- [Neil] This episode
of StarTalk is brought
to you by Storyblocks.
Hello YouTube-iverse,
you're in the right place,
and at the right time to
catch our next episode
of StarTalk, a Cosmic Queries edition.
(upbeat music)
This is StarTalk, I am your
host, Neil deGrasse Tyson,
your personal astrophysicist, and we have
a Cosmic Queries edition,
but now it's kind
of the questions, that kind
of land in their own category,
and so what do you do, when
you put questions together,
that belong each in their own category?
You gotta kind of grab back, a
kind of a Cosmic Curiosities,
all mixed together, and I got one guy,
who's a cosmic curiosity
himself, Paul Mecurio.
Paul!
- How are you?
- [Neil] Well, thanks
for being on StarTalk.
- Absolutely, sweet--
- I've been on your show.
- Yeah!
- The Paul Mecurio Show,
multiple times.
- Yeah,
you were great.
- Yeah, thank you.
You say that to all. (laughs)
- No, no, no, no.
Actually, I didn't think
you knew much about science,
but I was surprised.
(Neil laughs)
You actually killed.
- No, I loved being on your
show, because you're curious,
and your fans are
curious, and I like being
amid curious people,
because then I can fulfill
my prime directive as an educator.
- I told my wife, that if I
had you as a science teacher,
I'd probably be doing
something in science.
- Really?
- Because I do think,
the message is the medium in some level,
and the person communicating,
and I had this guy,
this big, hulking, bitter guy.
He was in it 30 years,
and he would smoke.
- Bitter teacher,
bitter teacher.
- He would smoke, like,
all right, we're gonna
make a battery today,
and I'm like, okay.
(both laugh)
- What an exciting thing!
- I remember eighth grade, I remember like
this is the worst, I got a
C in chemistry, but anyway.
The way, you, and I know, you'd come on
with Steven Colbert a lot, and
work on a show he just loves.
- Right, right, your warm up guy.
- Yeah, but he brightens
up, when you come on,
like in rehearsal, who
are we having there?
Oh, god, that's great, I
don't have to do anything.
I'll just ask one question,
he'll talk for two segments.
(Neil laughs)
So, you have a big fan
over there.
- Yeah, that's excellent,
excellent, so, you
collected all the questions.
- I did, yes.
- These are questions
I gathered from the internet.
- Right, along with--
- They're not specifically solicited,
because they're leftovers, really.
- Oh okay.
- This is like
the leftover podcast. (laughs)
- I'm a leftover guy,
this is about right.
- What did you wanna call this?
A cosmic?
- Cosmic catch-all.
- Catch-all, yeah, the cosmic catch basin,
cosmic trash bin.
- Well, how about
Paul's pathetic leftovers?
- (laughs) Okay, Paul's pathos.
- Yeah, exactly.
- All right.
- They all have mold
on them and everything.
No.
- No, the people,
they should be rewarded
for asking questions,
that fit no category.
- Yeah, and they're very good questions.
- There aren't enough
people like that out there,
who walk at a pace, that
no one sees or understands.
- (laughs) That's a
good way of putting it.
- No, no, there's a quote from Nietzsche.
This is one of my favorite quotes ever.
"Those who were dancing were deemed insane
"by those who could not hear the music."
- Wow, that's heavy.
- Yeah.
- I think, we should end the show there.
- (laughs) We're done.
- I don't think,
anything's gonna top that.
- Think about it, if you're
looking through a glass wall,
you don't hear the music,
what are people, in their--
- That's so true.
- They're just jumping up,
and down, waving their appendages.
- All these people having seizures.
- (laughs hysterically) Seizures,
and if you don't know,
they're playing music,
and you can't hear the music,
you'd think they're insane.
- It's definitely a good point, because--
- So, therefore I respect
people, who think differently.
In fact, one could define genius that way.
A genius is one who sees,
what everyone else sees,
but thinks, what no one else has thought.
- Were you always like this as a child?
(Neil laughs)
I'm not making a joke.
No, no, no, because
you're one of the most--
- [Neil] You're psychoanalyzing
me, Max? (laughs)
- No, no no, I'm just curious.
- Tell me about your parents,
that's what this sound.
- I know.
- What, what?
Okay, go ahead.
- No, I know,
I'm curious, because of
how you're so well-versed,
not just in astrophysics and science,
but in pretty much everything,
and I'm just curious--
- No, there's stuff and plenty
of stuff, I'm not versed in.
I just don't talk about it.
(both laugh hysterically)
It's a huge, gaping hole,
but if I don't talk about it,
you don't know, how unversed I am in it.
- That's good PR.
- Yeah, I'm just saying.
- No, I just, anyway.
- You know, what it is?
You know, what it is?
- And I mean it
as a compliment, I'm
not trying to be funny.
- Yeah, it's hard to know
it for a couple. (laughs)
- No, I'm sure.
Carol, did I just compliment him?
- He's asking his wife
in the peanut gallery.
- Yeah.
- Was that a compliment?
Of the spectrum of comments, that come out
of your husband's mouth,
that counts as a compliment?
Okay, I'd hate to be in your home.
(both laugh)
- Oh gosh.
- All right, no,
we got three segments of this.
We got more, okay, let's get
some first questions going.
- Okay, all right, we're
starting with our Patreon folks.
- Patreon folks, got it,
got it, got it, thank 'em.
- Priority people,
gotta love 'em.
- The priority Patreons.
- This is John Callahan.
Is the name Big Bang a misnomer?
From what I recall, we don't
actually have any evidence,
the Big Bang started with an
explosion like a supernova
or a black hole merger.
- Yeah, so, first of all,
the Big Bang was a name
given to this idea,
that the universe started in
this one primordial explosion.
It was given pejoratively
to this idea by proponents
of what at the time was known
as the steady-state theory,
hypothesis of the universe,
but when the universe
always was and always will be,
even though it's expanding,
it's always been expanding,
and matter is spontaneously
created in the vacuum
to fill in for where
space is getting thinner.
So that you'll always see a universe,
that looked about the same.
This was called the
steady-state hypothesis.
You could get that out of
Einstein's equation of gravity,
that was allowed, but
another solution was one,
where we're either collapsing
or we're expanding.
