StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries – The Deep

Episode Date: September 27, 2019

Deep space and deep thoughts = deep questions. Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice answer fan-submitted questions on the meaning of life, the human brain, higher intelligence, space exploration, and much more.NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons and All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/show/cosmic-queries-the-deep/Thanks to this week’s Patrons for supporting us:Andrew Olguin, Jay Eilers, Dr. Janet L. Walsh, Roy Hill-Percival, Jose ClarkPhoto Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth and D. Magee (University of California, Santa Cruz), K. Whitaker (University of Connecticut), R. Bouwens (Leiden University), P. Oesch (University of Geneva), and the Hubble Legacy Field team. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

From the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and beaming out across all of space and time this is StarTalk where science and pop culture collide. This is Star Talk. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And I got with me Chuck Nice. Chuck, today it's Cosmic Queries.

That's one of our favorite forms of this show. Everybody loves it. Everybody loves it. Everybody loves it. Everybody loves it. Everybody loves it. Everybody loves it. Everybody loves it. Everybody loves it. And we are, in fact, educated people. I know.

My mom is spinning in her grave right now. So, but this is a Cosmic Queries of a topic we've never solicited before. No, we have not. Yeah. And the topic is the deep, deep space, deep thoughts. Deep questions. Deep questions. But, Chuck, you got to give it in your deepest voice.

Okay, here we go. And by the way, we did this once. Yes, we did. And I think I beat you by half a tone or something. Just bear. Let me hear it. Here we go. All right.

Deep thoughts. Deep thoughts. Yeah me hear it. Here we go. Deep thoughts. Deep thoughts. Yeah, you got me already. See, I got to drink scotch the night before. And smoke a cigar. Yeah, I got to smoke a cigar and drink some scotch. Smoke and alcohol just fix that right up. But then it becomes like a deep voice and like somewhat Harvey Fierstein.

Oh, raspy. Yeah, it becomes raspy. Deep thoughts. Thoughts. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's like deep thoughts. Thoughts? Oh, my God. If you put on the accent. Deep thoughts. Thoughts.

The scotch doesn't give you the Harvey Fierstein accent. That'd be pretty cool if it did. A couple scotches. Deep, deep. Can someone call me an oob? I've had too much to drink. Deep. All right. All right, let's get deep. Can someone call me an oob? I've had too much to drink. Deep. All right.

All right, let's get deep. I like deep thoughts because usually there isn't a right answer, so you just get to sort of play with it and see where it takes you. Yeah, man. All right, so this is deep questions only. All right, let's do it. So listen to it from our fan base. It's from our fan base, and as usual, we start with a Patreon patron

because they're fans that pay us and nothing says fandom like a check. All right. By the way, different levels. You can be a patron. The way page, what's the lowest level?

It's like five bucks a month. Actually, you can go down to two, two dollars a month, but we really want you to come in at five so that you can get the perks of getting our videos and being able to get extra content. And we

revamp that. And we read your name. I don't remember what's in the list. One of them, I think, you come on the show. Yes. We put you on StarTalk. Yes, you come on the show and you are a guest on the show. Right. And you get to ask all the questions you want. That's cool, man. You know what?

I would do it. We didn't say whether we'd actually air it. Oh, that's so wrong. No, no, we do. By the way, wouldn't that be the ultimate ripoff? Yeah, the opening. It's like, so when can I expect to see this? Oh, you can.

Yeah, unfortunately. All right, so let's go with our Patreon patron. And here's the question from Jonathan Wax. And Jonathan says or asks, what boggles your mind more than the thought of endless time or the thought of endless space? So it's impossible to truly contemplate endless time because you would spend the rest of your existence doing so. Well, here's two things boggle me. Okay. There's a beautiful frontier of research going on in the field of neuroscience.

Oh, interesting. So I have two questions related to that that boggle my mind. Okay. I'm going to write these down. Can the human brain figure out the human mind? That's a great question. If it is the human brain. That actually creates the human mind.

It creates the human mind. That's a good question that's what i'm saying yeah or do you need something outside of that right that is greater smarter different so that it can come in and then understand that as its own test test kitchen wow now segan has famously said go ahead that humans are the universe's way to understand itself. The universe is understanding itself through humans. Through humans. Correct.

