StarTalk x The Film Theorists – Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains the Science of Rick and Morty

Chuck Startalk is closing in on 1 million subscribers that's right that's right well you you may be our one millionth customer we are planning a special event when that happens that's right we're gonna do a live cosmic queries so the deal is you can actually be with us and instead of me butchering your name you can say your name to Neil and then ask him a question it's gonna be really cool so you got to make sure that you hit subscribe if you're not a subscriber and turn on your notifications so that you can know exactly when this event is gonna happen and you won't miss out all right we'll see you then hey there Neil hey Matt Pat thanks for dropping in on Startalk hey Matt Pat how are you buddy so I get a lot of requests to cover theories on the show Rick and Morty and I was hoping that you guys might be able to help me out with some of the science elements so in season 1 episode 4 we learned that one of the things that put Rick on the multiversal most-wanted list is his ability to harness the energy that's found inside of dark Manor and in that episode we actually learned that his spaceship runs on a fuel made of concentrated dark matter and it's not like this is a new concept right science fiction has been talking about dark matter for decades at this point and in the latent potential found inside of it but I was wondering what is dark matter in the first place is it as powerful as science fiction leads us to believe could it power a spaceship like the one that we see in Rick and Morty and most importantly of all can it be our gasoline in the future I want to know you want to know whether is the new form of gasoline for getting around the galaxy is there anything which by the way if you look at Rick's Rick and Morty if you look at his ship the engines are made out of garbage cans but it's okay because genius that's how they cover that right well so my first comment is try to not get your science from cartoons that's just a just to just start there some a few decades ago this how old this is someone compiled a list of the cartoon laws of physics have you seen this jack no I haven't yes yeah yeah yeah Matt I don't know if you've seen it but this so the first one is when you run off of a cliff gravity only engages after you notice you have run off of the cliff you don't just fall you have to fight hover there look around realize there's no longer ground beneath you and then you fall so that's a that's a law of physics manifested in cartoons for example so there's a you're a coyote yeah I don't know if it's species dependent but definitely the best examples are from the coyote so but we can make an exception here with Rick and Morty because there's clearly a lot of thought put into the science that's in it and the implications of the science that's in it timelines and and and bio genetic transformations so Rick and Morty has elevated itself to be worthy of this kind of discussion I just want to say that that's what happens Morty that's my trick it's awful I'll give it a that's a b-plus okay so here's the thing probably they had intended to say dark energy instead of dark matter probably the reason why I the reason why I offer this is that dark energy is a mysterious by the way they're both mysterious we don't know what either of them are made of dark matter or dark energy dark matter is a source of gravity in the universe it's most of the ground he manifested in the universe is from this mysterious entity called dark matter dark energy is a mysterious pressure in the vacuum of space that is causing matter to to accelerate away from itself and so the expanding universe is accelerating against the interests and the wishes of the collective gravity of all the galaxies so people who have wondering whether this can be tapped as an energy source they're generally they apply that to dark energy because then if you're over here and you want to be over there you put in the the negative gravity and you then you just shoot away from whatever would have been pulling you in in the first place so but that being said if you want to stick to the script and the dark matter concept it turns out dark matter does not interact with our matter at all other than by its gravity and what I mean by that is if you have a like a cup of water and you grab it you can touch the glass at this water inside that doesn't spill out of the glass you can interact with the atoms and molecules of our world Dark Matter does not interact that way in fact if there is something made of dark matter in front of you you would not be able to see it you would not even be able to touch it because the forces involved with dark matter are not the same as the forces involved in the molecules of your flesh but there's an additional problem dark matter not only doesn't interact with our molecules it doesn't interact with itself if it doesn't interact with itself it can't concentrate itself it can't latch on to itself so our best current ideas of dark matter tell us there is no dark matter thing out there you can't concentrate dark matter because that implies you can get it to stick together to itself so but again it's science fiction and it's a cartoon so we give it to him what they've done there the writers is taken something that's mysterious still mysterious on the frontier physics and made something fun with it in the cartoon and fine may be the day we discover what dark matter is and dark energy maybe you could do all of that then what what Rick is doing with those garbage cans in a spaceship I can't say no technically okay but that's the fun part of good science fiction that you keep what you know intact and take the stuff that's on the boundary and extend that into the storytelling that you care about so two things I take away from this one is that dark matter is a bit of an a-hole very antisocial just you know it doesn't want to be bothered with anyone or anything and - this is what we're hearing from Tyson C 138 in this dimension but in is there another dimension where like Tyson 365 might have another explanation no all Tyson's are coordinated the Citadel of Tyson through the Citadel we're all trained in the same school yeah so - you can't ask what it is that he's using we can say sure they're safe in the realm of our modern day scientific ignorance and he's a genius so there it is there you go thank you that actually answers my question really well but well I have you here and while we're talking about matter I'd love to ask one more in the episode more tonight run we're introduced to a character named fart it's this a cloud that's able to change the composition of atoms now in the episode we're specifically told that