StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries: A Powerful Potpourri

Episode Date: February 8, 2014

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice tackle an eclectic mix of your questions that take us from the boiling surface of the Sun to the dark side of the moon and Earth’s distant past to the last moments of the universe. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. My day job, I'm the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History right here in New York City. This is the Cosmic Queries edition, which I do not do alone. I need help. I've got Chuck Nice.

Hey, Neil. Chuck Nice, comic, right here with me in studio. That's right. Calling from the internet. Questions. this is not a themed cosmic query this is our potpourri potpourri i don't even know how to spell that a potpourri a veritable grab bag grab bag a smelly grab potpourri is smells yes yes okay so this is whatever was left over in the bag as we pulled out the questions a smelly grab bag of StarTalk Radio. It could be themed. Let's get right into it.

Yeah, man. Now, I haven't seen these questions. That's right. So if I don't know something, I'm going to tell you. There you go. And guess what? That's one of the best things is that you're kind of shooting from the hip on this one. Totally.

But you never really shoot from the hip, you know? Because you know what you're talking about. All right. So here we go. This is from Harry Dasori. All right. Subject matter, dark matter. Dark matter, sure.

All right. Get ready for this one. By the way, there was a chapter of my memoir called Dark Matters. Yes. There's a chapter of my life called Dark Matters. I'm just saying. We each have some dark matters. Everybody's got some dark matters going on.

All right. here we go let me finish before you freak out I'll go I've witnessed ghosts and several experiences that have made me a believer in the supernatural or what some would call spiritual existence this is from Harry Dasori

my question to you Neil is can the expansion of dark matter in the universe be the accumulation of souls of all the planets in the cosmos? Some speculate that soul has weight or a value of weight. Impossible to prove. Okay, well, so where shall we begin yes i don't know he wants to connect his personal experiences with ghosts yes with the dark matter in the universe right so what he's saying is these apparitions that he has experienced clearly they must have some type of mass or weight could dark matter actually be the accumulation of all such apparitions as the ones that he's experienced.

All the souls. All the souls. A couple of things. Let's tackle souls for the moment. Okay. Back when x-rays were invented, were discovered by Wilhelm Röntgen, who's a German physicist. In fact, he won the first Nobel Prize in physics in 1900 for his discovery of x-rays. Soulful people of the day said,

if x-rays can see through matter and through the human body, maybe if we x-rayed a body that was dying, we'd be able to see the soul leave the body. What? Oh, there you go. And so they attempted these experiments and nothing, they didn't see nothing.

Right. Thank God the person was already dying. Exposing them to all those x-rays like that. And in a rare moment, we're thanking God for someone dying. Right. Okay. All right. So first, there was that.

All right. Second, the instant you die, which has a fuzzy – we don't really – I tweeted recently. The next person who is brought back to life after being pronounced clinically dead, it seems like we need to start redefining what dead is. If you keep coming back because you were clinically dead, maybe clinically dead really isn't dead. True. Right. So the point is there was some movie called 23 whatever. Remember this movie?

Yes, I know what you're talking about. 23 ounces or some crazy stuff like that. Yeah, 23 grams. 23 grams. 21 grams, right. It's just BS. If you're alive and then you're dead and you're on a scale, your weight doesn't change. Right.

Unless you evacuate your bowels and it spills off the scale onto the floor. Plus, most people don't know how much 21 grams actually is. Do you know how much it's like the weight of a nickel? I mean, it's not very much. No, it's not a lot at all. It's not a lot at all. I know because of my past use of cocaine.

I'm sorry. Because drug dealers were metric long before any American got involved. How many grams? Whenever I meet somebody who knows the metric system, I'm like, you've done a lot of drugs, haven't you? Oh, you sold them. So the point is, when you die, you have way more than that of just leftover urine and bowel content. And your sphincters relax and it all comes out of you.

But if you're not careful about how you make those measurements, you could be led to think that you weigh less at death than you did alive. But so anyhow, so if it's soul in terms of the mass of the soul, if you want to believe there is one, there's no evidence that it has mass. Right. That's number one. We know approximately how many people there have been ever born. It's about 100 billion, plus or minus. Okay. So 100 billion times any number is really, no matter what number you're multiplying it by, it's going to be small compared with the mass equivalent of the dark matter of the universe.

