Fore Play - Monumental Days, with NASA Scientist Dr. Eric Smith

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

The 150th at St Andrews. As big of a golf tournament as there’s ever been. Everyone from Tiger to Rory to Homa and beyond is dreaming of taking home this one. We get into the excitement of links golf, the historical significance of the Old Course, and the exhilarating addition of Tiger Woods. Then we’re joined by NASA’s James Hubble Telescope Program Scientist Dr. Eric Smith (01:02:37) who answers our questions about the monumental new images, what it means for our galaxy, and pepper him with questions about the universe.You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/foreplaypod

Hey, 4Play listeners, you can find us every Tuesday and Thursday on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. The light we see from the sun, right, you go outside and you look, the light that's hitting the earth left the sun eight minutes ago. Which ruins my day every time I hear. So we're always, you know, if the sun blew up seven minutes ago, we wouldn't know it yet. A minute from now, we'd be having a bad day. For Play, presented by Barstool Sports, we are back, and it is one of, if not, the most excited for a golf tournament championship major that I've ever been in my entire life.

We have the Open 150th at St. Andrews, the old course. Been a lot of buildup. We're in Scotland for an entire week leading up to it. Tiger Woods is there. Roy McElroy, I think is potentially the favorite. A lot of storylines going in. Yet on this very show, you were going to get a. guest that I would argue is going to be more intriguing than anything else that we're going

to talk about because we have Dr. Eric Smith, our expert, the program scientist for James Webb Telescope Program from NASA. Frankie got him on. The new images came in a couple days ago, maybe 48 hours ago from the depths of the universe, from the gallery. And we peg him with questions about what the fuck is going on in the universe, what's going on with this telescope, what kind of images are we looking at? What do you know now that you didn't know then? What is the edge of the universe? Is there an edge of the universe? A million questions we pepper them with. So that's coming up at the edge of the show. And we obviously have a lot to get into. Tiger press conference, Rory Press Conference, Mr. Slumbers press conference, the Open Championship,

St. Andrew, there's a lot to get into, boys. But we're back. State side, I believe, all of us. Lurch looks like he's in a fucking classroom about ready to give some sort of presentation, which is nice. But we're back. You guys participated in a mini golf tournament, I believe, today. Yeah, it's been an absolute grind. We're back in the States. Scotland was fucking amazing. We can all maybe touch on it a little bit when we do our open preview. We just got back last night and then we go straight to the Hamptons. We do the Barstool mini golf competition. It was amazing. Shout out to Hank and shout out to M.B. The whole entire crew, Kelsey. Dave even put out a tweet today saying just like how insane of an operation it was. He had 50 members

of barstool content people, all different walks of life, all different characters. You got Frank the Tank. You got Clemer. You've got fucking Kirk Minahan. It was just insane. Dave, going crazy. We're not going to give away any spoilers, but I will just say that it's an amazing, amazing competition that came down to the end. It's something to look forward to in the next month or so.

So we just kept it rolling. We went straight from St. Andrews to fucking whatever mini golf course we went to in East Hampton. So it was kind of a crazy 24 hours. Scotland's not close. I'll tell you that. Scotland is just not, I guess, from Arizona, where I landed, it's not close at all. From New York, it's actually a pretty simple trip. I agree with you. That's what I was going to say.

It's far. I mean, you've got to go across the Atlantic Ocean, which is a large body of water. But as far as like long flights go, this crew has done long flights. We've gone New York to LAX and then gone from LAX, walked right on another plane and flew to Melbourne, Australia. So it's like we know about long flights. And Edinburgh, Edinburgh, it is seven hours from New York City, which is like just a little bit more than New York City to LAX. So it is far, but it's not too terribly far. And I want to go back to Scotland at some point.

It's a beautiful, beautiful country. Great golf. I think we were all stunned by Edinburgh and how beautiful that place is. We got to spend a couple hours there, walked around a little bit, ate lunch. you could spend two weeks there and I don't think you'd be able to see everything. So yeah, it's good to be back stateside, good to participate in a mini golfing tournament.

It's just been a whirlwind. This whole year for us has been a whirlwind and we're just going to keep it rolling, I guess. You know, I do feel like we say that a lot, but I think that's a good sign. The thing is continue to escalate in terms of the whirlwind degree and it's just go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

It's great. It's a fantastic thing. When this podcast comes out, I mean, we'll be in mirror, or minutes away from watching the best players in the world play in the open championship. My alarm is set, I believe, for 4 a.m. Eastern time. I think Rory T's off at like four late in the fours just before 5 a.m. local time here in the Eastern time.

So it's just kind of slabs you. I'm not going to make it. I used to do this all time, but it's been such a crazy trip with us being five, six hours ahead trying to get sleep that I'll just, I'll just die and cease to be a human being because I'm 35 now and I can't just stay up all the time forever and ever, never, never, never, never, ever, never, ever. But I believe Paul Laurie is going to hit the first tee shot at like, I don't know, two in the morning.

I think it's 1.35 a.m. Eastern time and the Tiger T's off at 935 Eastern time, eight hours later. Also, I've been watching so much live from coverage and they went through this in good detail. I didn't even realize and remember that the Open Championship is the only championship that doesn't do first and 10th teas. They just send people off all day from the first tee, which makes sense because the sun is up perpetrator. It just doesn't go down in the summer in Scotland.

So it makes sense. They can literally send people off from 6 a.m. until 5 p.m. And you can just plague off. I mean, we did it ourselves. We teed off at like 6 and we finished and we're able to play fine. So it's going to be a long couple days of golf. I'm excited to get over.

up. People were going nuts about the old course at St. Andrews, how firm and fast it is. Everybody's raving about that. I went through this afternoon because I was catching up from our travel. I watched Tiger's press conference start to finish. I watch Rory's press conference start to finish. I will watch Kalamor Kawa's press conference start to finish. You could not believe how many times these guys just said firm and fast. And they actually referenced and Rory spoke very honestly about the fact that the fairways are faster than the greens. So like, That makes golf impossible. When you're hitting drives from 300 yards out and the ball lands in a fairway that is faster than a green and there are little sneaky bunkers everywhere, rough everywhere, gorse bushes everywhere, wind blowing.

It's not supposed to blow as much as it did throughout the week, but it's going to blow a decent amount, 10 to 15 miles an hour. And they could be wrong about the forecast. So it might blow more. It's going to be fucking sneaky hard, I think, out there. It's going to be epic. I can't wait. I mean, we were just there. We just felt those grounds walking around that course.

It's weird to say, Riggs, if you came back to your homeland in Arizona, like, I'll watch the first T-shot tonight, Wednesday night, and then go to bed and then see, you know, I'll get up early and watch Tiger hit it off and things like that because I'm just can't believe, you know, that he's in this thing, 150th. And, like, I firmly believe Tiger's got a real chance to win. And, yeah, it's a crazy idea that you need to hit it on the green to, like, slow the ball down.

You know, and just in terms like that, mindset. Like you need to hit it on the green to have any and all chance of like stopping that thing. Yeah, I saw Tiger say in his presser, he was like, yeah, it's weird to think about if you have a put from 10 yards off the green. Right. You have to play for the ball to roll faster. Before it gets to the green than you do after. He's like, that just takes getting used to it. Because he said the greens and Rory said this thing too, the greens are pretty pure and they got a little bit of greenness to him. We saw them. We were looking at them. Like the greens don't look burned out yet. They'll probably get there Saturday.

Sunday. But the greens are pretty pure. They're green. They're, they're a little receptive. The first bounces firm, they've been there for 600 years. But like that difference between the fairway and the greens and like what the RNA is going to do and they're going to put tight pen locations because they don't want the score to be a million under par. It's just going to be a really, really, really, really interesting tournament, not even considering the history and the big names and the storylines. Just from the actual golf, like we talk a lot. We've talked. We've talked. for five years now on this podcast every year about how I think from a pure golf spectating vantage point when you watch television coverage of the Open Championship, it is more

interesting than any other tournament that you watch because the ball will just bounce and like roll into a fucking assonine spot that you know that person doesn't believe their ball is in and it's fucking hilarious to watch as an observer. and we're going to get that at St. Andrews at the 150th with Tiger Woods playing. It's just a lot to look forward to, boys. It's truly incredible. Oh, I think I fucked up my mic there. Hold on.

It's truly incredible. It's the fact that we've, whenever we're there, it always adds to it for me, specifically because I'm, I just picture myself walking up 17, walking up 18. Right. Just becomes tangible. You're like, I was just there. just felt those grounds. When I was there, FaceTime my dad, when I was there facing my dad, I was like,

pay attention to this. And then when you're watching on TV, picture that, like, hopefully Tiger is walking up this fair way, like to go win the thing. It's such a cool moment. There's a lot of guys to be excited about it. It's not just Tiger Woods. There's a lot of good golf being played. I mean, the leaderboard, I'm assuming, is going to be absolutely stacked.

And it's going to be the toughest test in golf. So many cool shot shaping shots. You got to play with the ground. It's just how golf was meant to be played. And you've got guys that just can't handle it, which is also fun to watch. Like certain guys just aren't link-style golfers. And that adds to why the open is super fun. Some people just can't handle Augusta.

They just like they find themselves in the wrong spots at Augusta on the greens and they can't do it. They're just perennial bad players at Augusta National. Same thing in Scotland. And it'll be fun to see if any guys can get over the hump. And then also the thing I was. looking forward to is our guy Max Homa and Mani Fitz playing with Tiger. How can they handle that teeing off with the absolute living legend that is Tiger Woods at the 150th fucking open? You have to tee off next to Tiger.

