StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries: Art and Science

Episode Date: January 12, 2014

Explore the intersection of art and science when astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Chuck Nice discuss van Gogh’s The Starry Night, Escher, da Vinci, Giotto, computer generated art and more. 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 Radio. I'm your host, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. And we are here in studio in New York City. I got a co-host here, Chuck. Hey. Sorry, you're not just a co-host. Yeah, yeah.

Sorry. I appreciate that, Neil. I kind of think of myself as your favorite co-host. Keep telling yourself that. So, what do we do on StarTalk? I always have a comedic co-host, and we talk about the universe and all the ways that it impacts your life. And with folks like Chuck in the room, you're probably going to at least smile. And if you're not rib split by the end, we're switching them out next time.

Yes, exactly. If you haven't peed your pants, I get fired, basically, and I will commit Harry Carey. So today we have one of our StarTalk After Hours sessions. Yeah. It's Cosmic Queries, and we're going to spend this whole session just with you culling questions drawn from the Internet. That's correct.

All of our Internet presence, which is wide and varied. We've got Twitter and Facebook and Google+. get the stuff is where it needs to be that's right and we found the ones related to the intersection the collision the blending of art and science yes two great tastes that taste great together they're like the the Reese's Cup of the universe. Art and science. You got science in my art. You got art in my science. I remember that stupid commercial. I haven't liked Reese's Cups, but I'm one of the last people not allergic to peanut

butter, right? Who's left? It's so funny that it's true. Back in our day. I remember growing up, nobody was allergic to anything. Okay? Right. Now, I have a son. peanut butter right who's left it's so funny that it's true i never back in our day i remember growing up nobody was allergic to anything anything okay right now i have a son he's allergic to peanuts and to the point neil that i'm such an idiot that i didn't believe the doctors who told me that my son was allergic to peanuts because i forgot that there's another genetic code

that he shares not just my strong stock i mean you didn't just birth him out of your rib like an amoeba, right? Exactly. But anyway. Amoeba walks around and says, hey, I want another one of myself. Right. So, of course, you know what I did?

I took a little piece of, little teeny bit of peanut butter. You experimented on your son. And I experimented. I was like, yeah, I bet you this kid isn't all that. He's my kid. He's my kid. He's not a wimp.

Right. So, I took a little peanut butter, I put it at the tip of my finger, I put it in in his mouth and my son went into anaphylactic shock i'm not joking either i almost killed my son so but it was for the sake of science it was for the sake of science okay son you did not die in vain so what do you got for me oh man let's get right into this right uh coming from uh google plus this is marcos d831 marcos d8 this is code name this is code name all right so uh what do you think of computer generated art examples genetic algorithm based images. Yeah, I'm cool with it. Really, really. In fact, when it first

came out, it was striking because it was different and it had a different kind of sound. But personally, I think that the computer doesn't yet know how to feel emotion.

Yet. And what is art without emotion that's my line I say that cleanly please I'm sorry what is art without emotion okay now you can butt in so so I mean think about it you know I love me some Escher, right? The first MC. MC Escher. MC Escher? Yeah. I don't even think I'm familiar with MC Escher. You didn't hear him at the club the other night?

So the artist MC Escher, his drawings are like perfect illustrations of geometric forms, basically. Okay. And so they're fun to look at. They're fun to get lost in. But at the end of the day, you don't take emotional ownership of it. Right. And I think the greatest art allows you to walk up to it and say, that means something to me, regardless of what the artist thought or felt.

And then it's a communion between you and the creative energies of the artist. If it's a computer just punching out notes according to some algorithm, I don't know that it can reach those same heights. But now with- So maybe we need a computer that can cop an attitude. That sounds good. And then it composes music while it's under a disturbed mental state. You need a computer that can have a broken heart that's you need a computer to get dumped by a girl a computer that

that means the computer's a guy excuse me don't you know that all computers that announce the end of the world are female well wouldn't they though seriously there is two minutes left before self-destruction. That's true. It's not like, yo, get the hell out of there. And see, that's why they don't make it a man's voice because they would actually add some urgency to it. You know what I mean? Self-destruct in 10 seconds.