All three solutions were allowed.
The Big Bang itself, it
was an equal competitor
to the steady-state theory for decades,
until we finally got some
evidence to support the Big Bang,
and that was the famous
cosmic microwave background.
This is a leftover signal,
signature, from an explosion,
that started in one
hot, primeval fireball.
- 13.8 billion years ago.
- Thank you, sir, you
don't need me for this.
- No.
(Neil laughs)
That was the only thing, I remember.
- Sure, about 13.85,
you're showing off now.
- (laughs) No, no, I--
- You're showing off.
Okay, so, it was given as
a funny, pejorative name,
but it stuck and if it fits, it fits.
Now, it's not clear, how much
noise it would have made,
because just the
expansion of space itself,
that's not associated
with noise, and space
is vacuum anyway, noise
doesn't propagate, so,
if you don't wanna call it the Big Bang,
because it was probably
made no noise (laughs).
- You'd think it fixed that by now.
- (laughs) No, you call it,
how about the main event?
(both laugh)
- Let's get ready to blow up!
- Yeah, I'd think the big
event, but the main event.
- Yeah, when you talked
about laws and theories,
and what used to be called laws,
we call theory, right?
- You remember that,
thank you, that's a subtle point.
In the old days, we come
up with an understanding
of the universe, a new
law has been discovered,
that's a very exciting time
in science, when that happens,
and then you learn later on,
that with better instruments,
and more tools and deeper thinkers,
that what you came up with
as a law was a smaller subset
of a larger understanding.
So, you shouldn't call it a law,
but it works, so, we
just use the word theory
for everything, that works now,
and if you just have an idea,
that hasn't been tested,
we call hypothesis, Paul's hypothesis.
- Right, well, there's a lot of those.
Paul's BS hypothesis,
but there's somebody,
who said, right, exactly.
There's something you said
in this context, you said,
as I quote you, "What
happened in the 20th century,
"that we came to learn,
that whatever we determine
"to be true about the
universe may only be a subtext
"of a larger truth."
- Yeah, that's right, not
that would later shown
to be wrong, so it's not like
science goes from one truth
to another truth,
discarding previous truths,
not the physical sciences at
least, not since the 1600s
have we been in that situation.
Before the 1600, that's about,
when the methods and tools
and practices of what we
now call modern science,
were forged, Galileo,
Francis Bacon, folks,
that if you have an idea
about how the world works,
you should test it.
(Paul laughs)
I don't care,
how it looks, I don't care,
what your senses tell you.
Come up with an experiment,
that goes a little
beyond your senses, or
extends your senses.
Galileo had a telescope,
Leeuwenhoek had a microscope.
You start seeing directions,
that were previously inaccessible
to your sensory system,
your eyes, your sense
of touch, taste, smell,
and so the universe comes to you now
outside of the experience of your senses,
and the experiment then
becomes the measure
of what is true, not
whether it makes sense,
and one of my recent
books, the front piece,
I mean, the epigraph,
epigram, epigram or epigraph?
I always forget, what they're called.
(laughs)
- If you don't know,
I'm not gonna help.
- I just said,
I just baptize people into
this by saying the universe
is under no obligation
to make sense to you.
- Yeah, but we're always
in a state of subtext then,
in some way?
- Possibly.
There's some things we
might know completely,
but let it be open enough
to say, this is a subset
of a larger understanding.
Newton's laws of motion
and gravity worked.
Did he experience anything
faster than a running horse?
- Well that's, you--
- Or the gravity of the Earth?
And so it worked.
In fact, he got us to the
moon and back, but then
we have particle
accelerators, and we got close
to the speed of the light,
and we say, you know,
Newton's laws are this weird thing.
- Your knowledge is
limited, by what you can do
at that time and the ancient systems.
- Correct, and Einstein
came up with his laws,
or his theories of motion and gravity,
and we learned, that it's
a deeper understanding
of reality, that still has limits.
You know, where Einstein
leaves us high and dry?
At the singularity of the black hole,
and at the singularity
of the Big Bang itself.
It's like dividing by zero,
remember, you're not supposed
to do that in math class?
- Oh right, yeah.
- Right, right, okay,
so there's a poster, that
said, or a T-Shirt by now,
that said, a black hole,
the center of a black hole,
is where god is dividing by zero,
right, okay.
(Paul laughs)
So, I thought, that was cute.
So, singularities are now a
frontier of string theorists,
and others, who are trying
to take it to the next level.
- Got it, just one other thing on this.
Hawking said, the boundary
condition of the universe
is that it has no boundary.
Is that sort of what you're alluding
to there?
- That's a way
to think about it.
I think, it's a organizational
thought for you, okay?
You can say, what is, here you go, ready?
Holding flat-earthers
aside, I assume you agree,
that Earth is a sphere.
- Yeah, it depends.
- (laughs) Okay, so, so, if I say to you,
start walking and call me,
when you get to the edge
of the Earth, you say,
I'm not gonna do that,
because Earth has no edge.
Meanwhile, you can walk forever,
and never get to an edge.
So, what are the boundary
conditions of the Earth?
Is there an edge?
No, there's no edge.
- Right,
right, so--
- So, you can have things,
that have no boundaries, they're real.
The surface of the Earth
is one of them.
- And so if you can have
that on Earth--
- Now you go
to higher dimensions, and you
can just go to a whole lot
of places with that, and
imagine an entire universe,
that has no edge and no boundary.
You can have no boundary
in time, we'd live forever.
As a universe, there's no
boundary at the other end of time.
- I gotta tell ya, I love
you, your job is annoying,
because there's never an
answer at the end of it.
- No, we got some, no, no, no.
I take you to places, where
we don't have answers,
because that's where things are coolest,
but there's plenty of
stuff, we have answers to.
- No, I know.
- Like the age of the Earth,
where humans came from,
I got this, okay?
- You know what I like about
astrophysics, it's like
the names you come up
with, other sciences--
- We got the coolest names.
- Well, wait a minute.
Other sciences like zoology, whatever,
it's like Latin phrases.
You have like quark spooky
action and Big Bang.
Is there Beavis and Butthead
naming these things?