Max Homa's already tweeting about how awesome it's going to be. He doesn't care how fucking, what did he call it? He's like it might be childish or whatever he said or might be what's the word I'm looking for. What did he use? What do you tweet? I look it up. I can Google it or just search it on Twitter. I can't even think of the word.

Yeah, he had a great tweet. I don't know what it was either. I can't think of the word. I agree. It's going to be. Oh, he called it corny. Corny. It might be corny.

Yeah, it's corny, but who cares I'm playing with the freaking goat? That's awesome, man. The fact that that guy, when we watch TV, knows that he's playing with the goat and he's going to be soaking it all in. That's all you want.

You want to learn these guys' personalities and Max Huma brings you into that world. We know exactly I was feeling on the first tee. It's fucking amazing. So I'm jacked up, though. He signs up, playing in the open at St. intrus and he's got Tiger Woods for two days.

I mean, like that's a good tea time. It's like showing up to your local muni and just like getting like you just get paired up with a really good guy or a really good golfer. It's like that was just a good tea time. Got really lucky with that pairing. He's just got a fucking good tea time. It's super cool. I was, uh, I want to get into a couple of Scotty Sheffler.

He made a, uh, he had a good quote about what to expect. And so did Joe Griner, who was Max Homer's catty. First I want to talk about whoop. Whoop is the world's most powerful, personalized digital fitness and health. coach, an official fitness wearable of the PGA and LPGA tours. I have to credit whoop because last night, past the fuck out, then crazy travel, time zones, your brain's in a weird spot, doesn't know where you're at, what country you're in, what, what mindset you're in.

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Go to Woop.com into the code four. That's F-O-R-E to save 15% off at checkout. That's Woop. the code four to save 15% off at checkout. And look, I know we're talking a lot about this tournament. We're going to get into a couple of these quotes. But from a golf standpoint and architecture versus views and all of this, you really can't, no matter who you are, no matter what kind of architect you are, you cannot compete with

600 years of history and of a course being there and maturing and firming out to a point where every single slope on this golf course dramatically affects a shot to where Rory was saying and his presser, I think people have to lay back because if you hit a drive up near a green, the greens are the fairways are so firm. And the greens, while yes, they're green and luscious, the first bounce is so firm that if you're up near the greens within 20, 30, 40 yards, you cannot hit anything close to a full shot that can enact spin. They can get the ball close to holes. The RNA is not going to have wind according to the forecast like they obviously would

love to have. So they're going to have to tuck pen locations in order to keep San Andrews and the test of time and all that. So they're going to have to tuck pen. So to get balls close to greens, even though on a lot of these holes, guys are going to be able to absolutely rip drives up near the greens. The greens are so tricked out and are so firm and the conditions and the Lynx golf is so fucking lynxy to what makes all the architecture geeks want to come themselves that you literally are going to have to lay back and not hit it up near the green is what Rory is saying makes me so excited because on every PGA tour event that you watch, it's pretty fucking soft and pathetic in terms of the gorse presentation.

And a guy, you just watch them over and over and over again. They just throw wedges in, spin it one hop, check, stop. And they have a put from two to like, nine feet for Bertie and whoever makes the most of those just wins by a million. And it's great. And what you're going to get here is going to be guys have to genuinely think their way through this fucking place. And like Tiger Woods has been hitting bump and runs with a four iron, a four iron.

He's walking his way around hitting short game shots at the oldest course in the world with a fucking four iron. So if that doesn't make you want to turn on your television and watch what the hell is going on, I don't know what will because that is interesting. It's different. you never get it when you watch golf. And they're playing for probably the coolest prize in the history of golf, which is the 150th anniversary.

Like, I think the only thing cooler to win would be the first open championship. Like, I don't know how you can win something in golf that is cooler than winning the 150th. Rory said that. Tiger said that. Everybody has said that. And now we get to just watch them go try to play this course competing for that. It's just fucking super excited. Yeah, it is.

I mean, like, it's this or Augusta, but I think this is better than Augusta when it's at the old course. Like, I think you're going to have to fight your own self to be like, you wake up just because your body's like, dude, the open's going. You just roll over and just turn it on and now you're just up at 3 a.m. And you're like, yeah, all right. Well, I watched golf from like three to, I don't know, midnight because the sun truly, if you visit Scotland this time, it goes down at I think 11 or. maybe closer to midnight and then it's back up again at 3 a.m. It's the most outrageous, like, soul cycle, sun cycle of all time. But like, I think we're all just going to wake up and be like, nope, TV's on, like rigs you're in a hotel room. That's the easiest flip on of a TV that there ever is.

It'll be on when I go to sleep. Right. So it's just like, I'm giddy about it. Like, I can't wait to watch it all. We were just there walking the ground, seeing people in bunkers. Like, you know, I can't wait to see somebody just in a possible lie with their leg, flared out to the side, looking to the caddy being like, dude, what do we do here? I forget who it was the other day, but they putted it backwards to give themselves a lie in a bunker. Like, all that stuff is just going to be epic. So yeah, I mean, like, it's the best.

Like, it's going to be so fun. And then Saturday and Sunday morning, wake up, grab a cocktail, and then you're just watching the open in the morning. Can't beat it. So pumped for it to be here. And then obviously to have just been there, like feeling. the atmosphere or feeling the energy. Yeah, I mean, it's the open.

We got Tiger Woods playing in the open. He's going to tee it up. Just ecstatic about this week. I think he's going to win. He's going to win. I think he has to win. He's walking. He's walked a million holes out there this week.

Is flipping on a TV at a hotel easier than at your house? Is that what you said? It feels easier because there's only like one apparatus. Like you just have the clicker in there and then like some crumbie like phone. You know what I mean? I would say it's like the hardest. flipping on a TV experience I ever have because it's like you're jaded because you you text me the other night when we were in Scotland that you couldn't find your remote and I was like it was embarrassing

and Nate Bargatsy has a bit about it and his current rotation of jokes if you go see him on tour but it's very funny about like having to ask the like the concierge a question that you know they're going to think you're an idiot about like something like where's the remote and you just like don't ask him it's very funny I'll let him Trent and I had to do it with the AC unit. Neither of us could figure out how to get our AC on. My point about these fucking TVs in hotel rooms is like you turn on the power and you're not on channels yet. You have like a two minute load up screen.

You've got some sort of layout that's on front that's like welcome to this hotel. Like do you want the connections? Do you want the streaming? Do you want the guide? And it's just like, all right. And it's always delayed. You like hit like channel up and then it's like a second. And then you hit two channels up and it's like, oh, now we're going to go three.

You ever have that happened to you? where it won't catch up. It's delayed. So you know, you're hitting it to get to 36 and it's like, I don't know where I'm at and it goes over. It's almost like it like runs too fast and gets to 39. I will say to defend large a little bit,

the one thing I will say is that hotel rooms are sort of, if they're doing it right, they're simplistic enough that they know the TV is like the focal point. Right. Whereas like if you have an actual room in your home, you might have photographs and like you care about the design or the aesthetic of the room. This is a functionality utilitarian situation.

here when you're at a fucking hotel. That TV is plastered in front of your face. There's a fucking remote and like a bar of soap when you arrive and those are the only two things that they give you. So like it is pretty, it is pretty much like this is in front of your grill piece. Here's how you operate it with this little thing here. And if you can't figure that out like we can't.

I'm sorry. There's nothing more. There's nothing more simple than your own remote. Your own remotes like your own like dick. It's just like you know it like the back of your hand. I know my way around my remote like he wouldn't believe. It's crazy. When I'm in a new room, it's like, what the fuck is this little apparatus?

Whatever. I'm not going to harp on that comment too long. I want to say what Trent Daddy said, you need to make that point again. Tiger Woods has walked a lot of golf, a lot of holes of this golf course. I think it was 58, right? Yeah. He's walked a lot of golf. And I have to say, and that champions challenge thing, he looked fucking amazing.

He's been driving greens. he's looked absolutely excellent. He's got all the shots. They're zooming in on him when he's on the fucking live from coverage on the range. And again, he looks absolutely excellent. He's an artist around this place. He's a magician. He likes to pick his way around and strategize.

He's playing chess while the other guys are playing checkers. He's won in 2000, the year 2000, when he didn't hit a single ball into 112 bunkers they have on this fucking golf course. he beat the field by eight shots. And he said afterwards, when I asked, he said, I hit the ball better there than I did at Pebble Beach three weeks before when he won by 15. They came back in 2005. He won by five shots. He had a new swing.

He was on the Hank Haney train at that point, not on the Butch Harmon train, friend of the program, probably the best show we've ever done. So totally new golf swing. He still won by five. He interrupted a fucking interviewer today who said, or yesterday, who said, Hey, you've said a few times is one of your favorite courses. He goes, no, no, this is my favorite golf court. So he loves this place to death. He literally sat out the United States Open at the TCC, Brookline.

Francis, we met the whole fucking deal. He sat that thing out so that he could focus on this event and make sure he was comfortable for this event. He has said walking around and in his interview that it's very obvious this championship means more than any other, because it's 150th, it's the old course, the whole shebang. And if there was somebody who's going to win this fucking golf tournament, why wouldn't it be Tiger Woods? Right. He's soaking it up and enjoying it and playing so much golf out there

that he had people thinking, and he put it in my head a little bit, that he was going to retire after this tournament. Now, it probably is true that this is likely the last time he'll be able to play at a high level when the Open Championship is at the old course, because it's going to be a few years down the line. He's already up there. His body's not getting any younger. That leg is, we all know what that leg is.

