StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries – Scars in Spacetime

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

Can we influence the strong nuclear force? Neil deGrasse Tyson and Paul Mecurio answer grab bag questions about sci-fi laser guns, the Roche Limit, how we interact with the fundamental forces, and more! NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here:  https://startalkmedia.com/show/cosmic-queries-scars-in-spacetime/ Thanks to our Patrons Gladys Strickland, Jonathan Marino, Petri Rajama, Benjamin Cross, Smooth, Cecelia Linley, John Burgin, Elizabeth Shope, Barrett Mayes, Paweł Szczypa, Ivan Ocampo, Angelo Rios, Luisangel Araujo, B-RO RTR, Sebastian Poehlmann, Kendra, Charles, LateGame, Stephanie, Denis, Joseph Hodge, Daniel Smith, Matt Sutton, Ziyod Yusupov, TheAceIsHere _, Robert Baughman, Patricia Weaver, Scott Jones, Luis Figueroa, TheJosh, Justin Garrity, J. Michael Mastro, Andreas Sorteberg Vik, Christian Di Patria, Steve Kingan, Martha, Nick, Jeff Ferren, Louise Keyte, Ann Hosler, Darren, Roni Gi, Salacious B Crumb, Tero Tommola, Dhaval, Andy Roberts, Brian Simmons, Toney, Remedy, Terry Melman, David Smith, Andrew M Gross, Conan, Raz, Joseph Watkins, Joe, Dom WB, Mike Bertuccio, Deepak Mani, Adam Dockerty, Mike, Habib Hassan, Exercise Enlightenment, Everett, Twisted Universe, Jason Prechtl, Luis Antonio Leon, SwillisBolt, Switchblade91, Linda Hall, Bo J, Megan Marler, Dalton, Jim, Chris Brown, Krisztian Unpronounceable, Donce, Jay, Jacob, Suzan Wallace, Ted, Steve James, TERP Radio, Sublimis, Alexander Casian, Onlymeami, Zack Blankenship, John Perez, Specter, DJ, Kristian Jeremiassen, Adam Flores, Dan Herman, Zef Correal, Maddie, Adam, Mark, Mary, Andrew494, and Matthew Grieve for supporting us this week. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of StarTalk Radio ad-free and a whole week early.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

So Paul, thanks for doing Cosmic Queries grab bag with me. I love these. Always great questions. Yeah, some of them came from deep space. Very deep, which means they're either really smart or really drunk. I got a headache from some of the questions. Check us out and find out what gives Paul a headache on StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk, Cosmic Queries. I got with me, Paul McIrieu. What's up, my man? Good to see you again. Welcome back. Always great to be here. You collected the questions from our Patreon members. Always great.

We got some really fun ones, good mix. And I never see them in advance. No. This is like Karnak, where you hold the envelope. Karnak? Now you're going to say you're dating. Karnak from 50 years ago, Karnak. You know what?

It's okay for viewers to not. know something and then know something. That's like saying I'm only going to teach science that goes back 10 years. I am fed up with this. All right, go ahead. Let's continue. I want to just take a moment to just reflect on the privilege it is to have you

in this role. You're a multi-emmy-winning comedy writer. Yeah, comedian, comedy writer. Emmys. We're talking about actual Emmys. And Peabody Awards. And Peabody. That's the best one, Peabody. Yeah, it's small.

but it's large, if you know what I mean. Thank you for taking time out of your day. Are you kidding? I love doing this. It's so fun. Although you also work on Colbert and his days are numbered. Yes. So taking time out of your day might not be such a tax.

Yeah, what are they going to do? Fire me? I'm already fired. It might not be so stressful to take time out of your day. No, we're counting down. And I am available for kids parties. I can do balloon animals. Pretty much I can do a dachshund.

but just the body part. No head, ears, or tail. Or legs or tail. Or legs or anything. And on this show, you've been knighted barren. Yes, by yours truly. So I'm honored. I'm honored.

I did that with my Excalibur. You did. You did. You cut my juggler, but I'm okay now. So you brought questions in, and this is a grab bag. This is a grab bag. This seems to be a fan favorite, grab bags. The fans are amazing.

I mean, I always say this. It's worth saying. They're smart and pure. Oh, my God. You know what? It's a borderline annoying. And by the way, I judged how smart someone is not by how much they know, but by the depths of their curiosity.

The level of curiosity. Yes. And that's the only thing that's the hungry mind in search of enlightenment. And I always say if I had you as a science teacher, I'd probably be doing something in science. Your enthusiasm and everything else. All right. I don't care that you're taller than I am.

That's annoying. Monopoly world. Hello, I'm just curious about where the differences and. Who is this? It just says monopoly world. Monopoly world, okay. That's all it is. You know, the person wants to be secretive about this.

Bring it on. I'm just curious about where the differences and or similarities are between wormhole and a black hole. Oh, yeah. I mean, just because the word hole shows up in both, just, you know, chill out. Don't over, don't overthink it.

Don't be a hole about it. For me, one of the fun things about a black hole, Because our word hole is a two-dimensional idea. Think about it. There's a hole in the ground. You fall through the hole. Right. It's depth and it's step in a hole.

It's that circle and you fall through. Okay? Right. Whereas a black hole is a hole in every direction you approach it. Which is why once you get sucked into it. Yeah. There's no path out of the black hole. Right.

Right. And so it's a region of space where gravity is, so high that the speed of light is insufficient to escape. And just to put this in context, sometimes I make too many assumptions about what people might know. So let me back up just a little bit. Okay.

All right. You know the old saying, What goes up must come down? Yes. That's bullshit. Sorry. And did you write a paper on bullshit? God, I thought a whole thing.