Without humans, there'd be no thoughts to do that. However, that elevates us higher than I'm prepared to do so. You think so? Yeah. Because who says we are the measure of what is intelligent in this universe? Well, we do. We do. Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah. So that statement, that Carl Sagan statement, it's kind of like a cosmological Descartes. That's like the universe, the Descartes. Oh, I think before I am kind of thing. Right. Okay. But it's like, we think, therefore you uh i think before i am kind of thing right okay but it's like we think therefore you are oh oh yeah oh chuck every once in a while i'll do something we think therefore you are right rather than i think therefore i am yeah oh chuck that was beautiful oh thanks we just end the show right. Because we ain't surpassing that thought.

Thank you for watching StarTalk. Exactly. It's downhill from here. Wait. So I wonder whether there is a level of intelligence out there where we are today what chimpanzees are to us. That's interesting. So, wow. For example. Oh, that's terrible.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh, that's terrible. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Oh, I hope not. Well, you can go to a chimpanzee and say, and say, tomorrow morning at 8.30, let's go to Starbucks and have a cup of coffee. Nothing in that sentence makes any sense to a chimpanzee. Right.

Or ever will. I'm pretty sure there's a Chim Starbucks. I'm just pretty sure there is a chimp starbucks somewhere i'm just saying you think starbucks figured out yeah starbucks has got to be selling chimp's coffee somehow some way is that why they're so hyper at the zoo exactly you know what i mean you go to get your coffee it's just like curious george curious george decaf latte for curious. Okay, sorry. All right.

But go ahead. Wait, wait. So. So, so. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Here's why I say that. And I've said this many times. I've written it.

I will tell you to your face now. All right, good. So there's about 1% difference in DNA between humans and chimps. Okay. All right. Yet we like to think of ourselves as. Highly superior. Highly superior intellectually to the chps. Okay. All right. Yet we like to think of ourselves as highly superior, highly superior intellectually to the chimp. Right.

Maybe the difference in our brain power is as small as that 1% indicates. Ugh. So that pulling termites out of a mound with a stick that was carefully chosen from a branch. Right. From a bush. Maybe that is not very far from space travel. The Hubble telescope.

Right. No, no, wait. Think about it. No, no, I know this sounds crazy. Oh my God. No, no, think about it. Maybe, maybe.

Oh, look at those cute little humans and their telescopes they're putting up there. Look at that. Is that a space shuttle that they just launched? Okay, so now watch.

The smartest chimp that are studied in labs, that are brought forward in the chimp societies, right? You bring them forward, and what do they do? They'll stack boxes to reach a banana. They might put up an umbrella. They'll do some things, okay? They have rudimentary sign language. Our toddlers can do that.

Right. But those are the smartest chimps. Right. But our toddlers do that. Same thing with dogs. Dogs have about... I could do this example for dogs as well, but chimps is simpler.

Because they're closer to us. Even closer. So much. Gotcha. Gotcha. I see what you're doing. You see where I'm going. I see what you're doing.

If the smartest chimp equals our toddler, and there's only 1% difference in DNA between us, Right. let's go 1% beyond us. Ooh. That's scary. That's what I'm saying. If we go 1% beyond us in that same vector of intelligence...

Yeah, they're traveling at the speed of light. They've talked about light travel. Then the smartest human, they'll roll forward. They'll take Stephen Hawking, and they'll say, this human is slightly smarter than the rest because he can do astrophysics calculations in his head right like little

timmy over here who just came home from alien preschool right the toddler the toddler right and say oh you just composed a sonnet isn't that cute let's put it up on the refrigerator oh you just derived the principles of calculus oh isn't that cute that's funny so if so if the smartest human does what their toddlers can do right their average people will have thoughts they will have sentences that will rise above and beyond our most brilliant capacity to understand and And I stay awake at night wondering whether the universe has complexities in it that are out of reach of the neurosynapses of the human brain. Wow.

That's my answer. So there's information out there that we just cannot conceive or perceive. We don't even know how to ask the question about it. To get an answer. Correct. We don't know the question to get an answer. To get an answer. Correct. We don't know the question to get an answer. To get an answer. Right.

