StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries – Black Hole Escape

Episode Date: July 8, 2025

How much do we actually know about the universe? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice answer fan questions from plasma propulsion to quantum gravity to black hole escape plans.NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://startalkmedia.com/show/cosmic-queries-black-hole-escape/Thanks to our Patrons Jes Cochran, Todd Buedingen, Eugene, Nana, Richard Watkins, Mike, Christopher Gardiner, ProsciuttoDiKarma, zudasworld, Sis, Mitchell Adkins, Daniel McPaddne, James DeSalvo, David Williams, Ser Xanthos, Denis Genest, Kelly, Adam, Ben, jeasterbrook78, Misty Haisfield, Michelle Slaughter, Asher Sidman, Don Nelson, Moviefiend, jamicha keaton, Braulio Bianco, Bugsta, Antonio Bshara, Daniel Grundman, Dragoste Daniel, Jonathan Ongay, Sieve Sailor, Alexander Hughes, Glen Kendrick, Aprameya, Meet Chokshi, and Georgi Rusev for supporting us this week. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of StarTalk Radio ad-free and a whole week early.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus.

Coming up on Star Talk, Cosmic Queries, Grab Bag. Yes. Chuck, those make the best combinations of questions, because they come from everywhere. Yeah. But some of them, people, stay off the drugs, okay? That's good advice from this show, yeah. Coming up, people, you'll see what he's talking about.

On Star Talk. Welcome to Star Talk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. Star Talk begins right now. This is Star Talk, Cosmic Queries edition. In fact, it's not just Cosmic Queries, it's Cosmic Queries Live. Chuck, I love you. Oh yeah, man, very cool. It's also Cosmic Queries on the road. I'm in LA right now.

What are you doing? And, do you have any public talks? Oh, nice. Yeah, tonight in Riverside and, right, leading up to on Friday I'm in Oakland. I don't get to Oakland often enough. Okay, make sure you wear that bulletproof vest You know I'm saying Yeah

Oakland ain't no joke man Plus that you know, they're angry because they just lost three professional teams or something, you know, man. It's terrible I know and the Raiders Come on, like I still call them the Oakland Raiders. I don't care. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so they're especially Henri, okay Watch out So today is um grab bag for us, right what you got we go we got we got I got him right here The and if I don't know the answer, I'll just say I don't know the answer.

Just let it be clear about that. Yeah, that's not gonna happen. All right, here we go. This is Smitty West. Smitty. He says, hey dude, it's Smitty from Ojai, California. A new Patreon member. Okay, so it's not really, it's dude.

Oh, that's true. It's's not dude. Oh, that's true. It's really like dudes. Yeah, that's. Hey dudes. Thank you. That's surely what the man sounds like. That's what he sounds like, absolutely. New Patreon member with my very first question.

And this is what he says. It seems gravity is the bastard force in nature. Speculation continue as to whether it's a force, a field, waves, or particles. Now that LIGO has detected gravity waves, I was wondering, could you somehow aim those waves at a double slit like the Thomas Young experiment of 1801? And what would it show? And would the slit, what would the slit be made of? Would it show particle wave duality?

I'll share the Nobel Prize with you guys. That is a brilliant question. That takes what we know and takes some other bits that we know and tries to put them together into some future idea. And that's what good scientific thinking will do. Way to go Smitty. So, yeah, so my answer is I have no idea.

Okay, because the waves, right, so let's back up for a minute. So we know there's the wave particle duality, you may have heard about that. And every particle in nature has a wave length associated with it. And you can think of the particle as a particle,

as a physical particle, or as a wave, depending on the experiment you conduct. It will manifest as a wave, and will have wave interference. If you have a wave, and it can, wave interference means if the crests and the troughs match up, it cancels out the wave and if the crests and the crests match up, it'll amplify the wave.

Amplify. But you can watch wave-like phenomenon happen with these particles when you put them through the right experiment. So Smitty, was it Smitty? Smitty, my man. Smitty's asking the right question. We have gravitational waves. Right.

Is there a double slit experiment that we can imagine for which these would then reveal that they behave just the way other particles do? So if there's such a thing as quantum gravity, we expect there to be the graviton. Which is the particle that would make up gravity. The particle, so the graviton is to gravity. What the photon is to light, or electromagnetic force.

