StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries – Black Hole Information Paradox

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

What do astrophysicists mean when they talk about “information”? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice dive into questions about the black hole information paradox, moon moons, wormholes between black hole universes, and more! NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here:https://startalkmedia.com/show/cosmic-queries-black-hole-information-paradox/Thanks to our Patrons Dustin Franke, Joel Bradley, Bill, Bailey's Old Guard, Ezrah Davies, Joseph, David Tilbury, David Holt, Andrew Bowen, John Blair, BigShrimpin, Niall Heaton, Stefan Tabakov, Roger McVay, Steve, John Skobrak, Mau Guzmán, Marcus, Michael Astro-Knight, Charlize, Zach Sweet, Trish Edwards, 에이 큐, Michael Kitchen, Alboogie, studioofmars, Anders Öqvist, Liris, Robbie Bentley, Harry Campbell Blyth Clark, Timmeh, Stupot, Wick3dHeathen, Denise Pinheiro, Kenneth Millen, Porn Person, Bill, PotatoGraphick, Conrad Dunfee, Steve A, Priit Pääsukene, Étienne Pouly, thomas rodriguez, Jibak, Michael S, Kerin McGee, Kyle Young, S.P., Adam Sweeney, Micah Sell, Austin, Emmyb, Caiden Osborne, Devinder Singh, John Posey, Thierry Hubert, Spider, B. Nielsen, jonathan Ryan Munns, tanya henry, K Be, Tyler, Moseph Thuglewits, A O, Tim Gibbs I, Robert Buckley, Maggy, Abhi Arikapudi, Luna Sylvan, omarelsewefy, Kevin, Sylvain Racicot, Aiden Nathan, naked alien, Mohammed Al-Sabah, Derek S., Mark Oestereich, DarkInferno, Joseph Hernandez, Osboyjr, Jay Titus, Nathan Hargett, Dave Baxter, aspiring scientific journalist Also a cow, Charles Ian Norman Venn, Amanda, Tony DeGregorio, Michael Chunn, jeffrey gerber, Raymond McGovern, Ricky Byrd, Glen Bizeau, Richard Rines, Matthew Drumheiser, Raj, and kornschnitzel 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. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Chuck, about time we finally have a cosmic queries with a theme. A proper cosmic queries. Like in the old days. Yes. This one is black hole leaning. Oh, black hole leaning. Leaning. Oh, you can't, but you don't want to lean up against a black hole.

Bad, bad analogy there. All right, coming up, cosmic queries, mostly black holes edition. Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, you're a personal astrophysicist, and we're going to do Cosmic Queries today.

Cosmic Queries with Chuck Knight, Chuckie, baby. What's up? All right, how you feeling now? Oh, feeling great. Have you been practicing how to read people's names? Because you've got a little better. Not at all. And as far as I am concerned, if I mispronounce your name,

you are now officially in the StarTalk family. because you mispronounce them with affection. That's right, yes. So I'm told this time it's not entirely a grab bag. It leans towards which subject? Black holes. Black holes. Everybody's favorite subject.

Everybody loves black holes. Nobody doesn't love a black hole. That's right. All right. So just go right in. Let's rock and roll here. We're going to start off with Brian Berg. And Brian says, hey, Dr. Tyson, Lord, nice.

Chuck, you should be able to nail this one. Brian from Portugal. You know what, Brian? So then he says, hey, can you help explain the information paradox with black holes? My understanding is that quantum mechanics and hawking radiation are at odds about this. One says information is forever. And the other says information disappears when a black hole evaporates. Are we any closer to understanding how this can be?

Thanks for keeping on doing what you're doing. Well, thank you. So I can answer this to the best of my ability. But I think that that's really a Janna question. Jana and Brian and Brian Greene. But especially Jana. She's the Black Hole expert. She's totally into this.

With the Black Hole Blues. The Black Hole Blues. She's a whole book. That's her book. No, no. The Black Hole Blues. Blackhole Blues. She so badly wants to be able to say it that way.

Yeah. The black hole blues. So here is my understanding of that situation. Okay. You have a black hole, you go in and you never come out. Right. So if something contains information at all and it goes into the black hole, did that information leave your universe?

That's a question. Because once you're inside the black hole, it's no longer part of your universe. you've crossed over an event horizon. So that was a question. And I think it was even a bet that involved Kip Thorne and Stephen Hawking. Okay. Okay.

There's a history of bets with fun sort of frontier questions on new science that's being developed and discovered. And what do you win? The universe. I thought that was a dinner at a fancy restaurant, a bottle of wine. Oh, okay. It's actually a real bet thing. Yeah, something in reach of, you know, your firstborn or anything like. Or your house.

