StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries: Science Fiction - The Sequel

Episode Date: January 26, 2014

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Eugene Mirman are back to answer more of your sci-fi questions about Aliens, The Black Hole, Prometheus, Superman, Star Trek, Iron Man, Futurama, Gilligan’s Island and more. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm an astrophysicist, your personal astrophysicist. And I work at the American Museum of Natural History right here in New York. And I also serve as the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium there. Today, we're doing Cosmic Queries.

StarTalk, the Cosmic Queries edition. I've got in studio Eugene Merman. Hello. The one, the only. A voice. Yes. Risen from Bob's Burgers. Yes.

Because I can't believe you're that on a look for you on TV. So you're going to help us get through this. I haven't seen these questions before. And this edition is the sequel to the science fiction edition. Yeah, science fiction part two. Part two. Yes. Let's do this.

Bring it on. These are questions called from the internet. Oh, yeah. This is from Facebook, Twitter, from the internet. Okay. These are not- Fans of StarTalk, and this is our way to give back to them. So here we go.

Allie Bishop wants to know, can Neil please explain the hypothesis that the universe is a holographic projection? I've heard of it. I just don't understand it. Yeah, I can't claim to fully understand it either. It's an inventive, innovative concept where, see, on a black hole, information that comes through the event horizon has a memory of that information imprinted on the inner surface of that event horizon. And if I remember correctly, and the notion is you can create a whole world just on this sort of projected fact of having passed through the event horizon. projected fact of having passed through the event horizon. Now, how you get from the event horizon, which is a surface surrounding a black hole to the 3D existence that we are, I was a little fuzzy on that.

And so I don't claim enough to answer that question. But you described her question to other people, and now we all want it answered. So I've just frustrated people even further. You've clarified a thing that I didn't know to not understand. Yeah, it has to be. So I've just frustrated people even further. Well, no, you've clarified a thing that I didn't know to not understand. So thank you. It's an intersection. Now you really don't understand it. It's an intersection of sort of information theory and general relativity with regard

to things like event horizons. And the visual edge of our universe is an event horizon kind of of it to unto itself and so so it's it's intriguing it's intriguing uh but i'm not all there okay so i so that's a partial answer uh and maybe we'll come back and pick it up again what else okay jacob craner asks in the alien movies the aliens have highly corrosive acid for blood. Is this biologically feasible? Could a creature survive having highly acidic blood? And do we know of any that exist with similar properties today?

Yeah. Well, I mean, acid. Bloods, acid snakes. You know, everyone, when they hear the word acid, they say, ooh, it's going to destroy things. Well, you can be basic as well. That's the opposite of acid, and that can also destroy things. Yeah. I have acid in my stomach.

Yeah, yes, you do. And it's very – I can eat metal. Very low pH acid. But when you're basic, very basey, if you want to think of it that way. That's also rather caustic. And in fact, some of the most caustic stuff in your household is basic. And that's in Drano, liquid. That's why you really shouldn't drink Drano.

That's why. And if Drano was alive, this would be a great answer to his question. So all that matters is whether your acidic or basic blood is not caustic to the skin that contains it right right that's all that really matters and for example you have acid in your stomach that could dissolve other things yeah but they don't dissolve the lining of your stomach so it's just a matter of who's sitting next to whom yeah chemically or biophysically and then you're cool so the answer is, yeah, totally. You could have a very acidic alien.

Like I said, we have an extremely acidic stomach acid. So stomach, it's basically hydrochloric acid. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, the chlorine in salt. Yes. Which is sodium chloride. Yeah.

Chlorine becomes part of the hydrochloric acid in your stomach. Oh. That's one of the reasons why you need salt. To keep your stomach all nice and acidy. Yes, so that you can dissolve foods and have it enter your bloodstream for nourishment. Okay. Next. Jeffrey Bethel wants to know, could it be possible to give people telekinetic abilities like the Force from Star Wars using cybernetic implants?

