StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries – Fan Grab Bag

Episode Date: December 14, 2020

Black holes, the Arecibo Observatory, artificial intelligence, and more – Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice answer a special batch of Cosmic Queries from some of our most supportive fans. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/cosmic-queries-fan-grab-bag/ Thanks to our Patrons Joel Cherrico, Cory Farnum, Patti Weber, Vegard Gjertsen, Christopher Ludwig, Maria Atienza, Darshan Parmar, Larry Streeter, Kaleb Saleeby, Gregory Newman, and Jeffrey Moore for supporting us this week. Photo Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: Detlef Hartmann; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk, Cosmic Queries Edition. It's becoming quite the fan favorite. And you know I don't do this alone. I need help. Help me check! Well, yes, I'm here, but you don't need help.

But I'm always here. Okay, you give me spiritual help. Exactly. There you go. Right, because I'm certainly not helping to answer the questions, that's for sure. So this one is sort of a fan appreciation episode. Yeah. Where

I think it's primarily Patreon questions. All Patreon. These are our supporters. I think you're not just a patron. I think that's why the word is different. When you're a patron you just hand money and charity but Patreon, there's actually sort of a, what do you call it?

A contract between the money you give and what happens next. And there's a scale with higher and higher rewards for it. So we're trying to just encourage that because it allows us to experiment those funds. Right. And do things that are not yet tested in the marketplace. But we think it will work, and then we get to test it, and then it works, and we go on to something else. They're

giving us the opportunity to fail with our consequence. I hadn't thought about it that way. That's what they're doing. It's like, thank you for giving us the opportunity to fail, and we don't have to worry about it. We can, you know.

But, you know, that's a good thing, right? Yeah. Those who are the only people who no longer make mistakes are those who are no longer on the frontier of inquiry. Ooh. Did you just think that up? That's really good. Oh, no.

You're going to write it down? I am. Writing this down. I'm like,'s really good. Oh, no, you're going to write it down? I am. Writing this down. I was like, that's good. I'm just saying. That's excellent. Yeah, mistakes are evidence that you're exploring. They're not evidence of your failure.

So I have to agree with you. Yeah, cool, man. Cool. We have to change our attitude. By the way, if you make the same mistake twice, no excuse. That's a different story. That's a different story. That's a whole new ballgame now.

That's a different show. Right. So you collected all the questions. So what do you have for me? Yeah, so first we're going to try something different. What's that? Because speaking of Patreon, we have some patrons that do a yeoman's job of supporting us. Okay.

And by that I mean they drop some coin. Drop some coin mean they drop some coin. Drop some coin. They drop some coin and so, you know, we like to reward them especially. And so, Joel Cherico

is going to lead us off with a video question. Well, this is like in Jeopardy, you have the video daily double. Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah. And just a little

moment of silence for Alex Trebek. Oh, God, yes. Yeah, host of Jeopardy for, what, 36 years. What an incredible career he had. Yeah, and I was never a contestant, but I was multiple times on the board, either delivering clues, or my name was, like, a clue.

So I feel genetically connected in my own little way. Well, you know, and of course there's a big buzz in the Twitterverse intern webs that you should be the host. Oh, yeah, but I'm flattered. I'm flattered, but I got a day job. I got a job, yeah. I got a day job. Hey, man.

I'm indeed flattered. By the way, I think I could do a day job. I got a job, yeah. I got a day job. Hey, man. I'm indeed flattered. By the way, I think I could do a good job. But it's not my life's goal. It's not my... Here's my impression of you as the host of Jeopardy. What's that? And so they give the answer. And then the person chimes in,

and then you go, I'm sorry, the question we have there isn't quite right. Ha! Ha! Yeah, judges? Judges for the judges, right? We need a judge for the judge, because I'm pretty

sure that that question isn't exactly right. Yeah, They messed that one up. Right. Technically, maybe, but no. Yeah. So anyway. All right. So let's kick things off with our video question.

Oh, by the way, just another quick thing. There are people, when I went to college, there was someone who had like a very high IQ. He lived in my dorm. And his IQ was so high that it couldn't be measured by normal tests, so they had to create a special test for him. Wow. And then he was a consultant to people who write IQ tests for how to test people.

This is while he was in college. He was a consultant to test writers to test people at very high IQ. Wow. So it's weird. It's its own thing. It's its own universe, this IQ thing. That's insane. Wow. So it's weird. It's its own thing. It's its own universe, this IQ thing. That's insane. Yeah. And so what he was wondering was whether IQ correlated with your performance in school only to a certain point. Right. That a higher IQ would get you lower grades.

And so I asked, well, what's going on there? He said, oh, because beyond a certain IQ, And so I asked, well, what's going on there? He said, oh, because beyond a certain IQ, you are smarter than anyone asking the question. And so you will see answers that they do not yet see. And then you'll be marked wrong. Makes sense. So I thought that was an interesting fact. I'm not claiming a very high IQ, but this happened to me a couple of times in school.

