StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries Potpourri

Episode Date: May 17, 2015

It’s time for another episode of Cosmic Queries. This week, Neil deGrasse Tyson answers an eclectic mix of fan questions selected by Chuck Nice, from gravity waves and the Great Attractor, to dark matter and nuclear fusion. 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. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And this is StarTalk. You know, we don't have a guest today, so that usually means what? It usually means that we're going to do some cosmic queries. Cosmic queries. These are questions drawn from our listenership and all of our social media.

That's correct. And I think what happens is we solicit the questions, and sometimes questions don't fit in any category. Right. And so they all just, potpourri, I guess. Potpourri. I don't even know what that means, but potpourri. It means none of these questions stink.

That's, that's, that's, it's Cosmic Queries, potpourri edition, where none of the questions stink. I know you'd like to thank you. Don't stay. That's good. So I've not seen any of the questions. No, you have not. Which is not like a test.

No, yeah. You're not here to stump me, but if I don't know the answer, I'm going to tell you I don't know the answer. Exactly. So let's start right off. So this is Brian Maroud. I'm hoping I'm saying, you know. Why do you have such issues with people's names?

You know what? What's up with you? It's actually become a thing now because people now are online. They're just like, I just want to see how Chuck butchers my name. I can't wait to see how Chuck. Mary Smith. Let's find out. Mary Smyeth?

All right. Anyway, so Brian Maroud. I hope, Brian, that's your name. Mary Sniath? All right. Anyway, so Brian Maroud. I hope, Brian, that's your name. This is what Brian says. I've seen a lot of infographics lately about ripples in space-time due to gravity. Are there any space-time fabric

waves caused by the expansion of the universe? Or is the concept of galaxies accelerating away from each other a misnomer in that they're not actually accelerating through space so much as the space between galaxies is getting

bigger at an accelerated rate? This guy's been thinking, man. He's been thinking. He's correct. Okay, next question. I love questions like that. There you go, Brian. The answer is yes. How about that? Yes, comma, 42. Yes.

No. So the gravitational waves are ripples within the preexisting fabric of space and time. And you can get these waves if you have galaxies colliding or black holes coalescing. If you have galaxies colliding or black holes coalescing. Titanic gravitational events in the universe will trigger ripples through the fabric of space-time. And we call those gravity waves. And right now we're trying to detect them. The Laser Interferometric Gravity Wave Observatory, LIGO. LIGO.

LIGO. L-I-G-O. You can just Google that. Right. And this is our first attempt to detect these gravity waves first predicted by Albert Einstein. Now, if those gravity waves were interconnecting, would that be Lego LIGO? I'm just asking. I'm just saying.

Like if you could snap them together, build yourself a little gravity wave castle. I'll get back to you on that one. Good. So things within the pre-existing space can generate gravity waves. But space itself expands. Yeah, when that's expanding. I mean, there may be a way, but not by stuff that's something outside of it. So there has to be an event that causes this. Right, because the gravity field is there all the time.

Something has to put a ripple in it, and that ripple moves, by the way, at the speed of light. It makes perfect sense. It's a ripple, just like in a lake or a pond. You need something to drop into the water to break the surface tension to cause the wave. Yeah, and the pond is there without the ripple. You want to put in a ripple and observe that.

Boom. You got it. B a ripple and observe that. Boom. You got it. Bada bing. Bada bing, bada boom. There you go, Brian. Oh, by the way, we haven't detected a gravity wave yet. Gravity waves are very weak. Even when they're strong, they're weak.

So these gravity wave detectors are going to detect a disturbance over a given length of space that is about the same magnitude as the width of an atomic nucleus. Really? Yes. That's insane. It's completely freaking insane. That's insane. It is a frontier of technology. The scientific question is pushing the engineering frontier absolutely to make this

measurement and that's what the the eye and ligo laser laser interferometric gravity wave observatory right and we're looking for gravity waves and if we get good at it we can detect gravitational disturbances arriving from the big bang itself wow that's pretty cool actually look at that man that's So it's technology. Well, it's actually an answer in search of technology. Oh, nice. Perfectly worded, Chuck. It's an answer in search of technology.

I'm going to tell the folks who write the brochures. Signed Chuck Nice. Oh, is that a famous astrophysicist? If you only knew. All right. Hey, Brian, man, that was a very good question. Thank you for chiming in, my friend. Okay, this is Arthur

Colombo Duarte. Duarte. Okay. Here's his question. And by the way, you'll like this. Arthur says, cheers from Brazil. So he's writing us from Brazil. Brazil.

But he does not tell us where. Just, you know, it's a big place. Anyway, he says, what do we know about the great attractor? And what are your thoughts on what it is or could be? Could it be some sort of dark matter planet? Interesting. So these people are doing their homework before they're writing these questions. They really are.

