StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries – Science is Cool 4

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice answer Cosmic Queries about the secrets of the universe, science curriculum, tackling religion in the classroom, and more for a remote audience of thousands of science teachers. Recorded live at ScIC4 in collaboration with PocketLab. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/cosmic-queries-science-is-cool-4/ Thanks to our Patrons Joshua Ratcliffe, Mick Pirgmann, Jason Sills, Kyle Marston, Russell House, William Martin, Sami Succar, Christopher Ludwig, David Root, Mike Staber, and Andy Green for supporting us this week. Photo Credit: ESO/S. Brunier, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons 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. Welcome to StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And I've got with me my co-host, Chuck Nice. And this is a special edition of Cosmic Queries, brought to you in partnership with Pocket Lab. These are people that find all manner of reasons to gather together thousands of teachers around the world, which they did for this special live stream. And this presentation was called Science is Cool. We took their cosmic questions and turned it into a StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Check it out.

Hey, everybody in virtual universe. And hi, Dave. Good to be with you guys again. Guys, it's great to have you again. And as a testament to how much the audience really enjoys this, we got over 1,000 questions. Can you imagine that? We'll just go fast. We'll go in soundbite mode. Yeah, to go fast. It's amazing. Sound bite mode.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. People love to ask you guys questions. So I'm going to hand it off to you guys, and I'll be back on towards the end. All right. Excellent. Thanks, Dave. Thanks. Okay.

So Chuck. Hey, buddy. Yeah. Good to see you again. Always a pleasure. You're in L.A. right now, right? I am in Los Angeles. And I'm in New York.

So we got the whole country spread there. We got the country blanketed from end to end. End to end. Science, we have science across America right now. Science across America. And we've got many international viewers from, I was going to say international from other countries, but of course, that's what that means.

I got you. You know what we really need? We need... When the Flat Earthers had a conference, they were boasting that they had Flat Earth supporters all around the globe. Right. Yeah, it should have been all around the disk.

The disk. Thank you, Flat Earthers. So you got some. So let's hit them. I mean, I won't necessarily know the answers to these. I mean, you know, people, these aren't even constrained by topic, right? They're just whatever people want to ask you. This is my favorite.

This is when I like it, you know, when people just come out and they ask you whatever is on their mind. Just galactic gumbo? Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Guaranteed. Galactic gumbo. Gumbo.

They all say they're guaranteed. Put on there now a little sign. A little sign. Does everyone who makes gumbo speak like that? All right. Well, let's get to it. Give it to me. Here we go.

Bring it on. Speaking of international, man, let's get to it. All right, give it to me. Here we go. Bring it on. Speaking of international, man, why not let's start this from a little further down south. Let's go to Bogota, Colombia. Bogota. Yeah, and just before we begin, let me just establish my credentials here. I don't normally do this, but there might be new people to this. And I just want to say, okay, so I have an undergraduate degree in physics. I have a PhD in astrophysics.

I'm widely read on many current scientific topics. I have various hobbies that inform back into my work. And I count myself as a lifelong learner ever since I graduated, ever since I exited school. So any day that goes by where I don't learn something, for me, feels like a wasted day. So often when I'm given answer, I'm pulling from different places in my portfolio of knowledge and expertise, which can flesh out an answer, make the answer a little more memorable to you. If I add a pop culture reference, I spend some time thinking about pop culture, which folds back into this. So there you have it, Chuck. And if I don't know the answer, I'm just going to say,

I don't know. Okay, that's cool. And I guess I should give my credentials too. I have read every issue of Scientific American this year, and that's it. Okay. So let's. All right. Here we go. Jamie Cardozo. Jamie Cardozo wants to know this.

This is a great question. Neil, what is the most beautiful and inspiring process in space? Wow. Wow. Okay. We're starting off. We're going yard. Let's go deep. Let's go deep.

Okay. By the way, most of our listeners might not be American, so we're not going yard. We're going meter. Okay. Going yard is an American football expression for either going, no, going yard, that's basketball. No, going yard is baseball for your-

Baseball for going- You're hitting it out of the yard. There you go. Okay. Oh, it's hitting out of the- Out of the ball yard, yeah. Oh, it's not how many yards away it is. No.