But he really is, he looks like a kid in a candy store. There's clips of him with Roy. There's clips of him with John Daly. Like everybody's hugging. Everybody's having a good time. And he's really soaking it up. So I mean, and yeah, it'd be the cherry on top if he could just win the whole fucking thing. For a mere mortal, this would be too much anticipation and way too much hype for someone

to then go out and win the championship that we're talking about. Someone's this excited, this much talk about him. They're like, I waited for this one. In the game of golf, professional golf, like, the odds of you winning a tournament are like 0%. The fact that we're like he saved himself to go win this one. And then like we're saying he's probably going to go do it. Just speaks to how insanely amazing and competitive he is at this game. Think about that.

Like he could play out of his fucking bird and still finish, I don't know, seven strokes off the lead. Like, you know what I mean? That's just the way professional golf works. He could, he could do everything he wanted to do and still lose because someone else was just better.

But he could have also, that could have happened throughout the entire 2000s. Right. I know. In the year 2000, like somebody could have just beat him, but yet he just won every fucking. I know.

He's just better than other people. And I know because I've heard all kinds of, uh, people are worried about the old course. People were worried that the old course is 600 fucking years old. And we had, uh, Mr. San Andreas, Roger McStraveck,

was telling us how they've been playing since the fucking 1400s. And you think in your own mind, how the fuck can a course that is that old that got lit up a little bit in 2015, that's not supposed to have crazy wind, not have people shoot $8 million under par. And I saw a quote from Scotty Schaeffer that said, I would hate to be a caddy this week.

It is so hard. And I got to quote myself from Joe Griner, who is Max Homeless Caddy, who they will be paired with Tiger Woods tomorrow, when this tournament kicks off. And I asked him, how awesome is that place? And he said, pretty fun and hard. And I said, hard, you mean firm or hard?

You mean difficult? And he goes, fairways are rolling at 13 with crosswinds and bunkers everywhere. Yes, it's really hard. So I don't think people are going to shoot as low as others are anticipating. I heard a panic number that people are like, maybe somebody's going to shoot 30 under. Rory said at his press conference, which again, I watch back today because I want hear every word. He said, I think somewhere in the teens will win this thing. He was like,

I don't see somebody getting to 20 under par and winning. Yes, if they get to 20 under, I think they'll win by many. So if somebody wins this thing at, let's call it 15, 16 under par, I think that would be a massive victory for everyone, basically. Yeah, no, I agree. Think about us playing in Scotland and how many times you'd hit it down the middle and then it'd just end up in a bunker or you just like, for us it doesn't make that big of a difference because we're not actually we played our own matches and they were super intense and we wanted to win them but we had no expectations of trying to shoot a certain number out there yes we had our own personal goals but like if my ball went into the heather or into the bunker i just chalked it up to we're in scotland and that's a crazy lie and that's just what happened when you're trying to play against the guys that you played against at brookline and you're trying to play against the guys that you compete against on the pGA tour every single week and you know that they're making birdies and they're making eagles and they're making eagles and they're They're fucking chipping it close. For those guys to have these fairways running at 13th and running out into bunkers, that's like detrimental to their game for you to find a bunker and the other guy not to.

Like, they're not just a bunker. You're hitting the ball sideways. We've seen it. Like it's just a wasted stroke. And at that level, in that type of tournament and that type of championship, a wasted stroke is like, might as well be a bullet to the head. You're done. It's over.

So I can't imagine how stressful it is for them to play at that high of a level. Imagine we were playing at that high of a level where you're like every thing that you thought was going to happen now went wrong, you're done. It's over. Well, yeah. I mean, each bunker is a stroke penalty. So if you're like, I'm going to be within, you know, top players are probably all supposed to be like preweek within five strokes to leave. Every time you're in a bunker, you're just one stroke worse than that. Like, you know, it's just there are little pockets of almost water like around the course. There's 112 little pockets of water that you can't get into. And then also, if it's downwind, you've got to fly one. bunker and then stop it before the next one somehow some way when they're rolling in a 13 have huge hop so it's like every shot that they take i feel like is a gutsy approach shot that they've got to hit and land in a certain area to have a successful hole it's not like just pipe a drive you're in a bunker you know maybe it's a quarter stroke penalty on like the tour average like it's fundamentally like a full stroke penalty if you're in some of these bunkers in some of like the spots you can be so yeah i mean

it just, it takes an insane amount of focus the whole way through and like, yeah, you need to luck out, maybe a little weather to set yourself up going in the weekend. But I think to like that point, it just takes an insane amount of focus and effort to be like, all right, every hole, every shot, we got to be thinking where the wind is and then distances every time. And we got to be dialed in on those. You know what can help you see those bunkers would be Shady Race. Sure would.

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I'm curious if other folks on the show would think if somebody shot 30 under to win, would that ruin it for you? No, I don't care about the final number. I don't care about the final number as long as the final grouping is close. I just want competition towards the end. I'm rarely rooting for the golf course.

I saw a lot of tweets about how do you not rooting for the golf course to St. Andrews. I think it's more impressive and more fun to actually watch the guys maneuver their way around an impossible golf course. We know the course is hard. If someone shoots dirty under, it has nothing to do with the difficulty of the golf course being easier or not. Like right now, the world we live in, we know that the facts are the golf course is extremely difficult. If someone goes out there and performs at an insanely high level and shoots ridiculously low, that's super impressive and awesome to watch.

If it's one guy, if it's one guy I'm fine with it, if it's a bunch of guys, I'm not far less fine with it. Because it makes you worry about the future of that place. Like, can it withstand and fight off where the game is going? Like if one guy just goes crazy

and shoots 30 under the rest are at like 19 or whatever, like DJ at TVC Boston when he won by like 12 right if that happens I'm fine with it but if a bunch of guys are just pepper in that place

and it's they just kill it and the weather is yeah I guess the weather isn't supposed to be as extreme as it can be so that obviously plays into it because weather is a huge factor there but it would make me concerned

about the longevity yeah the longevity of it which sounds insane because it's been there forever and it's like you know we had Rob McStravec on and he was like they've been playing here forever. So they're going to keep playing here forever. But if guys, the way the game is changing,

they could kill that place if they get the right type of weather. That would be such a, that would be awful. I agree with you. Like I agree with a little bit of both points. I mean, like fundamentally, if they're shooting 30 under, it's just an easier golf course, which is just frustrating. Because like I hope they don't just bomb it over everything and are just like, you know, two putting for bird.

and, you know, just making it really easy on the place. Yeah, and then, like, you kind of hope the weather shows up, even though it's forecasted not to. Because, like, I like watching the open and I like watching people, like, struggle. You know, like, the day we had at Dundon Donald, it's like, that's just like you've got to enjoy the pain of being like, it's not going to be perfect today. Golf's an imperfect game, and you've kind of like got to get behind that. And so if it's a clear day, like, I don't know, you know. I think the old course is there forever, but it does make you think of like, will it be there forever if the whole group, you know, T10 is 22 under?

That's going to be pretty frustrating. Yeah, I could agree more. And it's like, I don't know why in my own head I give a shit if somebody's 30. Like, if you win the tournament, you win the tournament, who cares? But I don't want to see something as iconic as St. Andrews ruled obsolete. I want to see it stand the test of time. And I think that it will. I think that it will.

But I do like everybody's kind of been watching the wind forecast and being like, if it doesn't blow, this could get a little dicey. And I do want, I think it's going to hold up. I really truly do. I think something in the teens under par that wins it is totally legitimate. That's hard for any golf course to hold up that much against these guys is difficult because these guys are so unbelievably good. They hit it a million miles.

hit it dead straight. They put it lights out. They're better than they've ever been. Tiger talked about that a lot, being like all the new guys that come on the scene are better than they've ever been. They have better information than they've ever had. And they don't give a fuck about the challenge of coming out new. Colmore Cowell has already got a couple of major championships and a handful of wins under his belt.

He's like 24, wherever the fuck is. And Tiger made the point, too, that like it used to be from 28 to like 34 where your prime years. and now guys are showing up, Jordan Speath, Colin Morikawa, Tiger Woods back in his day, et cetera, et cetera, where in your low 20s, you can just go out there and dominate. So the fact that these players are as good as they are and the course still can stand the test of time is so incredibly impressive and cool and speaks to the design and the firmness and how much it matters. And I don't want people to panic because in 2010, Roy McElroy went out there and shot nine under 63. and then he followed it up within 80 and didn't win the golf tournament.

So I know that we're going to get it early. I know we're going to see guys are going to be 500 through 6. They're going to come out hot and people are going to be tweeting at us. Like this place is a joke. They're going to be bitching. Wait until the, the chips are down and Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening at St. Andrews. I really believe in this golf course.

I believe that it's going to stand up to the test of time. I don't think it's going to be impossibly hard in terms of the score. We're used to U.S. opens and majors and all that. But I think if somebody is 13, 15, 17 under wins this golf tournament for a course that, again, they played in the 1800s. They played open championships there. And really the only thing they've changed is that it's a little bit longer now

that it used to be. If it's still holding up to these fucking guys with Taylormade stealth drivers and mill grind three wedges that they can just. drop in on a dime and roll it in with a tailor-made spider-putter that is impossible to roll offline and it's still holding up in the teens under par which is what rory said i think we're doing pretty fucking good yeah we got the undersclose so anyone that's listening to this that got in there 18 under or better you're getting the shirt of the century honestly we also have a brand new we have a brand new line of shirts go to the barstle store we've been releasing shirts right now

i think it's megan that's been drawing these things the the the the The open shirts that we came up with for St. Andrews and like the whole Scottish theme, the back of these shirts where it's like a crest, a Scottish crest, is the best shit I've ever seen in my life. They are the best shirts we've ever put out. So go and check them out. It is truly incredible how good this line of shirts are. Trent and I were driving with them on the way home from the Hampton just looking at him being like, what the hell? Dave saw me walking out with them being like, this is fire.

