StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries – Across the Universe

Episode Date: March 1, 2019

Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice answer fan-submitted questions that take you across the universe to explore merging black holes, Hawking radiation, the Fermi paradox, time dilation, the death of the universe, and more!NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/cosmic-queries-across-the-universe/Image Credit: NASA. 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 on this edition of StarTalk, it's Office Hours, which is another version of Cosmic Queries. We're just calling it Office Hours because you can come in with any question at all on any subject.

And I got my man, Chuck Nice, here. Hey, Neil. What's happening? Of course, brother. Okay. How are got my man, Chuck Nice here. Hey, Neil. What's happening? Of course, brother. Okay. How are you, man? Thanks for doing this. It's always my pleasure.

I haven't seen the questions yet. No, you never do. One day you'll show me the questions. No, I will not. I'll mug you in the street. Yeah. Get the questions. So what do you have?

That'd be pretty funny, actually. I think I just saw Neil deGrasse Tyson beat the hell out of a guy and run off with some papers. I wonder what was that? What was that about? Yes, of course, you know, we take questions from all over the internet, wherever you can find us. And so we always start with a Patreon patron question. All right, let's do it. And this is Ari Modi or Ari

Maudie from Patreon. Ari says, Hey, I'm from Los Angeles. Some astrophysicists say there will eventually be universe death when the last atoms are ripped apart by the expansion and we enter the

big freeze. But we are also told a universe can come from nothing and taking any volume of empty space and waiting a gazillion years, matter can and does arise from that void. Aren't these contradictions? Why wouldn't something from nothing happen after heat death if that is a fundamental part of how the universe works.

So Ari Mowdy. He totally answered that question. He just got everything, man. All up in it. In the question. He was like, I'm going shopping for astrophysics, and I'm going to put everything in the cart. Everything in.

So right now, the temperature of the universe, if you put a thermometer out there right and it sort of could receive the sort of the energy of the void okay okay it's basically the cosmic microwave background right that that energy gives you about three degrees but we used to be much hotter when the universe was smaller right okay right we've been expanding and cooling not fundamentally different in principle. The mechanisms are the same, but when you, have you ever let air out of a bicycle tire? Does anyone still ride a bicycle?

Of course, yes. Okay. I do it all the time, and it's not even my bike. I just walk around Manhattan, I see a bicycle tire, and I'm just like, you know what? Expanding air is cooler than the air that it was before it expanded. Okay. So the air, you know, going past your thumb feels cool. It's not just because it's moving.

It's actually dropping in temperature by expanding. And so the universe expands and cools. It's a thermodynamic fact. Okay. And by the way, we can look to faraway galaxies. Right. Whose light came to us from a time in our past. Right.

And there are measurements you can make and show that that galaxy was feeling a warmer temperature in its time than the temperature that we measure today. That's pretty wild. It is completely wild. Because you're not talking about a very big source. Like that light source is- It's a light source, yeah. It's just a source. But it's ubiquitous.

So everybody feels it. Right. And there's certain- So now how exactly- There's certain atoms where the electron will move in a certain way depending on what bath it's in. There you go. The bath of light. I got you.

Yeah, yeah. That makes sense now. And so they're a little more excited farther away than they are here. That makes perfect sense. So we're not just making this up. Right. Okay? All right.

You know I hadn't listened. I just had to make sure. You know what I mean? So as we get twice as big, they drop the temperature in half. Three times big, it drops it to a third. So there is a directly- A direct inverse proportional relationship to that drop. Inverse proportion.

Very good. You like that? I like that. I saw what you did there. I don't know where with that. Not just proportional. Inverse proportional. Exactly.

So as this continues, the temperature of the universe drops. All stars will ultimately burn out as they shut off one by one in the night sky. Look at that. As they shut off in the night sky, you can ask, well, are we making new stars? Well, we are with the gas clouds that are still out there. Right. But then they make a star, and then that star dies.

So the gas gets sort of trapped up in stars that die. All right, so then there's no more gas to make stars. Then the atoms themselves decay. And ultimately, in about 10 to the 30 years or so, which is a huge number, huge number, the protons decay. The very structure of matter itself loses all integrity. Wow.

And so the universe ultimately dies not with a bang, but with a whimper. Right. And not in fire, but in ice. It peters out. That's, wow.

After I said those poetic words, you say it peters out. Is that the best you got for me? That was the joke. Okay. That was the whole joke. So this idea that you can get something from nothing, I just want to spend a minute on that if I can.

Okay. So if you start with nothing and then create something that has both positive and negative energy in it, all that matters is that the sum, you add them together and you get zero. Zero. That's it. Okay.

So you can start with nothing yet have something if the total energy goes to zero. Right. So another way to think about that is let's say you have a level field. Mm-hmm. Let's say I want to dig a hole.