When I was in kindergarten, I made a crayon drawing of the nighttime. Of the universe. No, of the universe. It was the sky. Exactly. It's like Earth and then the sky. And I used my black crayon and totally wore it out, put in some stars in it. And the teacher said, no, no, the night sky is dark blue. And I'm thinking, no, this is like, why would it, no.

It's like, no. But I'm like six or five or something. And so later on, the teacher went home, did research, and came back and said, no, you're right. The nighttime sky is black. Right. And so that's what happened there. And so when she said it's dark blue was your answer.

So do you have eyes? No, I'm five, okay? It's like a full grown-up teacher. And it happened again. There was a question on the physics regents, I think it was, where New York State, we take a regents. Right. So, there's a question.

If you have a projectile, this is basic physics, Right. So there's a question. If you have a projectile, this is basic physics, what shape best represents that path? Okay. And so you have, like, parabola, you know, a circle, ellipse, whatever. Okay.

And the answer they're looking for is parabola. Right. If you do the math, it's a parabola. However, however, if it's not actually a parabola. Right. If you do the math, it's a parabola. However, however, if it's not actually a parabola, it's close to a parabola, but if you removed Earth or scrunched Earth down to only its center,

that path would continue and orbit the Earth and come back into that segment. So, in fact, it's a segment of an ellipse. Right. More than it's a segment of a parabola. But it's taught parabola because a parabola equation

is way easier to calculate with than an ellipse. So, again, just because you wrote the question and you're testing other people's knowledge doesn't mean you know enough knowledge to test people who know more than you do. That's all I'm saying. All right. Hey, listen, that's good. Well, now we're going to test your knowledge because we got a bunch of questions that have been written.

Bring it on. The video daily double. Chuck, what's behind? Yes, exactly. Universe for 1,000. Go. Hey, StarTalk. Hey, Neil. Thanks for the chance to ask some questions. So I 1,000. Go. Hey, StarTalk. Hey, Neil.

Thanks for the chance to ask some questions. So I'm an artist. I make pottery, some of it inspired by the cosmos. And most of the pots have a spiral in them somewhere because I just think they look really cool. So my question is very simple. Why are there so many spirals in nature? Hmm. Interesting.

Oh, cool. And not just the universe, in nature, period. Oh, yeah, yeah. This is Joel, right? Okay, so I recognize him. I don't know who this guy is, okay? Because I got right here one of his creations, okay? This is a moon coffee mug.

Right. What do you think of that? And the problem is every time I taste it, I taste a bit of basalt. Why is this coffee so gritty? It's so gritty. Interesting. No, no. Each one is unique.

And I'm very impressed with just the artisanry of it. But, yeah, he gave me a set of these. Yeah. And they're all around my office. You know, funny thing is that he sent me one, as you can see. We got one, too? Okay, cool. Yes.

And he told me in the note that he sent me that he had made several for you. And I realized that he sent me one without a handle. I just looked at yours. Right. Okay. So yours has a handle and clearly, you know, mine is meant to. You know, Chuck is just so ungrateful. Joel, I apologize for Chuck.

And Joel, I apologize for you. Send me a handle-less mug. Thank you. Which I didn't even realize. I was like, well Send me a handle-less mug. Thank you. Which I didn't even realize. I was like, well, maybe all of his mugs have no handles. Maybe this is the way he intends for me. In fact, mine has a little place where your thumb goes. Right on the top of the handle.

Look at that. Place where the thumb goes. And not only do you have a handle, but it's ergonomic on top of that. And mine is just like, well, Chuck, I hope you don't burn your hands. Okay. All right, so here's what's going on in there. Spirals.

I'll do my best to give an answer to this. So here's what happens. If anything goes around in circles, okay, you get a circle. All right? Fine. If, however, while you are going around in circles, you move in any direction perpendicular to the circle, it's no longer a circle.

It's a spiral. That's right. So the circle gets distorted to move through time in such a way that you get a spiral like a spiral staircase or a spiral anything right so i was in one of the redwood forests when we were filming cosmos and i was nice intrigued but first in the city new York, we don't have big trees like that. So everything about this forest is completely alien to me. So I'm examining it like I'm on an alien planet because I've never seen anything like this. So I noticed that the tree bark on many of the trees is striated in this sort of very, very sort of high-pitched spiral going up the tree.

And every tree did this. And they all did it in the same direction. And I thought, what is asymmetric in the physiology, can I use that word as applied to plants? Sure. In the physiology of a tree, that there's this spiraling going on. I don't know about the rest of the plant, but it's certainly happening in the bark.

So I was just intrigued by that. But of course, the tree grows upwards. So whatever is otherwise happening in the tree, if there's any kind of sap movement or whatever else is going on, and I don't know, I have no expertise in plants, I'm just saying, combine something that wants to go in a circle and have it move upwards, you get a spiral.

