StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries – Expanding Bubble Universes

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

Is time dilation just the data loading in a cosmic simulation? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice answer grab bag questions about saving the Sun, generation spaceships, bubble universes, and more!NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://startalkmedia.com/show/cosmic-queries-expanding-bubble-universes/Thanks to our Patrons Colbi Rohr, Designer Chrome, David Crawford, Faber Gabriel, Don, DJ, Ashur Isho, Steve, Logan Doherty, daveb, Alyssa, Dave Rossi, WILLIAM DEANGELLO DAVIS, Kurtis Tucker, BoatsG, Brian Kemmet, Linn Eaton, Benson Albert, Alan Corey, John Mehew, Merrill, Hamad Alhadyan, Brian Langford, eSpectator, Craig Muller, Betty Ford, Rizwaan Khan, Eric L Brown, Kevin James, 84chamelio, Dave Hildebrandt, Joseph Torre, Ryan Martin, Mike Coffield, Patrick Mercado, Alvaro Mendoza, Justin M, David Spiro, Jerry Cornett, Len B Smith, Alex Roe-Million, Ken Nelson, 80HD, Tom N., yna, Nanette Westhof, Benjamin William Blair, Andres de la Torre, Bridget Yacker, Mac Crollman, Byron Gregg, Jaquenta Jackie, Kevin Williams, Mettavore, Nathan Randall, TheNative Artificer, Mihir Daté, Keith, Thomas Bunner, Jack carter, Andrew, Jonathan Venancio, Dwayne Moquett, Krishna Vasudevan, Lexee, David M, KC Jones, Andrea P, Vincent Y., Juan Hernandez, Gremlin, Brian Masney, GillesS, Brett, Moises Zorrilla, Tek Adept, Rick Stacey, Angela Hayes, Kent, Smitty West, and You Mesh 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, this was a grab bag, and everybody keeps asking about black holes. It is. They got black hole on the brain. And none of them have pronounceable names. What Chuck mangled names the way black holes mangle matter. Very nice. On StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk.

Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Dark Talk, Cosmic Queries Edition, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Chuck, nice, baby. Hey, what's happening? All right. To grab bags, he's stick your hand in a bag.

You don't know what you're going to get. He comes out. And it's random. Right. Exactly. So. And, you know, if it's a turd, it's your fault, people. Turt.

If we pull out a turd, it's your fault. These are, this is all you. All right, this is Joshua from Portland, Oregon. He says, hey, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice. I'm Joshua from Portland, Oregon. I love the movie Sunshine. But the main plot of... I haven't seen sunshine.

I haven't seen it either. He says the main plot of reviving our sun by sending all of Earth's nuclear material to the sun seen more than far-fetched and even a quite bit cheesy. Putting all the cheesy aspects of the movie aside, the movie did address what it would be like getting near our sun.

My question is, if you even have... If you've seen the movie, did the movie sunshine get anything right? when approaching close to the sun, scientifically speaking, of course. And if not, in your opinion, what would be the funnest or weirdest thing to know about being extremely close to our son?

So a couple things. So first, I haven't seen the movie. All right. But based on what has just been told, I have comments. Okay. Our nukes are, well, we have fission nukes. Right.

Which is what we call A-bombs. Right. The sun has never been in the business of nuclear fusion. It's fusion. Fusion. It takes light elements into heavy elements. Right. We do that, but we still don't know how to control it.

Right. So we have uncontrolled nuclear fusion, otherwise known as a... Hydrogen bomb? Bomb. Right. Right. Bomb. We're good at making uncontrolled nuclear fusion.

Right. And the day we harness that and we get fusion reactors, there would be very inexpensive fuel. It will be the... beginning of a new era. A new era, yes it would. Because all of our energy problems will be solved. Basically, that's correct. Yes.

That's correct. So, now you want to send our measly nukes into the sun and believe that's going to make a difference? Yeah. Okay, just for context. Yeah. Have you ever seen spots on the sun? I mean, in pictures.

Yes, you know what we call those? Sunspots. Sunspots. I ask easy questions. All right. A sunspot is typically slightly larger than Earth. Okay. So the sun has blemishes bigger than our planet.

A planet. Yeah, that's crazy. And you want to think that our nukes don't have anything to do with the sun? Right. Yeah. Why not throw spitballs at it? Just as effective. Just as effective.

Get a straw. Yeah, just as effective. Well, if I could do a Chuck voice, it would be, you'd find. the nuke into the sun, it's like, hmm, this is delicious. Exactly. Yeah. Wow.

Plus, isn't that different? I mean, you can't start fusion from an explosion, right? No, the explosion is the fusion. That's what I'm saying. Oh, but can you trigger it? Yeah, I'm saying. Because the idea would be to... No, you can't trigger it because the outer layers of the sun

are not hot enough to sustain it. Right. Okay. But at the center of your bomb, it was. Right. Just like at the center of the sun. Exactly. Yeah.