Okay, fine. But anyway, so- So I would say- What a great question. I would say on earth, because I'll go out into space in a minute, but I would say on earth, because I'll go out into space in a minute, but I would say on Earth, on everyone's bucket list, especially since in modern times, there's more traveling around the

world than ever before. It used to be really rare if you left your country and went to another country, or if you got on an airplane, that was a newsworthy event. Now, it's a little more common, it's more affordable. On everyone's bucket list should be to bear witness to a total solar eclipse. By happenstance, the size of the moon on the sky is the same as the size of the sun on the sky. Of course, the sun is much, much bigger, but it's also, the sun is 400 times bigger and it's 400 times farther away. So they exactly cancel out so that they're the same size on the sky. So the moon passes in front of this. You

can't see the moon because you're observing the backside of it. It's the other side is lit up by the sun. In broad daylight, the sun looks like it starts to disappear. And then the sun does disappear and you have the beautiful corona, not the coronavirus, just the corona, which is Latin for crown, and it lasts only a few minutes, so you travel all this way, and there's the anticipation. It's like a cosmic pilgrimage

to participate in one of the great spectacles of the universe, a total solar eclipse. I've seen two, one when I was 14, the first time I saw one. And I saw the one that came across the United States just a few years ago. But total solar eclipses happen every couple of years. So they're not rare.

By the way, practically every news article on an eclipse, they say, rare eclipse coming by. No, they're not. They happen every couple of years. You don't say, rare World Cup is being played this year. No, it happens, that happens every four years. Eclipses are more common than the World Cup, okay? So, but newspaper people and many other people want to believe that you're experiencing something that never happens ever, and it's just happening in your lifetime when you happen to be here on Earth. No, the point is, eclipsed paths are very narrow.

So you got to put in some effort to get in the path of the moving shadow, all right? And usually it's in some exotic, interesting place in the world. Use that as an excuse to travel. So for me, it is beautiful. It is elegant. It drives you to poetry.

And beyond that, if I could go anywhere in the universe, I would watch the collision of two galaxies, but have it happen in my own time scale. Because that typically takes a half a billion years and I don't live that long. So the next best thing we have are colliding galaxies on a computer because you can speed up time.

Go Google colliding galaxies. And oh my gosh, it's like a cosmic ballet choreographed by the forces of gravity as two spiral galaxies intersect. And they feel each other's gravity completely across their diameter. And so the whole galaxy begins to distort. And then they overtake each other.

They pass through each other. And then they come back. And then they oscillate. We have these simulations. Go Google it, colliding galaxies. And you'll get some of the most beautiful simulations there ever was. I'd like to see that just dangling out there in space and live long enough to just watch it happen. So, there you have it. There you go. And thank

you very much, Neil, for explaining where baby galaxies come from. No, it's where train wreck galaxies end up. They start out as two beautiful spiral galaxies, and they end up quite the mess when they're done. And their

black holes typically merge in the middle. So they now have a monster black hole that's twice the monster it used to be in either one. So, yeah. So there you have it. I'm just saying the imagery is very reminiscent of, you know, procreation. Really? Okay.

Cosmic. Cosmic procreation. Well, even though that's not, I mean, I know stars come out of nurseries, you know. Yeah, but there are baby galaxies. They're called satellite galaxies. We have two. They're, you know, less than a tenth the mass of our own galaxy. And they're called the Magellanic Clouds.

They're not really clouds, but that's evidence of what they thought they were when they were first observed 500 years ago. When telescopes revealed that what they thought was a cloud resolved into a pastiche of stars that are a collection of stars that orbit our own galaxy. Sweet. And our evidence shows that galaxies over time actually end up eating them. So we don't call it galactic procreation. We call it galactic procreation. We call it galactic cannibalism.

You can Google that. Galactic cannibalism. All right. All right. Give me another. Okay. Let's go to, okay. Yo, let's keep it international right here.

Hafez Mertza. Hafez Mertza coming to us from Malaysia. I'm going to apologize in advance for Chuck's inability to pronounce anybody's name. He tries. Listen, I know it's not your name, but here's the thing. Now you got a better name. No, you got a name. Now you got a better name. A Chuckified name.

They'll decide whether it's better, okay? It's got Chuckified. That's right. All right, here we go. But he's trying, just for everyone to know. I love this. How does astronomy help civilization? How does astronomy have economic value?

Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. Okay, so let me start. Let me get base on you here, okay?

All right. Everyone I know who dropped out of astrophysics graduate school and did not complete a PhD, okay, earns at least three times more money than any of the rest of us. So the talent, the skill set that you have as an astrophysicist, it's problem solving, it's mathematics, it's programming, it's taking large sets of data and making sense of it. That's hugely valuable in many other fields that are out there. In fact, Michael Bloomberg, the multi-billionaire turned mayor of New York City,

one-time candidate for president of the United States. Michael Bloomberg studied physics and astronomy in college and engineering. And so then he went and left that and went to Wall Street. He became the youngest partner at Salomon Brothers, the youngest partner. And his parents said, but you're not using your science degree. And then he left and founded his own company called Bloomberg Financial Markers. And his mother said, but you're not using your science degree. Then he turned that into a billion dollar his mother said, but you're not using your science degree. Then he turned that into a billion dollar multinational corporation, but you're not using your science degree.

