Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/18/23: Neil deGrasse Tyson On Exploration, AI, UFOs, and Elon Musk

Episode Date: September 18, 2023

Neil deGrasse Tyson joins us to discuss his new book "To Infinity and Beyond" out in stores now, as well as a range of topics from UFOs, AI, Exploration, Elon Musk and more!Buy The Book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/730342/to-infinity-and-beyond-by-neil-degrasse-tyson/To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know.

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But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Very excited to welcome to the show astrophysicist and author of the new book to infinity and beyond the one and only Neil deGrasse Tyson. Welcome, sir. So great to have you. It's an honor. Thanks for having me. I'm delighted by the Lincoln Memorial behind you. It was probably just a photo. That's fine. It's a screen video. It's a video screen to be clear. Yes. And I appreciate your background as well. It's quite lovely and appropriate. It's loading in space. There you go.

So let's start with the most basic question. What do you want people to get from the new book? Yeah, that's as basic a question as there is. I want to remind people that the discoveries we've made in our attempt to ascend from Earth involved a lot of fits and starts. Often if you read a book on how we've come to where we are, how we've come to know what we know about the universe, the storytelling and the accounts,

that you get the hits and not the misses. And you lose track of the fact that there's a human spirit that persists. And it's been active ever since we stood flat-footed and looked up at the moon and asked, how would you ever get there? Now, think about it. If it was the year 1700 and you had that thought, what answer would you give yourself? Is there a sailing ship that can float through the air? And does the air go all the way to the moon? And then would you land? Like,

what would that be? And because rockets don't exist yet, rocket fuel doesn't exist yet. So how would you even have that thought? So this is a, it's a, it's a chronicle of all the ways we've looked up and wondered how we would ascend from earth. Now, not only ascend with our physical body, which we've gotten to the moon, that's the farthest we've taken ourselves, but we've looked beyond the moon, of course. And so now we've sent our robotic emissaries, space probes, this sort of thing. And then how about like to the galaxies and the universe? Well, the only thing that can get us there is our minds and our laws of physics. So maybe one day there'll be some technology, warp drives or something fantastical to get there,

but not at this moment. And I don't know that this moment thinking about the universe is any different from the 1700s thinking about just ascending to the top of the atmosphere and along the way there's always some movie that is that tried to do what it is we're talking about or did do and I comment

on did they get it right did they get it wrong and that's the sort of the pop culture thread of this book because it's that's the sort of the pop culture thread of this book, because it's not just the science and the history. It's how is it relevant to stuff you've thought about and care about? So the takeaway would be the human spirit knows no bounds. Wow.

Well, one of the things we wanted to get your take on, sir, is a recent development about the understanding of cosmology. We knew that if we were going to ask somebody, they were going to explain it to us, it could be you. Let's put this up there on the screen from the New York Times about how the story of our universe may be starting to unravel as a result of developments and understandings from the new telescope. So could you put it in perhaps to plain English for us and for the viewers for what is unraveling and what are the questions that are raised that we've previously had a model to understand that may not have been correct.

So you're assuming I agree with that title. Ah, well, perfect. Well, we disagree. That's even better. Yeah. The titles such as that are irresistible to the press. Of course. You can't get enough titles that say everything we thought before might be wrong and we have to redo it. You can't. So let me just start with that. By the way, it's not just the press. Every YouTube video where there's an infomercial that begins the establishment thinks

this or you've always eaten this way or exercise that that way, but this is the right way. For some reason, those are irresistible. So let's collectively recognize that fact. Absolutely. So the James Webb Space Telescope was conceived, designed, and invented with the intent to probe the early universe at the time galaxies were being born. Okay, let's just put that out there. And it does it very cleverly. All right, it's sensitive to infrared light. And galaxies being born actually give off a lot of ultraviolet light. But since

the time that has elapsed, and the stretching, the expansion of the universe that has unfolded since then, the ultraviolet has become infrared light. So we have tuned the telescope to view galaxies being born in how they would look to us today. This is the kind of thinking that goes on in this. All right. So there's a period of the early universe when all the matter and energy is slowly cooling, and it hasn't yet formed stars. It's still trying to coalesce gravitationally to make stars and galaxies and all the things we're familiar with. So there's a period we call the Dark Ages. It's a great term and fully explainable and understandable concept.