- Yes, no, we call it
like we see 'em, okay?
(Paul laughs)
We, we, okay?
The beginning of space time, energy
and the universe, Big Bang.
One syllable communication.
- For people like me to get it.
- Okay?
If there's a region in
space, where you fall in,
you don't come out,
light doesn't come out,
black hole, okay?
(Paul laughs)
There's a crater in
Arizona made by a meteor,
we call it meteor crater, okay?
All the other sciences come
up with these huge, Latin,
Greek derived words.
- Crustaceous paleo--
- Paleo, the deoxyribonucleic.
- You would call it dinopocalypse.
- (laughs) I would say big tooth animal,
that's what we call it.
- (grunts) Maybe make that noise.
- Make it onomatopoetic.
So, I think it's wise,
so much of our vocabulary
has been absorbed and adopted
into the marketing of products.
Pulsar watches, I don't
know, if they still make 'em,
but that was a watch,
and a quartz brand TVs
and microwave ovens in the
old days, but today I think
it's the second, the
third highest category
of where you draw names from to name cars.
- Astrophysics?
- Yes, yes, yes.
- Seriously?
- So, science leaning astro,
let's start off, okay, right, all right?
Wait, aren't you supposed
to me asking me questions,
because okay.
- Yeah, I got questions.
- All right, all right.
- You want me to go to it?
- I count you as a questioner,
you too, okay, so fine.
This counts as Paul's questions.
- No, no, I can go
to the next question.
- Paul's question, fine.
- I'm sorry, wait, do you want me to ask
the next question?
- No, we're doing
Paul's question and make
everyone pissed off at you.
- Oh, I'm sorry, I'm
done, I'm done, I'm done.
- That's fine, that's fine.
- We go to the next question.
- So, the number one in car
names, I think, are names,
that don't mean anything like
the S class for Mercedes.
They're just letters and
digits and numbers, okay?
The M class and then with a number, okay?
Then you have locations,
like Yukon or Denali.
- Totally right.
- Oh yeah,
these are places, that okay, I think third
is like science names,
science astrophysics names.
- That's stupid. (laughs)
- And I made
a whole list of them.
- Is that right?
- Yes, let me read, I got
it right here in my pocket,
okay?
(Paul giggles)
Wait, okay, give me a sec, I pull this up.
- I swear to god, I'm happy
to go to the next question.
- No, no, no (laughs).
The audience will be
pissed off at you.
- I feel like--
- That's fine, that's fine.
- [Paul] They're gonna be mad at me.
- They'll be pissed off
at you, not me, okay?
So, here we go, cosmic
car names, you ready?
Here we go, okay, ready?
Okay, between 1973 and 1975,
what had just finished?
What did we just finish
doing, just before that?
- Getting rid of Nixon?
- That's true, we just (laughs)
finished going to the moon.
The car called the Apollo.
- Oh, I forgot about that, yeah.
- You forgot, it was a Buick,
of course General Motors, okay?
And then I got 2008 to 2009
the Saturn Car Company,
start there, okay?
- Wow. (laughs)
- They had a car called the Astra,
which is basically star in Latin, okay?
I got that, this could
go on and on and on.
You just tell me, when to shut up.
2005 to current, the Chevy Equinox,
I'm taking it.
- Wow.
- Equinox, did you know, okay?
I keep going, here we go, another one.
Saturn, going back to
Saturn, which the car company
does not exist anymore, but
Saturn from 2003 to 2007
had the Ion, I'm taking it, the Ion.
It's chemistry, the sun
is a ball of ionized gas,
called plasma.
- Oh, so, you're good there.
- All stars are ionized.
- All right,
I give you, it's a cousin, really.
- Excuse me, most of
the universe is ionized,
I'm taking it.
(both laugh)
Okay?
Not giving that to you, okay?
The famous one here,
1962 to 1979, and again,
1985 to 1988, the Chevy Nova, oh!
- Oh, that was the car we made out in.
- Wait, for those only
listening, you should say,
who you were making out with. (laughs)
- Oh.
- Not you and I.
- No, my wife Carol.
- Who is in
the peanut gallery of this studio.
- Yeah, we went to high
school together, and--
- And you made out, the Chevy
Nova is not all that large.
- We had a Chevy Nova,
and we would go to--
- Okay, bench, front seat, so you can.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- You can do,
it wasn't bucket seats.
- You could move the
steering wheel up there.
- He's got the biggest smile, that I--
(Paul laughs)
I don't think, people know,
that a nova was a star,
that had just blown up.
I think, Chevy had they known that,
they might have thought of.
- Well, sounds to me, it's no go.
- No go in Spanish.
- In Spanish.
- I got another 20 cars in this list,
that is proof.
- I just wanna say, by the way
for those listening,
he's has it on his phone,
and he has so many, that he
must have hit about 70 swipes,
he just kept going and going and going.
All right.
- Plus,
ask me, what gum I chew.
- Trident?
- No.
Eclipse!
- Oh god, there you go.
- Or Orbit, Orbit I prefer the harder gum
rather than the softer, right, so.
- You're really committed to your craft.
- So, and there's Moon Glow Bath Beach,
you got Celestial Seasonings
tea, you got Milky Way
candy bar, Mars candy bar,
even though this is the name
of the family, they named
it Mars and it's red, okay?
(Paul laughs)
The packing is red,
I'm taking it. (laughs)
- And that's all the time
we have for today everybody.
- We have 30 seconds left and then,
what's the next question?
- Next question is from
another Patreon fan.
- Now that part blew the
entire first segment, okay.
- One Height Gazette
asks, will space to resume
require some fundamentally new technology
to make it affordable for everyday people?
This is Patrick Paulus
in Milkweed Washington.
- And we will get to that
question in the next segment,
when StarTalk returns.
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Oh, puppies.
- StarTalk, we're back,
the Cosmic Queries edition,
where it's really a grab back.
Paul Mecurio, my co-host today,
thanks for being on, Paul.
- Yes, absolutely.
- From the Paul Mecurio Show.
- Yeah, podcast.
- Podcast, iTunes, I've
been on it several times,
and it's always fun
being on that with you.
- Thank you.
- Thanks for coming
to have this talk.