Because the fusion is happening at the center of the sun. And not in the outer edges. Okay. So here's how you prolong the life of the sun. And I got to see the movie to see why they were doing it. If the sun was running out of fuel or whatever. It's an easy way to do this. Let me guess.

Now, and this is me guessing. So shut up. All right. I'm going to say, since the sun takes hydrogen and fuses it so that it ends up with like this four proton that creates helium. Four nuclei. So it's two protons, two neutrons.

So the four nucleons that creates helium, what you want to do is either send the sun more helium or send it more hydrogen. Why send it more helium? Well, because the next step after the helium is that's where it keeps going from there. The sun won't. Only the high mass stars are going to take it.

Oh, get out. Some pretty much stops. So the sun stops. Yeah. Oh, so I need to send the hydrogen in it. No, yes. I should just send more hydrogen. Yes.

Okay. Okay. Now, where is it hot enough to fuse hydrogen into helium? In the center of the sun? In the center? Okay. So I got to get to the center of the sun. So if you run out of hydrogen in the center of the sun, where is there more hydrogen? If I run out of hydrogen in the center of the sun. Yes.

Oh, maybe I can pull it in from just outside the center of the sun? Thank you. From everywhere else. Everywhere in the sun. Just pull it back in. Okay. Yeah. So there's what's called convection.

Right. Okay. If you can drive a convection deep inside the sun, bring fresh hydrogen down into the core, pull out the helium, break, date. Then you'll jump start the fusion. You can jump start the fusion. And the sun, when it dies, it only used, I forgot the number of a few percent of its total hydrogen available. Oh. The sun could live for trillion.

The sun could live for trillions of years if you can't be found a way to recycle. You don't have to find hydrogen from somewhere else. No, just. It's sitting there in the sun. Wow. Just get away to get it like a conveyor belt. Right. Send it down into the core.

And now all you have to do is do that without burning up before you get there. Okay, so now, how do you get close to the sun? Well, first you give it a call. You're like, hey, how you're doing? You need a shield. Right. Because what temperature is it in space? Because right now you have a thermometer.

it's reading the temperature of what? Whatever the room temperature is. You mean here on Earth? Specifically, if I have a thermometer here and it says 72 degrees. It's 72 degrees at that thermometer. What is 72 degrees? The temperature of the atmosphere. I don't know.

The air? Yeah, the atmosphere. Okay. You said it's the temperature of the room. Right, no. It is the temperature of the air around the thermometer in that spot. Right. It's the air.

Okay. All right there. Okay. Because it may not be. 72 degrees over there. Now if I come over here and I'm near that lamp. Oh, it's going to be a little warmer. Because that's an old-fashioned bulb.

Yeah, exactly. Okay. Yeah. It's going to be a little warmer because that's heating the air over there. Right. Okay. You go by the window. It's going to be a little cool.

A little cool. Okay. Over there. Right. If you're in space, there is no air. Right. So what the hell temperature are you measuring? You've got to measure the temperature of the nothingness of space.

Correct. and space is not entirely nothing. Right. There is radiative energy moving through space. Correct. Right. Photons. Right.

So... So it's got a little bit of a temperature. And so it'll get a temperature if the thermometer is facing the sun. Right. Because that's a radiative heat coming from the sun. Correct. Right. And it's not the air.

It's just photons hitting. Now the other side of the thermometer, well, if you had two thermometers that split. So one is facing that way, one is facing this way. That's facing deep space. And it's just like, it's cold. Why is it so cold? Man, I'm burning up over here.

Depending on your distance from the sun, that'll be the intensity of the rays. It'll be hundreds of degrees on the other side. And as you get closer to the sun, the radiative flux is the one in the official term. Gets higher and higher and higher. That temperature will continue to go up. As long as you're shielded and you're looking out on the other side, that temperature is going to stay the temperature of deep space

which is like the microwave background hitting it which is there at all time or some nearby stars if they happen to be there so temperature is a funny thing did we do an explainer on temperature

I thought we did we did we did an explainer on temperature yeah okay and you put it on your lipstick yeah you can't do star talk with crack the lips I don't want the people talking about me

you know right Now, if I had ashy lips, there's some black people out there like, what is wrong with this lips? And I believe this brother on TV with ashy lips. His mother didn't. He didn't know his mother told him. Who raised you? Who raised you? Really?

