this is Farrah Dahlstrom, Farrah Dahlstrom says, "There's one thing "that bugged me about the movie. "Half the population is gone on earth, "we must have changed
our agriculture for that, "then suddenly they
come back, wouldn't that "lead to world starvation?" - I think if you get
rid of half the people, half of those people are gonna be, some of those people are gonna be farmers. - [Chuck] Yes. - I mean, think of the
people who are producing the products that feed the rest of us. So if you have a farm that
requires 100 people to run, and you kill half the
people, the remaining 50 can't now run the farm at all, 'cause everybody has their job. You'd need farms half the size, so yeah, I think Thanos really
didn't think this through. - And that's what kills me about it. - Thanos is an idiot. - He is really just a stupid, stupid man. - He's an idiot. - He's an idiot, yeah. - I think I'm really nice to
people, to those that survive. I'm helping them... - I've helped you all. My destiny has been to help you all. And it's like, no bro, no. All right, here, this is Daryl Chin-- - And I Tweeted right when I saw the film that the amount of
resources in the universe if you are space-faring
is essentially unlimited, so forget the fact that you're
running out of resources on Earth, if you have
access to space, space, with asteroids and comets and meteors and all the rest of that, come on now. - Yeah, and by the way, how about that? How about it's just like,
I'm gonna snap my fingers and take care of everybody? - Thank you! - Why do I have to
eliminate half the people? - Why don't I snap my fingers
and provide for everybody? - Right, I'm going to snap my fingers, we're gonna have quadruple the resources which means it would take
us four times as long. - And then you call me when you're done and I'll snap my fingers again, right. - Exactly, all right. Thanos, you're a dick. (laughter) Okay, so this is Daryl Chin-Fatt, and... - Chin-Fatt? - Yes. "How is Captain Marvel apparently able "to travel faster than
light to save the day "in the final battle
and also have a beeper "that can signal her while
she's in other galaxies?" That's so weird. - So it seems to me that Captain Marvel is supremely powerful on a level that should preclude the need
for any other Avenger. - Well, yeah. - Why do I need someone
who shoots bows and arrows when I have Captain Marvel? Why do I need vibranium
if I have Captain Marvel? Why do I need Ironman,
who can fly with jets, when she can move through
the vacuum of space? - Without a spacesuit. - Without a spacesuit. Why do I need a Hulk who
smashes things when Captain... Why do I need any other Avenger
other than Captain Marvel? Plus she glows. - [Chuck] Yes. - [Neil] What else do you need? - You don't need anything. - Now here I have issues, because-- - That's her personality by the way. That glow, that glow, I'm just saying. - That's her glow. - That's her glow, that's her personality. - Yes, yes, that's. So I don't, plus, if
she has that much power, how is it that she couldn't move the glove from one side of the
battlefield to the minivan? - Now, that really pissed me off. - She can carry spaceships
across the galaxies to land softly. - And to land softly. - Okay? - Touch, three point landing. - Three point touchdown, soft landing. - Super soft landing. - Soft landing, a
spaceship a thousand times bigger than she is, she can't move a glove across a battlefield to a minivan. - I gotta say, that was really very... That's one of those movie mechanisms where you're like, come on man. - I know right? This is the most creative
you could be on how to st-- That's like her running
away from something and then tripping on a rock or something. - Yeah, I mean, it would have been far more cool if Thanos
summoned a thousand of those little minions
to hit her all at once. - All at once, something
commensurate with her power. - With her power, right. Not, oh, I tripped. - (laughs) That's what that was. - That's basically, oh,
I tripped, oh, the glove! Ooh! Like, what? What the hell just happened? - I can fly through space and I, you know. - Yeah, yeah, no. - All right. So now, if you want her
to move through space, you can imagine that
she quantum teleports. Okay, I don't know if
you knew this, but... I'll explain this. Do you want the full explanation? - I want that. - You want he full explanation? - [Chuck] Why not? - Okay. So if you put water in a glass, it can't get out 'cause
the glass has walls, okay? So the walls are boundaries between the location of the water and the table. Does it make sense that if the walls were not there, the
water would then settle down and spill all over the table. - [Chuck] Absolutely. - That's obvious. - [Chuck] Of course. - So what that means is
the water has a lower energy state it could
occupy, but the walls are preventing it. - Okay. - 'Cause if you move the walls, the water won't stay there, it goes on its own. - Right. - It's called a lower energy state, okay? Oh by the way, the table
is higher than the ground. If you put a crack in the
table, it'll go through the table and hit the ground. It prefers to be even on the ground than it does to be on
the top of the table, than it did to be in your water glass. Okay. Quantum mechanically,
you can trap a particle with the walls of a glass. It's a energy well, okay? You can trap it there. Well, sorry, let's look at just the water, or a marble stuck in a