Right. Yeah, the world will end. What they should have is a brother, a real brother, just like, yo, man, you're gonna die. Get the hell out of here what's your problem are you crazy you're still here that'll that'll work that'll be the the brother computer right on the computer oh damn man you dead so i think for if a computer were to compose the blues it would need to know sadness right and i. And I just don't know how that, maybe that day will come, but you can program that in. But right now, no. So, yes, I'm happy to call it art, but it's not the highest levels of art that members of our own species have achieved.

So, computers can make art. It's just art that sucks. Yeah. Okay. Exactly. I'll accept that. I'll accept that. All right. Okay. Exactly. I'll accept that. I'll accept that. All right.

Okay. Let's move on. Oh, by the way, there's like startalkradio.net, and we tweet at startalkradio. And so our Facebook, just find us. We're startalkradio. It'd be easy to find. Absolutely. Okay.

What else you got? Sounds good, man. be easy to find. Absolutely. Okay, what else you got? Sounds good, man. This is from Nathan Giardina, which is, what, if any, influenced it? That means little garden, I bet. Yeah, I think it probably did.

Giardina. Giardina. So, what, if any, influence did art have on your personal desire to be an astrophysicist? What are your favorite current artists that explore science in their art? Ooh. So those are two, you know, yeah,

those are two questions. I mean, we're short on time. This segment, let me take the first one, which was, uh, what,

if any influence that art have on your personal desire to be an astrophysicist that it had no effect on my desire to be an astrophysicist, but it enhances my capacity to appreciate all the splendor and beauty of the images that derive from it. Wow. If you look at the portfolio of images from the Hubble telescope, I mean, you feel it all the way. And I look at those images not solely as a scientist, but as one who is not an artist myself, but one who appreciates the art of the cosmos. We'll come back in just a moment to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

And I'm your personal astrophysicist. By night. But by day, I serve as the director of the Hayden Planetarium here in New York City, which is a part of the American Museum of Natural History. Known to some of you for its dinosaur bones, but we also present the universe. And I got in the studio, Chuck Nice. I'm your private dancer, by the way. No, not, no, no.

You're telling me that? No. So, Chuck, you tweet. Yes, I do. Twitter dude. Chuck Nice comic. Chuck Nice comic. That's correct.

Nice, nice. And I like the daily dose, you know, of just humorous observations of the natural world. Yes. That you provide. Yes. Sometimes humorous, sometimes the natural world yes that you provide yes sometimes humorous sometimes disturbing yes and i want you to bring some of that to this we you're reading questions that we have called from our various portals on the internet the various star talk radio portals

and the theme is art and science that's right merging, the cross-pollination, the collision. What is it? And I think a lot about this topic, and I was overjoyed when my producers told me that we were going to spend some time on this. Cool. And I haven't seen these questions in advance because they're your choices that came out of the compilation. And before the break, there was a two-part question, and what was the second part to that? And remind me who asked it. Nathan Giardinia, who says, what are your favorite current artists that explore science through their art? Great question.

Now, I don't claim to be name-fluent among artists, but I can just tell you the kinds of art that I've enjoyed. For example, the big public sculptures that appear in front of buildings, you know, many cities have a budget for that. Those that tap the sky for their themes, I love them. I love they want to invent a new kind of sundial or their sort of constellation patterns. In New York City, for example, in front of the Time Life Building on 6th Avenue, across the street from... Give me a second. Time Life Building, 6th Avenue, across the street from 30 Rock. From 30 Rock.

