StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Curiosities, with Paul Mecurio

Episode Date: August 23, 2019

Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Paul Mecurio answer a grab bag full of fan-submitted Cosmic Queries on the Big Bang, the boundaries of the universe, space tourism, Star Trek, dark matter, neutrinos, communicating with extraterrestrial life, and much more.Thanks to this week’s Patrons for supporting us: Valentín Elizalde, Tyler Ford, Ted Shevlin.NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons and All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/cosmic-curiosities-with-paul-mecurio/Photo Credit: V. Springel, Max Planck Institut für Astrophysik, Garching bei München. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and beaming out across all of space and time, this is StarTalk, where science and pop culture collide. This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And we have a Cosmic Queries edition, but now it's kind of they're questions that kind of land in their own category. And so what do you do when you put questions together that belong each in their own category?

You get a kind of a grab bag, a kind of a cosmic curiosities all mixed together. And I got one guy who's a cosmic curiosity himself, Paul Mercurio. Paul. How are you? Thanks for being on Don Talk. I've been on your show, the Paul Mercurio show, multiple times. Yeah, you're great. Thank you.

You say that to all of you. No, no, no, no. You're actually, I didn't think you knew much about science, but I was surprised. You actually killed it. No, I love being on your show because you're curious and your fans are curious. And I like being amid curious people

because then I can fulfill my prime directive as an educator. I told my wife that if I had you as a science teacher, I'd probably be doing something in science really because i do think the message is the medium in some level and the person communicating and i had this guy this big hulking bitter guy was in it 30 years and he would smoke like all right we're gonna make a battery today and they're like okay what an exciting thing. I remember eighth grade, I couldn't, I'm like, this is the worst. I got a C in chemistry.

But anyway, the way you, and I know you come on with Stephen Colbert a lot and I work on the show. He just loves. Right, right. You're the warm-up guy. Yeah, but he brightens up when you come on, like in rehearsal. Who do we have in there? Oh, God, that's great.

I don't have to do anything. I'll just ask one question. He'll talk for two segments. So you have a big fan over there. Yeah, God, that's great. I don't have to do anything. I'll just ask one question. They'll talk for two segments. So you have a big fan over there. Yeah, no, it's excellent. Excellent. So you collected all the questions. I did.

These are questions I gathered from the internet. Right, along with Lindsay. They're not specifically solicited because they're leftovers, really. Oh, okay. They're like the leftover podcast. I'm a leftover guy. This is about right. What did you want to call this?

The cosmic... Cosmic catch-all. Catch-all. Yeah. Yeah, the cosmic catch basin. Cosmic trash bin. How about Paul's pathetic leftovers? Okay.

Paul's pathos. Yeah, exactly. All right. They all have mold on them and everything. No. No, the people, they should be rewarded for asking questions that fit no category. Yeah, and they're very good questions. There aren't enough people like that out there.

Yeah. Who walk at a pace that no one sees or understands. That's a good way of putting it. No, no, there's a quote from Nietzsche. This is one of my favorite quotes ever. Those who were dancing were deemed insane by those who could not hear the music. Whoa, that's heavy.

Yeah. I think we should end the show there. I don't think anything's going to top that. Think about Yeah. I think we should end the show there. I don't think anything's going to top that. Think about it. If you're looking through a glass wall and you don't hear the music, what are people... That's so true. They're just jumping up and down waving their appendages.

All these people are having seizures. They're seizures. If you don't know they're playing music and you can't hear their music, you think they're insane. It's definitely a good point. So therefore, I respect people who think differently. In fact, one could define genius that way. Genius is

one who sees what everyone else sees but thinks what no one else has thought. Were you always like this as a child? No, no, no. You're one of the most... No, no, no. I'm just curious. Tell me about your parents. Tell me.

That's what this sounds— What? What? Okay, go ahead. No, I'm curious because of how you're so well-versed, not just in astrophysics and science, but in pretty much everything, and I'm just curious. No, there's plenty of stuff I'm not versed in.

I just don't talk about it. That's smart. Huge gaping hole, but if I don't talk about it, you don't know. I just don't talk about it. That's smart. Huge gaping hole. But if I don't talk about it, you don't know how unversed I am in it. That's good PR. I'm just saying. No, I just, anyway. No, you know what it is.

You know what it is. And I mean that as a compliment. I'm not trying to be funny. Yeah, it's hard to know if you're a compliment. No, I'm sure. Carol, did I just compliment him? He's asking his wife in the peanut gallery. Yeah.

Was that a compliment? Of the spectrum of comments that come out of your husband's mouth, that counts as a compliment. It was. Okay, I hate to be in your home. Oh, God. All right, no, we got three segments of this. We got more.

Okay, let's get some first questions going. Okay, all right. We're starting with our Patreon folks. Patreon folks. Got to thank them. Priority people. Got to love them. The priority Patreons. This is John Callahan. starting with our patreon folks patreon folks gotta gotta gotta gotta priority people gotta love the priority patreons this is john callahan is the name big bang a misnomer from what i recall we don't actually have any evidence the big bang started with an explosion like a supernova or a black hole merger yeah so first of all the big bang was a name given to this idea that the universe started in this one primordial explosion.

It was given pejoratively to this idea by proponents of what at the time was known as the steady state theory hypothesis of the universe. One where the universe always was and always will be. Even though it's expanding it's always been expanding and matter is spontaneously created in the vacuum to fill in for where space is getting thinner so that you'd always see a universe that looked about the same this is called the steady state hypothesis you could could get that out of Einstein's equations of gravity. That was allowed. But another solution was one where we're either collapsing or where we're expanding.