Now, he's saying the souls of all the planets. So he's going to have to believe that there's life on other planets that has souls. Correct. And so it's the sum of all the souls. And there's no evidence for that. Now, one of the things science does that nothing before science did was establish something that is objectively true. So if I say, I saw it, it's real.

Well, was it in your head or was it actually real? Right. What are the qualifiers of seeing? Exactly. Science allows us to distinguish something that's happening in your head from something that is objectively true that everybody can agree with as well as apparatus that we have built to make the measurement. Correct.

So what he needs to do is find the ghosts, put them in a net or something, bring them to the lab, or get more than himself as witness to these ghosts. Correct. Then we can start making measurements. Until then, we kind of have to sort of, I'm left saying that it's all going on in his head, and therefore we don't have to explain cosmic forces that affect the the birth of the universe based on what he sees out of his own head right so basically uh in the corporeal world harry you are out of your mind no in other words that's just to be fair to his question

he may have surely been seeing ghosts right that doesn't mean the ghosts are objectively real. That's all I'm saying. Right, exactly. The human mind is a complex place. We still don't understand. We still don't understand. A whole new field called neuroscience has been born as we speak.

To determine why we see these things. To try to handle these things. Right, right. So I'm not saying he's not telling the truth about what he believes he saw. Exactly. But whether it's an objectively true thing is a whole other thing

it could be true it could just be his truth based upon his drinking of mushroom tea the lsd is what made it true or if he hasn't and he does that would take it a whole other notch exactly you're listening to the cosmicmic Queries edition of StarTalk Radio. I'm here with Chuck Nicecomic, tweeting at Chuck Nicecomic. That's correct, sir. You got it. StarTalk Radio. We tweet as well at StarTalk Radio.

And find us on the web, startalkradio.net. We'll be back in a moment. We're back. StarTalk Radio, Cosmic Queries Edition. Chuck, you just reached to the bottom of the barrel, and you just got whatever was left over. So we're calling this the potpourri? The potpourri. Alright, let's potpourri this. Or as you put it

so eloquently, the smelly grab bag of StarTalk. What I think of potpourri is the stuff that smells nice and you put it in the bathroom where stuff otherwise doesn't smell nice. That's true. You don't put potpourri in a rose garden. So true. Right. Now you sound like a philosopher, not an astrophysicist. That is. You'd never put potpourri in a rose garden. So true. Right. Now you sound like a philosopher, not an astrophysicist.

That is. You'd never put potpourri in a rose garden. No one puts potpourri in a rose garden. Okay. Then I hear like Chinese chimes, you know what I mean? Just like, ah, snatch the pepper from my hand, grasshopper. But, yo, that's awesome. Go.

All right, here we go. Adida. Adida Patil is- I have to say, you're the worst pronouncer of names I've ever had opposite me on a table. I am awful. I'm just saying. Listen, Neil, I am not- Somebody has to call your stuff out.

Listen, I'm glad you're doing it, because I am awful. I got to admit, I'm terrible at this. All right? But Adida. Okay, whatever. Adida Patil says, by the way, she wants you to know that she is 16 years old and she also wants you to know that she is from india so we are worldwide buddy we are worldwide okay where does all the energy go when it's all over is her subject matter you've said mr tyson

dr tyson in many episodes that the universe is going from chaos to order and would finally reach a state of zero Kelvin. My question is, where does all the energy go? All the kinetic energy that is present now, what happens to it? Okay, I don't think I've ever said we're going from chaos to order. I don't believe you've ever said that either. I think you've always said that the universe is in a state of extreme disorder. Disorder and becoming more disordered. But she knows that we're temperatures dropping in the universe to an approaching, there's a mathematical term for it, asymptotically approaching absolute zero. When you're asymptote

to something, it means you get ever closer to it, but will never actually reach it until you reach infinity. Kind of like fractals. Oh, yeah. There's always detail all the way down through and it's never going to stop. It's never going to stop. Right, right. So it's not exactly like fractals, but the idea that you're hitting some infinity point. Right.

And then it stops. Yeah, that's the only thing I could relate it to in my tiny little mind. All right. So you say, where's the energy? The energy is still there. It's just more and more and more diluted until it's so diluted that it's effectively zero energy density in the universe. So we talk about energy density.