And the fact is he was using his science degree the entire time. Don't think that when you go to college or study in a graduate school that the specific knowledge is what you're applying. No, no, no. You go to school to learn how to think, okay? And I can give another example that's not even in the sciences. Let's say you're in an

English class or a history class and you write a paper on Napoleon, okay? Yeah, you'll know a lot about Napoleon, but really that's not what will matter later on. What will matter later on is that you took a topic that you knew nothing about. You researched it. You composed words, paragraphs, ideas into coherent arguments, thoughts, analysis. That's what you retain when you exit school. In fact, you know what wisdom is?

It's what's left over after you've forgotten all the details of what you were taught in the classroom. That's wisdom. So that was just for people who didn't become astrophysicists, all right? For those who do, there's a long history of the relationship between governments and astronomers. I wrote a whole book on this. This sounds like a plug for my book, but you asked the question. Who was it who asked it? Hey, you all asked the question.

Right. Okay. Yeah. And it's a weird thing because if you know the sky, that's the earliest form of navigation there was, right? If you're going to sail to explore, to conquer,

for whatever is your good or bad reasons why a country might want to explore beyond its borders, you need to know where you are on earth and what time it is. And both of those factors come to you by an understanding of the night sky. And it goes way back into indigenous peoples and what they did from Australia to the Polynesians to Native Americans. It goes way back. to the Polynesians, to Native Americans. It goes way back. Navigation. Some of the greatest navigational tools come from some of the oldest culture. And in the Middle East, okay, in my museum, in my office, okay, I have an astrolabe. And there it is, multiple discs that you put on, depending on where you are. You hold it up, and there's a weight at the bottom.

And it's a beautifully carved Arabic in the brass. And people were doing this, navigating in the dunes. You know why? Because there wasn't a street corner to say, okay, this is north and this is south, and I'm going to find grandma's house. All right? So the value of what an astrophysicist brings to the world is not so obvious to someone just thinking, oh, do you build a gadget that I can now buy in the store? We are enabling the world to function in ways that might otherwise feel and seem hidden. And by the way, this is just spillage from the rest of what we do, which is talking about black holes and quasars. Oh, by the way, some of us actually are studying asteroids.

In fact, we just did a stop and go on an asteroid just a few days ago. Why? To kick up some dust, scoop it up, bring it back to Earth and study it. We have wars on Earth fighting over natural resources, over limited natural resources that are basically unlimited on asteroids. So if you're one of these people who say, why are we done up there when we should be focusing down here? You know what you sound like to me? You're like the person in the cave. And I'm looking out the door and I peek out the door and I say, wow, there's a mountain over there and there's valleys and there's streams. No, you can't explore. We have cave problems. Let's solve

the cave problems first. Then I'll let you exit the front door. That's what you sound like if you are trying to say, this is a luxury. We have to do the important things here on earth. So. Wow. Sorry. I'm sorry I get all screaming at you. No, don't worry. It's all good stuff. I'm like all in the lens, you know. Yes, exactly. You know, I love it.

I mean, you know, it's the same fervor that you hear from the guy on the street corner in New York City telling everybody that we're all going to die. Oh, okay. But for some reason from you, it works. No. Plus, I'm not saying we're all going to die. I'm going to say the methods and tools of science actually provide us power over many things that would otherwise kill us.

Excellent. We've got to take a quick break, but when we come back more and I support StarTalk on Patreon. Bringing the universe down to Earth, this is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Welcome back to StarTalk. In this special Cosmic Queries edition, in partnership with Pocketland, it's drawn from a live stream that occurred recently. And in it, we fielded questions from educators around the world.

Check it out. All right, let's keep it moving. Let's do it. Let's switch gears and come back to the United States. We'll now come back. Our first U.S. question. This is David Wilkerson from Kentucky, and David would like to know this. He's a science teacher. He says misinformation is so prevalent in the media. How can science teachers better train students to see through the noise? This is a great question and an important question.

And so I'm still, I have ideas that are still in the oven right now, baking. So technically that makes them half-baked if I share them with you. So I'll just put some things out there. And like I said, I think I've said that before. I still want to think more deeply about this, but I'll give you some of my early thinking that science simply needs to be taught differently. Okay. Whoever was the generation of educators who said, science is this body of knowledge and we need to impart that in you. What is a DNA molecule? and we need to impart that in you.

What is a DNA molecule? What is a molecule? What is DNA? What is metabolism? What are volcanoes? What is a combustion engine? This is knowledge and that's an important aspect of science literacy. I don't want to lessen its value by what I say next.