All three solutions were allowed. The one with the Big Bang itself, it was an equal competitor to the steady state theory for decades until we finally got some evidence to support the big bang and that was the famous microcosmic microwave background this is a leftover signal signature from an explosion that started in one hot primeval fireball 13.8 billion years ago thank you sir okay you don't need me for this no that was the only thing i remember 13.85 you're showing off now no i'm showing off okay so so it was it was given as a as a as a funny pejorative name but it stuck and and if it fits

it fits now it's not clear how much noise it would have made because just the expansion of space itself is not you know that's not associated with noise and And space is vacuum anyway, and noise doesn't propagate. So if you don't want to call it the Big Bang, because it was probably made no noise. You think you'd fix that by now? No, you call it the, how about the main event? Let's get ready to blow up! Yeah, I think the big event, but, you know, the main event let's get ready to blow up yeah i think the the big event but you know yeah the main event well you've talked about laws and theories and what used to be called you remember

that thank you for that's a right that's a subtle point in the old days we come up with an understanding of the universe a new law has been discovered that's a very exciting time in science when that happens and then you learn later on that with better instruments and more tools and deeper thinkers that what you came up with as a law was a smaller subset of a larger understanding so you don't really you shouldn't call it a law right it's it's a but it works right so we just use the word theory for everything that works now right and if you if you just have an idea that it hasn't been tested, we call it Paul's hypothesis. Right, well, there's a lot of those.

Paul's BS hypothesis. Bologna sandwich hypothesis. Right, exactly. There's something you said in this context. You said, this is a quote of yours, what happened in the 20th century is that we came to learn that whatever we determined to be true about the universe may only be a subtext of a larger truth. Yeah, that not that would later shown to be wrong right so it's not like

science goes from one truth to another truth discarding previous truths not the physical sciences at least um not since the 1600s have we been in that situation before the 1600s that's about when we uh the methods and tools and practices of what we now call modern science were forged. Galileo, Francis Bacon, folks said, you know, if you have an idea about how the world works, you should test it. I don't care how it looks. I don't care what your senses tell you. Come up with an experiment that goes a little beyond your senses or extends your senses. Galileo had a telescope.

Liu and Hooke had a microscope. You start seeing directions that were previously inaccessible to your sensory system. Right. Your eyes, your sense of touch, taste, smell. And so the universe comes to you now outside of the experience of your senses. Right.

And the experiment then becomes the measure of what is true not whether it makes sense and one of my recent books the the the front piece that i mean the the epigraph epigram a grammar epigraph i always forget what they're called uh if you don't know i'm not gonna it's i just said i just lead i just i just baptize people into this by saying the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. Yeah. But we're always in a state of subtext then in some way? Possibly.

There's some things we might know completely. Right. But let it be open enough to say this is a subset of a larger understanding. Newton's laws of motion and gravity worked. Did he experience anything faster than a running horse or the gravity of the Earth? And so it worked. In fact, it got us to the moon and back.

Right. But then we have particle accelerators and we move close to the speed of light and we say, you know, Newton's laws are weird things happening. So your knowledge is limited by what you can do at that time in the 18th century. Correct.

And Einstein came up with his laws, his theories of motion and gravity. And we learned that it's a deeper understanding of reality that still has limits. You know where Einstein's theories leave us high and dry? At the singularity of the black hole and at the singularity of the Big Bang itself. It's like dividing by zero.

You remember you're not supposed to do that in math class? Right, right. Okay, so there's a poster, it's probably a t-shirt by now, that said a black hole, the center of a black hole, that's where God is dividing by zero. Right, okay.

So I thought that was cute. So singularities are now a frontier of string theorists and others who are trying to take it to the next level. Got it. Just one other thing on this. Hawking said the boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary. Is that sort of what you're alluding to here?

That's a way to think about it. I think that's a, it's an organizational thought for you. Okay, you can say, what is, here you go, ready? Holding flat earthers aside, I assume you agree that Earth is spherical. It depends. Okay. So, if I say to you, start walking and call me when you get to the edge of the Earth. You'll say, I'm not going to do that because Earth has no edge.

Meanwhile, you can walk forever and never get to an edge. Right. So, what are the boundary conditions of the Earth? and never get to an edge. Right. So what are the boundary conditions of the earth? Is there an edge? No, there is no edge. Right. So, so, so you can have things that have no boundaries. They're real. The surface of the earth is one of them. So if you can have that on earth, now you go to higher dimensions and you can just go to whole other places with that and imagine an entire universe that has no edge and no boundary. You can have no boundary in time.

We live forever as a universe. There's no boundary at the other end of time. I got to tell you, I love you. Your job's annoying because there's never an answer at the end of it. No, we got some. No, no, no. I take you to places where we don't have answers

because that's where things are coolest. But there's plenty of stuff we have answers to. The age of the earth, where humans came from. I got this. Okay? You know what i like about astrophysics like the names you come up with other you got the coolest names well wait a minute coolest name other science like zoology whatever it's like latin phrases you have like quark spooky action and big bang who's is this like beavis and butthead naming yes no we call it like we see

them okay we, okay? The beginning of space-time, energy in the universe, big bang. We're into one-syllable communications. For people like me to get it. Okay?

There's a region of space where you fall in, you don't come out, light doesn't come out, black hole, okay? There's a crater in Arizona made by a meteor. We call it meteor crater, okay?