Electromagnetic force. Right, okay. So if there were such a thing as a graviton, how would you detect it? Right. And because that implies that you trapped it, right? Right. When you detect something, it existed over there,

now it's in my detector. Right. So how are you gonna trap gravity? What does that even mean, right? Is the gravity in the, it's like in the Ghostbusters, you know? Trap. Trap. Yeah.

You have it down in it, and now it's just in a little rectangular box. It's a little rectangular, with a handle on it. Right, with a handle on it. And what happens if you open it? What does the gravity do? So, I can't even begin to think about what that would mean

and how you would go about that experiment. So I'm gonna have to put that in the holding bin. So yeah, I wish I had a better answer, but we learned from the German poet, Reiner Maria Rilke. One of his poems is, as a line, learn to love the questions themselves. Ooh, now see, that's a man who had no answers. That's what that was.

She was like, now where have you been all night? He was like, sweetie, I'm just learning to love your question. I didn't want to talk about where I was. I just want to reflect on the beauty of the question you just asked me. That's, yes. All right, here we go.

All right, next. Thanks, Minnie, for that. This is David Robertson. And David says, g'day, Neil, and Lord Nice, the butcher of Aussie accents. Oh, thanks. Um, I really should read these ahead of time. David Albury, he's Aussie. Okay.

Really he is. He goes, uh, David Alberry here. He doesn't tell me where he's from in Australia, but he says, if the singularity of a black hole is a moment in time, can I escape if I bring my time machine? By the way, you guys have a great show. Yeah, so the answer is yes. Yes. Yes, okay? So let's back into that, all right?

All right. Yeah, go ahead. All right. I'm listening. Okay, so let's have the surface of my desk, let's say. And I put an ant on the desk. Okay. And then I draw a box, a rectangular box on the desk.

It was a little door, okay? And I say ant go through the door. So it goes through the door and then I shut the door on it. Now the ant has no access to a third dimension, just in this example. The ant is living in the two dimensions of my desk surface. Just picture that. So up does not exist for the ant.

They don't even have a word for up in this example. You go left, you go right, forward, back. Backwards, that's it. That's it. So I open a little hinge door, the ant walks in and goes out, okay? Okay. So the ant looks trapped.

But we, higher dimensional beings, live in three spatial dimensions, they just step up and step over the wall. Okay, that's not really a prison for you. Just go into this extra dimension we have supplied for you. Right. And then you can escape. And the ant is looking at us like, what are you smoking?

Okay, fine. So now let's up that, let's just up that to a prison cell. Okay. Where it's not just a rectangle or a square that surrounds you. Okay. A wall on all sides, a floor, a ceiling,

and four vertical walls, okay? Somebody opens the jail cell, puts you in, and closes the jail cell. I'm sorry, first of all, as a black man, I do not like where this is going. It's okay. Okay. All right.

Let me think of another. Okay, you're a place you don't want to be. Okay? All right. And somebody locked the door. How's that? Is that a little better? That's much better, thank you.

A little better, okay. So, now you say, well, how do I get out? Well, a fourth dimensional person will just say, step into the fourth dimension. Right. That's the way which arguing with the ant to step into the third dimension. You say, I don't have access to the fourth dimension.

Right. I don't even know what that means. I don't know what your word for up means when that takes you into your fourth dimension. So we can say that. All right. Now, you've all heard that time is a fourth dimension. Right.

You've heard that. All the time. All the... Yeah. It's not a spatial dimension, but it's nonetheless a dimension. Right. You heard that. All the time. All the... Yeah. See what I did there. It's not a spatial dimension, but it's nonetheless a dimension. Right.

So if you were in your enclosure and you had a time machine, you could go back in time before you were in the room. In the enclosure and escape the room without ever opening the door. Look at that. Okay, so time acts like an authentic dimension for you

if you want to be someplace other than where you are without having to go through whatever was the procedure to arrive there in the first place. So if you're in a black hole, it doesn't have to be a singularity in time. It just has to be a singularity. You're inside the black hole, say I don't like it here. Get me the hell out.

Go in your time machine and just simply return. Go back, back to the future. You can just simply go back in time or forward in time if you happen to know that there's a point where you were sprung loose by some higher dimensional being. Yeah, by evaporation. When you get there, there's nothing,

there's no universe left. Like Hawking. Like Hawking radiation. Evaporation. You don't want to be evaporated out of the black hole. That's no good. That's true, yeah, that's not good, right. Maybe backwards is a better direction. You don't want to be evaporated out of the black hole. That's no good. That's true. Yeah, it's not good, right?