Normally, we use the word density. We think of matter density. So lead is more dense than paper, right? And so it makes good paperweights, although we don't use lead anymore, nor do we even have paperweights. You know why we don't have paperweights? No. Because we don't have fans inside of offices

because we have central air conditioning. Yes, which is exactly why the register above my desk keeps blowing the papers off my desk. Sorry. Does it seriously? Yeah. Well, whatever it is, it's less than what a fan would have

done back in the day. So here we have the universe expands, temperature drops, asymptotically approaches absolute zero. It's the density of the energy that continues to drop. So the energy doesn't go anywhere. It's the total energy. The total energy is the same. It's just diluted to the place where

it is effectively zero energy. It is so dilute, just go home. Okay. So that's what's going on there. Yeah, that makes great sense. And by the way, the opposite would be true. In a collapsing universe, the energy density would be going up. Okay.

And the universe would be getting hotter and hotter and hotter over time. Okay. Yeah, that'd be a bad thing. A bad thing, though, right? Yeah. I'd rather end in ice than in fire. Okay, cool. Well, there you go. There you than in fire. Okay, cool.

Well, there you go. There you go. That's a great, great, great answer. Good question. All right, this is from Mark Fenimore. Calls himself the chemistry nerd. Okay, here it is. Dr. Tyson, in a freshly brewed cup of coffee, if, I'm sorry, if a freshly brewed cup of coffee was placed into a pressurized, help me out here, adiabatic, adiabatic, adiabatic container

and exposed to the vacuum of space while being shielded from the sun or starlight, how long would it take for said coffee to freeze? What is the mechanism for energy transfer in this case? Well, if it's not exposed to the outdoors, well, what you'd have to do is expand the volume. It's in a cavity, and if you expand that cavity, the energy has to now dilute. And there'll be a point where it dilutes physics term that refers to whether you keep pressure constant and change the temperature or keep the temperature constant and change the pressure when you're doing these experiments. And so, by the way, if you just had a canister there and if it was completely insulated, the temperature would never change.

Right. But you cannot completely insulate something because there's always a molecule or something attached to connect communicating with the one adjacent to it. And either with light energy or with vibrational energy. So it's going to cool down no matter what. Okay. So the fact is that even if it were completely insulated, the fact is you can never completely insulate something. Yeah. Is that what you're trying to tell me, Dr. Tyson?

insulate something. Is that what you're trying to tell me, Dr. Tyson? So yes, that as well as if you want to sort of expand the volume, because there'll be pressure in there because it's a warm cup of coffee. If you try to expand the volume, what will ultimately happen is the energy density will drop. And then at some point, it will actually freeze. Yeah. If you keep doing that, yeah. Right. Yeah. You can drop it so low. But maybe you'd have to evaporate all of the coffee before that happened, and then it's gaseous, and then the concept of freezing no longer matters. So as material changes state, it's a fascinating thing, actually, that we don't spend enough time on in school, I think.

Then just think about it. Here's this water, and then you drop the temperature, then it becomes solid. Right. A liquid becomes... Imagine if you had never seen ice just imagine i mean there were people who grew up in the tropics and never saw ice in their life that's right and then you just take water put it in some vest some cavity and you pull it out and it's solid they're not even gonna believe you he has magic if physicists never told people how we do stuff, we would be the gods of our culture. True. Because we would have powers that they think would define.

Exactly. You know what? It's so funny. As a quick aside, there is a great show for kids, and it's really trippy, but it's called Adventure Time. And there's a character. It's really trippy, but it's called Adventure Time. And there's a character. She's a scientist, and she is constantly railing against the people of the kingdom because they believe in magic.

It's awesome. That's great. All right. There you go. Let's move on to Jeremy Zuccaro. Okay. I got that one right. Jeremy Zuccaro.

You can at least try to put a little. Jeremy Zuccaro. Zuccaro. Yeah. Zuccaro. Okay can at least try to put a little. Jeremy Zuccaro. Zuccaro. Yeah, there. Zuccaro. Okay, there we go. The most interesting man in the world. Jeremy Zuccaro.

Go. Okay. Could intelligent life have evolved on Earth in the distant past? There seems to be little evidence to support this idea, but would there be? But would there be? What are the odds that this would be missed in fossil evidence? And is there physical reason why this could not have happened? I think about this all the time. Do you really?