All the other sciences come up with these huge Latin, Greek-derived words. Cretaceous, paleo... Paleo, the deoxyribonucleic... You would call it Dynapocalypse. No. I would say Big Tooth Animal. That's what we call it. Maybe make that noise.

Make it onomatopoetic. So I think it's why so much of our vocabulary has been absorbed and adopted into the marketing of products. Pulsar watches. I don't know if they still make them, but that was a watch, a Quasar brand. A TV. A TV and microwave ovens in the old days. But today, I think it's the second,

the third highest category of where you draw names from to name cars. Astrophysics? Yes. Seriously? Yes. So, no, or science-leaning astro. So, let's start off, okay?

All right. Aren't you supposed to be asking me questions? Yeah, I got questions. Okay, all right, all right. You want me to go to it? I count you as a questioner, you're two. Okay, so fine. Okay. This counts as Paul's question. No, no, I can go to the next question. Paul's question. I got questions. Okay, all right, all right. You want me to go to it? I count you as a questioner, you're two. Okay, so fine. Okay.

This counts as Paul's question. No, no, I can go to the next question. I'm sorry. Fine. Wait, do you want me to ask the next question? No, we're doing Paul's question and make everyone pissed off at you. Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm done, I'm done, I'm done. That's fine. I'm done. That's fine. I'm done. We can go to the next question. So number one in car names, I think are names that don't mean anything.

Like the S class for Mercedes. Just letters and digits and numbers. The M class with a number. Then you have locations. Like Yukon. Or Denali. Telluride. These are places.

I think third is like science names. Science, astrophysics names. And I made a whole list of them. Is that right? Yes, I got a whole, let me read, I got it right here in my pocket. Okay? Okay, give me a second, pull this up. I swear to God, I'm happy to go to the next question.

No, no, no. The audience will be pissed off at you. That's fine. I got a mad at me. Okay, ready? Okay. Between 1973 and 1975. Yeah.

What had just finished? What did we just finish doing just before that? Getting rid of Nixon. That's true. We just finished going to the moon. Yes. The car called the Apollo. Oh.

Yes. I forgot about that. Yeah. We forgot you that old. It was a Buick. Of course, General Motors. Okay. And then I got 2008 to 2009, the Saturn car company.

Whoa. Start there. Okay. They had a car called the Astra, which is basically star in Latin. Okay. I got that. But this can go on and on and on. You tell me when to shut up.

2005 to current, the Chevy Equinox. I'm taking it. Whoa. Equinox. You didn't know that these, okay. No. Keep going. Here wex. You didn't know that these... Okay. No. Keep going. Here we go.

Another one. Saturn, going back to Saturn, which the car canopy does not exist anymore, but Saturn from 2003 to 2007 had the ion. I'm taking it. The ion. It's chemistry, but I... The sun is a ball of ionized gas called plasma.

Oh, so you're... All stars are ionized. All right, I'll give you... It's a cousin, really. It's not... But, excuse me, most of the universe is ionized gas called plasma. Oh, so you're... All stars are ionized. All right, I'll give you... It's a cousin, really. It's not... But, excuse me, most of the universe is ionized. I'm taking it. Okay?

I'm not giving that to you. Okay, the famous one here, 1962 to 1979, and again, 1985 to 1908, the Chevy Nova. Oh! That was the car we made out in. Wait, for those only listening, you should say who you were making out with. Not you and I. My wife, Carol.

Who was in the Pina Gallery of this dude. Yeah, we went to high school together. And you made out, the Chevy Nova's not all that large. We had a Chevy Nova. Okay. And we would go to. We had a bench front seat. Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't bucket seats. You couldn would go to the front. We had a bench front seat. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You couldn't move the steering wheel up, though. He's got the biggest smile. I don't think people know that a Nova was a star that had just blown up. I think Chevy,

had they known that, they might have found it. Well, it also means no-go. No-go in Spanish. In Spanish. I've got another 20 cars in this list. I just want to say,

by the way, for those listening, he has it on his phone and he has so many that he must have did about 70 swipes. He just kept going and going and going. All right. Plus, ask me what gum I chew. Trident. Nope.

Eclipse. Oh, God. Thank you. Or Orbit. Orbit, I prefer the harder gum rather than the softer gum. Oh. Right. You're really committed to your craft.

And there's Moonglow bath beads. You've got Celestial Seasonings tea. You've got Milky Way candy bar. Mars candy bar. Even though that's the name of the family, they named it Mars. And it's red, okay? The packaging is red. I'm taking it.

That's all the time we have for today, everybody. We've got 30 seconds left. That's all the time we have for today, everybody. We got 30 seconds left. What's the next question? The next question is from another Patreon fan. Another Paul Blew the entire first segment. One Hive Gazette asks, will space tourism require some fundamentally new technology to make it affordable for everyday people?

This is Patrick Follis in Mill Creek, Washington. And we will get to that question in the next segment of StarTalk. This is StarTalk. StarTalk. The Cosmic Queries edition where it's really a grab bag. It's Paul's, but Paul Mercurio, my co-host today. Thanks for being on, Paul. Absolutely. From the Paul Mercurio Show. Yeah, podcast.