Who was a comedian? That's his line. Who raised you? He was one of the comedians. So, if you want to get close to the sun. In his shield. Well, but the shield will be too cold for you, and the other side will be too hot. so what you really want to do

is make a rotisserie oh I'm cooking evenly to you right now if you want to somebody baste me baste me please get the butter so you get pretty close if you're on a rotissory

all right but there's a point where that's it you'll just burn right and there's a point where that shield wait a minute this photon's hitting that shield.

Right. Maybe it's very reflective, so it's not absorbing any, but it's not perfectly reflective. Some are going to get absorbed, and that shield temperature is going to begin to rise. And eventually it will radiate infrared back to the other side of the thermometer. And burn you alive. So, yeah, the sun, and then you reach a point where it is so hot, everything vaporizes. Right. Do you know what has the highest melting point?

Iron? No. I thought it, what is it? No, no. What has the highest? You never guess. I'll never guess. Carbon.

What? Ain't that something? Wait a minute. But in the throat. Have you ever tried to melt a diamond? Oh, well, there you have. Yeah, put that on your stove and see what happens. Right.

Right. Carbon. Wow. Carbott. It's the highest melting point. Look at that. It's like 5,000 degree. I mean, it's insanely high.

Insanly high. And that, so generally if you're going to go near the sun, you want carbon. We need a diamond ship. And it has to be piloted by a hip hop star. Or Elizabeth Taylor. Or somebody would like Diamond. Or Carol Channing. Yes.

Ice. There you go. Yeah. So I have to go see the movie now. Thanks for that prompting. And maybe I can add more to that commentary. But otherwise, yeah, it'll vaporize you. No matter what.

All right. Very cool. Sunshine. I haven't heard of it. Bill Road, Rodwell. Rodewalt from Oregon, Ohio. Oregon, Ohio? Okay.

He says, if we were to find a habitable planet within a few dozen light years of Earth and we had the technology to send a generational ship to this planet, how likely do you think it would be that the first mission launch would be the first to arrive? It seems to me that improvements in propulsion technology might be such that technological advances may lead to later. missions overtaking the earlier ones at what stellar distances do you think this would become a practical consideration as to when to launch a mission? I love that because, you know, what he's saying is that you launch a mission today with your modern technology and in 50 years, that's some old technology.

And then the next ship just passes you. Passes the old ship. Waves to you. It said, sorry about that. It's like you started out in a covered wagon and then all of a sudden a Tesla. going by you. Like, what the hell? And so, so that's a brilliant question.

And I think if we're going to be passed, it would be because we have warp drives. If you have warp drives, you can take a warp drive to the location of the ship and bring everybody aboard and put them on the warp drive too. Right. I think in practice, that's how we would do it. We wouldn't leave them like, see him. Good luck. You know, you doc, you pick the people up.

Yeah, Doc, you pick them up. Then you put them on the warp drive. And it would have nothing to do with the propulsion. I don't see that as real. Right. Even if we found a way to prop-and-we reached like 20% the speed of light, let's say, the nearest start to the sun is the Alpha Centuary system. Right.

Four light years away. So how long would that take? 20%. So that's five years for a year, 20 years. 20 years. Very good math. Yeah. Good math.

Loving it. Every once in a while. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. What do you call it? You have a comedy special. You go, Just Smart Enough? That's my comedy special. Chuck Nye's just smart enough.

You just got that one. So would you go on a trip for 20 years to a planet that might host you? I mean, so here's what I'd rather do. Whatever was the problem with Earth that you're trying to escape? Yeah, fix it. Just fix it? How about that? I'm just saying fix it.

All right. And by the way, if that other planet is habitable, it means the atmosphere has oxygen in it. Right. What do you think made the oxygen? Right. Yeah. Life. Of course, that's right.

But you get to it. You don't know what it's like where it came from. You don't know. Oh, yeah. Believe me, it's going to eat you. Is it all life, but it's all Venus fly traps? Right. You know?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, by the way, the fixer part is really the issue. It's like, it's like hiring a plumber. He's like, well, I found your problem. You won't need a new house. Like, what? What kind of plumber are you?

Like, no. Yeah. So, what a great question, though. Yeah, that's excellent. So it's a great question, but I don't see that as how that's going to play out. Right. There's a moral question on a generational ship. A life of isolation on a mission that they did not choose.

Correct. But let's be honest, every kid's. I didn't ask me, I didn't ask me for me born. Hey, shut your ass up. Get over there to your station and do what you're supposed to do, okay? Because we got to get to this planet. I'm Nicholas Costella, and I'm a proud supporter of StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

All right, here we go. This is Salvatore Mamana. Okay, from Brooklyn. Mm-hmm. Salvatore what? Mamana. Spell it. M-A-M-M-A-M-A-M-A-M-A-M-A.

Mamana. Yeah. Sabatore, Mamana. Salvatore, Mamana. Yes. He says, Dear Star Trek. From Brooklyn. From Brooklyn.