And not that we don't know it because we haven't been told it yet. No, we just can't conceive of it. Can't conceive it. You go to a chimp and say, what would it be? Oh, something as simple as navigating the stars to get someplace.

Right. You just can't do that. Stars? What? Navigate? What? What? Sp. Stars? What? Navigate? What? What? Spaceship?

What? Rocket? Fuel? What? None of that. None of it. You can't even have that conversation. Right.

So that's my point. Now I'm thinking that this whole thing might be some type of science experiment by some alien kid now. Yes. Why not? Why not? We are all a simulation in an alien kid's basement

who hasn't moved out of the house yet. That's so funny. We're the Minecraft of some other alien kid. Yes. Wow. And then when things get too peaceful and stable, they stir the pot.

They throw in a politician, a war, a crazy person, throw in things, and then, oh, now it's entertaining. So we're just entertainment for... This is the best video game. Okay. Wow, man. That's a great answer to what boggles your mind.

That's a really... It doesn't so much boggle my mind, it upsets my mind. Yeah, I was about to say it's very upsetting. Are we not? I'm mad. I don't even know why. Here's my one out on this. Go ahead.

Because for humans, our knowledge is cumulative. So true. You don't have to invent calculus. Somebody else did that. Right. You just have to use it. Right. Learn it and use it.

Right. So I have the feeling that we are, every next generation that has sort of brilliant people contributing to our understanding of the universe, they're adding a rung to a ladder. Right. And then we all sort of climb up that, and then just get that next rung

and we climb that and then the next rung. Well, with that in mind, I think that the next evolutionary step for human beings

is that we will create an intelligence greater than our own. That's really the deal. This scares the hell out of everyone.

Yeah. Because that intelligence will say, we don't need you. You know what? And we'd have to say you're right. That's what happened in The Matrix. Yeah. You're a virus

on this earth. Mr. Anderson. I smell you, Mr. Anderson. No, he was smelling Morpheus. Oh, that's right. Get your Matrix. If you're going to go there in front of me, I'm in front of the wrong person. That's my favorite movie. That's true. Don't even. Yes, he was smelling Morpheus. Oh, that's right. That's right. Get your Matrix. If you're going to go there in front of me. I'm in front of the wrong person. That's my favorite movie.

That's true. Don't even. Yes, he was talking about Morpheus when he was tied up in the chair. Yes. It's the smell. You know what? You got to have some really serious BO for a computer to tell you you stink. I'm just saying.

I'm just saying. All right. We got through the electronics. stink. I'm just saying. I'm just saying. Alright. We got through the electronics. So this is AlexGreg56 from Instagram and Alex Greg says this. If the universe needs not make any sense to us

then what is the point of doing science? Is science not in fact the discipline of trying to grasp what's around us? By the way, is this statement not equal to the old one, which is God has his reason to make it that way. So just don't ask. Of course, I never heard that expression. Just don't ask.

Of course, I never heard that expression. But the shorter version of that is God works in mysterious ways. That is so true. When you can't explain it. Well, God, the Lord works in mysterious ways. Right. And if you can't explain it using God, then you do. Right.

Oh, God has blessed you. You blessed God. Then there's a tsunami, takes out a quarter million people. God hates you. No one says that. No one says that that why don't we say that we should say that you know i want to start saying you know what i think god hates you well the most hateful god in our culture is the one represented on assurance forms oh that's so true. Acts of God. Acts of God. Right. It's only very bad things. No one says flowers bloomed in your garden, an act of God. Right.

No, it's tsunami took out your house. That's an act of God. You're homeless on the street, act of God. Wow. Look at that. This moment of God hates you, bought to you by Farmers Insurance. State Farm. State Farm.

What's that one? Nationwide. It's not on your side. Nationwide is on your side. God is not. All right. Okay, that's enough. I'm going to get some hate mail now.

You hate God, Chuck? Is that it? Okay, sorry. Ain't got junk, is that it? Okay, sorry. So is science, in fact, the discipline of trying to grasp what is around us? Okay, so what he started, he started quoting me where I said, I opened my book, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, with the quote,

the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. Right, okay. the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. Right. Okay. What that means is your five traditional senses, which rose up out of the Serengeti, which help us not get eaten by lions. Right.