Wow. Now, that's a three-dimensional spiral. Now, we have spiral galaxies, which is flat. That's a spiral in a flat shape. And you get that because the inner parts of the galaxy finish a loop faster than the outer parts of the galaxy. So, if you have some system like stars forming in gas clouds, that'll get stretched, okay? And our current understanding of galaxies

is that there's a wave of pressure inside that galaxy. It's called a density wave that is moving through the galaxy through the gas cloud. And that density wave that is moving through the galaxy through the gas cloud and that density wave is being stretched by the rotation of the galaxy itself and where that density wave is hitting the gas you get the formation of stars so again you have an action happening combined with a rotation and that rotation is not as a solid object. And there you have it. So, by the way, plenty of stuff is not spiral.

We have elliptical galaxies. There's no spiral things in them at all. But if you're going to spin, watch for some spiral action. There you go. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, very cool. Well, thanks, Joel. And thank you for, once again, the handless cup.

Try to get the basalt out of it. Yeah, exactly. Thank you for my gritty morning coffee. For my volcanic coffee. That burns my hands. All right. All right, cool. Let's move on to, I'm going to combine two questions together now.

This is Rudd Vanderlinden or Rood. There's one or the other. Say the Rudd or Rood. I'm imagining his parents didn't name him Rood. I'm just thinking. That could, you know. How do you spell the first name? R-U-U-D.

Rood. Rood. Rood. Rude. Rude. Rude. Rude Vanderlinden. All right. Sounds like rude to me. Yeah, well, rude.

And rude, by the way, is kind of cool. It is kind of cool. Rude. You know what I'm saying? I'm rude. I'm rude. No, you're very polite. No, I am rude. Okay.

What's his question? Rude says this. Hey, guys. Sad news about the Arecibo radio telescope collapsing on itself. I'm so glad I was able to visit it before the collapse and before Katrina. I was wondering, does Neil have any personal stories about the observatory? And what was, according to Neil, the most important discovery that was made with the telescope itself? Thanks, Rude.

Now, let me follow that up with Christine Hale, who says, Hi, Dr. Neal. Just wondering how the loss of the Arecibo telescope will affect our scouring of the heavens for possible alien communication or life. So I figured I'd just combine the two. Well, yeah. Because one is, you know,

what's your personal connection to it? Right. Plus, we don't normally do current events in Q&A, so this is good. We'll get to that after this break. Oh! See what I did there?

You got me! We're doing Cosmic Queries. This is a fan appreciation edition. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. Chuck Nice with me. We'll see you in a couple minutes. hi i'm chris cohen from hallward new jersey and i support star talk on patreon please enjoy this episode of starTalk Radio with your and my favorite personal astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

We're back. The special Cosmic Queries fan appreciation edition. Now, Chuck, I don't quite know what's different between this, Cosmic Queries, and others for us to call this fan appreciation. Well, everybody's from Patreon. Everyone's from Patreon. Oh, okay, for sure. And there are even some video questions we're taking in, so that works. So you left off. Give me the two names of those who asked about Earth. Okay linden and charlene hale and rude wants to know your personal stories or connections to the arcebo uh radio telescope uh

because of course it collapsed recently and uh and and charlene uh would like to know will it have an effect on how we scour the heavens uh for possible alien communication or life. Yeah. So the Arecibo telescope was the largest telescope in the world for decades. Right. Okay. Ever since it was built until back in the 50s or 60s. No, no. When was it built?

I think 1960s until just a few years ago. It was the largest telescope in the world. And in telescopes, in astronomy in general, bigger equals better. Because if you're trying to collect rain outside that's coming down, imagine the rain or just photons. Photons, right. Okay? And you want to collect it.

You can use a thimble. You can use a bucket. You can use a cauldron. Or a swimming pool. Or a swimming pool. You use the swimming pool, you'll get the most amount of raindrops. Right. So it's that simple.

It's not more complicated than that. So bigger equals better. So since it's a radio telescope, it observes radio waves. And pulsars gives off radio, rapidly rotating neutron stars gives off radio waves. It can also detect things happening in our ionosphere, all right? This is a part in the upper atmosphere that's electrically charged, right? And old-timers will know that you could get AM radio from very distant cities late at night. And the reason why you could do that is AM radio waves, once they were broadcast by the antenna, would reflect off the bottom of the ionosphere

and be able to cover more than the curvature of the Earth that you could see from where your radio was. Whereas FM goes straight out into space. So if you want FM across multiple cities, you need repeaters and all sorts of other things. You need all manner of ways to get that signal into other places. Now, of course, everything's cable-driven and satellite-driven. I'm just talking about in the day.

Right. So it could observe phenomenon going on in the ionosphere. to detect the signature of decoy intercontinental ballistic missiles as they re-entered the atmosphere through the ionosphere as launched by Russia. What? This is how, okay, so don't get me started. Is that sensitive? Listen, this is, don't get me started on, well, you can, but not in this moment. Okay.

On the two-way street between astrophysics, my field and my people, and the military. Oh, man, we've got to do an explainer on that. We are all, my people, we're all generally sort of liberal, anti-war, this sort of thing. But at the end of the day, the stuff that we care about, the military cares about. Stuff the military cares about, we care about.