Yo, Brooklyn born and raised. Brooklyn in the house. I hope you are well. What do you picture in your head when you think of the Big Bang? I've heard it's not quite like the image of a tiny dot exploding in all directions. If you had to make a diorama for a seven-year-old, what would the Big Bang look like? And what would yours be? You know, I'm stuck on the explosion model.

Right. And but if you do that, it's exploding within three-dimensional space. But this is a sort of four-dimensional with time as one of the dimensions. So I picture an inflated balloon because that works for me. Right. You got to get rid of one of the dimensions. So our three spatial dimensions are flattened into the surface of a balloon. Right.

And the time dimension is still there emanating from the start of the balloon. where it's small. To any surface point on the balloon. And every larger service point is later in time. Right. Right. Yeah. That's how I do it.

That's how I do it. Yeah. So if you want to do it with your seven-year-old son, you get a nice big old one of these, where do you get the really big, I have to go to party store to get the biggest balloons. Giant balloons. Giant balloon. And on the balloon, just draw galaxies on it. Right.

And then inflate it, draw it galaxy, and then deflate it. And as you inflate it back, you'll see the galaxies expand apart. spread apart. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah, that's the best way to do it. I think so. Yeah, I like it.

All right, well, thanks, Salvatore. That's a great... Do it with your kid, man. And tell him to give us credit for that A. Because we know what you're doing. All right, this is Sotoris DeWitt from Belgium. And Sotori says, Hello, Dr. Tyson and Lord Nice.

My name is Sotori DeWitt from Belgium. The name is Greek, but not me. As you mentioned before, space gets compressed near mass, and time at faster speed slows down. This, I can imagine. But if space and time are connected, does that mean I would get smaller as I go faster? If so, I would be infinitely small at the speed of light. Would I then become light? Is maybe all light matter, but infinitely small and fast?

My boys got some angst I'm telling you right now So first of all, Sotori, it's going to be okay That's number one That threw some panic in that question, wasn't there? It's going to be all right, buddy The world will be fine by the mark All right

All right, so time slows down for you As others would observe it But you don't shrink Your dimensions will be measured To shrink front to back so you'll get sort of thinner front to back as people measure your speed increasing they'll also measure your mass increase

they'll measure your time slow down we have three equations that tracks all three of those okay all that happens in a black hole you're going to shrink only because it's compressing you down to a smaller point in space so deal with it I mean that's there's not a way around that

and you're going to be stretched head to toe from tidal forces, but you're going to be squished shoulder to shoulder by the ever-shinking fabric of space and time until you descend into that abyss as a stream of atoms. Have a nice day. There you go. Tell you kids that a bad time.

So, yeah, and Einstein concluded matter can never go at the speed of light. because you have zero volume and infinite mass and time would stop. So if you're going to travel speed of light, you have to have zero mass like a photon. Like a photon. Right.

Yeah. There you go. And they have zero mass. They travel the speed of light, and they have zero time, which we talked about. Right. So, right.

Photon only knows time the moment it is manifested by something that it hits. Right. So the photon is created in an atom. Right. It is absorbed wherever it was headed instantly. Instantly. To it.

To it. To it. To it. Everybody else gets to see it. Exactly. Go its path. That's funny. What I love is every time I'm on the beach, I always pull my swim trunks down just a little bit so that whatever photons land on my ass, I'm like, sorry.

You were born in the sun and you landed on my ass. I'm one instant. That is so mean of you. to the photon. No, I had similar thoughts, but not so crude. So my thesis data, my PhD thesis data,

my thesis is right there. Okay. We said the black one, the black one right there. This one, oh, God. Jesus. Yeah. Look at that.

So a study the abundance distributions along the minor axis of the galactic bulge. Okay. So this, it's single-sided. So don't think of it. Still. That's, it's, yeah.

Point is the galactic bulge best viewed from Chile. Oh. Okay. Well, anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere. And I went to Chile many times to get data for this thesis.

Here's the thing. The telescope is at the top of a mountain which has a tiny coastal town called La Serena at the base of the mountain. L'Azerena has beaches. And the people would be laying out on the beach with bikinis on and things like that.

And I would go to the mountain with detectors to see photons that left the center of the galaxy 30,000 years ago, some miss Earth and continue into space. Others hit Earth, maybe the countryside. Some of them hit the buttocks of people on the beach. Like your buttocks that you exposed.

That's right. But some of them land on my detector, empowering me to deduce the nature of the galactic center. So to me, those are noble photons. You gave your photon's purpose. My photons gave their life for my black ass.

Okay. All right, here we go. I can hear the photon. What is this? Where did I just land? No. Oh, no. All right.