And that was the conclusion of your dissertation? I learned early, how is it that we can go to the moon if you're going to say, what goes up must come down? Right. Okay? So it turns out there is a speed above which, if you leave Earth, you'll never come back. And that is sensibly called the escape velocity.

Right. From Earth's surface, it's seven miles per second. So Grandma's adage works for anything anybody would have thrown. Right. You throw it, it goes up. But if you have rockets, you're not beholden to Grandma's adages. With some kick-ass, boosters and everything. Right, right.

You're not beholden. Right. So it will never come back ever. It'll go to the edge of the universe before it thinks about coming back to Earth. So you can ask, if it's seven miles per second on Earth's surface, you can imagine objects,

planets with higher gravity, where the escape velocity is higher than seven miles per second. Right. Everything would weigh more. So that makes sense. Continue this line of reasoning. You get to a point where the escape velocity

is the speed of light itself. The speed of light is insufficient to carry the beam out of the black hole. So you fall in, you ain't never coming out. Light's not coming out. Is there a better term for it than the black hole? No, I think you're right. But both come from general relativity, right?

And both involve extreme. What's the other one? The wormhole? Yeah, the wormhole. So the wormhole, I had some early ideas about what that could be or what it might be. If you look at the math that gives us a black hole, the solution, there's a second solution to it,

which is the mathematical opposite of a black hole, which you might call a... Wormhole. No, go ahead, say it again. I really wasn't paying attention. If you were to name the mathematical opposite of a black hole, what would you call it? A white.

Thank you. A white hole. That's a solution to the equations, and it's the mathematical opposite of a black hole. Right. All right. So black hole sucks everything in. A white hole would probably do what?

Push everything out. Push everything out. So we said, let's look for that in the universe. Couldn't find anything that resembled anything remotely what a white hole should look like. Okay. So we don't think they exist. But how would they connect? We'd say, would they connect with a wormhole?

Connecting the black hole and the white hole. But since black holes are naturally formed from collapsing matter, is there any sort of known process in the universe to like could naturally create some kind of a wormhole? That's known? No, and we don't think so. We think you're going to have to make one on your own time. Okay? We know how to make a wormhole.

We just don't have the right ingredients. What we need is negative gravity stuff. Not the same as antimatter. Antimatter has ordinary gravity. Okay? An antiproton has the same gravity as a proton. Negative gravity stuff. Because what does gravity do?

It collapses space time. Right. A wormhole, you're trying to pry it open. Right. So you want the office. And travel through it. Yeah, that's, that's, that's, you get, you do that for free. Once it opens the hole, you just step through.

That doesn't quite, just open the hole. And you get sucked through. There's no sucking. It's just step through. If you can pry it open. But if a black hole is millions and billions of miles away from another locate, isn't it a wormhole connect? That's a tunnel in a way?

If they're connected by a wormhole, watch where you're stepping when you go through the other side. Because you don't know where. Get one of those mirrors. Like one of those look under the car mirrors Do that through the Oh, I know that. I'm Italian, I know that. Stop, stop.

Do you need easy pass in a wormhole? And what do they charge? I bet some municipality will put one up in the first wormhole. But you could naturally create a stable wormhole? So aliens, for example, if they have access to materials that we don't, and they discover a negative gravity thing,

then they, if they're smart, will know how to configure it to pry open a hole through the fabric of space and time. You step through and you land in another place and another time. So it's sort of like

Wormhole versus Black Hole. It's like, Black Hole, you check in the hotel, you ain't checking out. It's what they call the Roach Motel, so checking you don't check out. And Wormhole, you're checking out of the hotel, but you end up in a worse hotel

with a lousy buffet breakfast. Speaking of checking in and out, I think a lot about wormholes. And you know the closest we have to wormholes in our civilization is an elevator. There's like whatever's out here, you walk into this room. It's a box. It's a little box. Someone pushes some buttons.

Right. The door's open and it's a whole other place. Right. But what people don't explain and science will never is why I have to make small talk during that wormhole travel where I want to kill myself. The universe brims with mystery. So I think of that all. all the time.

Plus, if you come in from an elevator that opens to the outdoors, and you come in and then you're not outdoors anymore, you're in some other place. And if I don't tell you where you are, you have no idea. If I bring an alien into an elevator, it'll have no clue.

Because it's moving through time and it doesn't know. It doesn't know what I just did with it. As far as it's concerned, it'll be a wormhole. Just to finish this up, we'll move on. The stuff that you refer to. We don't know what it could be or what it is, or even if it exists.

Are we close to some? No, nothing close. negative gravity? Come on that. If we had that, we wouldn't need rockets. Do you think we'll ever get there? Nothing in the universe looks like it's operating under negative gravity. But I know the way science operates, keep your mind open to every and any all possibility. It is, and we're looking in the universe. We don't see any. It's open is, oh, we can't explain that. I wonder if it's negative gravity. That would be a way to think about negative. There's nothing out there that needs negative gravity to account for it.

So I'm skeptical. it's nonetheless fun to think about. It is. And maybe in the end we just need magic like Dr. Strange. Okay? But I kind of want to solve it with Rick of Rick and Morty because he uses real science. It's sort of, yeah, we've talked about that. Yeah, it's completely real science in Rick and Morty.

Wormhole, it's theoretically possible, but science is like, we're on our coffee break. Don't ask us to do it. Natasha Shaw-Davis. Hello, Dr. Tyson. This is Natasha from New Mexico. I'm currently at band club with other medical students and our mics are broken. So, were you out of where?

She's at band club. Band club. B-A-N-D. That's a thing? She plays it. Yes, there's a club. They play in a band-in-a-band. Yes. I'm a band club.