Maybe backwards is a better you want to come out intact on that So that would be how you would escape using time as a fourth dimension. You just go back before you you entered the room I know that's not as romantic or as Fascinating as other sort of elements of physics, but it would work entirely for you, right? Okay, very cool. All right, well, way to go, David. Appreciate that, and thanks for disparaging my Aussie accent, I appreciate that. Here we go.

Which I think is pretty good, but who am I to judge? I'm just gonna go. I mean, you know, listen, it's like, first of all, I mean, how many of me are you going to meet in Australia anyway? So, quite frankly, if I was in Australia and you met me and I was like, good eye, mate, you would be like, that guy's faking. So... Hi, I'm Ernie Carducci from Columbus, Ohio. I'm here with my son Ernie because we listen to Star Talk every night and support Star Talk on Patreon.

This is Star Talk with Neil deGrasse Tyson. All right. This is Ted Doyle. He says, hello, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice. I love you guys. And greetings from Southern Idaho. I am Theodore. Idaho. Idaho. Lord Nice, if you're delivering the question, my name I am Theodore. Idaho.

Idaho. Lord Nice, if you're delivering the question, my name is pronounced Theodore. Okay. Really bro? Come on. Anyway, he says, that was uncalled for by the way.

Okay. He says My question is if a plasma propelled spacecraft is chugging along to its destination At what point must it start deceleration 50% 70% 90% To avoid crashing and burning at touchdown Yeah, so generally the way we think about this problem is it's a 50, it's a halfway point. Halfway. So in a plasma propulsion, plasma is a gas where it's a charged gas.

So in other words, the atoms that are normally complete with their protons in the nucleus and the appropriate number of electrons to match the protons, because electrons are negatively charged, protons are positively charged, and they're neutral. If you kick off the electrons, now the atom is no longer neutral and the whole gas will respond to magnetic fields. It's a fascinating phenomenon. The sun is a big ball of plasma and that's why it's got these weird, it's got sunspots. It's not just a gas sitting there mining its own business.

There's a phenomenon occurring in it. So a plasma rocket is set up so that it kicks out particles, charged particles out the back. And so what does your spacecraft do in response? It moves forward. It goes forward. It recoils. Correct. So when you are a plasma, you can react to magnetic fields, electric fields, and you

can do things with it and do very fascinating things like you can become a star with a turbulent surface such as is our sun. So with a plasma rocket, one of the charged particles is channeled so that it gets kicked out the back. And one of Newton's laws of motion is for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. Action was his word for force. So in this case, you kick something out the back that there's momentum going and opposite reaction. Action was his word for force. So in this case, you kick something out the back

that there's momentum going out that way, you recoil in the other direction. Your acceleration is slow. Right. Because how much is your ship gonna recoil if you send an electron out the back? Right. Right.

Yeah. However, you could do this if it's a long journey, you just keep accelerating, okay? And once you get an acceleration that you like, maybe one G, then on the ship, your journey is at one G. So you feel like you're standing on Earth. You don't need special exercise equipment to not lose your bone mass.

You don't need special medical devices. You know, all of that. Because that is the force that's being enacted upon you. Right? Yeah, and Einstein made the brilliant observation that 1G on Earth from gravity is indistinguishable from a one G acceleration in a rocket. Okay.

Indistinguishable. And I gotta, we gotta go there, because we're already there. Okay. 80% there. You ready? Come forward. Okay. So if you are in a,

if you're in a rocket if you're in a rocket and you're accelerating, it means every next moment you are traveling faster than the previous moment. Right. So a constant acceleration means your speed is increasing. The entire time. The entire time, okay, so no watch. So if you take a beam of light

and turn it on on one side of the rocket and have it just cross the rocket, okay? You'd say, well, if the rocket isn't moving, it'll just go exactly across to the other side. Take a laser, just go straight line. But if the rocket is accelerating, it means the rocket is moving faster by the time the light got to the other destination than it was when the light was emitted. Which means the light will not hit the spot directly across where you turned on the laser. It'll hit slightly below because the whole rocket

was accelerating that whole time. It was moving. Okay, Einstein said, that's interesting, because if accelerating a rocket is physically and mathematically and cosmically the same as gravity, then gravity ought to bend the path of light. Damn. Damn.

