StarTalk Podcast_ Cosmic Queries_ Galactic Grab Bag_ with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Iliza Shlesinger

0:04 Welcome to StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And today we're doing Cosmic Queries Edition. And today it's on any topic in the cosmos, a kind of stellar smorgasbord. And today we have in studio comedian Eliza Schlesinger. Did I say it right?

0:25 If anyone could do it, it'd be you.

0:27 I just came out.

0:29 What hope is there? All the teachers assistants out there.

0:33 So you, so you are the, you were the first woman and the youngest person ever. to win last comic standing. Wow, so forget the first woman, you're the youngest person ever. That trumps.

0:48 Information prevails. I didn't want to say the word, it's become such an unfunny joke at this point.

0:54 He might win. And you're on TBS with a show, Separation Anxiety.

0:58 Separation Anxiety.

0:59 Easy-sounding show.

1:00 Yeah, it sounds nerve-wracking, and it is.

1:03 As it should be, as it's supposed to be.

1:04 As it's supposed to be. It was aptly entitled. I hope it does well.

1:08 It's a new show?

1:09 Yeah. By the time this airs, it's a hit show on TBS.

1:12 Or canceled, one or the other.

1:14 It's a canceled show.

1:16 Oh, God.

1:16 We've already shot so many.

1:17 Don't cancel it.

1:19 I'll have to return all the shoes. What it really has to do with taking someone you know really well, we separate you, and then you have to pick the questions that the person you know is getting quizzed on.

1:28 Okay. And then hope they get it right.

1:30 Hope they get it right because there's a quarter of a million dollars at stake, but they don't know that.

1:33 Oh. Well, now they do because they just see you on the show.

1:36 It's all right, though. I figured there's lawyers for that. You have to live under a rock to participate next season.

1:42 I got you. There you go. There you go. So as our longtime fans know, Cosmic Queries is when we bring in an in-house co-host comedian who reads questions from the universe, of the universe drawn from our fan base. And I've not seen the questions. And we just have fun with it. And if I don't know the answer, I'm going to tell you. If I don't know the answer, I'm going to ask you if you know the answer.

2:05 I absolutely know the answer. If both of us.

2:07 Don't know the answer, then we move on.

2:10 Do you know how long I've spent staring at the cosmos wondering where my Uber is? I've spent a lot of time in space.

2:18 That brings to mind, if space travel becomes a thing, we would need Uber spacecraft.

2:24 Yeah.

2:24 That would be interesting.

2:25 College kids all over the place would be like, I got a great way to make some money.

2:28 Yep.

2:29 And there's no collisions.

2:31 Yeah, actually, it's much harder to collide if you're moving in three dimensions than if you're only moving in two.

2:35 I say this all the time. I say this all the time.

2:38 No, it's a profound fact. So think about traffic jams. You're in a traffic jam because you're on a road and you can't go over or.

2:45 On a single plane.

2:47 Not only on your single plane, on a road, you're on a one-dimensional path. Right. Typically, there's more than one lane, though. Regardless, if you're stuck in traffic, all you have to do is go above or below. Introduce another dimension, you can pass all the traffic like this.

2:59 And that's why we need space cars. In the future, they always have them going through buildings.

3:03 I know. That was my future that we tried to come up with and failed.

3:07 So the fifth element was your idea. All those cabs and stuff. Flying cars.

3:11 You know, we've been dreaming of flying cars since the 1950s.

3:13 I know. And it will be a thing. And it's going to be terrible.

3:16 But a flying car is no different from having a lot of bridges and tunnels.

3:19 Right.

3:20 It allows you to go above and below.

3:21 It's a lot different in that there's nothing holding you to where you are. You've got a bridge. You have to stay on that bridge. A flying car is just like, let's just be.

3:28 However, if the engine breaks of a flying car, you are falling brick. True. That's the difference between being on a bridge or in a tunnel. Right.

3:35 Okay. So there's pros and cons. We'll say there's pros and cons.

3:37 In fact, I think we do have flying cars that are called helicopters.

3:40 Yeah, but helicopter is so expensive. That's how I got here. I've actually had that thought. I'm like, is there a way to get a helicopter? And I feel like these statistics for helicopters, I feel like they crash a lot.

3:51 Well, because when the motor goes out, it's, you know, in a plane, if the engines die, it's a glider. And a helicopter, if the engines die.

3:59 Straight down.

4:00 It goes straight down.

4:00 It shouldn't be an option to let the engines die. Like, that just shouldn't be an option.

4:04 Shit happens. Right?

4:05 So, they're going to have to have, like, meteoroid insurance or, like, asteroid insurance.

4:10 If you're flying through space and you get hit by one.

4:13 Like, farmers, like, you better cover that.

4:14 That would be one. I hadn't thought about that. But, yeah. You could be hit by a micrometeorite going five miles per second. That would ruin your day.

4:21 Yeah. Debris from, like, our last space shuttles.

4:23 That happens, too. Sorry.

4:23 It's an engine part. It's a daisy.

4:25 All right.

4:26 Okay, fair enough.

4:27 So what do you have?

4:28 Okay, so do I do the Patreon page?

4:30 That's your first time doing this. I hope it's not your last time.

4:34 I hope it's not my last as well.

4:35 Okay, we'll judge that.

4:37 We'll be the judge of that. That's why I gave you the doe eyes trying to flirt my way, which has not gotten me far.

4:42 Okay. So go for it.

4:44 These first?

4:45 Yeah, so what happens is we have our Patreon supporters. Yeah. One of the guarantees they get if they ask a question for Cosmic Queries, then we get to ask their questions first.

4:54 Okay, so I'm going to ask this one because there was so— I' m going to read it with the emphasis and the enthusiasm and the fervor that I feel they wrote this with.

5:01 Good. Go for it. Feel them.

5:03 Yeah. Also, I think this person's also a fellow Jew. You're not Jewish.

5:05 I am.

5:06 Okay, here we go. From Michael Cohen in Augusta, Georgia— it' s weird that there's a Jew there— Hello, Dr. Tyson. This question burns in my mind. I asked NASA and wasn't satisfied with their answer. If light can't escape a black hole, then doesn't that mean that the escape velocity of a black hole beyond the event horizon exceeds the speed of light itself? Could black holes be the exception to the speed of light as we know it? Thank you, at Cosmic Cohen.

5:36 Wow, that was beautiful. Thank you. That was totally, you embodied whoever that Cohen person is.

5:42 I omitted the fact that you misused than instead of then. No big deal.

5:45 Did I say than?

5:45 No, no, he did.

5:46 Oh, okay.

5:47 Pointing out the one part that I understand, which is literature.

5:49 Be nice, he's the one Jew in Augusta, Georgia.

5:52 Represent. Okay, that was the question about.

5:55 So, yeah, so it's, the question is stated accurately. There are two ways to think about the black hole. One of them is that beyond, inside the event horizon, the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light. That's kind of a classical way to think about it. But what has actually happened is the space-time curvature has basically closed in on itself. There is no path out of the black hole that you can take no matter what.