Okay. So I'm going to dig a hole and stack the dirt over on the left. Right. So I keep doing this. I can make a mountain as high as I want. Right. But you're going to have a hole. I'm going to have a hole i'm gonna have a hole i got a hole right i got a

hole there you go so um so the what we're not sure about is whether you create another universe within this universe that has expanded right out of that void our best understanding of this multiverse hypothesis is that the universe that's created is not causally where we say causally connected to what's outside of it so you could in principle have multiple universes popping up into existence right but in the expansion and the edge of what that universe is you have no way to interact with it so so there you have it. Wow. We're stuck in this one.

We're stuck in this one, and that's all there is to it. Yeah. That's pretty wild. Yeah. Man, that's a, well, listen. He got his money's worth on that one. He got his money's worth, bro. That's right.

Yo, Ari, that was a great question. Mm-hmm. Wow. Took us to the edge of the universe. Took us to the edge of the universe and back. Not only in space, but in time. Yes, but in time. Could you go to the edge of the universe without back not only in space but in time could you go to the edge of the universe

without space and time actually once einstein put forth relativity right where the fourth dimension is time and people say well that's weird why is that no no one has ever been at a place unless it's at a time no one has ever acknowledged a time unless they were at a time. No one has ever acknowledged a time unless they were at a place. Think about it. If I say to you, Chuck, I'll meet you tomorrow at 10 o'clock.

What's your next question to me? What are we doing? No, that's not... Okay, what's your question after that? Of course, where? Where? Where? I give you a time, you ask where.

Okay, I say, Chuck, I'll meet you tomorrow at the corner of 33rd and 3rd. When? When? We know intuitively that our path through life involves the juxtaposition of space and time. We know that intuitively. Wow. We just don't think of it in those terms. Right. Because they're measured by such different tools exactly a watch and and a map right right so but in fact

they're conjoined and einstein formalized that statement in his theories of relativity amazing that is great stuff you got it all. Let's move on to another question. Hey, how about Woody? Clearly, this is a Pixar, Disney Pixar character who's just writing in. Woody would like to know. Woody. Do lasers and solar panels work together, we could design and build the components for specific purposes of wireless energy transfer at great

distances, which frequency on the light spectrum would be best suited for this task. Then how would you resolve the problem of a 5-watt laser being a dribble like Chuck at 3 a.m. after too few many 500-kilowatt lasers? What?

What the hell is this guy talking about? Okay, I think I got his point. So what he wants to do is I have energy here, and I want to put it over there. Right. Right? So, by the way, that, when you think about it, is kind of like what war is. Okay. What is a battle?

A battle is… I have energy here, and I want to put it over there. Right. That is kind of what the waging of war is all about. Mm-hmm. Right? okay what is a battle a battle i have energy here and i want to put it over there right that is kind of what the waging of war is all about right i have a bow and arrow i put energy in the arrow here and then the arrow goes over there there's a bullet has energy there's a bomb there's a delivery mechanism oh thanks for the sound effects there no worries so so i think they're what he wants to is he yeah yeah what he wants to know is if i have laser energy over here right and laser goes fast and it's very directed can i just have

a catcher's mitt somewhere where i want to deliver it right and then use it and then use it and then use it as energy in principle nothing stopping that right okay except the curvature of earth's surface if you believe in around earth so you can't beam can't bend beam light and bend it right okay uh not unless you have a gravitational force that will bend it for you yes that would work so on a black hole you try to send a beam of light it'll just curve and go around the uh the black hole itself so but on earth and sort of normal gravity that we live in, no. So it has to be a line of sight delivery. If it's enough energy to be useful,

it's going to be pretty dangerous to cross that beam. I'm just saying. I shouldn't be laughing. I know. It's really serious. That's really a serious issue. But at the same time. If it's enough energy to do good stuff with it.

Right. It's enough energy to do some real harm. You'll be cut you in half just walking down the street. See, what's funny about that is if you're smart enough to make that happen, but you didn't even think it through. Completely. And so you actually do it. And like on the test run, you got the catcher's mitt there and you're just like,

oh my God, look at this. We've actually figured out a way to transfer energy over great distances and oh damn, we just killed somebody. Or a more tragic version

of that story was, let's celebrate and dance. And then they accidentally dance into the beam. In front of the beam. It kills the inventor of the... See, your version has poetic dance. And then they accidentally dance into the beam. It kills the inventor of the... See, your version has poetic justice. Right, that one. So, yeah, so that's an issue.

So, insulated wires. I mean, we kind of already do that with electricity. We do that with fiber optics. Electricity, well, no, that's information we send by fiber optics. Not energy itself. So, you're right. Yes, it's a small amount of energy, but it's not enough to power anything.