Well, I mean, that's a serious leap. Yes, it's called the equivalence principle. Lovely. The equivalence of gravitational acceleration and physical acceleration through space. Wow. So I had to go there because we were too close to, there's a little-

No, that's a good thing to go to. Yeah, yeah. So that was the equivalence principle in 1915 that Einstein put forth to become the general, the foundation of the general theory of relativity. All right, so now watch. So here we are, so you get up your acceleration until you're going at one G.

Okay. And so you're living on the back end of the rocket. Okay, so all your couches and beds and things are up against the, that's where you are. You're not on the sides, because it's not a rotating rocket. Right. You could maybe, but if you're moving the whole thing

and you're accelerating it, you're going to feel that, and so you're all going to be walking around in the bottom of the rocket. Right. So, the way we generally think of this problem is, you accelerate at 1G half the distance. Right. Then, you turn the ship around

and decelerate at 1G. Okay, cause there you go. For the other half the distance. And a deceleration is the same as an acceleration, you're just now walking on a different side of the ship. Right. Okay? And there you have it.

And you get to live in 1G the entire way. And by the time you get there, you would arrive at the same, you would arrive at zero velocity, okay? Right. Because now you're slowing down with 1G acting in the opposite direction it was before. So that's how we would think of these long trips

with the acceleration that builds. Yeah, that's a really cool thing. And you arrive at zero velocity. Yeah, there's a show, I think it's on Amazon, I'm not sure, but it's called The Expanse, and they make very good use of that principle in the show Oh, they show all the expanse. Let me go back and remind myself of yeah Well, you watch it a lot of good physics in the expanse

It is and one of the great physics points that they don't ever acknowledge but they show is Ship going towards a planet and you're looking at the rockets in the front while it's going towards the planet. Yes, because it's slowing down the whole time. Because it's slowing down the whole time. Correct, and you see ships turn around

to reorient their rockets. Exactly. And you know what else they get correct? If you're in a 1G acceleration, you are not weightless right any crime in that ship Okay, exactly right in the movie ad Astra with Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones Okay, just everybody in space was weightless even when they were firing their rockets. Everybody's just floating around I said dudes come on, please

Please take some lesson from The Expanse. In The Expanse, just to catch people up, it's a futuristic tale where humans have populated the solar system. And we're still awful. Then we're still eating. There it is. There's the whole geopolitical

or cosmopolitical dimension to this where the belters appear, they're like the low class workers who are mining the asteroid belt. And then there's the- The Martians who are very erudite. But they're physiologically different in ways that accommodate life on those places.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, man. Ah, that's very cool. I'm glad Ted asked the question. Theodore, Theodore. Okay. All right, here is, this is Jason Bennett. And Jason says, you know, I've always wondered

what would happen if Neil and Chuck never met. Would any of us or any of this exist? Ooh. of us or any of this exist. Oh! Okay, so, so. Oh, geez. Okay, so I got, I have a reply. Go ahead. I think about this often. This is the contingencies of life.

All right? There was a TV series, what was the dude's name? It was called Connections. Okay? Oh, I don't know. Well, yes, you do. He wrote a book called Connections, okay? Oh, I don't know. Well, yes you do. He wrote a book called Connections, then he had a very successful TV.

It was a Brit, and so it sounded all, you know, every night, because it was fucking Brit. Welcome to Connections, it's like, right. I'm terribly pretentious, and that's what you actually like. Yeah, exactly. So what he would do is he would find chance encounters between historical figures that would lead to something that would be transformative in our civilization. And then you say, no, it's cool. I'm amazed he could could assemble that many encounters.

And the whole show revolved around Kevin Bacon. Yes, every show would land with Kevin Bacon. We all know Kevin Bacon. Exactly. So right, if Chuck and I never met, and by the way, how do we meet Chuck? In the early days of Star Talk, we'd go trolling, back when trolling was not a bad word. So, right, if Chuck and I had never met, and by the way, how do we meet Chuck? In the early days of Star Talk, we'd go trolling,

back when trolling was not a bad word, trolling comedy clubs. And we would look to see who was in the open mic night, because we know we wanted comedy as an element, as part of the DNA of what we were trying to create. And so we would invite comedians to come try out with us. Not so much a try out, but just to have a, what do you call it, when you just...