So we have strongly overlapping Venn diagrams in what we do and what we invent and what we innovate. So anyhow, so the money for that telescope was driven by the U.S. military, and we knew all along we could piggyback that fact and make all manner of other discoveries. So it also gets us, it does radio echo, echoing. So what the telescope could also do better than any other telescope was send a signal back out to space. Okay. Because you think of telescopes as just receiving, but what you can do is take a signal, send it from where the location of the receiver, bounce it back off the telescope, and send it somewhere in space that you designate. Wow.

Okay? So there are asteroids which are too small to really carefully track using optical regular telescopes. So what you can do is take a radio signal, send it out, beam it back out to space to an asteroid, and then the reflected signal comes back to you. You time it. You get the distance to that asteroid. And when you get the distance and you know which way it's going, you get its orbit. And you need, you want to know what those orbits are for asteroids that cross Earth's orbit because they will eventually 100% hit Earth.

So it's like an echolocator for... Echolocator. Not with sound, of course. Not with sound, but still. But with radio waves bouncing off and coming back. And so this is... Amazing. That's amazing. So it's a highly useful telescope in that regard.

Now, all right, several years ago, okay, China says we're going to have the biggest telescope in the world. And so they went up and built a bigger telescope. Twice the collecting area of the Arecibo telescope. Twice? Twice. Twice. Around twice.

I forgot the exact math, but it's about twice. China. That's the deal with China. China. This is what I'm trying to tell you about China. They're killing us. They're killing us. They're killing us.

They're killing us. So they, too, found a natural crater in the Earth, as we found for the Arecibo telescope, and built the largest radio dish in the world. It has an acronym. It's called FAST, the 500-meter aperture spherical telescope. So its shape is a spherical. It's the geometry of it.

Nice. Good for them. So I visited that. We shot some scenes there for Cosmos for a whole episode. The other grass ties him. Communist. The communist gets a giant. And they're the communists.

Wow, that's so cool. So you got to see it? Okay, yeah, so I was there. So it's a mile in circumference. Wow. All right, if you walked around the upper. Anyhow, here's my point. The question was, do I have any relation? Yes, I do. My mother, my mother,

while she's born in New York City, her parents are from Puerto Rico. And in fact, her grandparents are from Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Oh, cool. So we have genetic connection back to the town that's the nearest town to that telescope. Wow. On the island of Puerto Rico. And so that's the first connection. Second, we would go visit relatives, you know, every Christmas.

And, you know, Christmas in Puerto Rico, that's a whole thing. Yeah. That's a whole... By the way, at midnight, they're usually through New Year's. At midnight, there's a tradition you eat grapes, one per... 12 grapes, one per tone of the clock. Right.

Okay. And one year they got grapes, but the grapes had seeds in them. So I was like, okay. That's rough. And I was like eight or something. It's like, what do I do with the seeds? Oh, eat another grape, quick. You got to do one per stroke of the, per chime.

Anyhow, so my point is... Oh, so the telescope will be missed in that regard. But it was falling out of disrepair. We've known this for about a decade. The National Science Foundation started withdrawing money for support for it, so that means your maintenance doesn't work out. No one writes the article about the drop in those funds. They wait until the damn detector falls out of the sky,

and then they talk about it as a tragedy. It was a tragedy that had tap roots that goes back a decade. Wow. So for me, this plight of the Arecibo telescope is metaphor for science in America. Excellent. First, the funding drops, it goes out of disrepair, and then a few

things break, putting the rest of the structure at stress points. Because an engineering design system, if you start taking out support struts, then the rest of it can't, it's designed to be complete. If you start yanking out rest of it can't, it's designed to be complete. If you start yanking out pieces of it because it broke and you don't repair it,

then that's the beginning of the end. Yeah. Which, in fact, it was. The beginning of the end, and now the detector falls down out of the sky, and it's the end of an era. And so now if aliens are going to talk to humans by sending radio signals. They're going to be speaking Chinese. The Chinese will be the first to have that conversation with aliens.

Now, as an American, I'm upset that we can't lead that effort. But as a scientist, I know that if your country becomes short-sighted in terms of their investments, the science can and will still get done. It happened with the superconducting supercollider that we were going to build in Texas. Funding began. Then it all got cut to zero. But Europe said, we'll build one.

So Europe built, at the European Center for Nuclear Research, CERN, they have the Large Hadron Collider, and they discovered the Higgs boson, the God particle. They discovered new frontiers in particle physics at CERN, and we

didn't, okay? Science doesn't care what your nationality is. All that matters is who is who who is offering you enlightened leadership and enlightened governance if you want to be on that frontier otherwise you will dance to the tune played by others who have made those investments in the future of this civilization wow man that was'm sorry, that's a long answer to that. No, it's a long answer, but I gotta tell you, the message

at the end of that answer, you can't, it's all worth it. Worth the price of admission. Gosh. Okay. Alright. Give me some more. Let's do another video from Joel Jericho. Joel has two videos? Okay. Joel, I'm gonna surprise you, he has more than two videos. Joel Jer I'm going to surprise you, has more than two videos.