Because obviously you couldn't just grow it. Well, here's the thing. Cybernetic outplants don't do that either. I don't see that. Yeah, could you do it with just a helmet? Yeah, I mean, I don't see it happening outside of your head, much less in your head. Something in your head presumably would enable you to control it

with your thoughts. I think that's the concept there. Yeah, that's what he's really a fan of. We can't do that outside of our head in the first place. We don't have any kind of telekinetic wands that use magic magnets. Are you saying Magneto is unrealistic? Magnetic fingers and blood. Yeah, one issue I had with Magneto is he's deflecting lead bullets,

and lead is not particularly magnetic. I mean, not all metal is magnetic. Yeah, that's why you should always shoot him with nickels. I mean, not all metal is magnetic. Yeah, that's why you should always shoot him with nickels. That should have been just a 10-minute X-Men movie where someone shoots him with a gun made of nickels in the head and he's dead. Not many people know that nickel is a magnetic metal because when you go to a nickel coin. Oh, yeah, I meant the coin. It's a gun that shoots the coin, not the material.

But the material in pure form is highly magnetic. You take a magnet to a nickel it's not magnetic at all telling you that there's not that much nickel in a nickel yeah just fyi i figured yeah okay government's always trying to trick us by stealing all the nickel in our neck yeah and there was a james bond episode we had a highly magnetic uh feature of his wristwatch or some item on his wrist. And when someone shot a bullet at him, he just lifted his arm up and deflected the bullet. And they forgot to include the conservation of momentum. If you can deflect a bullet with your arm,

your arm has to deflect wildly in the other direction in response. And that's not what happened. Wait, so is there anything that could function similar to telekinesis that I guess would be somehow magnetic or something? Well, so what you'd have to do, maybe the argument here is you have your thoughts affect an object that generates a magnetic field that can then be targeted towards one object and another. And then you could attract or push away because you go north pole, south pole. But it would be mostly things that were actually magnetic. You couldn't push like a plastic cup.

Yes, that could respond to action at a distance. And the two things we know are gravity and electromagnetism. So you could have a gravity machine. Yeah, but if I target gravity towards one thing, everything there would come towards me, right? I can't just say, cup, come to me. Right, right. Everything between you and the cup would right right exactly so so everybody out there stop trying to move things with your mind when you

wake up in the mornings okay it's pointless okay amoro jean baptiste asks is there any is there anything scientific to the different reaction of superman cells to red sun versus yellow sun oh good question is question. Is it realistic? The answer is, we just ran out of time in this segment. No! Yes, we did. Is Superman real?

You have to come back. It's after the break. You're listening to StarTalk Radio, the Cosmic Queries edition, the sequel to the science fiction edition. This is the sequel to our previous Cosmic Queries on science fiction. Eugene, thanks for doing this with me here. Eugene Merman is the other voice in the studio.

I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. So you realize we're on the internet, as you know. We're at StarTalkRadio.net. You're on the internet. You tweet the Eugene Merman. It's StarTalk tweets. You find out where all the shows are. It's just StarTalk Radio.

It's a very simple handle there. So I'm ready for it. This is the Cosmic Queries edition. Questions called from the fan base of StarTalk. And they're all about science fiction questions. So bring it on. Bring me the next one. Well, you never answered the Superman question.

Superman cells, are they affected? Oh, after the previous break. Yeah, yeah. Oh, good memory. Is there anything really scientific between – well, I have it written down, but yeah. Between the red sun and yellow sun, is that true? Like would someone potentially be able to fly or – Under one sun and not under another. Yeah.

Yeah, so we think we know stars very well at this point. It's one of the triumphs of 20th century modern astrophysics. How stars are born, how they live out their lives, how they die, what their properties are, what their catalogs. Who their friends are, what their favorite books. Well, figuratively, stars have friends. They're born in clusters, and clusters of a few, clusters of pairs. They're binary stars, triple stars, quadatively, stars have friends. They're born in clusters and clusters of a few, 10 or, you know, clusters of pairs.

Yeah. They're binary stars, triple stars, quadruple stars, quintuple stars, stars that have hundreds of star systems that have hundreds of stars, thousands of stars, hundreds of thousands of stars. Oh, wow. So they're cousins, uncles, aunts, all of these, except they're all born at the same time. So they're simultaneous in their generation.