A meet and greet. No, yeah, and they'll do a show with us just to see, we'll feel them out. And Chuck was one of such people, if memory serves. Is that your memory of this too? Because it's so long ago at this point. It was 15 years ago. So, yeah, I mean, I think that was it,

but somebody called me and said, Neil deGrasse Tyson would like you to come to his office. And I thought it was my friend f**king with me. I'm sorry, pardon my language. I forgot we're doing a show. Yeah, I thought it was a buddy of mine messing with me. Um, and yeah, but then, yeah, that's what happened. And we met and you were like, yeah, well, let's see if we can get you back in and

just see how it works out. We'll do one, we'll do one show together. So what's missing a little bit here in that retelling is you already had experience on radio. Yeah, I had years of experience in radio. So, you know, I was cheating compared to the other comedians. Comedians who were just sort of comedians, right.

You actually know how to flow a conversation. You know how to end a sentence so that the other person knows you just ended a sentence this time for them to start speaking. There's a whole dynamic there that would not otherwise be obvious. So that's how that, so here's what you have to ask. And who's the person again who asked?

This is Jason Bennett. Okay, so here's what he's gotta ask, okay? He's gotta ask, it's not what would happen if you and I never met. What would happen had I met someone better? Ha! Ha! That's an option that's in the space of possibilities. Well, it's in the slim space of possibilities.

So the people say, oh, look how lucky I am because this happened and I had this opportunity when I met this person in their life. It could be a career trajectory or a loved one. And you will never know if your life could have been even better. Correct. So given that it could go either way, because I said, I think about this often,

I simply embrace what is rather than imagine what might have been. I think about this often, I simply embrace what is rather than imagine what might have been. Because then you work with what is because that anchors you in reality. Well, there you have it, Jason. What he just said is he settled for Chuck Nice. Yes. He did.

So. Okay. That was funny. All right, we'll look at that. Here we go. This is Kylie. Oh, wait, wait, wait, let me back up for a sec. So with this fellow who had that show Connections,

what he doesn't talk about in this same vein is if that connection wasn't made, would a different connection have been made that would have been a better outcome? Or would another connection wasn't made, would a different connection have been made that would have been a better outcome? Or would another connection have been made that would have had the same outcome? Right. He's dangling you there, leaving you to think

that the whole world exists on this delicate pathways of contingencies of who happened to meet whom without thinking some progress in civilization would have been inevitable no matter who made it. No matter who made it, right. Exactly. So stay broad in how you think about contingencies

and then you lead a more sane life. So true, I like it, I like it. This is Kylie Ronning who says, hello, Dr. Tyson Lordenice, Kylie from Kenora, Canada here. Kylie from Kenora, Canada, okay. Yeah, exactly. It sounds like a TV show.

It does. Kylie from Kenora, Canada. Yeah, by the way, Kylie, let me just say on behalf of America, we're sorry. Okay, all right. Jesus, we're just so sorry. She says, if humans were to be graded on our understanding of the universe,

what grade do you think we should receive? Or put another way, what percentage of the universe do you think we humans actually understand? Oh no, we know that precisely. We know enough about the universe to quantify our ignorance. How about that? Wow, look at that.

That's pretty good. That's good. That's not bad, yeah. I mean, honestly, it's like, it's better than being Dunning-Kruger, you know what I mean? Like where we think we know everything and we really know nothing, we know enough to know that we are dumbasses.

So that's pretty good. Okay. So we, we now, by the way, we're still making discoveries, of course, and we're looking for a cure for cancer. So there are frontiers even within the realm of what we know. So I'm going to quantify our ignorance in a more profound way than just simply do we know how to cure cancer. The fact is we know that there's a thing called cancer and it does what we don't want it to

do in our bodies and we have top people working on it. That's a frontier but that's not the frontier I'm talking about because all of that is operating within the laws of physics, chemistry and biology. That's a frontier, but that's not the frontier I'm talking about because all of that is operating within The laws of physics chemistry and biology Okay. All right. So now if you look at everything that we Have mastery of You know the molecules and atoms and and gravity and all of this Okay, and you look at what's driving the universe? atoms and gravity and all of this, okay?

And you look at what's driving the universe, everything you learn about in school in science, like I said, the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, evolution, planet forming, star forming, all of this is 4% of the universe. Wow. We see things going on in the universe, we can measure them and we have no idea. No idea. What it is.