To power anything, correct. I got you, I got you. And what we learned, here's just an interesting, you didn't ask this, but let me put this in the mix. Okay. Do you remember everyone's

expectation of the future as imagined in the 1950s and 60s? Flying cars, motorized walkways people were thinking that energy would be very accessible basically because it takes energy to fly cars but that's not what became accessible information right became accessible it's so we're living in an information age, and it costs you nothing energetically to send information. True. And as a communicative species,

information is a highly valued commodity. So we send information around the world. With no effort. Yes, it's a big effort, but no, the investment of energy that that requires is extremely low. True. So back then, no one imagined a world where, so the movie 2001, A Space Odyssey? Yeah. The computer was this big thing in the center of the spaceship,

and it was controlling everything. No one is imagining that you're going to carry a computer on your hip. Right. Plus entertainment. This was not because it's information. Yeah. And distributed information is what that is. All right.

So we do send energy, but we send it in wires, and they're insulated so you don't touch the wire and get electrocuted. That's the electricity version of a laser. Right. Right. Yeah. Here's the wire sending energy. Here, go grab it with two hands. No, you're not going to do that. No, no. Go stand in some water. Hold this. Hold this and stand in a puddle. Okay.

I just took out some insurance on you. Got time for a few more questions in this segment. Okay. Okay. All right. Let's, um uh this is zachary sprodlin i'm pretty sure i said that right zachary uh zachary sprodlin wants to know this given your vast knowledge of physics what are your thoughts on a holographic universe okay i've never heard anybody ask this question. This is okay. Do you believe the universe to be holographic in nature?

If so, do you think we should be researching more about the perceived difference between the particles and waves? Or are we already doing as much as our tools will allow? What are your thoughts on nature of waves versus particles and this perceived separation therein? Okay, that's a whole other thing. But let me start with the holographic universe. Okay, cool.

I don't claim to be like a total expert in the holographic universe. But I'll share with you what I know and my understanding of it. There are calculations you can do that shows that in a black hole and the event horizon that's the point of no return okay that if you fall through that event horizon all the information contained within you gets remembered at that event horizon okay okay okay so that's a little bit spooky because you can ask the question are we something real or are we just some imprint imprint just an imprint of some other thing that's real that's correct that's it that's a that that's it's That was real. That's correct. That's a... It's almost like the Plato shadows argument or conversation that you have.

Is there some higher reality of which we are just shadows representing it? And so it's a spooky idea that has sort of theoretical tap roots. But I wouldn't know how to test that. Maybe the folks who came up with this have thought that through, but I'm not there with them on that. I don't know how you would test this.

But usually, if the theoretical underpinnings are working and they're based on other theories that are well-tested, like relativity and black holes and all this, you want to take it seriously. They didn't just pull it out of the ether. Right, right. So that's an intriguing fact. Now, waves and particles, the duality?

Yeah. Matter is waves and particles. Right. Okay. Do you know why an electron microscope works? Because it costs a lot of money? I don't know. I just know they're really expensive.

Why is the word electron in the same phrase as microscope? Microscopes use waves, light waves. Right. Okay. Well, you can't... Can I blow your mind? Go ahead. Better than.

Are you seated? I'm seated. Okay. Here you go. Are you seated? I'm seated. Okay, here you go. Doesn't make sense that with whatever microscope you're using,

you cannot see detail smaller than the wavelength of light you're using to illuminate the object. That makes sense. Does that make sense? Absolutely, because you're, it's... That's your blunt... That's what you're looking at. That's what you're saying, okay. As a matter of fact, you couldn... That's your blunt... That's what you're looking at. That's what you think, okay. As a matter of fact, you couldn't see it, like, no matter what you're looking at, if there is no light, then you don't see anything in the microscope.

Anything. That's it, you see nothing. So you need some light. So now you turn on the light. All right, now, if I'm using red light, red has a wavelength, a certain wavelength, okay? light red has a wavelength a certain wavelength right okay but if i use wavelength light that's shorter wavelength so orange or yellow or green or blue okay of the visible spectrum blue or violet has the shortest of the wavelengths okay so if i have a violet light microscope i will see detail better than i would in a red light microscope right okay you'd also see all the like really

nasty cruddy stuff because it's a black light and it's just like, ooh, I don't know what was on this slide. That's if you go ultraviolet. That's if you go ultraviolet. Not just violet. Not just violet. Ultraviolet. Yeah, get your ultra going.

So here's the thing. It also means you can pack more information into a certain sort of size. It's why Blu-ray players have higher resolution than regular CDs. Right.

Because regular CDs didn't use blue lasers. And who knew streaming was going to take them both out? Regular CDs and Blu-ray. Oh, sorry, let me explain. CDs are what we used to

Yeah, exactly. For you kids out there what we used to, you know, DVDs. For you kids out there. There used to be something called a CD. Right, right, but go ahead. Okay, so the point is, an electron has a wave associated with it that is in the realm of deep, deep UV into X-rays. So if you illuminate a source with electrons,

you basically have X-ray wavelength light telescope. That's very cool. That's what you have. And you can see, that's why, if you see pictures taken for an electron microscope, you're seeing the fibers on the microbes. Right, exactly. It's like the fibers on the microbes. Right. Exactly. It's like nasty.