Yeah. Right. That's a bet. So information theory is very important. And there's sort of a latter emergent understanding of how we also need to think about the world. It's not just an interplay of forces and matter, emotion, and energy. Okay. There's information contained within it.

And entropy is a measure of the disorder of information. Mm-hmm. Correct. Okay. So we have this energy field outside of the event horizon that belongs to the black hole. Right. The black hole is responsible for that. Okay.

Particle, anti-particle pairs get created. Gotcha. And they fly in opposite directions. Mm-hmm. If the angle is right, one of them will just fall back in and the other one will escape. And the other one goes out. Goes out. Right.

Okay. If you inventory the particles that are created out of the, the gravitational field, it is exactly the particles that the black hole ate. Oh. So somehow, knowledge of what the black hole ate that

was living inside the event horizon is communicated to the gravitational field. Right. And it's pulling it out of what was inside the event horizon and then releasing it into the universe. And therein lies the

evaporation. That is the evaporation of the black hole, but the preservation of information. But the preservation of information. The preservation of the information. It's wild. I love it. It's completely wild. I love it.

Oh my gosh. That's crazy good. Yeah. Now, there may be nuances to that that I'm not getting or I haven't, but that's the basic thing that's going on there. Right. And so that resolved the information paradox. Right.

So the information is not lost. The information is somehow known, preserved. and then demonstrated or expressed in the gravitational field. In the gravitational field. And as the black hole gets smaller and smaller because the evaporation is slow. Slow. Vaporation is slow, but it happens. There's a point where the black hole disappears altogether.

And so it has returned to the universe once it came. Wow, man. Yeah, it is. That's the kind of stuff that's tell you, man. That's good stuff. All right. All right. What about you got?

All right. This is SP. S.P. says, Greetings, my lord, and my doctor, Shea from Arizona here. All right. I love StarTalkland. This is my very first question.

Excellent. I'm welcome. I wonder about... Say, right. Welcome. Welcome to Star Talk. Very good. SP says,

I wonder about asteroid 2024 YR4. And what might happen in 232 as it makes its approach to our planet. The odds of it impacting the Earth are almost nothing, but it has about a 4% chance of impacting our moon. My question is, what are the odds of it being captured by our moon instead? According to the paper, Can Moons Have Moons by somebody Raymond and Raymond, Colomere and Raymond?

Our moon is large enough to host a moon of its own, and my curiosity has peaked. Love it. Can you also talk about the effects of what we? we might experience if our moon has another moon. Okay, cool. So a couple things. Good question. So we are getting better and better.

We have better and better data on asteroids that put Earth at risk. Right. And these are called Near Earth asteroids, or Near Earth objects, NEOs, which would include comets. Okay. N-E-A's would be a near-Earth asteroid. Neos anybody who's near-E-E-E-O-E-O-E-E-O-E-E-E-O-E. All right.

And just for context, if I had to Earth here, there's a schoolroom globe and I ask how far away is the moon. If you're thinking about how it's drawn in textbooks, the moon is like somewhere over here, a few feet away. Yeah, it's right there. Right there. It's not. It's actually not. It's 30 feet away. Right. If you were doing it. 30 feet away. There's a lot of empty space there. Between the moon and us. That's why it takes eight minutes to get to Earth orbit. But people say, are you going into space? It takes eight minutes to get to Earth orbit. It takes three days to get to the moon. Wow, that is a lot of empty space. That's a lot of empty space.

All right. So it is of interest if an asteroid or a comet comes between us and the moon. It's what's called cis lunar space. So that's the area of the moon's orbit around the earth. If it comes in there, that feels a little tight, but it's not as tight as you think. Because you're remembering the textbook picture of the moon sitting right off our elbow. Oh, my gosh, you're going to thread that. That's dangerous.

But no, it's 30 feet away. It's like a field gold post that's the size of the stadium. I don't know if I can make it. That's an exact analogy here. So when we think of danger and close approaches, anything closer than the moon will get reported that way in the press. All right. This one has a chance of hitting the moon.

That'd be fun to watch. But consider the moon has been hit before. Have you looked at its face? Yes. All right. So it wouldn't be... He doesn't have a pizza face for nothing. It wouldn't be the first time the moon got slammed by an asteroid out there.

Just keep that in mind. Second, it is almost impossible to capture an object. Oh. Without consequences to another object. Right. The Earth and the Moon, if there was a third object, in the system. And that other object

came in from outside, moving very fast. Something has to slow it down. So it's going to need a close approach with some other object, like a third object, where it exchanges gravitational energy so that

the asteroid slows down while the other one speeds up. And then the other one escapes the system, and then it stays with us. So it needs a third body to carry away that extra energy. That's not going to happen.