Joel Cherico. And so, yeah, he does Cherico Pottery. That's right. Yeah. Joel's a big supporter on Patreon. Yeah, yeah. And so, by the way, while I was drinking my coffee,

an alien climbed out of the moon mug. Joel, can you lose the aliens? All right. Okay, go on. All right, go ahead. Okay. Go on. All right. Go ahead. Let's hear from Joel. Another question for you.

So science and technology are replacing a lot of the things that we used to make with our hands. They're being made by machines. So my question is, could a machine ever make art? Hmm. I wonder why he asked that. So my question is, could a machine ever make art? Mmm. I wonder why he asked that. That's a scared artist right there. Yeah. And you're next, Chuck.

Can machines really tell jokes? No, I had a conversation with one of those rolling robots once, you know, at a party. Yeah. And they sounded really smart. So I said, you sound really smart. Like, where'd you go to school? And he said, oh, Solid State University. I thought that was good.

That's not bad. That's not a bad joke. I'm going to kill that robot. So I think machines, so for me, let me offer my definition of art. Art is reality through the lens of someone with imagination, which upon being shared with you, allow you to see the world not only with fresh eyes, but with a perspective that can enhance

the beauty of your life and the life of others. Okay. That's what I think of. And by the way, art, capital A. Sculptors, screenwriters, set designers.

Right, that doesn't make a difference. Yeah, all of art. So, can a computer do art? I think computers, if they're programmed by you to just do something that's already known to do, no, it's not going to do art. Or it'll duplicate somebody else's art. Right?

That's not art. That's just forgery. Right? So art, for me, has got to come from a creative place. Good art has to come from a creative place that has not yet been tapped by anyone else if you're going to advance the world of art, right? So for a computer to do that, it has to be full-up, genuine artificial intelligence.

Yeah, it would have to be basically human. Yeah, it would have to be, exactly. Yeah, it would have to be, exactly. It would have to be, it would have to have the exact same, I would say, neurological capabilities

that we do. Well, it wouldn't have to be the same, it would just have to be, have the capacity to have a thought that was never had before. Right.

Exactly. Whether or not it's the same thought we had. Right. It would just have to be an original thought. An original thought. Right. Because, I mean to be an original thought. An original thought. Right.

Because, I mean, think about it. So you look at, like, just take Monet or any of the Impressionists, right? I don't know who the first Impressionist was, but he was probably nearsighted. Someone go back through time and say, put one of these on. And you'd be like, oh, wait a minute. So that's how this stuff really looks? And it's just still painting everything in great detail? So you could hand this thing to whoever that was

that would destroy an entire movement. Destroy a whole movement. Be like, wait a minute. So, oh, that's how stuff really looks so it but it was either that he was nearsighted or he was like why can't why wouldn't i see why couldn't i see the world in this gauzy like perspective but what surely contributed to that was the arrival of photography. Absolutely. These are coincident in time.

Because photography is not, now I can capture reality basically exactly as reality is. As is. I don't need you to paint a portrait of me to capture the reality of me. Absolutely. Now if you're going to paint a portrait, okay, give me three eyeballs on one side or whatever Picasso did. Do something different

and imaginative because if I want exactly me, do something different and imaginative. Because if I want exactly me, I'll just take a photo. Yeah. There you go. So, yeah. Yeah. Oh, wow. That's really cool.

Right. So, yeah, I think that's the kind of computer you need. And the day that happens, you know, we'll just become their pets. I was going to say, we're all screwed. Yeah. When that happens, it's a wrap. It's a wrap on us all. Okay.

Okay. Do you know how we created, do you know how we created, do you know how we domesticated cats and dogs? I know. By killing the ones that bit us. Oh. God, that's awful. So you have a litter, all right,

and some are nice and cuddly, and you pet them, and they purr, and they do that, or whatever, and then another one's like scratching and clawing at you. Dead. Kill that one. Kill that one. And so you were selectively editing the gene pool of these creatures

for their temperament. And so now you went from a wolf to a poodle, right? Or what's the Pomeranian, you know, or a Yorkie, a lap dog, right? So the point is the day AI becomes our overlord, you just want to be nice to them so you can become their pets. Otherwise, they're going to... Don't be the human who kicks and fights. Don't be that human.

Your ass is gone. Right. Because you will not outsmart the ai yeah because they're designed to be as smart or smarter than anything we ever will be in the same way we design we program computers to be better at us at chess okay computer beat kasparov for goodness sake all right a computer beat the best Jeopardy champion. So we're already kind of know there's certain things they're better at, but if they start running things, okay, yeah, just learn how to purr. Yeah. All right, we've got to take another quick break.

And when we come back, more uh cosmic queries uh fan appreciation edition when star talk returns hey we'd like to give a Patreon shout-out to the following Patreon patrons, Corey Farnham, Patty Weber, and Vergard Jertson. Guys, thank you so much for your gravity assist as we make our way through the cosmos. Without you, we couldn't do this show. And for those of you who would like your very own Patreon shout-out, please go to patreon.com slash startalkradio and support us.

We're back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries, fan appreciation edition. Chuck. Hey, hey. You're spending all this time just blathering. You know, we got to get to more questions. Okay, we'll get to more questions. I got to stop this. I got to, I got to.