Yes. Oh, he's nice. He knows his geography. Look at that. His urban geography. Aha. There's a huge sculpture in front of that building and it's a big triangle yes it is it's a triangle and people eat hamburgers under that and have no clue what it is it is a sun

triangle do you know that on the first day of the principal seasonal points of the calendar at 12 noon the sun aligns which each with each of those legs of the triangle. I did not. So the more vertical leg of the triangle on June 21st, first day of summer, 12 noon, sun time, it lines up with that leg. On the shallowest leg, it lines up there on December 21st. On the middle leg, it lines up both on March 21st and September 21st. It is a sun tracking device. And people just lose.

It's pretty brilliant. I love it. I love it. And forgive me for not remembering that fellow's name. Right. But sculptors, they're artists, of course. Of course. Who are inspired by the universe.

I love them. I love it when writers, that's a form of art, they think to cast a scientist as one of their characters instead of the cop, the lawyer, the doctor, whatever. Because there's other themes they can draw upon. I'm still waiting for the sitcom where there's a woman who's an entomologist who studies bugs and she falls in love with an exterminator. That's funny. So these are untapped themes, and I want science to show up in the everyday storytelling of novelists and poets and all the people who are responsible for bringing culture and the joys and the pains of culture into our daily lives. And do you know what the number one sitcom today is?

I just learned this. I would guess, since you're asking, that it would be... Taking too long. I'm going to go with Laverne and Shirley. In reruns. Yeah, that's the number one. No, of course, it's the Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang, yeah.

Of course, of course. CBS's Big Bang. Yeah, and so, no, it's not high art, but it's art. They're clever writers, clever. They've got a good science advisor, and it's a science advisor being brought in to the community of writers who are artists in their own right. Right.

Helping to tell very fun stories about how – they're caricatures, of course, but they're fun caricatures about what it's like to just hang out with people who are scientifically fluent, scientifically literate. And so, I like the writers who do this. I like the sculptors who do it. I like anybody who has taken themes of the universe and blended it in with their art. You know what I'm less impressed by? Go ahead.

People who look at a Hubble photo and say, I'm going to paint that. Okay. I don't need you to paint. I got the Hubble photo. Right. I already have the photo. I got the photo. However-

Take me to a new place. But would you not say that it's possible to take you to that new place by giving you an interpretation of what they see when they look at that photo. Yeah, but the interpretations are just sort of color variants on what it is. Here's what you do. Take me to a vista that's inside the cloud looking back out. Take me to the surface of...

Take me to... Okay, then I'll ask you this. What do you think about James Cameron's Avatar, the movie? Now, he took us to a different world. There you go. As they say in Texas, there you go.

You know, we had different vegetation. We had different animal life. We had different, you know. He was completely informed by the vegetation on Earth and by planets in orbit around stars. And he had this background foundation of scientific information. And he said, now I want to take it to another place. Now, when you say literally and figuratively, when you say he was informed by vegetation on Earth, do you mean that he was smoking weed when he came up with that?

Precisely. No, because on Earth we have, you know, plants and animals that have bioluminescence. Right. Well, he took that to an extreme. He did. That was cool. He thought about it. Okay.

He didn't just invent that out of the ether. For everything he showed, there's some kind of physical, intellectual, artistic link back to what goes on here on Earth, except for the unobtainium. Unobtainium. The stuff that made the clouds float. He pulled that one out of where the sun don't shine. But everything else, sure. And nine foot tall blue people, I'm okay with that. That's kind of cool.

Except they had the USB ponytail. You know, that one where they just plug it in wherever they are. Wherever they want, yes, yes. I know Captain Kirk would have done very well on that planet. He gets his stuff wherever it is. That's right.

He's got it. All right, let's move on to a Facebook question. Wait, wait. That would be Captain Kirk of the original Star Trek television series for those who were born after 1969. Oh, that's true. Yeah, that's right. I forget.

There's a lot of people who may not know about the original Star Trek. Well, they know the later ones. And the fact that the captain of the USS Enterprise was a poon hound. Intergalactic. Exactly. All right. All right. What else you got?