The James Webb Space Telescope found five galaxies, full red-blooded galaxies, alive and kicking in the dark ages. We have no explanation

for that. So, what we can say is, well, maybe we don't understand galaxies or the distances we're giving to them. Maybe there's a flaw. Or you can say, let's throw everything out that has answered a thousand other questions we've had about the early universe. Let's throw all of that out because of this one observation. Now, that's maybe, but unlikely, because of how successful the account of the early universe has been

with so many other observations that have been conducted. Now, in all fairness, the James Webb Space Telescope is more powerful than all previous telescopes. So it's bringing to us access. It's giving us access to the early universe that no other telescope has. So we're going to take this seriously. But I want to give an example from history. Copernicus decides that maybe the sun is in the middle of the known universe,

the middle of the world, rather than the earth. And people before them said, earth, it's obvious, earth is in the middle. It's clear. Everything rises and sets around us and fed our ego, and it was consistent with what we saw. Copernicus says, no, maybe we are a planet among others and we go around the sun. Now watch.

He presumed orbits were perfect circles. They're not, but he presumed. Why assume some other shape? He didn't know. Plus, if God made the universe and God is perfect and a circle is perfect, of course planets would orbit in perfect circles. So he does this and it does not match the position of planets on the sky.

So do you say, Copernicus, you're wrong. It's not working. Let's go back to epicycles and geocentric universe. Or do you say, it explains a lot of other stuff. Maybe there's an adjustment that's necessary. And sure enough, though it would take, you know, 50, 60 years,

Kepler would come along and say, no, the orbits are not perfect circles, they're ellipses. Bada bing! Everything fits into place. And it retains the sun in the center of the known universe. So, science has many fits and starts. And the book chronicles how we think one thing is true,

more data come in and it supports it. And another one, more data come in and you have to discard it. So there's a chance we have to rethink the early universe as that clickbait title indicates. But I wouldn't be so quick given how much else the Big Bang model of the universe accounts for. Right. Very helpful. The book is really a celebration of human exploration and curiosity. The twin engines, the twin chariots of cosmic discovery. I love it. Yes. Indeed. And I was wondering if it was partly inspired in this

moment when we have such a focus on machine learning and AI and large language models and all of this extreme technological development, if there was an intentionality around in this moment, recentering around the spark of all of, you know, this exploration and scientific discovery, which as you put it is, you know, this exploration and scientific discovery, which, as you put it, is, you know, human inquiry and creativity. You know what's not spoken enough is the fact that your language models and all the AI that, yeah, AI can be creative in some ways. Yes, it's found new ways to checkmate you on a chessboard, new ways to beat you at Go. Of course, AI has beat us at Jeopardy. Why people didn't run for the hills at that point, I don't know.

Apparently, when AI started composing your term paper, then people lost it. It was like, oh my gosh, AI. It's like, dude, we've been using AI for decades in my field, and AI is all around us. AI is driving Siri in your iPhone, giving you the shortest distance to grandma's house without checking with a human being in the loop.

So don't all of a sudden complain or be concerned about AI. Yes, there are certain tracks of AI that, yeah, you want to regulate that or keep an eye on it. But AI as an encompassing basin of a catch basin, we're embedded in it. So just get used to that, first of all. Now, I can tell you this. I was once interviewed by AI in a podcast, okay, by a chat, one of these chat programs. And it was very clear right off the bat that it could not know

what it didn't have access to on the internet. So its body of knowledge and source of creativity was completely fed by the internet. And even when you want it to be creative, you can say, write me a sonnet in the style of Shakespeare. It'll do that. But if I say, write me a sonnet in the style of Arnold Shmednick, who hasn't on the internet yet, it's not going to know.

Or write me a style that is yet to be discovered. It's got no place to hang its hooks on. And so the spirit of cosmic discovery and human ambitions, I'm going to go to the shoreline and discover a new fish. AI is not going to do that. A new bacterium, a new life form. Because I'm out there in the field. AI is not walking around doing this.