And like, he's a guy that likes cool shirts. now. I love a crest. Who doesn't love a crest? Love a crest. Makes you feel distinguished. Also makes you feel like you went somewhere cool wearing that on your back. Go check this out. The whole merch team absolutely crushed this fucking release. It's an amazing collection that we have. And hopefully our tiger does well because we've got one in the fucking bowels. If Tiger Woods gets off to a good star on Thursday, we're just going to release it. It's the best. Dude, they send us that right before we came on. And I was like, we need, we need Tiger to play well for a lot. of reasons, as many reasons as you can think of.

Us releasing that shirt and whatever else we put it on, that's near the top. I got something going on below my desk on the, yeah, did you hear that? That was my, that was your boner? That was that a fucking boner hitting the bottom of the desk. I don't know. That's how good.

I might have not reached that. It's a pretty high desk. I'd need the desk to be like on my lap. So, oh wait, the other thing I was to say is also remember, and I hope that most people like with brains will understand that if there's no when these guys are going to. going to go low. Like, I don't think St. Andrews should be obsolete if these guys are just torching the place because remember when Justin Thomas was like, if you give us good conditions

and no wind, we're going to shoot nothing out here. He's like, if there's no wind involved and it's like soft conditions, we're going to shoot nothing. So like, yeah, St. Andrews is getting you the hard conditions, the hard ground, the things are rolling. But if there's no wind, they're going to torch the place. Like that is what it is. So we do have to, we have to hope for a little bit of nature. But he said soft as well. He said if there's no wind and it's soft. Right. So I was saying we have half of it, which is good. But you're right. If we get fucking no win and these guys could just rip it. I don't know. I don't know what to expect. That's what's so exciting going into it. Like going into a U.S. Open course, you sort of know. Like I,

Matthew Fitzpatrick is what, six under one, the U.S. Open. I think John Rom was somewhere around there as well. Like that is legit. These guys are so fucking good that if you hold the winner, the best player out of the 156 people to six under after four days of golf, less than 200. a day as a golf course, how good these fucking guys are. That is bananas. The guy that played the best that was making every put, was hauling chips, was fucking hitting shots around fucking lips and bunkers on the 72nd hole. That guy that won the thing was only six under.

That golf course is a mean motherfucker. And so for even San Andrew, for any golf course to be able to hold up like that, it's just impressive. It's got to be difficult. The things that we're hearing from people is that it's extremely difficult. it's fast as shit. And the only thing that that means when it's fast is that it's impossible to predict where your ball is going to end up.

You cannot hold a fairway. If a fairway is running at a 13 or somewhere around there and you hit a drive that, by the way, when these guys hit drives are 165, 170, 180, 90, mile an hour ball speed, that puppy is in the air for six, seven, eight seconds. It lands going that fast. And it's supposed to just end up in a good place. Are you fucking kidding me? It's like you might as well shoot it into ice on the fucking Arctic.

Like you don't know where it's going to stop. You have no clue. And now you got hundreds of bunkers all over the place. Rough, fescue. If it's in the rough, you cannot predict where it's going to land on your approach shot, which again,

you're hitting into the same kind of shit. So it's just fucking fascinating to watch. And you're going to have the backdrop of the old course. You got the whole fucking thing. I'm excited. The one question I have for you guys is, do you think it would be? be overall for what we do, good or bad, if a live golfer wins this open championship?

I would say good because it's storyline. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I would say good because that would be some crazy shit if that happened. And that would just be something to talk about. It's got to be a titan of the PGA tour or a live guy for it to be something more than just being the St. Andrew's Open winner. If it's, you know what I mean? If it's fucking run-of-the-mill Paul Casey or something, you know, I don't

fucking know. Like, it's just that's the open winner. St. Andrews, it was a really cool tournament, really cool championship. If it's a Titan of the PGA tour, fucking Tiger Woods, Rory Macoroy, Kalamara Kawa. Amazing. If it's fucking one of the guys from Liv, insane. Insane

storylines. I don't know if you guys got this. Wow. Did you guys, I got the feeling when I was over there with caties and just kind of like talking that the Scottish just like in general are not fans of like live tour players whether it's greed or something like that because that's not really in their culture we talked about like you know the burger shop just being like yep the burger shop in town a is like still the same like named burger shop in town B and so I don't know a lot of my caddies were pretty like negative on the live

tour and like kind of cussing it a little bit that way um and so I'd be interested if there's a tour player how well he gets treated by basically like the fan base in town. My gut is saying that like they're going to be like negatively rooted on, you know, Bood, if you will, as they go around the old course if they're in contention. I don't know. I'll be interested to like watch and see, but that's kind of like the gut feel that I was getting from people in Scotland.

Yeah, I don't know. I actually, I didn't talk to, like I didn't talk to my caddies about it, but the culture over there is certainly different. I will say when we were walking around following J.T. and Tiger for a little bit on Sunday, I think that was. As we were walking back to our hotel, we ran into Phil's group.

And Phil was sitting a drive, and I don't even remember who he was playing with. Danny Willett. He's playing with Danny Willett. And but he was being treated normally by the crowd that day. I don't know if that's indicative of what it would be like if you were in contention, but that was the feel that I got watching him interact with the crowd on that particular T-box. Fucking Johnny Goodro just went to the Columbus Blue Jackets, just out of the clouds. It was between the Islanders and the Devils and the Blue Jackets just offered him seven years,

nine, nine point eight million. He took it. It's every year with this motherfucking team, the Islanders, where it's like, it's between one team and the Islanders, Lou is really in the running and I'm always getting geared up, getting a little boner on me. And then it's like, nope, sorry, kid. You got to go out there with Andy Andrioff this year. Fuck my life. I picked up Frankie Borelli at 630 this morning to go to the Hamptons to play mini golf.

And it's just, you know, you pull in the driveway. You get them in the car. And then there's like that 15 minutes or 10 minutes where it's like, we're both just thinking like, man, it's early. But then the first thing that came out, he was like, I think the islanders might get Johnny good drug too. But he's like, but I'm not going to tweet about it because every time I tweet about them acquiring a player like that, they never get them. So it's, it's good to see this thing come full circle, although I am, I'm bummed that they didn't get him. It's fucking Columbus blue jackets. Who the fuck wants to play in Columbus? Everyone's like, oh, he doesn't want to play on that shit

island. Everyone that plays here loves Long Island. They have like the best house ever. They live in Manhasset or Garden City. They belong to like seven different country clubs, the best golf in the world on Long Island and they get to go play hockey like every once in a while it's a fucking sick life out of here Columbus is the worst why didn't he want to stay in calgary i don't know i think he wants to be closer to his family and they live on like the border of jersey and p a so like Columbus is a little bit of an easier trip i guess now the devils were supposed to be a front runner he just told them to go fuck themselves johnny good joe i guess is just a piece of he was he a fan of the rangers growing up i think the flyers flyers yeah and then the like apparently the flyers were

mad like players in the flyers are mad that didn't go after him he was mad i don't know uh it's just down just need a guy like that it's just sickening to me rangers had a ton check i mean he's the same guy's cop and they paid more money for him but it is what it is no he's nothing better than that but i agree cop scored like 11 goals in the playoffs you guys just like didn't offer him anything you know we're not going to be mad about it was when we go to myrtle beach boys i am really excited to go to merdle beach we've done a lot of traveling went to scotland we're going all these different places merdle beach is a home game when it comes to like elite

Agree. Game time. We need a home game. We're due for a home game. Need a home game. Dude, I have something for Myrtle Beach. I think we have this on camera somewhere. It's going to be in the travel series.

But when we were in Scotland, we were talking to the caddies at one of the places. I can't remember what it was. It might have been Dunnell. And the caddies were saying to us, like, why do you guys come out here? Because it was whipping rain. And he goes, you guys have Myrtle Beach.

like that's you've got Myrtle Beach in the United States Why ever come here for golf? Like they were saying like you've got Not a bad point bars Golf beautiful weather Everything that you need to have fun is there Why do you come here in the cold? He goes he's like look and it was like raining sideways

I know we're going there we're fucking going to Myrtle Beach So Myrtle Beach South Carolina if you did not know Is the golf capital of the world Home to more than 70 golf courses Sandy White beaches local breweries, hundreds of restaurant options, pretty much anything you could want to do. Myrtle Beach has it. Two of the courses you must visit during a trip to Myrtle Beach are Caledonia Golf and Fish Club

and True Blue Golf Club. Two courses are just across the street from one another and are considered the crown jewels of Myrtle Beach. Sounds like a nice little 36 old day. Both layouts have been named by all major publications as top 100 public courses in the United States of America and simply put Caledonia and True Blue are must plays in Myrtle Beach. visit caledonia golf vacations.com to plan your golf trip and be sure to tell them for play sent you that's caledonia golf vacations.com plan play enjoy yourselves go book your golf trip to stop

the fun does not stop once you finish your round of golf at caledonia and at true blue 19th whole overlook in the 18th green at caledonia is a must with numerous restaurants waterfront bars fishing charters and the beach all just minutes away. Visit Caledonia golf vacations.com. Tell them four play sent you. All right. I have to say that I really don't know after this conversation how to proceed with tomorrow to the point where I'm like, do I just stay up?