Let's retain that value, but add to it the understanding that science is a means of querying nature. Somewhere in there, that got lost, okay? Science is a tool. It is a process of inquiry so that there's something you don't know and you ask yourself, how do I go about finding the answer to that? That is what science is.

So the science denial that's going on is coming about because, I think, because people think of science as just this body of information. And they decide what the cherry picking information, the way you might in other subjects, you might say, no, I don't think it happened that way. I think it happened this way. You know, in science, science doesn't give you that latitude of denial, right? The law of gravity is not something that was just written by members of parliament, you know, 20 years ago. And if you gained three pounds, you know, three, two kilograms last week, you're not going to say, oh, I want to repeal the law of gravity because it somehow made me look fat, right? This is, you don't have that option in science. And if you don't know the power and the objective truths that the methods and tools of science bring to you, you are susceptible to that way of thinking.

So I don't know if you can go to adults and convince them because they've already been through a system where they think that they can pick and choose what it is that they believe is true. But science is taught, here's something, if you wonder if it's true, investigate it. Don't say, well, that conflicts with my culture, my religion, my family values, therefore it must not be true. Oh, no, no, no, that's not how the world works. And so, yeah, I'm still working on how this could be implemented, but the science standards are, I think it's missing some elements of what science is that could protect us as we go forward. Very nice. Very nice. There you go. That's a great answer. Let me answer questions faster so we can get through more of them, because we have a thousand of them.

And at this rate, we'll be here until the year 2025. That's fine. During these COVID times, I don't really have a lot to do. You got this. Let's hope COVID doesn't hang out that long. All right, go ahead. Yeah, let's hope. All right, let's get a little more personal with Michelle Nedslick from Wayne, Michigan. And Michelle says, love you guys. What is the one thing you learned about yourself during the COVID quarantine? A little more personal here, Neil.

Have you learned anything about Neil deGrasse Tyson? I have. First of all, I don't mind spending a lot of time alone or in solitude or with family. Fortunately, we live in, our apartment has enough rooms. People can go to them and separate. Not because we have COVID, but if you, you know, you can get on each other's nerves. Plus, I don't have like three-year-old children, we used to, but I don't have three-year-old, five-year-old children running up and down creating the entropic universe that they're so good at doing.

So I don't want my answer to think less of the people who are actually trying to maintain their sanity. What I will say is that I was very productive, but I'm disappointed in myself because I wanted to be a little more creative. As much as it's difficult, if not impossible, to confess to ourselves or to each other, if you want to be more creative, you have to be less productive. You don't want that to be true, but if you think about it and think about your own life, it's true. I got this many emails done today, and I cleaned

up, and I did the laundry, and I did, and look at how productive I was. Did you create anything? Did you have any new thoughts? No, no. And you know what new thoughts take? It requires being alone for a while, just like looking up at the ceiling and letting the food that you spent your life feeding your brain, letting that find new connections. getting that, find new connections. Because what is a new idea? But old information connected in new ways. That's what a new idea is. But you know what is happening?

Is people during COVID, they're binging TV shows. Okay, this is a stretch of hours that you could have sat there and maybe created something. By the way, it doesn't have to be, you don't have to be Isaac Newton. You know, you could, you know, knit something new or read a new book or something that takes your thoughts in a new place. A good TV can do that and a good movie can do that.

But if that's all that it is, all right, then it's really you're sampling other people's ideas and not your own. So I was not as creative over this time as I wanted to be. And so I'm going to try to see what I can do about that going forward. I'm always creative because I'm never productive. So there you have it. It's just all creativity all the time, baby.

All the time. All creativity all the time. Just creating. Chuck, you have laundry on the ground. Exactly. I'm like, that's not laundry. That's an extra bed now. Creativity.

Well, that's tomorrow's clothes because it wasn't quite dirty enough to put in the hamper. Exactly. All right. Keep it going. All right. So let's, great question here. All right. This is Catherine Higgins.

And Catherine is coming to us from- Do we know where they're from? Did they say where they're from? She's coming to us from Spokane, Washington. Spokane, okay. Spokane. Here's what she says. If you could know the answer to one question about the universe,

what would it be? You only get to pick one. I got that. I got that. I got that. Really? So you've thought about this already? Oh, yes.

All the time. Jesus. Go for it. So I lose sleep wondering whether we, humans, who are basically the first intelligent species of life on Earth, you can define the word intelligence so that that's true. Okay, so we're the first ones to have music and poetry and art and science altogether. Okay.