6:18 And so not even a beam of light can get out. So that is all true. You can't get out. By the way, just because the speed of light required, just because to get out of a black hole requires you travel faster than light, Doesn't mean that you are. Doesn't mean you can't. Doesn't mean you can. Right, right, right.

6:36 So we're all cool. Relativity is fine.

6:38 It's really hypothetical because you physically can't do it.

6:41 Correct.

6:42 So it's all in theory.

6:42 There is no known law of physics or observation that would enable you to escape a black hole.

6:47 Even if you take the subway.

6:48 Correct. So, yeah, yeah. So I'm disappointed that they couldn't get a good answer from NASA. I wonder where they ask.

6:55 I feel like NASA was like, please stop tweeting at us. The Russians are hot on our tail. We've got bigger things to deal with. Please stop. Here's a mug and a hat.

7:03 How did you know that?

7:03 Because they're always hot on our tail. Haven't you been to the movies? Okay. Would you like a real question?

7:09 Uh, anything. Yeah. Give me whatever you got.

7:10 Okay. Um, this one's, is the Martian based on a true story? I'm just kidding. Uh, okay. This one's a good one.

7:19 I'm not authorized to answer that question.

7:21 I saw that movie and I was like, I guarantee if I tweet this, people will be like, Oh my God, I thought so. I read the book.

7:26 All right.

7:27 This is from Jeff Jurchin. Hmm. At Jeff Jurchin, does space smell?

7:33 Ooh.

7:35 Yeah.

7:35 So I once tweeted an answer to that question. So somebody is not a follower. So you know what?

7:39 Go back and look it up. Because you're lazy and there's no lazy in space. There's no lays in space.

7:46 So here's what happens. Smell is a chemical phenomenon. And it involves molecules interacting with your olfactory glands. And it's in the vacuum of space where there are insufficient molecules to trigger that. No, you're not smelling a damn thing.

8:01 So it has to do with the molecules outside and inside. It's not just.

8:03 Molecules are outside. They come inside and then you have smell what was outside. Right. You're inhaling. So now here's a way to smell something. If you face the sun and the sun starts singeing your your your skin on your face. then it'll burn, and then you'll smell the burning flesh.

8:23 How long are you facing the sun, though? How close?

8:25 Are you saying you have to be... If you're close enough and you make the... Yeah, you'll get singed, and you'll smell the singed. Outer skin layers.

8:34 That's horrific.

8:36 I'm just saying, you want to smell something in space, that's how you smell something.

8:38 I want to smell something in space. Wait, is that why we sneeze when we stare at the sun? Because it's slowly singeing our nose hairs?

8:45 That's never happened to me. Who told you that? I do it.

8:48 If I get a sneeze, sometimes any light source, even artificial, and you go like that, stare right at the sun if you get a sneeze. Really? If you're on the verge of sneezing and you feel you're going to lose it, if you're going to lose your nasal orgasm, stare right at the sun.

9:01 Lose your nasal orgasm? Sneezes. A nasal orgasm. Sure. I had not heard that.

9:06 How great do you feel after a sneeze? And then like a little guilty.

9:08 It's good. No, no. But you have to watch out because there are things you feel good after only because the act of leading up to it made you feel bad.

9:15 That's interesting. Yeah.

9:17 Like you have to pee real bad and then your peeing feels good. Well, it only feels good because you felt miserable right up to that moment. So anything feels bad.

9:24 Just getting back to homeostasis.

9:25 Exactly. So I had a lot of syllables in that word.

9:29 I know a lot.

9:30 That's good.

9:31 That's why I was asked here. NASA we did our homework.

9:35 I did me after this guy So so you need air molecules some kind of gaseous molecules, too And so that always had me wondering in spacesuits if they're not properly ventilated. You could just smell yourself In this in a space well provided doesn't swap out your co2, right?

9:53 Yeah Yeah, There's not enough farts to go.

9:55 Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you farted, I don't know if the space, I should ask one of our astronauts. We have some.

9:59 We won't answer you back at NASA.

10:00 No, no. Just ask if like below your waist effluences mix with above your waist effluences. Like do burps and farts mix? If that's the case, you'll smell. All of your body effluences. As long as it's.

10:12 Mine, I don't care. It's not yours.

10:14 Somebody else.

10:16 Yeah.

10:16 Okay.

10:17 Let me find a good one.

10:18 It's true. People have a much higher tolerance of their own gaseous effluences than that of others. Sure. Someone needs to look into that.

10:25 I think I know why.

10:26 Why?

10:27 Okay.

10:28 All theories, all hypotheses entertained.

10:30 Go. Yeah. So, okay, here's what I think. All hypotheses considered. Okay. Except for just mine. So when you smell something, like, we're trained to, if you smell, like, a fart or poop, like, you know that it smells bad, like, in our brains because it's telling us that it's dead and it's not something that we should eat.

10:47 Yeah, you shouldn't eat it. Yes.

10:48 I think if it's coming out of yourself somehow, like, there's a disconnect where it, because it's from you, maybe kind of like if your own baby is ugly, you don't see it as ugly.

10:55 Okay.

10:55 I think when it comes from us, we're not as grossed out.

10:57 So we're psychologically predisposed.

11:00 Narcissist.

11:01 To not completely reject.

11:03 Right?

11:03 Okay. All right.

11:04 That's got to be somewhere on the spectrum, right?

11:07 We've got top people we can put on this. Okay.

11:09 I haven't seen any so far.

11:10 Two producers.

11:11 One's eating her lunch in there. And there's my managers over here.

11:15 All right.

11:16 Okay. Here we go.

11:16 Your dog is on the floor there looking for learningly at you.

11:19 She's looking for answers.

11:20 Yes.

11:20 From you.

11:21 Aren't we all looking for answers?

11:23 That's why I came here. Smartest person in a 12 block radius. Okay. I'm just going to read you a long one.

11:28 Go.

11:29 Sarah Wynn Belgeny. From Facebook says, do you think that spacecraft using photon propulsion is a reality? I read several news articles stating we can use a laser. She wrote laser to propel spacecraft to Alpha Centauri in just 15 years and to Mars in just days. Is this the same concept as a light sail?

11:48 It is precisely the same concept.

11:50 Great.

11:50 Next question. Next question.

11:52 Yeah.

11:52 So you have your sail and you have lasers on Earth. Well, so here's what happens. So your sail can work with the sun with sunlight. And it can move you to greater and greater orbits, and you can move to Mars or wherever else. And it's a constant source of acceleration. So this works. And if you keep accelerating, the speed that you measure for yourself is constantly growing.

12:13 Is this like a solar panel?

12:15 No, not a solar panel. A solar panel takes the sun's energy. sunlight and turns it into energy you use for something else. This is simply a sail. As you hold up the sail, sunlight hits the sail and bounces off and the recoil, the momentum transfer to the sail pushes you forward. That's all it is. But now what happens if you're so far away from the sun that the sun's energy, they're not strong enough. So you take Mondo lasers from Earth, aim it at the sail and continue to push it along its way. And lasers can go very, very deep into space. Yes. But not into a Well, you can go into a black hole but not come out. Not come out. Exactly.