On iPodcast and iTunes. I've been on it several times, and it's always fun being on there with you. Thank you. Thanks for coming to help me do StarTalk. Thanks for having me. I've been a big fan of the show. It was really like an honor to be asked to do this. And you collected not out of

one category. You just, you got the dregs of everybody's questions. Yeah, but I think it's cool because it's like, it's a mixed bag. It's fun, you know. It's not just one topic. You know, we've got dark matter. Yeah, I think some of them are the best questions. There's several dark matter. March to a beat of a different drummer.

Yeah. You call this Paul's what? Cosmic catch-all. Catch-all. Yeah. There you go. Okay. So reread that question before we exit in that last segment. This is a Patreon person.

Patrick Follis in Mill Creek, Washington asks, will space tourism require some fundamentally new technology to make it affordable for everyday people? Yeah, so that's a really good question. What's interesting about access to space is, if you remember your econ 101, we think the demand is completely elastic. Okay, and an elastic demand would be, if you drop the price, more people will do it. If you raise the price, fewer people will do it.

But there's always a demand at a price. That's one of the measures of whether something is elastic. If it's inelastic, it doesn't matter what price you charge, everyone has to buy it, and you can drive some people bankrupt or whatever. But elastic is like most products, you want them to be elastic. It's a healthy economy.

Okay. So tourist seats have already been sold on the space station by the Russians because the Americans wouldn't do it. And how much were they? They were $20 million. Why wouldn't we do it? Because it was not our, that's not how we roll. Okay.

It was America. Not for our greatest of frontier. No, so for example, we have the right stuff. If you can just buy the right stuff example, we have the right stuff. If you can just buy the right stuff, it ain't the right stuff. So our image of going into space

had some of that right stuff added in. You don't want to sully it, right? Yeah, you don't want to sully it. Yeah, exactly. I think that was, no one would say that, but I think that was part of it.

But don't you think it's inevitable that... Yeah, I'm getting there. I'm getting there. Exactly. No, no, no. Don't apologize for interrupting me. This is New York.

If you interrupt me, that's my only evidence that you're paying attention to me. Okay. I'm sorry. Who are you again? All right. So you can drop the price.

So if you made it $10 million, there might be 10 people who will go up. If you have a billion dollars, $10 million is lunch money, right? There are a lot of billionaires today. Yeah. Make it $1 million, then you have all the, like, hundred millionaires, okay? So, as you go down the economic ladder, the number of people who I think would be interested in this would continue to grow. Plus, I bet, I don't know your budget, I don't know what you do on holiday, I'm not going to ask, but I bet you would save two years of holiday expenses to go on one space trip

and you stay home and watch tv and all the other holidays when you might have gone to aruba or whatever does my wife have to come yes she's in the room now the answer is can i go on a craft called nova so i so i think there's a price that you can just keep doing this. Then, if there's a price below which it can't go, make a lottery. Oh, interesting. Yes. Yes. So let's say you can't get it below a million dollars. Right.

So you sell a million lottery tickets for a dollar. You can do that every single time. How low do you— Every single seat will go for a dollar. You can sell for a dollar, and you get the one person, and that's the $10 million that pays for that one person's seat. You can sell for a dollar and you get the one person and that's the million, the $10 million it pays for that one person. You could do that every time.

How low do you think the price could go realistically? It's tough. It's tough getting into space. Yeah. It really is. Yeah. I don't know.

It's tough. Do you trust the technology on the private side to get it right and do it right? You mean to not kill you? Yes. No, people will die.

That's what happened with the first airplanes. People die. Right now, people... You're a bad commercial for this. No, it's just how this works. Go to space, die. No, go to space first, die.

At least you went. People said, if Elon Musk, you know, has a spacecraft to Mars, would you take his, the first spaceship? I said, no. I wait till after he sends his mother. And brings

her back, right? If he can do that, then I'm going on the trip. I'm bringing the fam. Get a good Netflix account. And occupy the nine months to get there. Listen, I believe in science. If you can make Disney World affordable, then I know we got something going on. I think you'd have to do lottery

if the ticket doesn't come down to the thousand dollar vacation that we would all take paying for an airplane and rental car and a hotel to go to a beach you're dropping anywhere between one and five thousand dollars for a family um that you might have saved up to do and i don't see it coming that getting that cheap i don't see that happening to me it's come faster than i thought it would i mean there's talk of it seemed like it just talked about a few years ago and suddenly like we're close to making this happen yeah and so as a thing we'll watch the rich people do it first by the way rich people were the first to fly in airplanes just let's this is a good point you know that's a good point the first president to do it that was

headline news president flies in an airplane. Okay. Quick prediction and we'll move on. How many carry-ons am I allowed to do? I think you, right now, access to orbit costs $10,000 a pound, no matter what it is. Whoa. Yes. So I can't do that fake, I have an emotional problem. Can I bring my dog?

Well, then you pay $10,000 a pound for your dog. So a lot of chihuahuas are on this trip. Forget it. Get the bloodhound and the great dame. You have a great dame

on a weight loss program. You want to go to space? Run. No, that ain't happening. No. So $10,000 a pound. Elon Musk is trying to get that down.

But I don't think he's going to get it to $1,000 a pound. And what do you weigh? 150 pounds? Yeah. So there'll be $150,000. Way less than a million. Yeah.

But, and I bet if you weighed 160, but you could drop to 150, you'd do that to save the $10,000. Absolutely. To go into space. So. I'd go on naked just to save the weight on clothes. to go into space. I'd go on naked just to save the weight on clothes. So you're talking about carry-ons?

That'd be some seriously important carry-on. Can I take my bowling ball on? That's going to cost you $15,000. Alright, we're going to go on to another page here. Bowling would be hard in space, by the way.