Right. So the moon will not capture a moon. Not by that mechanism. Right. No. Right. Now, it would be kind of cool to see the moon at night and then a moon going around. Around the moon.

They would each have exactly the same phase, which is kind of cool. If you have a half moon, you have a half other thing that's up there. Right. Because they're both in the same angle between you and the sun. Right. So, yeah. So it works. So that'd be kind of fun.

Oh, okay. But yeah, don't expect it to ever get captured. It's not going to fun to think about, but not going to happen. A capture orbit is a special case. Okay. Not impossible, but. But very special case. Yeah.

Got you. So this is Kevotron. And Kevotron says, hey, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice. I'm Kevin from Charlotte, North Carolina. Nice. I was just there in Charlotte. Oh, cool. He says, fiction has always been my preferred type of literature throughout my life.

From long novels to short comic books, I love the imagination authors put into their characters and stories to see what your imagination is like. My question for both of you is, if both were in a superhero comic book, what type of villain do you think each of you would be? Or a hero if you can't see yourself as a villain. Gosh.

So let me preface that by saying, I want what I do, which is I write nonfiction, I don't want what I write to be referenced as the negative of something else. You want every assertion to be positive. Yes. You want every assertion to be positive. Yes. So I invented the word.

I think what I write in others who are in the nonfiction world, if you write fiction, we write fiction. That's actually a better word. A way better word. Yes. except it also means a splintering of a group. But many words have more than one meaning. So true. So that wouldn't be the first time that happened.

Okay, so Chuck, would you be a villain or a superhero? Oh, that's a rough one, man. Because the villains are often far more cool. Really? Oh, yeah. And the reason they do that is because if it makes the superheroes the underdog. And you always want to root for the underdog. There's something about them where you...

You feel for them. Yeah, like you look at the transformers. The Autobots are cars. Big deal. Whereas the Decepticons are, they're jet planes. Okay. Well, the Decepticons are far more cool than the Autobots, okay? But the Autobots always win, you know?

But I never wanted to be Lex Luthor. Okay. Oh, no. I wanted his money, but that's it. I got to say, I wouldn't mind being Lex Luthor. Because Lex Luthor is nothing more than Batman gone wrong. What? Yeah, think about it.

Batman is a billionaire who creates all these toys so that he can fight crime and uphold justice. Lex Luthor is a billionaire who is also a psychopath, so he creates toys to try and kill Superman. Okay. But if he were good, he would be an awesome, like, count, he would be an awesome, like, tandem hero with Superman. Allow me to quote the Joker in Batman. Go ahead. you complete me. Yeah,

or I complete you. No, he says, yeah, you complete me. Yeah, yeah. But it's talking directly to Batman. Right. Without you, I'm nothing. Right.

Yeah. So, you know, the yin and yang I like is... There's another saying, which has said in geopolitics, you're only as great as the greatness of your enemy.

Ooh, that's a great... That's a really profound statement. So there was Saddam Hussein trying to hide in the desert. Right. And he says, I got the entire... entire U.S. military after me.

I am no longer a badass. I went from badass to dumbass. No, no, no. What I'm saying is, while he's alive to say that, that's quite a boast. Yes, it is. Right. Right.

But the fact, but the fact is that he was, he was the biggest, baddest dude in the Middle East until Uncle Red, White, and Blue showed up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, who would you be? Would you be? What hero would you be? I'd be a superhero.

I'd be Mighty Mouse. Don't laugh. I'm confessing my inner. By the way, everybody loves Mighty Mouse, but why Mighty Mouse? Because I'd like that he sings when he goes to save people. Here I come to save the day. And that's how you know he's showing up on the scene. You can hear him echoing through the corridors.

Right, give me your money. Here I come to save the day. Oh, man. And then there's another key, he sings it in. Yes. So somehow I was enchanted by that as a kid. Mighty Mouse. Mighty mouse.

The big old chest? Yes, he was more chest than he was anything else. He was all chest. He was all chest. But my mission wouldn't be to save the damsel or whatever he would. Okay, my mission would be to save the geeks. Ah. They were being pummeled by the football quarterbacks.

Right. Because in my day, that's what happened. Any geek being bullied, you would show up. Bullied. Exactly. In my day, we hadn't figured out that you could report bullies to the principal. Well, that's because. They were a fundamental part of your life. Right.

And you were forced to deal with them because what happens is you go to an adult and you say, this guy's bullying me. And they say, yeah, because you're a snitch. Look at you. You know, my father said, he said, anybody bullied you? Punch him in the face. And that's what everybody. Not only he said, my grandmother told me that. Yes.

Okay. You punch you in the face and they will never bully you again. And they'll never bully you again. I said, yeah, but they are going to beat my ass right then. You do have to take one ass with him if you're going to stand up to a bully. Okay, that's the thing. They will never mess with you again, but that one time that you did that. In my day, nerds had very low stock value in society.

