The Universe and Beyond, with Stephen Hawking

from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and beaming out across all of space and time this is Startalk where science and pop culture collide I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson your personal astrophysicist and tonight we're featuring my interview with world-renowned physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking I picked his legendary brain on everything from the Big Bang to the origins of the universe so let's do this so my comedic co-host tonight is Matt kirshen you co-hosts the sciencebase podcast likely science it's probably science we have some mystical measure before every time you come up with a different version on a mic it's like their names also joining me is my friend and colleague theoretical physicist Janna Levin Janna welcome your professor at Barnard College of Columbia University award-winning author most recently a black hole blues and other songs from outer space nobody says it better than Neil do you get people asking to like to do your voicemail messages yeah yeah yes but it gets worse than that yeah like I need to break up with my girlfriend but I want it to sound good but that felt good so Janet will be tapping your big brain on this because you're an expert your theoretical physicist specializing in cosmology and I know a little cosmology we have some overlap there not as much as we need for this situation okay Stephen Hawking has been called one of our greatest minds of our generation possibly of the century and maybe ever he's done groundbreaking work black holes relativity cosmology is a the mega best-selling book a brief history of time so 10 million copies and it brought cosmology from the frontier of physics in to people's living rooms and now there was a movie uh movie in 2014 called the theory of everything starring Eddie Redmayne and he won an Academy Award for Best Actor so what more can you want in a career I mean me so Hawking currently serves as director of research at the what's the department department medical physics at the University of Cambridge you work there is that right I worked in that department for a few years five years and you graduated from University Cambridge if I did just about was a close call but I got there in the end so have you guys ever met I saw him once but it was at a talk he was giving and I don't think that counts that's like spotting an orc or a SeaWorld you know he's gonna be there so it might interview with him before getting deep into physics I just wanted to get to know him a little better as a person we had met before but we never really hung out like we did in this interview so let's check out the first clip professor Hawking thanks for agreeing to be on Startalk and let me just start off with the first question perhaps the most pressing question to us all what's your favorite food for me it's pizza actually New York Pizza boisterous oysters little slippery for me but that's cool okay how about your favorite drink I like pina coladas myself but if it's not alcoholic I would do a milkshake okay last question last question what's your favorite equation I know you've got one the ablation I discovered relating the entropy of a black hole to the area of its horizon s people say over for how many people get this their favorite equation is one they came up that's badass what that's what I know I think you just all got a glimpse of what it's like to be on a date with Neil your favorite food your favorite drink now equation those results peer-reviewed and check out then it becomes a relationship so just in case and anyone had been living under a rock Stephen Hawking has what we called Lou Gehrig's disease a ALS so and it's gradually paralyzed in over the decades and right now he communicates through twitches in his cheek and these are read electronically and he moves the cursor up and down on that screen which we got a brief glimpse up and he basically bangs out the spelling of words and ultimately sentences and then scientific papers that as well yes yes so Janet tell me about his favorite equation so this is with this incredibly stunning discovery that Hawking made so the entire idea of a black hole is that nothing can get out of it that's the whole idea can't reflect light it can't emit light what falls in never comes out again when you talk about the area of a black hole what you're really describing is the region after which no information can ever escape nothing so this is the surface region right surrounding the black holes yes so there's nothing there it's not a surface of any material kind it's simply a boundary that separates what can come out and what can never come out again and amazingly Hawking realized is in some sense which seems intuitive in retrospect but it was very difficult that that's how you know it's really genius after somebody so he can't emit anything it certainly can't you can't emit light or be illuminated in any way but what he realized was that if it absorbs stuff it must be taking entropy out of the other side of the boundary right entropy being a measure of disorder or randomness or in some sense energy and so if it takes entropy there is a law of thermodynamics that says entropy always increases you know you your room gets messy or not cleaner with intervention so disorder always increases and so if it's taking entropy out of this side of the boundary it must actually be producing its own entropy and each time it takes something in it gets a little bigger and has a little more entropy so in what form is this entropy is really the mystery then Hawking realized the black hole must be evaporating must actually be radiating at a temperature like a hot object okay so so that means a black hole is not entirely black yeah actually from far away if we were looking at a black hole in a very cold background it would look to us like the black hole was actually emitting particle it was at a temperature radiating yeah it was radiating at a temperature and and that would explain this famous equation of hawky so there are two major kinds of black holes we think of in astrophysics one of them is the end state of a high mass star the Sun will not become a black hole but more massive stars can and you and then we find black holes in the Centers of galaxies with super duper high masses and we call them supermassive black holes because we tell it like it is so I was always wondering what questions