Okay, so a couple of decades ago, it might have been in the late 80s, in the research of where all the galaxies are going, there was a research paper that noticed that there's an entire community of galaxies that are all headed towards one spot in space. And then you look in that spot in space and there's not an obvious thing to be tugging on them. And so it came to be known as the great attractor. And you expect things to be moving because we're near each other.

We'll feel each other's gravity. We call the, those are called peculiar velocities, it turns out, not because there's anything peculiar about them. It's just, if you're moving within the fabric of space, that is a very natural speed that you would have. So we found this something called a great attractor. That's what it got called. And it got a lot of press in its day.

Now, I haven't read up on the latest on that, but we know that there's dark matter everywhere and dark matter has gravity, just like ordinary matter. Right. And there is six times as much of it so we're no longer as shocked when we see things being drawn to one part of the universe or another right just because we don't see anything there anything there fully lit galaxies or anything because we know that that happens yeah you can have now can it be a dark matter planet not likely i'll tell you why why because to make a planet matter

Whatever it is that makes the planet has to be able to stick to itself gotcha think about that right right right what? All the molecules of the rocks they're stuck to one another right all right dark matter Not only doesn't stick to our kind of matter it doesn't even stick to itself okay So it's not obvious how you would ever coalesce dark matter into any kind of solid object at all. Gotcha. It would just pass through itself. It would pass through itself.

So it's not going to get together and hang out. And be the evil other planet. Exactly. The dark. Right. Is there a dark matter earth where you have a goatee? Oh, wait. You have a goatee now.

So my dark matter earth is a good shot. Interesting. Interesting. That's very cool. So it's like, what's it called here on Earth? There's a place in the ocean where all the floating pollution tends to gravitate. I just read about that. And it just comes into this giant trash circle. A plastic bag.

into this giant trash circle. Mat of plastic bags. And it's just a big, massive swirl of plastic garbage. Okay, that has nothing to do with dark matter in the universe, but it's still interesting that that happens at all. Yeah, but I'm saying this is like that from space. Oh, so that's an attractor of itself. Right. Oh, yeah.

Even though that's really just ocean currents coming together. Yeah, yeah. Confluence. Dead pooling. It's one little place to let us know that we're a bunch of a-holes who are polluting our world. Yeah. That's very cool.

So no dark matter planet. Extremely, extremely unlikely. Right. Okay? Based on everything we've measured about dark matter. Because it passed through itself. Nothing to stick to. Right.

It's got to stick to itself, and then you can make solid objects. But the attractor itself, completely understandable, because we know now that dark matter has gravity just like regular matter. There you go. That's how we know it's there. Hey, Arthur, man, another great question. People are really living up to the potpourri. Potpourri, all right. Okay.

This is Mary Blickhan. Blickhan. Okay. Mary doesn't tell me where she's coming from. Mary says, I want to know more about the comment I saw. Oh. How close did it get to the sun, and how did it survive its trek? I guess it might, but I i confess i just had a hunt i guess i guessed it might but i confess i had a hunch in other words she she knew it would

survive uh but comets have been around a long time and seem to survive anything oh that is so not the case. Yeah. Comet ISON was a comet discovered a couple of years ago, and it was heralded as the great Christmas comet. It was a comet that was on the back end as it comes around the other side of the sun. Let's remind ourselves, comets have very elongated orbits. Right. They spend a lot of time far away from the sun and a little bit of time very close to the sun.

These are strongly elliptical orbits. That's why we don't see them all the time. We only see them when they visit. They pay the inner solar system a visit. All right, Comet ISON, if you plotted its trajectory, it would come extremely close to the sun. I don't remember exactly how close, but close, like within a sun's own diameter of it.

What? Yes, yes, yes, yes yes that's actually very very close yes yes yes so okay so now okay so and and and the sun is big ball of plasma and hot hot and a comet is ice and cold cold okay thank you and you were looking at me like, hey, you don't get these two right. You're not coming back. After all this time here, Chuck, if you don't get these two, it's curtains for you, buddy. The sun is hot. A comet is cold. And now you want to bring the comet within one solar diameter of itself.

This does not bode well for the comet. Guess who's coming to dinner if the comet had survived the other side right it would have come out with a beautiful long tail because the sun evaporates it actually sublimes the frozen get the frozen the ices turns them into gases and on the other side was thanksgiving and christmas and it would have been a beautiful comet and people were touting it and talking it up but nope. The sun tore a new one in that comet. Had its way. The sun tore

a new one. There are images of this. The comet's going in with all perfectly shaped tail. Hey everybody. I'm Ison. I'm Ison. Ison is an acronym for International Observation Network or something. It's an acronym.