If we go in there, leave your bowling ball at home. If you get a strike in space and you don't hear it, did it happen? If you got a strike in space and you didn't hear it, you'd be bowling in a vacuum with a spacesuit on, and that would be weird. We would make a place where there's air and you could breathe, okay? We would do that for you and your bowling ball. All right, okay. And one other thing real quick. I saw you were talking about something, and you talked about, okay? We would do that for you and your bowling ball. I love you. And one other thing real quick.

I saw you were talking about something, and you talked about the movie Gravity, and you made the point that Sandra Bullock's bangs did not... The bangs always point you down. Which is hilarious. The bangs knew where gravity was. Everything's floating around. Everything's floating around.

The bangs didn't budge. That angered me irrationally. And whoever immediately went to her face, she looked great. You're right. They were down. They were perfect. They'm sorry. And whoever cut it, like immediately went to her face and just, she looked great. You're right. They were down. They were perfect. They were straight.

Everything around her was floating. Now, was I wrong to go there? No, you were totally wrong. Here's my thing. Here's my, let me just defend myself for the moment. If you look at any picture

of somebody in space who has long hair, the first thing you notice is that the hair is everywhere. That's the first thing. That's a good point. The women who go up with all their long hair, the first thing you notice is that the hair is everywhere. That's the first thing. That's a good point, yeah. The women who go out with all their long hair

and they don't tie it in the thing, sticking straight up. Is that why Kelly, the bald guy, he's bald. He wants to keep you guessing if he's in space or if he's on a soundstage.

Mark Kelly. Mark Kelly. Mark Kelly? The twins, I forget which one. I think it might be Scott. I don't know. Scott, which one did we interview on StarTalk? We had one of those two twins.

We had the better looking one, apparently, as he introduced himself. Scott Kelly, I think it was. Yeah, maybe he had long dreadlocks. I'm going to screw with their heads and shave myself. I'm not going to be a fool in that photo. Let me mess with them. All right. So we're going to go on to another Patreon supporter, OneHiveGazette.

This is the same gentleman. This is Patrick Fogarty. He's getting two questions in there. All right. Dark matter seems to be a placeholder for unexplained gravitational forces in the universe. Is it possible that our understanding of gravity is incomplete? Could gravity work differently on galactic scales? Not likely.

It's an excellent question. First, it's not so much a placeholder. It is a placeholder, but it's not. We measure this thing out there that has gravity associated with it, and we don't know what it is. Come up with a name. Call it something. Call it Fred. we don't know what it is. Come up with a name. Call it something. Call it Fred.

I don't care what you call it. It's a thing. It's got gravity. We measure its gravity. It interacts with matter by gravity. So we happen to call it dark matter, and everyone's thinking, oh, is it matter? It's really dark gravity.

Dark matter implies you know it's matter. We would label it correctly just like the big bang we'd have to call it the big event the main event if it didn't make any sound dark gravity is the accurate thing we should be calling it

and we don't know what it is but we can calculate it with it and you put it in the equations and it works there's a term here's the extra stuff, dark matter. Is it 85% or something like that? Yeah. So 85% of all gravity in the universe is of unknown origin.

Gravity that we measure. So, yeah, it could be that we need a deeper understanding of gravity on larger scales. But we have examples of colliding galaxies. And you can run the numbers on it. And regular gravity accounts for that. And then you throw in dark matter to account for some other things that are going on. So I don't...

We think it's not that. Right. Yeah. How slow... By the way, there's a subcottage industry of people who think we just have to modify gravity, modify Newtonian gravity. And they abbreviated that M-O-N-D,

modified Newtonian, and they called MOND, the MOND people. You type MOND in wiki, you'll get all this description of taking Newton's gravity and adding a term to it for a large-scale thing. And you can fit a few things, but there's some things you can't fit with it. So we think it's something else,

that we simply don't know what it is. Well, you said you, this is something you said, you don't know if it's made of matter, it's a misnomer to send people in thought directions that's not the right path. I don't say it's not the right path. It's, you don't want to mislead, you don't want to mislead.

You don't want to prejudge what it could be. Because then people use the word, and then they get caught up in the word, and then the word becomes the thing rather than the idea. Are you a WIMP proponent? A weakly interacting massive particles? Yeah. Yeah, sure. The possibility of what role they could play in the universe?

Right. Sure. I mean, in the universe, astroph role they could play in the universe. Right. They do play, sure. I mean, in the universe, astrophysics, we're open to anything. We are so ignorant of so much stuff. We just take any, you got an idea, bring it on and give us ways we might test it and we'll test it. Is there a process of elimination? Is there like, are you all crossing things off the list? You want to come up with a hypothesis that has enough detail in your predictions

that we can rule it out if we make the experiment. If you just say, oh, it could be just something that's there when you don't look at it, but then it's there for the... Then give me a prediction. If you don't have a prediction, it's not useful. Okay.

So there are hypotheses that are put on the table. The more fuzzy-wuzzy they are, the less useful they are, and you just discard them. It's the ones that say, if this idea is correct, you should find this if you look in that direction. And then we do it, we find it. Hey, you're onto something. Give me another prediction. Oh, that failed. Okay.

Should you modify your hypothesis? And by the way, if your predictions keep coming right, we elevate your hypothesis to a theory. Oh. That's how you get the theory of gravity. You get quantum theory. You get relativity theory. You get evolutionary theory. These are ideas that started out as an hypothesis elevated to a working understanding of how the universe works that has predictive value.