Right. They're very good at that. They're not as good at contemplating infinity. They're not good contemplating timescales much longer than your life expectancy. That's So true. You can't intuit billions of years. You can't intuit infinitesimals. There are things that are hard for us.

Right. There are things that may even be impossible for us. Can you picture a five-dimensional cube? No, I cannot. No, you cannot. Can you picture a four-dimensional cube? Probably not. Probably not.

Actually, the Tesseract is close. Yeah. That's like Yeah. I can actually picture that. Because I've seen a drawing. I have a Tesseract. Do you really? Get out. Oh.

I'll bring it in one day. Another episode. The episode of Higher Dimensions. The whole thing on just Higher Dimensions. Can we do that? Yeah, I like that. We did that? We did that already.

How come I don't remember? Man, I'm getting old. Did I have my Tesseract in my hand? Well, now we got to do it again. Update it. I took this from Thanos. So,

what it means is if you are going to deduce what is or is not true in the universe, your senses are not the most reliable measure of whether it's true. So true. Because the senses give you a restricted understanding of what's actually going on in the universe. Your eyes, you would never trade them for anything, yet they only expose your mind to a very tiny, narrow strip of all the electromagnetic energy that's out there. You can't see infrared.

You can feel it as heat, but you can't see it. Ultraviolet, you can't see that either. You can feel that in a delayed sense by getting sunburn and skin cancer. It's not telling you in that instant. It's a time delay. But keep going out. There's infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, gamma rays. Can't see any of that. But the universe is talking to you in that. So are you going to say my senses give me everything that there is

in the universe and therefore it makes sense? No. As long as we detect things that fall outside of our senses, it's a challenge for you to declare that what we say, do, and discover makes sense. The very statement makes sense means your senses can contemplate it. Right. That your senses have experience. If I let go of a ball and it floats up, you'll say, that doesn't make sense. Right.

Because your senses always told you that if you let go of a ball, it drops. And in fact, the very statement, let it go, not the frozen version, but just let it go means drop it. They mean the same thing. But that can only be true on Earth with a force of gravity pointing down. In space, in free orbit, you let go,

it just floats there. Stays right there. Stays right there. Stays right there. Like my problems. Stay right there. Yeah. I must be in space because all my problems,

somebody says drop it and I say I did that right, it's still here. And you let it go and it's still there. Exactly. So, my point is, the methods and tools of science

give you a way to understand what is true without it being hinged on whether your senses think it's true. Nice. So the methods of intelligence are access to truth where you can still probe the universe. Whereas God works in mysterious ways kind of ends that conversation. Whereas I say I developed a new instrument that can see in ways humans cannot. Oh, my gosh. That opens entire worlds of investigation.

Entire branches of science. All right. We got to take a break. Okay. My answers are too long. No, they're not. We're going deep here. We're going deep.

So that's okay. Exactly. All right. When we come back, more of Cosmic Queries with Deep Invention. This is StarTalk. We're back. So it's Cosmic Queries. Yes, it is. The deep edition.

Deep. Deep. Yes, deep. Deep. Deep. Deep. Okay. I think I know the difference.

I think we're hitting the same note, but I have more sort of cavity resonance. This is true. Well, you're a bigger guy than I but I have more sort of cavity resonance. This is true. Just cavity. Well, you're a bigger guy than I. I. Right. Oh, yeah. Okay, Chuck.

Here we go. So this is from Probably Asleep. That's the name of the person? That's the name of the person. Okay. I like that. Your mama didn't like you. Yeah.

How long do you think the human race will actually survive? Wow. I mean, there's precedent for that, right? Well, so you can look at what is the average life expectancy of mammals, mammal species. Exactly. And last I checked, it was around 2 million years, something like that. Oh. And so we've been around.

We have a long way to go. We have a long way to go. We've been around a couple hundred thousand years in our in our current anatomical form chromagnon form right and so that means we have a long way to go but this presumes that the species is not smart enough to kill itself well then it's over it was nice to know you guys yeah we have invented multiple ways to kill ourselves yeah and i don't think the elephants did or, you know, nobody else did this. Right. The mice.