Yes. She was writing this while she was getting beaten up. They can't beat them up too much because then they can't perform for the game. Not the fingers. Not the fingers. No, this is literally hilarious to me because she's writing this. as she's at band club and she's a medical student. So apparently you have time in medical school to be in a band, which is troubling to me. I am not coming to you, Ms. Davis, for any medical treatment

because I don't want you to play your flute while you're working on me. Okay. So I'm currently a band club with other medical students. Our mics are broken. So while other instruments are cool, I must yell, how quietly should a singer whisper to affect one quark at a time?

What about just one atom? Any good uses of my nonsense? Thank you both. I love this question. Okay. So. I mean, it's not about whispering quieter. You can divide the universe up into four forces.

So the obvious one is gravity. We all know about that. Another one is the electromagnetic force. That's what holds all our model atoms and molecules together. The third is Palmicureo charisma? That's a force. No, no, that's, I checked. In fact, I double checked.

It's not there. That's negative gravity. Then there's the weak nuclear force, which operates within particles that describes how they decay into other particles. And then there's the strong nuclear force in the nucleus of an atom. We don't have access to the strong nuclear force. You've got to be like 10 million degrees to get in there. But we have quarks that make up atoms. Hang on, hang on.

We don't have access to that. The weak nuclear force, we're not really messing with that either. We can interact with gravity. and we interact with the electromagnetic force. All right. Whatever you do, that's what you're doing. Okay? Now, we had someone in that chair.

Did you take a hit of acid before you came here? What am I supposed to do with that? Whatever you do, that's what you're doing? We had someone in this chair, Betul Kachar, who said something I'd never heard before. I had to pause and reflect on it and say, wow, that's deep. The world is simply electrons looking for a place to rest.

Wow. And I didn't want to embrace that until I kept thinking about it. And it's like, yeah, that's what's going on at all times. That's what happens in when atoms get together with atoms to make molecules. The electrons are finding a place to hang out. Okay, I have this pen.

This is a solid state. It is held together by molecules and the electrons that bind enabling it. First of all, Did you wash your hands before you touch that? I licked my hands. Clearly. Okay.

But no, there's, you're saying electrons are in motion within that? At all times. At all times in everything. So there's the electrons, that's the electromagnetic force. But she's talking about quarks. Right. You ain't getting into quarks. Quarks are, they're locked up inside.

So it's like Legos make up a brick building within the Lego. You've got atoms and you've got within the atom. You're not getting into the quartz without higher power than what we have access to. But she wants to still influence it. And it's kind of a metaphysical question. Whatever you do ever at all, you're invoking electromagnetic fields and forces. But the issue here is wavelength, and it's not about loudness. It's about the fact that the collective wavelength are too large to localize into a quark.

She breathed. That's true. That was good. Come on, huh? That was good. I have Peabody Awards. The point is, she. She wants to whisper at some volume level that will somehow tickle quarks.

The fact that she... Which, by the way, is a fun parlor game. Tickling quarks? If you do anything at all, you are moving around electrons and you're bringing the quarks with you in the nuclei of the atoms that are parts of the molecules that comprise you. So you cannot do anything without setting into motion electrons and quarks. Either bound into the molecules that move because as she whispers, vibrations go into the air. And the molecules of the air vibrate carrying it to another location. So a whisper doesn't target anything.

It just bothers everything equally like the Human Resources Department. Right? I mean... They're there for your own protection. Yes, that's true. We have to worry about this in science all the time. If the mics are down and everyone is screaming at each other and she wants to be heard,

the background level of conversation creates what we call a noise level. Okay, that's the random sounds that are out there. If she wants to be noticed, she has to break through that noise, either in frequency or intensity in order to get noticed by anybody else. Do you define intensity as loudness? Loudness.

And frequency is, if she comes at it with a frequency that no one else is communicating with, everybody will hear it. So you have a deep voice. If everybody's higher, your voice is going to cut through. My voice is going to cut through.

And if I come in in a high pitch voice, that'll get heard in the din of other noises. Well, but at the atomic scale, does sound stop being a precise tool and become more of like a shove, like a statistical shove of some kind? No, it's always just,

it's a pressure wave moving through the medium at all times. Right. Are we alone in the universe or just early to the party? In my latest book, Take Me to Your Leader, I explore how aliens might find us, what they be like, and what we should do next. Curious, you should be. Take Me to Your Leader is available now in print and an audiobook, which I narrated. Don't wait until after you've had your first alien encounter to grab a copy of Take Me to Your Leader.

because then it would be too late. Mikhail Boisvert. Hello, Guardians of the Geeks. Nice. Mikhail from Canada. All right. If I submerge my arm in a sink full of water, first of all, you need to get a hobby,

or get in a swimming pool. Damn, you cold blood. Come on. There are people coming in out of their honest home experiments, and you're going to talk smack about them. Screw you and the cork you didn't ride in on. If I submerge my arm in a sink full of water or get in a swimming pool,

I don't really feel squeezed by the water. However, if I do the same with rubber gloves, say on washing dishes or get in a river wearing a waterproof fishing waiter, and I hope you're fishing and it's not some weird thing, I feel disturbingly squeezed. What's up with that? Shouldn't I feel less having something rigid

in terms of material around me? If he put on mittens and then submerged, it's not going to feel. He's putting on latex gloves. Of course they're going to squeeze it. Okay. That's what I mean. The guy needs a hobby.

If you're putting on rubber gloves, they're going to squeeze your hand. Well, because it doesn't feel like it's squeezing you. It's just pushing your body. No, so here's the thing. Air pressure is created between the skin. Right now, you're in equilibrium with the air pressure. You know how I know that?