That's amazing. Yes. Because you're using the wave of the particle. Of the particle. The wave of the particle. Damn. Damn. Damn.

Yo, that's hot. That's hot. And so my point is, there is no meaning for you to ask, is a wave or a particle right it is both it is both and just because your brain can't wrap your head around it doesn't mean it's not true wow we don't have when i say your brain i mean our vocabulary our awareness of a reality requires that we choose it is this or is it a that is it a book is Is it a chair? Are you a this or you're that? Right. Okay?

Right. This is, we're forcing this in ourselves because we like compartmentalizing. This is part of the gender thing. Are you a boy or are you a girl? Which is it? Okay? Well, I haven't decided. You haven't decided.

So, this forcing seems to be a deeply human thing. Right. But when it's time to understand the universe. It's not nature. Doesn't necessarily have to be a deeply human thing but when it's time to understand the universe it's not nature doesn't necessarily have to be nature it's not cosmic nature oh

okay you got it we gotta take a break alright okay we are in Neil deGrasse Tyson's office hour

on StarTalk we'll be back in a moment this is star talk we're back on star talk which is a way of saying cosmic queries, but you can pull that query from wherever you want in the universe. We've got Chuck here to mangle your name. Yes. Absolutely. You got a little better, Chuck.

A little better. I'm an educator. I want to give. I think it's part of the charm of the show, the fact that I can't read or mention or figure out anybody's name. All right. So let's move on to Kyle Ryan Toth. How easy was that?

Kyle Ryan Toth. Three syllables. Three syllables. Hey, Kyle, man, thanks, bro. Ryan is two syllables. Yeah, Ryan is two, yeah. Not when I say it, though. It's Ryan.

Ryan. Ryan. Ryan, come on down. not when I say it though it's Ryan Ryan Ryan Ryan come on down it's time for dinner hey Ryan Ryan Ryan how you doing man

everything's what's in how you doing man alright Kyle says who was it it was Jeff Foxworthy who said

in Texas there's certain words that are like single syllable words with multiple syllables yes like i don't give a she right and it's one word it's one syllable but yeah that's like uh i have a friend he was like uh if you're italian um uh jeep is uh it sounds like one syllable but it's a whole sentence you know it's a jeet yeah not yet you know but i don't know what that means oh oh jeet jeet jeet why is that if you're italian uh i don't know that's what he told me so oh you mean italian descendants speaking like within a brooklyn accent yeah yeah hey jeet hey jeet oh yeah okay

i'm thinking pure Italian. I'm saying, no, I'm not getting that. Right, sorry. No, this would be, right, the diaspora. I got one. Go ahead. No, I'm saying. No, yeah, and wait.

That is, do you know what I am saying? Right. Do you know what I am saying? No, I'm saying. No, I'm saying. No, I'm saying. And y'all mean. Y'all know what I mean?

Yep. Yep, yep, yep. There you go. Y'all know what I mean? Yep Yep There you go Yamin There you go, Yamin Alright, here we go Namsain So I'm going to do the rest of this show

I'm going to say I'm going to give the answer Namsain Alright Alright, here we go You know what I'm saying? Here we go How do you even spell it?

N-O-M Apostrophe S-A-I-N Namsain N-t-o-f-e-s-a-i-n. Know what I'm saying? Know what I'm saying? Know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

All right. Mm-hmm. How do you spell mm-hmm? Mm-hmm. It's unspellable. No, it's mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

And if you're a black woman, it's mm-hmm. Oh, the hands got to get all in there. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's the same thing. You just went a higher octave. Well, no. If you're a black woman, it's... Oh, the hands got to get all in there. That's the same thing. You just went a higher octave. Well, no.

The pitch actually connotes the feeling behind it. So there's the affirmation. It's like, baby, you look good. Okay. And then it's just like... So I didn't go to work today. I'm sorry. Okay. Yeah. So. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Yeah. So, the pitch carries meaning. Carries meaning. Even though you're saying exactly the same thing. It's the exact same thing, but it's all in the pitch. You know what I mean? Okay. That's good. I learned something today.

And then there's, mm-hmm. No, that's a, you are lying through your- That's it. You're absolutely right. You are lying. Right. Better known as Negro, please. So there you go.

Here we go. This is... I got a word where the pronunciation changes just by capitalizing the first letter. Wait a minute. Go ahead. No. You'll get that later. Okay, go.

Oh, what a tease. All right. Okay, here we go. You want the word? I'll tell you the word. No, no, no. Let's make it a tease. We'll do it after the question. After the break. After the next break. Okay, here we go. You want the word? I'll tell you the word. No, no, no. Let's make it a tease. We'll do it after the question.

After the break. After the next break. Ooh, after the next break. Well, that's a real tease. No, keep it coming back. You got to stay here now. You are forced. You are forced to be here.