Is it possible that our understanding of gravity is so vague that my bathroom scale could be off so that I'm actually lighter than I am? That's the part of gravity we understand precisely. Damn. Yeah, I'm just saying. Okay, we're going to move on. Oh, by the way, people don't talk about this.

Because of the centrifugal force of the rotating Earth, you weigh less on the equator than you do on the pole. Because the Earth is trying to spin you off. And so you actually weigh a little less at the equator. You weigh less here than you do in Canada. Really? Yeah. Not only that, Earth is slightly wider at the equator than it is at the pole,

so you're farther away from the center of the Earth. So you weigh less for that reason as well. You also weigh less because you are immersed in a fluid called air. There's a buoyancy that you have in air. Air is a fluid? If it takes the shape of its container,

it's a fluid. You can have liquids and gases or fluids. And so fluid dynamics, which is an entire branch of physics and engineering involves the movement of things that would that are would take so the movement of of water around bridge embankments the movement of air over the the wings of planes it's all it's all fluid dynamics so so so why did i talk about that where was where was i going with this? Because I asked you if the laws of gravity are so vague

that my scale could be wrong. Yeah, yeah. No, sorry. Oh, yeah. You started. So, here's how to go. On the equator, where you get the centrifugal forces, you weigh a little less than you would, than, Santa Claus would weigh less on the equator than on the North Pole. Okay. Okay. And you also

weigh less on the equator because earth is slightly wider at the equator than it is pole to pole all right and you'd also weigh less if you went to a mountaintop because you're farther away from earth center than if you went down in a in a mine for example carol we're moving to an equator i want to be able to move to a mountain on an equator now there you go now you're talking. Now you're talking. Pizza every day. Get your six ounces or whatever. When we come back with Paul Mercurio on StarTalk, we're going to do more Cosmic Queries from the dustbin. Hey, we want to shout out the following people

who support us on Patreon and help us as we make our little journey through the cosmos. Valentin Elizalde, Wilson Teixeira, and Julia Leszek. Thank you so much, guys, for supporting us. And if you want your name shouted out, go to Patreon and support StarTalk Radio.

Bringing space and science down to Earth. You're listening to StarTalk, we're back. Paul Mercurio on loan from the Paul Mercurio Show. Did you allow yourself to be loaned out to us? You have to check the authorities on that one. I bought myself a car service and everything. Yes, I got permission

to be out just for the day. Just for the day. They let you out. I said, please, it's Neil. They're like, all right. And you brought your wife. She's in the studio with us here. Welcome.

Tell me your name again. Carol. Carol, welcome to Star Talk. So you got some more questions for me. Let's go. From the dustbin. We're sticking with Dark Matter.

This is Kale Honeyset, Instagram. Do you think that once Dark Matter is discovered and understood, would it actually help in space travel? So I'm going to answer a bigger question than that. Almost. By the way, we've already discovered Dark Matter. We just don't know what it is. Okay?

So what she means there is once we know what dark matter is made of okay we've already discovered it it's there can we then use it okay by the way there's a long history of discovering things that we don't know what it is okay that's this is not a first time you discover something the kardashians what is this why am i watching Exactly. How did this come about? How did this come about? You can edit that out. Dark matter forces operating on our culture.

That's the 85%. That's the 85%. So once we find out what it is, I can say more broadly that practically every scientific discovery there ever was, when you have enough clever engineers and other folks in the pipeline, we find a way to apply it to our everyday lives. In this case, maybe space travel.

Maybe we can exploit its existence as we move through space. Maybe we can isolate a dark matter particle here on Earth and use it for walking through walls. Dark matter doesn't interact with ordinary matter in ordinary ways. In fact, it moves through it as though it's not there at all. How do we know that if we don't know what it is? Oh, because we can see. Oh, because we can see.

You can log the behavior of things. Effects of things. Exactly. So you say, here's this region of space. We don't see any matter. No light is coming out except stuff is getting attracted to it. Must be. Stuff that moves through it unimpeded with its speed.

So I'm attracted to it, yet it's not slowing me down. I'm not plowing into anything. So dark matter and, quote, regular matter can move through each other with no effect at all. So maybe that's how you make ghosts. Maybe these are the spirits of all the dead people do you believe in any of them no okay next question but okay there's been about a hundred billion people ever born on earth maybe a little less like 80 billion so and we got about seven billion here now so let's 80 billion minus seven that what it gets you down. So that's 80 billion minus 7. What did it get you down to?

So that's 73 billion ghosts out there. So first, that's a lot of ghosts. People said, do you believe in ghosts? No,

because there'd be so many of them. There'd be 10 times as many ghosts as there are people. You'd have to have high rises. It's like,

that'd be so annoying. It's like, get out of here. I'm busy. Everywhere you turn, there's a ghost. There's a ghost. Enough with the ghosts already.

Great Caesar's ghost. I don't know. So where was I? We were talking about 70 million ghosts. 73 million ghosts. So here's the thing. The total number of humans ever born doesn't amount to that much mass. There's way more mass in the universe in dark matter than ever could be equaled by the ghosts of dead people.

So you can't appeal to the ghosts of dead people or lost socks in the washing machine space-time continuum. Jerry Seinfeld thing where the sock is up against the dryer wall trying to get out. All right. Next question. What do we have? By the way, on this dark matter thing real quick, the idea that you can't define it, we don't know what it is,

that's a good way to scare kids. Like if you don't go to bed, dark matter is going to get you. You'd like freak them out. Oh. Did you ever think about that? No, I didn't. Do you have kids?