Forgive me, I don't have it off the top of my head. That's okay. But it came out the other side, and it was a raggedy-looking thing. The thing broke apart, it diffused, and just completely disappeared on the other side. Wow. Well, the glowing part. There's probably debris there, but no longer was there a comet for us to embrace. That is awesome.

Oh, man. Yeah, so the sun tore a new one. That was the end of the comet. And that all happened on Thanksgiving Day. All right. So, yeah. And there was no Christmas comet. So I saw it came in and the sun was like, this is my house. My house. Don't do this to me in my house.

So every comet, no matter how close it comes, when a tail gets made, it's actually losing some of its own material. Of course, right. So comets have finite lifetimes. They can't go around the sun forever. Right. So it doesn't make a difference which comet that... Eventually, a comet's going to die.

And in fact, you've heard of... Every night, if you look long enough, you'll find a meteor. Of course. Shooting star. And occasionally there are meteor showers, right? Right. Which are always at the same time each year. You know what meteor showers are?

That is Earth plowing through the debris stream of long dead comets. Awesome. Whose trajectory crossed the orbit of the Earth. Oh, see, now. That is why they happen at the same time every year. Okay. And that's why they're a higher rate of these debris particles than in any other random night.

So ISON, I have to check which way its trajectory actually came, whether that will become a new meteor shower to- Because we may one day actually plow through the detritus of Ison. The rocky flotsam and jetsam of Ison. Sweet. Yeah, yeah. I have to check. The orbit has to be sort of near the plane of our orbit,

and then it's a whole brand-new meteor shower. So a meteor shower is basically a comet graveyard. Yeah, exactly. Oh, that's awful. Yeah, yeah. It's the crap left over. After the sun done did its thing. Oh,

wow. Wow, that's a great question. Another one. All right, let's see if we can get one more in here. Before the break. Yeah, before the break. Here we go. Okay. Okay. All right, that sounds good. We can fit another. Go for it. All right, so this is. We can fit another. Go. Go for it. All right. Here's a... All right.

So this is from Gerald. It says, Chuck, is Neil jacked or are his shirts just really tight? Well, first, in my day, yeah, I was jacked. Yeah. I was like captain of my wrestling team. Oh, wow. I was like 190 pounds. Wow. You were jacked. Oh, yeah, I was jacked. Yeah, I was like captain of my wrestling team. Oh, wow. 190 pounds. Wow, you were jacked. Oh, yeah.

I could totally kick some ass, all right? All right. I wanted to be protector of the nerd set. That's what I thought. You know what? That makes sense when you think about it. That was my superhero dream. Right.

Back then, the tough quarterbacks would be shoving nerds into the locker rooms. And then you would show up? Before they would later learn that you needed the nerds to fix your computer. Right. Before they were respected and revered. And revered and became the richest people in the world. Right. In the day, when people were nerd hunting, I was card carrying nerd, and I wanted to

be the protector of all the nerds of the world in my own little superhero fantasy. That's a noble fantasy. So there'd be like a little bat signal that would go up in the sky and I would land. What would it be, a pocket protector? I don't know. They'd shine a pocket protector in the sky. Later in the day, it would be like a slide rule.

And however extended the slide rule was, that's how serious the encounter was necessary. Yeah, so no, and I studied martial arts, and so I was in my day. Right. So somewhere below some layers of fat, a few of those muscles I think might still be there. There's some muscle memory maybe happening. Muscle memory.

I'll try to, I asked the trainer, I said, so when am I going to get my six pack? He said, it's still there. It's just under the fat. Right. So I was jacked off like 40 pounds ago. And if I take it off, I plan to take some off by the end of this year. Okay. Maybe we'll see if any remains.

All right. There you go, Gerald. Yeah. There's your answer. Yeah. Well, if you saw the shirts recently, yeah, I can still fill a shirt, but generally I'm sitting at a table and you don't see my belly hanging up or below. You see my upper body, not my midsection. You're listening to StarTalk.

Stay tuned for another segment. Welcome back to StarTalk. Here's more of this week's episode. So, we are in Cosmic Queries. Yes, we are. StarTalk, the Cosmic Queries edition, is the way I call it. Absolutely, absolutely. So, what do you have?

So, we've got questions from all across the internet. And I haven't seen them. You have not seen them. And this one is from Jersey Norrington. Jersey Norrington. Sounds like an anchor. Or a porn name. Exactly. Jersey Norrington.

Or an anchor porn man. Anchor porn. Good evening. I'm Jersey Norrington. Your top story? Wow, wow. Okay. That was like so 1978.