It's stuck as a chunk of silicon in the middle of your computer. So yes, it's a celebration of silicon in the middle of your computer. So yes, it's a celebration of being human and not being AI. Absolutely. That's such an incredible answer. I did want to ask you though, sir, about this human celebration, creativity of all, I've been so fascinated also about human exploration, about going to space, the moon. I remember you once said, I think it was on the Joe Rogan podcast about whether we would be interesting to an alien species. So I'm curious, like, why would an alien species not be curious, not only just curious about us, but why would they not be, you know, if they are to be like seafarer or space faring civilization and reach this level,

why would, why is it inconceivable that they would be interested in visiting us? Yeah, so sure. It's funner to say they're not interested in us because we're too far below them. But no, if they're deeply curious about life forms, they might be curious that that there are more species of insects than there are human beings in the world. So I think Darwin, someone once said, like beetles, there's like some uncountable number of kinds of beetles. So if you come to Earth, you would say, oh, Earth must really love beetles.

Okay, forget the humans. The beetles are the thing that it's all about. Or the whole biomass in ants or in fungus or in trees. So it's our ego talking to presume that we would be the most interesting thing to an alien who's interested in life forms. But I joke that we think we're intelligent, but who declared that? We did, okay? Did a third party declare it? No. Humans declare that humans are intelligent. And we may be so far below the

intelligence of aliens, and then they see us kill one another based on who you worship, who you sleep with, what side of a line in the sand you're born on, how reflective your skin color is to sunlight. And they might run home and say, there's no sign of intelligent life on Earth. So there are a lot of ways I think we can slice this. One of them would be maybe they're interested in humans or perhaps beetles,

or maybe they're not interested in us at all. Or maybe they're so much smarter than us that we don't even know that Earth is a literal aquarium terrarium that they created for their own amusement. Well, now you've really set people off on that one. But I wanted to ask if you had any reaction to the UFO whistleblower. He actually came out just a couple of days ago and he said, of you actually, he said, you have a PhD in physics. Where is your curiosity? I have credentials. I would be happy to go toe to toe with you. If he wants to debate me, I would be fine with that. So first, just any reaction or if you have any interest in debating the UFO whistleblower.

We'd be happy to host. Which we would host, of course. Yeah. So I don't, I don't, you've never seen me in a debate on anything. Debating is not the path to objective truth. The path to objective truth is data. All right. So when two scientists get into a quote debate, there's an implicit contract between the two.

Either I'm right and you're wrong. Either you're right and I'm wrong. Or we're both wrong. In a rare case, we can both be right, but it's very rare and it's another. Like, we can be blind and touching an elephant. And I go, well, elephants are these hard, you know, ivory things. And you say, no, elephants are these stringy things, and you're touching the tail. We're both right, right?

Because we're talking about the same object. But in most cases, that's not the case. All right. So what happens when the two scientists, they'll have the conversation, and at some point they'll say, okay, we can't agree. We need more data to resolve this.

Now let's go have a beer. So it is not, it makes no point to debate someone who's talking about classified information that nobody else can see. I can't have, I can't, that's not, so what needs to happen is it needs to release the information. We did that in the Apollo era. We got moon rocks, brought it back, shared the rocks with the world so everybody can investigate it and evaluate it. So if you have a result, the way science arrives at objective truth is not by debate, which politicians like doing. And by the way, I've never seen a debate ever where one person says, you know, you convinced me, I agree.

It has never happened ever. Happens on this show sometimes. Yeah, we try a little bit of that here. My quick point is that all he has to do is release it for independent analysis. And in science, an objective truth is established by multiple verifications of a claim. And eyewitness testimony, sworn testimony, is irrelevant to science. We don't care what you saw or what you say you saw.

We care a little bit. We'll make a note of it. But in the end, if I want to declare that what you said you saw or what you say you saw. We care a little bit. We'll make a note of it. But in the end, if I want to declare that what you said you saw, what you did see, is objectively true, other people have to verify it. Yes. And bring it forward. So the aliens in Mexico, where they rolled them out.

Great. That's a start. I love it. You saw the pictures. I love it. Okay, you saw the picture. I love it. Okay, so now to verify whether this is true or a hoax, allow others to study your three-foot-tall alien bodies. Yeah, that look exactly like you, too.