Because you're not shrinking and you're not expanding. Thank you. So all. All pressure is equal on all parts of your body. I know that right now. Okay. Here's a cool thing you can do. If you're sitting in a pool, we're approaching summer now,

just sit at the edge of the pool up to your neck. Like sit on a step where you're up to your neck. Then inhale a very deep breath. And your body comes up a little in the water. Oh, I was a swimmer. Because you're getting less dense. Why does my bathing suit get air in it and it just, fills up.

Because you're farting. No one told you that. These are practical questions. I've been a swimmer my whole life. Because you're wearing speedos and there's no air exchange. You know I am. And it becomes a...

I don't do waiters, man. I just do a speedo. Everybody take that in at home. Drink that in. But the glove traps air. And when the air gets squeezed, the glove tightens. Okay.

So. And that's what he's feeling. If you have something underwater that is squeezable, the water pressure will squeeze it. If you have a plastic bag and put anything in it, okay? A head. It doesn't matter. It won't matter what you put in it. Okay.

That's what the word anything means. The air inside the bag is in equal pressure with the air in the atmosphere. So the bag is just the bag. We don't even think about it. Right. If you take that bag and immerse it without letting water get in. So you seal the bag. No, don't seal it.

Don't seal it. Leave it open up top. Okay. And lower it into the water. Before the point where the, to stop away, the water doesn't get in. Correct. Okay. That bag will collapse completely around what you put in it.

That's air pressure. It is water pressure winning out over air pressure. Air pressure between the head. And it's going to take all, between all the heads that are in the dollar. bag, it will squeeze out all of the air that's in that bag. Okay. Then you zip it and now you have basically a vacuum sealed bag. So like water itself is chill, there's no pressure, but you put a glove on.

No, no, I didn't say that. I'm working my way to that. I'm just saying that if you have a glove, typically there's air between your hand and the glove. If you put your hand in the water, the water's going to press the air out and it'll feel like the glove is squeezing on your hand. Right. But it's not. It's just taking the air out. Right. Okay, so no watch.

If you go deeper, then water pressure becomes significant. And there's a point where your body cannot resist the water pressure. And your ear drums will pop. Your lungs will collapse. And if you go deep enough,

you just implode. It's like the water is the mafia and your body owes the water money and it's squeezing you. Is that the exact analogy to whatever? I think that works. You said earlier in your Italian. I am.

I'm talking from experience. And we were talking about heads in a duffel bag. I know a guy who knows a guy and I owe somebody money. So it's fun to watch this happen. Just take a bag, like a Ziploc bag, but leave it unzipped. And just dip it into the water. Just watch all the air come out. It'll be snug onto what's in there.

Then zip it up. It's how to get all the air out of it. Well, I get a sip. sandwich bag, I put something in it, and if I squeeze the air out, what it does is it forms, the bag forms pretty closely around that object. Correct. You can get water to do that for you for free, but you have to set it up to make that happen. Okay. Yeah. So that's water pressure getting the air out, but five inches into the water, that's not

enough water pressure for you to feel that as the pressure on your body. Here's what will happen. As you submerge, there's pressure on you. You have skin, right? So skin, it's pretty good. But your eardrums, they are sensitive to pressure. Your capacity to breathe against pressure will be challenged. It's all fighting pressure.

As you're fighting it, as you get lower and lower. So it's fast. Pressure is a fun, not fun, it's a fascinating feature. It's a little unsettling, but I'll keep it in mind. Lee Robertson,

greetings gentle folk of the universe, Lee from Florida here. What is the determination for an object to be effective? by the Roche limit. I know Saturn's rings were likely made by one of its former moons being destroyed by the planet's Roche Limit,

but how are we able to maintain orbit around Earth with our own Roche limit? The Roche Limit matters for objects that are held together by the force of gravity. If you're just a solid object, the Roche Limit is irrelevant to you. You're a solid object.

You are not held together by the forces of gravity. Wait, if I, if I push the bounds of the Roche limit, are I going to be pulled up? You can just walk across the Roche limit and laugh in the face of crap. Which I've wanted to do for a long time. Of objects that are gravitationally bound, you could just laugh as you walk by them. So why the distinction on solid objects versus non-sol? I'm going to tell you.

So let's distinguish solid objects that are rigid and solid objects that are held together by gravity. We think of Earth as a solid object, but it's held together by gravity. All right. How do you know if something's held together by gravity? It's spherical. Always. Yes. Pretty much, yes.

Why does it have to be spherical? Because that's what gravity does to something when it is in charge. I'm going to go back to this pen cap. Isn't this held together by gravity? No, it's held together by electromagnetic forces, which swamp the effects of gravity. That's why that's not falling apart, even though we're within the roached limit of Earth.

You can walk around. and not get torn apart. Because crossing the road's limit, Earth is not really tearing you apart. It feels like, it looks like that's what's happening, but that's not what's happening. I would tell you what's happening. You ready?

Yeah. Okay. The closer you get to an object, the stronger its tidal forces are. And tidal forces go up as the inverse cube of your distance. If you are one-third the distance to an object that you used to be, what's the inverse of one-third? Three.

Three. Cube it, what do you get? Three times three times three. What do you get? 27. 27. The tidal forces are 27 times higher. If you're one-third the distance than they used to be. If you're one-fifth the distance, it's 125 times higher.

So these are tidal forces. All that means is it's pulling on one side, the side closest to the planet, way more than it is on the other side. So at the Roche limit, the title force, simply exceeds the gravity. And what is that point? How do we measure that point? So you can calculate where that is.

If it exceeds the gravity... But it's different for every object. If it exceeds the gravity of the object that's holding it together, then gravity loses. The tidal forces win. And so mountains just float up. And because they're not held down by gravity anymore. Rocks float up.