little, in a skateboard park, and the marble can roll up and down. - Back and forth. - Back and forth, there it is. It's not leaving, okay? If you want it to leave, push it with fast enough, enough energy
so it goes over the top and then it goes down to the ground level. But you have to give it energy to get over that barrier to then
escape, and now it escapes. Okay, watch. It turns out because
particles can also be waves, the particle that's trapped in the well is also a wave that exists not only everywhere in the well, parts of that wave exist outside the well. So the particle has a
chance, a small chance, of existing outside of the well, a very high chance of
existing in the well. So most of the times,
you look at the particle, it's inside the well. Every now and then, it escapes. - [Chuck] Maybe it's outside. - Correct. To watch it escape, it escapes instantly. It breaks through the
barrier, and no matter the width of that barrier,
it goes from one side of the barrier to the other in zero time. So if she has control over
the quantum continuum, she can then, it's called tunneling, she could tunnel through any space barrier and be wherever she wants in
the universe instantaneously. - So she would be in effect entangled with the entire universe. - Very clever, yes, that would be a way to have her move through space
in the way that she does. - [Chuck] Wow. - She would be quantum
entangled with every location in the universe,
so that she could then materialize herself
wherever she needs to be. - Wow. - Having tunneled there through
these barriers, correct. - That's pretty wild. - Right. But she still can't move a
damn glove into a minivan. (laughter) - Ooh, I tripped, I shoulda tunneled! I shoulda tunneled! To the van! - I tripped! - Why didn't I tunnel to the van? - Yeah, she, why not
tunnel to the damn van? - Just tunnel to the van. - She tunneled across the damn galaxy. - [Chuck] Oh my god. - [Neil] Next. - Wow, that was great. Okay, cool. Okay, here we go, here we go. Ron Sparkman, he goes, at the beginning-- - I'm here for you Ron, give it to me. - Here we go. "At the beginning of the
film, Tony and Nebula "are in space trying to
return from a Saturnian moon." - So they're in a spaceship in space, yes. - So they're on Titan, in
a spaceship in space, but. - [Neil] The moon of Saturn is Titan. - Correct. "But the sky they show makes it look like "they are in deep space. "What should that view
leaving the Saturnian system "actually have looked like?" - Like they're in deep space. (laughter) Because if you're not on Earth. - [Chuck] That's very funny. - If you're not on Earth, then every place is deep space to you. There's nothing attenuating
your view, there's no... Well, yes, there's space gas clouds, but there's no atmosphere
you're trying to look through as you have here on Earth, so... Oh, the only difference is
the sun is relatively nearby, so don't look that way,
that would be too bright. That would knock out some of your view, because it would be too
bright and your eyes-- - Too much light. - Too much light. You look the opposite direction,
it will look as though you were anywhere else in the galaxy. It would be a space view,
it's very beautiful. - That's gotta be amazing! - Yes, and have a ring system that you're pulling away from, ah, it's beautiful. - Now I wanna go to Saturn. - Do you know Edgar Mitchell recently died a couple of years ago. - Oh, okay. - Apollo 14 astronaut. We're losing them and
they're not getting replaced, 'cause nobody's been anywhere outside of low Earth orbit since 1972. So this is the only people
that have left Earth for a destination. Edgar Mitchell, on the way back, was positioned in, back from the Moon, was positioned in the
capsule in such a way that the rotation of
the capsule always had the plane of the solar system in view. - Wow. - So as he rotated, Earth would go by, and the Moon and the Sun and the planets. Three days of this. - Wow. - This changed him. - [Chuck] I'm sure it did. - He became-- - [Chuck] He was dizzy. (laughter) - Okay, apart from the throwing up. He became spiritual. - [Chuck] Okay. - He was connecting to the cosmos in ways no one else ever had,
or perhaps, ever will. - [Chuck] Yeah. - And he started participating in these sort of institutes where
people are wondering, is there some other
spiritual way of knowing about the world other than just our mechanical ways at a lab table? - Right. - And so my point is, if you're out there and you see Saturn and its rings and deep space and the Sun
and the rest of the planets, your reaction does not surprise me, and you didn't even witness that. And I saw it on IMAX,
that was really good, but if you see that stuff for real life, you're a different person coming back. - I believe it. I was different when I saw Saturn from basically a backyard through a telescope. 'Cause you can actually
see the rings of Saturn. - You can see the rings
of Saturn, and its moons. It's an amazing thing. - It's really wild, and it's... - That's why my desk lamp
to this day is Saturn. - [Chuck] I see, yes it is. - Which I made when I was in
seventh grade wood shop class. You press down the ring
and the light turns on. - [Chuck] That damn thing still works too. - [Neil] That's right. - [Chuck] You in the wrong business. - (laughs) No, I'm in the