- Thanks for having me.
I've been a big fan of the
show, it's really like an honor,
yes, to do this.
- And you collected
not out of one category, you got the drags
of everybody's question.
- Yeah,
but I think, it's cool, because
it's a mixed bag, it's fine.
It's not just one topic, like
dark matter, we've got this.
- Yeah, I think, we got some
of the best questions, right?
- Yeah.
- They don't march to it.
- There's several dark matter in--
- Beat of a different drummer.
(both laugh)
So, you call this Paul's what?
- Cosmic catch-all.
- Catch-all,
there you go.
- There you go, all right?
- So, read me that question
before we exit another segment.
- This is a Patreon person
in One Height Gazette,
Patrick Paulus in
Milkweed, Washington, asks,
will space tourism require some
fundamentally new technology
to make it affordable for everyday people?
- Yeah, so that's a really good question.
What's interesting about access to space,
is, if you remember your Ekon 101.
We think, the demand is
completely elastic, okay?
And an elastic demand would
be, if you drop the price,
more people will do it.
If you raise the price,
fewer people will do it,
but there's always a
demand at a price, okay?
That's one of the measures of
whether something is elastic.
If it's inelastic, it
doesn't matter, what price
you charge, everyone has to
buy it, and you can drive
some people bankrupt or
whatever, but elastic is like
most products, you want
them to be elastic.
It's a healthier economy, okay.
Tourists seats have already
been sold on the space station
by the Russians, because the
Americans wouldn't do it,
and how much were they?
They were $20 million.
- Why wouldn't we do it?
- 'Cause it's not how we
roll, this is America, yeah.
(both laugh)
Not for our greatest of frontier, no, so,
we have the right stuff.
(Paul laughs)
If you just buy
the right stuff, it ain't the right stuff.
So, our image of going
into space had some of that
right stuff.
- Yeah, you don't wanna
sully it, right.
- Yeah, you don't
wanna sully, yeah,
exactly, I think that was,
that no one would say that,
but I think, that was part of--
- But don't you think
it's inevitable, that--
- No, I'm getting there
exactly.
- All right, sorry.
- So, no, no, don't
apologize for interrupting,
this is New York.
(Paul laughs)
If you interrupt me,
that's my only evidence,
that you're paying attention
to me, okay?
- I'm sorry,
who are you again?
(both laugh)
- So, so, you can drop the price.
So, if you made it $10 million,
there might be 10 people, who would go up.
If you have $1 billion, $10
million is lunch money, right?
There're a lot of billionaires today.
Make it one million, then
you have all the, like,
100 millionaires, okay, so, as you go down
the economic ladder, the
number of people, who, I think,
would be interested in this,
would continue to go up.
Plus, I bet, I don't know your budget,
I don't know, what you do on
holiday, I'm not gonna ask,
but I bet you would save two
years of holiday expenses
to go on one space trip.
- Absolutely.
- And you stay home,
and watch TV on all the other holidays,
when you might have gone
to Aruba or wherever.
- Does my wife have to come?
- (laughs) Yes, she's in the room now,
the answer is yes.
- Can I go on a craft
called Nova? (laughs)
- So, I think, there's a price,
that you just keep doing this.
Then, if there's a price
below which you can't go,
make a lottery.
- Oh, interesting.
- Yes, yes, so, let's say,
you can't get it below $1 million,
so you sell a million
lottery tickets for $1.
You could do that every single time.
- How low--
- Every single seat
will go for $1, but you can sell for $1,
and you get the one person,
and that's the $10 million,
that pays for that one person's seat.
You could do that every time, I'm certain.
- How low do you think the
price could go, realistically?
- It's tough, you getting
into space, it really is.
I don't know, it's tough.
- Do you trust the technology
on the private side
to get it right and do it right?
- Do you mean to not kill you?
- Yes. (laughs)
- No, people will die,
that's what happened
with the first airplanes, people die.
Right now, people--
- You're a bad commercial
for this.
- (laughs) No,
it's just how this works.
- Go to space, die.
- No, go to space first, die.
(Paul laughs)
People say--
- At least you went.
- People said,
if Elon Musk has a space craft tomorrow,
would you take the first spaceship?
I said no, I wait til
after he sends his mother.
(Paul laughs)
Wait,
and brings her back, right?
If he can do that, then
I'm going on the trip.
I'm bringing this in, get
a good Netflix account,
and occupy the nine months together.
- Listen, I believe in science.
If you can make Disney in
Disney World affordable,
then I know, we got something on.
- So, I think you have to
do a lottery, if the ticket
doesn't come down to $1,000 vacation,
that you would all take,
paying for an airplane
and rental car and a
hotel, to go to a beach.
You drop in anywhere between
one and $5,000 for a family,
that you might have saved up to do,
and I don't see it coming
at and getting that cheap.
I don't see that happening.
- To me it's coming faster
than I thought it would.
It seems like we just talked
about a few years ago,
and suddenly, like, we're
close to making this happen.
- Yeah, so as a thing,
well, watch the rich people
do it first, by the way,
rich people were the first
to fly in airplanes.
- Fair point, it's a good point.
- The first president to do
it, that was headline news.
President flies in airplane.
- Okay, quick prediction and we move on.
How many carry-ons am I allowed?
- (laughs heartily) I think, you,
right now?
- Yeah.
- Access to orbit costs
$10,000 a pound, no matter,
what it is.
- Wow.
- Yes.
- So I can't do that fake
I have an emotional problem,
can I bring my dog line?
- Well, then you pay $10,000
a pound for your dog.
Still a lot of chihuahuas
around this trip.
(both laugh)
And the great Dane.
- We have a great Dane
on a weight loss program.
You wanna go to space?
You're on.
- There you have it, so, $10,000 a pound.
Elon Musk is trying to get that down,
but I don't think he's gonna
get it to $1,000 a pound,
and what do you weigh,
100 and?
- 50 pound.
- Yeah, so, that'll be $150,000, way less
than a million, but,
and I bet, if you weighed
160, but you could drop
to 150, you'd do that to save the $10,000.
- Absolutely.
- To go into space, so.
- I'd go on naked just to
save the weight on clothes.
All right, we're gonna move on.