Yes. Okay, cool. I lay awake at night thinking about this question. Okay, cool. I asked if civilization ended today, how long would it take, given the earthquakes and volcanoes and other geologic forces on Earth, how long would it take for every trace of our civilization to be completely gone? Being sucked into the magma of a volcano and coming out as a fresh rock. Right. All right? Jumpstarting the geologic record.

And I've spoken with some geologists about this it would be billions of years it's not oh yeah it's it's a while because you have to get every bit we're everywhere on earth not basically you have to get every bit of land mass deep enough down so that it's completely completely wiped out right and and and melted down and reshaped into the next round of works. Because the Earth is literally remaking itself. It is repainting. Over time, right? Yes, it is.

And it has to be sort of uniform enough so that there's no trace. So I said, could there have been an intelligent civilization in the past? And I think not. I think not. First, because it would take a long time to completely wipe them off the map. I think not. First, because it would take a long time to completely wipe them off the map. Second, complex life is an evolutionary trajectory.

Gotcha. You would not have had single-celled life forms three billion years ago popping into a multicellular intelligent life form overnight, making a civilization and then disappearing again. You have to track it through the growth of complexity in the evolutionary chain. And when you do that, you only get sort of big-brained, if intelligence derives from being brain, you only start getting big-brained mammals

after the dinosaurs are taken out of the picture. Got you. And that was 65 million years ago. Our mammal ancestors scurrying underfoot trying to not be hors d'oeuvres for T-Rex. Only when T-Rex got taken away did our mammal brains start getting big and become anything that we call intelligence today. Gotcha. So now, when you look at that trajectory, is what you're saying that the Earth has not been here long enough for that trajectory to have taken

place in the past and then been wiped away record-wise so that we are finding ourselves in that place again today. It's a combination of not only that, you would not expect complex neurological organisms, organisms with complex neurology, to have been around long enough ago, given the time it would have taken to create such a creature, as the evidence of the fossil record shows. Fantastic. So there you have it. There you go, man.

That's a great answer. When we come back, more of Cosmic Queries Potpourri edition. You're listening on StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition. Poo-poo-ee. Shock what? You're the one that dug all these questions out of the bottom of the barrel because they didn't fit any other category. There's a question about

whether there's past life on Earth. I want to add something to that. Go ahead. There's a lot of science fiction storytelling that has sort of aliens helping out our civilization. Yes. Like Stargate, for example. Stargate.

You know, the pyramids came from some... Well, aliens who came down, helped us build it, and then left. And then left. For some strange reason. Just like, hey, we need to go build some pyramids on Earth. On Earth. In that spot. In that spot, and then left. For some strange reason. Just like, hey, we need to go build some pyramids on Earth. On Earth? In that spot.

In that spot, and then we're out of here. That's their sole purpose of coming here. These humans look like they need pyramids. Yeah, and they're not mechanical or anything. They're just stone. No, not at all. Just stone buildings that we are going to, because we're that technologically advanced. Let's give these people some stone triangles to drop in the middle of a desert

and then we're out of here. Okay. Yeah. So that's what I was going to say. No. So the urge to think that ancient peoples could not have actually done these great structures. I mean, the fact is they have the same brain that we do. We do.

Right. And so they have less technology, but they're not any less not any less smart right in fact some could argue that they're smarter so i'm always upset when we want to credit some intelligent aliens for stuff that our own species did here on earth exactly give us some credit man it's funny because you know my son who's seven years old and he said well how come you know if they didn't have anything technical back in the day, they could actually create these great buildings and things, but yet we don't seem to be as smart as they are? And I went, because they didn't have cable television, son. Exactly. That's why.

And they had 100 years to build it. Right. Exactly. It's none of this, look, we got to get this done by October. Right. No. Pyramids is like, how long it takes lifetimes and nobody cared right we got number time that's great all right here we go um this is from our very own uh somebody here in new york city

and uh andrew wood andrew wood and you pronounce his name correctly yes i did thank you andrew for having a very easily easily to pronounce name. All right. We have several impact creators on Earth from meteorites. My question is this. We have the big holes, but where did the big freaking rock disappear to? I will not be able to sleep until I know. I like people who can't sleep because science keeps them awake.

That is good. So a couple of things. Probably the most famous hole in the ground is a meteor hole in the ground is in Arizona. Right. Near Winslow, Arizona. In fact, I was just there filming for Cosmos. Oh, cool. Yeah, cool. You can't not go to the crater.