Today, it's the richest people in the world. Yes. And I was around just before the transition where the quarterback and the average, and the athletes, they needed the nerd to help them with their computer homework. Right. So you can't, there's a limit to how much you can get really an nerd. Also, you're probably going to work for them one day.

That wasn't yet fully established. Not fully established. Okay. And also you might want to cheat off of them one day in class. Well, that's always been the case. That's always been the case. So I would be protector of the nerds. That's cool.

I'd be Dr. Manhattan. Oh. Because he can go anywhere in the universe he wants. Any time, anywhere, any place. And also be in several places at the same time. Yes, yeah. So that's kind of really cool. Plus, he knew all the secrets.

It made me feel bad for just want to be Mighty Mouse. Well, listen, it's fun to think about. That's a cool. Dr. Manhattan from the Watchman. The Watchman series, yes. Yeah. Yeah. The movie got me. I mean, I always loved it.

Watchman was the graphic novel. Correct. Then there was the movie. Right. Then there was the series. Yes. And I was going to say, I always liked him. in the graphic novels,

but it wasn't until the movie that I wanted to be Dr. Manhattan because he was in his lab working and in the bedroom having a threesome with his wife with himself, which is awesome. My man was still working on his science

and getting it in with his wife. And himself. In a threesome. Okay, you can't beat that. Okay, that's what. All right, here we go. That's a little weird. Yeah.

And add to this, though, to understand the severity of what I had to come save, there'd be a little signal for me. What would it be? It would be digits of pie in the sky. Oh, that's cool, though. And so the more digits, the more serious. The more serious. The case, can I?

Increase the urgency. Wow, that's so funny. It was just three point. 52 decimal places. Oh! That's atomic wedgy. Exactly. go interrupt there.

If it's one decimal place, it's just someone trash talking to you. Right. Right. That's great. So that's what it would be. That's funny. Thank you for that question.

All right. I'm Joel Cherico, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson. This is William Heisenberg, the third. He says, greetings Dr. Tyson and Lord Nice. My name is Heisenberg? He says, I'm William Heisenberg.

Heisenberg, okay. The third. And then he, phonetically, Wilhelm. Wilhelm? Wysenberg. He says, so I got it right, Wilhelm. I didn't say Wilhelm, though, okay, because I'm not that pretentious. And you're in America now.

It's Bill. Not Wilhelm? Not Wilhelm? Okay. All right, buddy. Here we go. He says, in Back to the Future, you had to hit 88 miles per hour to activate time travel. I was thinking about that.

First, you have to set the date to 1955. Who's to say that the actual cosmic time reference is? For all we know, time could interpret that as 1955 years from the Big Bang. Now, that would be an uncomfortable arrival. Second, they never programmed a location. So you probably appear in open space. And without anything to slow you down from 88 miles per hour, would you be stuck endlessly slipping through time,

unable to decelerate below the activation speed? What do you think? Whoa. Here's what I think. Okay. Here's what I think. You need the second job. You just spent too much time thinking about this.

You need. I'm going to say shipbuilding is what you need in a bottle. Ships in a bottle. This is too much thought. I'm joking. What an interesting thing, though. So a couple things. A couple things.

We can unpack that one bit at a time. Okay. All right. The time machine panel, which you program, that knows that it's 195 on the Gregorian calendar. Right. You see it on the display. It's on the display. Right.

And I don't remember if it said AD, but it's completely implicit in how the whole thing was conceived. Okay. Okay. All right. All right. So that's the first point. So there's no risk of going back to 1955. A, B, B.

After the Big Bang. After Big Bang. Right. You're not going to get an after Big Bang. Right. All right. Okay. Of course, AD, the A doesn't stand for after. What's it stand for?

It's a year. It stands for what? Year in Latin. Oh, okay. Anno. It's Anno. So that's the year in time. Because the whole panel lit up.

Right. All right. And now, location. Significantly. Mm-hmm. He goes back a number of years, not a number of months or a number of days. If he'd gone back 30 days, he'd land in the middle of space because Earth is not there now.

Correct. Okay. Right. Okay. Or then. Right. Any actual time travel machine ideally should also be a space travel machine. Right.

Okay? Because you're sitting here. You say, I want to go back to yesterday. and you walk in, you want to come out, you want to still be here. Right. That had to transport you in space as well. Right. So it's a space time machine. It's not just a time machine. Correct. It's got to be a space time machine.

It has to be. Otherwise, you'd be dead on your first transport. Exactly. Because you'll be in an empty space. Right. All right. So had he gone back 30 days, 30 minutes, 30 hours, 30 days, 30 months, he'd be dead. But he went back 30 years. and a year, Earth returns to its place in its orbit. Right. He's still on Earth.