12:49 That's the right answer.

12:51 You got it. So that's a good question. Nicely worded.

12:53 Thank you.

12:54 There are no weird questions there. These are all like textbook questions.

12:57 They literally sent these to me 10 minutes before I walked in.

13:00 Oh, my gosh. Okay. All right.

13:01 I think the important thing was that you gave an accurate answer, not that I read a good one. As long as you look smart. If you could fight Stephen Hawking.

13:08 Thank you for making me look smart.

13:09 Okay. I didn't say that.

13:11 Okay. If I could fight Stephen Hawking, was that.

13:12 One of them?

13:13 Okay.

13:13 Here's one because I recognize these words from science class.

13:16 Okay.

13:16 Pulsars, quasars.

13:17 What did you major in in college?

13:19 I was a film major, which is why I'm here.

13:20 Film major, okay.

13:21 Which is why this background is okay.

13:23 Okay, yeah, you're in a galaxy right there. Yeah. Yeah, okay.

13:26 My favorite part of green screen is putting your hand into someone else's bit of their, oh, that's a wide shot. Okay, well, they didn't go with me on that one. That's fine. Pulsars, quasars, magnetars, neutron stars, white dwarfs, black holes. Are all of them simply dying stars?

13:41 Yes. Next question.

13:43 I'm going to look through these.

13:45 No, they're all different. Wait, wait, go back. Okay, give me the list again. So there's white dwarfs on that list.

13:52 She is on the list.

13:53 Okay, the sun, when it dies.

13:56 We say white little people.

13:57 Oh, is that really? Yeah, okay.

13:59 And we don't say black holes, we say African American.

14:01 Oh, yeah, you're right.

14:02 I'm just trying to make it clear.

14:03 That's right.

14:04 I'm going to get you a better question. Everyone knows they're dying stars.

14:08 Wait, did you hear about the greeting card that talked about black holes? And someone thought they were talking about black hoes. And like the NAACP got all enraged by this.

14:19 No one do the research?

14:20 No, no.

14:21 No one looked at the car and was like, no.

14:22 If black hole and other physics concepts are not in your vocabulary, you have no other way to think about black hole other than black hoe. I mean, that's. I'm just saying. I try to jump in and say this is it. Education problem, not a racist problem.

14:38 It is a huge, which sometimes I don't want to.

14:41 It's a non... Huge education problem. But so all of these are the dying states of stars. Stars of different mass. And we, our sun, will die as a white dwarf, which is an object the size of the earth. And all the rest of the mass of the sun will escape into space and make a beautiful nebula, which we call... Well, they're actually called planetary nebulae. They're misnamed. But they're beautiful, spherically shaped nebulae. And if you Google planetary, that's a galaxy.

15:13 But planetary nebulae are just gorgeous, stunning displays.

15:17 Those are the ones that look like cotton candy almost.

15:19 Yeah.

15:20 Crab nebula, that's one. No, no.

15:22 Crab nebula was the death of a supernova which leaves a neutron star, a pulsar, in its core. So the Crab Nebula has a, you go down to the center of the Crab Nebula, there is a rapidly rotating neutron star pulsing radio waves. And when these puppies were first discovered, we thought they were so perfectly timed that people thought that maybe there was an intelligent civilization sending us signals.

15:43 You probably can't close to it because if it's a radio wave.

15:46 Well, if it's too intense, it's bad for you. But we're at good enough distance, so our radio telescopes detected it. But no, they were not LGMs, little green men, which is how they were first written.

15:55 LGM?

15:55 Yeah, yeah. Someone says, is this an LGM or not?

15:57 I like how they're labeled green before we even saw them.

15:59 Yeah, plus we want them to be small so that we can dominate them.

16:03 Well, yeah. How do you think we're going to progress?

16:06 Question. No, no one ever imagines BGMs, you know, big green men.

16:10 There's the BGF.

16:11 BFG.

16:12 BFG. It's the Roald Dahl book. It's about giant. Big, big giant.

16:16 All right.

16:17 Okay. Yeah, they're probably not big. I would imagine aliens might be taller than us, but not heavier.

16:21 As they were in Avatar. They were nine feet tall.

16:23 Yeah, which is a Bible. That's a rhetoric. That's perfect. That's how it's going to be.

16:30 That's what's going to go. For sure. Okay.

16:33 Movies are always right, eventually.

16:35 Blue people.

16:36 They could be blue.

16:37 You know what pissed me off about that movie?

16:38 What?

16:39 Okay. They're all connected. They got this USB ponytail, the way they can connect to their to their flying horses, and all of nature is one, when it was time for them to fight, the best that could happen was the rhinoceroses came, and that was it. I'm thinking, if you could summon all the power of all the living creatures on your planet, oh my gosh!

17:01 The tree would come.

17:03 And swat you, oh my! If you could talk to them through your ponytail, excuse me, they should have totally kicked ass.

17:12 I'm talking about like intercranial Bluetooth capabilities. Like I can't even get my phone to connect to my Civic.

17:16 I'm just saying.

17:17 I can't harness any other armies.

17:19 I'm just saying they had way more power that they could have tapped given the premise of that story than they actually did.

17:26 Maybe the messages like when it comes time to war, maybe less is more.

17:30 And they're up there praying and stuff. And I'm thinking you have the power over nature. Put nature to work here.

17:35 Right. What can nature do for you? Yes. But when you run for president.

17:39 What have you done for me lately?

17:40 What have you done for me lately, nature? Thanks for all the shade, jerks. This is a question. What would be on, because you said our son's going to die.

17:47 Yeah, yeah, our son is totally going to die.

17:48 What would be on our son's tombstone?

17:55 I burned the candle at both ends.

18:00 Oh, I like that.

18:01 Yeah, how about that?

18:01 Yeah.

18:02 More tombstone options when StarTalk continues for our second segment of Cosmic Queries with Eliza. All right. You tell me. Let me hear. Eliza Schlesinger.

18:15 Eliza.

18:16 Eliza Schlesinger.

18:17 I swear paparazzi were taking pictures of me this morning.

18:19 Schlesinger. All right. We'll be right back. This is Star Talk. We're back. And I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. My day job is at the American Museum of Natural History, where I serve as the director of the Hayden Planetarium. And I have with me Eliza Schlesinger.

18:37 Yeah. Hey. I read that in your bio and I was like Hayden Panettiarum.

18:40 Oh, yeah.

18:42 I hope no one's ever made that joke. You're welcome, Hayden.

18:44 I'm here.

18:46 Yeah.

18:46 So you do stand up across the country. Yes.

18:51 In the world.

18:52 In the world. Very cool. Does it translate to other countries?

18:55 They're usually English speaking. Okay, okay. Because of us.

18:58 When I said translate, does the humor translate, not the language?

19:02 Oh, I thought you meant the language. It does, especially in England. No. Because they get our pop culture. If you're asking me to come there, it's because you're a fan of my comedy.