- So, you're talking about carry-ons,
there will be some seriously
important carry-on.
- Can I take my bowling ball?
That's gonna cost you $15,000.
- Right.
- All right, we're gonna
go on to another question.
- Bowling would be hard
in space, by the way.
Just, there's little for going there.
Leave your bowling ball at home.
- If you get a strike in
space and you don't hear it,
did it happen?
- If you got a strike in
space, and you didn't hear it,
you'd be bowling in a
vacuum with a space suit on,
and that'll be weird.
We would bake a place, where there's air,
and you could breathe, okay?
We would do that for you and
your bowling ball, alright?
Okay.
- And one other thing
real quick, I saw you talked
about the movie "Gravity".
You made the point, that
Sandra Bullock's bang
do not--
- The bangs always
pointed down.
- Which is hilarious.
- [Neil] The bangs
knew, where gravity was.
- Everything's floating around.
- Everything floating around,
the bangs didn't budge.
That angered me, irrationally, I'm sorry.
- And whoever cut it,
like, immediately went
to her face and there she looked great.
You're right, they were
down, they were perfect,
they were straight,
everything around is floating.
- Now, was I wrong to go there?
- No, you were totally right.
- I'm doing my thing, let me just
defend myself for the moment.
If you look at any picture
of somebody in space,
who has long hair, the
first thing you notice,
is that their hair is everywhere.
This is the first thing.
- That's a good point.
- The women who go out
will all their long hair,
and they don't tie it in a
thing, sticking straight up.
- Is that why Kelly, the bald guy,
(Neil laughs)
he wants to keep you guessing,
if he's in space or if
he's on a sound stage?
- Mark Kelly, right?
- Yeah, the one--
- The twins.
- I think,
it might be Scott, I don't know.
- Scott, which one of them
we interviewed on StarTalk?
We had one of those two twins.
We had the better looking one, apparently,
that's how he introduced himself.
Scott Kelly, I think, it was.
Yeah, maybe he had long dreadlocks.
(both laugh)
- I'm gonna screw with their
heads and shave myself.
- I'm not gonna be a fool in that photo,
let me mess with them.
- All right.
So we're gonna go on to
another Patreon supporter.
One Height Gazette, this
is the same gentlemen,
this is Patrick Paulus.
- He's getting
two questions in, all right.
- Yeah, apparently.
Dark matter seems to be a placeholder
for unexplained gravitational
forces in the universe.
Is it possible, that our
understanding of gravity
is incomplete, could
gravity work differently
on galactic scales?
- Not likely, it's an excellent question.
First, it's not so much a placeholder.
It is a placeholder, but it's not.
We measure this thing out there,
that has gravity associated
with it and we don't know, what it is.
Come up with a name, call
it something, call it Fred.
I don't care, what you
call it, it's a thing.
It's got gravity, we measure its gravity.
It interacts with matter by gravity.
So, we happen to call it dark matter,
and then we think, oh,
is it matter, isn't it?
It's really dark gravity.
- Oh.
- Dark matter implies it's matter.
If we would have labeled it correctly,
just like the Big Bang, we'd
have to call it the big event.
(Paul laughs)
The silent,
the main event. (laughs)
If it didn't make any sound,
with dark gravity is the accurate thing,
we should be calling it, and
we don't know, what it is,
but we can calculate with
it and you can put it
in the equations and it works.
There's a term, here's the
extra stuff, the dark matter.
- Is it 85% or something like that?
- Yeah, so 85% of all
gravity in the universe
is of unknown origin.
- Anything--
- Gravity, that we measure.
So, yeah, it could be, that
we need a deeper understanding
of gravity on larger
scales, but we have examples
of colliding galaxies,
and you can run the numbers on it,
and regular gravity accounts for that,
and then you throw in dark matter,
account for some other
things, that are going on.
So, I don't,
we think, it's not that, yeah.
- How slow--
- By the way,
there's a subculture industry of people,
who think, we just have to modify gravity,
modify Newtonian gravity,
and they abbreviated that
M-O-N-D, modified Newtonian,
and they're called MOND,
the MOND people.
You type MOND in Wiki, you'll
get all this description
of taking Newton's gravity
and adding a term to it
for large scale thing, and
then you can fit a few things,
but there's some things,
you can't fit with it.
So, we think it's something
else, that we simply
don't know, what it is.
- You said, this is something you said,
"You don't know if it's made of matter.
"It's a misnomer to send
people in both directions,
"that's not right path."
- I don't say, it's not the right path.
You don't wanna mislead people,
you don't wanna prejudge,
what it could be, because
then people use the word,
and then they get caught up in the word,
and then the word becomes the
thing rather than the idea.
- Are you a WIMP proponent?
- [Neil] A weakly interacting mass
of particles?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, sure, the possibility,
what role they could play
in the universe, sure.
I mean, in the universe,
astrophysicists were open
to anything.
- Is there--
- We're so ignorant of so much stuff.
You got an idea, bring it on.
(Paul laughs)
And give us ways,
we might test it and we'll test it.
- Is there a process of elimination,
are you all like crossing
things off the list?
- Oh yeah,
you wanna come up with a hypothesis,
that has enough detail
in your predictions,
that we can rule it out,
if we make the experiment.
If you just say, oh, it
could be just something,
that's there, when you don't look at it,
but then it's there, further,
then give me a prediction.
If you don't have a
prediction, it's not useful.
- Okay.
- So,
the hypotheses, that are put on the table,
the more fuzzy wuzzy they
are, the less useful they are.
You just discard them.
It's the ones, that say,
if this idea is correct,
you should find this, if
you look in that direction,
and then we do it, we find it,
hey, you're onto something.
Give me another prediction.
Oops, that failed, okay.
Should you modify your hypothesis,
and by the way, if your
predictions keep coming right,
we elevate your hypothesis to a theory.
That's how you get to theory of gravity,
the quantum theory, you
get relativity theory,
you get evolutionary theory.
These are ideas, that
started out as an hypothesis,
elevated to a working understanding
of how the universe works,
that has predictive value.
- Is it possible, that our
understanding of gravity
is so vague, that my
bathroom scale could be off?