And the whole thing just breaks apart. It doesn't break. It just lifts apart from itself. Because the Roche Limit is kicking the ass. Disassembles is the better term than break apart. I like kicking the ass. Because nothing breaks. A rock is still going to be a rock.

But if the rock was sitting on Earth, it's no longer attached to Earth. Because a rock is held together, not by gravity, but by electromagnetic forces. And you have this fetish about your pen. So your pen would survive a crossing of the... the roach lobe intact. Hang on. I love you. Fetish is a little strong.

I mean, really. So is it sort of like pulling bread apart and at some point you're pulling it apart to the point where it becomes disconnected from itself

and then that's the... It's exceed the roche limit at that point. If the stretchy part of the bread is what we're thinking of is gravity, then there's a point where your force exceeds the gravity

and the bread just pulls apart. So like the roche limit is like the ultimate relationship boundary like where you're getting closer and closer it doesn't mean anything because you just want to turn your relationship into confetti. Well up until that point you're both independent

strong entities within the Roche Lobe you get torn apart. No you get, no I use it a different word you get disassembled. Everything you once were is now in pieces. So it's like you're in a bar

things start to happen. There's a guy you get a little close, Roche Limit's like, let's take it outside, I'm going to dismember you. Only if you're talking to his woman. Does that happen? Exactly. It doesn't just happen. No, I'm in my Speedo in the bar,

and she's checking me out. I'm not asking for trouble, then the Roche Limit kicks in and we have to go outside. So the Roche Limit sort of exceeds gravity, power, strength, and then it's... Exactly, and so it's a very natural place where that would happen.

But anything that's held together electromagnetically is intact. rocks, boulders, no problem. Your pancap, you and the electromagnetic force is 40 orders of magnitude, 40 powers of 10 stronger than gravity. Therefore, Roche Limit has no... Effect on something that's held together

by electromagnetic forces, like rocks. But if you're a rubble pile that's all held together by gravity and you come near the Roche Lope, it'll totally disassembled. within the rubble, we'll stay. We'll stay. But they'll break apart.

So another two rocks here. We don't know whether some asteroids are just rubble piles or whether they're solid, which matters if we're going to deflect them en route to hitting us. Because you're going to push it out of the way. You're going to need like 20 Ben Affleck.

Ben Affleck? Is that the right? He was part of that. Was he? Yeah. He goes on the thing with... But he's Bruce Willis. No, he's with Bruce Willis.

It was Bruce Willis. And Bruce Willis is the old salty guy and then Ben is like loose, but then Ben does it be in the guy. And then Liv Tyler, she helped out too. Oh, my God. You need something to come back to. Yes.

Exactly. I don't know if you know, but we recently did an explainer on the Roche Limit. Oh, perfect. So anyone who was confused by what I just said or by what you said. Well, the reason this question got asked

after your explainer is the buzz on social media is your explainer was, eh. It was Roche Limit, Beth. So you just catch it in our archives. I think we do well on our explainers. You do well on everything. Are you kidding? When you care.

Bev, happy galactic gumbo to you, Dr. Dyson. If you could delete one overused sci-fi movie trope, what would it be? Thank you for keeping the educational Eternal Flame Strong, Bev, a one-syllable name from Alabama. I've given up on this, so I'm going to mention it, but not that I think it'll ever happen. they should stop, you should stop hearing explosions in space. It would be completely silent. Because. There's no air in space to propagate the sound.

From wherever it is to where you are, completely silent. So it makes for much less drama if they're just... Okay, that's all good and technical. Can I have one now? Yeah, what's yours. Can we delete the speech where they save humanity? Have you met humanity? It's annoying.

We don't need to save it. Well, how about the one where the astronaut is, like, are they lost in space? Are they going to save somebody or not save somebody? And there's always the video of the kid that was just born and the touching the video screen back on Earth. Yeah. You know, really?

Come on. Can we move on from that, please? Exactly. And anybody who has like a nine-month-old kid, keep them on Earth? You don't send him in the space. No. And he doesn't need to be on a video at nine.

He's going to be doing that the rest of his life. How about the fact that when they show up, the aliens, they immediately speak perfect English, okay? Meanwhile, you can't understand the guy from Glasgow, Scotland right now. And suddenly, right? No, seriously, like you've got an octopus alien.

No, the alien studied. No, the alien studied. Well, no. It doesn't wash for me. They're smart. They can learn. They're smart. Why are we always assuming that we're dumb and they're smart? Because that's another trope. Because they arrived here. Well, but how? But we, we, we cheer on

people who ascend 100 kilometers above Earth's surface, which is the equivalent of two dimes above a schoolroom globe. They go up and come back and we celebrate them as astronauts. We have an alien coming from across the galaxy.

How do you know they just took them a long time to figure it out? Why do we give them credit? I'm just saying they come across the galaxy. I'm thinking they're smarter than us. I'm thinking they have higher technology. I'm thinking they can read a dictionary and be fluent right after they read it. But they could read the dictionary and just say,

this is a really stupid race and it's not worth it. They could do that too. In fact, they likely will. Exactly. So those are your tropes. Do you have any others that come to land? Yeah, so those with the touching the screen of the newborn infant from your spouse at home. And the sound and space.

Where the astronauts are floating in space. That's fine. That's fine. That's fine. But go ahead. So there's another one. They have these sort of laser weapons. Okay. And again, they're making noise.

Chum, chum, chum. Yeah. That's why I say, I've given up. I let them make the chum, chun, chun. So you see, and you see, and you see the laser going from the ship to the target. Right. No. The laser is headed to the target.