Here we go. All right. This is Bodnar. Actually, just to be. precise, if it were like high energy photons, they were absorbed by your melanin. Oh, wow. Yeah. Well, they were lucky then.

It would just grab it right out. Yeah, right out. Yes. Snatch it right out of there. Because that's what melanin is for. That's what it's for. Yeah. All right, this is Bodnar, Martan Janos, who says, from Budapest. You can't possibly have pronounced any of that correctly. No, Bodnar Martan Janos. Because he's tried to add a little... I'm not trying to add anything to that. Okay.

Okay. All right. He says, I'm trying to solve a dilemma. I've been thinking about these past couple of days. Suppose I'm traveling in my super advanced spaceship towards a super massive black hole at the speed of light with the goal of doing gravitational slingshot maneuver at the black hole. I'm planning to do this speeding by my speeding my spaceship close to the event horizon of the black hole. Questions. Is this even possible? If yes, how would I experience the event too? Using strong gravitational pull of the black hole and the slingshot maneuver, could my supersonic spaceship speed beyond light speed?

I'm a 13-year-old student aspiring to be an astro or theoretical physicist. Cool. Good for you. In Budapest. In Budapest. Yes. So didn't we do an explainer on slingshot? We did.

On slingshots. On slingshots. Yes. And it's really cool. But it's not what you think it is. No. No, no. So.

You know why? Because everybody thinks of Slingshot as this. Mm-hmm. the two prongs that you pull, put a projectile, you pull it back and then you release it, and then the projectile just goes, taking all the energy of the recoil from the pullback, propelling it forward.

But the way you explain slingshots, gravitational slingshots, it's not really a slingshot. It's not at all. It's not really a slingshot. So here's a problem. If you fall towards the black hole, but not in it,

because you ain't getting out of the right. The acceleration, of the spacecraft falling into the black hole is exactly canceled by you trying to climb out the other side. Right. So when you're done with this exercise, you're not traveling any faster or slower than you were before. The slingshot works because you come in from behind an orbiting planet.

And you go, the planet pulls you in, and the act of pulling you in has you catch up with it in its orbit. So there's an extra speed that's outside of, of the symmetrical fall-in climb out of the gravity. Which is the planet itself dragging you along in its orbit. Correct. Right. And you just ate some of the orbital energy of the planet.

Right. You stole it. You stole it. By taggingle. You're a stowaway. You're a gravitational stowaway. We're a gravitational stowaway. So that's not going to happen.

Right. So A. B, if it's a super massive black hole, you can easily fall into it and not be ripped apart. Right. Because the event horizon is so large. So big. It's so big that the title forces are not strong. Right.

So you get in and now you're just falling inside of the black hole. You're falling into within the event horizon of the black hole. And the closer you get to the center, that's when the- That's when the title forces start messing you all up. Correct. But in the beginning, you're just like, oh, well, this ain't bad at all. Not bad at all. And it's because your height, if he's 13, maybe he's five feet tall, you're five feet relative

to the radius. of the black hole is small. Right. Whereas as you get closer to the center, you're five feet. It could be my, and only another five feet to the center of the black hole.

So the title forces will become greatly magnified under those situations. Gotcha. Wow. So, um... But it's great to see a 13-year-old thinking like this.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. How cool. Oh, yeah. How cool. Well, good luck to you, man. And, you know, invite us to your graduation. I mean, we're not coming,

but then invite us. Stop. You're in Budapest. Ain't anybody who's paying that kind of money. I wish you well. Well, we'd like to know when you graduate. All right. Let me back up.

So if I'm near the speed of light and I do an actual slingshot maneuver. Right. Okay. Right. Around a planet. Could I be slingshot to go faster than the light? The answer is no. No.

No. Because you're not going the speed of light. Right. Because you're made of material substance, which can't go the speed of light. And you're not, it's not like the slingshot gives you all the energy. and then you just keep it and keep going, you've got to climb out of the fall that you would, the descent that you made,

you have to climb out of it. So what would happen is, what happened was, let's say going 95% the speed of light. And you were to get a slingshot, what effect would it have? It would add energy to your trajectory. And there's a point where adding energy

is not simply increasing your speed. There are other ways to boost, the energy of the system. He will end up going faster, but he won't catapult past the speed of light. That's the way to think about it. There you go. Okay.

All right. Here we go. This is writer's eye from Ohio. Writer, as in W-R-I-T. Right. Writers-E. E-Y-E. So does the fact of us living in an expanding universe

contradict the premise of living in the black hole? Since we know that black holes evaporate and there is a limit upon which all matter can be compacted, we wouldn't notice any intake of energy or matter from the waves it would cause. So not since the Big Bang has any more matter energy been introduced. Can we assume the universe in a black hole would not be expanding? Hoping to get an answer lost in illiteracy in Ohio. That's very funny.