No other, nobody else has done that. And to build stuff. Okay. So we sit alone in that category. If you define it that way. Okay. If we are the very first species to have that ability, who are we to think that we have sufficient intelligence to contemplate all the complexities of the universe?

Imagine a world where there are multiple intelligent species and some are way more intelligent than others. Some might be more intelligent compared to humans than we are compared to chimps. You know what chimps look like to us? Okay, yeah, they can stack boxes and reach a banana and they can use a stick and get termites. And we say, that's a smart chimp,

and they're using tools. Yeah, but they didn't build an airplane, okay? So you can praise them, but they're kind of really no better than our toddlers, what our toddlers can do. But if you find another species that's to us what we are to chimps, what do we look like to them? What do their toddlers look like? Their toddlers would be smarter than our smartest human beings. When I joke about this, their toddler comes home and said, oh, look, mommy,

look what I did. Oh, Junior, sissy, what did you do? Oh, you composed a sonnet. Oh, you derived the first laws of calculus. That's so cute. Let's put it on the refrigerator door for grandma to see. So if you can imagine that increment of intelligence above us, what are they figuring out? That we're not. That we are just, that we are just, our most complex thoughts are incapable of even knowing what question to ask. That's what I wonder, and I lose sleep, not every night, but certainly weekly, I think of that. Wow. So, I mean, the real deal is, for me, I don't mind if we're far down on the intelligence quotient. I just don't want us to be delicious.

See, like, it's okay if aliens come here and look at us like we are much lesser beings, but I don't want them to come here and look at us like we are much lesser beings, but I don't want them to come here and look at us the way we look at cows. That would bother me. You don't want to be tasty. I don't want to be tasty. That's it. I'll be stupid, but I don't want to be stupid.

You can even be their pet. They can make us their pet. If they're smart enough, they'll just completely trick us into being their pets and we wouldn't even know the difference, right? So, yeah, so I just wonder. And so as we contemplate the cosmos, and forget any one individual being smart, I'm talking about collectively,

the human species, is the wiring of our brain sufficient? And I worry that it's not. And so that makes me sad. It could be that we're not capable of carrying the information necessary to know what is knowable. Or to even know what question to ask that would then later be answered. Wow. Yeah. Just think about that. Not even knowing the question. Yeah. Okay. So a chimp won't even know how to ask, what's the square root of two?

You know, what is cosine of 45 degrees? That question is so beyond every other primate. Okay. It's beyond some human primate, okay? But nonetheless, that's even a question that has no meaning to them. That's what I wonder. Cool. So that's my answer. All right. All right.

Are we smart enough to figure out the universe? Excellent. Or should we just give up now and wait until some other smarter creature makes us their pet? Well, no. That can't be the answer. You don't want it to be the answer. That certainly can't the answer. You don't want it to be. That certainly can't be it. You don't want it. All right, let's keep it coming. Let's go to Stefania Gonzalez in Mexico, who says, how do you deal or manage the contradictions between religion and science

in the classroom if children were to ask you. So if somebody were to ask you a question that certainly has religious implications, how do you give them a scientific answer? Yeah, so in a free country, we have free expression of words and ideas provided that they don't conflict with other people's freedoms. That's a common way you would think of what it means to live in a free country. You should have the freedom to worship whoever you want in whatever way it fulfills the traditions of your family, your culture, or your community. And so that, at least in the United States, that's protected. It's protected.

So you can have a stretch of road where there's a mosque, a synagogue, a Catholic church, some Protestant churches. You can even might find a Scientology, you know, building down the street. So that's protected. Religions, the tenets of most religions are not based on what is objectively true. It's based on what you might say is a personal truth. Okay. So Jesus is your savior. That's your personal truth. No one in a free country can or will or should take that away from you. But that doesn't mean it's somebody else's savior. Okay. So now you have someone who worships differently from you and now you put them both in the same classroom. So my response to you is if that classroom is a science classroom, you teach the objectively true realizations of how the universe works.

And that is true no matter who you worship. Okay? And so, by the way, you don't have scientists going in front of places of worship saying, you know, that might not necessarily be true. That's not how you do it. That's not what anyone has done, okay? You don't even find ardent atheists doing that, okay? The issue is just what the question pivoted on. What do you do in the science classroom, okay?

So what you can say is, whatever is, again, I'm not telling you to do this, but how I would handle the situation is, I would say, if a religion or a holy book makes a testable statement about the world, we can test it using the methods and tools of science. If it turns out to be false, then that's the reality of the world you're living in. You're living in a world where the science gives you smartphones. It gives you means of communication, means of transportation. It has established what you accept and recognize as modern civilization. So you would need to go back to your religion and say to yourself,

okay, do I need to reject the science because I believe in this religion so strongly, or do I sort of think of my religion differently as a place for spiritual enlightenment, spiritual fulfillment, as a sense of community? You can do that without declaring the universe was made in six days. You can do that, and most enlightened religious people do. So there's a huge intermediate place in there for you to land between rejecting all of science because it conflicts with your religion or rejecting all of religion just because you believe in something that is itself not testable. That's a lot of words coming out of my mouth. You know, if you want to be like simple about it, you could just say, this is a science class.