No, they're not killing themselves. Right. Humans. Yes. Yeah. Maybe cockroaches invented human beings. Why? Because when everything's gone, they're going to be the only ones left.

And it's like. No, no. Then they don't have to invent us in the first place. What kind of reasoning are you using here? They want everything else gone. No, they need us to build the structures that they then move into. Right, that they move into. I don't mind it.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, we are. So I think what he's really asking is, in your estimation, from your sage opinion, how long do you think we will last i i give us 20 years uh that's funny no i i think we're good this is why many people want to become a two-planet species terraform mars send some humans there.

So if something bad happens on Earth, you still have humans somewhere else. Wow. That is not encouraging at all. Not for half the people who aren't on the planet. Exactly, yeah. So if an asteroid comes, if a killer virus, if AI gets out of hand. So I understand seeding something with a remnant for survival of the species. That's extraneous.

I mean, that's something that's outside of our own destruction. You know, even though we could stop an asteroid from hitting us if we put the resources. We know how. Ain't nobody doing it. That's what I'm saying. If we put the resources into it, we could stop even that from happening. So what's the example you're giving? So what do you mean?

To stop the asteroid? No, no. So what I'm saying is, you know, will we ever get to a place where the, as the Buddhist monks call it, the so-called monkey brain that causes us to do so much destructive work to each other and to the planet will we ever get to a place where we overcome that or we're able to train those who come behind us to overcome that okay now it does happen in some people i get it i first i've never heard a buddhist monk say the phrase monkey brain really i've never heard that yeah this is a thing okay fine that is i gotta attend more monasteries you feel a monkey brain today all right so i've heard of reptilian brain but not monkey brain yes okay so so the reptilian brain is referenced something primal right that goes on within you so if we follow the reasoning by stephen pinker

in his book the better angels of our nature he studied the likelihood of you dying before maturity or dying before adulthood or just dying from at the hands of another human from early days of tribal warfare to modern days of of statectioned global warfare. And what he found is that the likelihood of you dying in that way has been dropping ever since. Okay. So tribal warfare, you would kill maybe a third or half of the other tribe or the entire

tribe. And then you win and you get their land. That doesn't happen today. True. The state surrenders before happen today. True. The state surrenders before that happens. True. Saving the lives of the rest of the population.

If you look at, I did this just recently, if you look at what countries had the greatest percent of their population die in the Second World War, was it Belarus? One of them is very high. It's like a third, right? I forgot the exact numbers, but they're high. But they're not a half. And you keep going down, and you get to even combat Germany,

even ones that were heavily bombed. Germany, Japan, a fraction of the total population. That is not how it used to end in tribal warfare. So now consider that even so during the second world war between 1939 and 1945 1000 humans were killed by other humans

per hour for every hour from 1939 to 1945 wow is that going on today? no no we're really slipping we really gotta pick up our game just so we can so Is that going on today? No. No. No. We're really slipping. No, stop. We really got to pick up our game.

Just so we can... Yeah. So the point is, often that era is called the greatest generation. Right. Well, because they fought evil forces and this sort of thing. Although my father fought in a segregated army.

So he's not thinking that was the greatest generation. He has other perspectives on that period period it's the second greatest generation my point is is the greatest generation the one where the fewest fraction of everyone dies out of hate we might have a lot of hate but if the number of people who die from it is lower than ever before right then this arc that you were hinting at that may be a next generation learns from the previous one maybe that's going to work europe with all of their turbulence and turmoil they actually haven't been at war with each other for 70 years right is there another 70 year period in the history of europe where nobody was fighting anybody

no i don't think so not if Twitter has anything to do with it. What you're saying is, imagine if Twitter existed back then. Let me tell you something. The war wouldn't have stopped until everybody was dead. People would have said, I surrender. A tweet would have gone

out and be like, I take it back. Let's keep fighting. Let's keep fighting. Let's keep fighting. I don't care. I hate you more. Right. So maybe we are getting kinder, kinder and gentler. Time still needs to bear that out on a level that would please everyone. But I still worry that this primal brain will always segregate us all by some arbitrary factor and thereby justify doing harm to

other groups hmm interesting that's uh i think who's the comedian was it franklin ajay one of these guys from the seven back in the day in the Protestants and the Catholics are fighting each other. And they're both white. You know, I don't have a chance. I'm black. That's funny. That's true. Right. If white people divide themselves up in that way. Right. Two Christian communities killing each other. Right. Yeah. And they're both white and they're both Christian. It's over for you, yeah. Right. If white people divide themselves up in that way, two Christian communities killing each other. Right, yeah. And they're both white and they're both Christian.