right business, Chuck, okay? - Shoulda started a lamp company. (laughs) Tyson Lamps. All right, cool. - That's been my desk
lamp since middle school, ever since I built it in seventh grade. - It's really cool, too. - [Neil] All right, what else you got? - All right, here we go. Thank you Ron, here we go. This is Livintolearn from Instagram says. Oh, this is so cool. "What was the whole Mobius strip thing?" So, remember Tony, he
figures out the quantum key to time travel by asking
Jarvis for a Mobius strip, and then he actually calculates something using the Mobius strip that I don't know. From there, I'm like, okay. I don't know if there was any real science in there after that. - So it's called gobbledygook. Special kind of movie science. So there is such a
thing as a Mobius strip, and a Mobius strip is a fascinating thing. It's a fascinating thing. If you wanna make one, cut a ribbon. So a long thing strip, a ribbon, of any length, doesn't matter. Maybe make one a foot
long, just for the sake of, and maybe two inches wide. And then you could tape the
ends together to make a loop. Okay? Not the sides together, that
would make a long cylinder. So just take the short ends,
that would make a loop. And there's nothing odd about a loop. There's an inside of a loop. - [Chuck] And the outside of a loop. - You can paint the inside if you wanted. You can paint the outside. Okay. Instead, this time, instead
of connecting them that way, give one of those edges a turn. Okay, 180 degree twist. A twist, then take them together. - So now what you have
is kind of an S-shaped, almost like figure eight that
turns in and out on itself. So it goes in and it goes out. - It is way more profound than that. - Okay. - Okay, you ready? - Go ahead. - That thing has only one side. You could draw a line
along the length of it as you pull the ribbon
through, and without ever lifting your pencil off the page, without ever crossing
the edge of the page, you will land back where you started and you would've put a
line on all surfaces of it. - Ooh. - It is a ribbon that has only one side. - I'm trying to picture this in my mind. - And if you cut along that line, if you cut it in half along
the line you just drew, you make a single loop twice as big. You don't cut it into two pieces. - Oh, that's, oh, okay. So it just becomes, wait a minute. See, I'm pretty visual, I'm pretty visual. - You're a visual a dude. - So I'm seeing, 'cause
what's happening is the twist now, as you cut, as it opens up, it just becomes a circle. - A bigger circle,
okay, that's what it is. It's a big circle, okay, so now the point is, so you
throw in a Mobius strip which is cool and has a
dimensionality interest to it, okay? But then you put a time travel spin on it. So if your path through
time is on a Mobius strip, you can come back to where you were, but you're not exactly where you were, you're on the other side of that space. - Right, but even though
it only has one side. - Even though it has one side! - See, that's it. Oh, look at that. Oh, I see what they did there. - Okay. So if you had to create
mumbo jumbo gobbledygook. - A Mobius strip is the way to go, baby. - A Mobius strip will get that for you. And so you come back and
you are right adjacent to that other part of the universe, except you have no access
yet until you go back around. And that's how in
principle you could do it. - And so that's the idea, is that-- - Well, I'm thinking, I'm just trying to give them some benefit of the doubt. - Well no, it makes perfect sense, but it makes no sense
in terms of time travel. But it just makes philosophical sense in terms of returning to that place. - If you needed to come
with some hocus pocus mumbo jumbo, why not do a... By the way, they have three-dimensional Mobius strips that are
called Klein bottles. - Yes, now I've heard of that. - You've heard of a Klein bottle? - I've heard of a Klein
bottle, but I didn't know it was a Mobius strip. - Yeah, it's bottle that
actually has no inside, 'cause the inside is also the outside in four dimensions. So the Klein bottle you
build in three dimensions it what it would look like projected onto three dimensions from
a four-dimensional space. - Interesting, wow. - Chuck, we have hardly any time left. I'm doing a lightning
round, let's do it, go. - Okay, here we go. (bell rings) All right, this is John C, he says, "What is the biggest scientific inaccuracy "in the movie in your estimation?" - Inaccuracy... - [Chuck] So many. - I know I'm typecast
that way, but that's not how I think of movies. I think of were they internally consistent in the wrong science that
they're invoking? (laughs) And if that, then you give
them shout out for at least... - Hey listen, right, we
actually took the science and took it to its awful conclusion, but we stayed consistent
to that awful conclusion. - Okay, so here it is. On all the spaceships,
they made no reference of any gravity generator, and they all should've been weightless
on their spaceship. - Or have magnetic boots. - Yeah, but they didn't show that or give any shout out to it. - [Chuck] Right, nobody was weightless. - Yeah, nobody was weightless at any time. - Never. - And the weight matters because you could be standing upside down in the ship, and if it's rotating, all of that works. They didn't give any thought to that, especially the Guardians