Okay, here we go. Imagine a planet orbiting close to a black hole and experiencing extreme time dilation. How would outgoing signals of electromagnetic communication be affected? Will we still receive such signals? Would they be distorted and or appear very slow paced? Yeah, no. Yeah. It still goes at the speed of light. Right. If the planet is outside the event horizon, it's not trapped and it's in orbit. Yes, it is in a deep gravitational well. There is very serious time dilation relative to anyone looking at them.

They will send out a signal. And the energy of their light as it comes out will continuously lose energy. So that by the time... Not speed. It'll still come out the speed of light. But if it starts out at a high energy band of light, by the time it gets out, it'll be a very low energy band of light. Interesting.

Yeah, so you're going to get very low energy. See, and that's counterintuitive for what you would think because you would think that it would lose speed, but you can't. Light can't lose speed. Not light. Light cannot lose speed. By the way, a way to think about this is,

if I send a beam of light, there's a certain amount of energy, and I do that in one second, let's say. Right. Okay? But now I'm looking at you, and what you're calling one second now takes an hour for me. Okay. Then that amount of energy, that if it's packed into one second

delivery time, has a certain intensity to it right but for now it's taking you an hour to send out that energy as far as my watch is concerned right so the energy gets diluted right over that ascent from the black hole interesting so yeah it's called a gravitational redshift right oh cool it has a term you can there's probably a wiki page on it. I got good people. Yeah. My astrophysics, my community. I think we got some of the best wiki pages, accurate wiki pages out there.

And by the way, it is a hard page. No. I'll compare you with other sciences. I think we do a good job. No, no. You guys do a good job. We do a good job. Gravitational redshift. I'm going to tell you what you don't try to do on that wiki page is make it easy for regular people like me to understand.

Gravitational redshift is there. Yeah, gravitational redshift. All right, that's a great, hey, first of all, that was a great question, Kyle. Yeah. So thank you so much. All right. What else to bring it on? Let's go with Annie C. Hickman, and Annie wants to know this.

She says, I am a teacher and a manual. Give it up for the teacher. Yeah, give it up. Boom. Blow it up for the teachers and a manual because God, are they making such a sacrifice

to just waste your life on these kids. Damn, Chuck. You know, I'm joking. My mother was a teacher. I have nothing but the utmost respect for teachers. She says, I am a teacher and a manual wheelchair user. From time to time, my students and I wonder if a wheelchair could be powered in space with fireworks or perhaps they are ready to get rid of me.

To send her up there? Because they want to send her to space and put fireworks on her wheelchair since fireworks are rockets. She's thinking about propulsion here. She is thinking about propulsion. Also, would having mobility issues on Earth be erased in space since there is no gravity?

If you float around the space station, for example, aren't you using your legs uh for the need to balance you know that's a great question because people would think that in zero gravity that your movements might do something in terms of uh affecting the way you drift about in zero gravity so what what is the answer there so first great, great question. And so I presume it means she has power, she has arm power to propel her wheels. Right. So that's a key element of this. So first of all, in space, you don't need the wheelchair. You have a wheelchair so that you're not on the ground, right? So when I say in space, I'm referring to zero G in space. Just take that as a given here.

So if you're in space, generally people are not maneuvering themselves with their legs. The spaceships are designed, Space Station is designed to have grips. Oh, you're right. I've never seen them use their legs. They're always grabbing little grab-ons and then they pull themselves. And then they swim through the air. Like swimming. Yeah, exactly.

And so you don't want to go too fast because you have to stop somewhere at the other time, and you've got to be ready to stop. Right. So if you have full use of your arms and your arm muscles, you'll be doing what everybody else is doing on the space station. Oh, man, that's so cool. So now the difference is you won't be able to do some of the sort of acrobatics that they do to show you. So, for example, one of them is they'll start rotating, and then they'll bring their knees up to their chest.

You might be able to pull your own legs up if you don't have use of your legs. You just reach down and grab them. But otherwise, they're pulling their knees up, and then they see that they spin faster. And they're just having spinning fun. Like when an ice skater brings their arms in, they spin faster. If you bring your extremities in and you had a slight rotation before, you have a faster rotation. And in case you don't feel nausea enough for being in zero G,

now you can just spin and then throw up right on the spot. And paint the walls. Paint the walls. Go ahead and paint the walls. If you're spinning while you throw up, then there's this spiraling effect. Oh, that's a beautiful picture. It's a beautiful picture.

So I don't think NASA shows us. So now that's under a wheelchair and the rockets. Now, so here's the thing, because I'm thinking in my head. It's not about the chair. No, no, no. So I'm talking about what she was saying. If you put rockets on a wheelchair, but on the wheels themselves, would you propel yourself through space in that chair even though you don't need it?

Or would the rocket just spin the wheel in place? So what will happen is, because the wheel is on an axle, and so now you're putting something called torque onto it. Torque is a force that causes something to rotate. Okay. I've always loved the word torque. It sounds powerful. It's a badass word. It is.

Yeah. Give me some torque. Exactly. Plus, you know, the car folks all like torque, too. They love that. Yeah, 600 pounds of torque. Foot pounds. Foot pounds.