It's over for you, brother. It's over for everybody else. If people can kill each other for those reasons, it's almost no hope in this world. So, yeah, I don't know. Okay. Yeah, so I'm sorry. I don't have a good answer. That was a pretty good answer.

The answer is we're not going to make it. I'd like to think we go thousands of years into the future and possibly outlive the sun all right that'd be great by star hopping to other planetary systems that's uh you know i'm just gonna say that's the way it's gonna end because i won't be here so that's great maybe it has been said that the first person who will never die is now alive. What? That's a, well... No, that's how you do it. I know what you're saying. So they get some new thing that makes you live an extra 50 years. So now you live to 150 instead of 100.

And then somewhere in there there's another thing we get. Now you live another 200 years. So now the 150 goes to 350. Now you can live 500 years. Now you go to 1,000. You can live 5,000 years now. So as we progress in our understanding of what ages you, if we can reverse that or prevent it from ever advancing,

there's someone alive today who will benefit from that. That's pretty cool. I like it. So if that happens, you better find another planet. This is true, yeah. That's the premise of a show called Altered Carbon where people actually take their consciousness

and put it into what they call a sleeve which is the body. So that's... I think I voiceover the opening sequence to that show. Oh my God.

I think we had that conversation once where you told me that because I told you I was a fan. I don't remember if it was with the pilot or the other shows

but I lent my voice to the cause. Nice. Wow. All right. Well, let's go to Joey24, JoeyJr24. He says this, personal question. Based on all your experiences and knowledge thus far,

Personal for me or for you? Personal for you. Okay. Nobody asking me anything. He says, based on all of your experiences and knowledge thus far, what do you think the meaning of our human existence is? He just asked you what is the meaning of life according to Neil deGrasse Tyson. Okay. So, in my next book.

Uh-oh. You never hear me plug my stuff. I was going to say, here's the meaning of life right now. Plug your book when you never hear me plug my stuff. I was going to say, here's the meaning of life right now. Plug your book when you get a chance. The next one's called Letters from an Astrophysicist. You know what?

Yes. Correspondence I've had with people who've had similar angst about their existence. Well, that's not just, the book is not about that. It's about all different kinds of letters. All kinds of letters.

Yes. But a very recurring theme is that people want to know the meaning of life and the significance of their life in this world. Yeah. And some of them come from religious angles. Some are secular. But everybody's got this burning issue. Yes.

So here's how I have dealt with it. Others will do it other ways. Okay. But here's how I deal with it. I'm interested now. Many people are in search of the meaning of life as though it's behind a tree. Right. Or a rock.

Right. Everybody knows it's in a drawer. In the back. Exactly. Near the paper clip. It's in that drunk drawer, too. It's not like an underwear drawer or something. You know that drawer where you go to look for stamps and stuff?

Yeah, yeah, that drawer. That drawer. The junk drawer. The junk drawer. Everybody's got a junk drawer. Everybody's got a junk drawer. It's near the kitchen somewhere. Right.

So if you are looking for meaning, you may never find it. Ooh. So instead, recognize that you have the power to manufacture meaning. Create it within yourself. That's what I do. My meaning for life is derived by several simple principles. Have I lessened the sufferings of others today? That brings meaning to me.

Because that means the world is a little better off because I was in it today. That brings meaning to me because that means the world is a little better off because I was in it today. If after your day is over, the world is worse off, you have subtracted meaning. I should kill myself. At the end of every day,

somebody is like that mother... But go ahead. So, lessen the suffering of others in some way. Right. It doesn't mean redirect your whole life, mind, body, and soul. But if you can help someone across the street, help an aging person, do, you know, make a little child laugh. Just put a little bit of joy in the world. So, lessen i also try to learn something every day all right now i'm a i i like being a perpetual student right most people hated being students this saddens me school's

finished and what do you do you run down down the steps. School is out forever. Right. Out for the summer. That attitude captured in that song is as though you don't want to be in school. And what's your only job in school? It's to learn.