Here's the thing. We know the difference between a yellow star and a red star. You know, the yellow star is- And is it 10%? The yellow star is hotter than the red star, period. And it gives off a little more white light, okay? A little more yellow light than does the red star.

Yeah. It's just light. So if it's light that gave Superman his powers, and if it's red light that took him away, then all you need to do is shine red light on Superman and he'd be a pile of a crying mess. You know, Lex Luthor really can hear you, so you really shouldn't be saying things like that.

So it's not simply... You don't even need kryptonite. You just need a flashlight. We have fully characterized the light emanating from stars. And a red star, if Superman did not have powers on Krypton, but he has power on the Krypton system, and he has powers on the Earth-Sun system,

then we would have had him figured out long ago. But even if his skin is like a solar battery that absorbs the energy? Oh, yeah. So if the yellow sun emits higher energy light than does a red sun. And he could be absorbing it, and then red light wouldn't ruin him right away. He could be, except we know exactly how much energy his skin can absorb. And it's infinite.

No, it can't be any more than the light hitting him, right? And most of the sun's light is not hitting him. It's hitting the ground. It's hitting your butt on a beach. He might fly butt first towards the sun until he's so powerful he comes and puts an end to all villainy. I wish now to be more

realistic. Superman flew butt first towards the sun. I assure you Superman needs many more solar panels than what his skin clad with such material could bring him given the powers that he exhibits. So it's some mystical thing that is not really...

Even though magic's really the only thing that can hurt him. But I understand what you mean. Also, did you know I was in a Superman comic? No, but I believe it. Oh wait, I think I did know that. Yeah, it was Action Comics 140 or 142

just a few months ago back in – and I was chilling with – Superman came to visit me at the Hayden Planetarium. And did you tell him all these terrible things where you're like, man, I don't think your skin's as powerful as you think it is? No. Did you just tease him? No, I praised him for all the good work he's done in Gotham because – You mean Metropolis.

Oh, sorry. Am I mixing Batman? No, sorry, Metropolis, yes. I did say Metropolis. It's almost as if those worlds aren't real to you. So, yeah, I mean, I've been a lifelong resident of Metropolis. Resident of Metropolis. And so,

he wanted some help finding Krypton on the sky. And so I pointed out a star. That you think would be. With a planet. And we showed it to him in the Planetarium Dome. So it was kind of cool. That's awesome. Alright, are you ready? What else you got? Go. Edwin A. Crespo asks, Could Captain James T. Kirk, the starship at dome so it's kind of cool that's awesome yeah all right are you ready what else you got go uh edwin a crespo asks could captain james t kirk the starship uh could captain james james t kirk

the starship enterprise and its original crew defeat superman if it came to a fight in soul system space soul is the latin word for the sun just in case people are wondering yeah what we're also wondering is what a soul system space mean in the world of Star Trek? Where is that? Oh, well, no. Well, if it means something other than what I know, then I don't know. But soul is what we call the sun in Latin.

And the counterpart to that, to Earth, would be Terra, and then the moon is Luna. So that way everybody has one family of Latin words. We have soul, Mercury, because these are Roman gods, and Romans spoke Latin. So Mercury, Venus, Earth is not Latin.

So it's Terra, Luna, and then you go all the way up. Are you trying to avoid whether Superman or Captain Kirk would win in a fight? That's what it sounds like.

So what- Okay, here's the thing. There's a reason why he's called Superman. Yes. Okay? I have no doubt that Superman could take the Starship Enterprise and the entire crew. Yeah.

That's why they call him Superman. It's true. He's not just sort of strong man. He's not sort of kind of Superman. He's Superman. Yeah. Listen, the dude flew backwards around the Earth, stopped, reversed its rotation. Yeah.

Turned time backwards. Well, that's not something. James Kirk also flew around the sun and stopped its, reversed its rotation, turned time backwards. Well, that's not something, James Kirk also flew around the sun and then saved the whales, so let's not be like he's the only one who can go back in time. He flew past the sun in a spaceship. Yeah. Superman flew around the sun donning a cape and blue pantyhose. That's true. That's way more powerful.