In any whole number of years. Right, because it's a whole year. So you're right. A year ago to, no, a year ago this time, the Earth was here. Correct. Right. Now, we're ignoring the leap days. But also, what about the fact that in our solar system on the tip of that spiral,

that thing is moving too. Oh, you're talking about the whole solar system moving through space? Yeah, the whole solar system is moving too, though. So the question is how far do the solar system move in a day? Right. Okay. So you have to factor that in.

Okay. You would. But to factor in one of them, cinematically, that's good enough. Okay. All right. To get them all, then you're just being, you're being annoying. Right, exactly.

Yeah. If they knew. It's like saying that football, it's not, you're not first in 10. You're first in 30 feet. Okay, shut up. Not first than 10 yards Well, it would be No, but you don't say it that way

Because you're just over-complicating things Oh, I got you got you got you You know what I'm saying You don't say first down 30 feet to go No, it's first in 10 You know, because we know what it is We know I got you

So 30 years So now apparently What's his name? This is Wilhelm Wilhelm Bill Bill You didn't pay close enough a 10

to that scene. Really? That mall is called Twin Pines Mall. Where do we think it got its name? Marty, exactly 30 years, goes back in time, and he arrives at Twin Pines Ranch. The ranch gave itself up to be a mall, as is so common with the strip malls or the suburbs.

Right. All right. And so out of an homage, you keep the name that it once was, Twin Pines Ranch. Right. And it says it in that scene back in 1955 when he arrives, crashing down the door of the barn of Mr. Peabody's ranch. Okay.

So we've got him going back in time still arriving on Earth. We've got him going back in time arriving in Twin Pines Ranch, which is the same places where the mall was that he just left. Okay. It's America. So what does the farmer do upon seeing a DeLorean arrive with Marty who has a hazmat outfit on because he's handling plutonium?

Right. Okay? What does the farmer do? He invokes his Second Amendment rights. Go all damn big. Get off my property right now, I'll tell you what. No, you don't ask them first. No, that's true.

You shoot first and then ask. That's right. Yeah, I forgot. So the shotgun comes out. All right. Marty is trying to escape. He's driving fast. He bowls over one of the two saplings that are the twin pines of his ranch.

There are two five foot tall saplings with a picket fence around it, and that's the twin pines of the Twin Pines Ranch. Marty bowls over it attempting to escape and not get shot. Okay? Okay. Now, hang on. Hang on. I thought Vilheim put too much thought into this. Damn.

Wait a minute. So the second shot against Marty hits Mr. Peabody's mailbox. Okay. And that's how you know it says Peabody on it. So that's how you know he's Mr. Peabody.

When it hits the mailbox, the mailbox explodes. But his shotgun, I didn't think anything of it until I gave this talk, I gave a talk where I described that scene in Southern Georgia. And somebody in the audience

you know, looked like, you know, someone who owns a few guns. Of course. You know, had like a, like a camouflage, you know,

a camo hat. You know, somebody probably held a few guns. He said, I had something to comment. I said, oh, did I miss something? He says,

yeah, that shotgun would not have blown up the mailbox. I said, what would have done? He said, it would just would have put holes in it. Oh, okay.

Like shotgun pellets would do. And where were you when you gave this talk? Southern Georgia. Oh, he would know. So that's when I said. That's where I discovered, he introduced himself as a nerd redneck.

And that's where I discovered this beautiful species, a new kind of nerd. Welcome to the nerd club. The nerdneck. The nerdneck. And we agreed he could be a nerdneck. And that's what we had, for our Patreon, we have private Q&A with Patreon. And one of them is also self-proclaimed nerdneck. Oh, cool.

And he wrote me later say, sign, you're nerdneck. So, anyhow, so, Marty leaves. Right. Okay. Then he goes into town. He has to figure out how to get back and all of this. Then he goes back to the future and we rejoin him at the mall. Right.

Because that's where he left. That's where he left. Right. It's no longer called Twin Pines Mall. Are you for real? It's called Lone Pine Mall. Oh, snap. Oh, snap.

And the camera doesn't zoom in on her. It's just there. It's just there. Oh, man. Okay. Okay. So my boy, he's got to go back and watch. Well, Wilhelm, there you have it, my friend.

No, no, he just got out geeked. You did. I thought you had a lot of attention to detail here, but apparently... You better wake up early in the morning. You want to outkeek me. You can't out back to the future, Neil, on this one. Wow, that was something else, man. All right.

