Modern Wisdom - #581 - Neil deGrasse Tyson - Understanding The Wonders Of Science

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist, planetary scientist, author and science communicator. The universe is filled with mystery. Science has answered a lot and yet there's still so many fundamental questions which we seem no closer to understanding. What is consciousness? Are we alone in the universe? And why do people argue so much on the internet? Expect to learn what would happen if the moon disappeared, how Neil has dealt with the fallout from Patrick Bet David's podcast, why Sir Christopher Wren was an architect troll, Neil's best answer to the fermi paradox, why the world of astropolitics will be very complicated, why your colon bacteria doesn't think very highly of you and much more... Sponsors: Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and more from Athletic Greens at https://athleticgreens.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get 10% discount on your first month from BetterHelp at https://betterhelp.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Extra Stuff: Check out Neil's book - https://amzn.to/3ZDrHlc  Follow Neil on Twitter - https://twitter.com/neiltyson  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Neil deGrasse Tyson. He's an astrophysicist, planetary scientist, author and a science communicator. The universe is filled with mystery, science has answered a lot, and yet there's still so many fundamental questions which we seem no closer to understanding. What is consciousness? Are we alone in the universe? And why do people argue so much on the internet?

Expect to learn what would happen if the moon disappeared, how Neil has dealt with the fallout from Patrick Bett-David's podcast, why Sir Christopher Ren was an architect troll, Neil's best answer to the Fermi paradox, why the world of astropolitics will be very complicated, why your colon bacteria doesn't think very highly of you and much more? You might be listening, but not subscribed. 70% of you are listening, but not subscribed. In fact, and it really does make a difference

if you want to support the show. Just press the subscribe button on Apple podcasts as a plus in the top right hand corner or the follow button on Spotify. Thank you very much. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Neil deGrasse Tyson. We were discussing your overly baroque column background behind you before we got started. I've got a story about Sochrista for Ren, famous English architect. During his extremely long career as England's most celebrated architect,

Christopher Ren was often told by his patrons to make impractical changes in his designs. Never once did he argue or offend, he had other ways of proving his point. In 1688, Ren designed a magnificent town hall for the city of Westminster. The mayor, however, was not satisfied. In fact, he was nervous.

Told Ren that he was afraid the second floor was not secure and that could all come crashing down on his office on the first floor. He demanded that Ren add two stone columns for extra support. Ren, the consummate engineer, knew that these columns would serve no purpose and that the mayor's fears were baseless. But, build them he did, the mayor was grateful, it was only years later that workmen on a scaffold saw that the columns stopped just short of the ceiling. They were dummies Both of them got what they wanted the mayor got his columns and Ren actually didn't have to molest his original design I think I wasn't one of the big reasons he was catapulted to significant was that he was

an active and celebrated architect at the time of the London fire. I don't know, but that would have been around about the right time, 16, 18 years ago. Yeah, and I think and you got to rebuild stuff right afterwards. And I so I had some memory that he was around when when people needed architects. So I asked a good friend's historian about which British person from history did he wish had more exposure in the modern world and he said Dick Wittington. Why do I know that name? So Dick Wittington, the real character that was Dick Wittington, ended up being this rich guy who's cat, Dick Wittington and his cat was the story that you might have heard.

It was Kat's, Dick Wittington and his Kat was the story that you might have heard. But he ended up giving away almost all of his money, the still buildings that are alive today, and educational grants, and all sorts of stuff that are downstream from this one guy in his Kat's. Oh, okay, cool. Yeah. I've heard the name. I didn't remember why I know the name. Somebody shares a story for you there.

You've got a quote that says, it's not good enough to be right. You also have to be effective. What does that mean? Yeah, that comes to me from my father, among a couple of other sort of wise epithets. That one, you know, if you want to change the world in some progressive, positive way, then you can go out and just scream at people. You can tell them they're all wrong or they're idiot, so you could just say whatever. But if you didn't invest any time and energy

thinking about how to be effective with your messaging, your mind will just stay home. It's not good enough to be right. You have to be effective. And that's where the effort and energy and navigation of people's ways of thinking, how to unravel habits that are deeply held if those habits interfere with achieving some goal. So I've never forgotten that. And at every

turn where I think, you know, the world could be better off if it was a little more scientifically literate so that we can become better shepherds of this awesome technology and that we wield. technology and that we wield and People who take it for granted people who reject it people There's a lot of sort of misunderstanding of it all and so again, you can't just declare it and then go home You've got to sort of fight the good fight and it's not always a fight It's just there is another way I can say this where you'll now understand what I'm trying to tell you? Because previously, you didn't. As a your fault, or is it my fault that you didn't understand me? I could just declare it to be your fault. And then once again, I'm ineffective. So, so I tweeted

once and it turned out to be way more controversial than I think it should have been. The tweet was, how often have we heard a teacher say, these students just don't want to learn. When really that teacher should be saying, maybe I suck at my job. And that's coming from the same place of if you want to, you can't just be right. Yeah, maybe they don't want to learn. Is it their fault or yours? You're the teacher. Don't you make it interesting? For them, yeah, that takes extra work. You got to know what's going on, what makes the brain ticks, what what what what

receptors exist within them or not. Figure that out. Navigate that. Yeah, then you'll be that's then you become a great teacher. We all have great teachers in our lives. All of us and it's not every one of the teachers we've had. Most of them are not that. Are not effective and are not influential and are not memorable. I've had, most of them are not that, are not effective and are not influential and are not memorable. I've had teachers say, how can I become a better teacher? Be the teacher that you remembered having, that one in a hundred teacher. Be that teacher. And yeah, maybe you'll be effective. Is it particularly ironic that a tweet that you are having this particular idea about trying to be not just right, but also effective resulted in a tweet about not being just right, but also

effective, which was then interpreted in a way which wasn't effective? Well, that's why I'm saying it had it had a little more noise that followed it than I had intended. I thought people said, I never thought about it that way. But, no, have you ever taught? Sometimes, Richard, people just got all, well, it is the cesspool that is social media. I get that. But I try to always know what the reactions, the range of reactions will be.