But Captain Kirk is very good under pressure. He is, but if Superman goes to the tail of the Enterprise and swings it around lasso style, that's the end. Alright, you win. No, you're right. Aliens would defeat Earthlings. That's what it always comes down to. Right, because Superman's an alien.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, don't let him forget it. Okay, here we go. Here's another question. Virgilio Jonathan asks, in the movie Prometheus... Maybe it's Jonathan Virgilio, and you put his name first. I agree that I think the other way sounds better to me, but I will not tell this young man that his name is wrong. But I agree that that's how I would do it if I was him. I've never met a person whose last name was Jonathan.

That's my only point. Well, you've never met Virgilio, so that's part of it. In the movie Prometheus, when we're exploring the structures, they got to a part where there was breathable atmosphere, but it seemed that it was naturally created and not by a machine. The air didn't diffuse out into the atmosphere outside the structure. Is this possible? How would it work, and would this work on, say, don't know mars yeah completely so it's not the the oxygen was

created by life inside the cave so yeah when they lifted off their their their their helmets and they could breathe life was inside the cave now that cave it does not receive sunlight and everything we know about the production of oxygen via photosynthesis requires sunlight. So I don't know how they worked that one out. But ignoring that complication, that's where the oxygen would have been. Now, since they walked in a big gaping hole in the cave, it seems to me right. It would sort of spill out. But if the oxygen is made at a high enough rate, you could still breathe the oxygen made by the extensive plant life, oxygen producing life that was within the cave itself.

And in Prometheus, the coolest thing were those little birdy things that they flew into the, they tossed into the cave and it mapped by laser the three-dimensional structure of the cavernous contents. That was great. And does that seem realistic? Oh, completely. I mean, I love, Prometheus, I think, got panned by too many, given what it did and how good it was for what it did. You loved it.

I thought it was pretty good, yeah. And you thought it had elements that were accurate and interesting. Or within reach. They had this pod where you can dial up how it would operate on you. What do you need a doctor for? So I'd like a hysterectomy. I'd like a tooth extracted. I'd like

you dial it in, you get in the pod, it scans your body knows how what you look like goes in takes the organ out sews you back up and i won't tell you what happened in that scene if you hadn't seen it but it's i haven't seen the movie but it doesn't sound like it worked out if you're leaving out you're making it you're like everything's great but i won't tell you the end of this operation wait but don't get me started since we're're on Prometheus, I got to get this off my chest. There's a point where Charlize Theron, who's the corporate representative on board the ship, because the corporation paid for the voyage to this outer distant star system. They know where the money is.

In a frustrated, sexually tense moment with the captain of the ship, says something like, I didn't come a billion miles into space just to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm thinking a billion miles, that's like to Saturn. Right. It's like, excuse me, Charlize, you got that one wrong. I didn't come over a thousand billion. Right, exactly.

And so I tweeted this and so there was a nerd sort of reaction saying, what? The anti-nerd reaction saying, what? You're paying attention to what she said and not her body because she was really hot in this in this movie but go on okay okay christopher lloyd asks and who knows maybe it is the one uh the abyss in the ocean vast and deep enough to hold oh sorry the abyss is the ocean vast and deep enough to hold an alien spaceship that we wouldn't know about by now? Ooh. It depends on how vast.

You can easily hide something smaller. But if it's really, really vast, I don't think so. Say it's the size of Connecticut. No, I don't think so. What if it's the size of a Burger King in Connecticut? A Burger King-sized spaceship for sure. And I'll tell you why. why oh we're running out of time we got to take a break uh and make some money this is star talk

the cosmic queries edition part two of science fiction star talk cosmic query we're talking about science fiction and this is science fiction StarTalk Cosmic Queries. We're talking about science fiction, and this is Science Fiction The Sequel. We did this once before, Eugene, and we only got halfway through the questions. Questions called from the internet from fans of StarTalk. Great having you guys out there. And forgive me, did we leave off? Yes, we left off talking about the ocean.