Well, you have to. It's almost a mile across. Now, is this the crater that they say may have wiped out everything? Is this the big? No, no, no, no, no. This one was a bad day in Arizona when this thing hit, or whatever it was called back then, 50,000 years ago. Then there's another crater that was found submerged under the Gulf,

found primarily by the efforts of oil drillers trying to find out gravity anomalies, because if it's oil or is it sand, is it sediment? And they found this ridge. And this ridge is the rim of a crater and that's the one we traced to the dead dinosaurs. And that hit near Yucatan Peninsula,

near what is now Mexico. And I once gave a talk and I said, but I said, near what is now Mexico? I said, but that's not what the dinosaurs called it. Someone in the front row said, yeah, they called it Mexico. That's actually funny. It's a Spanish fluent dinosaur.

So yes, we do have these craters. And the Chesapeake Bay area, we now know from space, is a meteor impact. So a meteor impact created Chesapeake Bay. Look at that. Yeah, right there in Maryland. All right. So there you have it. So what happened to the rock? What happened to the rock? That if the speed of the asteroid, which is true in every case, is higher, so you have a speed and you can calculate how much energy it has for motion. We call it kinetic

energy. Kinetic is motion. So write down that number. Okay. You can calculate that. Right. Now you say, what's this thing made of? Is it rock? Is it metal? What's holding it together? Are there bonds? There are chemical bonds from one atom to another.

There's a crystal lattice. There's some forces holding the thing together. Right. Add that up. Write down that number. If the kinetic energy number is bigger than the number that's holding it together, poof, and the thing hits, where did all the kinetic energy go? Back into the object and it explodes, vaporizes, goes to smithereens.

And so, in fact, most of it essentially vaporizes. Gotcha. And that's called a high-speed collision. And so, in fact, most of it essentially vaporizes. Gotcha. And that's called a high-speed collision, and that's what happens. That's why you have fragments scattered, but the bulk mass of the asteroid is gone. Now, if the thing came in slowly, it would just hit and bounce, and then you could get the whole… And then the rock would be sitting around. was purchased by a metal speculator because he presumed that the huge object that made the crater is still buried beneath.

Still there. Yeah, so he bought the land, brought out his metal detectors, drilled boreholes, didn't find a damn thing. Oh. Yeah, poor guy. Because he didn't have your formula. All he needed was your formula.

It would have saved him a lot of money. Now this dude is just like every dude Because he didn't have your formula. All he needed was your formula. It would have saved him a lot of money. Now this dude is just like every dude you see with black socks and sandals on the beach. With his little metal detector. So it's the Barringer family, and they actually still own the land. And so now it's a tourist attraction, and they're making money off a tourist. Okay, well, at least he got his money back somehow. Somehow.

So, yeah. So that's what happens in a high speed impact. And if those two numbers were different, the object would basically stay in one piece. Right. So there's your answer, Mr. Wood. Look for the rock in the land of smithereens. Exactly. You're listening to StarTalk Radio Cosmic Queries, Potpourri Edition.

We'll be right back. We're back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Potpourri edition. Chuck Nice. Hey. You're reading me these questions. I haven't seen or heard any of them.

That's right. That's right. You have not seen them or heard them, but I have them right here. Go for it. Okay. Let's go to John Reitzka. Reitzka. Okay.

You know it's right. John, I hope. I'm sorry, Scott. Right. Scott. Okay. You know, it's John. I hope I'm sorry, John. So. Okay. Subject of the tides. And this is kind of something that we've touched on. Oh, me and tides go way.

Yeah. You are the veritable prince of tides. See what I did there. Did you see what I did there? Okay. I thought it was the king of tides, but okay. Okay. Did you see what I did there?

Okay. I thought it was the king of tides, but okay. Fine. Okay. I've heard Neil mention in multiple episodes that the gravitational forces of both the moon and the sun combine during a full moon to create the highest tides on Earth. It seems to me that they should cancel each other out, being that the masses are on opposite sides of the earth it also seems that the highest tide should be during the new moon because the moon and the sun are both on the same side of the earth i could look up the answer but i just love hearing chuck nice's take on the same side, is there a greater pull? So here we go.

You ready? Go ahead, please. All right. So let's forget the sun for the moment. All right. Let's just have earth and the moon. The moon raises tides on earth. Gotcha.