Stephen Hawking might have for my man Isaac Newton you know Stephen Hawking is like as the greatest physicist of modern times and Isaac Newton as the father of classical physics I thought this would make an interesting exchange if they could do such a thing so I asked him let's check it out you hold the same endowed chair that Isaac Newton did I'm just wondering if we had some way to communicate through time with him and tell him about what life is like today are there any questions any problems you might want to hand him to solve there's a solar system stable and what happens to a star that cannot support itself against its own gravity mm-hmm so you thinking if Newton saw those questions he might give us deeper insights into black holes I'd be curious yeah so what he did with that question was not what I thought he would do with it what he did was he asked questions of Isaac Newton at the boundary of where Isaac Newton left off his own studies so stuff that he already knew the answer to right but he think he's testin he wants to see how Isaac would do because certain questions you might not even know to ask hmm even if you invented the theory yourself Einstein didn't even think to take his equations to get a black hole out of it right the black hole was really discovered by by somebody else but later on with using his formula yeah we've been a year wouldn't be a crushing disappointment if Newton did come back and just wanted to know about like tinder like tell me more about this dance revolution of all things you might be curious about the tinder would not be among all evidence shows that Isaac Newton died a virgin mm-hmm but he got a lot of science done so now they're getting in on you could revolutionize the world so Jane what question would you have for Isaac Newton do you think uh that's an interesting question well um I think I would love to hear his response to Einstein's revelation so Newton wrote down the stunning system of equations that describes not only how the Apple falls from the tree but how the moon stays in orbit around the earth I mean that's a huge leap to think that the connection see connect their celestial bodies motion and the motion of stuff here on earth that was absolutely brilliant but he knew that he didn't understand how the earth was pulling on the Apple without touching it or how or how the earth is pulling on the moon without touching it in action a distance and so Einstein has this beautiful intuition that what's actually happening is the masses are curving space and time and things are falling along the natural curves I would love to hear if Newton was satisfied with that story or if he felt something was missing do you think the leading question of what would happen if a star collapses do you think he could have landed on a black hole out of that there's no way not without modern physics so if we look at the history of the discovery so it was Einstein even when he saw the mathematical solution for the black hole did not believe nature would allow this to happen as you well know and after all it is hard to crush stuff you know you want to crush an entire star our Sun down to six kilometres to make a black hole it fit in Manhattan you know yet if earth were a black hole you would make of the of a plum yeah how do you do that it's really not easy I can't crush this Cup and so it's was sensible for Einstein to think matter forces wouldn't allow it to happen well we even got a little we got a some of our scientists on the team to work had a case study for what happened on a more localized situation first on a team we do we've got scientists working behind the scenes as well yes they they worked out what would happen if Neil's stardom became just too much for you to handle so you deactivate your Twitter account and here's what happens and we found according to our calculations there'll be a vacuum of celebrity selfies in Twitter fuse with flat earthers and eventually the whole universe will collapse in on itself so there is so just be careful be aware okay thanks for this warning okay crack team of scientists on that yeah don't blame me they did all the work there's being peer reviewed as well a very thorough on this show well you know Hawking's his discoveries and his personality had made him kind of like a pop culture icon everybody knows who he is and and and what he sounds like and we've got some images but yeah so this is one of his many animated appearances on The Simpsons here is with Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory oh yeah I was in this scene as well so we're we are floating his we've got Stephen Hawking Bill Nye George Takei and me and Futurama so professor Hawking knows how to have some fun he did that zero g plane thing you know that you know that zero g thing very aware of it I asked him about it let's check it out Stephen you've been in that zero-g airplane I've always wanted to go I just wondered what it felt like for you it was wonderful to float weightless three of my wheelchair I could have gone on a non unknown hmm well one day I'll try to do that to see what that's like one problem for me I get nauseous and I were to throw up yeah you don't throw up in zero-g you know these zero-g airplanes it's not that they go into orbit or go into space yeah what they do is they go on an arc where you ascend as they of course move forward then there's a point where there's a precise trajectory down where the plane is basically in freefall and while you're in freefall you are weightless and the fact that's how Newton connected the free-falling Apple to the orbiting moon so so when you're in freefall then you can this happens but you know it's even cool about those zero-g planes as they can do trajectories where they can simulate moon gravity or Mars gravity so they just do a shallow effort they just they just should do it do it in a way that they're it's not a full freefall like they're slowly coming out of the freefall and you can simulate any chosen gravity you want it's very cool so coming up more of my interview with world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking when Startalk returns in New York City we're featuring my interview with acclaimed physicist professor Stephen Hawking and I asked him about one of the universe's biggest mysteries let's check it out so Stephen everyone wants to know what was around before the Big Bang nothing was surround before a big Big Bang according to Einstein's