Yeah, it needs a distance and a torque. Right, because it's a distance from the point of rotation. How many feet away and how many pounds forced to push it. So what you'll do primarily is rotate the wheels. But there's something called conservation of angular momentum. So if you're in space and you wanted to keep your wheelchair, if you sent wheels rotating one direction, something has to compensate and rotate backwards.

Okay? So you'll push the wheels that way and you'll just rotate in opposite directions. So the two of you will be going in opposite directions spinning around. Correct. So what you want is, if there's a force operating on you, you want that, this is inside baseball here, you want that line of force, if you

extended it, to go through your center of mass. Right. And that way your entire system moves. It's just moving all at once. All at once. Everything's moving at once. If you're off the center of mass, you're going to start rotating. You're going to rotate.

Yeah. You have some movement forward, but a lot of that's going to go into your rotation. And you want to be stable out there. So there you go, Andy. What you want to do is lose the wheelchair. Lose the wheelchair. You don't need it. Altogether, you don't need it.

You don't need it. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. And she likes fireworks rather than just those jet packs. So you can take like Roman candles or whatever, light it. And since that has a Roman candle, it's intermittent, right? Right.

So you can just adjust it. Hold it where you want. Where you want. And let it pull you. And let it pull you. Yeah. Very cool. Very cool.

God, I want to go to space now. God. Okay. And throw up all over everyone. All right. Do we have time for another one? Yeah. Yeah. A couple more. Let's do it. A couple more?, I want to go to space now. God. Okay. And throw up all over everyone. All right. Do we have time for another one? Yeah, yeah. A couple more.

Let's do it. A couple more? Okay, here we go. This is Jay DeGator. Jay DeGator wants to know this. What the? We'll go with that, Chuck. Yeah.

Okay. Hey, man. Hey, Jay, I'm sorry. We'll go with that. Yeah, so, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. It's DeGator. Hey, Jay, I'm sorry. We'll go with that. Yeah, so, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. It's the gator, you know what I mean?

No, yeah. I know what you mean. You know what I'm saying? All right, here we go. All right. What does the merging of black holes mean for the future of the universe? Could the universe eventually eventually if it does start a sort of contraction phase be the victim of a collective hyper massive black hole could we be

left with a singularity or a black hole containing all the information in the universe waiting for the next big bang to trigger or does the universe have more not so distant problems to worry about you prioritize right so so uh black holes are not as voracious as lore leads us to believe right there's a black hole in the center of our galaxy okay and it's what we call a supermassive black hole. I forgot the exact mass. Hundreds of thousands of times the mass of the sun. Wow. At 600,000,

but it might be a million. I forgot the number, but it's large, okay? And the formation mechanism is still a little bit of a frontier in my field. You can merge two black holes if two galaxies collide.

Right. And we've seen that happen. It's happening all the time. Every day, all the time. And so as they collide, the black holes will ultimately find each other. Okay. And then they will merge.

And then you have a black hole twice as big. Right. But the black hole's not reaching out. If you would not otherwise fallen into a black hole, you're not going to now start falling into the black hole. It's not a drain. It's not a toilet bowl right right so we're not we're not gonna one day we're not cosmic poop right right well some of us land in that so so no in fact in the

very distant universe black holes ultimately will evaporate, according to Hawking radiation. And it's a really interesting phenomenon. So now, okay. Can I tell you what the phenomenon is? Go, please. So a black hole has very strong gravity. Okay. Well, how much gravity does it have?

Well, you can think of the gravity having a density of energy. We call it the energy density of gravity. Okay. In its vicinity. Every now and then, spontaneously, that energy becomes particles, according to equals mc squared. Okay. We'll do that just spontaneously.

And you make a particle pair, a matter and antimatter particle pair, and they go in opposite directions. Oh. Okay? Okay. Okay. By the way, they have to go in opposite directions

so that the momentum cancels. Because it started out as just a pocket of energy sitting there doing nothing. Right. You can't have a particle just go in one direction and nothing canceling out that motion in the other. Oh, like a bazooka. Yes, the recoil in the other direction. The recoil of a bazooka. Otherwise, the person becomes the recoil.

That's pretty funny. That would be funny. Note to the next design. Exactly. That is awesome. Let me redesign that. Why do you guys have 25 bazooka shooters? Because we got 25 shots.

Yeah, so there's a recoil of that to send it forward. Gotcha. So the same with the spaceships, the rockets that take off. You recoil at the back, all the exhaust. So what point was I making? You were talking about, so the particle, as it evaporates. Oh, yeah. So what happens is, so the energy density spontaneously makes a particle pair.

One particle falls into the black hole and the other escapes. Right. That takes mass away from the black hole. And that is the evaporation of the black hole. Yes. It's very slow, but it's real. But this spontaneous particle, you know, basically... It's called Hawking radiation.