19:12 You already know.

19:13 Let's see what this American weirdo does. But I'll do it for the troops. I've done a lot of shows in.

19:16 The Middle East.

19:17 That's always very fulfilling and terrifying. And I was just in London, and their English is far superior to ours.

19:25 So we think.

19:27 So they think and we think.

19:28 The first I ever heard the Beatles speak.

19:30 Horrific.

19:31 Oh my gosh. I had no idea. I was a kid and I didn't know what the hell. That's how old I am.

19:35 All British people. When you hear that and then you hear them sing and then Adele's like, I've got my voice. It's ready to go. Just sing everything from then on. We all want to sound like the other.

19:50 Culture yeah just sing and and we're good before we left off you challenged me to come up with a epitaph for the dead son yes and i and i said i i burned my candles at both ends and That was a little lame, I think. And I want another chance. Okay. Do you have one?

20:06 I have one.

20:07 Okay, ready? Okay, what?

20:08 The epitaph on the sun's tombstone should be, sick burn, bro. Ooh. Ooh. Everyone hates me? All right.

20:15 All right.

20:16 All right. Okay.

20:18 Let's. Okay. I got one. Okay. This is spoken to earthlings who long went extinct.

20:27 Okay.

20:27 I tried. I tried.

20:30 Oh, that's so sad. What about I couldn't take the heat? Oh!

20:35 That's good.

20:37 This skill applies literally to no other avenue in my life. Oh, that's right. Yes, celestial.

20:43 Instal of the sun. Okay.

20:45 You had one question that I felt I could answer in one answer.

20:48 Really? Okay, go, go. That gives me one fewer that I got to answer. Go.

20:52 Corey Moon at SF Moon.

20:54 Someone named Moon.

20:55 Yeah.

20:55 I love it. What phase is he? No, go.

20:58 Full.

20:59 Good. Okay.

21:01 SF Moon 101.

21:02 Maybe he's sad and he's a blue moon.

21:04 He's a blue moon. Yeah.

21:06 Okay. What do you have?

21:08 I don't know any other moons. A blood moon, a harvest moon.

21:12 Harvest moon. Harvest moon.

21:14 Blood moon. What kind of sicko came up with that one?

21:16 Maybe he's amber and he's a honeymoon.

21:20 Is that a thing?

21:21 Yeah. Yeah. Honeymoon.

21:22 Honeymoon. Sorry.

21:22 June full moon.

21:23 I'm so focused on not sounding like an idiot that I'm like a honeymoon. Great. It's the celestial reference.

21:29 The June full moon is the honeymoon.

21:32 Okay. So you're not.

21:32 Many people don't know it, but it is. And that's how you get honeymoon.

21:34 It's the one that most men try to avoid.

21:36 Possibly. But I wonder if June was not the traditional marriage month, then... what would the vacation you take after wedding be called? If you named it after those moons, it would have very different sets of names.

21:49 That's why it's got the word honey in it.

21:50 There's a wolf moon. There's a snow moon. There's a.

21:53 Snow moon.

21:53 Snow moon. Well, it's a winter moon. It's agrarian. I mean, it came from.

21:59 Sounds very Asian. Snow moon.

22:01 Snow moon.

22:02 It just does.

22:02 Okay, but I'm just saying, there are a lot of cultural references to moons, and the honeymoon is so named because its arc across the sky remains very low.

22:11 Interesting.

22:12 And it It retains the colors of sunset its entire path, which is a deep amber. And so it has an amber color even at its brightest. And so it's a honeymoon.

22:21 As opposed to the harvest moon.

22:22 By far, correct. Okay. Correct.

22:24 All right.

22:25 So what do you have? Take me there. Cosmic queries.

22:28 He asks, has a nuclear bomb ever been tested in space? If so, what happened? Please visit Utah. And my answer is, yeah, that's Utah. That's how we got Utah. Terrible place.

22:39 All right, so we have never tested a nuclear bomb in space.

22:46 The Chinese and the Russians.

22:47 No, but the sun is a nuclear bomb. Therefore, it is being tested in space continually.

22:56 As we speak.

22:56 By all stars throughout the galaxy and the universe.

22:59 Maybe the sun's epitaph will be testing one, two, and then nothing else.

23:05 What happens if I put these molecules, these atoms together?

23:08 What do these two wires do?

23:09 So the difference is when we create thermonuclear fusion, it is uncontrolled and it's a bomb. When the sun creates thermonuclear fusion, it's controlled and it's a star. So that's the difference. We don't know how to control it.

23:21 How come when you do it, it's a star, but when I do it, it's a bomb? It sounds like an argument. Sounds like a teenage galaxy arguing with the sun. How come when you do it?

23:31 That would be a badass argument.

23:33 Son of the sun.

23:34 Sun could invoke that argument. Now, the two times nuclear weapons have ever been used in warfare, they were detonated in the air, not on the ground.

23:44 Oh, really?

23:45 Yes.

23:45 I didn't know that.

23:46 Yes, and that is the birth of the concept of ground zero. It is the spot on the ground beneath the location of the explosion. Okay, well, that's what I was thinking about. Which is the closest point. And there are people who calculate this. How do you maximize the blast radius to kill and damage the most people?

24:03 You know exactly how much the radius is.

24:05 So you figure out what is the rate that this would grow, how much damage will it have, how much energy does it have, therefore what is the altitude? It was about a kilometer up. So that was detonated in the air. Then there were nuclear test ban treaties that came out, and one of them said you can't do it on Earth's surface, So then they did it underground.

24:21 What can you do on Earth's surface?

24:22 Well, then they would scatter radioactive materials, right? So if you do it underground, then all the radioactive stays underground.

24:28 In the soil?

24:29 In the soil, in that one spot. So you pick a spot where nobody lives, and you do it there. Then they were banned entirely.

24:37 There's got to be, like, half-lives or something. It can't just be, like, contained. For sure.

24:41 Yeah, but it's hard. It's very hard for radioactivity to penetrate through soil. It's very hard. No. No way.

24:48 It's porous, at best.

24:50 Yeah, but there are a lot of really, really empty places on Earth.

24:54 Utah. Home of the new, of NASA's proud new, I know NASA doesn't do radioactive nuclear testing, but maybe one day. Back to the question.

25:03 Utah. All right. What else do you have? By the way, this is Cosmic Query's grab bag, so whatever, you know.

25:11 Cosmic Query's grab bag. I was doing a great job of picking them myself, and then the producer came in, and she was like, you need to get better at this. And so she went through. and label them for me. He's like, you are fucking up our show. You're supposed to have some constitution here, and you're coming in and you're wearing too much base. Lou Newcomb, at Lou Newcomb.

25:32 Newcomb as in N-U-K-E-M?

25:34 N-E-W-C-O-M-B.

25:35 We were just talking about nukes. I'm sorry. I have nukes on the brain.

25:38 For sure. So it's apropos. Is active, it's not SETI, it's S-E-T-I?

25:43 SETI, you can pronounce it, yeah.

25:45 We pronounce it, we say the acronyms here.