general theory of relativity space and time together form a space-time continuum and were manifold which has not flat but curved by the matter and energy in it I adopt a Euclidian approach to quantum gravity to describe the beginning of the universe in this ordinary real time is replaced by imaginary time which behaves like a fourth direction of space in the euclidean approach the history of the universe and imaginary time is a four dimensional curved surface like the surface of the earth but with two more dimensions him and I proposed a no boundary condition the boundary condition of the universe that it has no boundary okay in order terms the Euclidean space time there's a closed surface without ad like the surface of the earth one can regard imaginary in real time as beginning at the South Pole which is a smooth point of space-time where the normal laws of physics hold there is nothing south of the South Pole so there was nothing around before the Big Bang the boundary condition of the universe as there is no boundaries everyone's minds just go clear it enabled you to meditate surety for the first time so Jen I'm here nodding like I'm following here look at the end I get it like I got maybe 20% of where you was going so let's see if we can unpack this what does he mean by imaginary time well imaginary time is really it doesn't mean made-up or invented time it literally means you you invent a new time parameter which is I'm gonna say it in math terms the square root of minus 1 times the old time parameter it's just a manner to minus 1 is the imaginary imaginary number it doesn't mean that it's made up or invented and it's just a mathematical it's a most unfortunate word for it it is we gave it it is but it is a pretty odd it is a pretty odd little trick to own numbers are imaginary right there isn't you can't see oh no no that looks like one microphone the one represents the microphone yeah so in this mathematical trick you're we representing time as though it's actually space that's ultimately what the mathematical trick does so that when you do this in all of your mathematical equations you literally couldn't tell what was time and what was space before especially if you relabeled them to trick yourself you know like a little game of yeah so then what what you're doing is you're imagining that instead of space and time that you're just in space but a four-dimensional space and that allows you to visualize certain aspects of the space-time so what about then there being nothing for the South Pole right so then if time what first we all agree you can't go south right there's nothing about that you just go back again so there is no if you stay on the surface of the earth you don't ask the question what south of the South Pole you just realize oh that's just an old post question and it's all completely compacted so they would imagine entire space-time where as you move in time this Euclidean time you'd actually come looping back around again it really is a hypothesis that is as yet unsubstantiated Hawking made Ahad was only a hypothesis and he's not here to defend himself so it's time right now for that part of the show we call cosmic queries we took your questions about the physics of space and time out there in the cosmos and we've got cosmologists jan 11 2014 and actually relates to what we were just talking about which is if the universe is has a shape where it is compact and completely connected then we could be so it's as though you walk we leave New York City you walk around the earth and you come back to where you started but in this case light does it so light leaves the Milky Way galaxy it travels throughout the entire universe and we're here some number of billions of years later and we're collecting light coming from behind us and we realize oh we're actually looking at an image of the Milky Way in our past that is a completely possible scenario if the universe has this kind of connected property it's not actually your rear end it's what your rear end would have been 13 billion years ago so there's every chance that in 13 billion years time from now they could be listening to a distant echo of this episode of star talk yeah I love it you know it's Planet of the Apes you you leave in a rocket you come to some distant planet and you realize the Statue of Liberty is buried in the sand you came back to where you started mm-hm damn you all to hell okay yeah from John Ron from Illinois do galaxies form around supermassive black holes or do supermassive black holes form in the center of crowd galaxies oh I haven't seen the latest on that but consider that however massive these supermassive black holes are the galaxy is vastly more massive than that now you can have like a million even a billion times the mass of the Sun in a supermassive black hole but the mass of the galaxy is 400 billion times that so that's just a point of fact but at the very beginning of the universe last I checked I think the jury is still out on this I think it's a really interesting astronomical question that we're answering right now this is how what astronomy is doing right now and we learned with the Hubble telescope that essentially every galaxy has a supermassive black hole in it so that everybody's in the party on that okay next one Oh someone from my country Vanessa FEMA why is the speed of light around 300 million meters per second that seems so random why not faster or slower oh this is a great question is he complaining that it's kind of a round number or she I think it was like white why is that such why that specific number we have no idea where any of the specific numbers that seem to be constants of the universe are what they are and so the speed of light is actually comes out of electromagnetism it's it actually has to do with the strength of electricity the strength of magnetism put together just makes this random number so if those forces were weaker or stronger the speed of light would be different similarly if gravity were weaker stronger our entire universe would be different and there are people who believe that we live in a multiverse in which these numbers are different in different manifestations of the universe and dare I say in my latest book there's a chapter called on earth as it is in the heavens and it's a discussion of the laws of physics as measured on earth and how in fact we came to discover that they apply across the universe and across time itself yeah if we look