It's Hawking radiation. That's what it's called. So it's the dissemination of the particles that are opposites and one going away, one going in. Yes. And then all of a sudden, if it keeps continuing, the black hole's gone. It evaporates to nothing.

To nothing. Correct. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So we got to take a break. When we come back, you will learn what words pronunciation changes just by capitalizing the first letter. Yes.

Oh, yeah. In Neil deGrasse Tyson's Office Hours on Star Trek. Star Trek. Bringing space and science down to Earth. You're listening to StarTalk. We're back on Starcom. Cosmic Queries edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson's office hours.

Where we take questions on anything. It doesn't have to be in a category. And they're coming from everywhere. Everywhere. Chuck is helping me out here. Chuck, keep it going. All right, let's jump right. No, first you got to give the answer to the tease. Okay i like words a lot okay so what is this word that you can sorry capitalize the first letter yeah and change the meaning of the word completely yeah completely

the word is i feel like i'm on npr the word is p-o-l-I-S-H. Polish. Yeah. And then you capitalize it, and it's Polish. Yeah. So one is what you do to shine something, and the other is... Is your nationality. Is the nationality. Right.

Very nice. It's weird. It is weird. It has nothing to do with the show. No. But I don't know why I... So don't start a sentence with polish. Yes, because it has to be capitalized.

Because it has to be capitalized. Polish your shoes. Polish my shoes. Polish my shoes? You racist son of a... All right. Yeah. Let's go to Fyodor Popov.

Fyodor. Fyodor? Is this F-Y? Yes, it is. Fyodor. It. Fyodor. Fyodor? Is this F-Y? Yes, it is. Yeah, Fyodor. It's Fyodor. Yeah. Okay.

And last name? Popov. Popov. Okay. Fyodor Popov. Fyodor Popov. Hey, Fyodor. Hey, Fyodor.

Here we go. Fyodor says this. If you had to guess, where lies the great filter? Now, first of all, what is the great filter? I have no idea yet what he's asking in this question. So please proceed. All right. Okay.

There you go. There you go. Let's move on. No, no. Let me hear the whole question. That's it. What? If you had to guess, where lies the great filter?

I don't know what the great filter is. I mean, unless it's, you know, Brita. If it's Brita, I'm good. Where lies the grape filter? In my refrigerator. Filter. Filter in my water. The grape filter.

Chuck, I have no understanding of that question. So we got to go to Wikipedia. Maybe from that, again, I'll be able to say something. Say something. Okay. All right. All right. you maybe maybe from that again i'll be able to say something something okay all right all right so in in that case what i'll do right here is go to wiki wiki so you help me out here from wiki

and i'll read it to you what they say it is the great filter in the context of the fermi paradox is whatever prevents dead matter from undergoing abiogenesis uh genesis abiogenesis in time to expanding lasting life as measured by the Kardashev scale. Okay. I can say something about this. All right. I just didn't know it was called the Great Filter. All right. Okay.

Okay. So in… Now, all I got from that was Fermi paradox. I know what that is. Yeah. So the Fermi paradox was a question posed by the great physicist Enrico Fermi. Right. Who, born in Italy, came to the United States.

Nice. Basically Cold War, not Cold War, Manhattan Project. So Enrico Fermi posed the question. Because you can run the math. You can say, all right, how long has Earth been here? How long did it take life to form? How long did it take what we call intelligence to form? Now that we're intelligent, how long does it take to travel to another planet? Let's say we have a spaceship. All right. Is it a generational ship? Fine. So it takes 10

generations to get there. Then you become pilgrims. Set up tent. Now, from there, you go to two other planets. Okay. From each of those two planets, they go to four more. From one to two to four to eight. So it grows exponentially.

You can populate the entire galaxy with intelligence in a shorter time than evolutionary timescales. Hmm. Okay? You can do it in like a million years.

Okay. Or so. Right. Okay? Yes. And that's on an evolutionary... Dynasties went extinct 65 million years ago. Exactly.

That's a very short time. Very short. And it's small compared with the lifetime of a planet. Exactly. And especially the future of the universe. Right. So if that's the case, why hasn't it happened yet? And where are the visitors trying to populate this planet that we're on?

So it's the Fermi Paradox. Where are they? Maybe they were already here. Maybe we are. And maybe we are them. You know. So there's some religions that are based on that. That God is actually the aliens.

Yeah. Okay. That's right on. Okay. All right. And listen, I don't judge. Just by the fact that you said that, me too. I don't judge how crazy people are.

That's what you said. That was implicit in your... Oh, man. So... Okay. Wait, wait. So you... So this dead matter...

They don't mean dead matter because that implies it was once alive. They mean inanimate matter. Okay. Inanimate matter evolving to become self-replicating life. Okay. So the question is,

maybe that takes so long that it puts a damper on this whole... On the other processes. On all the other processes. Right. However, that happened really fast on Earth. Okay. We went from inanimate molecules to self-replicating life within a couple of hundred million years. Wow.