Otherwise, I'm miscommunicating at some level. Speaking of that, you recently had a conversation with Patrick BetDavid and there is a clip from that that's done the rounds a little bit on the internet. I don't know how much attention you pay to what's going on. What's your post-mortem on that situation if you had one? Well, when I'm asked to be on a podcast, it usually means people are interested in what I have to say about the world. That's when I'm flattered and I try to be effective, I try to be potent for an audience. Not all audiences are the same, the mixtures are very different.

So I try to be aware of that to the extent that I can in the time available. I was on a four-city tour of Florida at the time. This I give a public talk in theaters. I was in Orlando and Jacksonville and Fort Lauderdale. Between two of those cities, because it was driving between among those cities, between two of those cities, because it was driving between among those cities, between two of them, there's his studio. And they mapped this out, they knew this. There's no way I could say no. I say, well, you know, you were driving by here

at this time between these two cities. I said, well, sure, sure. And he's a big fun, you know, socially aggressive, but not in an angry way, but just in a sort of curious way. So, I was just fine, but then he pivoted and made the whole big part of the conversation about vaccines. vaccines. And I was intrigued by that because I'm an astrophysicist. And but to the extent that I can shed light on people's confusions by alerting them of what science is and how and why it works, that I can do. And speak of the denial that many people are in on many front tears of science that are moving along. And it's curious, I'm intrigued by why that happens, how people might cherry pick certain information.

But you know what's behind it mostly, I think, is that, and I wrote about this, and recently, in a whole chapter called Risken Reward, where we are, we as a species, and there's plenty of evidence for this, are woefully ill-equipped to think statistically or probabilistically about the world. We just awful at it, at every turn. And I don't know in the UK, but in the United States, the subject of probability and statistics is not a fundamental feature of the math curriculum. And then when you get to high school, you're age 16, 17, 18, it might be elective in some high school. but it's otherwise not there. And so, and I joked, my one conspiracy theory that I have, that we all allowed one conspiracy theory. I have one, okay. The state lottery thrives on people betting they're going to win with odds that are dare I say astronomical against them winning. And you know who doesn't play the lottery?

Typically are people who deeply understand probability and statistics. They just don't. And the, well if they don't, then the state doesn't raise money. And for many states, if not most, the tax revenue from the lottery goes to fund education. So it's in their interest to not put probably in statistics in the schools. Okay, you think that the part of the US justification behind the scenes, this sweaty cabal of hooded figures

are purposefully keeping young kids statistically illiterate so that they can continue to make money from the state lottery. If you grant me that one conspiracy theory, that's hard. I will permit you to have that one. It's relatively harmless. So the, you may have missed this, Rishi Sunak, the new prime minister of the UK, said that children are going to have to learn maths until the age of 18. Now, as opposed to the age of 16. Nice. And throw in, make those extra years count. And there'll be way more valuable to learn probably in statistics than calculus, I would say, or even advanced trigonometry, in

terms of just what's relevant to your brainwiring and decision-making that you have to go through. By the way, in another story that I tell, the American Physical Society, which is the United States organization of professional physicists, and academic and industrial physicists, the American Physical Society. They were scheduled to have their annual meeting in San Diego, and it was at Snathu with the hotels, and they had to quickly readjust and reorganize and Las Vegas, the MGM Marina, now the MGM Grand rose up and said, we'll take you.

We can house 4,000 physicists, however many multiple thousands of physicists like on a dime, so they did. So all the physicists went to Las Vegas. And a week later, there is a news headline that said physicists in town lowest casino take ever. They've been invited to never come back ever uninvited for any future visits. The point is it's not that they somehow knew the odds and exploited them, it's that they knew that betting is not really what you

should be doing your money statistically and probabilistically. As a physicist, a miniaturist physicist, but the same line of training, I've had some form of probability and statistics every year of my life since 10th grade through graduate school, some form. And so it's just, it's not natural to think so. Point is, the reason why I'm going here to tell you that is we embrace passionate testimony above data. And almost everything, it's why advertisers will show you

this product work for me, right? Rather than just show a bar chart, they could just show a bar chart and say, how many it worked for, how many it didn't, and how well. Just show that. That would be all the data you need to decide, but no, that doesn't work. You have to see another human being passionately tell you that they use the product and it works for them. And that's a feature of the fact that we don't think statistically. And advertisers know this. And as I've implied,

an entire industry exists because of that weakness and its casinos. Well, in your books as well, you don't just write a list of compelling stats, right? You hang those stats around narratives. There's protagonists, there's stories, there's people, stuff happens, you get bought in, like we're just not that compelled. Some people are. For the most part, humans aren't that compelled just by stats. Yes, and I accept that. However, the narratives that I weave them into, they may be examples of the statistics that are a little more real, a little more emotional, but I'm not... I'm not trying to have you believe something that is not statistically true because I went to the exception to that statistic and had that person testify in front of you.