And we were talking about how it's so vast that it could potentially hide an alien spacecraft. in the abyss like in the abyss and then the question is so and this is a question asked by christopher lloyd well by someone named christopher lloyd which i hope is the real christopher lloyd asking through facebook a question about the movie the abyss that's my fantasy it might be just a guy in bagel day christopher lloyd if that's really the chris mulloy we think it is yeah i i loved you on cyber chase yes well so so uh a spaceship the size of connecticut could not hide from us underwater but a spaceship the size of burger king could no here's the thing uh a spaceship a large spaceship would need an energy source if it's doing anything okay yeah in principle it could tap the energy of the magma that gurgles beneath The earth's crust

In the Marianas Trench off of The Philippines That is the deepest part of earth's crust The closest you can get to that churning Without drilling The closest you can get for free Without drilling up The bottom of the ocean

Aliens are very concerned of the cost of drilling into our planet They're like we can't spend all our money On this drill drilling up the bottom of the ocean. Aliens are very concerned of the cost of drilling into our planet. They're like, we can't spend all our money on this drill. It would be funny if they had the same economic problems. Yeah, I don't know. But here's what might happen. We know ocean currents. We know how they move.

We have the capacity to monitor the ocean depths. We have submarines out there. The structure of the open depth is of very high interest to the military. We can still break the Germans' codes. In fact. So watch out, Germany. In fact, the knowledge that in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the continental plates were separating was first derived by the mapping of the ocean bottom by the military. Oh.

And so that fact is what enabled everyone to then believe you, uh, uh, uh, Wagner. Yeah. The, I forgot his first name. Uh. Johnny. Johnny boy Wagner. Yeah. Uh, Wagner was a scientist who proposed that the continents shift around on Earth's surface and fit together like a puzzle at one time in their past.

And he was laughed at, basically. How could this possibly happen? It's a solid thing. It's not solid. These things are moving around. Mid-Atlantic Ridge showed that. And that allowed you to fit South America to Africa, which any child knows looks like they fit together on a globe. So,

we've mapped the ocean surface. So, unless this thing is swimming around behind the submarine, behind the surface... But it took so long to find giant squids, so you think... Well, this is what I'm saying. Well, the giant squids are not the size of Connecticut.

Right. So, what in between? So, what's the biggest thing you think you could have like could it be the size of umass boston if it's intelligent mass if it's intelligent it just doesn't go where they're doing the the the the tomography yeah right you can just sort of follow around i joke about this with the the rover on mars yeah if they're cool aliens hanging out up there but they just want to mess with us, they just keep running behind the stereo camera. And then,

oh, it's desolate. No, they're having a party on a lazy Susan dancing around the camera. So yeah, you could, in principle, hide it.

But if it was stationary, I don't think you could. Okay. Yeah. Good answer. All right, Tim Bailey has a question. The Tim Bailey.

I don't know. Neil, what is your favorite science fiction book, TV series, or film? The correct answer is BBC's Red Dwarf, by the way. That's what he wrote. But no, what is, yeah, what's your favorite sci-fi? Okay, favorite science fiction for TV has to be the original Star Trek series. Yeah. And because of, it was nothing, it was like nothing that came before.

Yes, there was science fiction. Yeah. But this one. But it was unrealistic, like Buck Rogers. The difference was this told stories that really should have been told in real Earth situations, but no one would have allowed that to happen. Right. Because they were offensive, they were this, or they probed our odd social mores because

social statements were being made. Right. You could finally have a race of purple people or green people. Exactly. And be like, why are you so mean to the green people? probed our odd social mores because social statements were being made. You could finally have a race of purple people or green people. Exactly. And be like, why are you so mean to the green people? Exactly. So you can transpose it into space and have these stories still be told. Twilight Zone had equivalent landscape in which to conduct the storytelling.