You're going to be learning about science. And later on when you're older, you can think this through for yourself and what makes the most philosophical sense to you. And we live in a free country. You have that freedom. But I'm not going to tell you something that is not otherwise scientifically established.

Well, I think that you really hit... That's the science classroom. I think you really hit the crux of it in your first statement when you said there are personal truths and there are objective truths. Right. And by the way, if you rise to power of where you control laws and legislation and you have a country or community that is diverse in belief systems and what people want and care about and who they love and what they look like, if you're diverse and you're going to make laws, who they love and what they look like.

If you're diverse and you're going to make laws, it seems to me the most secure way to make laws is to base the laws on what is objectively true because that applies to everybody. And I've said before, the good thing about science, and I mean the objectively true established science from experiment and observation, the good thing about science is it's true whether or not you believe in it. So a law then matters on all scales at that point.

So when I think of establishing governments and laws, if in a diverse country, you kind of have to anchor them in things that everyone can recognize is true, whether or not you wanted it to be true. Cool. All right. Let's stay in North America and go to Guadalajara. And this is Alejandro Salazar,

who says, what features does a cool teacher need to have? Oh, I love that question. I love that question. Okay, Now I'm going to talk about you all here. Okay. So just, are you seated? Don't get me started. Should I get out a book? Are we about to be read? Don't make me do this. I'm going to do it. You ready? Okay. Okay. I've seen the curricula in schools of education. I've seen it. Okay. Maybe not every bit of it, but from what I've seen, what is commonly trained is, well, train you to be

organized. Good. Train you how to give an exam where the questions are not ambiguous. Good. How to give homework. How to grade. how to mechanically create the perfect classroom environment, okay? Fine. You'll be a better teacher for knowing that, but you will never be a great teacher. Just, I'm telling you that, okay? And how do I know this? Because I have never, ever met anybody who said, that class was awesome. I said, why? The exams were so perfect, and the homework was so considered.

No, nobody ever said that ever about any class they ever took, okay? What do they say about their favorite classes? I love the teacher. The teacher was enthusiastic. They made me want to learn. They had expertise that came from all places, and they put it together in fresh, interesting ways. And how many teachers in our lives satisfied those criteria? I bet it's like this many. By the way, I don't have to ask you because I know, because I poll people and I ask them.

Out of the scores of teachers you've had in your life, how many were singularly interesting to you? How many changed your life? How many opened your eyes? There's like three. At most, five. But it typically fits in one hand. So who are these teachers? These are teachers who take their enthusiasm and forgive me for using the word in a COVID climate, and their enthusiasm is infectious. Okay. They breathe on you and they spread their infectious love of their subject.

Okay. And the rest is, yeah, it helps if you're organized and you got the thing, but don't you want to make lifelong learners out of people? Don't you want people to want to continue learning about the subject you just taught them rather than at the end of the day or at the end of the season to say, school's out and throw their papers in the air. And I'm saying, what, what are you doing? Oh, I'm glad school is out because it was a chore. Nobody ever said that about their favorite classes and their favorite classes have people. It's not about being cool. It's about being interesting. It's about meeting them more than half, their students, meeting them more than halfway in their spheres of curiosity. Because otherwise, what are you doing? You're standing in front of a chalkboard

or whatever the board is made of today. You're standing in front of it and you're writing facing the other way. And you say, if they don't learn, oh, the students don't want to learn today. No, no, don't ever say that. I will never accept that as an answer, okay? By the way, I've said that publicly

and people go, he's never been a teacher. Excuse me, go look at my resume. It's online. Okay. Forget the wiki page. I don't know whoever writes your wiki page. My homepage. Go look. Okay. Okay. So, so again, I'm screaming again. I told you somebody, why are you making, turning me into this? I'm sorry. I. You know, I like to see you get worked up. I like to see you get worked up, especially about this. That's great stuff, man. I mean, that is great stuff. We've got to take another quick break.

But when we come back, we will introduce you to one of the co-founders of Pocket Lab, who has a few more questions to ask Chuck and me. Hey, it's time for a Patreon shout out to Kyle Marston, Farid El Nasser, and Steve Lindauer. Thank you so much, guys, for your support. Without you, it'd be so difficult to make StarTalk a reality, at least in this dimension. And for those of you who want your very own Patreon shout out, it's so simple. You just go to patreon.com slash StarTalk Radio and support us. Welcome back to StarTalk, the third and final segment of our Cosmic Queries, brought to you in collaboration with Pocket Lab.