25:47 SETI.

25:48 Is active SETI a good idea? Do you agree with Dr. Hawking that it could be risky?

25:52 Yes. Well, so I don't, okay, so SETI, we're searching for life in the universe. Fine.

25:57 That's the acronym?

25:58 Search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

25:59 Okay.

26:00 Yeah, yeah, okay. You didn't know what that stood for?

26:02 Nope.

26:03 Everybody knows what.

26:03 A- No way. Makeup artist, PR person, manager, dog on the floor?

26:07 SETI, dog, Blanche, right?

26:10 Blanche? Did you know SETI? Yeah, she knew it.

26:12 Woof, woof. Yeah. I don't know.

26:14 Why does it have to have an acronym?

26:15 Well, because it's easier. So here's the thing. So we are looking for life. Now, there are two ways of engaging SETI.

26:24 One of them is looking for life in all the wrong places.

26:27 We turn our telescopes and aim it at places and just see if anyone's trying to talk to us. All right. That's one way we're looking for life. That's actually pretty safe because if we find life, they have no idea where we are unless we send signals. So Hawking is concerned that if we start sending signals, announcing where we are in the- Our position, yeah. Our location and what we're saying, then maybe we would be prime candidates for being enslaved or taken over or whatever. So he's worried that it's a bad idea to announce our presence. But in fact, there's not a damn thing we can do about it because we already have. And for the past 80 years- Our radio signals and our television signals have

27:15 been leaking out from our atmosphere. When they talk about being on the air, the air has nothing to do with it. Radio signals move through the dead of space like it's nobody's business. And soil.

27:27 They go through soil.

27:28 A certain depth of soil. The radio waves can go through a certain depth of soil.

27:30 At Home Depot, they have a special kind.

27:32 Well, they penetrate through walls and buildings. That's why.

27:34 It's going out anyway.

27:35 It's going out anyway. So the earliest signs of life on Earth have already been established.

27:41 And they're traveling through space.

27:43 At the speed of light.

27:44 At the speed of light.

27:44 At the speed of light.

27:45 They're billions of light years away at this point.

27:47 No, no, no, only.

27:48 Nope, it's billions.

27:49 80 light years. Okay.

27:52 Free to disagree? Put your hand on mine? They've gone so far.

27:55 I will agree to say you're wrong.

27:56 Right. Okay, that's not what I asked.

27:58 So 80 years ago is when they began. So how far away can they possibly be by now?

28:02 You tell me.

28:02 80 light years.

28:03 80 light years.

28:04 Yeah, because they're traveling the speed of light. Okay, but 80 light years.

28:07 In regular years is how many years?

28:09 80 years. That's it?

28:12 Why label it a light year if it's the same thing?

28:13 No, no, no, because it's been going for 80 years to travel 80 light years. Now, if you want to say billions, so 80 times 5.8 trillion, that's how many miles away the signal.

28:24 Is right now. Well, I meant miles.

28:25 There you go.

28:26 I said years.

28:26 So 80 times 5.8 trillion, so that's 8 times 6 is 48, so that's 5. Yeah, it's... 448. Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna let you figure it out.

28:37 I'm gonna let you say it. I don't want to embarrass you.

28:38 Yeah, so it'll be 400 trillion.

28:41 I was close with the four.

28:42 Yeah, 400 trillion miles.

28:43 Because eight times five is 40.

28:45 Very good.

28:46 Thank you.

28:47 So.

28:47 I'll get science at my high school.

28:51 That's far.

28:52 But the point is it's going out, when we couldn't control it.

28:54 All I'm saying is it has washed over exoplanets that may have some kind of life, possibly intelligent life. And if they have the tools to detect our signals, They will infer what our culture was like. And I've said this many times before on the show, and we just have to suck it up that their first encounters will be things like the honeymooners. Totally. And they'll learn how- The moon, Alice!

29:16 We know where the moon is!

29:18 Oh, they'll learn how men and women treat one another from seeing the honeymooner.

29:21 Everyone's, all the men are fat and all the women stay at home.

29:24 Right, and the men threaten bodily harm.

29:26 Harm to their wives.

29:27 Right, right. Bang zoom to the moon, Alice.

29:30 Isn't that funny that it's... And why I ought to, you know. Well, I think it's also where there's so many variables to that. We're assuming that if it's intelligent life, it's more intelligent than us. and it's understanding. Like, there's so many... It's such a small equation that would be they're smarter than us and know what we're doing and are warmongering people. Right.

29:47 So, the reason why.

29:48 We're looking for us.

29:49 The reason why I don't agree with Hawking, because that's what started this... Hawking feels they might have evil motives. And I claim And by the way, if they come visit us in response to our signal, they are far more advanced than we are because we're still just driving around the block, boldly going where hundreds have gone before in low Earth orbit. So we haven't even been anywhere in 40 years and it doesn't look like we're going anywhere anytime soon. So if they come here, they're more advanced than us. So he's worried that a more advanced civilization coming upon Earth might then enslave us. And I'm saying that while that may be true, his fear derives not.

30:26 From scientific evidence from movies.

30:31 His fear comes from what he thinks aliens will do, but he's basing that on what he knows humans will do.

30:40 Sure. What else could you base it off of?

30:42 His own behavior. So he's assuming that aliens are as evil and as warmongering as humans.

30:50 He also read Guardians of the Galaxy before it became a movie. But yeah, it's an assumption. And it's all.

30:58 Maybe aliens are better than us in every way that matters.

31:01 Can I, my theory that I said during the break.

31:04 What's that?

31:04 Was that aliens are an advanced form of humans visiting us from the future.

31:08 Oh, okay.

31:09 Look at their brains are bigger.

31:10 All right.

31:11 Eyes are bigger, which are things you would need. You don't have to use like a nice eyeliner.

31:14 Okay. All right. All right.

31:15 Yeah. We don't have hair. We don't really need hair. They don't have sex organs presented, which is kind of an animalistic thing.

31:22 Okay.

31:24 And they seem to be very smart.

31:25 How do they mate? I mean, how do they know who to mate?

31:28 E.T., like that.

31:30 Okay. I don't know. You're coming up with this now. I'm listening to your ideas.

31:33 You can still have sex organs. Like, fish don't have boobs.

31:36 Not that you noticed, but I bet to fish it's totally happening.

31:39 If she dressed nice for me once in a while, I would pay attention to her. They have sex like aliens do.

31:44 Animals have no problems finding out who to mate. All right. Okay.

31:49 So the aliens, it'll just be.

31:50 Even though we need a lesson on which is the male snake and which is the female snake. They don't have any problems.

31:54 So neither do the aliens. So put your elbow to mine. I don't know what they do. Something gross that involves probes, obviously.

32:01 Elbow sex.

32:01 Elbow sex. All right.

32:02 Here's another one. All right.

32:05 Tim Wall, at TimWall2016, so we just got that handle. If an astronaut jumped.

32:11 Or he was just born this year.

32:12 Then you know what?

32:14 People tend to put their birth year in their handles. Go on.