So I just see that as a really important series. I will also add that the Starship Enterprise, by my read of the history of the telling of science fiction stories, was the first ship of its kind to not be designed only to get from A to B. It was designed to live on. And also to explore. Its mission was simply information, science. It was not a destination. I don't know any other ship for which that was the case.

Yeah. In the history of the telling. The Magna Carta. Since then, we've had those. Yeah. Ships that just go hang out. Yeah, yeah. The ship is.

Cruise ships. Space is cruise ships. Exactly. Yeah. So I would say Star Trek, the original series. And love that and the Twilight Zone, which had a lot of space themes in that era. We were going to the moon. Yeah. They addressed them on on movies i'd have to put a deep impact when the asteroid hit and hit the ocean rather than having good aim like the asteroids did in armageddon where one hit the

eiffel tower and one hit a dam or whatever so this one hit the ocean most of the earth's surface is ocean that got a lot of so much of the physics, I let him go on stuff that wasn't right. Like the story? I haven't seen it. No, I recommend it. It's based on the... So that's the one you find most scientifically accurate? Yeah, yeah.

What's the one you find most enjoyable? Wait, wait. And I thoroughly enjoyed Carl Sagan's story brought to film, Contact. Oh, okay. It was an interesting treatment of how humans would react to information that we found a species

of aliens more intelligent than we are. Humans just freaked out. And I enjoyed watching the attempt to capture that. When we come back, more of StarTalk. The Cosmic Query. We're back. Cosmic Queries.

Car Talk. Eugene, thanks for being here with me. We left off with what my favorite sort of movie, TV, science fiction. And just a quick recap. The Twilight Zone, the first Star Trek were without precedent in their concept and what they portrayed. Deep Impact, an asteroid movie that finally got the physics right. The Bruce Willis one, no. This one, yes.

And Carl Sagan's Contact. People act crazy without intelligent aliens talking to us. That one, I think, really captured how crazy people would get in the face of that information. And I got to love The Matrix. Yes. Those are my top ones. Not including 2001 A Space Odyssey. That's there just as a classic. Right.

So, Eugene, they keep asking me these questions, but it seems to me you might have favorites. I do. Well, you know, I don't know. I love the Star Trek IV where they go back in time. I love time travel stuff. Oh, that was Save the Whales. Yeah, yeah, Save the Whales.

But I mostly... Star Trek IV, the movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the fourth episode of the series Star Trek. I think that was the last one that had the full crew? Maybe. But I also loved the new, the latest Star Trek. The movies. Yeah, yeah, the movies. I thought that

was great. But I did, I loved as a kid, like, Auto Man and Buck Rogers and The Misfits of Science. By the way, in the latest Star Trek movies, I loved as a kid, like, Auto Man and Buck Rogers and the Misfits of Science. By the way, in the latest Star Trek movies, I had an issue with the red matter turning planets into black holes. Seemed unrealistic to you somehow?

I don't know. It just seemed to me. Are you saying you know more than Spock? I find that unlikely. If you had red matter, I don't see why it has to go to the center to turn it into a black hole. Put it 10 feet underground.

It would make a black hole there, too. I don't see why they had to drill. It was a cool drill. Don't get me wrong. If I had to drill to get to the center of a planet, that's what it would look like. It would make a black hole there too. I don't see why they had to drill. It was a cool drill. Don't get me wrong. If I had to drill to get to the center of a planet, that's what it would look like. But all right. You're right.

Just throw a little, just throw it near it. Yeah, just throw it near. It would totally take it in. But what else you got? Okay. So Matt Ellie wants to know, Neil, what is an astrophysics theme you would like to see tackled in a work of science fiction?

I would like to see an asteroid come while the whole world is at war, and then people realize that the asteroid could render everyone extinct. And so the common enemy to everyone forces everyone to then harmonize with each other. You should check out the movie Watchmen then. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. It's an element of it. They touched there. It's an element of it. And so I don't think, they've attempted that in the past, but I don't think they did it very well. They normally do it with aliens.

And that one is not just about science. It's about geopolitics and how humans treat each other and what we fight over. And it may be we figure out a way to harvest the resources of that asteroid, put it into orbit around Earth, and then we stop fighting each other over the resources that sit beneath our feet. Right.