Do I watch every single golf shot? Do I want to miss Paul Laurie's first tee shot at like 1.30 in the fucking morning Eastern time. Do we know what time the leaders are going to tee off on Sunday? Like this whole thing, the five hours ahead behind, we were like,

we were there. So it feels like we should know. But I will say that now that I'm back, I'm almost more confused this to the time because I keep wanting to go, I keep wanting to go back five hours, not ahead five hours and understand where we're at. And I kind of like that about the British Open as well, that it messes with your time.

That it's almost like such a unique, cool experience that the times aren't even. fucking correct that they're all messed up and you can't comprehend why people are playing and where they're playing. So I just, I don't know. I think the golf's on USA too, which is USA. That's funky. Yeah, I saw that it's on like USA Network.

I think it's on like Peacock than USA for, and I saw that it's on USA for like a million hours. I think it's on USA from like for 12 hours straight or something. It's like space. It's just expanding, but there's really not taking over anything else. It's not like USA at anything else on. So when our listeners listen to listen to Dr. Eric Smith here in a little bit, that'll be pretty much it.

People are going to love this interview, by the way. So good. Oh, the best. The absolute best. How many golf go? I want to hear about, I mean, I know you can't give away the details. You can't give away the results. I'll say that like, well, yeah, I mean, it was run like a real tournament

where there was a cut and then, like, repaid. parings and then like in the beginning it was almost like a shotgun start and then at the end it was like the like out of the top maybe 20 people it would go off like like the worst

guy that made the cut went off first and then the final group went off at the end just like a golf tournament. It went 40-20-10 or 40-2016 yeah 40-2016 and then there was like for the last group there was the holders the name holders and every time so I'll make a birdie they change it from like whatever

was 18 to 19 it was fucking six no matter where you were in the course you knew what you were doing and like without spoiling too much like at one point i was on one side of the course and other guys were on the other side of the course and i made a big putt and it was like the roars from the early group were startling the the leaders and like they're like what is he got going on over there and i was making a surge like a surge so yeah no it's um it was fucking crazy man it was hyped up um fun. Taylor made was all there. Bio light. Yep, the whole thing. It was hot. Biolite was necessary. It was hot as

balls. And this company, putterly, which is really cool that you're going to learn a lot about. They're going to be working with Barstool a lot, especially with us. They're like this new fucking putting club slash bar that they're popping up all around the country. It's going to be like 21 plus. You walk in and it's just like a mini golf course, but it's going to be all itemized to what city it's in. Like maybe you're like, like in a place that it's going to look like a library and like you have to put through the books and like through it's going to be fucking awesome a really cool bar they're sponsoring the whole thing i just thought it was really well done hot hot as fuck like like sunburn right on your fucking asshole

type sunburn like it's today we got it that's violent sunburn it was violent sunburn i think it's 108 here in arizona so yeah you get you get that burn if you want it out this way i'm always amazed that people associate how hot it is outside with sunburn what do you mean yeah I mean because what then you go into UV index rigs is that where you're going because like that's really the tell it could be like 80 with a well no if it's like hot out that doesn't make the sun's not like the sun doesn't hurt you more if it's just like no but like that sounds wrong no that's got to be wrong because if it's like 30 and like it's 30 and like it's 30 and it's 100, you're going to have a better chance

to get in sunburn if it's 100, right? Has to be true. The UV index definitely has to do with heat, right? I mean, it can't be like, you can't get a nine UV index on like a 10 degree day, can you? Where's, where's Dr. Okay, here's what I would ask is that if it's, if it's 40 degrees out and you're playing golf, you'd think if it's 95 degrees out, like,

what I don't understand is when people are like, yeah, it's like chilly. I don't need to wear sunscreen. I don't, I've never understood that. No, that's another thing. I just think that I agree,

but I think we're asking about new. Go ahead. Well, when he asked me like, it was hot and I'm like, yeah, man, I got fucked. It was bad.

I got sunburnt today. Like it was brutal out there. It's just like a different type of hot. No cloud cover. You're never out of the fucking sun. There's no trees. It was just one of those days that was like, who our skin was burning today.

As opposed to like, 85 and like kind of a breeze and you kind of got away with it because whatever there's cloud cover and it's just like there's just difference. Here's a little more. He's a metaphorical almost even like you. I don't think mine is literal.

So if I have a question, if it's all right, so if it's 55 degrees out and sunny, then you spend two hours out there you just stand there for two hours. If you were to spend those same two hours in 100 degree heat,

Is one sunburn going to be worse than the other? My answer with no scientific evidence would be yes, that the 100 degree sunburn is going to be worse than the 55 degree sunburn. Has to be. Mine's going to be no, and I have no idea if that's true or not. The answer would be, does UV index go up with heat? I'm going to Google it really fast. You need to Google that, Frankie?

Yeah. does UV index go up with heat? Does air temperature affect the UV index? The short answer is no. There's a common notion that the hotter it is outside, the more likely you are to develop a sunburn. But the amount of UV radiation that reaches Earth on any given day is not affected by the air temperature.

That gave us both answers. No, it didn't. It brings his right. The beginning of it, no, didn't the beginning of it say what we were saying? It's saying the short answer is no. There's a common notion that the hotter it is outside, the more likely you are to develop a sunburn. But is there's some base level.

But then there's another one. It is true that sunburn is more likely in warmer seasons or climates. That's the internet right there, babe. Yeah, that's the, well, I think that's saying that it's more likely in warmer seasons because the UV happens to be at a higher level during warmer. But there's some sort of baseline, like summer months is going to be more likely to get on. Has higher. Yes. Right.

Right. The trend's question is. Right. I'm with you. Go forward. Here's what I would say in general. I've always thought in my, and again, I didn't know the answer, but I just have always thought it seems ridiculous to be that people think they're more likely to get sunburn

if it's warmer out. Like the temperature is determined typically by like currents and fucking atmospheric stuff that it is by the thing that's eight and a half light minutes away. Then like it like the sun UV doesn't change. The thing is like it doesn't change if it's a little warmer out. just you're still getting burned by it is the way that I've always thought about it. Yeah, but in the winter, you're further away from the sun. So that definitely makes a difference.

The UV index has to be lower. It does. I wish we could actually ask Dr. Eric Smith. Wow. I know. I don't like that would be such a great question for Dr. Eric Smith. What should we send it to the man? Next time.

There's one thing that we all have to tell. He said some sort of number that we're going to have to switch around, the 30,000. It was that end up being wrong. He actually texted me saying, I just did my calculations, and that was an incorrect number. So maybe we'll edit around that. He gave us a number that he says it's just exponentially wrong, and he just can't have that. Just say it now, and then people wouldn't people listen to that. What was the number?

Well, it was the speck of dust that goes through the telescope. He says was traveling at 30 miles a second. He said it went 30,000 miles a second. 30,000 kilometers a second. It's actually 30. Okay. It's pretty, it was off. Well, that's, all right.

Well, that's incredible fast. willing to admit his mistakes. I appreciate that about Dr. 30 kilometers a second. That's what he said. I don't think about how fast that is. It's about 30 kilometers second. I think I said 30,000 kilometers a second,

L.O. My bad. So, I mean, I think he knew right away. What a guy. He logged off and he's like, that seems way off. And he just wants to make sure you make sure you can be correct. Something about Dr. Eric Smith saying L.O. my boss. Yeah, I agree.

Think about how fast something's going if it's going 30 kilometers a second. It's fast. A second. Fast. Super fast. I mean, if you're going 60 miles in an hour, you're going fast as fuck. This is going 30 kilometers a second. This is the second time we've had Dr. Eric Smith on.

And this time we got a little bit more like, all right, we're going to ask you the real shit at the end. Because there were some things that we just needed to get off our chest. And he found he answered them. I think the first time we were kind of feeling him out and didn't want to like disrespect his like level of fucking intellectual. knowingness of the fucking universe and his job as being the fucking astrophysics division chief scientist in Washington, D.C. It's like, you don't want to ask him like,

where does God come from if the Big Bang is right? But this time we're like, you know what, motherfucker? And we don't call him a motherfucker, but you know what, dude, like, I want to know these fucking answers now. And he gave it to us. You're throwing a lot of wheeze in there. There was a lot of you being like, what's this? What's next?

What's after the thing you know the most? most about like why like why does it go here it's no it's they were good questions because people want to know that ship but it was just like yeah you're like all right you guys know all this information and then what and then what and that's a he's an amazing guest he really is he is quick transition of that 30 kilometers per second it's a hundred and eight thousand kilometers an hour which is ungodly fast yeah it's ungodly fast he um because like a second we don't talk about things that go over in a per second but just thinking about 108,000 kilometers every hour.

I mentioned this before we started recording, but I think it needs to soak in for the listeners that I think this might be like the most relevantly impressive guess we've ever had. When it comes to like what he did for the last 20 years to launch this thing into space, it has now produced a picture and multiple pictures that have now blown the minds of the entire world.