Here we go. Facebook. And this is Heather Redding Maffoli. That's it. Heather M. Heather M. Here you go, wow. Mepholi. That's it. Heather M. Heather M. Here you go, Heather. What is your scientific reaction to Starry Night?

Love it or does it make your eyes burn? Do you mean Starry Night as painted by Vincent Van Gogh? Van Gogh. Van Gogh's Starry Night. That is The Starry Night painted in 1888 by Vincent Van Gogh. And it is one of my favorite works of art of all time really yes in fact i have an oil reproduction of it in my office nice it's actually the original but don't tell anybody right now there right now there are a ton of people breaking into Neil's office right now.

Actually, if you look online on YouTube and type cosmic office, there's a tour of my office, and it's in the background. I don't actually point to it or mention it, but it's there. It's there. So I have it there. I chose it as the cover of my second book. The title of that book was Universe Down to Earth. Got you. And so, no, it does not make my eyes bleed

it would if i were a scientific purist not allowing anybody to interpret anything but in there no the moon is weird all right the moon doesn't look that sickle shaped no and stars are not like that vibrato right no and they're not that bright. No. All right. I'm with you on that. However, I will allow that to be

how the sky made him feel. Ah. So you're looking at this more as a representation of emotion. Exactly. Than an actual depiction

of the sky or the cosmos. I think it was, we only got a couple of seconds left here. I think it was the first picture picture work of art ever to be named for that which was in the background, not the foreground. The foreground, there's a cypress bush, there's a village, there's a church steeple.

He didn't call it sleepy village. He didn't call it cypress tree. He didn't call it church steeple. He called it Cypress Tree. He didn't call it Church Steeple. He called it Starry Night. The stuff in the backdrop that framed the village is the name and the subject of that painting.

There you go, background dancers. Vincent Van Gogh is your man. We're coming back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. This is StarTalk Radio, and we're back. This is the Cosmic Queries part of our show. I like to think of it as StarTalk after hours. Chuck, nice I got you in studio. Thanks for being here.

Always a pleasure. You're helping us go through some questions that is viewer mail. No, listener mail. Listener mail. It's all about the collision between art and science. And we ran out of time that last segment, but I was on a roll. You were starry night. Oh, man.

Obsessed there, man, in a good way. But that brings up a question for me personally. Okay. Because I heard that Vincent van Gogh actually created more than one starry night. Yes, he did. And just before the break, I was describing the most famous of them, which is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City

on West 53rd Street. Correct. By the way, just a couple of blocks from the sun triangle we described earlier in our conversation. But yes, he actually has other paintings. He has many paintings

that were of the night or in twilight that showed moon crescents and stars and this sort of thing. Another, he had two other starry night paintings. One of them was at a cafe. And it's a cafe scene. And you see it's a narrow, one of these narrow European streets.

And there's a little cafe. And you look down the street and there's a sky that reveals itself flanked by the silhouette of buildings to its left and right right and that is a kind of a funky looking version of well what it looks it is a it is a recognizable constellation that's my point and so that unlike the famous starry night where nothing matches anything he has a real constellation there. And there's another one where he's on the water's edge, and you see a river. I forgot which river it is. But there you see, in fact, the Big Dipper.

Not exactly a mapping of the real Big Dipper, but again, closer representation of the Big Dipper. So those are a little closer to a reality than the original one that's most famous. And of course, who's the artist who composed the song? Starry, starry night. What's the guy? McLean? Yes. I always confused him with a picture for the Detroit Tigers in 1967.

Dennis McLean? I don't know Dennis McLean. I get him mixed up. Forgive me. I'm not doing this from notes. mclean i get him mixed up forgive me um i'm not doing this from notes uh but anyhow so he he was compelled to compose an entire song based on artwork based on the universe that's awesome and so talk about a collision intersection cross-pollination you can't get more uh incestuous than that no you can't i mean serious i had no idea had no idea. It's Don. Don McLean. Thank you.