So you heard that somebody died after they took a vaccine. Okay. You know how many people die every second with or without vaccine. Just there's a death rate of people in the world. And if everyone is getting vaccinated, somebody's gonna die shortly after they get vaccinated. Just the statistics of that. But that's not what rises up.

What rises up is my uncle cousin, that died and I heard about some, is a website that, and then all of a sudden, the these cases become much more real to people than the statistics of what it is they're trying to evaluate. And so, I get it, we're human, and but all I can do is offer the truth, the objectively established truth, that is, truth's established by the methods and tools of science, repeated as best as possible at any given moment where we know something.

That science is exquisitely tuned to establish what is objectively true. But better than any other thing I've ever seen, any other system of inquiry, when you think about it. It's why planes don't fall out of the sky. It's why, we can send a space probe to collide with a moonlit of an asteroid and time its difference in its orbit. It's how we can put a pocket telescope a million miles from Earth and observe the early universe with it. It's how and why that works. What do you think we do?

It's why your smartphone works. How you can find the shortest route to grandma's house in this afternoon's traffic. Not a human being is involved in that decision. It's all technology and science and math. So maybe just science needs better PR, that's all. Why do you think it is that that conversation generates such virulent response, so passionate, and this is from both sides of the fence. This is from

people that are both pro and anti whatever the strategy is that's been deployed in your country. If you considered what it is that's caused people to have that level of vehementness. Yeah, I don't see it as pro and con. I see it as people who are objectively sharing truths about the world and those who reject it. So it's not just, are you pro or are you con? With Mary against me. That would be true in politics. There's always political divisiveness.

If it's purely political, sure, I expect that. And then a good healthy democracy that gets debated daily, if not, then it should be. So for example, you don't debate whether or not humans are warming the earth. This is an established objective truth. What you do is, so that if you spend time debating that, you're wasting taxpayers' trust. What you should do is say, well, I'm conservative and you're liberal, and my solution is, no, you don't tax that solar panels or you do, where you invest in the industry, do you put tariffs on overseas solar panel to build our... Those have fascinating political solutions that can land anywhere on the spectrum,

depending on how passionately people argue them, how well they defend them, and the like. how well they defend them and the like. And so I welcome political conversations to solve problems in a free democracy. But I will not equate those equations, I will not equate those conversations with conversations where you're sharing with someone, the statistics of public health, and then you have people just choosing to reject them for whatever reasons they have.

I think a lot of those people who are hesitant around the vaccine would be saying, I have seen other statistics, and your contention would be those statistics are wrong, they're not framed in the right way. I don't think that for the most part it's right to characterize the people who are reticent around that stuff as rejecting stats. They've just been convinced by a different set of statistics. That's the charitable way to put it. I would say that we have agencies whose sole purpose is to establish public health guidance. And if you look carefully, if you unpack what it is they do, it's hundreds and in some cases thousands of health professionals who are weighing in on what should be the next

steps in the interest of the health and safety and security of society. If you now choose a different source, I'm intrigued by that because you don't choose a different source when people, how about the people who say, Earth is flat? Are you just going to say, yeah, I think Earth is flat because they've convinced me. Are you going to say, no, a plane can't fly. So I'm not going to fly planes are dangerous because I saw one crash 10 years ago. So I'm going to walk or I'm going to take a car. By the way, in the United States, 40,000 people died in car accidents, pedestrians and drivers and passengers in this past year. That's a higher than in recent decades. So the way we choose our risks that we would absorb or not is itself fascinating to me, but it shows that people first,

so yes, if you want to, you're choosing statistics that are not mainstream, but I'll just put it that way. If it's not mainstream, we have this curious urge to embrace the claims of someone who says, you've always thought this was true, but it's not. This is true. There's something they want you to believe this, but this is what's actually true. There's definitely something I don't know about like gated information. Why that's so compelling to people. I think everyone's always done it this way and they're wrong. And then you listen in and you say, wow, tell me, tell me the right way.

Oh my gosh, they've all been wrong. At no time, for those who are attracted by that kind of scenario, are they saying to themselves, is there reason why everyone else has done it this way? That is not being shared with me. That question doesn't typically get asked. So, you know, I can't run around and keep, I mean, there's a limit to this that I can do. And so, you know, I can't run around and keep, I mean, there's a limit to this that I can do. And so, you know... Is there a concern there as well? You mentioned before, I'm an astrophysicist and I'm being asked questions to do with

stuff that is outside of my domain of competence. Is that something that we should be more concerned about, about people kind of getting out over their skis and other domains, you know, we have experts, people that happen to be an expert in one domain, getting asked about the Ukraine conflict or getting asked about what we should do about global warming. And you think you, you don't have an expertise in this. You just happened to be good in one area of life. And now people seem to think because you're good in one area,

that we should, everything that you say in everything else, would it be a better world if people said, actually, I don't know, or actually, I don't have a take on that. It's not realistic, but, and I think your question conflates two different points. So, one of them is, people have opinions on things.