of the Galaxy people, or creatures, things. - All right, that's great. - [Neil] Okay, good. - So that's a good one. Milky Blue Moon wants to know this. "How was it that the Cap,
as in Captain America, "can throw his shield
and it comes back to him "like a boomerang?" 'Cause it is a Frisbee, let's be honest. - Wait, I thought it doesn't
just come back to him, it bounces off of things back to him. That's what I thought it, right? It doesn't just come back
like it's on a yo-yo. No, he throws it, it hits its target and it comes back to him. Otherwise he'd have to run
after it every time he threw it. - You know what, I don't
know, you're right. It may be hitting stuff. - So if there's a thing facing you, there will always be an angle with which you can throw something where it bounces straight back to you. - So he's just good at pool. - He's good at the cue
shot, the cue ball shot. - He's banking stuff, that's all. - I never remember seeing it... - [Chuck] Just go and come back. - Just playing Frisbee with himself or boomerang with himself. It hits something and it comes back. Okay, good. (bell rings) Unless I've missed a movie that he was in where he did that. Okay, next. Plus, it's very boingy, it's very boingy, so it'll go and then retain the energy, the coil energy, and come back to him. Okay, next. - Ryan Lenny from Instagram
wants to know this. "Why didn't Ant-Man go up
Thanos' butt like you said?" - (laughs) What do you mean, like I said? What do you mean, like I said? - [Chuck] That was pretty funny. - He'll have to wait
for the director's cut. The after hours director's
cut, on that one. (bell rings) - All right, last one, Carlos Frangello from Instagram says this. "Tony Stark says something
like the Planck scale "messes with the Deutsch proposition "and creates the EPR paradox, so what the, "is he talking about?" - Forgive me, I don't know what
the Deutsch proposition is, but he did mention the EPR paradox, which is the
Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox. That's a real thing. And Einstein is Einstein, the other two are other physicists,
and they got together and explored in the discovery, in the dawn of quantum mechanics, he was
like, this is some weird stuff. Is it real? Can we create a thought
experiment that is a paradox that will reveal either a new truth or unravel the truth that we
think we've just discovered? - [Chuck] Interesting. - I don't if there's a Deutsch proposal. I think they just threw that in there. If there is, I don't know it, okay? But EPR is a very well-known paradox. - So the EPR paradox is real. - Well, so the
Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, this is back in the early
days of quantum physics where we were really scratching our heads. Not we, I mean, I wasn't
there, but. (laughs) My people, my physics progenitors here, they're scratching their heads. What does it mean to not be able to fully know the reality of an
object, of a particle? Heisenberg noted you
can't simultaneously know the momentum of a particle or its position precisely at the same time. So Einstein's uncertainty principle means you can't know with accuracy
the position of a particle and its momentum, which
means its velocity, in which speed and direction its going. You can't know both simultaneously. The more you know of one the
less you know of the other. So if you know the velocity of something, you don't know where it is. If you don't know where
it is, then you know exactly how fast it's going, even though you don't know where it is. (laughs) So this would be good, Chuck,
next time you're stopped for a speeding ticket, and the cop says, "Do you realize you've been
going 65 miles an hour?" Yeah, but I don't know
where I am. (laughs) And if the cop is
quantum-physics literate, I bet they let you go. - Yeah, that's gonna happen. (laughter) - So they had thought
experiments to explore the nature of that reality,
and it was confronting all of the thinkers of the day to sharpen their ideas about what quantum-physics is and what it could mean. - So at least they made an attempt to put some real science into this movie. - Yeah, it was an attempt, okay. (bell rings) Gimme a third one. - That's it. - We got through all the questions! - [Chuck] We got through them. - Oh my gosh. - Oh wait, there's one more. - One more, go. - It says, "Neil, I am Groot." (laughter) That's the question. - That is the question? - [Chuck] That's the question. - Okay, so. I think most people in life
never really know who they are, so that really at the end of the day, we should be deeply
respectful of Groot, who does. - Right, 'cause he knows, I am Groot. - That is a cosmic perspective. (laughs) - I am Groot. - This is a spoilers version. This is the first ever spoilers StarTalk. - Yeah. - We assume you've all seen Endgame and other Avengers movies related to it. So that's what we do, we
just spoiled it for you, or enlightened you, one or the other. - Yep. - [Neil] We can't spoil it
if you've already seen it. - If you've already seen
it, you can't be spoiled. - Yeah, you've just been enlightened. So I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson,
your personal astrophysicist. I'm always thanking Chuck. - Hey man, it's always good to be here. - All right. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.