Don McLean. I had no idea that Starry Night was that far reaching in its influences. That's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. And I was on a tour of the Museum of Modern Art, and they didn't know it was me because I'm an astro dude. And it's, oh, here's one he painted, and here's the location, and here is the period. On to the next painting.

It's like, no. No. Excuse me. Get your ass back here in front of this painting, because I got more. Just let me tell you. Let me school you on Starry Night. Wouldn't you just hate to be the tour guide that gets Neil deGrasse Tyson? And this is Starry Night.

Let's move on. You know, by the the way i'm an idiot all right what else you got all right here we go uh this is from uh don uh cancio and i would definitely like to hear neil's thoughts on the golden ratio and the role of mathematics in aesthetics in general thanks that's an awesome question. Oh, my gosh. Right. So, it has been suggested since antiquity that certain proportions are pleasing to the eye. Right. No matter what your upbringing is, perhaps no matter even, no matter your upbringing within a culture, and perhaps no matter even what culture you derive from.

And one of them is the golden ratio. Yeah. And I think it's one plus the square root of five over two. So some, I'll look it up over the break, but I don't carry it in my head. But what it does is it tells you how wide something should be for how tall it is. And that's why certain paintings, certain pictures in their frame just feel a little awkward. They don't feel pleasing.

And you can't even put your finger on it. It's kind of an emotional force operating on you, a hidden intellectual force that's telling you, I like this picture better than that. And you might not even know why. I know why, because I'm looking at porn at that point. For me personally, I'm just saying. So you have other ratios that apply to porn there's the porn ratio we're gonna check out that one

where my mind just went go ahead so i like geometry uh geometry uh in fact literally means earth measurement uh geometry and And it was applied to measuring distances along earth's surface and earth is curved. So you get some interesting mathematical discussions when you bring mathematics to bear on earth measurement.

But math, I think, is overvalued as a force in art. Because in math, there is no room for emotion. True. That just isn't. And so the question is, is there something that's mathematically pure that is also emotionally, uh, rich or satisfying? And by the way, people have been thinking about this since forever. And it started with the

music of the spheres. They saw planets in orbit around the sun. Well, there's a rhythm to that and the different orbits of different times. Is there a ratio of those that means something mathematically

out of which you can make music? And it was imagined that music, you can make awesome music from the universe. And for all the music I've heard that came from the universe, it's not. I'm sorry. We've got to take a break. We'll be back with StarTalk Radio.

I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your resident astrophysicist. And I'm with Chuck Nice. Yes. Chuck Nice Comic. At Chuck Nice Comic on Twitter, please. Your Twitter handle. That's my Twitter handle.

Get a handle on Chuck Nice Comic. We left off with a question about the role of geometry and geometric shapes and forms

as informing art because you get geometry from math. So that's math informing art. And I think a lot of it is overrated in its role.

There's that golden ratio. We looked it up over the break. It is one plus square root of five over two. So the ratio is one to that. Right. And the ratio of one to that, if you did the math, it's about one to 1.6. So something would be of height one would be 1.6 wide. Right.

Very pleasing. And that becomes a soothing, pleasing visual effect for some reason. Even though you're looking at a block of cement. Exactly. But it's elegant cement. But it's elegant block of cement. So now, what about my man Leonardo da Vinci and the Vitruvian man? Oh, the dude inside the circle.

The dude inside the circle in his arms. Yeah, yeah. That was really wishful thinking. Because once again, he was imagining that, by the way, there's sort of spiritual religious implications here, that human being is a pinnacle of God's creation. And if math is perfect and we are of God, then we ought to be perfect at some level as well. If not our behavior, certainly our biological form. And so he imagined that the perfect human would have these proportions. And you put the guy inside the circle, and the center of the circle would exactly line up with the belly button.

And the arms would then reach out and extend to the edges of the circle. Now, it's true for most people, your reach is approximately equal to your height. Okay. But are you going to say that that is most pleasing? Because that is not true for most people in the NBA, and they're very highly paid people. I happen to have very long arms compared with my height. In fact, they're a foot longer than my height. Really?