No. You always say it, but it's good. It's good. No, no, no, no. Okay. Let me tell you. I mean, if you went to the bank, right, and you said, I'd like to withdraw $100. And the bank manager comes out and says, oh, hi, Dr. Tyson.

By the way, today is Dr. Tyson Appreciation Day. Now, in addition to your $100, here are, and he counted out by ones, another $100. Okay. Would you say, bro, what are you doing? All right, I'm in a hurry. Okay, okay. I got to get out of here. I got to go.

All right. No, you let him count out the $100 in ones. And then you take it. And you say, thank you very much. And that $100 was not out of your account. That's right. No, you let them count out the $100 in ones. And then you take it. And you say, thank you very much. And that $100 was not out of your account. That's right. There you go. Bank decision in your favor.

So it's all gravy. New monopoly card. All right. It's all gravy. Well, thank you for the bank analogy. There you go. Let's go to Tracy Scrubbett, who says, Dr. Tyson, what do you consider to be the most persistent belief in physics or astronomy, which has already been disproven, but that is still perpetuated in popular culture and or schools?

Oh, wow. What a great question. Okay, yes, like a multi-part thing going on there. Okay. Yes. What a great quest. Okay, yes, like a multi-part thing going on there. Okay.

Yes. So the concept of belief, I prefer to use that word for when you think something is true in the absence of evidence. So belief doesn't have much currency in the sciences. What happens is I have some marginal evidence that something might be true. So I can say I believe it's true, but I have this much evidence to say it's true. What does your evidence say? My evidence says there's the opposite of that. So the third person comes and say, no, what I found is there's a hybrid of those two things that you're saying, and this is the real truth. And then a fourth person says, I agree with that third person. And a fifth person says, I agree with that third person. And you assemble information and data and observation

so that there's an emergent objective truth. Right. So it's not like we're all saying, let's just believe this is true and get on with life. No, that's not quite the mechanism of what's going on here. So what you really want to know, is there anything that we long thought would be true turn out to not be true, but the public still believes?

No, the public believes stuff that we always knew was never true. That's hilarious. No, spaceships don't make sound in space, okay? So Star Wars would be silent movie, all right? That's hilarious. So, no, spaceships don't make sound in space, okay? Right. So Star Wars would be silent movie, all right? So that's one that we always knew was not true, and the public doesn't seem to get it. We knew the world was round in ancient Greece.

Forget this Columbus stuff where people thought, no, the educated people knew Earth was round. Ancient Greece, they knew Earth was round. Ancient Greece, they knew Earth was round. You know how they knew Earth was round? Because lunar eclipses, okay, where Earth's shadow is cast onto the full moon, always made a curved shadow.

Okay? And the shadow was a circular shadow. And the only shape object that will always make a circular shadow is a sphere, no matter what angle the light comes from. That's right. So the ancient Greeks were clever people, and they recognized this,

and they saw that it would be at different angles, and they always got that circular shadow on their thing. The only way you can get a circle is if we are a sphere. So it's been known for a thousand years, yet there are emergent people today who are certain Earth is flat. So no, there's nothing that we have carried with us that is

yet to be confirmed or has been confirmed in the negative that the public still believes. Not in physics. You get some of that in medicine. Right. Always. Oh, oh my gosh oh this is chicken soup this will cure you all right in in six days right okay can't go biloba okay so something you know my favorite is the chicken soup one so the way it goes is uh there's no better cure

than grandma's chicken soup, okay? And that and other good traditional cures will make you better in a week. Right. But without them, your cold will linger for seven days. Yeah. Right. So if you look at sort of what they used to call old wives' tales. They used to call it that.

I don't know how it even got that term. But just things that lore handed down. Another one is, if I roll you in front of the window, and the window's open and it's cold air, you'll catch pneumonia. Right. Okay? I heard that from my grandmother. And I'm thinking, why would you catch pneumonia? Is there, like, pneumonia sitting outside the window, ready to come in?

Only when it's cold outside? Like, what is, what? And I never believed it, but I heard it, okay? I watch movies. You know, go to TCM movies, black and white movies from the 1940s and 50s. It is all throughout the movies, okay? Shut the window, you'll catch your death of cold. There's a Hitchcock movie where somebody's trying to kill somebody who's wheelchair-bound

and rolls them in front of a window, opens the window in the winter, and then leaves them there, and they catch the death of cold and die. This is, but today, you don't see that in storytelling. So that must have gotten through. Right. Yeah. It must have, okay, gotten through that. No, that's no longer the case.

I was told by my grandmother, wear your slippers, otherwise you'll catch a death of cold at night. And how am I going to catch a cold through the bottom of my feet? You know, I have calluses. If a cold gets through the calluses in the bottom of my feet, give it to them.

Exactly. Yeah. All right, so I think in other professions, in physics, not so much. Gotcha. All right, that's cool. Keep it going. All right, let's keep it going., physics, not so much. Gotcha. All right, that's cool. Keep it going. All right, let's keep it going.