And there are only two things that affect that. The mass of the moon which isn't changing right and the distance the moon is from earth right those are the only two things that can affect the tides that the moon raises on earth okay now the moon's orbit is not an exact circle it's like a flattened circle an ellipse is the official term you think of it as an oval and so occasionally the moon is closer to the Earth. It'll have raised slightly higher tides. Occasionally the moon is farther, raised slightly lower tides. And that has nothing to do with

what phase the moon is. The moon's tides on Earth are the same for every phase from new moon crescent, first quarter gibbous, everybody... Because the moon is the same size. The moon is the same damn thing in the damn sky. Right. Okay. Right. So now, now bring in the sun. Okay. The sun is trying to damn thing in the damn sky. Right, right. All right, so now, now, bring in the sun.

Okay. The sun is trying to raise tides too. And it's a function of how far are we from the sun and how much mass the sun is. It's trying to do this on us too. But it turns out its strength of tides is only about a third as strong as that of the moon, it turns out. Because it's so far away. So far away. Distance makes a big deal with, it makes a big difference with tides. Gotcha. Because the tidal strength varies as the cube of the moon, it turns out, because it's so far away. So far away. Distance makes a big deal with, it makes a big difference with tides.

Gotcha. Because the tidal strength varies as the cube of the distance. Gotcha. If you're math fluent, you got that. I know what you're saying. All right. So it is directly and proportionally tied to the distance. Yes.

Okay. To the third power of the distance. Third power. All right. So if you're far away, it's way less than if you're nearby. Gotcha. So now watch. If the moon's tides align with the sun's tides, you have high tide, higher than at any other time.

If the moon's tide is at right angles to the sun's tides, they're each trying to bulge at right angles to one another. That's where they cancel out. Gotcha. Okay? At right angles. And I think they call it the Gotcha. Okay? At right angles. And I think they call it the neap tide. All right? You'll still get a slightly high tide,

but it's not as high as at full moon or at new moon. And here's how the tide works. You ready? Okay. So you have the moon and you have earth. The moon is pulling harder on the side of the earth closer to the moon than it is at the middle of the earth. And it is pulling harder at the middle of the earth than it is pulling at the far side of the earth closer to the moon than it is at the middle of the earth and it is pulling harder at the middle of the earth than it is pulling at the far side of the earth right okay because it's

farther away because it's like we said this is it's distance it's a distance thing thank you and so now you are a squishy pool of water the side of you closest to the moon is being pulled most, and the side of you farthest from the moon is being pulled least. So all this gets stretched out. That's all it is. It's a big stretching game. Got you. By the way, the solid Earth has tides as well. But that doesn't manifest because it's a solid thing that's changing.

But we see tides never come in and out. The bulge is always there in space, and it's Earth turning inside the bulge. So in fact, when you see- That sounds so dirty. Oh my God. So when you, if you're on the beach, you say, here comes the tide.

No, the tide was there in space, and you are on Earth being turned into it. Into the bulge of the tide. Wow. I know, I know, know i know so now watch so now so the the the moon stretches out the water near side far side right the sun stretches out the water near side far side so a new moon or full moon everybody's lined up everybody's stretching it out there you have it it's all just all just straight. It's basically a love triangle between the sun, the moon, and the water.

However, when the triangle is at its finest, it makes a straight line. Ah. That's where you want your highest triangle. That's the highest triangle. I mean, the highest bowl is the straight line triangle. That's right. Yo, that's hot. You got it.

You're still listening to StarTalk Radio Cosmic Queries. I'm here with Chuck Nice. We'll be right back. We're back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Potpourri edition. But we're in the final segment, which means what? Lightning round.

Lightning round. Because I take so long answering the questions that we've got to pile them all, the ones I didn't get to in the last segment, and I'll blow through them soundbite style. Okay. All right. Are you ready? Let's do it. And that's the sound you'll hear at the end of the question. No, at the end of the answer. At the end of the answer.

Go. Amputees in Space from Jeff Lowe wants to know, hey, just curious to hear your thoughts about whether amputees in space would do well since there's less muscles to atrophy. I'm also curious to hear if there would be effects from zero G on organs. You know, after all, the heart is a

muscle, but it's constantly working, even in space. Yeah, so amputees in space, you're not walking anywhere. So, in fact, the space walk, you're not walking. It's called space floating. It's space floating. So, in a way, you don't really need your legs. So amputees, I think, would do very well space walking.