back to the early universe there's no evidence that it's changed in our the laws of physics has changed so right from the moment the universe was created the speed of light was from the earliest measurements that we could possibly made my last final question from Derek Liu Duras from Oklahoma how would a Galactic Empire keep a uniform standard of time this is a new Neil I'm just asked why Oh an empire it that is all coherent right yes if you didn't otherwise care if there's too far away wouldn't I care yeah I'm guessing this question is sort of all right so on earth we have different time zones but there's a universal time zone as well that we use yeah what's the Galactic version of that yeah you couldn't because the light travel time across a galaxy is a hundred thousand years so there'd be no such thing as any meaningful simultaneity of what's going on unless your communication channels happen through wormholes and so here's one side of the galaxy here's the other side of the galaxy that's a hundred thousand light-years to cross and you create a wormhole connecting the two and everybody's got a wormhole and it'd be like a wormhole Skype connection and then your signals go through the wormholes then you could do that all right well you agree yeah if you can keep the wormhole open you find a shortcut yeah there you go got there all right so I get on that scientist well that's the end of cosmic queries up next I asked professor Hawking is time travel possible when Startalk returns [Applause] we're featuring my interview with professor Stephen Hawking world-renowned physicist and I've got with me physicist Michio Kaku Michio a professor at the City College of New York New York Times bestselling author of the physics of the impossible one of my favorite books of is also the physics of the future and the future of the mind so Michio you're kind of known for entertaining wild ideas in science fiction that could be based in actual fact that that characterized you accurately I think is compared to say that I talk about science fact which appears to look like science fiction isn't even kept up oh very nice very nice so I had to ask professor Hawking a classic sci-fi question all right let's check it out so Steven will we ever have the ability to travel backwards in time I'm thinking not simply because if we ever did obtain that ability we would have met somebody by now from the future hope that we could warp space-time so that one could go off in a rocket and come back in the past but I have shown that this is not possible if energy density is always non-negative hmm okay maybe that's a big if all we have to do is create negative energy density stuff then we'll all be able to travel backwards in time what I've done this show a few times now and I think this is the one where I really do feel the dumbest like what is non-negative energy density yeah actually I'm not even completely sure myself what is come on it's got your name on it on Star Trek is called dilithium crystals which make warp try wormholes and time travel possible for a physicist it is negative matter and negative energy things that fall up rather than falling down now a black hole has positive energy energy to rip the fabric of space-time but it's unstable it collapses back on itself you need negative energy or matter to keep it open that's why hockey made a very famous theorem showing that wormholes showing that time machines require negative energy to keep the black holes and things like this from collapsing again it is anti-gravitational repulsive and that's what prevents the black hole from collapsing all the way okay so how are we gonna create negative energy negative energy already exists if I have an advanced civilization much more powerful than our that our civilization today they could make large quantities of negative energy and perhaps go backwards in time and become masters of the universe you can create wormholes to go across the galaxy I fell backwards in time witness the Big Bang that would then enable backwards time travel that's right in fact Stephen Hawking himself has shown this theorem showing that the only way to go backwards in time is to have negative energy then an energy below the zero of the ordinary values so how do you avoid getting into a hole Monty McFly in mum situation because the river of time Forks into two rivers into a multiverse so when you go backwards in time to save Abraham Lincoln from being assassinated at the fore theater it's someone else's Abraham Lincoln that you just saved you cannot alter your own past quantum mechanics says the time itself can fission time itself could come a multiverse of parallel universes right he didn't walk he once come up with I can't make backwards time travel conjecture so that you don't have this this Marty McFly problem chronology protection conjecture and what does that protect it protects the order of causal events so that you are unable even if even if there exists mathematically on paper the possibility to go back in time you can't kill your mother before you were born because that would be inconceivable okay so Michio was gonna get around that by saying time Forks that's right according to the quantum principle time is constantly forking so that our universe being a bubble that expands can actually become a multiverse like in a soap bubble so a soap bubble bath think of lots of bubbles bifurcating colliding with each other and that's the Big Bang the Big Bang is nothing but the collision or the fissioning of soap bubbles in a bubble bath called the landscape of the multiverse this is now the dominant theory in quantum cosmology if time travel it may not be possible unless we have this negative energy density stuff they'd be possible for us all the day we harness that's right this negative energy sector but that is sometime in the future at a point unknown but what is true right now is that we have space travel even if time travel is not available to us right now so I asked Stephen Hawking but what is his sort of bold vision for humanity's future beyond Earth in the form of space let's check it out so Stephen you've said publicly that he want us to be a multi-planet species and who could argue that I'm with you there however I have one mild rebuttal because you defend that argument by saying something bad could happen here on earth an asteroid that's run away virus rendering us all extinct and if we exist only on one planet that's the