I know. Porn music track. Yes, yes. All right, what do you have? All right, here we go. Why is it that no one talks about ITER? This is what he puts, I-T-E-R. I never heard of it.

So maybe he's right. Maybe he's right. They're trying to get a fusion reactor to work. So it could create an infinite source of energy. I really think that's cool. All right. So ITER. Let me see.

Remember what that stands for. I really think that's cool. All right. So ITER. Let me see. Remember what that stands for. International Thermonuclear Experimental. What does the R stand for?

I don't remember. Reactor. Reactor. Thank you. Fusion reactor. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take fusion reactor. And so you can have fusion.

Right. A fusion is the bringing you can have fusion. Right. A fusion is the bringing together of small atoms. Right. To make a bigger atom. It turns out when you do that, you get energy. Okay. Up to a point. But you get energy.

Bring two hydrogen atoms, make helium, you get energy. The sun does that every second of its life. Sweet. And it is very efficient. It really is. Just back up. Okay. Turning along.

So it takes high temperature okay and you're fusing nuclei so thermonuclear fusion gotcha that is what that's called thermonuclear fusion now we have mastered thermonuclear fusion ever since like the 50s okay late 40s early 50s it's called a bomb I was going to say. What we have not mastered is the control of thermonuclear fusion. Right. All right? Uncontrolled thermonuclear fusion is called a bomb. Nagasaki.

The sun. No, that would be. Oh, no, because that was a hydrogen bomb. No, that was an atomic bomb. Atomic bomb. And Nagasaki used, that one used plutonium. Plutonium. So where's the hydrogen bomb?

The hydrogen bomb has never been used in warfare. Oh. But those pictures you see with like tiny little ships next to the hole and half the ocean is blown out of, those are hydrogen bombs. Oh my God. Hydrogen bombs make atom bombs look like starter firecrackers. Oh yeah. Oh there's no contest between the two.

The two of them. Oh yeah. When we talk about nuclear power, we're really talking about who's got it. Well, no. Okay. The starter kit is to make a nuclear fission bomb, and that's what happened in the Second World War. Okay. So that's a nuclear fission bomb.

Because you take big atoms, make them little, and you get energy by doing that, too. Yeah. Yeah. So then the atomic bomb- That is big atoms in the very specific cases of the Second World War, splitting uranium and splitting plutonium. Okay. An element named after the cosmic object Pluto, by the way.

Oh, okay. Uranium was named after the planet Uranus. And guess what Neptunian was named after? Oh, the god of the sea? Neptune. So we have three consecutive elements on the periodic table. Uranium, Neptune, and Plutonium. Gotcha.

Named after Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. But since Pluto's not a planet anymore, I think it got on the periodic table on false pretense, just between you and me. Get me started. Okay. So now what are they going to call it on the periodic chart? Neil killed me? Dwarf Plutonium.

Dwarftonium. Dwarftonium Dwarftonium, there you go I love it So, getting back to Fusion, thermonuclear fusion So, in France, there's a collaborative project International project To try to harness fusion Because if you did it

And harness it in the way the sun does it In a controlled way You have essentially an unlimited Supply of energy Of course, yes And, as they say, too cheap to bill it in the way the sun does it in a controlled way, you have essentially an unlimited supply of energy. Of course, yes. And as they say, too cheap to bill. Personally, I think our electricity is already too cheap to bill.

You know why? Why? Of course, you do get electric bill, but you know why it's too cheap to bill? Why? If you're driving away from your home and you see you left your living room light on, are you going to stop the car, get out, unlock the door, go in and turn out the light? No, you're not. That light is staying on until you get home today.

Even if you're a conservationist. Even if you're a conservationist. You say, nope, I'm not. That's why I got the old fluorescent light bulbs. Okay. That's why I got fluorescent light bulbs. So already, certainly in America, we treat, in the United States, we treat electricity like it is the least of our financial priorities given how we use it.

So fully lit up malls at night when nobody's there, for example. Fully lit up buildings. Light up cities when everybody's going home. Everybody's going home and is asleep. So why is anyone talking about it? Well, we haven't achieved it yet. The day it's achieved, it's going to be headlines all over the place. Right.

Yeah. So do you think it's achievable? Because, I mean, that's a real. Yeah, in principle, yeah, you have going to be headlines all over the place. Right. Yeah. So do you think it's achievable? Because, I mean, that's a real- Yeah, in principle, yeah, you have to control plasma. Here's the problem. The temperature of the stuff you need to- It has to be high temperature to fuse the nuclei together. I was going to say, you're basically talking about having the sun here on Earth.