If you can see the laser, that means ascending light sideways to you. Right. It means there's something there's reflecting the light. It would be like the kid went like this with the chalkboard erasers. Okay, now do the lasers so we can see the laser beam. That's not how empty space works. Wait, the laser beam has an end point that it hits the object. Yeah, you'll see it explode on the other side.

But you're not seeing the beam. You won't see the beam at all. Because it's light. It's light, and unless you can reflect it out of the beam to your eyes. How do you know that there's not something happening in space, in time, that is doing that? You don't understand yet. You have to be in the middle of a big gas cloud to make that happen.

And then you'd have particles reflecting. Because that's sort of the chalk and the thing. Yeah, that's the equivalent of the chalk. All right. I don't think we need to save humanity. That's all I know. Kurt Guy. Hey, Neil and Paul.

Paul, on your show, permission to speak, you spent years pulling the extraordinary out of ordinary people. From a cosmic perspective, Neil always says we're all made of stardust. After hearing so many different life stories, what's the atomic common thread you found that proves

will all part of the same human constellation? I love that. And so that reminds me that your stage show is not just you on stage. A fundamental part is you interacting with the audience. Yeah, just borne out of my stand-up and liking to talk to audiences

and getting these amazing stories. So have people caught on and now they leave the front rows empty? Yes, it's like going to a Gallagher show where he's smashing fruit. Gallagher, for those who are over 50. My job is to

open people up. You act like you're young. You're 78. You have a swollen prostate. I know. I talk to you, my prostate out of this. So what you do only works

if, because you never met these people before. No. You can... Although I do get asked if it's pre-planned, if they've been scripted or any of that. I know you're talented. You don't need that.

I get that. So you read the audience by whatever metrics, and you know what thread will work through them so that you have a meaningful exchange of content and humor. Yes.

And so is this because you know human nature so well? Because I have my counterpart to that just as an educator, but I want to hear, because the comedian is way closer than the educator is. I think that people want to be heard and I think people want to be heard in a context where they feel safe.

I define safe as like not worrying about political correctness and what you can say and also that they're not going to be made fun of. That would mean emotionally safe. Yes. Yes. And then although they are, there are, we do this over an alligator pit. So there's a physical safety issue.

And lava, too. Of course, hello. For me, what I've been told, and I can't speak to this, I do have this natural curiosity. I'm not just asking the questions as part of an act. So, and when you get to that second, third, and fourth question, you get these amazing stories. And I think the reason that it works is because there's something that I call a, we all have beautiful, imperfection. And what I say in my show is we're imperfect and we should embrace that. In other words, we want to think that life comes in nice, neat boxes and everything's black and white, but life

would be boring. But in the imperfection, that's what's interesting. That's where you get crazy stories, funny stories, how about stories, because we're all making imperfect decisions all the time, but that's okay. And I think what happens is a connection happens with people in the audience that night because they're sitting there going consciously or subconsciously, oh, this guy's as imperfect as I am, and I feel pretty good about that. Maybe we should redefine those imperfections as perfections, if they're fundamental to what it is to be alive. Oh, wow.

That's a lot deeper than I thought of it. It's in the same vein of that. If everyone is special, then no one is special. Right. It's the same kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. If everyone has imperfections, then that's what the perfection is. But Kurt asks about common thread. And I think the common thread is that people want to be connected,

especially now. Things are divisive and they seem to only be getting worse. But it's not a political show. But I think people want to be connected and they get connected through these stories. And I think the other thing that happens is I think it gets us out of our silos to be aware that there are other people out there different from us in a way that's good to know. You don't have to agree with it, like it, or understand it. But you have to know in advance that they're going to like that. They're not going to get up and walk out of the show. They do.

Okay. I mean, I've had stories where you're like, oh, my God. I mean, I've had two heroin addicts on stage, one recovering and one didn't want to recover. You bring them up on stage? Oh, yeah, they come on stage. Oh, okay. I bring them up in groups, like, four, six people at a time, and then we just start. That's brave.

I've seen you do that at the beginning of Colbert. Yeah. Yeah. And then what ends up happening. Yes. And what ends up happening is, it really turns into like we're hanging out in somebody's big basement having drinks and telling stories for people who have never met before because then people from the audience will start to yell out questions, which is fine with me. And then the

beautiful thing for me is they don't leave right after the show's over. They come over to somebody and they'll say, oh, you're from Portland, I'm from Portland and they'll start to connect with you. Because they learn that about them. Yeah. And they were drawn in by the conversation. So I think it's the common thread of sort of we're all imperfect and we're all figuring it out. So we need to send you to the Middle East. Wow. Bring peace to the world. Oh yeah. Okay, I'm the one. You know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to go on my speedo. That'll make people throw up. They'll stop all action. Exactly. Nobody can fight because they're all throwing up. But thank you for asking that question. It gives me a chance to explain the show a little bit. It's pretty awesome.

So my version of that, I don't know if I got asked it as well. Yeah, I think it's for both. Yeah. I rely on an assumption that everyone is fundamentally curious at some level. And if they forgot how to be curious, there are embers that just need to be fanned that can then reignite in their adulthood, embers that were there as child, as children.

And there's nothing more satisfying to an educator than to watch an adult have a resurfaced feeling of wonder about the world that kids have every day, because every day in a kid's life is new. So here's what you do, we talked about emotional safety in my show. What you do is what I'll call intellectual safety. Like, I never feel stupid, and I don't think anybody does. Really, I've been trying to make you feel so. I've been failing at that. Let me go back and try again. You really suck at that.

No, you give intellectual safety and enthusiasm. And those two things together, you can draw people in emotionally with enthusiasm and not being pedantic and talking down to them. And you never make somebody feel. They don't fear displaying their ignorance. Exactly. Okay. And so when, look, I mean, we've all- But I will attack you. I will attack you if you don't know that you're ignorant and are coming out out of the gate strong.