32:17 If an astronaut jumped on a diving board on the moon, would he bounce higher or lower than on Earth? I know the answer to this.

32:26 Yeah, yeah. So the diving... Oh, you know the answer. Well, let's hear it.

32:30 He's not going to bounce. There's no gravity.

32:32 On the moon?

32:33 He's going to go high. He's going to go so high.

32:34 Yeah, yeah, there is gravity on the moon. Otherwise, the astronauts would just have been floating there rather than walking. They were walking.

32:41 Yep, there's gravity on the moon.

32:42 Yeah, yeah, just think that.

32:43 You go higher.

32:44 Yeah, you go higher, yeah.

32:45 Because I knew that.

32:46 Yeah, yeah. So, well, no, no. So just to be clear, so one of them is you're trying to set mass into motion, okay? And your mass is your mass no matter where you are. But for a given amount of recoil... that same recall will then send something farther on the moon than it would otherwise here on Earth. So that's why on the moon, when they hopped, they hopped very far than they did here on Earth. Even though they had 200 pounds worth of, or more, of life support.

33:19 Because 200 pounds, they weigh one-sixth, so 200 pounds would weigh only how much?

33:23 Half of one-sixth, would you say?

33:26 So no so on the moon it's one sixth gravity.

33:28 I was trying to suck my chin in and look like I was understanding.

33:30 That's good so on moon is one sixth gravity so the 200 pound thing on earth would weigh one sixth that's six of that six of.

33:37 That yeah I can't do that. I put you on the spot.

33:41 I put you on the spot. So you make up for the fact that you said it had no gravity at all. That was your way to make up.

33:45 That was just me getting nervous about interplanetary discussions with a renowned astrophysicist.

33:52 So there's less gravity, and you can do a lot of fun things. Baseball games would be really interesting. But you couldn't throw a curveball because you need air to move it against.

34:00 Here's what I do know. If you go into space and you jumped, if you were out of an orbit and you jumped in outer space off a diving board, You would just continue to, you wouldn't even. Correct. Because objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Sir Isaac Newton.

34:14 Yes. Give it up for Elisa.

34:18 Like in your head, you were like, please don't say her name wrong.

34:20 Right? Yes. Very good. So you had physics. You took physics. When did you take physics?

34:26 Long time, like long, no.

34:27 But you remembered that. Good.

34:29 Long ago enough that I could have forgotten it. But I have a profound respect for physics.

34:34 Good, as we all should, because these are not just good ideas. They're the laws.

34:39 Yeah, they're the laws. Sometimes at home, I have a very small counter, and I drop my things off my makeup counter. Every time something falls, I yell, gravity!

34:46 Yes!

34:47 Angry. Okay.

34:50 What's next?

34:50 Please stop and just read the questions. Bobby Tenderflake. That is the cutest last name. Bobby Tenderflake. That is first. It sounds like a Southern, like, come here, little tender flake.

35:04 Okay.

35:04 Bobby Tenderflake, which is either a porn name or you're very close to nature.

35:09 You know, let me tell you my porn name. Absolutely. It's Tuffy Arlington.

35:14 Why?

35:14 Yeah.

35:15 Is it like the street you grew up on? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

35:18 And your first cat. Yeah, yeah. Tuffy Arlington.

35:19 I think it's got to be more Cosmos related.

35:21 What can I do? I can choose what street I grew up on. It's just Tuffy Arlington. No, but you can take it to another level. But then I have to invent one.

35:28 I'll tell you how to do it.

35:29 I'll tell you the formula.

35:30 It's your favorite nebula and your favorite subatomic particle.

35:36 Okay, that would be the crab boson.

35:39 There you go. Sounds like a disease. We'll move on. Okay. Mine would be.

35:45 You've got crab bosons, huh?

35:46 I would have to say crab because it's the only nebula I know.

35:48 There's an ointment for that. The crab boson.

35:51 There's an ointment for that. Bobby Tenderflake at Heavy Sweating. Well, there's your porn name right there.

35:56 All right, all right, all right.

35:58 At Heavy Sweating.

35:58 We have like 20 seconds in this segment.

36:00 Go. If I went to pee on Pluto, would the pee freeze before it hit the ground?

36:04 Yes, it would.

36:05 Great.

36:06 You'd make a pee arc.

36:07 Yes.

36:08 And then you would die because there's no.

36:10 Air for you to breathe.

36:11 And you would freeze too.

36:12 You just got your dick out?

36:13 Yeah. And by the way, you don't have to do that. There are plenty of other places in the solar system you can pee and have it freeze in midstream.

36:20 It's a man question. I'm going to mark my territory like an American.

36:23 And I could do that on Pluto. Can I still do it?

36:26 Can I make a pee spear? It would arc. You're saying it would arc?

36:29 Well, because that's just the trajectory of it.

36:31 It wouldn't freeze before it got to that trajectory.

36:33 It wouldn't matter. It would still follow the arc.

36:35 You don't think it would freeze a millimeter outside of your jet?

36:37 No, because it's body temperature. It's body temperature. So it's got to drop temperature, then change state, and only then does it freeze.

36:43 Okay, we've got a clip of that coming up.

36:47 When we come back, more Cosmic Queries with Eliza Schlesinger. All right. We're back on StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition with Eliza Schlesinger.

37:00 You look so angry.

37:02 Not grrr.

37:03 It's the Schlesinger part that looks like you're bearing it.

37:05 Schlesinger. How's that? Is that better?

37:07 Schlesinger.

37:08 Is that better? So what's some of your favorite material when you do stand-up?

37:12 Of my own?

37:12 I love stand-up, by the way. It's my favorite. thing ever of anything really yes yes and not enough women we could get some more women please because the first time I heard women do stand up oh my gosh there's a whole swath of culture that I've never heard joked about bring it on.

37:28 It's evolving now I mean I of my material you're asking me my favorite material of my material yeah yeah yeah if you like if you guys like it you can check out my Netflix specials and War Paint and a third one coming out Netflix.

37:38 Special like you you on stage on TV yeah on Netflix okay I'm there.

37:44 On streaming television.

37:45 Okay. Nonlinear programming. We like nonlinear in mathematics.

37:49 It is nonlinear.

37:50 All the great things that happen in the world are nonlinear.

37:52 Yeah. That's true. Especially in TV now because nonlinear programming is killing it. I don't know. Observations, social observations between men and women. I love self-deprecation. I really like aggressive humor. I look at stand-up comedy as more of like a series of sketches with one person.

38:07 Okay. Oh, interesting. I like that.

38:10 So it's colorful. It's textured.

38:12 It's cosmic.

38:14 It's cosmic.

38:14 Yes.

38:15 Not a crab nebula. Crab nebula boson. Is that what you said it was?

38:19 Crab boson. Yeah.

38:21 Crab boson.

38:21 I love bosons.

38:22 I'll have the seared crab boson. Thank you.

38:24 Okay. So give it to me.

38:25 Question for you is.

38:26 See how many we can fit in.