And then we also put things that can absorb sunlight on it, turn it into a Dyson sphere and power the Earth. We could do that too. Good. Just making sure it's possible. So that would be the end of all wars and it would take the threat of extinction of the species to reach that point the ultimate in death becomes the savior of our lives you've just created a madman out there listening to this who's going to try to develop an asteroid to bring here uh okay here's another dan owens has a question they are currently remaking disney's the black hole the movie that you claim was the least accurate sci-fi movie you've ever seen. Excuse me.

I've seen, okay, there's nothing accurate about the Star Wars series scientifically, except the double star system that sets in the desert. Not even the Force? So I don't judge movies by whether they're inaccurate. I'm just saying the original Disney movie, Black Hole, was awful. It was awful and inaccurate. And inaccurate. Oh, the worst.

Right. They go into a black, and they go into the black hole, and it's like this reddened scene from Arizona, you know, with vents spewing fire. What are you doing? I was in high school at the time, and I could have said, look, I could have been your science advisor, and we could have done a kick-butt movie on black holes.

I bet you in high school still knew a lot of science i i yeah i taught a seminar on black holes actually yeah at the time there you go it's the it's not the best example of someone unknowledgeable about black holes but i understand what you mean if they make it i want to make sure they had some advisors you know it doesn't have to be me you want the black hole to just be people turned into spaghetti and then the movie's done it It's about 35 seconds long. Spaghetti-ficate. No, but you can have the drama and the love. Entering the event horizon, maybe that for 45 minutes. You need relationships and someone gets pulled from them with the extended outreach hands as they get spaghettified. You want it to be a better story.

That's what you really want. Oh, my gosh. Don't – oh, just – yeah, I hope. And Disney's got good money today and science matters now in movies so just just to clarify i think disney has the resources and they have the science if it's not literacy let me call it science sensitivity right to think about how to make a really cool movie using black holes no way based on what you've told me about the black hole that they could do anything but have a fun world in there.

Like meaning of the story. But they could make it a better story. By the way, there are black hole space-time structures where you go through, and if you survived it, you see the entire future of the universe play out in front of you. That's a movie. And then you enter your own brand new fabric of space-time. Oh. Freshly created for you through the center of the black hole. If they don't know that,

I'm tweeting about it, okay? Well, hopefully they're listening. Yeah, they know I'm ready to bite at their ankles. Yeah. Gotta take a break. We'll be right back with Cosmic Queries. We're back on StarTalk

with Cosmic Queries Edition. The sequel to science fiction. In every way it's cut. So we went through a bunch of questions, but there's still so many more. We're in the last segment of this hour, and so it's going to be the lightning round. Let's do it. Ready? I've got my trusty bell.

We'll test it. Yep. Engineer, do you hear the bell? We're good. All right. All right. Ian Coby asks, alien movies. Ripley opens up an airlock in space on two separate occasions.

Wouldn't opening the airlock kill her pretty quickly? Yeah. So what you mean is you're in a vacuum. Yeah. And no, it won't. You just hold your breath. And you're not there long enough. You won't explode or freeze or anything?

No. It's some tension on your skin because there is pressure inside of you. Air will come out of your lungs because the pressure balance wants to equalize, so your cheeks will puff out and you've got to let some air out. But if you're just trying to open an airlock and spend a little bit of time in there to get your suit, to put on your boots, to close

another door, plenty of time to do that. Oh, really? Like how long? Like 5, 10 minutes? Or like 35 minutes? No, because you can't hold your breath for 10 minutes even in regular air. I could. I mean, I would die. Yeah, as long as you can hold your breath, you're good to go. Oh, okay. And yeah, so it's been overplayed, okay?

Yeah. Whether you explode inside. Right? Go. Okay, David Pilland asks, physics limitations in the Iron Man movies. Is there a theoretical power supply that would be small enough to carry and still provide adequate power output? Certainly. Matter-antimatter drive in his chest would do almost essentially everything he wants. Yeah. Except what would the antimatter touch to contain it in his chest?