Right, exactly. Because then you're in this place where- Listen, you know enough to think you're right, and you don't know enough to know you're wrong. And then you're aggressive. I don't, you know. Yeah. Everybody watching, everybody listening and you and I

have had a moment where you go. I don't want to ask that question. I'm going to feel, it's going to sound stupid. Hey, you and me. Nick, you and I. Okay, you see, this is why people don't socialize with you. This is why you're alone a lot. Sitting there pulling bread apart, doing the Roche limit things.

I'm just saying. So I think that that's a common thing, especially when you're younger, it's like, I want to ask this question and I feel stupid to ask it. Then you ask it, and a person goes, it's great you ask that because five other people have the same question. You never create an environment where you feel like you could ask a stupid question and you have enthusiasm. So you give what I'll call intellectual safety in that way. Thank you for thinking about it that way. And I think it's really important. All right.

Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah. Done with our mutual appreciation society? This is great. I'm still not hanging out with you after this. Time for a couple more questions. Sure, absolutely.

I'm Ali Khan Hemorrhage and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Hi, Dr. Tyson. If space itself is expanding faster than light, what's really stopping us from ever outrunning the universe and is the limit physics or just our current understanding of it. Alan Ray are here, an Indian turning in from Vilmius Lithuania. Oh, okay.

So if I understand that question, if space is expanding, and the fastest you can travel in the space is the speed of light, and space is expanding faster than the speed of light. Which is seven miles per seven. No, that's the escape velocity from Earth. Go ahead. Okay. Yeah. The speed of light, 186,000,

2282 miles per second. If the space is expanding faster than light, and within space, the fastest you can move is the speed of light, you're not outrunning the universe. Is it ever possible? No. You're not outrunning the universe.

That's not happening. And is it, do we know that, or do we just think that there's science out there that we don't understand that? We're not outrunning the universe. If the universe re-collapsed and is not then stretching at faster than the speed of light,

then yeah, you can get wherever you want. Every place you see, you can get there. Right. At the speed of light or less. But right now we live in a universe where there's a distance at which is receding from us faster than the speed of light. And it's not a problem because that's Einstein's general theory of relativity,

which places no speed limits. What is causing it to recede faster than the speed of light? Do we know? The two things. The original energy of expansion was greater than the escape velocity of the universe itself. That's another way to think about that.

It'll expand forever. But we also found dark energy, which is this negative pressure that's forcing the expansion to accelerate. And so that puts it out of reach. Negative pressure. I thought you were talking about your personality. Okay.

All right, we're going to do another one. So you're not out running the universe. So just chill out on that one. We want to get a couple more in here as we finished. Diego Calderon. Hello, Dr. Tyson. I'm Diego Calderon from the world's longest and narrowest country.

home to some of the world's most advanced telescopes. I'm a new Patreon member and someone deeply curious about the universe. Our telescopes can detect parts of reality. We are completely blind to radio waves, infrared, x-rays, and gamma rays. But they always translate them into forms our senses can understand.

If humans could develop one extra sense to better discover the universe, what sense would you choose? Greetings from? Where is he? There you go. And if he's Chile, then it's not Calderon. It's Calderon.

Oh. Diego Calderon. I feel like you're hitting on me right now. Are we going to tango? The Andes mountain range goes practically the full length of Chile. And so all the great telescopes in South America landed in Chile for that reason. There's also very good atmospheric stability because the mountains are right on the ocean shore. and so the way the air comes in

and interacts with the mountain range, it creates a very stable observing environment. Because the range is so tall. It's all relative to that and the air is cool off the ocean. So it all combines the same advantages they get in Hawaii. Right.

And the big observatories there. We should go on a vacation there together to the Andes. You and me? Yeah, you know, bring the wives. I don't know if they're going to want to come. Leave your speed over. So yeah, if humans could develop one inch of sense.

You know what it'd be? Better discover what we'd be. You ready? Common sense. Yes. Come here, give me that right there. Mine was, know what you're talking about. Common sense.

We don't need... I mean, I feel a little privileged here as a scientist because scientists have dozens of senses, just like Diego commented. We can see infrared, ultraviolet, x-rays, gamma rays, radio waves without our physiology enabling that because we have detectors. That's what science is, is how to probe the world beyond the capacity of our physiology to accomplish that.

So because I can do it with my tools, I'm not thinking that I'm deficient. Right. That's not. He's talking about not through tools, but just a natural. I know. I'm just saying I don't feel the deficiency that he's asking. because I have my science

and say yes and if there's I think common sense is something humans lack which means it's not common I just pick the ability to detect you know when someone actually knows what they're talking about

or is just a bag of hot air how about that sense? That's science literacy which empowers you to know when someone else is full shit. I don't need a sense of dark matter I need a sense that tells me where the hell my phone is

so I don't tear my house apart. Like I'm a rabid dinosaur looking for some meat. I don't know. I'm getting angry now. I don't make sense when I get angry. So you lose your phone in your own home. Yes, you haven't done that? Says anybody over...

No, here we go. Here we go. So common sense is actually a good one. Yeah, because I'm content with the senses that my methods and tools of science otherwise bring to me. This is where we were talking about before when we talked about intellectual safety. It's sort of the person you,

you don't like, and I agree, is the one that will just come in, you know, full in a China shop, like, I know everything and doesn't want to hear anything. And I don't mind someone doing that if they actually knew everything. But generally, when you do know everything, you're not that aggressive. No, exactly. Yeah, because you're comfortable when you're not overcompensating. You don't overcompensating. It's the way you do.