38:28 Go. More Emily Care boss at Emily Care. I don't understand what that being. So it's at Emily care, which is an old age home for only women named Emily. What are the, what are the frontiers of research in astrophysics right now?

38:42 Oh, right now we're looking for dark matter. We don't know what is causing 85% of the gravity of the universe. We don't know what is making the, yeah, yeah. I'm not even done. Right. And there's a pressure in the vacuum of space, making the universe accelerate and, In its expansion against the wishes of all the galaxies that it contains.

39:03 If you add up dark matter and dark energy, it is 96% of all that is driving the universe. And we haven't a clue what they are.

39:11 Dark side is winning. It's Star Wars.

39:12 The dark side is definitely winning. Winning this contest of knowledge.

39:16 Something's out there just pulling. Yes.

39:17 And we don't know what it is. But we can measure it.

39:19 What does it have to do with.

39:21 We don't know. I don't know. We shouldn't even call it dark matter, dark energy. That implies we know it's matter and energy. We don't even know what the hell it is.

39:29 It's evil, though.

39:29 It's evil.

39:30 You know it's evil, and it's out there, and it's pulling.

39:33 Because it's dark.

39:34 Creating stretch marks on the universe.

39:36 And we're looking for life in the universe, life on Mars, life in Europa.

39:39 You're saying go for it, and Hawking is like, no.

39:41 This could be probably microbial. I don't think there's intelligent life lurking in caves on Mars. But life at all would be a boon to biology.

39:49 They find water bits on Mars?

39:51 Yeah, but not intelligent life. That's different.

39:53 I think it's a little rude to call them intelligent.

39:55 It's a jump. To jump to go from oozing water to intelligent life with civilizations.

40:02 Well, you haven't been to Hollywood, so your definition of intelligent is not the same as others.

40:06 Yeah, so I would say that. Plus, on the biological side, which affects the search for life, we don't know how to turn organic molecules into self-replicating life. That transition, which Earth did, apparently without any issues.

40:18 Without any help.

40:19 Without any help. So we don't know how to do that yet. So that's an interesting frontier. Once you figure that out, you can better decide what planet it might be happening on. Right. Yeah.

40:30 Well, there's your answer.

40:32 Bring it on.

40:33 Care for only Emily's.

40:35 Okay.

40:36 Mike Armenany at Armo15, which specific sci-fi movie, let me look at the camera because I am a trained professional, which specific sci-fi movie would you like to see remade Because the idea was fine, but the execution was awful. Ooh. Make some enemies right here today.

40:55 Ooh. Pre-made.

40:58 My least favorite genre.

40:59 So, I gotta, okay. They did The Day the Earth Stood Still a second time. And it was different, but I thought it could have been better, but it was good.

41:12 Tell it to him.

41:12 It was good. It was good. The Day the Earth Stood Still, because that was first in, what, the 50s or early 60s, and then The next one had Keanu Reeves. And so, and a few others, Kathy Bates was in it. So, but didn't have.

41:27 For a remake.

41:27 Well, how many times are you going to do it? So, so I would say, uh, the blob, I think they should remake the blob. That's just, okay.

41:40 I guess I think sci-fi. I think he was looking for more of like a space movie.

41:44 Oh, well, blob is an alien that sucks your blood. And that was not an actor in a costume.

41:49 What about Invasion of the Body Snatchers? It wasn't done poorly in the first place. I'd like to see a remake.

41:53 But it was remade.

41:54 A remake of the remake.

41:55 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.

41:56 We don't talk about originals anymore.

41:57 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How about Voyage to the Moon? Oh, that's a good one. All the people line up behind this big rocket, and the rocket shoots, and it hits the moon in the eye.

42:09 Yeah, if you ever saw the Smashing Pumpkins did a video, and they had the Voyage to the Moon. I forgot the French word. It's milieu... Well, it's French.

42:17 La Lune, yeah.

42:19 No, the Lumiere. Sorry, that's who did it.

42:21 Okay.

42:21 Well, that's the director. BD. All right, Voyage to the Moon.

42:25 BD, no big deal?

42:26 No big deal.

42:26 Okay.

42:27 STF for terrestrial life.

42:30 Acronym.

42:31 Callback. It was a callback from the acronym from before.

42:33 STF?

42:34 Searching for intelligent life. SETI. SETI.

42:37 SETI.

42:38 I said it was a stupid acronym.

42:39 Because STFU, you know.

42:41 Right.

42:42 Okay.

42:43 That's not what I was saying. Voyage to the Moon.

42:45 Yeah.

42:45 It was what? Like 15 seconds long. Right.

42:47 It was 15 seconds. I think we should redo that in a full moon.

42:49 Do it on Vine. Just be done with it. Are you ready for another one?

42:52 Go for it.

42:53 What type of music do you listen to the most? Are you inspired by music and or the arts?

42:58 Deeply and always. And as long as I can remember, have been inspired by the arts. And my brother is an artist. He attended the High School of Music and Art in New York City. I attended the Bronx High School of Science. So very geeky, very nerdy. It's everything you think it would be is what it was.

43:14 You guys got both sides of the brain covered in that.

43:16 Totally, totally covered. And I grew up with a kid artist who's now an adult artist. So that kept me sensitized, I think. And so I value what role artists contribute to society. And people say, you know, what value is art to the security of our nation?

43:33 Those are like bankers.

43:34 Well, you get people who say that, but the answer is the fact that we do art makes the country worth defending.

43:43 The fact that we're allowed to create art.

43:44 Makes it worth defending. Yes, yes. And I listen to almost every genre of music that I can even think of. I like creativity no matter how it manifests. But if I were to pick one for the Desert Island disc, or I would say for the space mission, All right.

44:02 I have a Discman on a desert island.

44:05 So, so just my playlist for my space mission would be heavily represented in the blues. I'm deeply.

44:13 Yeah.

44:13 I love the blues. If I'm driving a car at night and the blues comes on the radio or whatever I'm listening to, I got to like slow down, go to the right hand lane.

44:20 Just feel it.

44:21 Just feel it.

44:22 Just feel it.

44:22 Yeah. The blues.

44:23 Every white girl secretly wishes she could sing.

44:26 Really? Saying like that, yeah.

44:28 Is that soul?

44:29 Yeah, it's got to mean something coming out of you. Like Janis Joplin.

44:32 Right, okay, so you're saying all that.

44:34 People say, oh, wouldn't she? Suppose she wasn't so depressed and lived longer. She'd be more productive. Then she wouldn't have been Janis Joplin.

44:40 She would have been even more depressed. I can't believe this is still happening. I've been thinking about it forever.

44:45 Wasn't she from Dallas or from Texas somewhere?

44:47 I don't know.

44:47 I don't think from Dallas.

44:48 Otherwise, that would have been rammed down our throats in like year two of Texas history.

44:52 All right. What else do you have?

44:53 Another one? Well, she didn't X off anymore for me, so I'll just do one that I have.

44:56 Okay.

44:57 What is antimatter? Do we have access to it? That question by Andrew Sinclair on Facebook.

45:02 I wonder if these are people who have labs in their basement and they want to become like... How do I get access to it?