fart can't be destroyed using regular matter that instead he needs to be killed using an antimatter gun now the question is what is antimatter is that just a scientific hypothetical or is it a real thing and if it is real what is its theoretical you see outside of you know killing cloud-based life-forms oh god I love it by the way probably one of my favorite episodes of Rick and Morty ever because of fart and they do kind of like a little David but we asked a musical number a called goodbye moon men and I don't know it's sublime to me I just thought and by the way fart a Rick named some fart because because he's gaseous of course he doesn't have form and so and he doesn't know what a fart is and so he says I like this name fart so it's not a it's not an acronym for something you know I haven't seen that episode that's not but I can totally talk about antimatter so first of all antimatter is real this favorite fuel of science fiction it is real it was proposed back in the 1930s and it would take a while before it was discovered in the laboratory and it turns out that for all the ordinary particles that we know and love there is a version of that particle that is identical to it in all ways except certain key properties which when they come back together with its original with the matter particle they annihilate entirely so you start with two particles they get together and poof they simply become energy it's a perfect annihilation it's matter and antimatter so it's the great term antimatter it's like the force and the dark side you know the two sides of a coin it's so that's why plays so well into science fiction and into storytelling and so we happen to live in a universe filled with matter but we can make antimatter in the laboratory all right so now you have mater and you want to destroy it generally if you're the military and you want to destroy something you break it apart so that what so however it used to function it no longer functions that way all right but if you have a substance that doesn't depend on whether it's attached in a particular way that it's that it's very essence is just the matter that it is then hacking away bits of it is not going to make a difference think of in Terminator 2 the the liquid metal Terminator you can break pieces apart from him and he still has the essence of what he is as that as that model there was at the T 2000 or something yeah I forgot so it turns out if you have this cloud of atoms no you're not going to destroy them because it's matter unless you figure out a way to turn it entirely into energy so now you get an antimatter particle stream to shoot into this madness fart matter and then you can't annihilate the fart matter with anti fart matter and then it becomes pure energy and whatever the thing was before it is no longer so so by the way the movie which was at one of the Dan Brown movies angels and demons I think that was the one of course the story too but I tend to watch movies rather than read the books so I'm referencing the movie forgive me you literate folks out there so in there the Vatican is walking around with this vial of antimatter and it's carried around like it's something precious and it could destabilize the world so first I've been in some church basements I've never seen particle accelerators there so I don't know how they came up with antimatter not going to the right Church [Laughter] it must be well church basements I've been into it the cupcakes and bake sales that's all I saw on motivations we have the particle daemon out the demons have been removed right I cast you out boson Beelzebub zombie go so boson is an actual particle to chuck you doing your homework on this so here's my point they they're walking around like it's something rare and precious but we can manufacture antimatter all the time and on command in particle accelerators so it sounded good in the fictional storytelling but in practice it's really bad science fiction in that sense because it's not something weird or exotic but it does have the power to annihilate and as it has it's the most efficient way to turn matter into energy the Sun turns matter into energy all the time by converting hydrogen into helium but that's not as efficient as turning pure matter and antimatter into pure energy so there you have it the fart gas and fire the a a prop a an effective countermeasure to the fart gas yes yes antimatter fart gets believe me I've had a couple cases of that so it's it's not as much science fiction this people might think so what you don't want is and find your twin in an antimatter universe who's also gassy that could that could destabilize all the creation in every other unit sooo that's all the time we have for today but make sure you check out where I would say called filmed theorists Channel great name this is like people thinking about films in ways and dimensions that I bet the director and producers had never intended and on there I will discuss theories of the multiverse and one of the Rick and Morty episodes involving dark matter and we do that with of course mat pad so I by the way will put that specific link in the description anyway thanks for your questions Matt Pat you got it Thank You Neil and Chuck we're hoping to formulate these theories with me no problem and thanks Chuck as always for helping me decode the universe for anyone who will listen my pleasure always and until next time as always keep looking up Chuck I got a package in the mail look at that it's a black box did you go to our crash site go to a crash site and pick up some black from YouTube it could be our million subscriber plaque it could open it oh no no you can't open it we have to open that live on the air during the event I won't open it now now you the kid that's found the presents in the closet five days before Christmas and you got to wait till Christmas Day now man that is punishment so there you go if you want to see what's in the box just make sure you subscribe and turning you notifications and you can see at the live of it I also want to see what's in the box okay alright we'll see you guys there and you

Channel: StarTalk

Views: 1,153,231

Rating: 4.92589 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, rick and morty, film theorists, matpat, matthew patrick, science of rick and morty, film theorists rick and morty, film theorists neil degrasse tyson, neil degrasse tyson rick and morty, antimatter, dark matter, mattpat, chuck nice

Id: _7vaPDPZPGU

Length: 17min 7sec (1027 seconds)

Published: Tue May 19 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/War-Huh-Yeah]

"Rick's fuel for his spaceship is harnessed dark matter, what is dark matter, and could this be possible someday?"

Neil deGrasse Tyson: "Don't get your science from cartoons" lol