I mean, wait, what? Well, that was a great question. Yeah, really good. I think a couple more. Time for couple more. Yeah, slip another one in there. All right, here we go. Hello, Dr. Tyson.

In popular fiction, we experience time travel from one perspective, either a single person traveling through time or multiple people traveling to a specific time in a single event. We rarely, if ever hear, multiple people traveling from multiple perspectives. How would the universe handle these separate events? Thanks from Austin Town, Ohio, Bob W. The universe can't handle the truth. Well, it's conflicting cause and affection. No, no.

If one person goes to one place and that's what the story is about, fine. But you can make another story about somebody going somewhere else and let there be a hundred stories about people going throughout. So maybe the question is, if someone is about to disrupt a timeline of events, it gets highly complicated if somebody else is in a different part of that timeline with similar capacity to influence the timeline of events. And then it gets very chaotic. But wait, the universe would have to either force all of those perspectives into one consistent

in story, split them into separate realities, or prevent the situation entirely. It would just become one story. We wouldn't have to force anything. Okay, so then if time travel were possible, would multiple travelers from different points in time necessarily converge into contradictions? They would wreak havoc on the timeline

we have come to know and love. They would turn it into a new timeline that had them as part of that timeline to begin with. Yeah, but that's not science fiction. That's like the universe opening up too many tabs and everything crashing. It's a, it's a two, a universe with too many tabs. I like that. Yeah?

That's a perfect analogy. Because I did my thesis in Chile over that. It's so weird. When were you there? It seems contradictory to me. No, I'm just, I think the issue is how much of a maelstrom would unfold if more than one person were meddling in the timeline simultaneously. Can multiple conflicting past be all true at the same time or not?

Not in the same universe, no. Okay, but they can be through time travel. But we have to ask what this conflict mean, right? So you can't have a universe where Hitler rises to power, and in that same universe, Hitler doesn't rise to power. Pick one. And so this is why people are thinking that timeline splits, you actually split universes.

This allows them to... So contradictory things can exist in two different universes. That's the only way to get out of that... Conundrum. That's conundrum, right. And there are plenty of people who want to think that way. about universes. The timeline splits into two universes.

I would time travel with you. You would? Yeah, if you didn't talk. As long as you leave your speedos behind, we go anywhere. There you go. I think we did a nice job here. We got through a lot of questions. One quick one, and I'll answer it quick.

A quick one. Okay, let me find a quick quick. Patrick here, Dr. Tyson, Patrick, just another science nerd from southeast Texas. What if spacetime behaves like a super solid, meaning it has both fluid-like flow and crystal-like structure, could black holes actually be long-lived topological defects in that medium rather than singularities? And if so, instead of destroying information, might they encode it in stable patterns or scars in space-time itself,

potentially releasing it later as structured gravitational wave echoes or even retro-casual signals? This is a really basic question. and I wish this guy would be a little smarter. Wow. That's a great question. That question is so trivial, I'll let you take it. Well, you know, I'm a big fan of crystal light. It's like a lemonade, but it doesn't have all the calories.

Is that what we're talking about here? So I'd like the notion that something we think of as just empty space is reinterpreted as a medium within which you can embed information. I like where he's going there. And we know how you make a black hole. So if you can make a black hole in this medium, then the black hole itself is not some blemish that's there. When we look at crystals,

there are imperfections within crystals that make for some interesting properties. Some of those imperfections give them certain color hues because the light doesn't go through smoothly. Structure. Yeah, yeah. And so, but a black hole is a very natural, phenomenon. So I can't think of it as an imperfection. I refuse to think of it as an imperfection.

But if a black hole has the power to send out ripples into that medium that contain echoes of what happened inside, and that then somehow gets embedded in that medium, that's a cool idea. The question is what, so here's what you do. When you have an idea, however outlandish, you ask, how would we test it? Is there some light echo? left by a black hole in the middle of empty space that we should be looking for? Is there some scar or record within the fabric of space and time that would betray the existence of these black holes or other imperfections? And you'd have to pose the question in a way that our telescopes can answer.

Otherwise, it's just fun science fiction. Well, what about his supposition? What if space time behaves like a super solid, meaning that it's both fluid-like flow and crystal-like structure. Do we believe there is a super solid? Well, that's to what if, and then if it is, then it would somehow capture these echoes

in its substance, if it is a thing, right? And it's probably not all it would capture. There'd be some other phenomena. When we say echo in this context, we mean sort of what happened, the after effects of a black hole being created. Yeah, just a black hole being a black hole? Does it vibrate?

Does it trigger some pulse? Is there a gravitational wave that has information embedded within it? So yeah, I don't have a problem thinking that way. But if you're going to do that, you want to come up with predictions. Do we have that ability to come up with predictions? No, it would be his job.

Wow. Okay. If he's going to seek up that question, I'm leaving it to him to come up with it. When did you semi-retire from science? I'm tired. I'm tired. I'm damn tired. That's another trope in every movie. I'm tired. I can't do this. I'm too damn old for this. Well, that was a great question.

All right. I think we've wrapped up. We've got a great... All right. We're good. Probably didn't get to them all. No, we did not. All right. Maybe next time. Yes. Paul! Great to see you. We'll find you. So what are your next cities?

So on my website, Paul McCurio.com. We'll find you. I'm right there. You can't miss me homepage in my Speedo. And after... And after May 21st, if you need your lawn mode. I'm the guy. Who wants mayonnaise on their sandwich? I'm the guy.

I can do any of that. The last Colbert show. Colbert show and, yeah. Kind of weird and strange, but it is weird and strange. All right, dude. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, great to see you. All right.

This has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Grab bag. Fan favorite. Neil de Grass Tyson here, as always bidding you to keep looking up.