Exactly. And it's so hot, you say, okay, what vessel are you going to put it in and carry it from one place to another? Here, take this 10 million degree plasma and go straight home with it. Don't go anywhere else. Right. And so plasma is actually magnetically responsive. So there are things where you can create a magnetic cavity where it's kind of like a magnetic bottle, if you will. And then it sort of bounces off the magnetic field that contains it.

Kind of like the radiation from the sun does on the Earth. Well, it sees the magnetic field and then goes around it. It's precisely the same phenomenon going on. Oh, okay. But if you design a magnetic bottle intelligently, then maybe you can have it serve your energy needs by having fusion within it.

I got you. Oh, my God. Let me tell you something. Listen, I'm just the person who gets very nervous. And Jersey, all I can say, man, is this sounds – Jersey Wellington? Jersey Norrington. Norrington, yes, yes.

Anchor porn, man. Yes. It sounds really dangerous. Well, I mean, like, what you're talking about, let's say you have this magnetic bomb. And the containment field fails. You are wiping out, like, I don't know what. Yeah. For I don't know how many miles around you.

So you design it so it doesn't fail. Okay, next question. Duh. We have so solved this problem. That's why you need really good engineers in this world. There you go, man. All right. What else you got?

Okay, here we go. Let's move on to Urs von Gergensburg. Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Chuck. Keep telling yourself that, Chuck. Okay. Come on, Chuck. I'm so glad you're not president of a university who's reading the names of the diplomas. Oh, man. I'd be like, and next guy.

Next guy. Please come up and get your diploma. Next guy. And young lady. Please come up and get your diploma, young lady. All right. Here we go. Hi.

Here, dear Dr. Tyson. Okay. I love when you talk about the validity of science in movies. always defies my suspension of disbelief in sci-fi movies is when the character is briefly exposed to space to go between airlocks without some sort of space pressure suit this happens in both sunshine and event horizon is this even remotely possible thanks for entertaining me on my commutes hey earth that was cool. Very nice. Very nice of you, Urs.

So here's the problem when you change the pressure that your body is immersed in. And we learned this, I think, for the first time building the Brooklyn Bridge. Oh, really? Yeah. And building the Brooklyn Bridge, a lot of that structure is deep underwater. Yeah. And so you- It's in the East River.

So you have these things called caissons, I think they're called. And these are basically huge bubbles. It's just a, if you have a, I don't know, take like a pot. Okay. All right. And then invert it and then submerge the pot.

Right. You've trapped air in there. Yes, you did. So if you have little chairs inside that pot, make the pot big enough, you can sit in it inverted and then you submerge the entire pot, and now you can breathe the air while you're underwater.

Okay. But the deeper you go under the water, the higher is the pressure pushing up against that air from the water that's at your feet. Okay. The higher is that pressure. And that can have an effect on your physiology. All right.

And when they did this to build the Brooklyn Bridge, they discovered this new physiological failure called the bends. Uh-huh. And what happens is you can go down there. Uh-huh. That's fine. But it's coming back. Gases that are dissolved in your circulatory system. Right.

When your body is then exposed to lesser pressure, begin to escape from you. Okay. And the gases in your lungs, as they expand, you can just exhale that. Right. That's cool. Okay. But suppose the gas is dissolved in your bloodstream.

All of a sudden, these pockets of air show up inside your bloodstream. That's not good. That's not good. Thanks for concluding that, Chuck. That's not good. That's not good. Thanks for concluding that. That's not good. That's not good. So you have to be very careful when you change from one pressure to the other. You have to do it slowly or non-catastrophically.

All right. So if you go from one atmospheric pressure into zero atmospheric pressure, space, you're subject to these things that could end up giving you the bends. But if you're not there for very long, generally you're not there longer than you can breathe. Okay. Right? Right. How long are you in the airlock?

For a half hour? No. You're in the airlock without a suit on because that was some emergency maneuver you had to do. You're not going to be there longer than you can hold your breath. Correct. All right.

So, you might get some of the case of the bends, but it's not going to kill you. Your eyes are not going to pop out. Okay. You know why your eyes are not going to pop out? Because there's not an air pocket behind them ready to pop out your eyes. We're liquid.

Right. Right. So, when liquid changes pressure, it's all about what are the gases doing within them. Okay. Okay? Now, you want an example of gases coming out of liquid? Yeah.

No. Oh, do tell. Do tell. Believe me, because I can think of a few. I know, I know, I know. That's when you go into, I'm eight years old brain. Exactly. So the best example is a sealed can of soda.

Okay, right. It's under pressure. It's under pressure. Right. And let's say, let's take a bottle so you can look in it. It's under pressure. You don't see any bubbles anywhere. Right.