Yes, we do. How old are they? I'm not sure. I'm trying not to get too close. Okay. We're going to move away from dark matter. We've done a few of those. This is from Mike Parker

at Facebook. When something explodes in space, as is shown on numerous TV shows and movies, is there really a shockwave in a vacuum?

So, good question. Okay, so, this person clearly knows there's no sound to move. You only get a shockwave if energy is moving

through a medium. Okay. And so... is moving through a medium okay and so example of a medium oh anything okay yeah anything okay that's how bombs work a bomb works because it creates a shock wave that moves through air then walls then your flesh ghosts Ghosts. Okay. I haven't seen experiments on ghosts yet. There's 73 million of them. You should get on it. No, a billion. A billion, sorry. Wow, I screwed that up. Sorry, go ahead.

So it goes through these mediums. And so, generally, in a supernova, which is some of our best shockwaves in the universe, the star that was once there had shed a lot of gas which is some of our best shockwaves in the universe, the star that was once there had shed a lot of gas into the vacuum of space. And deep down is where you get the explosion.

And so the explosion happens, sending a shockwave rippling through the gas that it had spread out into space. You see these beautiful photos of these terribly disturbed gaseous regions. The shockwave had blown through it. By the time it gets out the other end of the material,

then the shockwave can't propagate. So what it does is it accelerates particles at the end with that leftover energy. You get very high-moving, fast-moving particles. It's a fun thing. Is this where Newton's third law comes into effect? Newton's third law always comes in. Oh, just there, but not with you?

Yeah. Newton's laws apply everywhere at all times. My butt is pushing down on the seat. And it pushes back. Exactly. So you have this energy moving through and it needs to manifest. And at the edge of the gas you get this acceleration. It happens at the edge of the sun

as well. You get these accelerating particles at the edge of the sun. It's very cool. Really? Yeah. It's part of the solar wind, actually. Does any of the stuff that happens on Star Trek, is any of that true? Because, I mean, I learned Klingon, so I hope it's not a waste of my time. You did learn Klingon.

You're in the club. Wow. No, I didn't learn Klingon. I said, no, I'm going to use my brain for other things. I knew enough back then that that's how I should be using my brain. All right, we're going to do one more. By the way, the photon torpedoes or the phasers, the ship phasers that shoot forward, if they're directing their energy to the ship in front of them,

you should not see them from the side. There's no energy coming out from the side. It's like when the speedometer is on your windshield in a really fancy car you can only see it straight on uh oh this because it's in a well okay that's because it doesn't let you see it from the side because it's in a it's in a cylindrical cavity oh the digital ones oh so what they do is they have a like a a polarized screen so only the driver would see it. You can do all that, but that's not why this is the case.

When you see a laser through the air, it's because particles in the air are reflecting the laser light to you on the side. But if it's Starship against Klingon ship in the vacuum of space and you send a light beam forward, you have no idea the light beam is there. Got it. You said that about Rudolph's red nose,

that it doesn't emit light, it's reflecting. It would reflect light, but we can allow it to emit light. Why do you know everything I've ever written or said? This is a little spooky. I'm just supposed to know stuff. This is bordering on... I'm sorry.

This is bordering on... What's the word you have? Groupie. No, I'm interested in your stuff, and I feel like I should know something if you're nice enough to have me here. All right. What should we do again? We are at the five-minute mark, which means we have to go into lightning round.

Okay, here we go. So that means I will answer every question with a sound bite. Okay. And I will move to the next one. Because we're training for when I'm on the evening news. Because they only want sound bites out of me anyway. I feel like this is a game show. This is for a car. Okay. Okay. And I will move to the next one. It gives me training for when I'm on the evening news. Because they only want sound bites out of me anyway. I feel like this is a game show. This is for a car.

There we go. Okay. Okay. Brian Amaral, Facebook. Hi, Neil. Can you please talk about why scientists are so intent on catching neutrinos on Earth and what they can tell us about the universe? Thank you in advance.

Excellent. So every nuclear process that goes on in the center of the sun and the center of every star, every nuclear event that happens has neutrinos associated with it. So for every hydrogen atom that becomes helium, becomes a helium atom, there's a neutrino emitted. And neutrinos are hard to block. In fact, they exit the sun without any trouble at all. And so neutrinos are

the signposts of intense nuclear activity wherever you happen to be looking. And we think that there's a neutrino blast from the early universe when the universe was formed. And we want to create neutrino telescopes that could see that. This would be, for neutrinos,

what the cosmic microwave background was for the Big Bang and the rest of our understanding of the Big Bang. This would take us even farther back in time. So neutrinos, they're where the action is. I'm sorry, that's not the correct answer. Thank you for playing. Okay. We're going to Miriam Sassal. is? I'm sorry, that's not the correct answer. Thank you for playing. Wah, wah, wah, wah. Okay. We're going to Miriam Sassal. I'm sorry if

I'm butchering that. That's right. Chuck Nice is usually here and messes up every word. At present, how accurately can we intercept possible signals from intelligent aliens? Excellent. Here's the problem. Let's say you assert that they're going to communicate in this frequency.

So now you build a particular frequency. Now you build a telescope. Doesn't it matter on their cell plan? Exactly. International. Is it 3G or 4G? So now I'm going to listen on that frequency, but which way am I going to point the telescope?