end of the human species I get that here's my mild rebuttal isn't it easier to deflect an asteroid easier to find a super serum that will come any deadly virus that it is to terraform Mars and ship a billion people their collision with an asteroid is one of the least of the dangers we now face hmm the last collision was 70 million years ago nuclear war climate change and pollution are now much greater threats of course it would be impossible to move the population of the earth to a new planet but if we can establish independent self-sustaining colonies in space that would ensure the survival of the human race than the event of a disaster on earth leaving earth will also give us a new perspective and cause us to look outwards rather than in words it would also unite us to face a common challenge well so Jan are you are you ready to go to Mars for these reasons yeah I think isn't it still a one-way ticket though isn't that at the moment yeah we could get to Mars with the technology we have now and and and the money we have now but we can't get people home so that's but we actually interviewed somebody on Startalk who had signed up for the one-way trip and it was a little odd because you know he was all excited about it and apparently he's married so I said what what does your wife say about it and he said oh she encouraged it she's building her a rocket she's gonna do so beat you are you are you a big fan of colonizing on the planet yes in fact there's gonna be a traffic jam over Mars around 2030 Elon Musk NASA with the SLS booster rocket and now amazon.com I mean everyone's jumping in the game now to create booster rockets capable of taking us to Mars on a two-way trip Charles is the only one by the way that's going for same-day delivery only if it's Amazon so I think at a different point Hawking have said that civilization only has a hundred years left on earth which seemed a little pessimistic to me well I I mean I don't think I worry I say this too much I don't think we look like the most successful species that's ever walked the face of the earth I mean dinosaurs were here for hundreds of billions of years like we invented you know industrialization sort of took over in the past couple hundred and we're already near threatening our own demise so it doesn't look great for us to be honest oh I think if we don't blow ourselves will become what is called a type one civilization in a hundred years that is a planetary civilization a type two civilization is stellar they control the power of an entire star 2,000 years in the future then type three civilization is galactic they control black holes that control the energy of an entire galaxy now on this scale we are type zero we get our energy from dead plants oil and coal we don't even rate on this scale but if we can make it to the next 100 years here we can make it through it we will become a type one civilization truly planetary and that'll be the greatest transition in the history of the human race from segmented nations that fight each other with fundamentalist ideologies to a planetary civilization that is secular scientific multicultural and at peace if we can make it through the next hundred years then we make it to type one well this is a perfect time for our game show how we're not gonna make it through the next hundred years so we did a little survey of how the world will end okay um Neil what do you think my money's on the zombie apocalypse Zambia if it's up there okay all right shame on you nailed Jana okay let's do nuclear nuclear holocaust alright a nuclear holocaust [Music] [Applause] Michu me joke I want to be the bad boy and say that we will survive that's humanity will struggle through it will squeak by and we're not gonna end ourselves oh you're wrong so so Matt let's see over here let's see what you missed good old-fashioned on nuclear war I know sure that would nd well but uh asteroid and climate change at number one yeah yeah we agree that all of this is bad all of this is possible well up next I asked physicist Stephen Hawking about the future of our minds when Startalk returns welcome back you start off in the American Museum of Natural History with featuring my interview with famed physicist Stephen Hawking check it out so Stephen if we ever really developed the technology to upload your brain into some computer providing life after death or at least consciousness after death would you be first to sign up for that my body hardly works at all because I have motor neuron disease otherwise known as ALS so getting rid of it would mean no loss and would spare me discomfort being immortal a solely a brain I proceed the future unless I was terminated by someone slipping off the computer or by a computer virus well I hadn't thought about that but if you're a computer you're susceptible you could have copies look you just make a backup of yourself so meet you at the time of your book the future of mind the scientific quest to understand enhance and empower the mind when will uploading our brain become a reality well just remember if at all digital immortality is starting now so this is an example of what's going on here that's right telepathy telekinesis uploading memories recording dreams we can quote do all of the above this is no longer science fiction you go to the physics laboratories and you can see how images can be extracted from the human brain how it's possible now that we can upload memories in animals and record memories from animals because physics can now probe thoughts as they go ricocheting through the brain is what you're describing the same thing as consciousness because if that's the case then we can say it's not just our thoughts that live forever it's our very identity ourselves our conscious self that lives forever well there is a theory that says the soul the soul is information it's a vast amount of information but nonetheless this information that can be put into holographic form such that even if you pass away something there is is survives but theoretically that is effectively immortality once you reach that point that is you living forever why not have digital immortality wouldn't you want to talk to you a great great great great great grandkids who want to meet their great great great great ancestor I the trance what that like this gives you this gives you movements throughout time and throughout space so this is being godlike well that's what we're talking about transcending the human