Sure, people have opinions on Ukraine. Sure. People have opinions on Ukraine and on Russia and on global policy. Yes, we elect officials to represent how we think our country should be run. That's not a matter of you can only comment unless you are an expert in international policy. If you are an expert, your comments might be more convincing because you've thought about it more deeply, but the whole point of a democracy is on issues where opinions matter, the majority rules within some framework of a constitution and morality and the like. So that's different. That's different from someone claiming they're an expert in something

that does not have to do with opinions and they're not. So in my case, I do not accept invitations to be on shows where the main point is for me to comment on a subject outside of my expertise. If they say, we you on a global warming show get a climate scientist we need you on a back show get a get a medical professional I decline those interviews you would never know it because in larger interviews that I'm on when the interviewer pivots to other topics such as we have kind of done here. to other topics such as we have kind of done here, that typically gets excerpted for YouTube. And it looks like I'm commenting on all of these things all the time. So it really just reflects people's interest. And I respect that. The difference is I'm sharing with you mainstream you mainstream content. It's mainstream in all cases. All right. So it is the emergent consensus of professionals that I have read and I've understand I might be able to explain it in another way than others couldn't because I'd

spent a lot of time in that space. But that's what I'm doing. So for people to say, you're wrong about the vaccine for the, I'm going to debate. It's not about me. It's about what medical professionals are sharing that I am sharing with you. It's got nothing to do with me. Now, if the difference would be, if you said, which vaccine

do you advise, or how do you, no, I would never do such a thing, okay? Do you advise against taking a vaccine? All I can tell you are these numbers that I get from the CDC and other medical professionals and other public health professionals. That's what I get and that's what I'm sharing with you. But the fact that people come to me

to want to attack me for saying that, I'm intrigued by this because they think I somehow have some separately researched agenda about the topic. That is not the case. And so, but it's true for all of it. All of it. Now, I have stronger opinions where it involves people who are sure they're abducted by UFOs. I can have that conversation because that's closer to my expertise. And I can offer opinions about that that may be of interest to you.

And they are deeply informed opinions. Why do you think some people- But so otherwise- I don't know why you think some people? So otherwise, I don't know why you think some people believe that they've been abducted by UFOs. What do you think's going on? I, I, my point is not whether or not they've been abducted, but their eyewitness testimony in the court of science is insufficient to convince an authentic skeptic on it.

We just need better data than your eyewitness testimony. I know in the court of law, I need a witness. You know, in the court of science, that is the last thing anyone will tell you is I need a witness. No, I need a chart recorder. I need the the, you know, I need some other evidence that wasn't processed by your brain. And we know this. So that's why I just need better evidence. And what has been put forth doesn't satisfy that. So if you've been abducted, here's what next time you're abducted, just snatch something off the shelf and ash tray or whatever. I don't do alien smoke, I don't know, it's not, you know, some device and bring, and then you have something and take that to the, that'd be cool. Oh, yeah. Then we could have that conversation, but until then I, I don't have, it's, it doesn't convince me enough to pursue it. So I don't stop people from doing it. You want to bag yourself an alien with

a net? Go right ahead. I will not stop you. And you'll be the most famous person ever in the world if you capture one. And by the way, the janitor that works at Area 51, all the janitor has to do is take a snapshot of the aliens stockpile there. That genre will lose its job overnight, and it'll be the most famous, richest janitor there ever was. You could live stream it. Okay, we have methods for that today. So. You spoke about risk and reward as two of the things. In your new book, you also talk about life and death, and given that the universe is at least part of your domain of competence, is it more terrifying or liberating

to realize that the universe is pretty much indifferent to us as individuals, life on planet Earth, what we do are motivations and the way that our lives continue forward? Yeah, it depends on the individual because that's an emotional reaction to an objective fact. So it is true, the universe could care less what's happening to you. In spite of all of our urges to the contrary, going far back, even pre-religion, okay, religion kind of codifies that you mean something to the universe and the gods that matter to it.

But even before then, there was, or there was, or the sky knows about you. This is the seeds of astrology. It's right. I'm born at this time and Mars and Venus and the Sun, they know about me and they have information about my life. This urge that the universe as vast as it is somehow knows who you are and how you're living, who you're going to sleep with and what your chances of earning money will be, these are early signs of that need. It's a need. And it takes a lot of sort of brain, I don't know what you call it, adjustments to recognize that it is we alone who can or will save us from ourselves here on earth and all the challenges and problems that we face. That is enlightening. To some, it's terrifying, but I'm saying, no, it's, it restores control over our faith to ourselves. So now we have to become better shepherds of who

and what we are and of the world that sustains us in order to have any hope of the future that we wish for for civilization on earth. Do you think that we are the only corner of the universe that's got consciousness in it? So as best as I have, as best as I can judge, consciousness remains poorly understood as a thing. And how do I know that? Because every year somebody writes a book on it. The more books that are actively written on a subject, the more evidence that is that we don't understand it. Otherwise, you wouldn't have to keep writing books on it.

It would be done. Ask yourself how many books are there on Newtonian gravity. There's like two books and they're on the shelf and they've been there for 200 years. And so, people aren't still writing about this subject. So that tells me we have way farther to go before we have any deep understanding of consciousness. We're not in a good place to judge what other animals also have consciousness. All right, the religious arguments would say we're the only one and then other arguments would say, well, quote, the higher animals, which is itself a bias towards who and what we are relative to other animals. You know, are bacteria conscious? Well, they're really in control of your body in your digestive track. They're more bacteria that live and work within one centimeter of your lower colon than the

total number of humans who have ever been born. So however high up you want to think of yourself, to the bacteria, you are a darkened vessel of fecal matter, of anaerobic fecal matter. And if you upset them, they're in charge of your life. Because you tell you, you will know exactly where the toilet is and how many paces away. If you upset them. So they'll be be the higher animal.