So that I'm actually
lighter, than I appear to be?
- That's the part of gravity,
we understand precisely.
(both laugh)
- Damn, all right.
- Yeah,
I'm just saying.
- Okay, we're gonna move on, another--
- Oh, by the way, people
don't talk about this,
because of the centrifugal
force of the rotating Earth,
you weigh less on the equator
than you do on the pole.
Because the Earth is
trying to spin you off,
and so you actually weigh a
little less at the equator.
You weigh less here than you do in Canada.
- Really?
- Yeah, yeah.
Not only, that Earth is
slightly wider at the equator
than it is at the pole,
so you're farther away
from the center of the Earth,
so you weigh less for that reason as well.
You also weigh less,
because you are immersed
in a fluid called air.
There's a buoyancy, that you have in air.
- Air is a fluid?
- If it takes the shape of
its container, it's a fluid.
You can have liquids and gases are fluids,
and so fluid dynamics,
which is an entire branch
of physics and engineering,
involves the movement
of things, that are, so,
the movement of water
around bridge embankments,
the movement of air
over the wings of planes,
it's all fluid dynamics.
So, why did I talk about that?
Where was I going with this?
- Because I asked you,
if the laws of gravity
are so vague, that my
scale could be wrong.
- Yeah, yeah, no sorry, yeah, you started.
- Me just being an idiot.
- I'm saying,
so here's it how it go.
On the equator where you
get the centrifugal forces,
you weigh a little less than you would,
Santa Claus would weigh
less on the equator
than on the North pole,
okay, and you also weigh less
on the equator, because
Earth is slightly wider
at the equator than it is pole to pole,
and you also weigh less if
you went to a mountain top,
because you're farther
away from Earth center,
than if you went down
in a mine, for example.
- Okay, Carol, we're moving to an equator.
I wanna be--
- Moving to a mountain
on an equator, there you go.
- Now we're talking.
- Now you're talking.
- Pizza every day.
- Get your six ounces.
(both laugh)
When we come back with
Paul Mecurio on StarTalk,
we're gonna do more cosmic
queries from the dust bin,
when we return.
- [Narrator] Okay, I was
so distracted by puppies
in the last commercial
break, that I also started
looking up videos of kittens
on Storyblocks Video.
If you wree working on a project, and need
stock footage, you'll wanna
use Storyblocks Video,
and their giant library,
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Try stuff out, if it
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Check out the link in the
description to learn more
about Storyblocks Video, that's
storyblocks.com/StarTalk.
- StarTalk, we're back,
Paul Mecurio unloaned
from the Paul Mecurio Show.
Did you allow yourself
to be loaned out to us?
(both laugh)
Got to check the authorities on that one.
- Yeah, I bought myself
a car service, and I,
yes, I got permission to
be out just for the day.
- [Neil] Just for the
day, they let you out.
- I said, please, it's Neil,
they were like, all right.
- And you brought your
wife, she's in the studio
with us here, welcome,
tell me your name again.
- Carol.
- Carol, welcome to StarTalk.
So you got some more
questions for me, let's go.
- I do.
- From the dust bin.
- We're sticking with dark
matter, this is Kale Honeyset,
Instagram, do you think, that
once dark matter is discovered
and understood, would it
actually help in space travel?
- So, I'm gonna answer a
bigger question than that.
Almost, by the way, we've
already discovered dark matter,
we just don't know, what it is, okay?
So, let me, what she means
there, is, once we know,
what dark matter is made of, okay?
We've already discovered it, it's there.
- Can we then use it?
- Okay?
By the way, there's a long
history of discovering things,
that we don't know, what it is, okay?
That is not the first time,
you discover something.
- The Kardashians.
- (laughs) What is this,
why am I watching this?
- How did this come about?
- How did this come about?
- Poof, the magic.
(both laugh)
- That would be dark
matter forces operating
on our culture.
- That's the 85%.
- That's the 85%, so, once
we find out, what it is,
I can say more broadly, that practically,
every scientific
discovery, there ever was,
when you have enough clever
engineers and other folks
in the pipeline, you
find a way to apply it
to our everyday life.
In this case maybe space travel.
Maybe we can exploit its existence
as we move through space.
Maybe we can isolate a dark
matter particle here on Earth,
and use it for walking through walls.
Dark matter doesn't interact
with ordinary matter
in ordinary ways, in
fact, it moves through it
as though it's not there at all.
- But how do we know that,
if we don't know, what it is?
- You can log the behavior of things.
- Effects of things, okay.
- Exactly.
So, you say, here's this region of space.
We don't see any matter,
no light is coming out,
except stuff is getting attracted to it.
- Must be--
- Said stuff,
that moves through it
unimpeded with its speed.
So, I'm attracted to it, yet
it's not slowing me down.
I'm not plowing into anything.
So, dark matter and quote regular matter
can move through each other
with no effect at all.
So, maybe that's how you make ghosts.
Maybe these are the spirits
of all the dead people.
- Do you believe in anything?
- No.
(both laugh)
Next question. (laughs)
Okay, there's been
about 100 billion people
ever born on Earth, maybe a
little less, that 80 billion.
So, and we got about
seven billion here now,
so, let's, 80 billion
minus seven, what is it,
get you down to, so that's
73 billion ghosts out there.
So, first, that's a lot of ghosts.
People say, do you believe in ghosts?
No, because it'd be so many of them,
there'd be 10 times as many
ghosts as there are people.
That'd be so annoying.
(both laugh)
It's like, get out of here, we're busy.
- Everywhere you turn is a ghost.
- There's a ghost!
- Enough
with the ghosts already.
- Great, Caesars ghosts.
So, where was I?
- We were talking about 70 million ghosts.
- There's 73 million ghosts,
so, here's the thing.
The total number of humans
ever born doesn't amount
to that much mass, there's
way more mass in the universe
in dark matter than ever
could be equaled by the ghosts
of dead people, so, you
can't appeal to the ghosts
of dead people or lost
socks in the (laughs)
washing machine, space time continuum.
- Jerry Seinfeld thing,
where the sock is up
against the dryer wall, trying to get out.
Not, that we care.
- Next question.