Pop the lid, all the bubbles escape. Exactly. They were dissolved there until the pressure changed. Exactly. And so it's whatever is above atmospheric pressure in it, and then it goes down to atmospheric pressure. The bubbles escape. So you have to be careful. And it won't be comfortable, but just get the hell out of

there. So now, okay, if I'm in the airlock, in the event horizon, this ship, okay? Oh, yeah. Okay. They depressurize. Yes. I'm in it. Yeah, you've got to...

But all I have now is, I held my breath. Yes. You've got to. All I have now is I held my breath. Yes. The airlock opens. Uh-huh. And now just across, I can push off and get into another airlock, repressurize.

Could I do that? Yes, easily. Okay. Easily. Okay. If you have your wits about you. If you have your wits about you. You could be, ah! Which is, now that's my home movie.

You ain't making it. That's the real movie right there. That's how people would actually. Right. It's just like the airlock opens up. Just like. No, but you couldn't hear me because I'm in space. Exactly.

Because in space, no one can hear you screaming in airlock without air. Exactly. It would be silent movie. That'd be funny. Right. The camera picks up. The silent scream. Yes.

That's super cool. This is something they did accurately in the movie Gravity. The sound level as they went in and out of airlocks would go from complete dead to slowly you begin to hear it and then it was a full up volume sound. They did it brilliantly in the movie Gravity.

So there you, listen there, Ursh. That's a great answer, man. That was very, very cool. It's all about the gas, baby. And in the movie, one of the Mars movies, which one, the one that had

named one of the Mars... Red Planet? It was either Red Planet or Mission to Mars. I think it was Mission to Mars. Okay. Where the tether doesn't reach him and he doesn't want them to come after him so he kills

himself so that they don't come after him. You know how he kills himself? He lifts off the visor. Okay. And three seconds later he looks like he's been dead for 20 years. Right. No. That doesn't happen. No. You would see him suffocating there. That's how really it would happen. Yes. Or total recall where Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn't have his helmet on and his eyes begin

to bulge out of his head like one of those little squeeze toys. I've seen those. Yes. Yeah. And- The pressure relieving, you know, the stress relieving- Yeah, the stress relieving squeeze toy. And that's what his eyes do.

Yeah. And he's like, and then all of ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. And then all of a sudden he comes. That was great. That wasn't even a sentence, but you knew it could only be uttered by Arnold Schwarzenegger. How did you pull that off? That is brilliant. Yeah, that's like every comic does Arnold.

And that's all you have to do to do Arnold. So that's not true then. No, you could survive a couple of minutes. For a couple of minutes. Yes. Okay, gotcha. Just don't stay there long. That's all.

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. If our circulatory system were entirely gas, and then you stepped out into an extremely low pressure environment, yeah, you'd explode. Like a environment. Yeah, you'd explode. Like a balloon. Yeah, like a balloon. Right. But we're liquid.

And so liquid has different reactions. So there's different properties for liquid. Correct. And the fact that we're 70% of that, boom. Right. Okay. No, we're 100%. Are we 100%?

No, you're 70% water. That's what I mean. Yes. 70% water. Yeah, but right. Yeah. But bone is liquid? Is bone considered liquid in your body? Sure. No, but... Right. But bone is liquid? You could... Is bone considered liquid in your body?

Sure. No, I'm serious. You're listening to StarTalk Radio. Stay tuned. More up next. Welcome back. Here's more of StarTalk. Just before we begin, this just came across my desk.

Yes. Here. Just in. A couple people submitted geek pickup lines. Right. But they're kind of lame. I'll read them. Here goes one. I'll do my best Barry White impression here.

Are you the square root of negative one? Because you can't be real. Oh, God. Actually, that's not too bad. That's not too bad. That's actually not too bad. But you got to remember your imaginary numbers. It's a square root of negative bad. That's not too bad. That's actually not too bad. But you got to remember your imaginary numbers, square root of negative.

Here's one. No, this is totally calculus geek. I wish I was your derivative so I could lie tangent to your curves. That's like calculus. Calculus is finding the slope of a line. Yeah, exactly. That's what the derivative is. And so you take the first derivative of a curve.

Right. You lay it right there. Right there. And it comes across that little point. It's what the derivative is. And so you take the first derivative of a curve. Right. Like you lay it right there. Right there. And it comes across that little point. It's right there. I got one more here. Go ahead. And then we go back to Alpupri.

Our love is like dividing by zero. You cannot define it. Oh. Oh. I got to tell you, using those lines lines you better build a robot girl but here's one hey baby are you a graviton

cause I find myself attracted to you totally geeked out I bet I bet our listeners could totally beat these and so they'll probably better than that alright so what do you have alright let's get back Totally geeked out. I bet our listeners could totally beat these,

and so they'll probably better than that. All right, so what do you have? All right, let's get back to our Cosmic Queries potpourri. Potpourri edition. Let's see what Jim Scarborough wants to know. Jim says, what is this conservation of information Dembski puts forth. Why do I keep forgetting things?