I'm not even, I'm not engaging that level of ranking. I will say it will be hard to not imagine that other animals or other mammals are also have a consciousness. Certainly your cat, your dog, no one will deny them this. Horses, people who ride horses. All the animals for which we have somebody who claims to be a whisperer to them. A horse whisperer, the cat whisperer,

the dog whisperer, the rabbit whisperer, whatever. I would think those animals would have what we think of as consciousness. And so consciousness is not rare on earth. Earth is not rare. Earth has a, the fact that we're on a planet around a star. In a Goldilocks zone, where the temperature is just right, the planet catalogues are growing exponentially.

27 years ago, we knew of no exoplanets. Planets were orbiting other stars. Now the catalog is rising through 5,000. And so these are places we might look for life. And we've only just begun that search. So, no, I'm not saying we're the only corner of the galaxy with consciousness. There's no reason to think that.

And there's every reason to think the opposite, especially given that we're made of the most common ingredients think the opposite, especially given that we're made of the most common ingredients in the universe, hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen. The most abundant ingredients in the universe and light happened to be opportunistic, taking what it was given and turning it into life when it had a source of heat, the heat energy, such as what we got from the sun. So no, remember looking. I learned only a couple of weeks ago that Proxima Centauri and the exoplanet that seems to be in that system is similar sort of

size to earth, similar sort of distance from a star, which is putting out similar sorts of amounts of energy, and it seems to be rocky as well. Like, how ridiculously unlikely is it that within the closest other system to us happens to have a planet that looks good in terms of options for habitability? Well, there's a there's a branch of probability called Bayesian statistics where you you take a prior and you say So you don't calculate the statistics from scratch. You say I already have some information Does shouldn't that Allow me to do this statistics standing in a different place

than assuming nothing? And so the Bayesian statistics is of the hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy. If the nearest star system has a planet just like Earth? Probably Earth like planets are common. If the nearest one has it. Yes, folding in the likelihood of us now being two for two in terms of us going out. Yeah, yes, or if we find life on Mars, not on the surface unlikely, but beneath the surface where there's we still think through water, present that was once on the surface and became a kind of permafrost, Mars is very cold and inhospitable in many places on its surface.

But there might be forms of life where it's actually rather hospitable, right? I mean, you would die pretty quickly on the North Pole, but polar bears just hang out there, right? So they, doing the backstroke, okay? And they're mammals, by the way. So what we think of as hospitable could be different among life forms on Earth,

especially from different life forms, from planet to planet. Point is, if in the nearest star system we find a planet that looks like Earth, is rocky like Earth, is in the Goldilocks zone like Earth, it allows you to think that Earth-like planets may be much more common than we had ever imagined. And if we find life in our backyard, then we're again saying starting there, we say, oh my gosh, our backyard, the nearest planets to us, the moons of Jupiter, that's right there. Oh my gosh. That allows you to think maybe life is even more common than the most generous estimates we've ever given.

That would be terrifying. Are you familiar? I'm going to guess that you will be with the great filter hypothesis? What would be terrifying? If we found microbe organisms on the surface of Mars or underneath the surface of Mars. Why is it terrifying? It's just nature. Because of the great filter, which is my sort of most recent obsession from Robin Hansen, so he says, why is it that we can't see all of the aliens, one of the potentials that get to put forward? Is there a particular line in the sand that civilizations tend to not get past? If you take that that might be one of the reasons that we haven't seen any other what seem

to be intelligent life forms out there in the universe. If we find life that is near to us, that is behind our level of development, what that suggests is that this great filter still lies ahead, which means that we are yet to get past it. Sure, I don't have a problem with that. That started a few decades ago when it was suggest, the variance on this, this great filter. But it invokes fundamental but still very human philosophies on the existence of such a filter. So it would be, well, this is a variant on it, but I think it's a little more present.

So you want to go colonize planets, okay? So you go out and do that. Well, I want to do that too. Well, I can't colonize your planet because you, you, so I got to find a different planet. So if you breed a civilization that is into colonizing planets and taking ownership of them, then everyone goes out to colonized planets. There will be a point where there aren't enough planets to be colonized, and now people want to colonize each other's planets, creating a level of conflict, a kind of implosion of this exploration paradigm. And that that implosion basically dismantles the entire exercise of what it is to colonize planets. And that is a planetary, a direct planetary analog to European colonization of the world up to and including the Second World War.

All right, there is England, British Empire, the Sun never sets on the British Empire. By the way, that sentence is identically equivalent to the Sun never rises on the British Empire. If it never sets, it also never rises. Okay, let's be logically consistent about that. But there's England, there's Portugal, there's Spain, there's France, and the Netherlands, and everybody's, and then at some point, you all ended up fighting each other.

Yes, you're fighting each other for control of New York, that's the Dutch and the British and the French, and everybody's fighting, and it's all gone practically now, okay? And because there's nothing left to fight over, there's no major colonization efforts such as what occurred in the in the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s. So it's that analog extended to space. And that's an interesting analog. What it says is the urge to explore in this way is incompatible with being successful expressing your urge to explore. And another line that could be drawn, you can think of many of these, that the technologies are so awesome and so powerful that the civilization implodes within it.