Yeah, which means I can punch you out. So your wingspan is a foot longer than your height? It's a foot. It's 84-inch wingspan. You'd have been a great boxer. So it's 10 inches long. I'm 6'2", and my wingspan is 84 inches. So it's 10 inches longer.

Wow. Yeah, 74 inches to 84 inches. Yeah, or I could hold your head while you swing under my arm, you know, never reaching me. Yeah, the classic, yeah, just give that one up. Go home right after that. So I think, plus there were these metrics of beauty that people had presumed and established. The measures of Western beauty. You know, what is the width of the cheekbone to the height of the face and the nose to the mouth? Yes, you can measure anything.

And you can say that certain measurements repeat. That doesn't make them important geometric forms. It's just a geometric form that applies to that standard of beauty. Right? And so I'm not prepared to go and say, let's go look at geometric math to derive what is beautiful. What people are doing is finding who everybody says is beautiful, measuring that.

And applying the geometry to that. No, no. Then they measure it and say, here are the beautiful numbers. Right. And then applying the geometry to that. No, no. Then they measure it and say, here are the beautiful numbers. Right. Okay. I'm fine with that. But what I find interesting, it has been said that the most intriguing characters are not the ones who are most symmetric, but the ones that have a slight. Slight imperfection.

Slight imperfection. Yeah, like Meryl Streep. Yeah. Or Marilyn Monroe with the mole on one side. With the mole on one side. Yeah. Yeah, like Meryl Streep. Yeah, or Marilyn Monroe with the mole on one side. With the mole on one side.

Yeah, and Harrison Ford, who was clearly the standout in the Star Wars series. His face is not symmetric. He has like a scar on one side of his face compared to the other. I have a scar on one side of my face, but no one says that's beautiful, though. It applies to actors and not anybody else. So you can measure this stuff. But in the end, I don't know that that's how i want to decide who's beautiful i'd rather really just take a look well what do you what do you think

about the ratios when it comes to size and weight ratios like for instance uh certain it's been i don't know if it's proven but asserted that certain hip to waist ratios say fertility and causes a certain kind of desire in a man when he looks at a woman breast to waist to butt ratio it's a family show yeah actually it's not but go on but i mean you know so did you say breast to butt ratio that's the first of those i've heard what can i say that's just me personally. Yeah. Okay. Well, we got to check the journals on that one. There may be no empirical medical evidence whatsoever about that one.

Okay. Consider this, that any two numbers, any two measurements has a ratio. Okay. That's true. And although I look through time and I see the depictions of women in art, them ratios are all over the place. You're right. Those Rubenesque women.

And then you go to the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties and flat-chested women was the thing, the flappers. That's right. They were certainly not Rubenesque. And so I'm not here to say that math is defining what we should be, but nothing will stop you from making those measurements in the first place. Oh, I've already made my measurements. We're going to take a quick break. And, Chuck, when you come back, I want you to spend a minute.

Tell me about you've got some crazy show on HGTV, on Home and Garden Television. I laugh every time I think about it. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. We'll be right back this is star talk we're in our last segment, Chuck. This went fast. Oh, my gosh. It just flew by. Yeah, we're talking about the intersection, the blending, the cross-pollination, the collision of art and science,

a subject about which I've thought quite a bit. And you got the questions from the internet. That's correct. Keep them coming. All right. So, you know, we don't have a lot of time left. Like you said, the show's kind of flown by. So, why don't we enter our lightning round? Oh, there's a lot left is what you're saying. Yeah, I got a lot of time left like you said the show's kind of flown by so why don't we enter our lightning round oh we don't know there's a lot left is what you're saying yeah i got a lot because i haven't seen these you you picked them you found them yes so there's quite a few questions left so

we're going to kind of breeze through them okay no so this is the lightning round and i will sound bite the answers get through as many as we can as many as we can okay Okay. This is from Lee off of Facebook. Lee asks, are we born scientists and become artists or vice versa? Which comes first, chicken or the egg? Well, first of all, I have the answer to which came first, chicken or the egg. It's the egg. Laid by a bird that was not a chicken. Whoa.