That was something else. Sorry, let's go to Colin Montot, or Montoot, who says, hello, this is Colin from the Berkshires of Massachusetts. He says, I'm asking this question for my wife, Billy. I would like you to explain what information means when it's used by you astrophysicists. Like the question of whether black holes destroy the information and all that. Hawking radiation. What is the information? I need help.

on that. Okay. Because for me, as I came to understand it, the information, it was good enough to simply have the inventory of particles that went in and came out. All right. But we know that if a molecule goes in, the molecule has more information there. Absolutely. There's order. Because it's a construction. It's a construction of these particles. That's right. And when the Hawking radiation reemerges, it doesn't give us whole molecules. Right. So I cannot answer that. I have to check with my black hole people.

Okay. Okay. All right. So because to me, a molecule would have more information than a particle. Right. Absolutely. Well, look at that. What a great question, Colin.

Unless. What? We're going to dig into a black hole. And get back to you. Unless. Unless. Unless. The act of making the molecule reduce the information somewhere else.

Oh. Okay. So you have less entropy here, more entropy there. So instead of thinking about it as how much information is in the molecule, you look at the entropy budget. Right. All right. Why are we complex? Where did that come from?

In a closed system, that can't happen. Right. Thermodynamics. Go ahead. We're not a closed system. No. There's introduction of energy into the system. From where?

Our great Lord Ra. The sun. Yes. Okay. So, we're getting energy from the sun. Right. Building information here, building complexity, reducing entropy here. Right.

However, the sun's entropy increased. Right. The sun is going to burn out one day. That's right. So I'm thinking that's how that is reckoned. That makes a lot of sense, though. That does. I'm pretty sure that's how that'll go.

Okay, cool. I love that answer. But I'm going to double check. But we still got to get a way to talk with Jana. It's a great answer, though. I hadn't thought of it that way. Jan 11, if you didn't, if you're a new subscriber, she's a friend of StarTalks.

She's a professor of physics at Barnard College in Columbia University. And she's written a couple of books on Black holes. Black holes. Yeah. And she's a theorist. Theoretical physicist. Physicist, yeah. He's our resident black hole expert.

Yes. So, yeah. All right. This is Joe Kiarelli. Joe Keirelli, who says this. Hey, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice. Jokea Ralee here from Connecticut as a new patron member.

Nice. A new Patreon member. He says, I had the pleasure of meeting you and Gary at Chuck Special in New York City. Oh my God. Oh, my God. Look at that.

Look at that. Well, thank you for coming to that. We were all there in good numbers. Yeah, it was great. Chuck gave a stand-up, a science-informed stand-up routine. special. Yeah, do you have a title for it?

What's you go? It's called Chuck Nice, Just Smart Enough. Oh, okay. That's the name of the special. All right. Because everybody I'm with is always smarter than me. That's one of the things that happens when you work here.

Well, you do what I do for the... I'm surrounded by him and all his buddies, and they're all freaking super geniuses, and I'm a dumb ass sitting here, but I'm dumb enough to know how dumb I am. That makes you smart. So that's what I do. I just sit and listen and learn. So my motto is from... Michael Dell.

Okay. My sister used to work for a Dell computer in Austin, Texas. Right. And she would tell me stories. So Michael Dell said, the day you wake up and find yourself as the smartest person in the room, change rooms. Well, you need to get up and leave. Because it's just us here in this office. So you need to go right now.

All right. Let's see what Joe says. He says, and by the way, Joe, thanks for all the nice words. He says, Neil, when we think about things getting hot, we think of them expanding. So why do clothes shrink in the dryer? Thanks for the love. Thanks for the show. That's one of the deep mysteries of the universe.

That's so funny. Wow. That's funny. Why do clothes shrink in the dryer when things normally expand when you hit them? I mean, that's kind of a... You know, because it shrinks the most is wool. Right. Right.

But what I never understood is, like... Because you know, you have to wash wool very special, you know, special way. Normally, warm water and wool light. If it's summertime and you hose down sheep, and then the sum comes out and it heats it... Yeah, they don't become tiny or she... They don't become... So, what's up with that? It's...

That's... That's... Stop leaving us out in the sun. Yes. Oh, that's so funny. So not all material behaves in the same way by the same thermodynamic forcing. Right. So, here's one that we just accept that ice floats.

Right. Well, ice is water that is colder than the water it's floating in. You're right. Things that get cold normally shrink. And shrink. They'll shrink. They'll get denser and denser and denser. And they shrink.

Cold things shrink. Right. Ice at three degrees Celsius expands. Expands. Yeah. I'm sorry. Water at three degrees Celsius. Becoming ice.

No, it's not ice yet. Right. At three degrees, it expands. Okay. And that floats to the top of the lake where it freezes. Right. And it stays at that larger state. Right.