They destroy their environment, they blow themselves up. This is a big concern, of course, during the Cold War, and persists as a concern in modern landscape of geopolitics. So it could be that a civilization becomes so advanced it has the power to render itself extinct. And that could be another great divide. So yeah, we can come up with all kinds of reasons there. I don't know if it's obvious to people that this question was first posed by Enrico Fermi, it's called the Fermi Paradox. It's not just

where are they, all right? There's more thought that went into it than just where are they? It's because we know how old the universe is. And we know how long it would take to colonize a galaxy. So let's assume you don't have warp drives. But you do manage to go, let's say, 10% the speed of light. All right? Is that too much to ask? 10%. The give us 10% the speed of light.

All right? So if you can do that, the office and cheery system is four light years away. So 10% of that, there would take you 40 years to get there. Alright, now it's a one way trip as the European explorers and colonists came to the new world. Those were one way trips for them. Alright, so that we understand a one way trip. So they go there and then they pitch tent and then they develop space exploration and they move on to another plan.

But they move on to two planets instead of the just one. And they colonize and they go to four and then they go to eight and then 16. And it's 50 years in between each one. If you add up the time and at the rate at which the spreads, and this is what Enrico Fermi did, it's what we call the back of the envelope calculation. There's something you do while you're sitting there, it doesn't involve a computer. You realize that you can completely populate all planets in the galaxy in just a few million years.

in the galaxy in just a few million years. A few million years, 10 million years tops. Earth has been around for 4.5 billion. Billion years, 10 million is a small fraction of 4.5 billion. So if there are other planets that were formed before Earth was, a billion years before Earth, two billion years, three billion years, we formed seven, eight billion years after the universe formed. All kinds of stuff could have been happening

in the universe before we got here. So the question, where are they? Is legitimate in the sense that anyone who was going to colonize would have colonized it all? That leads to the interesting question. Maybe we are a colonial outpost and don't know it. It's fun. It's great food for science fiction storytelling.

But I don't see anything terrifying about it. I don't, you can't invest in motion in cosmic discovery. You can invest in motion in, wow, I'm learning something new today. Not, oh my gosh, what does this mean? Am I, no, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just, just. Yes, yes, yes. Let's start with the outer space treaty. Okay, it's a much longer title, and I always forget the full title. The treaty on the peaceful uses of outer space

among the big title, right? It came out of the U.M. back in 1967, something like that. If you, and that was a very turbulent time. We were in a hot war. The United States was in a hot war in Vietnam and a cold war with the Soviet Union and NATO and we had a civil rights movement, campus unrest. That was a turbulent time. And so if you read it, it's very cum baya.

It's like in space, it'll only be peace in space. And if you're in trouble and you're in another country, I will help you in space. And you read it, it's like, oh, it's so beautiful. It's so UN, okay? United Nations is everything you'd want the United Nations to be and represent. And I was taken by it initially until I just got older.

And I got, I don't know, it's not so much cynical. I just became a realist and I said, really? Really what you're saying is, if everybody goes into space, then we'll stop killing one another. But on earth, you can't stop them from killing one another. But some of space is going to be different.

So my interpretation is, show me you can stop killing each other on earth. Then I'll believe you can make this work in space. And you haven't shown that to me yet. So I'm skeptical. One of the things that I realized when there was a passing asteroid that there was a potential project to go and maybe try and chip a little bit off, bring it back to Earth, it was going to have, I don't know what it was, lithium or gold or something. It was going to have some valuable repository. If you did that, it would completely wreck the market for that on Earth because the entire

economic system, the way that the Earth works, it's a closed system, right? We know how much difficulty there is in associated with doing this particular thing, and it's within a set amount that the Earth has to restricted supply, kind of like Bitcoin, I suppose. Yeah, but it wouldn't wreck it. It would change it. Yes. Okay. I mean, you value judging and saying that would be bad.

No, I would say. I would say. No, let's talk about the consequences of it. Nature has a way of pre-sifting ingredients on a periodic table of elements, so that when it makes new planets, it's hot and molten and the heavy things fall to the middle and the light things float to the top. When we think of rocks, we think of them as heavy,

but Earth's crust is made of rock. The rock is the lightest thing on Earth, and that's why it floated to the top. What's our core made out of? It's made out of iron and nickel and cadmium, and all these heavy metals went to the center of the Earth. There's some veins that got trapped while we now call them ores that got trapped while the earth was cooling. And so they're gold ores and, you know, yes.

If that weren't the case, we wouldn't, we would have no access to any of those. Well, in a proto-planet that started doing this, slam it with another proto-planet, and these pieces break off. You have entire asteroids made of rock. Those are from the outer shells of these proto-planets. And entire asteroids made of heavy ingredients, such as metals. And those are asteroids made from the middle.

They're fewer of those, but they're out there, and we know where they are. And they have the greatest concentration of metals and rare earth elements and all these things that are otherwise rare or hard to get to on earth. There they are, right there. Yes, if you lassoed one of these asteroids and brought it back to earth, the marketplace

and every one of the metals in that would be completely transformed. And yeah, gold would be, you know, it's a $10 an ounce or something, it would be really cheap. Or less, they're asteroids with more gold on it than has ever been mined in the his mind or extracted in the history of the world on the single asteroid. So gold, by the way, is highly technologically useful. Highly, it's the most malleable substance, so you can take a little bit and flatten it out and make sheets. And so, people's inventiveness, which previously was constrained because of how expensive it

was, if gold is $10 an ounce instead of $800 an ounce, you can think of other things to do with it. Opening up whole new marketplaces. Just think about that. Look how cheap computers are. Yeah, you got to drop a thousand dollars. But for what that thing does? Oh my gosh, you would need a city box worth of computers 40 years, 50 years ago to do that. And now it's sitting on your hip when the price of computing dropped. We found more and more things to do with it. Do people worry about the collapse of the computer industry? No! They found other things to do undremtaved by that earlier generation.