This is a man that got this done. He went to fucking D.C., got the funding, went in there, worked with this. colleagues had all these like papers written on like how it was going to be done he worked on hubble he worked on this thing he's working on the next one he is a reason for why it's in space and now we get to speak to him 24 hours after it was in time square like the photo of this release was in time square like in a movie where people were looking up his image as being like holy shit and he had something to do with that now we got him on our golf podcast i almost wanted to

apologize to him because and Riggs referenced it a little bit when we were talking to him but we had said we were being assholes because we were seeing how we excited Frankie was about it like being like if there's not a little green man in these pictures then I don't want to see it like that's fucking pointless if we're not going to see those things but then I was actually in the we had just arrived at the Edinburgh airport is that where we threw a flow out of the skeleton yeah and that's when I first saw the picture of the deep universe picture where you see it's the famous one that everybody's seen now and I just like I felt very human I was just like oh like that's fucking amazing that like we're so small and this just proves that like all that

bullshit about like I just want to see aliens but then you see what they're actually trying to do and what they're trying to look at and it's just I knew when I saw that picture that it was going to be a picture that everyone was going to remember for the rest of their lives like if whenever if you have kids or grandkids that's the picture you're probably going to look at at some point and be like the James Webb telescope fucking took this picture and the whole world stopped and was like wow that doesn't happen very often no he's got a virtual background I mean our tax dollars are safe so he's doing a great job but he's got a virtual background where it's a cloud

where stars are forming and that just is it's the coolest image in the world like that's when Rick says like yeah it's kind of aliens are bust that was right after he said like yeah this is a cloud where stars are being created. I was like, dude, you got to give them a little credit here. I mean, this is the most impressive thing ever. Then you're just like, yeah, it's kind of alien to a bus podcast. You know, three, fours. I've always been deep into whatever the fuck this thing came back with.

I was going to get hard on. And not only is it just like the creation. They're looking to see back in time how it was created. That's how far these dust clouds are that they're saying, all right, I want to see the creation of this. Even though right now in this world we're living in, it's already created. How did it get there?

And they're going back in time by looking at the light. It's crazy. You're going to listen to it. He's not about 30 minutes. I feel like now we're over talking about things that we talked about with him. I feel like you should just hear it from the guy's mouth. All right. You know what else is impressive from a scientific standpoint?

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improving their game. He legitimately loves that. And that's what's going to happen if you use Taylormade. So go check out Taylormade.com slash barstool. Use the promo code barstool at checkout for free shipping. Here is a friend of the program now, probably the smartest person that we'll ever have on this show, Dr. Eric Smith from NASA. Yes, he did. There he is. Yeah. Yes, he did. What a background. That is so good. It's crazy. Hey, doctor. Hey, how's it going? Doing great. How are you? Yeah, better now.

Yeah, we're doing better now for sure. Quite the photo you got behind you there. Yeah, this is one of Webb's first images that would release yesterday. It's a Karina Nebula. I think they call it the cosmic cliffs. It really looks very three-dimensional. And these are, of course, all public now. You can go download them and blow them up and have them on your computer. And for all of them, you can just keep zooming in and in and in and they get more amazing the closer you look. Dr. Eric Smith, I got to say you have a little bit of a pep to your step today.

You've got a smile on your face. I can feel the energy is different today than it was last time. We're just going to hop right into this interview. If you haven't already, if you can't already tell, we are joined by Dr. Eric Smith, the program scientist for James Webb Telescope Program. He also serves as the Astrophysics Division Chief Scientist in Washington, D.C., Dr. Eric Smith, for the second time, welcome to our golf podcast, the Four Play Golf Podcasts, presented by Barcelona Sports.

Welcome to the show. The James Webb Telescope just released its first images to the world yesterday. We have you on the show today. It feels like our biggest get, maybe ever, even with the open happening. You guys are hot right now. You guys are hot right now. You guys are hot. How are you feeling right now?

I talked to a couple months ago. How are you feeling right now? now. So obviously it feels really good. I was going to say, you know, I've been expecting this for literally decades now. And it's no surprise the images and the data are good. But when I first saw some of these things, I tell you, I actually kind of giggled because they were so good. I couldn't believe it. Oh my gosh. What do you mean by that? So talk to me. I've seen quite a few. You got the one behind you, which is incredible. Yeah, so obviously this is an audio podcast.

For everybody that doesn't know, Eric Smith has, Dr. Eric Smith has the image as his virtual background. And that's just the proudest virtual background I've ever seen in my life. And it works so damn well. So I think I might switch that image because it is the best one on the internet right now. And the one that's really gone pretty viral, you can see just stars and colors and things everywhere. I tweeted the other day that it looks like the most, you know, like background image on a computer that people could only imagine decades ago and now it's a real photograph.

So talk to me about what are we actually looking at? What have you actually seen Dr. Eric Smith from NASA when you've seen these photographs, these images come in from the telescope? Okay. So first, let me take a step back and say, why did we pick the things we did? And because you're going to learn different things from each of the objects we looked at. So the one that I'm using from my background is one we call Cosmic Cliffs. It's a nebula where stars are being born. It's a big giant dust cloud, light years across, and all along the sharp edge, there's a blue top part where you can see a lot of stars,

and then there's this brownish orange piece below. And that's gas and dust. Because web is an infrared telescope, we can actually see further into that dust cloud than you could with Hubble. So Hubble looked at this thing and told us a lot of stuff, but now we can see forming stars in a way we couldn't with Hubble just because of the wavelength. So immediately on this, we noticed some new features that we hadn't seen before. There's a young star that's shooting out jets and material. And near the top of this picture, there's a little blob. material. It's blasted out part of this cloud away up into the blue part of the dark part where all the

stars are. So the people who study star formation, you know, they're already going to town on this one. We put one of the deep universe, right? That's really what we built web for, was to try to find the first stars and galaxies. And now that's a picture. We used a bunch of different filters. Each filter was about two hours long. And we almost wrote the record. of the farthest object with what amounts to a practice swing, right? Took up, took a practice swing, almost, you know, drove the green with it, if you will. Nice. So I've been saying, you know, we have a Ferrari or like maybe in second year with it right now.

Really? So this was just, I saw a lot of the sneak peek was given out. And it's like this is, this was done before the first cup of coffee in the morning. I saw that quote saying, this image came in before breakfast. What does that actually mean? Was it like, let's see the capabilities of this thing, what it can actually do, and we'll see the image that's coming out. And now going forward, it's going to be more dialed in, more detailed even further. Yeah, yeah.

We knew we wanted to take deep universe pictures. So we said, okay, we'll do a practice one. That's crazy. Well, like two hours, we got as, you know, deeper than Hubble. The Hubble took two weeks to take its picture. We did this in a couple hours, you know, for, you know, for each. filter. So like I say, we almost drove the green not even trying. Yeah. It was, so for me, I get swept up in all this stuff. I get, you know, it blows my mind. It makes me nervous. It

makes me nauseous, the whole entire thing. Seeing that photo, we've seen a million different things in our lives, especially now in this day and age. You watch a movie. You watch guys going interstellar, going through space, whatever. This was the first time where I sat back. I looked at that deep universe photo and I was like, man, that's the real thing. And like, there's, there's galaxies all over there. And it's just, it was really, where were you when you saw this picture moment? Did you feel that same energy around, you know, your office and around NASA? Yeah. I can remember when I was actually up at Space Telescope for a different meeting and the team that was working on producing these things. One guy came and caught me in the hallway

and said, hey, hey, you want to see something? And I'm like, of course I do. So I went out to his office and he pulled up all these things. And, you know, that's the point where I was almost giggling. I just couldn't believe how good the data were. And in that deep universe picture, which as the analogy has been put out there, it's about the same size on the sky if you held, you know, like a little grain of sand that you're at arm's length.

So it's a really tiny patch of sky. It's got about seven or eight thousand galaxies. God, I can't imagine how excited you are right now. I can't even imagine how excited you are right now. So I got to ask because, you know, we, in golf, we talk a lot about when you get a new golf course that has been on your bucket list for a while and you go check it off the list and you play, you always add at least 10 or 20 because during that round, you hear about this course, you hear about that course, you talk to the caddy, you talk to people in a group.

every course that you play, you add 10 more that you need to now play. Have you guys now, in the information that you've gotten in only a few days of photographs, images, have you now gotten infinite number of new questions that you need to try to answer? This was a point that I made at a press conference yesterday. So people had to write their proposals of what they were going to do with Web before it launched. We had to have time, and so we could have these programs lined up. So once it is operating like this now, it had things to look at. And I know what was in those programs, and I said now, like, oh, you guys, you were too timid.

You know, we're going to think totally differently about how to write their proposals that will be due in November, or actually will be doing January next year. And so, yeah, now they've just been given a whole new set of course. horses they got to go and think about because the first one that they were too timid. Wow. That is so amazing to think about. And I was thinking like even on top of that, I guess in the same line of thinking, is there so Hubble obviously like didn't give you the thermal imaging. So then now with this you can see into that cloud.

Is there anything in this image? Because I look at it and I think it's like perfect. I think it's the most amazing image I've ever seen in my life that frustrates you or in the next camera lens you want to uncover. X or Y within this image. So even though we can see into these clouds where stars are forming, if you look in that cosmic cliff, the thing that's in my background, you can see there are some dark patches still. And so those are dust clouds that are so dense that even webs infrared vision can't penetrate

them. So that tells us, you know, that's kind of pointing towards where you need to go next. You need a telescope that sees farther into the infrared to try to see inside those dust clouds. So, yeah, whenever you launch a new telescope, you make new discoveries, and then you go, ah, now I need to know what to do next. Truly hard, Seltzer boys and girls has been the go-to drink for the Barstall Classic for four straight years of the Barstall Classic. We've had massive guests have played in that tournament from Jake Owen, Steph Curry, Kevin Kisner, many others. Naipigazzi played in the Barstow Classic.

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and one of them was a chart? And was that about an exoplanet that was, and they were trying to see if there was condensation and maybe the possibility of rainfall and water on that planet, and that's what was discovered from that image? So this was an exoplanet. We knew about it ahead of time. So we wanted to test out on a known target, you know, how Webb did. And this particular exoplanet, planet is a planet that's not as massive as Jupiter, it's a little bigger in diameter, and it orbits its host star every three days. So it's really close in, and therefore it's very hot. It's about a thousand degrees on the surface, well, at the cloud tops of this planet. So what the spectrum, those wiggly lines tell us is that there's water in this atmosphere.