This is Timothy L. Johnson. Timothy says, Chuck, you can pronounce my name, I promise. Timothy Johnson. Thank you, Timothi. Timothi. Thank you, Timothi. Joe Hanson. Yeah, Joe Hanson.

Then he says, Dr. Tyson, I wanted to pick your brain and your opinion. What is the most fascinating thing that we have discovered in our known universe? And how many ways could it kill you? I think nothing beats black holes. There you go. And a black hole will kill you a hundred different ways. There you go. Okay.

So the first discovered black hole was, it was a source of X-rays and ultraviolet light in the constellation Scorpius. No, it might have been Cygnus. No, the first one was in Cygnus, the constellation Cygnus. And you have a, when you have a black hole and material getting flayed off of a star in orbit, around it, that material falling in radiates copiously

before it enters the abyss. And so we knew that. You calculated this is the signature a black hole would give us as matter falls in. And so you look for those in the sky. So now the catalog, we have no end of cataloged black holes. So it's definitely black holes. And they've captured our imagination in movies, in storytelling. Disney had a movie, The Black Hole, back in the 70s. I think they're redoing it. So yeah, it's got to be black holes.

And my favorite way to die is falling into a black hole. I don't want to get hit by a bus. I don't want to die in a thing. Put me, throw me into a black hole. Good for you. Mine is sleep. You're going to sleep. Yeah, I'm going to go to sleep.

You're going to sleep. That's what I'm going to do. In your sleep. Yeah. I'm going to say that's my favorite way. No, no, no. Why not be part of an experiment while you're doing this? Because I don't want to be there at all because I'm dying. I'm told, I haven't heard this verified,

that during the French Revolution with cutting off everybody's heads, if you know you're going to die that way, why not participate in some science experiments, right? So, for example, your eyes connect directly to your brain and they don't need the rest of your body. Right. Okay? You can stop your heart briefly and you're still kind of alive while that's happening.

So cut off your head. Go to the rolling head right before it completely dies and ask, because your ears are still connected. What do you see? Yeah, how many fingers do you see? Why don't you blink? How many? So I'm told, I didn't have this verified,

that there was still some brief brain activity right after. You're just an experiment. Okay? Okay. Why waste a guillotined head when you could... So if I got to die, throw me in a black hole. I'll give you all the data you want. There you go.

All right. Oh, God, I'm going to get a T-shirt. Science, why waste a guillotine head? We got to get a... Oh, that's so great. No, by the way, I mean, in all seriousness, there was a prisoner who voluntarily donated his body to be micro-sliced.

Okay? Do you know how you do this? Yeah. Oh, no. This is a prisoner who was on death row. Okay? Voluntarily did this. Said, yes, give my body to medicine.

So they do that. Then you, like, mostly freeze the body. And then you just start taking slices. Right. So ideally, you'd have three bodies to do this with. One you'd slice this way. Right. One you'd slice this way One you'd slice this way

Top to bottom, left to right, and then front to back Then you'd have thin Transparent slices of the human body That you could compare To MRI images Of the three dimensional Cross section of the body Nice

So I own a book that is this sliced Prisoner who was on death row. And if you're a cannibal, it makes for a lovely carpaccio. Sliced human. That's great. Or you fry it, you get human chips. Cutting potatoes

thin. Alright. Let's see. Let's go with... I hope kids aren't listening to this show. Are we PG-13? I think we're PG-13. Listen, we're talking nutrition. That's all. Issam Khabas says,

Hey, Neil. Hey, Chuck. My question is about the elasticity of expansion of space. Space is expanding in all directions, and everything is moving away from everything else. Why isn't the space within our own solar system expanding? Why doesn't the expansion of space destabilize orbits? Why doesn't the expansion stretch the space currently occupied by the Earth and in turn stretch us?

This person has clearly lost some sleep on this one. If you've got 10 questions that just vomit out out of one idea. His question was like a little Russian nesting doll of questions. Yes, that's right. So, excellent question. So, here's what's going on. The stretching of the fabric of space and time from the expansion of the universe, okay, is at all times competing against gravity that would prevent it, okay?

On the largest scale, it is winning. On the smallest scales, it's not. The sun has a good grip on the planets, and the urge for space to stretch within the confines of the solar system is not higher than the success of the sun keeping everybody in orbit. Wow. However, in the dark energy future scenario of the universe, where the universe will continue to expand and accelerate in its expansion, the expansion will become more and more significant in places where it didn't previously have a stronghold.

And yes, eventually, that extreme future universe, where you have exponential expansion, will start ripping apart solar systems. Yes, the sun will no longer be able to hold onto it against the stretching of space between the sun and the earth and the rest of the planets. Then it'll start... Now, electromagnetic

forces are stronger than gravitational forces. So what's holding earth together is stronger than the sun's gravity on the earth. So the earth will struggle and hold on until it will break apart. And this will continue until there's some of us worried about the big rip.