That is the answer to that question dad gone got it okay second so you thought you were slick slipping that in there okay uh personally i could be biased but i think all kids are born scientists and learn to do and appreciate art because what does a scientist do they turn over rocks and pluck petals off of roses and jump two feet into petals and each of these is an experiment on the physical laws that operate around them they do that without being told but what happens when they get into the classroom then they're said well here's the pasta and here's the glue you're making a pasta collage right so the art projects are kind of installed there, but you send them out into the yard. When they're not running and chasing each other, they're actually exploring nature.

Right. So my opinion, based on my observation of children and just the human species, is that we're actually born artists. I'm sorry, we're born scientists, and then adults beat it out of them later. And then we're taught how to then be creative. Right. So, yeah. Okay. All right, moving along.

Here we go. I'm sorry. I can do it faster than that. Okay. I dragged on that. Go. Do you think artistic ability could ever be learned or created through artificial intelligence? So, can a computer learn to be an artist?

A true artist? I think what it will have to do is be good enough to fool an expert whether or not it has the right motive the same motivation that an artist does so i think the answer is yes okay what are your thoughts on sacred geometry is there any art or design this is from randy huff that does give healing property so there's the real caveat there uh if you see some form or geometry that heals you that surely lives in the realm of the placebo it is an effect that we still don't understand a medicinal effect where if you're given a pill that has no no no medical effects on you but we tell you that it does and you then get, there's some percentage of people get healed.

It is a not well understood phenomenon. If it is your God who you appeal to, or your belief in the power of the doctor, or whatever it is, and it works, it's the placebo. Gotcha. There you go. What else? So, I just, before- Well, I love to say that.

Placebo. Placebo. One of those cool words. That is a cool word. Like polka dot. All right, go on Well, I love to say that. Placebo. Placebo. One of those cool words. That is a cool word. Like polka dot. All right, go on. All right, here we go. This is from Barney Atkinson.

And I just have to get to this question. If art influences science, how come the International Space Station is so ugly? It's because art does. It's because art does not influence science. Art influences design of architecture and hardware, but it does not influence science. So those were engineers that had an opportunity to make the baddest looking thing there ever was orbiting the earth. And out came something that looked like a rector set. And so, yeah, I'm a little disappointed now that you mentioned it, but I, we want to bring in some art and designers for when we go to Mars, because I want that to be the bad-ass looking thing that's ever come off the earth.

Gotcha. Next. Here's a great question. Was there ever, this is from Cesar Avilla, was there ever a painting or sculpture during the Renaissance or any other historical time that captured an accurate depiction of the cosmos at that time? Yes, there is Giotto's painting of the birth of Jesus, a very famous painting in which he puts a comet. We don't put comets to signify good things. The whole history of civilization where people have looked up and seen a comet,

if you look at how they reacted, they said, oh, something bad is about to happen. And so he took a leap and said, well, the birth of Jesus is a good thing to Christians. And a comet is just something in the sky. And that comet is likely Halley's comet that he had seen in the sky at the time that he painted it. Because if you date back the appearance of Halley's comet every 76 years, it lines up

with when he made that painting. Wow. So that is real science in a real painting. Not only that, 1066, the Bayou Tapestry. There is a dude pointing up at a comet. The comet came in 1066, and it coincided with William the Conqueror. Look at that. There you go.

That's all we got. That's all the time we've got. Chuck, thanks for being on StarTalk Radio. It's a pleasure. And we find you on HGTV, busting into people's homes, talking about them. Home strange home.

I show up to white people's homes unannounced and they say, come on in. Then you know the world has changed if that's happened. StarTalk Radio is brought to you in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. I'm your host and personal astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

As always, I bid you to keep looking up.