Among them is, let's build a computer that fits in your shirt pocket that talks to orbiting satellites, put up there by the US military to find coordinates on Earth so that you can get the quickest distance to grandma's house in this afternoon's traffic. Oh my gosh, did anyone imagine that? No, it's another application for something that is cheap. Cheap. It's so cheap, you can't even charge for it practically. I'm old enough, just to sound like father time here. When there's one computer on the campus,

on the university campus, and you had an account, and you would write your software, and you'd run it through the computer and you get the results. They would charge you you get a bill for it running and it would be like oh my gosh I need a grant to pay for the bill to run my computer on this one main frame in the center of campus. So yeah, don't try to keep your emotion out of the consequences of things they are just what they are. I don't want to tell you what to do with your emotions, but keep in mind that often the emotions are because things will change from what you're accustomed to, but that's not always bad.

Speaking of things that might be bad, I read a book called Seven Eaves by Neil Stevenson and the first line of that book, The Moon Explodes. How much havoc would be caused on Earth if the moon went away? If I could just snap my fingers and the moon laughed? Well, astrophysicist would delight in this because the moon wreaks havoc on the visibility of dim objects in the night sky, especially the phase of the moon as its closest to full moon. You know, the full moon is like six times brighter than the half moon.

The laws of optics make the full moon much brighter than just the simple geometry of two halves. So it's a fascinating fact. So that complete, so we have what's called dark time and and light time and and and if you want to see something really deep in the universe you have to apply for the coveted dark time when the moon is not up. So we would be happy first of all. Second, the tides would drop in intensity to about a third of what they are. And we would just have solar tides instead of lunar tides. And what else would we have?

The evenings wouldn't be as romantic. Okay. Islam would not have this symbol, the crescent moon and a star in the sky. The lunar calendar would have never have been invented or to be orphaned in place once you snap the moon out of existence. So people will have to switch over probably to the Gregorian calendar, which is not moon based. It's based on earth seasons. Does the moon does the moon not do something stabilize the rotation of the earth as well? Yes. You're talking about historically. The moon has, so earths, the tip of earth, thanks for

mentioning that, almost forgot, the tip of earths, we're tipped on our axis. 23 degrees. 23 and a half somewhere around there close enough and that and we process on our axis like a top whoever spins tops anymore I don't know you spin it and the top starts to wobble while it's spinning it's wobbling we're wobbling in space so that's that's procession okay that period is 26,000 years all right so we've seen this in recorded history and we've measured it. Another thing it does, it bobs up and down.

So while it's processing, while we are spinning and the bobbing up and down is a change in the angle of our tip relative to the sun and the gravity of the tip relative to the Sun. And the gravity of the Moon has a way of stabilizing that because that would tip much more wildly than it currently does. I forgot the numbers right now just several degrees each way, but without the Moon, it would be much larger than that.

And that would make for much more severe, seasonal temperature changes. And yeah, so civilization would have developed differently from how it has in under that influence. I remember I read an article from someone who was trying to do an astrophysics analysis of why the seasons in Game of Thrones could be so difficult to predict. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, the winter's coming.

Winter's coming. They say that for three years. Winter's coming. So, you can ask, in fact, on one of my podcasts, I think we address this. I interviewed George R. Martin for one of my StarTalk podcast, but I don't think that was the podcast where we talked about what planet this could be. So what you do is you back, you back into the story, right? So you say, all right, how long does, how long does it take to get to winter? How long, how many months or years? Is there not winter? And then you configure a planet-moon star system that is on an orbit. There are other consequences because if the orbit gets close and far, then the size of the star and the sky has to get bigger and smaller. I don't

remember them referencing the size of their sun. So yeah, it's fun, what we call not so much revisionist, but it's the whole field of apologetics, where you have something that is taken to be true, and you do whatever you can to justify how and why that's the case. It's apologetics from the original, as it Latin, meaning defender of their religious apologetics, for example, who defend their version of the Bible as a Latin meaning defender of their religious apologetics,

for example, who defend their version of the Bible against people who say it's not true. So it's a fun exercise in the sci-fi world. They do that for Star Wars. Han Solo said he did the Kessel run in 12 Parsecs, he boasting about the speed of his ship. And that's just wrong, okay? What does he mean?

You can't give a time measure with a measure of length. The parsec is a measure of length. All right, 12 parsecs is about 40 light years. And no, that's like saying, oh, how tall are you? How tall are you? What's the example? How tall are you? I am 55 miles per hour.

Okay? This is, okay, how long did it take you to go? 12-part sec. This is not how this works the units matter, okay What's your body temperature? Oh, it's it's 43 cents, you know, no, it's not Right, it's not who ever was in the writing room at Lucasfilm's that day whoever was in the writing room at Lucasfilm's that day. There were people who took a sentence and worked hard to find a way to make that.

Rather than say, yeah, he fucked up. Rather than say that, not he, but the writers, right? They came up with some back doorway to account for it. And it's like, okay, that's how you want to do it. I'll walk away now. Have you read about this habitable world's observatory, which has been proposed? There's something called a WASP collaboration, which is a wide area, S, wide area search for planets, which is ground-based.