Okay. This is good. That's a great question. Is it really? Yeah. So information in the middle 20th century and onward, people,

the whole branch of research opened up called information theory. True. Right. If something has information, how long will it retain that information? People, the whole branch of research opened up called information theory. Right. If something has information, how long will it retain that information? And if it doesn't have the information, where did the information go? Okay. Information is very different from things like conservation of mass or energy or mass energy. For example, if you have an orange and then I give you a second orange, you have twice as much orange, don't you?

I hope so. Okay. If I give you a newspaper, then I give you that identical newspaper, you do not have twice as much information. That is true. You have the same amount of information duplicated. But I do have a bathroom for my dog. Okay. Now I do.

I hope it's a puppy. That's what you're doing with your dog. It's true. Otherwise, it's an infirmed dog. So information theory behaves differently from other kinds. I'm sorry. A conservation of information is a different understanding and a different treatment of information than conservation of mass energy would be treated. That's all.

And so there's an idea that can you lose information? What happens to it? And he's saying if there's a conservation of information theorem, then why is it that he forgets stuff? No, it's a brilliant question. What happens is what you remembered or thought you remembered becomes other things typically in your brain. Right. It just becomes other things. And so. So it just becomes other things and so so it's still there it's just it's not the same it's not the same information it's a total amount of information uh yeah it's an amount of information that you might be conserving there but uh it's not my research specialty so i don't know what the

latest is that they're all saying about it right it seems to me that if I have a newspaper and I burn it, I got rid of all that information. True. And this is what happens in book burnings. Civilizations typically take a few steps back because they've lost. And when you say civilizations, you mean Republicans. No, I'm joking. No, you don't.

I do. You don't. I do. You don't. Well, Jim, there you have it. There really is a conservation of information. Oh, by the way, everyone who passed the Jim Crow laws were Democrats. This is true. Just as a reminder.

Yes, Southern Democrats, we all know, are now modern-day Republicans. You just can't generalize over time and space. I'll give you that. Yeah, yeah. All right, Jim, great question, and your answer is early onset Alzheimer's. Okay. All right, let's move on. Wow.

Okay. Can we join in in this wow? Okay, yeah. You can sit there and admire the question and leave us hanging. Okay. This is Jacob Seymour, and Jacob wants to know, does nuclear fusion occur at the bottom of black holes? Ooh. Yeah, man.

That's why I was like, wow. Wow. Really simple, but good question. Ooh, yeah. I don't know. Oh. It's plausible. Okay.

Because at the singularity, which is like the limits of Einstein's equations, where in fact you are literally dividing by zero. Right. Which means we don't have a theory to understand the singularity. We can just say, that's the best we got. Come up with something better. Right at that singularity. Right.

At that point, all matter is at a very dense state. But we do know that the energy created by nuclear fusion, even if it occurred at the singularity, would not be enough to do a damn thing to the black hole. Wow. Yes, black holes are stronger than any nuclear fusion that would occur within them. It's why we got the black hole in the first place. The black hole used to be a star. And the star was going to explode and it didn't. The black hole said, no you're not. So as the massive stars, the higher the mass star, the difference, their fate becomes more and more

different from what the sun would be. There's a point where a star dies as an explosion, a supernova. If it's more massive than that, it wants to become a supernova, but the gravity overcomes that and it's black hole gravity and the whole star collapses down and implodes within itself. And so, no, you can't every time I try to get out, they keep pulling me back in. That is what everyone is saying who's stuck in a black hole right now.

Oh, wow. With that level of frustration, I might add. I'm so sure. Wow, that was fascinating. Good stuff. Good stuff there. All right. Let's go with Douglas Napolitano.

And Douglas says. Wait, you pronounce his name in a Spanish way, but it's clearly Italian. Napolitano. Napolitano. Oh, come on now. Napolitano. Napolitano. Okay. Douglas wants to know come on now. Napolitano. Napolitano. Okay.

Douglas wants to know this. It's like he's from Italy. I mean, from Naples. Yeah, yeah. Douglas wants to know this. Was there space before the Big Bang, or was space created during the Big Bang? What is the universe expanding into? during the Big Bang,

what is the universe expanding into? In other words, is space expanding with the matter and energy, or is the matter and energy expanding in the space? Man, my head, man. My boy's got some cosmic angst going on. He's getting asleep, you know. I gotta tell you, it's a nice little conundrum that he's... Yeah, so everything that we've come to know

and define space to be was formed within the Big Bang. Okay. And if we have a multiverse or some prior existing state out of which our universe spawned, that would be embedded in higher dimensions. And so normal space is not how you would address

that configuration. It'd be higher dimensional space, a four-dimensional space, five or ten dimensions. It's some higher dimensional space, a four dimensional space, five or ten dimensions. It's some higher dimensional space in which that occurs. Gotcha. So, if space is where there's nothing, then

outside of space, you might call that nothing-nothing. Nothing-nothing. Perhaps. So, we have top people working on the nothing-nothing. That's it. Chuck, we are in the five minute warning zone. This means, you know what that means. That's right. The lightning round.