I'm going to point it this way. Right. Suppose they're giving me a message on a different frequency. Well, I could listen to that. Well, how about a different frequency from that? Suppose they're not in that direction. Suppose they're giving me a message on a different frequency. Well, I could listen to that. Well, how about a different frequency from that? Suppose they're not in that direction. Suppose they're behind you. Suppose they sent the message

10 minutes ago before you started listening. Right, you were in the shower, you didn't hear it. This is called the parameter space of communication, and are they using your frequency at your time from that direction, and it all has to match up. So you need a detector that can listen to all frequencies.

You need to look in all directions, and you need to look at for all of time. And we don't have that. We're not there. We're not there. Are we working toward that? It's hard. It's hard. Plus, suppose they sent us a message, and it came during the Roman Empire.

And no one caught the message because they didn't invent radio waves, discover radio waves yet, and then nobody sends back a signal, they might conclude there's no sign of intelligent life on Earth. Yet we had the entire Roman Colosseum and statues and what we call intelligence.

So, yeah, just no. Okay, let's get some more in. These answers are too long. I got to make them even shorter luke the inventor instagram do you think if people traveled closer to the edge of the universe with a huge telescope they would be able to see past it to the other side and will they see a giant fetus and then an old man in a white bedroom what does that mean no i'm just kidding uh space odyssey uh yes uh if travel with a huge telescope edge, will you be able to see past it

to the other side, and what would they see? We are bound by the horizon established by the speed of light. And so, if you could travel faster than the speed of light, you could then get ahead of the signal that came from your past. And then see

things in the past. You just blew my mind. Seriously, say that again. But right now, we don't know how to go faster than light. We don't have wormholes or anything. So you're stuck in your present and in your future. But the moment you can travel faster than light,

you can get ahead of the light beam that you created in your past and be able to see your life unfold before your eyes. Next. I don't know if I'd want to see that. I don't know what you've been into. Okay. ShavaBello at Emily Luris, Instagram. What obstacles do you think space tourism will face?

Here's one no one talks about. Okay. I send you up in space. You are weightless. How many of us have experience being weightless? None of us. By the way, it's the experience you get on an amusement park ride, except more so. And so in space, if you throw up, all your vomit continues to float in the air and doesn't go into a splatter diagram on the ground. Right. Okay? You ever go, you see, you know, 3 a.m. You take the fun out of everything.

You walk the streets outside of bars. The throw up pattern is very clear. Okay? It's very, they are different, but they're all generally different. Yeah, they're all different, but they have there's a general recurring geometric pattern, okay? There's always some carrots in there

in the middle somewhere. All right. That he ate seven years ago. You know that, right. So, we trust gravity to gather the vomit in one place. Right. But in space, when you're in zero- G, it's everywhere. So if you have all these newbie tourists throwing up everywhere, it will smell, it'll get in your hair, it'll just be nasty.

You have to put them in a centrifuge and get them all, like, that thing and get them used to it. That gives you extra gravity when you're in centrifuge. You see how I did the astrophysics thing? I went, zzz, zzz. You did the sound thing that you would not hear in space. Right. You really do ruin everything. Give me one last one real quick okay uh julian garcia okay we know

where the center of the galaxy is but does anyone know where the center of the universe is oh there is there is no center of the universe the center is in fact everywhere you want the center is in fact everywhere. You want the center of the universe? Go back in time. Me. 3.8 billion years. Ask my wife. I tweeted that one. I said, there is no center of the universe,

so you can't be it. Okay? That's great. So, if you want to think of a center of the universe, you have to go back in time when we were smaller. 13.8 billion years ago, when all the universe was in the same place at the same time.

Think of that as the center. But then we're all at the same place at the same time. So now as we expand, the center of the universe is everywhere. Yeah, and that place is like a fraction. No, no, I'm just saying it is now everywhere. That center of the universe is now the entire universe because we were all in the same place at the same time now that being said just because a thing exists doesn't mean it has to have a center where's the center of earth's surface

tell me uh the corner of 88 the park avenue paul we gotta end it there the corner of 88th and Clark Avenue. Paul, we got to end it there. Paul from the Paul Mercurial Show. Yes. Thanks for having... I'm glad. Thanks for coming to our show. Oh, thank you for having me.

This was really, really fun. And you've got to have the coolest gig in the world warming up the audience for Stephen Colbert. Yeah. CBS Ed Sullivan Theater. Yeah, it's a really cool theater.

Yeah, it's fun. It's always good to see you there. There's several times I've been on the show Yeah I try to come by and say hi Yeah And I've got a They've been nice enough To have been on the show

A few bunch of times too It's great yeah I've been Steven and I go back To the Daily Show together So Oh cool It's really great to see

How the shows like Come together you know Yeah yeah exactly And he found his groove Yeah you know Because he's not a stand up That's not his thing And he really like

He got it He got it yeah And you're always so great on the show oh thank you the show colbert oh no it is a high compliment and by the way like you see them all oh yeah yeah you know because you know when a guest is like the staff hangs out around the tv i don't i'm not a big fan of this but um no they do and like you know you know you work on it. Sometimes people are going to be like, who's on the show today? I'm like, I don't know. It's like a job, right?

But like, I just, you should know that. Oh, Neil's on and everybody's standing around the TV. Well, thank you. I try to say something interesting about the universe. I'm glad sometimes it is. Absolutely. All right. Absolutely.

We're done there. You've been listening to, possibly even watching StarTalk. And I, your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, bid you to keep looking up.