45:08 Do you need to buy some Sudafed?

45:10 What is antimatter? How do I get my hands on some? So as far as we have been able to measure, all particles of matter have an exact replica of those particles... Except they're made of what we call antimatter.

45:25 The doppelganger.

45:25 Which, if they come together, they will completely annihilate and turn into pure energy. And so, and it's not just, we discovered it first. It was not science. Science fiction does some stuff first. We did this first. Right. We came up with antimatter, predicted its existence, discovered it.

45:43 How do you discover it?

45:45 Oh, so it's the product of other reactions. So you have regular matter, you smash particles apart, and in the Particle stream, you see antimatter. And the antimatter doesn't last very long.

45:54 How do you see antimatter?

45:55 Well, because then it annihilates. Yeah, you know, you see its path through the cloud chambers and things. You see the path that it had traveled.

46:02 What about through soil?

46:04 You're still worried. You want to store it.

46:05 Very worried about the nuclear reactions going through soil.

46:08 So it is real, and it would be matter, antimatter. Engines would be the most powerful engines, the most efficient engines we would ever know how to make if you're traveling through space. Because you start with matter, and then you have pure energy. And your car that you drive, you said a Civic or you were joking about a Civic.

46:24 What is it? It's like only 20 or 30% at most of the energy of the gas you put in the engine is going to move your car forward. The rest gets dissipated as heat. That's why your car gets hot when you drive it. Imagine if all that energy went in to propel your car. You'd be going 200 miles an hour.

46:40 Harnessing energy.

46:41 Harnessing energy is all about it.

46:42 Harnessing expended energy.

46:43 All about that, exactly. And if all of your matter becomes energy, You got it. There you go.

46:49 Who do you think will win in the race to harnessing antimatter first, us or the Russians?

46:53 Why do you have Russians on the front?

46:56 Don't make me talk about this.

46:57 You want the Cold War to come back?

46:58 I don't think it ever left.

47:00 We have more resources than the Ruskies do. He said it. Maybe it's us.

47:04 He said it. Dasvidaniya. All right.

47:06 Let's go to a lightning round. Okay. Try to get as many questions as I can, and I'm going to answer in sound bites.

47:11 Okay.

47:11 Are you ready? Go.

47:13 Do I say the name of the person?

47:15 Just read fast. Okay.

47:16 What is complete stillness? Would you be slingshotted to the end of time? Would you be ripped completely from existence?

47:23 If you were completely still?

47:25 What is complete stillness?

47:27 Complete stillness, as far as I know, would have nothing to do with you traveling through time or being cast out to the edge of existence.

47:33 Also the name of a yoga studio.

47:35 And in fact, nothing is completely still. There are vibrations at all levels, even at all temperatures, including absolute zero. That's true. Matter vibrates. Next. By the way, it just vibrates more if it's hotter. But even at absolute zero, quantum fluctuations create vibrations in matter.

47:52 And at the smallest level.

47:53 Exactly. Go.

47:54 If there was no comet to wipe out the dinosaurs, how much harder would it be for mammals and eventually intelligent life to thrive? Could we maybe get intelligent dinosaurs?

48:02 Okay. So, great question. So, here's the thing. Our mammal ancestors were running underfoot to T. rex. trying to avoid being consumed as hors d'oeuvres. So if the comet didn't come, the asteroid didn't come, it's not clear we would have evolved to anything unless we were on a completely separate continent where the dinosaurs couldn't swim and then eat us.

48:23 Then it's possible that we could evolve intelligence completely separately while there were major dinosaurs existing on another continent. And then when Columbus sets sail and crossed continents, he would have just gotten eaten.

48:37 There was like hats on like welcome Yeah, I've seen the way an iguana looks at you like it knows something. It's like it could have been us next right.

48:48 So could dinosaurs involved intelligence not likely their brain cavities didn't look like yeah too small okay next bunch of jerks Do.

48:54 You think there's promising progress to be made in the unified field theory of holofractor graphic universe?

49:00 Okay, so You read that well. Very good. Very good. The holographic universe is.

49:07 Oh, fractographic, doctor.

49:08 Oh, fractographic. Well, I don't know what a holofractographic universe is, but a holographic universe, I know.

49:13 I think we only want it for holofractographic.

49:14 Well, then we gotta move on.

49:17 Sorry, we only accept holofractographic, you lose the spelling bee.

49:21 No, but a holographic universe is that the entire universe is embedded within a holographic map on the skin of a black hole of things that had passed through. So it's just, and maybe the entire horizon of the universe itself contains the record of everything that's going on within. It's an intriguing hypothesis that has good, strong theoretical support, and it's still being researched.

49:46 I had a whole joke about Tupac at Coachella because they did a hologram of him, but then when you said it was so smart that I just abandoned it. Okay. Is Earth gaining mass from space dust and impact rocks or losing mass from evaporating gases and launching space probes? What effects would this have on GPS satellite?

50:01 Excellent question. So we are gaining approximately anywhere between 200 and 400 million Tons of meteor dust a day, which vastly exceeds spacecraft that we send out or lost evaporated particles in the atmosphere. So Earth is gaining mass daily. Consequences, that would be it is not any worse than an elephant collecting a gnat. Wow, that's small. It's less. It's less than that.

50:29 These questions are more just me trying to, I have no idea what I said when I read it, and just me trying to look like I know what's going on. I cannot process it. Okay, for 20 seconds.

50:36 Okay.

50:36 Even if we somehow discovered the tech to travel at or faster than light, would passengers of the vehicle survive?

50:42 So, the issue is not how fast you go, it's what is your acceleration. Acceleration is what kills you. Deceleration is what kills you. So, in a plane, you're going 600 miles an hour, and you're just fine sipping tea. Speed doesn't kill you. Speed has never killed you. It's all about acceleration. And I actually wrote a little essay for Motor Trend magazine. Who doesn't get that?

51:07 Who isn't subscribing to Motor Trend Magazine?

51:09 And I said, it's not all about the speed. It's all about the acceleration because that's what you feel, and that's the feeling of going fast, whether or not you actually are. That's right. So, no, go as fast as you want and enjoy.

51:22 Go as fast as you want from Neil deGrasse Tyson. Don't wear a seatbelt and enjoy your life.

51:27 That's not what I said.

51:28 I'm pretty sure that's what you just said.

51:29 Fist bump out of this. Eliza Schlesinger.

51:31 Still an issue, huh? Yeah.

51:34 We will look for you on Netflix and on TBS.

51:37 Please do.

51:37 Coming to a....

51:40 Galaxy near you.

51:42 A stand-up galaxy near you. Avoid pulsars. They're bad for your health. Mark Madder. So, I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. You've been listening to and possibly watching StarTalk. And I've been your favorite astrophysicist. Maybe I'm not your favorite astrophysicist. By the way, if you know more than one astrophysicist, I'll stop saying that because I will not presume. But if you only know one, I will declare that I'm your favorite astrophysicist. And until then, I'll be signing off, as usual, bidding you to keep looking up.