Go to the labs, especially skeptical labs, study it, and find out, hey, there's something here. Bada bing. We got two aliens that were hanging out 2,000 years ago. By the way, I wonder, by the way, your nose is just an empty cavity into your skull. And so old mummies and things don't have noses. These aliens were bones the whole rest of their body,

but they had a nose. There's nothing to, what?, but they had a nose. Curious. There's nothing to... What? How do you keep a nose? Oh, but it's an alien, so maybe there's a bone in its nose. Yeah, maybe they got a different thing going on. All right.

Hips, ribs, femur, skull. So, anyhow, fingers. Okay, I have three fingers. Therefore, it's an alien. Okay. Great. So I'm looking for... I love it.

I love it. Now release it to the world. Yes, I agree. I agree. So I'm looking for, I love it. I love it. Now release it to the world. I agree. So let's let that heat to Congress. So Congress should release that information. Okay. I got one last for you before we let you go. We were talking about the James Webb Research Telescope and how incredible that has been. And, you know, for people like you and the new discoveries that it could unleash. You also have a lot of private sector investment. I think about, you know, SpaceX and these other companies in terms of exploration. Do you worry at all about the profit motive sort of supplanting the motive of just scientific

curiosity as private space exploration becomes a larger and larger chunk of this type of inquiry? Yeah, just to be clear, I wrote a whole other book on this called Space Chronicles, Facing the Ultimate Frontier. That's a few years back. But in it, the point I make is, first of all, there's been private enterprise in space exploration from the beginning. Yes, the Saturn V rocket said NASA on the side, but it was built by the space industrial complex. In fact, the LEM, that which landed on the moon, was built, I live in New York City, built right out here on Bethpage, Long Island at the headquarters of Grumman Aerospace. People still walk tall because they had an aunt, an uncle, a cousin who worked on that project.

So it's not like private enterprise is a new participant in it, first. Second, the difference is private enterprise is leading the goals, okay? Because back then, private enterprise responded to the needs of the government, okay? They're leading the goals and building the capacity for people to access space, including governments. It is, you are witnessing the birth of a new industry. That can't be bad. Not in a capitalistic sense. That can't be bad.

Sure. All right. When planes were invented, first, only rich people flew in planes, just to make that clear. Then it became commoditized, and then it got cheaper and cheaper. Now, basically, everyone has flown an airplane, okay, who has a job and has to travel. So, tourist industry, which would be the driver of this, I presume, I think it's let it go. The science frontier will not be done by private enterprise because the frontier is you got to go where no one has gone before. The risks are uncertain. The return on the investments

is not yet established. So no, SpaceX, as much as Elon says, I'm sending a rocket to Mars. No, if it's his rocket that goes to Mars first, it's because the government will say, we're going to Mars. Who's got a rocket? And then Elon rolls out his rocket and we ride one of Elon's rockets to Mars. Then we ended up paying for that. But he has no business case to send people to Mars other than the dream state that that represents, which can trigger other investments for other things in the pipeline below it, which is nothing wrong with that either. Well, sir, it's been a real pleasure talking to you. You really got us thinking. And we appreciate you joining us. We've got the book right here in front of us. We're going to have a link down in

the description. Encourage everybody to go and buy it. And I just want to just conclude here by saying our UFO guy, who's got, I'm flattered and honored that he would call, you know, name check me in the press politely, name check me. And I just want to say it's not to debate. You just bring it out. Bring it out. Okay. Well, it's not just him. It's Congress too, though, to be fair. It's what you say? It's not just him. Well, he wants to put the information out. It's Congress who has had some issues there as well as the intelligence community. But I agree with you. It should come out.

Let me figure it out. And then call me. Okay. All right. Did you hear that, David Brush? Yeah. No, no. What it is is that the aliens come.

It's like they say, take me to your leader. I'm not bringing it to the president. No. Okay. I don't care who the president is. It's going to NASA. Okay. There it is.

Well, thank you very much, sir. I'm sure that'll go out. All right. Thanks for your interest. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Great chatting with you. I know a lot of cops.

They get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

High Key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Audley. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. I know. This is an iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an iHeart Podcast.