It's the lightning round. Okay, I will answer questions in soundbite mode. Okay. To get in as many as we can in the next four minutes. All right, here we go. Go. This one from Facebook and Paul Bear. Paul Bear wants to know, how is the gravity of the sun strong enough to hold Jupiter into place,

but not strong enough to pull the Earth close enough to eat it up. Oh, because Earth is moving faster than Jupiter. And at our speed, at our distance, we are in a safe orbit. If we were moving at the speed of Jupiter, at our speed, at our distance right now, we would fall into the sun. Boom! Bada-bing. Boom!

Bada- Oh. Oh, yeah. There. Okay. There we go. Thank you. Next.

All right. So every orbit, at every distance from the sun, there is one speed that you can sustain and maintain that orbit. Anything less, you fall into the sun. Anything more, you will go to a higher orbit. Go. Okay. Rogue planet.

All right. Here we go. Also from Facebook, Patrick Clark wants to know this. Dr. Tyson, what do you see as the advantages benefits of permanent human colonization of other bodies in the solar system? What resources do places like the moon and NEAs hold, and how could we harness and use them efficiently?

Ooh, so NASA has a whole new branch of itself called ISRU. Okay. In-situ resource utilization, which is NASA speak for, when you get there, find your own damn food. Damn, man. That's rough.

So you got to look ahead. Is there water there? Is there natural resources? Can you seed the soils in a way to grow plant life? Is there enough sunlight? So right now there's nothing like Earth out there. And so if you're going to go, you're going to have to bring a whole lot of Cheetos. There's something to keep you keep you fed until you so uh the resource we develop our species exist on earth thriving on researches resources that are native to earth

right that's why we are okay here right and and not okay on the moon or on mars so this is a huge challenge there you go that we have not yet resolved. Go, next. Alright, there you have it. The answer is click your heels, Patrick. There's no place like home. Nice. Alright, let's see here. That might mean Patrick is wearing ruby slippers. Alright, Amanda

Dean wants to know this. Why are some planets in gas form and some in solid? Does this differ in a binary star system? Ooh, turns out, would you say Earth is gaseous? No, because it's mostly rock, and then we have this thin layer of atmosphere on it. Jupiter, if you go deep enough, it has a solid middle.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody's got a solid core. So basically we're all the same. It's just more atmosphere. More atmosphere. And in Jupiter's case, most of its mass is in the form of gas. I got a fever and I need more atmosphere.

Fantastic. More cowbell. Give me more atmosphere. Alright, here's the next question. This is from Gene. Oh, by the way, Jupiter has a much higher gravity so it can hold the very light gases such as hydrogen and helium that we could

not hold. Jupiter is mostly hydrogen and helium, very light gases, very fast moving atoms. They can fly out of a weak gravity field as they did for us. Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So our atmosphere is denser, heavier than Jupiter's atmosphere. We have heavier molecules in our atmosphere. Oh, cool.

Because they don't move as fast and so they don't escape. You sound like a chipmunk on Jupiter. Yes, you so would. I never thought that through because I was not going to think I would get out of my spaceship and open my helmet while I was in the atmosphere of Jupiter. But since you've already thought this through, Chuck, that is exactly how it would happen.

Time for one more question. Go. Made me choke. So all the Jupiterians sound like Mickey Mouse. Go. Go. The native Jupiterians. Go. Go. The native Jupiterians. Go.

All right. Here we go. This is from Paul F. Aronfsky Jr. Okay. How can we tell what far off planets and the other objects are made of? Ooh. Yeah. This was the birth of modern astrophysics in the late 19th century.

We took the spectroscope, the prism, take light, move it through the prism out the other side, it breaks it up into component colors like a rainbow, and in there you find embedded the fingerprints of the very chemical identity of what it is you are looking at. Boom! Bada-bing! And so today we don't just look at pretty pictures

of the night sky as Hubble would have you believe looking at the greatest hits from that telescope. What we do is we take the light and we slice it and we dice it. And in that light, we find carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, silicon, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide. We find molecules, atoms. Thanks for listening to StarTalk Radio. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Many thanks to our comedian, our guest, our experts, and I've been your host,

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