And I tell you what it is, it's dark matter and dark energy. That's it. That's it. Those two things are operating on our physical universe and you can sort of weigh them, if you like, as to what is the, how consequential are these things in the universe that we call dark matter and dark energy?

It is 96% of what's driving this universe, and we have no idea what's causing it. But the 4% we do know, that's life, that's civilization, that's transportation, that's skyscrapers, that's dams that we build, all the rest of that, it's agriculture, is all the rest of that are the laws of physics that we know and understand. And so who knows what kind of profound advances

will come about once we- Once we know 5%. Who knows what kind of profound advances will come about? Once we- Once we know 5%, that's when we'll be smart. So here's an interesting thing. How do we know that even when we learn that other 96%, that that just doesn't simply put us on a new vista

where we get to look out and see even more ignorance. And that's probably what's gonna happen. I'm thinking, I'm thinking. And who is to say that we are intelligent enough to actually understand the universe? Here we are, human beings evolved on the plains of the Serengeti, just trying to not get eaten by lions.

So we develop a sensibility for that. All right, a lion runs at you, you run the other direction. You climb up a tree. This is survival things, and now we're trying to contemplate the cosmos. This is a mismatch of physiology, of neurophysiology. And so the idea that we are smart enough to understand the universe,

there's a little bit of hubris in there, I would say. So yeah, I mean, would an alien judge us as being intelligent? And I think not, particularly when they see some, as you say, dumbass behavior. Oh, God. Yeah. I mean, basically, they would come here and say say these people are hell-bent on destroying themselves Like that would be the number one takeaway when you look at when you look at us as a species

They can't possibly be smart where that reason if for no other if for no other. Yeah, yeah, right All right. All right. Here we go This is the artist formerly known as James Smith. He says, hello, James Smith here from Indianapolis. So Neil, can't we agree that it's Brian Green's fault that the universe will not end in fire, but in ice? He's supposed to be figuring out what's causing the expansion of the universe. Or do we need to let him off the hook and become a level three civilization on the Kardashian

scale to do that? Love you guys and have a great day. Man, he's calling out Brian Green. Yeah, I'll tell you, I don't know what Brian did to you, man. So yeah, the expansion of the universe derives initially from the Big Bang, but there's also this dark energy phenomenon in the vacuum of space that is accelerating the expansion of the universe against the wishes of gravity. All the collective gravity of all the galaxies in the universe, even the dark matter, what

we call dark matter, because that has gravity, all of that wants to slow down the universe and maybe one day re-collapse us. However, we have a dark energy phenomenon going on that is accelerating the expansion of the universe and we don't know what's causing it, we don't understand it, we want to, and you can't blame Brian Green for that. And as we expand, the temperature of the universe drops, hence the notion, the universe, you know, so Chuck asked, how will the universe end? Neil, how will the universe end? Not in fire, but in ice.

Yes. Right. So yeah, you can't blame Brian Green. Don't shoot the messenger there, because we need the messengers. Very cool. Now, about the level three civilization. So, let's remind people that there is a,

was he a physicist? A Kardashev, no relation to Kim. The Kardashevians, okay? So, Kardashev imagined, not imagined, he thought about and wrote about levels of civilization measured not by how smart you are, not by how nice you are, but by what means of energy do you command,

do you control. Wow. Okay? And a level one civilization controls all the energy manifesting on your home planet. So that would be like the hurricanes and the tornadoes and the earthquakes and the tides. We would somehow find a way to tap that energy and harness it.

To harness it for our own means, for our own diabolical, for our own means. That'd be a level one civilization. A level two would capture all the energy from its host star. We capture some of it with our solar panels on the roof or whatever. But sunlight is hitting every square inch

of Earth's surface, okay? Well, when it's not hitting our surface, it's hitting the tops of clouds. But Earth is intersecting a cross section of the sun's energy that would otherwise go into empty space, but Earth was in the way. Right. Right?

Well, how about that same amount of energy that went by Earth and went above and below in every other direction in space? That's a lot of sunlight. So if you build a system where you capture all that energy of your host star, channel it down to your civilization, now you have a badass civilization level two.

Wow, that's level two? That's only level two, right. And I think, yeah, level two. And now you build a similar device that captures all the energy of all the stars in your galaxy. Okay. That'd be a level three.