Floating, actually insulating the water below. Right. Allowing fishes to survive the winter. All right. Because once you put a layer, an ice layer on top, the bottom of the lake no longer is climatically connected to the weather connected to what's above. That ice actually becomes insulation. Insulate ice as insulation. Ice as insulation.

Exactly. So ice does the opposite of that. And there's a few other materials that will do this. Okay. And the chemists know about them. So, for example, if you want something that does not expand or contract at all, you combine two materials that have opposite properties. That's cool. And then they'll work opposite each other in this way.

Nice. The thermocouplers are these metals that bend when they're heated. Okay, so typically these would be valves to gas valves. All right. So you heat it, it stays open. when you turn it off and it cools down, it closes back. Naturally, just because of its own response to temperature. So, with regard to clothes in the dryer, can't help you.

What can you do? I gave you the rest of the physics of what's going on. But what's going on, but yeah, that will remain a mystery along with what happened to my other sock. And along with, does the refrigerator light turn off when you turn the refrigerator? Right. Yeah. Yeah, even, and people say, of course it does, because you just press the button on the side and you see the light goes out. And I'm like, yeah, but that's because the door is open.

So I once tweeted this. I said, one of the mysteries of the universe does the refrigerator. So someone put their cell phone in their refrigerator. Oh, hilarious. Okay. And then they started filming and then they closed the door and then it got dark. It got dark. You got to love people.

You got to love people. All right. Chuck, we only got five minutes. How many do we get like a boatload of questions there? Oh, who cares? Let me go. Stop. Let's go.

Let's see I can answer them fast. Go. All right. This is Tom Lindelius, who says, greetings from Uppsala. Uppsala. Sweden, yes. It was an important observatory there.

Oh. From the early 19th, early 20th century. Did not? It probably goes earlier, but the data that I've seen from them is quite relevant and significant. I had no idea. When they were a player in that space. Okay, go on. He says, if our universe actually existed inside a black hole,

wouldn't everything seem to be converging into a single point, the singularity, rather than expanding also, wouldn't we be able to spot any evidence of spaghettification, like large galaxies or gas clouds appearing stretched, thanks in advance. The spaghettification happens when you get very close to the singularity. Right. The bigger the black hole, the less the spigetification is at the outer edge. At the outer edges. In the beginning, you're just falling.

You're just falling through. Right. If we are in a black hole and our black hole is the size of our universe, then the spigitification is not a thing. Right. Okay. Which is occupying the volume inside the black hole. And we're not a collapsed system, like when a star collapses to make the black hole in the first place. Right.

So, yeah, the spigateification is not an inevitable fact of falling into a black hole. Okay. All right. Very cool. That's all. You know. All right. This is RID, Rydd.

Hey, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice, Remy from Nante France. Love this show. If black holes are actually newborn universes with different physics, can a wormhole cross them or get us out of our own universe or are space time separated? and we're just stuck. Yeah, I do not know for sure, but everything I know about wormholes tells me they can get you anywhere.

Anywhere. And if there's a multiverse, and there's another universe over here, in principle, you should be able to pop up a wormhole. The tunnel to that multiverse. However, in a multiverse, every universe has slightly different laws of physics. Oh, that's not good.

That's not. So you opened them, Open the portal and then like flip a coin through there. Right. And then they grab it. If they explode or disintegrate, the coin melts. Right. Then just stay.

Yeah, we'll just stay right here. Exactly. So into a, so that's another universe in the same way. The forward facing universe in a black hole would be in another universe. I don't see any reason why a black hole couldn't connect any two of those. And that's exactly what Rick's, Rick has his. The portal gun. The portal gun.

Right. In Rick and Morty. There you go. All right, this is Christoph de Massinier, who says, hello, Dr. Tyson. Monsignor? No, M-A-E-S-E-E-R. Masenia. Okay.

Who says, hello, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice, Christoph, calling from Belgium. Love it. I know that the answer today would be, we'll get spaghettified. But let's suppose our current limits in technology aren't an issue. What would it take to fend off a black hole coming towards our solar system? A mission like Dark would be out of the question because it would get equally spaghettified. Curious to hear your encounter, your counter-apocalypse ideas. So a black hole is coming at us.

In my day, what you would say is kiss your ass goodbye. Right. But more seriously, what we would have to do is get all the rockets we have, attach it to the side of the earth, and get us the hell out of the solar system. before the black hole gets close enough. Literally, spaceship Earth is the answer. Because there's, you're not, you can't touch the black hole. You can't nudge it out of the way.

Right. There's not you can do to the black hole. To the black hole. And if you are on the course to fall into it, once you get to that event horizon, it's over. It's over. It's over. So you want to move Earth to another place, ideally to another star system. Right.

Because we value. Yeah, because we need sunlight. You need sunlight. Right. Exactly. All right. Very cool. One more.