Your organs are sort of suspended in your body. They're not loose to float around and get out of alignment if you go into zero G. Plus, when you lay down horizontally, your heart does not work against gravity. It pumps blood horizontally. And that's like it not working against gravity. So your heart would be just fine in space. Okay. But it was not obvious.

In the early days, we didn't know whether you could swallow in space. Does your saliva know to go down your throat? Turns out your body does a good job pushing liquids wherever they got to go. Next. Go. Here's one. How about Adam Caspi? You're a biggest fan in Israel.

That's what he said. Okay. From my limited understanding, nothing can travel above the speed of light why does light travel at exactly that speed i understand that it can that it can't travel faster but why not slower even a small amount like two meters per second light does travel slower when it goes through anything other than a vacuum. Ooh. Oh, snap. Yo, Adam. Light goes slower when it enters our atmosphere, which is why when you see sunrise,

it's not actually risen yet. It is still below its horizon because when it changes medium, this light slows down and it refracts, showing you the sun before it is actually risen. Light is at its slowest through diamond. It only goes 40% as fast as its speed in a vacuum through diamond. That's why there's all this internal reflection in your ring,

and it looks radiant because the light internally reflected multiple times before it came out, looking like the diamond itself is giving you light. Oh, thank you. Well, there you go. Yo, that was hot. That was hot. Yeah? All right, here we go. This one from Luke Schlonigan. Well, there you go. Yo, that was hot. That was hot. Yeah. All right, here we go.

This one from Luke Schlonegan. Luke. Yes, go. Luke. Aliens. On your aliens episode, you said aliens the size of a solar system couldn't exist because it would take too long for a signal to travel from one point of the brain to another and for the alien to react.

But what if it did not have a centralized brain? What if the decision-making capabilities were spread throughout? In other words, a couple little brains around that alien head. Okay, I didn't say life could not exist. I just thought it would be a really clumsy form of life. If it stubs its toe, it would take 10 hours to respond to that fact. Or if something starts eating it, it won't know until it's way too late. It's just not an effective size to be life.

If you're competing against the speed of light for you to communicate signals across your body. If it has regionally controlled centers, brain centers, then is it one organism? Oh, snap! There you go. Oh. I question whether it is in fact one organism? Oh, snap. There you go. Oh. I question whether it is in fact one organism. Luke, there's your answer. Okay.

All right. Next. Cody in Iowa wants to know, in an extremely unlikely scenario, if you were to be touching or right next to a micro black hole at the moment of its formation. What would happen? Bad for you, good for the black hole. Yeah, if any part of you starts to enter the black hole, the black hole will just eat whatever part of you it touches. That's all.

Eventually, you are gone. You're gone. And the black hole burps. No, it doesn't even burp. Yeah, black hole one, human zero. There you go. Next. All right, Cody.

You are delicious to black holes. All right. This is from Matt Holesley. The sun. How loud would the sun be from the earth if there was a way to transmit the sound through space? I don't know what the hell that means. Okay. That's why I couldn't read the question.

Okay. So if you ever heard a pot of water boiling on the stove. Yes, I have. Okay, that's water and it says, okay, the sun is boiling as well. Okay. It's roiling, boiling, convecting. Convection is the scientific word for boiling. Right.

The sun is boiling like it's nobody's business on its surface. It would be the loudest boiling pot of water you ever heard. If somehow you can deliver that sound through the vacuum of space to us. And that'd be kind of cool to listen to what the sun was doing. It would sound like boiling oatmeal. Boiling oatmeal.

But really, really loud. Answer, thank God we can't hear that. Real quick, 10 seconds. Okay, we got 10 seconds. And oh my God, here it is. If there were a civilization that lived only on the far side of the moon, how hard would it be for it to detect the existence of the Earth? Oh, they would never see Earth because Earth is never in their sky.

But they would know somebody was up to something because we've sent spacecraft in orbit around the moon. And the most famous photo ever, Earthrise, was a spaceship coming around the backside of the moon. They would have said, uh-oh, we are not alone in the universe. Sweet. So would the far side moon dwellers say. You've been listening to StarTalk Cosmic Queries.

Chuck, thanks for being on. Always a pleasure. We brought you in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.