And a level four would be all the energy of all the galaxies of all the universe. That'd be level four. And there's a level five, I think. Yeah, that's called God. God, okay. Yeah. Okay. that's called God. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

God on the Kardashian scale. That's it. God on the Kardashian scale. That's all there is to it. Do we command the energy of hurricanes or tornadoes? No, we run away from them. We buy toilet paper and run away from earthquakes and tornadoes and volcanoes. And we're not even at level one civilization, we're level zero.

Look at that. Yeah, we're at number zero. Yeah. So, if we control all the energy of all the universe, maybe even the dark energy, then we can control the expansion of the universe. Right. For our own needs, for our own desires. Yeah, that's too much power for anybody to have, especially us.

No, no, but that'd be the future where you have wars between the universes in the multiverse. That's true. Yeah. You know, I'm not joining that army. I don't care. I'm not doing it. But at that point, all the life forms in our universe

would be aligned with each other because our enemies would be whole other universes if we're all level four civilizations. Yeah, but you know, the way it normally works is you're working with the people to defeat a common enemy while you're plotting to destroy them as soon as you defeat the common enemy. That's the playbook.

That's the playbook, you know, so yeah. The human playbook. Yeah. But here would bebook, you know, so yeah. The human playbook. Yeah. But here would be, you know how to mess with another universe? If you have the power, maybe level five power, to change the laws of physics. Okay, see, now you're just diabolical.

No, no, think, because if you just slightly change the charge on the electron, then all solid matter would just disassemble. Oh. Oh, you just Thanosed a whole universe. That's crazy. Oh man, that's crazy. That's insane. By the way, I don't generally have those,

I'm a peaceful person. That question drove me to these insane thoughts. Yes. So Chuck, time for two or three more. Somebody have. All right. Here we go. This is Isabella. She says, hi Dr. Tyson and Lord Nice. Isabella and Sierra from Ogden, Utah.

Our question is, what would our solar system look like if we had an extra planet, either terrestrial or gaseous? And what would the implications of this be? Can a planet that can't be demoted, RIP Pluto, 1930 to 2006, thanks to Neil Tyson. Implicate me that way? I was in the set three. I was not, I didn't pull the trigger.

All right. So anyway. But I did drive the getaway car. I did drive the getaway car. That's true. So Planet X, I mean, every, No, no, a couple things. I kind of feel like we get this in the news

every once in a while. I got this, here we go. Okay. Here's a, here we go. Okay. Here's my colleague who works just up on the sixth floor of the Rose Center. My office is on the fifth floor, which is not where I am right now. I'm in a hotel in Los Angeles.

Steve Soder, who by the way, co-wrote the original Cosmos with Carl Sagan and the first of my two cosmos is he co-wrote those okay brilliant guy Brilliant in history and science and and he's fundamentally a solar system guy. He wrote a research paper that demonstrated that The planets we now have Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus and Neptune in their locations Is the maximum number of planets you can fit into the orbital space of this solar system.

If you put another planet in of any size, Jupiter-like or otherwise, the gravitational fields of the other orbiting planets would wreak havoc on its orbit and would either crash into a pre-existing planet, crash into the sun, or be ejected from the solar system. Thrown out. Thrown out. So we are so mature as a system, four and a half billion years, five billion years old, that all the shaken out that was going to happen has happened in the solar system.

So if we're going to find another planet, it would have to be way beyond where there isn't this orbital dynamics creating the stability zones of what we now accept as the eight planet solar system Got you got you so it's all about the pulling and the tugging and ours All times it's always happening. So ours is done all the pulling and the tugging is this it is what it is Yeah, this we there's some long-term instabilities We think like on billions of years time scales, but by and large we're stable. And it would go unstable if you just brought in

another planet. So all the searching for another planet, planet nine, planet X, that's all happening well beyond even deep into the Kuiper Belt. Right, right, that would have to. Okay, very cool, man. I love that question. That was really, that was wonderful.

This is aspiring scientific journalist, also a cow, who writes, that was the title there. It says, if I rotate a proton fast enough, can I create a black hole? And if so, let's assume I spin it to create an event horizon of one meter or one kilometer, how could a Hawking radiation dissolve it? Or will it just go all at once?