- All right, by the way on
this dark matter, real quick,
did the idea, that you can't define it,
you don't know, what it
is, that's a good way
to scare kids, like,
if you don't go to bed,
dark matter is gonna get you.
You'd like freak 'em out.
- Oh.
- Did you ever think
about that?
- No, I didn't.
Do you have kids?
- Yes, we do.
- How old are they?
- I'm not sure.
(Neil laughs)
We're trying not to get too close.
Okay, we're gonna move
away from dark matter
with a few of those.
This is from Mike Parker, Facebook,
when something explodes
in space as it's shown
on numerous TV shows and
movies, is there really
a shock wave in a vacuum?
- So, good question.
- It was mine.
- So, this person clearly
knows, there's no sound to move.
You only get a shock
wave, if energy is moving
through a medium, and so.
- Example of a medium would be?
- Oh, anything, yeah, anything.
It's how bombs work.
A bomb works, because
it creates a shock wave,
that moves through air, then
walls, then your flesh, okay?
- Ghosts?
- I haven't seen
experiments on ghosts yet.
- There's 73 million of
them, you should get on it.
- No, billion. (laughs)
- Billions, sorry (laughs),
oh, I screwed that up.
Sorry, go ahead, so goes
through these mediums.
- And so, generally in a
supernova, which is some
of our best shock waves in the universe,
the star, that was once
there, had shed a lot of gas
into the vacuum space and
deep down is where you get
the explosion, and so
the explosion happens,
sending a shock wave,
rippling through the gas,
that it had spread out into space.
You see, these beautiful photos
of these terribly disturbed
gaseous regions, the shock
wave had blown through it.
By the time it gets out the
other end of the material,
then the shock wave can't propagate.
So, then, what it does,
it accelerates particles
at the end with that leftover energy.
You get very high moving,
fast moving particles,
it's a fun thing.
- Is this, where Newton's
third law comes into?
- Newton's third law
always comes in. (laughs)
Oh, just there, but not with you.
(both laugh)
Yeah, Newton's laws apply everywhere
at all times.
- At all times,
okay, my ass, my butt is
pushing down on the seat.
- And it pushes back, so, exactly, so,
you have this energy moving
through and it needs to manifest
and at the edge of the gas,
you get this acceleration.
It happens at the edge of the sun as well.
You get these accelerating
particles at the edge of the sun,
they're very cool.
- Really?
- Yeah, gets part of the
solar wind, actually.
- Does any of the stuff,
that happens on Star Trek,
is any of that true, because
I mean, I learned Klingon,
so I hope, that's not a waste of time?
- You did learn Klingon,
you're in the club, wow.
No, I didn't learn Klingon,
I'd said, I will use my brain
for other things (laughs).
I do enough back then, but that's how
I should be using my brain.
- All right, we're gonna do--
- Oh, by the way, the photon
torpedoes or the phasers,
the ship phasers, that we shoot forward,
if they're directing
their energy to the ship
in front of them, you should
not see them from the side.
There's no energy coming out.
- It's like when the speed
armor is on your windshield
in a really fancy car, you
can only see it straight on.
- Oh, because it's in a,
well, okay, that's because
it doesn't let you see it from the side,
because it's in a cylindrical cavity.
Oh, the digital ones, so, what they do is,
they have like a polarized
screen, so only the driver
would see it, but that's
not why this is the case.
When you see a laser through the air,
it's because the air is
reflecting, particles in the air
are reflecting the laser
light to you on the side,
but if it's star ship against
Klingon ship in the vacuum
of space and you send
a light beam forward,
you have no idea, the light beam is there.
- Got it, you said that
about Rudolph's red nose,
that it doesn't emit
light, it's reflecting.
- It reflect light, but we
can allow it to emit light.
Why do you know everything
I've ever written or said?
This is a little spooky.
- I'm just hosting, know stuff.
It'd be nice.
- This is bordering on--
- I'm sorry.
- This is bordering on,
what's the word, you have?
Groupie. (laughs)
We're at the five minute mark,
which means we have to go
at a lightning round.
- Speed, okay,
here we go.
- Okay, so that means,
I will answer every question.
- And I will say nothing.
- With a soundbite, okay.
- And then I will move
to the next one.
- It gives me training
for when I'm on the evening news,
because they want
soundbites out of me anyway.
- I feel like this is a game
show, this is for a car.
(bell rings)
- There we go.
- Okay, Brian Ameral, Facebook.
Hi Neil, can you please
talk about why scientists
are so intent on catching
neutrinos on Earth,
and what they can tell
us about the universe?
Thank you in advance.
- Excellent, so every
nuclear process, that goes on
in the center of the sun,
in the center of every star,
every nuclear event, that happens,
has neutrinos associated with it.
So, for every hydrogen atom,
that becomes a helium atom,
there's a neutrino emitted,
and neutrinos are hard
to block, in fact they exit
the sun without any trouble
at all, and so, neutrinos
are the signposts
of intense nuclear activity,
wherever you happen
to be looking, and we think
that there's a neutrino blast
from the early universe,
when the universe was formed,
and we wanna create neutrino telescopes,
that could see that.
This would be for neutrinos,
what the cosmic microwave
background was for the
Big Bang, and the rest
of our understanding of the Big Bang.
This would even take us
farther back in time.
So, neutrinos, they're
where the action is.
(bell rings)
- I'm sorry,
that's not the correct answer.
- (laughs) Okay.
- Thank you for playing.
- (quacks) Okay, we're
going to Miriam Sesans,
I'm sorry if I'm
butchering that, Instagram.
- That's all right, Chuck
Nice is usually here,
and messes up every word.
- At present, how
accurately can we intercept
possible signals from intelligent aliens?
- Excellent, here's the problem.
Let's say, you assert, that
they're gonna communicate
in this frequency, a particular frequency.
Now you build a telescope.
- Doesn't it matter on your cell plan?
- Exactly. (laughs)
- International.
- Is it 3G or four?
So, now, I'm gonna listen on
that frequency, but which way
am I gonna point the telescope?
I'm gonna point it this way.
Suppose, they're giving me a message
on a different frequency.
Well, how do I listen to that?
Or how about a different
frequency from there?
Suppose, they're not in that direction.