It's got dozens of countries participating, sharing their data, and they're finding planets. I think they're targeting Earth-like planets. I don't know if that's the same thing, but it has to be... I read an article about it. In sessions of the recent 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society, NASA officials outlined their approach to developing what the agency now calls the Habitable World's observatory, a 6.5 meter space telescope operating at ultraviolet visibly. Oh, no, it's a whole other thing. Oh, my gosh. Yes. Oh, that would have just happened.

Literally, this week. American Astronautical Society, those are my people. And I wasn't there for that meeting. Otherwise, I could give you firsthand retelling of this rather than the journalist account. But we just, we meet. Our biggest meeting is once a year in January. Oh, that's great. I'm glad to hear that. What is it? The budget projection for it's the it's two thousand and thirty five to two thousand and fourteen forty five. And you would need to increase NASA's astrophysics budget currently about one.5 billion year to 2.5 billion annually later in the 2020. You don't have enough money, and if you don't get enough money, it's going to take ages

and people will mad that it was going to take ages, basically. Well, at first we are forward thinkers in my field. The James Webb Space Telescope was on paper in proposals decades ago, for what it would be and what it would do. And you speck it as best you can at the time, but technology changes and we learned things in science. Certain things may be impossible, some things are easier than we thought. So you can make adjustments along the way. But the James Webb was on paper decades ago, as was the Hubble Telescope, on paper decades before it was launched. And so, so yeah, we are very forward thinkers. And

the way you do it is you increment the budget and that money goes to it. You don't spend it all at once because you don't have it and you couldn't spend it, because often it involves technology developments. So yeah, I mean, search for planets is a big industry now, as you'd expect, because we're looking for life. That must be infuriating to do a project which is going to take so long that you know that the technology that you are going to design it with will be way obsolete by the time that it comes to launch it.

Yeah, so you do your best to forward project that based on how quickly things went obsolete before. So, with Hubble, because it was a serviceable telescope, they were able to swap out that was a Microsoft XPS. One of the girls operating systems, and the chip was a 286 chip. You know, it was once, you know, plus Hubble was delayed in its launch because of the challenger disaster. And that delay meant it was sitting there in mothballs,

not literally mothballs, but it was sitting there getting old as technology and computing advanced and bandwidths and communication protocols and the like. So when it launched it was already old. In the first servicing mission which had to fix the optical problem, they were able to swap out a whole bunch of things and bring it up to date. So yeah. So no. It's a challenge.

The one rule in astronomical research, or any scientific research is you want the experiment to be done before you die. OK. Right. So the person that's designing it might put a mortal limit on what's going to go on. And the budget appropriately, correct. That's right. I like that mortal limit. I like that. That's what we will call it.

What are the mortality factors of this project? Right? Well, Louie's going to die and Susie's going to die. And yeah, so you give them other projects that can happen within their lifetime. Quicker, right? Okay. You can go and get us a coffee or something. That would be capable. What are you working on next? What can people expect from you this year? Oh my gosh.

Yeah, I have a book, the third book of my, in the spirit of my podcast, coming up, Star Talk. It's a third book. It's called To Infinity and Beyond. But it's not coming down until December. So I don't need to distract people with it. But it's a celebration of cosmic discovery. But through the start talking and lens,

which is pop culture and humor, but you learn the fits and starts of science and how we went from A to B to C to beyond the alphabet where there are no letters to ascribe off to infinity. So it's a close up look at how we make discoveries and how we celebrate them and how we lament the ones that fail. So it's a candid look at how science works. That's cool.

That's in the fall. But we're still editing that and that's still happening. Otherwise, I just wanted to go to the Bahamas, because I had a very, very full year with the publication of the book. And oh, by the way, we were talking about the moon. If the moon weren't there, there's a whole chapter on just called Earth in Moon.

And just if you want to sit down and bask in what the moon is to us. And I'm glad we have a moon because I'll repeat the off-quoted, what do you call it? It's not an epithet. The off-quoted saying in the space, fairing industry, that if God wanted us to explore space, he would have given us a moon. It sounds a little backwards, but yeah, we have a moon and we've explored space. Think about it. If we didn't have a moon to draw us as a destination, would we have had a space problem? I mean, I wonder this. That's a really interesting question

because the barrier to entry for space travel would be so high if the closest thing that we were going to was Mars. Correct, correct. We still haven't done it. Venus is closer, but we'd learned before then, I'd hope that we would vaporize upon learning. So yes, Mars, for sure.

Yeah. Wow, yeah, that is very interesting. And Stari Messenger also relatively new out now. People can go. Yeah, yeah. In the United States, at least for this last I checked, it's still on the best seller list, but it will surely get bumped because it was hanging on at the bottom. It'll get bumped by your your boy. Prince Harry spare. Well, I mean, if you if you want to compete with Prince Harry, you're going to have to spend half a chapter talking about your penis. A step I don't know whether you've descended into that realm yet with your writing, but I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. You know, people were joking where he says he wants to go into private life and

not be disturbed, but to make sure that happens, he goes on Oprah and then goes on 16 minutes and then publishes a book and then, and now he can have his peace and quiet, right? So anyway, I'll have no hesitation making room for X royalty. That's how the book lists work. But I was delighted to be on the best sellers at all with a science book. I mean, it's it's not often that that happens. So congratulations. I'm happy for you. But the night states it had some following. Yeah.

Look, Neil, I appreciate you. I appreciate your time. And I'll see you next time. Thank you. Excellent. Thanks for having me. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,