And once you have life, life was there for billions of years. So that's not really that long. No, it isn't. Right, right. So the filter, I don't see that as the big filter. You know what I think the filter is? What? Whatever urge you have to colonize planets.

Okay. And then all your descendants have that same urge. Right. There's going to be a point where there's a planet i want to colonize oh but you want to colonize that same planet so then what do we do you're gonna you're gonna have a blood feud you're gonna blood feud with your own family right correct and so it could be that the urge to want to expand is self-limiting because you will fight wars. You cancel yourself out. You cancel yourself out. The very urge that causes you to strike out and discover is the same urge that

destroys you in the end. Correct. Wow. Right. And there are whole categories of these kinds of problems in life. For example, I don't know if it still happens if you lose a quarter between the base and the back of the seat in your car, and you reach for it, the act of reaching for it separates the two cushions more, and then it falls further in. See, I'm cheap. That whole seat's coming out. Okay.

I'm going to be honest. Get in that corner. I have actually pulled a seat out to get the money that's falling. We got one minute left. Let's do lightning round. Go get to money. That's fine. We got one minute left. Let's do lightning round. Go. All right.

Here we go. You know what? This is an education question, so let's do it. This is Stephen Donham. He says, hey, Neil, love your show. Listen all the time. My question is about Common Core math being taught in school. It seems like a waste of time, and kids have to go through all of these extra steps to get the right answer when there were simpler ways to get the right answer

when it comes to life and death and space. Wouldn't it not be better to get the right answer the fastest possible way? Oh, good question. Okay, I'm not doing a lightning round on that question. It's too important. It is very important. I'm going to end with my answer to that question.

Okay, so this is the end of the show. I'm doing deep dive on educational philosophies in my recent months and years. Well, that's why I picked the question. In my recent months and years. Well, you're an educator. You're an educator. A deep dive. And I'm looking at what people have said, what have worked, what hasn't, best practice.

And I have come to conclude with regard to that question. Okay. That what matters more than the right answer is the right question. Interesting. And taking a cue from Isaac Asimov in an essay he once wrote called The Relativity of Wrong. The Relativity of Wrong. Yes. Okay, so here you go.

You're in elementary school. Uh-huh. And I have a spelling bee. Uh-huh. And I have a spelling bee. Mm-hmm. And I ask you to spell cat. And you spell it K-A-T. Mm-hmm. It's marked wrong.

Right. You don't get any credit for that. Because the correct answer is C-A-T. Right. But suppose instead you had spelled it X-Q-W. It's still marked wrong. And that's so much farther away than K-A-T. It's so much farther away than K-A-T.

In fact, you could argue that K-A-T is a better spelling than C-A-T. You know why? Because if you look up cat in the dictionary, C-A-T, the phonetic spelling is K-A-T. That's correct. Okay? That's awesome. But you got it marked wrong. Right.

Okay. That's awesome. But you got it marked wrong. Right. So this urge to get the right answer. Yes, I don't want to diminish the importance of right answers. That has value. But it has less value than you think it does.

Because in exploration, you have no answers. You're on the precipice of the boundary between what is known and what is unknown, and you're taking a step into that unknown. And you don't know what's there. You don't even know what question to ask. I know what's there. But you're probing. You're poking.

You're trying to figure out what question to ask. And most questions don't even have unambiguous answers. Right, exactly. Can I give you an example? Go ahead. Okay. What's the diameter of the sun? Ask me that.

What is the diameter of the sun? You look it up, it'll say 864,000 miles. Okay. Okay, fine. But in what wavelength of light did you make that measurement? Okay. Other wavelengths of light emerge from deeper in the SAR. Right.

Okay? That's it. And if you're using x-rays, it's bigger. The corona emits x-rays. We found that out earlier in the show because of the different wavelengths. That's a different wavelength. So you have to specify. How high up does the atmosphere go?

Earth's atmosphere is about 62 miles, 100 kilometers. We've just agreed because that's a round number in kilometers. There's still air molecules above 62 miles.

That's why we have to boost the Hubble telescope every now and then because air molecules are knocking it out of orbit. Okay? So there is no demarcation line.

It fades until it blends with the interplanetary medium. So we like tidy answers, but most of science is not even about the answer. It's about the general understanding of what's going on, and then you take it from there.

So no, common core math is a good thing. It's got you thinking in ways that it will enable you to tackle a problem in the future that you have never seen before. And if you're in space, it's not about knowing the right answer to a pre-designated question. It's about figuring out an answer to a question no one has asked before. And so you need the tools and the methods and the power of inquiry to accomplish that. Wow.

There you go. Drop the mic. That was, that's a very good answer. I'm saying. I like it. I'm writing this up. It makes sense. It's going in the next thing.

All right. Chuck. This was good, man. Always good to have you. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? You know what I mean?

You know what I'm saying? This has been Star Talk. We're recording this in my office. The Cosmic Crib. At the Cosmic Crib at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, part of the American Museum of Natural History. And as always, I bid you to keep looking up.