race because I asked Stephen Hawking about his thoughts on the future of religion just just to get his sense of this spirituality going forward let's check it out so Stephen religion has been around for thousands of years and it long predates science and in spite of the effort of modern ardent atheists religion persists so do you have any sense of what religion will be in the future of civilization to answer questions we all ask why are we here where did we come from nowadays science provides better and more consistent answers but people will always linked to religion because it gives comfort and they do not trust or understand science hmm yeah Stephen Hawking is imagining that any time you didn't understand something and ascribed it to deity science would then fix that for you but there's the rest of what people use religion for this spiritual fulfillment and the rest of this it's not obvious that science has solutions to that going forward don't you feel a sort of surge of excitement and the connection of the universe just to know that even though we're stuck on this silly little rock that were able to know that much that's stunning they're deeply look yeah it is it is deeply moving so this whole kind of notion that that oh it leaves you feeling cold and sterile that there is the scientific thinking is actually has been the opposite of my personal experience I think we're hardwired that way evolution has given us a brain to be receptive to awe to receptive to beauty and that's why there's a god gene because we are genetically programmed to believe in superstition because that's the way it has always been even today that's way before science came along that's not knock on wood knock on wood the truth well coming up the one and only Stephen Hawking offers some life lessons for us all next on Startalk the American Museum of Natural History and we're featuring my interview with legendary physicist Stephen Hawking I wanted to hear more about Stephen Hawking's perspective on life and so I asked him who's his favorite non-scientist check it out a few years ago I would have said Nelson Mandela he brought a peaceful solution to a seemingly impossible situation there is no one of his stature today hmm certainly not Donald Trump favorite non yeah whatever you say yeah favorite no wife is a scientist so that's yes she has a PhD in mathematical physics they're like Neal would marry a non-scientist [Laughter] okay you know what I would say Vincent van Gogh his painting the starry night in 1889 is artwork that was given a name not for what he drew in the foreground or the mid-ground it was named for what appeared in the background there's a village he could have called a sleepy village or cypress tree or rolling hills but no the universe was speaking to him more loudly than his foreground and out of that came the title the starry night and you look at that painting it's obviously not what he saw because the real universe doesn't look like that but you know it is what he felt he drew what the universe felt like and I am a fan of all the ways that artists can be touched by not only science in general but the universe in particular this is my man Vincent van Gogh before we wrap up this segment and before we wrap up the show I have a dispatch from my good friend Bill Nye the Science Guy and he's gonna give us his thoughts on the big ideas proposed by physicists like the great Stephen Hawking check it out our curiosity brings us to places like this the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles California here we look through these telescopes and ponder the cosmos and our place within it and it's one thing to think about the cosmos but it's another thing to realize that the cosmos is different now than when I started talking it's changing I mean we think of the cosmos in terms of space we think of it in terms of time but in astrophysics we think of it in terms of space-time I mean moving through space seems straightforward enough but moving through time that's a tricky one it's been speculated that there are yet undescribed particles of time tiny bits of time and if they turn out to be real able to be discovered out there in the cosmos so tonight go outside and have a look there's time back to you Neal [Music] so meet you I've not heard of this is this particles of time is this real well you can look at it as gravitons so they are kind of to the force of gravity what photons are to electromagnetic force exactly a photon is a particle of light a graviton is a particle of gravity and when the graviton becomes big enough it becomes a universe giving us a multiverse of universes so what you're saying is that what what bill might have been talking about as particles of time are just particles a space amount of space time natural space and time are wrapped together that's right oh I see okay so in my final clip with Stephen Hawking I asked him if he would just share with me some parting words of wisdom check that so the course of your life you've had it sort of unique perspective on science on technology endurance if you saw some that together and offers some insight for us any lessons that we can take with us we must all do the best we can then whatever situation we breathe in never give up never give up clearly that advice applies to us all privileged to spend this time with you thanks for your thoughts and your insights and being a source of inspiration to us all how could you not just wonder what's going on inside this guy's head I think our greatest gift as a species is not our body we're not the fastest we're not the strongest our body hardly distinguishes itself in any way in the animal kingdom our greatest sort of gift in the Tree of Life is our mind and perhaps no one knows that better than Stephen Hawking and so much so that he does not take his mind for granted enabling him to go places that we might never even dream of simply because he has power of mind where he has power from no other part of his body so maybe it is we who are imprisoned thinking our body matters when in fact at the end of the day it's really all about your thoughts all about your dreams all about how we react to our life experience in this world and share it with others that is a cosmic perspective you've been watching Startalk and I've been your host Neil deGrasse Tyson your personal I want to thank meet you thanks for being with us we'll see you next time as always I bid you to keep looking up you