Where does the spin go? And I'm gonna put on the end of that, my man, you need to get some help for your drug problem. Okay? It's all fun and games until somebody blows out a mind. And a mind is a terrible thing to waste, sir. Okay, anyway. Okay, I have to reassemble the bits and pieces

of that question into a question that has sort of physical meaning and coherence. So just because you spin something has nothing to do with whether it becomes a black hole. The unrelated... It's all about mass. Mass, mass, mass. It's all about mass. It's all about mass.

That's A. B, a proton is not a fundamental particle. Okay? A proton is composed of quarks. And so let's create that question, reassemble that question in a way that has meaning. If a black hole is evaporating by Hawking radiation, and let me remind people, the gravitational field just outside the event horizon has enough energy to spontaneously create particles, a matter-antimatter pair, and one particle drops into the black hole,

the other one escapes. Where did this mass come from? It came from the gravitational field of the black hole, and the gravitational field comes from all the mass that is the black hole. Damn! and the gravitational field comes from all the mass that is the black hole. Damn. Bro, this is a way, I don't, this is the way that the matter that's inside,

what, Chuck? It's so freaking creepy, man! This is how black holes evaporate, it's crazy! Yes, yes. It's crazy! You have no idea, people. Okay. And, yes. It's crazy, you have no idea people. And the weird thing is for me, because this was an emergent phenomenon that I then learned from my colleagues

who work in this space, that if you inventory the particles that show up the particles that show up from the evaporated gravitational field, it is the same inventory of particles that the black hole ate over its entire life. Okay, so somehow the gravitational field remembereded what the black outside the event horizon That's remembered what got eaten and is living inside the event horizon. So oh, wait a minute I just okay. So could that mean that

Maybe when the stuff falls in The information stays at the event horizon? Yeah, well, so this is the idea, this is the holographic universe that people are talking about that the event horizon is an imprint of all information that had passed through that boundary. All the information is contained. I don't know what to believe anymore in anything. I'm Hold on. I'll be right back Okay, all right, the yes, these are edibles damn it that's what they are you just went and got edible

I just went and got myself an edible and Yeah That's insane what's it? Okay. So now here's what's going on You just went and got edible. I just went and got myself an edible, and yeah. That's insane. Okay, so now here's what's going on. In the original Hawking radiation paper, what he was able to show is that the light, that is, the particle comes out, but you can associate a temperature of the black hole, based on, and temperatures,

at a temperature you radiate. Right. So he was able to analogize the evaporation of a black hole with a black hole of a certain temperature that's radiating, okay? Wow. So as the black hole gets smaller and smaller, the radiative light, the wavelength,

gets smaller and smaller, and the wavelength is commensurate with the size of the black hole, okay? That's the wavelength of light that's coming out of the system. So as the black hole gets smaller and smaller and smaller, the wavelength of light gets tinier and tinier and tinier. And when you have tiny wavelength of light, that light has higher and higher energy.

Energy, right. Energy. So you go from visible light to ultraviolet light, which will mess with your skin, to X-rays, which will mess with your DNA, to gamma rays turn you into the Hulk, okay? So what he showed was that as the black hole evaporates, it evaporates faster and faster,

and the energy level of light that it emits gets higher and higher and higher, and it eventually, it's a runaway process, and it's just a brief pop of light, a pure gamma rays, and then the black hole is completely disappeared. Gone. Gone. Gone. So my point is, if you still like your proton,

your proton is composed of quarks, that's what's fundamental, okay? And so as the black hole is evaporating and you're holding on to your last proton and its quarks, I'm saying that's the last one, you know, turn off the lights when you leave, all right, and it'll just evaporate back into our universe. Crazy.

Wow. Damn, that's a Blover. That's a black hole Nova. A Blover, okay. Yeah. I tried, I tried, man. I tried, okay. I mean, yeah, but I mean that's crazy.

Yeah, so I think that's all the time we have, Chuck. Oh man, this was so much fun. I tell you, these people, they come up with some great questions, man. Alright, so we gotta land this plane. So Chuck, there it is, another installment of Cosmic Queries. This was a good one, man, I liked it. It was a good one.

It went everywhere with some good people out there asking questions. Everyone, stay curious, is the only way we grow as human beings and as a species. Right. Yes. This has been Cosmic Queries Grab Bag. Chuck, always good to have you.

Always a pleasure. All right. Neil deGrasse Tyson bidding you to keep looking up.