And in this segment, we'll meet David Baker, who's co-founder of the organization, and Clifton Roosboom. He's a mechanical engineer turned educator, And Clifton Roosboom, he's a mechanical engineer turned educator. And they each have some questions for me and Chuck about what it is they want to do as educators. Check it out. So, Dave, Mr. Co-Founder of Pocket Lab. Hey, it's great to see you guys.

Thank you. That was pretty entertaining. So, Dave, you've got other questions. What are you bringing to the table? I do have other questions. You know, bringing to the table? I do have other questions. You know, but, you know, and first though, I have a complaint. You know, 2020 has been going so great for everyone. And then all of a sudden, just kidding, you know, as if anything could go worse in 2020, a week ago, I see a headline that says, Neil deGrasse Tyson says an asteroid is going to

hit Earth. And that's all the headline says, right? Okay. First of all, that's all the headline says, right? Okay. First of all, that's not what I said. I know that's not what you said. That's the arc of exaggeration that unfolds after a simple scientific statement is made. What I said was... We're all going to die.

That's what he said. His exact quote was, we're all going to die. If you're going to say that, it's got to was, we're all going to die. And then they- If you're going to say that, it's got to be, we're all going to die. You got to say it with some panic, right? So there is an asteroid the size of a refrigerator headed towards Earth. And there's a chance on the day before the US presidential elections that it will buzz cut Earth. And buzz cut, I don't know if that expression

is common internationally. It's a close, you know, cut with the clippers, but there's still a little bit of hair standing on end after you've done it. So we call that a buzz cut. And you're not quite bald after a buzz cut. They leave a little bit of hair there. So it could be buzz cut. But if it does hit Earth, it will be harmless to us. That's what I said. But that became, Tyson predicts that we're going to get slammed by it. But what I made it clear is, because it's harmless at that size, even though it's moving very fast, and if it hits, it will explode in the atmosphere, be visible to anyone in view, even in broad daylight. And there'll be some rocks that make their way down, remnants of that explosion. Yes, all that'll happen, but it's not going to disrupt

the grid. Nobody's going to die. And so I made it clear, if the day, if the universe ends in 2020, it will not be the fault. No, no, if Earth ends in 2020, it will not be the fault of the universe. Right. But the good thing is, if we do get hit by an asteroid the day before the presidential election, the good thing is we will then have to elect a president that we can all agree upon, Morgan Freeman. Morgan Freeman. Are you remembering him as president from the movie Deep Impact? Deep Impact, yes. One of the best portrayals of a

president I have ever seen was his portrayal in that movie. He was dignified, he was intelligent, he took care of business, he gave the right speech at the right time. And so if anyone wants to see their examples of presidents throughout American movie history,

that's one of the best ones. 1996, I think it was, or 97, Deep Impact. Came out within a year of Armageddon, which, where Bruce Willis saves the world. And that movie, by the way, has more violations of the laws of physics per minute than any other movie ever made, just so you know. That's good. You know, it must be hard for you to enjoy movies, because they're not fun to do, right? physics per minute than any other movie ever made. Right.

It must be hard for you to enjoy movies. It's the most you do, right? No, I'm not making... Dave, Dave, nuh-uh. It's not hard for him to enjoy movies. It's hard for you to enjoy watching a movie with him. Yeah, yeah. No, I

am polite. I'm polite. I'm okay in the movies here. I'm not as bad as the people who read the book first. Those are the people who should never see movies because they're never happy with their movie. Oh, they left this out. It was in the book. Well, get the hell out of it.

I don't need you here. Can I watch my movie, please? Go back home to your book. By the way, I just want to now go to a movie theater with Neil and have him scream out, just, that is factually incorrect. Or, you know what I mean? The laws of physics are being violated, people. This could never happen.

Like, that would just be the best. No, I just silently chuckle when I see it. But what are you saying, Dave? Well, Chuck, that would be a nerd's version of Rocky Horror, right? Yes, exactly. Are you speaking out to the Rocky Horror Picture Show? Yeah, there you go. There you go, cool.

So, yeah, I do have an important question. So, for teachers who are teaching science, what is the best way to get science concepts across the students? Like what is the... Yeah, concepts are harder because concepts are not objects, right? So if you're teaching geology, here's earth and here's a volcano and here's lava and here's this. So concepts are an extra sort of step on the pedagogical pyramid for you to, it's an extra challenge for how to convey it.