Suppose, they're behind you.
- Are we eliminating
possibilities?
- Suppose, they sent
the message 10 minutes ago,
before you started listening.
- Right, you were in the shower,
you didn't hear it.
- This is called
the parameter space of
communication, and are they using
your frequency at your
time from that direction?
And it all has to match
up, so you need a detector,
that can listen to all frequencies.
You need to look in all
directions, and you need to look
for all of time.
- And we don't have that.
- We're not there, we're not there.
- Are we working toward that?
- It's hard, it's hard,
plus, suppose they send us
a message and it came
during the Roman Empire,
and no one caught the message,
because they didn't invent
radio waves, discovered radio waves yet,
and then nobody sent back a signal.
They might conclude, there's
no sign of intelligent life
on Earth, yet, we had the
entire Roman Colosseum
and statues and what we
call intelligence, so, yeah,
to just, no. (laughs)
(bell rings)
Okay.
Let's get some more in.
- Yes.
- These answers are too
long, I gotta make 'em
even shorter.
- Luke, the inventor,
Instagram, do you think,
if people traveled closer
to the edge of the universe
with a huge telescope,
they would be able to see
past it to the other side,
and will they see a giant
fetus and then an old man
in a white bedroom and
what does that mean?
No, I'm just kidding, that
was my space phantasy.
Yes, if travel, a huge telescope, edge,
will we be able to see
past it to the other side,
and what would they see?
- We are bound by the horizon,
established by the speed
of light, and so, if you could
travel faster than the speed
of light, you could then
get ahead of the signal,
that came from your past,
and then see things--
- You just blew my mind.
(both laugh)
No, seriously, say that again.
- But right now, we don't know,
how to go faster than light.
We don't have wormholes or anything.
So, you're stuck in your
present or and in your future,
but the moment you can
travel faster than light,
you can get ahead of the
light beam, that you created
in your past, and be able
to see your life unfold
before your eyes.
(bell rings)
Next!
- I don't know, if I wanna see that.
- I don't know, what you've been into.
(both laugh)
- Chava Bellar, at Emily Lewis, Instagram,
what obstacles do you think
space tourism will face?
- Here's one, no one talks about, okay?
I send you up in space,
you are weightless.
How many of us have
experienced being weightless?
None of us, by the way,
it's the experience you get
on a amusement park ride, except, more so,
and so, in space, if you
throw up, all your vomit
continues to float in
the air and doesn't go
into a splatter diagram
on the ground, okay?
You ever go, 3 a.m., throw up splatter.
- You take the fun out of everything.
- You walk the streets outside the bars,
the floor pattern is very clear, okay?
- They are different, but
they're also generally there.
- They're all different,
but there's a general,
recurring geometric pattern, okay?
There's always some carrots in there
in the middle somewhere.
- That you ate
seven years ago.
- You know that, right.
So, so, we trust gravity to
gather the vomit in one place,
but in space, when you're
in zero G, it's everywhere.
So, if you have all these
newbie tourists throwing up
everywhere, it will smell,
it will get in your hair,
it'd just be nasty.
- But those, you have
to put 'em in a centrifuge
and get them all, like,
that thing, and get them used to it.
- That gives you extra gravity,
when you're centrifuged.
- You see, how I did
the astrophysics there,
I went (buzzes).
- That's the sound, that you
would not hear in space, right.
(both laugh)
(bell rings)
- You really do ruin everything.
- Give me one last one, really quick.
- Okay, Julian Garcia, okay,
we know, where the center
of the galaxy is, but does anyone know,
where the center of the universe is?
- Oh, there is no center of the universe.
The center is in fact everywhere.
You want the center of the universe?
Go back in time, 3.8
billion years (laughs).
- Me, ask my wife.
- I tweeted that one,
I said,
there is no center of the
universe, so you can't be it.
Okay?
(both laugh)
- That's great.
- So, if you wanna think of
a center of the universe,
you have to go back in
time, when we were smaller.
13.8 billion years ago,
when all the universe
was in the same place at the same time.
Think of that as the
center, but then we're all
at the same place at the same
time, so now, as we expand,
the center of the universe is everywhere.
- Yeah, and that place
is like a fraction--
- No, no, I'm just saying,
it is now everywhere.
That center of the universe
is now the entire universe.
- Got it.
- Because we were all
at the same place at the same time.
Now, that being said, just
because a thing exists
doesn't mean, it has to have a center.
Where's the center of Earth's surface?
Tell me.
- The corner of 88 Park Avenua?
(Neil laughs)
(bell rings)
- Paul, we gotta end it there.
(both laugh)
Paul from the Paul Mecurio Show.
Thanks, I'm glad, thanks
for coming to our show.
- Oh, thank you for having me.
This was really, really fun.
- [Neil] And you got out the
coolest gig in the world,
warming up the audience
for Stephen Colbert.
- Yeah.
- On CBS
at Sullivan theater.
- Yeah,
it's a really cool theory, yeah.
- It's always good to see you there.
The several times I've been on the show.
- Yeah, try and come by
and say hi, Nice and up,
they'd been on the show a
bunch of times too, it's great.
Yeah, Stephen and I go back to
the Daily Show together, so,
it's really great to see,
how the shows come together.
- Yeah, exactly, and he found his groove.
- Yeah, because he's not a
standup, that's not his thing,
and he really like, he got it,
and you're always so great on the show.
- Thank you.
- I know, seriously.
- It is a high compliment.
- And by the way--
- Did you seen them all?
- Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
because you know, when a guest is like,
the staff hangs out
around the TV, I don't,
I'm not a big fan, but,
no, they do, and like,
you work and sometimes people are like,
who's on the show?
And I'm like, I don't know,
it's like a job, right?
But like, I just, you
should know that, like, oh
Neil's on and everybody
standing around the TV.
- Well, thank you, I try to
say something interesting
about the universe, I'm glad, sometimes.
- Absolutely.
- All right.
We're done there, you've
been listening to,
possibly even watching
StarTalk, and I your host,
Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always with you
to keep looking up.
- [Narrator] Okay, before
we go, I wanna thank
Storyblocks for sponsoring
this episode of StarTalk.
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I'll see you in the Caribbean.