And this will take place when it tries to stretch the very quantum realm that is the tiniest representation of the fabric of space and time there is. Because that, we don't think think is stretchable at all. And if you get into that realm, you have overcome even the quantum realm,

and we think space will just rip, and we don't know what that'll look like, and it's kind of scary. And in fact, StarTalk has another book coming out. Do you know this, in the spring? I did not. Okay, spring 2021. You know what Do you know this? In the spring? I did not. Spring 2021. You know what that book is called?

The Big Rip? It's called Cosmic. I shouldn't be announcing it yet because I don't think it's on shelves yet. Because they're still in production. So don't look for it yet. Okay? But it's called Cosmic Queries. Nice.

And in there is the whole discussion about the expansion of the universe and how it could, in one scenario, could end up in the Big Rip. In which case, all of the nesting doll scenarios described by, what's the person's name again? Nisan. Nisan, will be realized. And that'll be the end of the universe as we know it. There you go, Nisan.

Have a nice day. Have a great day. The Big Rip. He who smelt it dealt it. There you go. So we got day. Have a great day. The big rip. He who smelt it dealt it. There you go. So we got time for one more question, Chuck. Well, that means we got to go to our last video question from Joel Jericho. Joel gets three questions?

Yes, sir, he does. Dude, he must be giving us a lot of money. Oh, my gosh. Yes, sir, he is. Okay. All right, no, we're not that crass, but just we like to joke about it but no we're very loving okay what so what does he get here it is another question so there are some scientists in history who were also interested in art as part of their process like albert einstein

had his violin right next to his desk where he would do his math problems. And when he'd get stuck on a math problem, he would take a break and play the violin. So as a scientist, are there any parts of your process that involve doing anything artistic, anything that's not just doing science that helps you with your own scientific problems

or ideas? Excellent question. Interesting. So let me, well, I don't know if we have time for me to give the full answer that that question deserves. Let me go quick and briefly. So the art-science relationship is not an equal two-way street, okay? There are discoveries in science that directly impact how the artist does art. True. Okay, from the computer. From everything to everything. Yeah, so computer visualization in movies is all the science and engineering that went into the computer that the visualizers are using, all of whom are artists, to do their craft. All the stuff that's happening on tablets now.

When neon was discovered or invented as a means of lighting in colors, artists picked up on it immediately and started doing sculptures with neon bulbs, right? And so the progress of science and engineering directly affects art. The question is, does art directly affect science? I think the actual answer to that is no. There is no scientific discovery where the person says, this is where a G chord on my guitar came in. There is no such infusion. That being said, the value of art to the scientist, I don't think is any different from the value of art

to anybody who knows the value of art. It is a place for you to stimulate parts of your brain that are wired differently from all the other ways your brain is wired. Right. And that could possibly stimulate new synaptic possibilities in what your next thought will be. Okay? My entire PhD thesis was written to the music of the nine symphonies of Beethoven

and all of his string quartets. Okay? So, me and Ludwig go way back on this. Okay? So in that case, I'm not writing and then looking at art. I'm writing and listening to artistic creativity in the regime of classical music. So science has a direct impact, whereas art may have a direct inspiration. Inspirational impact, correct.

Right. It's not as though Einstein played the violin and said, oh, there's a note, I'm going to put that note in the thing. That's not really what that is. I see Einstein and the violin not so much as an escape from his work, not so much as something that will directly plug into his work, but as a respite from his work. And if you have a brief respite, it lets the brain breathe. I like that.

Metaphorically breathe so that new, or maybe literally breathe, new oxygen comes in to feed new thoughts. So I've always been a fan of art. My brother's an artist. And so my whole life, and he went to the High School of Music and Art, just as a, we're both native New Yorkers. I went to the Bronx High School of Science. So we both sort of were fed by these institutions in New York

that knew and understand such people walk around who could benefit from this kind of stimulation. So, yes, I got to go with Joel that it can help inspire you not directly, it shows your brain a different palette on which to

think before you return to what you were doing before. Cool. Yeah. I like that answer. Okay, well, I'm glad. Thank you, Joel, for your three daily doubles. And your money. Chuck, stop being so crass.

And maybe he'll get the basalt out of this. Now, some people don't know what basalt is. Basalt is just like hardened lava, lava fields, right? And so the darkened areas of the moon are basalt out of this. Some people don't know what basalt is. Basalt is just like hardened lava, lava fields, right? And so the darkened areas of the moon are basalt. We went over that in one of the explainer videos. We talk about making craters. But anyway,

this definitely evokes the universe and moons without actually being a representation of a moon, and that's where I like art to be. Don't be the moon. Be something that the moon evokes that makes you feel the moon.

Nice. I just want a handle. No, just try to get a handle. Okay. And like I've said in the Van Gogh's Starry Night, that's clearly not what he saw, but it's definitely what he felt while he was watching

that night sky. And I want a piece of what artists feel. Because I want to feel and see the way they do. Nice! I myself am not the artist, so I need their help. We gotta wrap it up there. Chuck! Always a pleasure.

Always good to have you, man. Okay. This has been StarTalk, Cosmic Queries Fan Appreciation Edition. And as always, I bid you for the whole StarTalk family to keep looking up.