Now, it's obviously not liquid water at a thousand degrees. It's superheatting. steam, basically. And the way that those wiggles, the details of them tell us that it's not just a uniform ball of steam, but they're clouds of material. And what we'll do now, again, that was just one pass of the planet in front of the star. So we'll go back and look and do several of them, and now we'll look for other things. You know, is there ammonia? Is there carbon dioxide? We'll start looking for other chemicals in the atmosphere. Gosh. I have to ask about these images because I know that what I'm looking at behind you

is not precisely what the image looks like from the actual telescope, correct? No, no, that's what it looks like. So there's not any doctoring. There's not like, right? Because I always- Instagram filter on that. There's not- I always thought there was like infrared that you add to it and it looks more straight.

That's exactly what it looks like. Well, what they do, so our eyes, we can't see infrared. We see visible. And so what they do to make a picture like this is they say, just like for our eyes, you know, blue is shorter wavelength, green is a little bit longer. Red is the longest wavelength. They'll do the same thing with the infrared camera. It has a shortest wavelength and they'll say, well, those data from that, we'll color them blue.

So we see them. So this is infrared colors translated into colors our eyes can see. But the blue things are the shortest wavelength and the redder you get, the longer the wavelength. Another way to think that sometimes the blue are cooler and the red, or excuse me, the blue were warmer and the red are cooler. So it's the translation of infrared light into visible light. So that's just what it looks like. Yeah, exactly. amazing. So I have to ask because we've talked about a lot on this show. We've said aliens are bust. That's been, I think myself and Trent, I've said that many times.

In terms of, you know, the hub tele or the web telescopes going out there, we talked so much about it on the last show. In fact, you referenced a lot of things already that we went through on the last show and we got all jacked up for it. In terms of that hunt, you know, have you learned anything? yet what's the next step in terms of learning about, you know, what could be out there, exoplanets, is it more likely, less likely? Where are we at in that whole hunt? So what, because Webb has this pretty small field of view, we only really pointed at places we know to look, in other words. So we're going to use this other missions, discover things, and then we more or less bring the, you know, the powerful eye of Webb to examine them. detail. So there's a bunch of known exoplanets already. And so people will just start looking at them with web to try to see what's in their atmosphere. For some nearby exoplanets that are big

like Jupiter-sized planets, we can even take a picture of them. Of course, it's just like a little dot of light. It don't see any features on them, but we'll actually start imaging those giant exoplanets. So we know they're going to do that, but we know it's going to do the deep universe stuff. and if you were to look at the set of proposals from the first year, there's almost 300 different targets or programs they're looking at. So, you know, we're going to be looking at everything. How that image behind you, which we've referenced a lot, which is one of the most beautiful things I think any human has ever looked at

in the history of planet Earth and beyond. How far away is that? So that's within our own galaxy. You know, I don't recall right off top of my head. If you actually just Google Karina Nebula, it's got its own Wikipedia page. It'll tell you how, you know, it's a few tens of light years away. So this is sort of in our own neighborhood here. And so how big is our galaxy?

Because you mentioned holding up a grain of sand. You could see, what did you say, 8,800? 8,000? Yeah, 8,000 galaxies. Now, those galaxies are very far away. Right. But you're talking about this is tens of light years away, and it's in our galaxy. So it's like, it's just, I can't even comprehend.

Yeah, we've, so our galaxy is, you know, 100,000 light years across. And so then you just, you have to scale out of all those galaxies in that deep image. Some are much bigger than our galaxy and some are very small. So that's, you know, kind of the next level down. You start analyzing what are in those data. I don't understand how you take the photo. I don't understand how you take the photo. I understand that the photo is being taken, but like, how are, if it's so far away, how are we seeing the light?

Like, how far is, is Webb shooting out that infrared to actually capture that image is my question. I also have, I have another part to that question because a few of the things that I've seen on social media and with the articles that I've read is that the images are looking into the past. Is that right? Yeah, and so that's right. And this is how it works. So the speed of light is finite, right? It has 186,000 miles per second. But space is huge.

So when that light has to cross it, it takes some time. And now a lot of people remember that the light we see from the sun, right? You go outside and you look. The light that's hitting the earth left the sun eight minutes ago. Which ruins my day every time I hear. Yeah. So we're always seeing, you know, if the sun blue, up seven minutes ago, we wouldn't know it yet. A minute from now, we'd be having a bad day.

So the farther away something is, the longer it has taken the light to get to us. So in that sense, we're seeing how that object looked many, many years ago. In that deep image, we see the farthest thing we've found in it so far, the light left that object 13.1 billion years ago, and it has been traveling for that long until it ran into the JWST mirror and it got captured by architect. That's fake numbers. Dr. Eric Smith, let me ask you a question.

So if you're standing on the edge of the earth, you have a perfectly clear night and you have a telescope in your hand that is magical powers, whatever, and you can see 10 light years away and you're looking at someone on the edge of another planet 10 light years away, and that person is waving at you. If you are seeing that, that person was waving at you 10 years ago? Is that correct? Exactly.

Yeah. And so if I wave back, they're not going to get the wave back. Their grandkids will. I mean, like, I understand what you're saying, but I also don't.

Why can't we bottle that up on Earth? then use that as time travel? Well, it only goes one way, right? You're just seeing the path. It's actually one thing that I don't like the time machine analogy. Some people say with a telescope because that does make you think, oh, it's a machine. I can go one. Right.

No, it's just the fact that space light, the speed of light is finite and space is really big. Right. We've got to figure out a way to capture light and then be able to go back like a cap. You know what I mean? Like in real time. So the way astronomers do that is they see some object that's close by and they go, okay, let's say this object is 100 light years away. So we know it looks like this. Now, if you look at you find something that is similar to it, but farther away, that's an earlier look at that. You can see it in a statistical sense evolve over time by finding

similar objects at ever-increasing distances. Amazing. Truly, absolutely amazing. I'm so glad that there's guys like you that are around, and then there's not just guys like the four of us who just know what this stuff is. That's amazing. Well, but it's you guys, you know, through your taxes, you're paying for all of us. And we really appreciate your support.

Well, speaking of support, I mean, you know, NASA feels like it's having a really good, good, I'd say a couple years, right? Especially when you got like the Elon Musk's of the world, who's not NASA, but like space exploration and space travel has just been a very big part of our last, I'd say five years or so. For me, in particular, I just see it on the internet all the time. This year, it's been huge with the release of the web telescope. Do you feel like, you know, that NASA is almost like back right now? Like it's just in the news people are talking about. Young kids are getting into it. Older people are getting into it. What do you feel about that? Well, I've always felt, you know, of the opinion, like, you know, we're NASA,

we're kicking the universe in the ass every day kind of thing. Right. But this is a particularly good year and we'll also have the launch of what we call our Artemis rocket, the biggest rocket in the world. That's going to launch later this year. And that will eventually take people back to the moon. So, yeah, there's a lot of big projects that are coming online and private industry is getting into the game, which I think is.

great because that's more opportunities for satellites, for people, you know, tourists eventually to go into space. So, yeah, we're having a good year. How far do you think tourists are from going into space? Well, it depends on how much money you have right now. I think we're probably, you know, a decade or more out from when people might think about, you know, I'm going to save up for a space trip. You know, right now you got to have a lot of disposable income. You don't save up for it. You already have it.

But you think in our lifetime buddies are going to like, yeah, we want to go to Scotland for a golf trip or let's just do a rip around space. That's going to happen. I certainly hope so. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's reasonable. Wow.

Do we have a lot of trash in space? Like you say all these like satellites and stuff. Is there if you just go out of our atmosphere, is there just a bunch of of like satellites around like it's what is it like visible where you're like oh look at all these satellites uh no it's not going to be visible again because space is really big but there is a lot of debris most of it is super tiny like paint flex uh if there's ever sometimes countries shoot things at satellites to test their missile capability and they blow off the satellite now is a million parts around so for low earth orbit things that uh like Hubble it is becoming

a concern that there's things that did all the time. In fact, if you go to the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., there's a camera that was on Hubble. They serviced it. They brought that camera back. They put a new one in. But that camera had a panel that was on the outside of the spacecraft. And you can see, it's got all kinds of pock marks from little things hitting it. So there's a lot out there, but most of it's tiny. You couldn't really see it with your eye. and the big stuff is so far away, you have to know where to look to see it. James Webb got hit by something very tiny, right? Was it a meteorite or like a little mini comet or something like that that

that went right through one of the panels? Yeah, it's a micrometeeroid. So again, something about like a dust grain. But those dust grains are going about, you know, 30,000 miles a second. So what happens is it essentially makes a little crater. It didn't go through the mirror, but it made a little crater, and it's noticeable. But thankfully for us, our mirror was made so well, so perfect that even with that, we're still beating the specifications we have for the mirror. In fact, that's one.

We were designed to have our vision sharpest at a wavelength called two microns, an infrared wavelength. Now Hubble's sharpest vision is at a half a micron. We're actually limited to fraction limited. Our best vision goes down to one micron, which means in some infrared parts of the spectrum we overlap with Hubble. We're even sharper vision than Hubble. So, you know, we just beat the specs. Our launch was so perfect. We're going to be up in space for more than twice the time we thought.

So it's all good. What's the fastest? Yeah, sorry. Well, so your launch was so perfect. You're going to be in space twice as long as you thought. That seems crazy to me that the total time you could be in space would go derivatively all the way back to when you've launched. How does that affect how long you could be in space? Yeah.