Yeah. So I don't have a good answer for that. if we were in a black hole and the black holes are eating things in its vicinity, you would see material coming in, just as he suggested. But not all black holes are actively eating. Quasars are galactic center phenomenon where a black hole is dining on stars and gases that have wandered too close, and it's emitting energy in the process. There's a distance within which quasars no longer are there.

they shut off. We think they just completely ate everything in their environment. And so a black hole, it's not a requirement. It's not a prerequisite that a black hole is always eating things that you would then see things coming in through your event horizon.

So don't use that as a reason for not embracing the possibility that we are in a black hole. Gotcha. So, yeah, and evaporation, super massive black holes. Forget black holes the size of our universe. Supermassive black holes

take 10 to the 100 years to evaporate. Yeah. So it's just don't hold your breath. A lot of time. Not nothing to worry about. Right. So very cool. All right.

But nice thought experiment. Here we go. This is Rabayaga, Robert Dudak from Flint, Michigan. He said, I read a paper validating the subliminal, subluminal warp drive as a more realistic possibility than the alcubian. FTL drive. FTCL said for faster than light. Faster than light. Constant velocity, physical warp drive solution.

The one thing that was not even hinted at on the paper was how one might accelerate the warp bubble. I would appreciate any thoughts on acceleration and how fast the subluminal drive might eventually go hypothetically and thank you. Yeah, I've got to do some homework on that. A couple of things. A warp drive, there's no prerequisite that it goes faster than light. Right. You just warp space and you go...

But if you can go faster than light, then why not? Right. Like, what do you do it? And if you were to go faster than life, this would be the only way you could do it because you would have to compress the space because you can't go faster through the space

than light. You're stepping through basically the compressed space on the Alcubieri drive. He was a Mexican physicist who came up with this. and so I don't know I don't know what the problem is

because the Alcubieri drive is a way to go faster than light but there's nothing in principle preventing you from just dialing it down just go slower. Right, exactly. Right? I mean your car probably goes 130 miles an hour.

Guys, take it easy. You know this part of the galaxy is a speed trap. Red light cameras So I don't see that as a sticking point At all Yeah You just dial it down

Yeah And by the one By the way Even in Star Trek They have warp 1 through 9 Yeah warp factor 1 is the speed of light That is the speed of light Right

But I don't even hear them say warp Or it's impulse power or something Impulse power is less than light speed Yes than light correct So All right well there you go So you just fly on impulse, baby. All right, this is Tyrone Morgan from Hackensack, New Jersey.

Joyce. He says hello, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice. Tyrone Morgan from Hackensack, New Jersey. Love your show. And here are my inquiries. What if the graviton was not quantum? What if the space time that we live in is the gravitational field and black holes are the graviton in a higher dimension?

Black holes having infinite mask at the singularity might be similar to, photons having no mass in the electromagnetic field. Holy moly, bro. You spoke of some shacks. People. Wow. What would a photon look like to someone whose space time was the electromagnetic field? I think it's very difficult to see the full picture when you're inside of it.

Thank you for everyone for the science that you do, curiosity, the passion, and your discovery. I don't know if I can help this man. This is a wild question. He's got a bad. Yeah, man. The graviton. Okay, so. The gravitational feel and black holes in a higher dimension.

Just watch, just watch. So, wild. So there's electromagnetic force. Right. That is propagated by the photon. Right. Okay. They go hand in hand and hand.

And a photon comes in waves as well. Of course. We have gravitation. Einstein said it's the curvature of space and time. But if it's going to be a force, and we're going to describe it in a quantum way, there ought to be a particle that propagates the

gravitational field. Right. And we already have the wave that propagates it. We've seen that. That's called the, well, it's Ligo discovered. Right, LIGO discovery. Okay?

So we got that. So what about the particle counterpart to the wave? We call that a graviton. Just like the photon is a particle counterpart to just the waves, light waves. Light waves. Right.

Okay. So we have, A graviton is the particle counterpart to gravitational waves. But we don't know how to detect that. Right. But it does make sense. Well, if you can quant, if you can turn all of gravitational physics into a quantum solution, then yeah, that makes sense. But if not, it could just confuse things.

Yeah, I mean, I'm already confused. So to be honest. Yeah, so I think it's kind of fanciful to think of black holes as the gravitons of, yeah, it doesn't feel right to me. Because black hole, we already have that described. It's not some mysterious thing that you're finding some other mysterious thing to say that it is. Yeah. And we want to avoid that anyway.

You want to take this thing that we barely know. Right. To use it to explain this other thing. There's something out that we don't know at all. Iowa don't know. Take this thing that we really don't understand and barely know. This is what happened with consciousness. People are saying, let's take the weirdness of quantum physics that nobody understands

and use to explain quantum consciousness with nobody understands. Exactly. Right. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, listen, that's, I like the way you think, though, man. You definitely smoke in some good weed.