And while I try to, I use my hands a lot. You might have seen when I gesticulated in Eclipse. You know, I think I have pretty expressive hands. I think I get pretty far. I think I get pretty far. But if you have tools in your classroom, models of things, then you don't have to be so inventive with your hands. The thing is there, and your hands could try to be inventive with the thing that you don't have a model of, right?

So, and I understand you guys have such models. They're in your storefront. But I'm just saying, when I think of a teacher's utility belt, walking around explaining things, if you're in a classroom, your utility belt is what lines the walls. Those are your tools. And the more of those tools you have, and the more informed you are on how to invoke them,

I think the more potent you can be in communicating the concepts. And so, yeah, yeah. In fact, Clift is on the line here. So Clift, one of the engineers for Pocket Lab. What kind of engineer are you? Mechanical engineer by training. But, you know, science educator by night. Oh, okay.

Bruce Wayne by day. Yeah. Batman by night and oh okay bruce wayne by day yeah batman by night okay yeah and and then you know the the skills of modeling like you just touched on and how we can apply that in our science classroom so i would say that one of the one of the cautions or just it's not a question it's just be actively self-aware that when you model something there are some students who will think that you are describing the literal thing okay and I don't know what is it one in 10 one in 20 but there'll be at least one or a few students in your class that will not get the metaphor of what you're using or the analogy of what you're invoking. And so, by the way, that's where a model breaks down, right? A model is not the exact thing. It's a model of the thing. And so you can pursue the model until you have a

breakdown in that correspondence. And then they have to be self-aware of that or you bring in a better model. So is starting with the phenomena a good way to get around the limitations of models? Yeah, so I don't know. In my experience, I'd like explaining an idea first, seeing how far I get. Let them chew on it a little bit, you know? And if it's not tasty enough, I'll throw in some special sauce, which might be a pop culture analogy or a life experience, something that adds a storytelling dimension so that I get their interest. And then they're grappling with the idea, what do you mean the sun covers the earth, the moon covers the sun? Huh? What is that? I'm trying to think this through. And when you,

when they've invested a little bit of that, then you bring out the model. Oh, that's what you mean. Oh, now I see. All right. So, but if you lead with the model, then the model itself can become a distraction to the idea. I like trying, it's my personal, I like trying to put the, and let people struggle a little. Nothing wrong with struggling. Nothing wrong with trying to figure it out. Then the model gets put out and then it becomes crystal clear. In my field, astrophysics,

I have colleagues who gave slideshows every day when they taught because we have a highly photogenic field, okay? astrophysics. I have colleagues who gave slideshows every day when they taught, because we have a highly photogenic field, okay? Astrophysics. Everything is beautiful, all right? Even the ugly stuff is beautiful. So they'd have slideshows, and this is what we're going to learn about today. You know, if you show something that you haven't learned about, it's just a pretty picture. I saved slideshows for the last day of class. And I said, okay, and here is the planet Mars. And notice it's red. Yes, we learned about that. It's red because it's iron oxides

because we learned that in the chemical part of it. Oh my gosh, yes, now I see. Thank you. And it's cold on the poles. Oh, it's got ice caps, just like we talked about. Okay, and then all of a sudden, the model becomes the, it cements it in place. And then they've got the idea, they've got the model that supports the idea, rather than the model itself that becomes the idea.

That's just me. You pick up on that however it fits your classroom. I think that's strong advice. Yeah, yeah, I really like that. We talk about that a lot. We probably talk about this all day. The problem with the internet is you can just Google it and you lose that opportunity to think about it.

To think about it, yeah. Googling is like a replacement for, you know, I was going to have a new rule because when people get into an argument, they say, well, let's Google it. I have a new rule. No. Argue about it for at least five minutes, ideally 10 minutes. Argue.

That forces you to think, well, are my thoughts correct? Oh, you made a good point. Let me reassess that. After 10 minutes, then Google it. Okay? And by the way, you'll get to learn whether the loudest person was correct.

Or whether the over-talkers, like the male over-talkers, like the male over-talkers, whether they're actually correct or just where they're just full of hot air. But you give them a chance to commit to something that they either know or don't know in the 10-minute argument. Then you Google.

That's my new rule. This is great. Chuck and Neil and StarTalk, thank you so much. Again, it's fantastic to have you. Dave, you're doing great work there. And any person who can bring together 10,000 teachers in a coherent way where everyone is on the same side

of the same fence trying to do what's right for this world, we need more folks like you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad you can be a part of it. This has been StarTalk, and I've been Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and I want to thank my co-host Chuck Nice, as well as Pocket Lab for

co-sponsoring this edition of Cosmic Queries. As always, I bid you to keep working out.