Maybe I misspoke. It's not how long we'll be in space. The thing that limited our lifetime, the mission lifetime, was how much fuel we, carried on the spacecraft. And we used that fuel out there in orbit to help us position the satellite over time. And so eventually you run out of fuel. And we were going to have to use some of that fuel to make sure we got into the perfect orbit we needed to be. But the rocket that launched us was so precise that we really didn't have to use any of that fuel to get into the good orbit. So now we have it for station keeping.

and the original goal was 10 years, and now it's going to be more than 20. Wow. Amazing. When you are on the course, crushing drives and crushing beers, the last thing you're thinking about is hydration. That is true. How many times have we just become significantly dehydrated on the golf course, especially in Scotland, I have to say?

Yeah. Scotland, it happened a lot. And it happened a lot today out in the Hamptons. And it was sponsored by it in the Hamptons? I think it's in the Hampton's on Long Island. In the Hamptons on Long Island. Just you guys make it so difficult out here. It's really simple.

Just figure it out. You mean you guys, Trent. Right. So, but they had biolites all over the place. And now what we just discussed earlier in the show is that heat may not affect whether or not you get burnt. But what it does affect is how much your body sweats. And what biolite does is it just replenishes all those nutrients. So everything you're sweating out,

It'll put you, it'll put right back in. They've got all these delicious flavors. They had a bunch of stops throughout the mini golf tournament today. So every corner you turned, you drank a biolite and you felt instantly better. Delicious flavors, like I said, you got to get biolite. If you're out on the course and it's hot and you're drinking, just drink a couple of those. You're going to feel way better. Biolite is a physician formulated recovery drink made with all natural ingredients that will help you feel better fast.

The iv in a bottle contains the same amount of electrolytes as an iv bag. You'd have to drink six and a half sports drinks to equal one bio light. It's delicious. We had it today like you're saying. It's delicious. It really is. And it makes you feel like you're doing something pretty important for your body. Definitely.

Six and a half water is my goodness. You can feel it in real time. As you are drinking it, you're like, wow. You know, when the depths of your body from your arms to your organs are reaching out, being like whatever that just came through the esophagus situation. I need some of that. You can feel when your whole body's reaching for it. That's what BioLite does when you pour that sucker in.

Go to drinkbiolite.com slash barstool. Use the code for 4Play for 10% off your first Amazon order. That's drink biolite.com slash barstool code for play 10% off your first Amazon order. Now what's the fastest object in space? If that's moving, just one object is moving that fast. because now I'm looking, and I'm just seeing things just zip around as fast as I ever could. Well, it depends on what you mean by thing. So the fastest thing is actually light.

Nothing can go faster than light. And if you go to some galaxies that have a giant black hole in the center and material is swirling around that black hole and some of it's getting blasted out, some of the material there is moving close to the speed. of light, you know, some fraction of maybe a third of the speed of light or something. So those are the fastest material objects. I don't know, you know, like what the fastest asteroid or comet is. Okay.

How confident are you that nothing can go faster than the speed of light? Because that, to me, I mean, I get that we haven't tracked anything yet. We haven't seen anything yet. It seems inconceivable to us that's something to go faster than the speed of light. why would there be in the universe, which is incredibly complex and tough to predict, this arbitrary speed that is just not passable? So that is actually one of the most basic questions in physics, and it was Einstein's special theory of relativity, 1905.

He was the one that postulated this, that is the universal speed limit, speed of light. And many people have tested that and tried to, come up with theories that that's not the case. And they've been trying for more than a century and they haven't. So right now, our whole understanding of how the universe works is based upon this one fundamental fact that the speed of light is the speed limit. Nobody knows exactly why it is what it is. That's a super fundamental question. Yeah.

Wow. So you change that. If you change that fact and everything that we know about it would change. So, yeah, the way. physics works is right now all the physics we know that's the speed limit that sets our understanding physics but it could be that someday in the future somebody thinks of a different way of thinking about the universe and the model we have now doesn't become incorrect it just becomes less correct than the new model and what do i mean by that so before einstein everybody thought the universe worked like the way

Isaac Newton said it worked. And for several hundred years, that was the successful model of the universe. And almost all our everyday knowledge of the world uses what's called Newtonian physics, because we're never going close to the speed of light. But as more was learned, they found, uh-oh, Newton, Newton, Newton, Newton, Newtonian physics breaks down. We need a better theory. So that's Einstein.

Until it breaks down, we'll use it. When it breaks down, we'll get a better one. incredible amazing amazing absolutely amazing how um dr. i you know i this this big bang theory how confident are you guys in that puppy because i mean that's billions of years ago there's been string theory there's been lots of things came up what early 1920 27 something like that was when kind of big bang how confident are we in the big bang theory? Actually, super confident.

It is one of the best tested theories we have in physics. It's part of what's called a standard model, so how fundamental particles are made and how the universe created those. The data that you can measure and compare it to the big bang theories, the agreement is super tight. So it is one of the best theories we have right now. Is it perfect out to hundreds of decimal places? No, but it's pretty damn good.

So you say it's one of the best tested. How does somebody test it? So we first learned about what we call the cosmic microwave background in the 1960s, some scientists at Bell Labs who were the test antennas for communications. they were noticing some noise that was in this antenna. No matter where they looked, there was this noise. Well, it turned out that was the signal, the so-called 3-degree Kelvin background from the Big Bang.

A guy named John Natter, who's the project, senior project scientist for Webb, made an experiment in 1990 that measured the temperature of this background and founded this 2.73 Kelvin, a perfect fit to Big Bang theories. Since then, two other satellites have looked at microwave background in ever greater detail, and they keep more or less adding decimal places to the accuracy. So, yeah, it's one of the best theories we have as far as being tested and being accurate. At some point in all of astrophysics and all of this stuff,

do you go far enough back where there is no answer where you're like, well, I don't know, because me as a person that will always be like a pessimist or like devil's advocate, I'll say, well, where'd that come from? And then where'd the two things that collided come from? What's the furthest back that you go? And then beyond that, what's the thought? Okay. So we'll follow Webb back. So Webb was designed to, I'd like to say, watch the universe turn the lights on. after the big bang the universe was hot expanded and cooled down and so there was just hydrogen and helium atoms and gas or just hydrogen helium eventually as it cools down the gravity starts pulling all that stuff together and when there's enough of it it makes a star and stars make galaxy so that's

what web look we're going to look for that moment so before that moment there was this cold dark gas. There was no light. We can look for that gas using radio telescopes. And someday we might put a radio telescope on the moon to look for that gas. But that the hot

surface that was the Big Bang, that's the three degree background. That's as far back as you can see. You can't see any farther back than that. Yeah. It's fucking leaving a speech. It's just a lot. Because like, and then when you say there's just gas, It's like, well, what does that mean?

Like, what does it actually mean? What do you mean there's just gas there? Like, where that come? What are we like in somebody's like computer that started with gas? Like, like what is that? Like, what is the gas? What is the nothingness is my question? Like, what is before the collision?

Well, we have, I like to say, you know, science, you have to be able to measure something. It's nice. Right. So before you can make a measurement. It's philosophy then. So I think about this a lot. Is there, Dr. Smith, is there a wall at the edge of the universe?

No, but there is a point beyond which we can't see in the following sense. Because the universe is expanding and the farther away it is from us, the faster it's expanding. eventually there's a point where the thing that's receding from you, because space is expanding now, space is expanding faster than light coming from it could ever get to us. So in that sense, there is an edge to the observable universe, and it's not that something's going faster than light, because light travels space can be moving faster. expanding I I don't want you to answer

because it's going to make me puke but it's like expanding into what so yeah it's not expanding into anything that's the yeah there's nothing good it's just getting bigger

into nothing yeah that'll make you think you can't you can't sleep at night believing that there's just it's expanding into nothing it's expanding into something it has to be it has to be

no there's a it spaces you know there's that is one of the admittedly difficult to conceptualize ideas but it's not like the big bang it's not like somebody who's sitting around you know in like a really humongous living room in which the big bang happened the big bang created space and so it is space it is space yeah well dr eric smith you've already given us 37 minutes. You're probably one of the best guests, if not the best guest we have on this very show. The listeners, we're some golf podcast of this four idiots talking about just this game. And then we bring on the most intelligent, amazing, well-spoken person of all time that works for NASA. Thank you so much for giving us the time and coming on the show a second time.

I really do genuinely appreciate it. Oh, well, it's, I love to talk with you guys. You actually ask great questions. because these are questions that everyone wants to know the answers to. So, you know, that's why it's fun for me to come here. So you ask great questions. Amazing. Thank you. You're the man.

We appreciate. I know you're busy. You got a lot of exciting ties. We're going to have you on again soon. Every time I see something on Twitter, Frankie, connect with him, get him on. You're just the best. You answer our questions. You're fun to hang out with, chat with, answer questions.

Every time I think we're asking something that there's no way a human being on this earth could know an answer, you, I see you shaking your head like. yep, I know how to answer this. You just deliver every time. So we do appreciate it. I know you're busy. You have way more important, more intelligent human beings to talk to. So we, it means a lot.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Let's figure out another place to live because the sun thing freaks me out. We got seven seconds here. Seven minutes. Seven minutes. Okay. All right.

That makes a little bit better that I got six and a half good minutes before my world could be over. So let's figure out another place to live. So it doesn't cost a billion dollars to travel in space. So go do that work and we'll just continue to be four idiots. Thank you, sir. All right. You're welcome, guys.

When we have that habitable exoplanet spectrum, have me back on then. We'll talk about it. As much as I want to come back. Come right back here. Thank you, Dr. Smith. All right, bye, bye, guys.