Here we go. This is Jeff. He says, hello. Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice. I'm Gwielan Hewitt from Birmingham, UK. Birmingham. Yeah. Oh, I wish Gary was here. In class the other day, I was reading the elegant universe.

That's Brian Green, right? Brian Green, yes, best selling book. Yeah, he said, and it was explaining black hole entropy and mentioned that after every interaction, for example, an asteroid falling into the black hole. It's accretion disc expands. I find myself wondering why this happens, why the accretion disc expands after these interactions. By the way, love the show.

Excellent. That's really cool. The accretion disc is the holding pattern for the material that ultimately will fall in. So that's the bright hot thing that you see going around the black hole. The bright hot thing. The reason why it exists at all is because rarely is anything moving through space and headed exactly

toward the black hole. Okay. Even if the black hole influences its path, it'll curve it around. Ah. But it's never headed straight in. It's a very rare trajectory

to head straight in. Okay. All right. So, the material gathers and, all right, it wants to fall in. Okay. Now, if you jump off a roof,

why does hitting the ground kill you? Well, you know, Because the ground is not going anywhere. When you jump off, your speed increases. You're speed up, yeah. You speed up. You just fall and fall and falling, fall. No, but you can jump off a curb and you're not going to die.

Right. Because you weren't falling long enough to have high speed. Gotcha. I see what you're going. It's a simple point. It's a real simple point. Okay. So where did you get the energy that was ultimately manifest as high speed at the bottom?

The elevator gave you that energy. Right. It's called gravitational potential energy. Gotcha. All right. So, you're at the top, you fall. At the bottom, you die. Gotcha.

Here is material falling into the black hole. Where does its energy go? Because it's speeding up. But then it gets stuck in the... Oh, that's so cool. It gets stuck in the... So that's the grounds for the black hole. Yes.

Yes. That is awesome. Yes. That's why it's all hot and bright. Hot. Because normally when you hit the ground, it breaks all your bones. But if you're gas clouds, that becomes... heat.

Dude, that's amazing. It heats up. It heats up to such high temperatures begins to radiate ultraviolet x-rays. And so X-ray

telescopes would discover black holes. So if the asteroid simply fell straight into the black hole, nothing would happen to the accretion disk. Right.

Nothing. Because it would just speed up and get lost on the other side. Right. But if you hit the accretion disc, all that extra speed had to go somewhere and it's manifested

distributed throughout the accrued and that energy is now in the accretion disk. It's in the accretion disc. And that's why... And it heats up and then it expands. So when you see light from a black hole, you're not seeing any light from inside because light can't escape a black hole. That's what you're seeing.

You're seeing the accretion disc. Or the materials trying to get in so fast that the heat is so immense that the accretion disc is preventing the heat from escaping. What's the only way the heat can escape? It can't get out through the disc. How's it going to get out? It can't, it has to join. No. There's other ways you can get out.

With the heat from the disc? Yeah, yeah. If it's very, it's a ferocious. It's trying to get out of the disc, but it can't. Okay. Right. There's two ways it can get out. Up and down.

Okay. These are the jets that we see coming out, black hole jets. Very cool. Black hole jets. Nice. You get the Cretion disc, black hole jets. There you go. And that's what we're seeing.

Yeah. That's. Black holes are cool. Dude, what a great question. Yeah. That was cool. Yeah, very good. So the only thing wrong about the question was he assumed that the black hole had eaten.

Right. No, but the accretion disc ate it. Right. And it gets hot and expands. You got it. That's what we'll get time for. That was great. Man, a black hole leaning.

Yes. Cosmic queries. Right. Love that. So Chuck, we got to call it quits there. Oh, it's a shame. But we'll be back. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, I'm going to shamelessly plug my next book. Oh, cool. Because it's a question and answer book. I love it. It's called Just Visiting This Planet. Just. It's Merlin returning, because Merlin was a,

a column that I wrote in a magazine for like 15 years. Right. And people just wrote in with questions. That's why I'm very comfortable in that space. Because I cut my teeth as a scientist and as an educator responding to people's questions, however crazy they were. Wow. And so it's just coming out like now.

This is another extension of that. And it's illustrated by my brother, who's an artist. He went to high school at music and art in New York City. Very cool. And I went to the Bronx High School of Science. And now you guys are working together. Look at it. I'm loving it.

This is true steam. In a family coming together. Family Steam. Nice. So, yeah. So people who love queries about the universe, it's questions answered with this character called Merlin. And I think it's more fun.

You could type it into chat GPT, but you know and I know, there's no soul behind those words. Exactly. There's no entity. There's no personality. Yeah, just the dead eyes of AI. All right, this has been StarTalk, Cosmic Queries.

Until next time, I bid you to keep looking up.