Please send me some. This is Matt D from Oklahoma. He says, good day, Dr. Tyson, and a big high five, the Lord Nice. My name is Matt Dodd from Oklahoma. And I'm wondering about our. bubble universe in the multiverse. If our universe is constantly expanding, does that mean our bubble in the multiverse is growing over time?

Who's to say another multiverse bubble would not merge with our own? What would it mean for our universe? And thanks for the inside. Yeah, I worry about that. Yeah. Because quantum physics in the multiverse model is pumping out universe as left and right. And each universe has slightly different laws of physics. Right.

You don't want to just, hey, let's go visit the, you know, the Johnson's over in the other universe. Right. If the charge on their electron is different from yours. Right, because now I just exploded. I turned to goo. Or you, you collapse into a pile of glue. That's it. They didn't want the lesson to come.

You bring something to test it with, you know, like a gerbil or something. So now somebody, I don't know. That would be mean. Maybe not a gerbil. No, gerbils are fine. They ain't worth it. I'm not losing any sleep over a gerbil. Anyway, put that sucker in a habitrail, send them right through it.

All right. But. The universe could be made of antimatter, for example. Right. That would be terrible. You toss a coin and the thing blows up. Right. That would be so cool.

And then, of course, you meet yourself. But your other self, you know, you look, half of it is black. that has to twice. It's like... Episode from Star Trek. The anti-matter matter guy. That was...

They'll have a goatee. Yes, exactly. And black hat. And that's the evil man. Somebody, I don't know where I saw this or heard, because I don't think I read it, saying that... Is there a possibility that dark energy

or dark matter is another bubble universe colliding with ours, and that's why it doesn't interact, it's just passing through. Yeah, I'm a fan of that kind of thinking. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Yeah, because that's, even though it involves a higher dimension, it's kind of simpler than other explanations. It makes sense, too. Yeah, yeah. It's like, yeah, this thing is just passing through us, but it doesn't interact. Like a sphere passing through.

Two dimensions, right. It's a dot, then a circle that gets bigger and bigger, then it gets smaller and smaller again, then disappears from your, from your, universe. So, yeah, I'm partial to those explanations, even while knowing they're probably not correct. Right. Fun to think about. All right. This is Sweet Heat 223 from Dallas, Texas. Sweet, what? Sweet Heat 223, better known as Sterling from Dallas, Texas.

Sterling, all right. He says, hi, Dr. Tyson and Chuck Nice. Sterling was not a cool enough badass name. Yeah, he had to go with Sweet Heat, or C. Sweet Heath. All right. Sterling, that's a board. name. Sterling's avoidance? Yeah. Okay. So Sterling from Dallas, Texas.

He said, if we could travel via warp drive, is it possible that speed to bypass the spaghettification process when entering a black hole to reach its singularity? So could you warp into a black hole and then bypass the singularity because you're going so much faster than the speed of light itself. So you've warped through the black hole. So technically you don't need an escape velocity to get out of the black hole because you're warping through it. It's a wild proposition. Are these two black holes?

No. It's you in the black hole. Yeah. Hmm. I'm not feeling it. Yeah, not feeling. It's an intriguing idea. It is.

And like, can you bypass... Can you bypass the rules? The whole rules. Yeah, the boundary rules. Right, right, right. None of the super gravity. There are black holes that you can fall in and not go to the center. Right. Like rotating black holes.

And there are other configurations you can imagine. But, yeah, no, I'm not feeling it. Okay. All right. Yeah. Chuck got a few more minutes. Minutes. Okay, let's see what we can do.

Okay. This is Patrick Laverdeer, who says, in video games, when you walk into a complex area, the frame rate drops because the system is rendering more data. If our universe were a simulation, could gravity be doing something similar, slowing down time because the cosmic engine is processing more information? I like that.

Wow. I like that. He's saying the more complex areas of our universe require more... more calculates computing power. And as a result, everything slows down. This is the argument either for or against that we're in a simulation. Because the simulator doesn't have to simulate

the whole universe, only the universe that you are seeing at the time. Correct. That's it. For example, if we are in a simulation, are they simulating every molecule within the earth if no one is looking at inside the earth? But now you start digging, so it's in their interest to simulate ahead of you without having to waste computing power on the whole earth.

Right. And so that's just an intriguing scenario. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense if you are in a simulation. Why would you waste all the computing power necessary to create the stuff that's never even being seen? That's correct. You know?