Channel: StarTalk

Views: 670,923

Rating: 4.9479203 out of 5

Keywords: startalk, startalk radio, neil degrasse tyson, stephen hawking, astrophysics, physics, science, scientist, national geographic, natgeo, black hole, michio, michio kaku, janna levin, matt kirshen, bill nye

Id: TdjAJeUy0zM

Length: 46min 59sec (2819 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 14 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/net_403]

He should be an inspiration to everyone... I've known so many people, including myself, with a fraction of the obstacles in their way as him and feeling like they can't do much. He has to communicate through a switch on his cheek and he wrote ground breaking scientific papers this way and still had a positive outlook on life.

Just realizing that about him makes him a beautiful being

[u/JoshAubrey]

Published on Mar 14, 2018

"This year’s season finale of StarTalk on National Geographic TV was Neil deGrasse Tyson's interview with Stephen Hawking. In memory of his passing, and in celebration of his life, we offer that episode for you here, now, commercial free. Also featuring astrophysicist Janna Levin, comedian Matt Kirshen, physicist Michio Kaku, and Bill Nye the Science Guy."

[u/jonbrant]

This.... is hard to watch. Neil DeGrasse Tyson is no idiot. He's dumbing himself down quite a bit to make jokes. Which, I know, is for show. He's going Carl Sagan's route to try and popularize science. That's great and all, but it's like he had a 13 year old dictating his lines. There's nothing in this for anyone who has more than a passing interest in cosmology.

Again, I'm aware this is an attempt at pop-sci, but come on. Hawkings and Tyson in a video truly shouldn't remind me of idiocracy. This is offensive to Hawking's legacy.

[u/51GreenGuys]

Neato, never knew he straight up filmed this show on the floor of the Hayden Planetarium. Love that place.

One of (my) life's greatest mysteries is how the krill in that closed-ecosystem bubble tank are still kicking about after all these years.

[u/[deleted]]

If he was in private and just thinking and not focused on communicating, would his thoughts be translated as well?

I thought it was neat to ask Newton a question along the lines of his studies and that might have sparked an aha moment for him. I wonder what that discovery or invention would be for Hawking 300 years from now.

[u/Shannsz]

I’ve never seen this show before, but now I feel obligated to watch all of them. Thank you for posting!