That's the big problem. Okay. Alexandre LaChapelle asks, will the artificial intelligence we create ever reach the same level we see in sci-fi? I don't see why not. Look, already our artificial intelligence beats us in chess. It runs faster than us in Jeopardy. So, sure. I mean, why not?

Sure. It doesn't sound dangerous to me. Yeah. The tricky part is, will it one day ever become diabolical? Or enslave us or use us as food. Exactly. And the answer is maybe, but probably not. I'm skeptical.

Yeah. Hayden Jaurice asks, could robots really be programmed to follow Asimov's law of robotics? And if they could, do you predict lifelike artificial intelligence in the near future? We can program computers to do anything we want. Even speak Spanish? Period. Period. And so this whole thing about Asimov's three rules, and one of them is the robot cannot kill the creator of the robot.

Yeah, yeah. And so the point is you can program it to do anything. Name one robot we have that kills people and call it a drone. Yes, exactly. And a robot doesn't have to look like people. It just has to respond to – It just has to kill. Planes today are robots.

Yeah. The monorail in airports are robots. There's nobody driving the damn thing. Not even a bunch of kids? Nobody. So yeah, yeah. I don't see why – Yes.

They do anything we want. And here's the thing. Whether they achieve consciousness on their own, I don't know how that can happen unless we program them to achieve consciousness on their own. So that'd be nice of us. If you program it just to perform tasks, okay. And that's, I think, all we should let computers do. Next. Okay.

Oops. There. Okay. Larissa J. Levy asks, is there any possible way to make a radio out of coconuts? No. No, well. But great question. And you got to love the professor on Gilligan's Island.

Oh, now switching to questions from Twitter. Yeah. You need some metal to make. You need some conductors. You need something to conduct and coconuts barely conduct. No. But you can make, what, an alarm clock out of a potato or power it. Yes.

Power it. But there are wires sticking into it. You need metal. You need conductors for that. Next. Okay. So Rachel Fender asks, in line with Futurama's predictions of the future, is alcohol a viable substance for robot fuel? Brazil has, most don't know, the third largest aerospace industry in the world. It's a $20 billion industry.

It employs 18,000 people. And they invented an airplane that runs on alcohol. On like cognac or... Pure alcohol. So here we are drinking alcohol on our airplanes, and they're making airplanes that can run on alcohol, which is essentially solar-powered. Because

alcohol is derived from plant products. Plant products get their energy from the sun. Nice. Okay, in Wall-E, after 700 years in space, humans lost bone mass. Wait, wait. Wall-E is asking this? Or Wall-E? No, you're right.

Sorry. Ben Apperson in the movie Wall-E. Thank you. Sorry. After 700 years in space, humans lost bone mass and gained fat. Would their bodies really work back on earth no no no you you look our bodies don't work on earth when all you do is sit and watch tv right you die yeah yeah you go in space and then you gain you get fatter if you don't exercise so if we sent uh enemies to outer space and brought them back in like 20 years we could beat the

crap out of the crap what you do is you spin up the space station, you spin up the craft so that you have artificial gravity and it solves the problem entirely. If we had them in super gravity rooms, we could make them very powerful. Even stronger, correct. That's no different from just increasing the weight in the gym. That's no different.

Okay, next. It sounds more fun. We're running quick. Okay, Jeff DeLoke asks, in Dune, energy shields allow slow-moving objects to pass through but prevent fast-moving objects. Is this possible? I've never figured that one out.

Because it's made up. That's fine. Let me not say that it's not possible. Unlikely. There are things that you can move slower through faster than trying to move fast through. That's true. Yes. Like really viscous liquids.

Yes. If you try to go fast through, there's a partial vacuum that picks up behind you and slows you down. Yeah. It's like the muck of mud. But move slowly, it just goes around. We got to go. Eugene, thanks for coming. Thank you so much for having me.

Cosmic Queries Sci-Fi. You're listening to StarTalk Radio, brought to you in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation. We'll see you next time. As always, keep looking up. StarTalk Radio Bye. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you To keep looking up.