Right. All right. So this is Merwaki, Merwaha. Merwahi? Marwa'i? I don't know. Gera Ziger. Gera Ziger, who says,

Hello, everyone, I was wondering if black holes accelerate things beyond the speed of light once inside them. Does that mean those things are going backwards in time? So the gravitational pull is so strong once you are past that event horizon. could you then go faster than the speed of light since light can't escape? Yeah, what happens is you start gaining mass. Right. And rather than gaining speed.

Right. That's how that happens. Right, right. And so, no, you don't just keep getting faster or faster. No. Okay. And as you gain more mass, it's harder to accelerate you. Right.

So, yeah. Oh, well. But what a great question, man. I like that. All right, Femke. say nae say naive

from Belgium. He says, I was wondering, would be possible to say if we reach a black hole with conventional space travel, even if it took thousands of years,

to send a quantum AI computer or quantum robot, a bit like they did an interstellar. Ultimately, sacrificing itself to send us the data and solve the quantum gravity theory,

could quantum computers handle this information and send it to a spaceship in the vicinity or would the information forever be stuck in the black hole? They can't answer your own question. Pretty sure you answered your own question, buddy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going with the, it's stuck in the black. It ain't coming out.

It ain't coming out. Yeah. There's the hawking radiation, but it pulls it out as a strip tease, right? One molecule, one atom here, one particle there. Right. And then you have to reassemble it later. You would have to find that. You would have to put that information back together once.

evaporates. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, well. I'll time for one last question. All right.

This is Martin from Denmark. Martin from Denmark who says, hello, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice. Martin from Denmark here. I think there's something undiscovered around the perception of time and the speed of light. If we humans were to travel at the speed of light, we say no matter the distance, it will feel like an instant when arriving at the destination. But since we also discovered that we can accelerate particles faster than the same. speed of light. When did we discover that?

The hell, Martin. Did you get a Nobel Prize that nobody heard about? Damn, bro. What you're talking about? And he says, how will we perceive that? Like yesterday or thanks for a great show? Okay, so, no, we have not accelerated part of fashion. The speed of light in a vacuum. Right. But the speed of light is slower. In mediums.

In media. Right. Media. Right. Plural of medium. medium medium media it's slower in water glass air and especially diamond right where it gets bounced around and then comes out when it's cut correctly you're going to cut correctly you're going to cut it it's just a way refracts so it looks like the diamond has a certain radiance too right yeah and it's refraction yes exactly dispersion on the way out all right so cost you a lot of money for a little bit of like

praise i stopped buying diamonds years ago and why are you forcing upon others your own marriage experience Just warning. For those considering times or not. If you're considering, just warning, I'm telling you. Cuban zirconia, man. Don't make the mistake. Don't make the mistake. The diamonds are expensive, buddy.

Let me tell you something. They throw them all like it was no big deal. They don't put them on every time. Like, oh my God, look at this. This man went out and spent all this money. They just throw them all like there's nothing to it. Okay? Get them circons.

Save yourself some money. Take it from a pro. I forgot what the question was. Okay. All right. Oh, no, no. So you can't make him fast in the speed of light. No.

But two points. If you could, the particles would go backwards in time. Right. According to the equations. Right. So in Einstein's equations, you can go up to the speed of light, but you cannot attain it. But nothing stops you from existing on the other side of the. speed of light, and then going faster than that.

Right. And if you do that, you would live backwards in time. And what's that called? Takion. Techion. That's right. Takios, from the Greek, meaning fast. Like a tecometer?

Right. You've heard a tecometer. Exactly. My car doesn't have it anymore because I have an electric car, so there's nothing to tech. Yeah, I'm just saying. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, so then it would be moving backwards through time. And you could then send yourself a signal. Using your tachions. Using tachions before you knew to send yourself a signal. Wow. Trippy. So, yeah, it's a fun particle. Someone decided to move all the way into the other side of the equations

and follow them through. And that's one of the conclusions. We've never found tachions. Right. In the actual universe. Oh. Yeah. Well, well, it's kind of cool.

So tachions, then, if they did exist, They would be moving. We could only intersect them at the point which they meet our reality. Going opposite directions in opposite directions. Correct. That's the only time we can see them. It's a perceptive point you're making. Yeah.

You can't see them in the future. You can't see them in the future. You can't see them in the past. You're going backwards to the time and we're going forward to time. And boom, that's what you see the tag. In that instant. That's cool. That's wild.

Yeah. I like it. Well, that's what that. Martin from Denmark. Yeah. Very cool. All right. That was fun.

Man, we're just knocking these out. We love the grab bags. They keep coming in. Well, listen, as long as you keep sending, we'll keep doing it. There it is. Another installment of StarTalk Cosmic Queries, grab bag edition. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, you're a personal astrophysicist. Chuck, Lord Nice in the house.

Yes. You should be in here. Always a pleasure. As always, keep looking up.