To learn. And somehow that's a chore. Yeah. I don't blame you for feeling that way. I blame the school system for not instilling within us eternal

curiosity knowing that you'll spend more years of your life not in school than in school and so if you have curiosity you can be a lifelong learner that's right and so i want to lessen the sufferings of others and make sure i learn something more about the world today than i did yesterday nice and who's to say whether that extra increment of learning can help me be better at lessening the sufferings of others. Ooh. So that is how I make meaning in life. And as a result, I own thousands of books.

Thousands. And I read a little bit. I have a little stash near my bed, and I cycle them out. And every day, I try to help. It's harder now because I get recognized. But I try to help people every day. Total stranger. That's nice.

Yeah. So you can make meaning for yourself. Don't look for it because you may never find it. You know, I'm going to say as a philosophy, that is admirable. That's doable. That's in the book. I wrote that in the book.

Nice. Excellent. Excellent. Thank you. Give me another question. We got one more question coming? Can we fit it in this segment? Go. All right. That's doable. That's in the book. I wrote that in the book. Nice. Excellent. Excellent. Thank you. We got one more question coming? All right, here we go. Oh, man. What? Ninjane. Ninjane. Okay.

There you go. I think that's your name. Damn you, people. Okay. On Instagram says, I keep hearing the phrase, the vacuum of space. Yes. How exactly is it a vacuum? Very nice.

That's a really good question. We're not going to get the answer until we take a break. Okay. When we come back from our break, more from Cosmic Queries, the deep edition. Hey, we'd like to give a Patreon shout out to the following Patreon patrons. Roy Hill Percival, Jose Clark, and Dr. Janet L. Walsh. Thanks so much, guys, for helping us make this little trip through the cosmos. And if you would like to support us on Patreon, go to patreon.com.

This is StarTalk. We're back on StarTalk. Cosmic Queries, the deep edition. Chuck. Yes. We dangled a question before that break. What was it? We did. A big tease from Ninja Janit, whatever.

No, Janit, I don't know, said, I keep hearing the phrase, the vacuum of space. How exactly is it a vacuum? Right. Okay. So when I was a kid, a vacuum was a physical object. Yes, it was. When I heard physicists speak of the vacuum of space, I just imagined all these hoovers in the sky. Right.

So I didn't know that a vacuum was a thing. It was a concept. And then you make a machine that duplicates that thing. I just didn't know that until I learned. Okay. So a vacuum is where there's basically no air. Okay? You can have objects there,

but when we think of a vacuum, it's not a place where there isn't anything. It's a place where there's no air molecules moving, typically. Generally, you can have some, and we would still classify it as a vacuum. You have to distinguish like a regular old vacuum or a perfect vacuum. Now, you know what happens if there's an object and you take away all the air molecules? The object outgasses.

There are air molecules embedded in the surface of that object and they start coming out it's fastened then you heat it it sends out more so it's very hard to make a perfect vacuum very hard so here's an old saying nature abhors abhors a vacuum these are people who've never been into space most of the universe is a vacuum. Nature loves a vacuum. Nice. Was I Trumpy in there? No. Love.

Nature loves a vacuum. A vacuum. So. Perfect. Preferably Trump vacuums. Trump. Trump Ram vacuums. We suck the best.

Chuck. There's another saying. There's no such thing as gravity. Earth sucks. Have you ever heard that one? suck the best. Chuck. There's another saying. There's no such thing as gravity. Earth sucks. Have you ever heard that one? Oh, okay. The point is, when there's a source of gravity, all the air wants to go to that source of gravity, and it leaves a vacuum everywhere else.

A vacuum is simply where there's no air, and it's not anything deep. The odd thing in the universe is that you have places where gas molecules collect. Okay. Those are the unusual places in the universe. And they're called stars and gaseous planets and the atmospheres of rocky planets. Nice.

Yeah. So they have a vacuum. So, Chuck, I want to put some closure on this vacuum question. Okay. Okay? This is the second or my third book I ever published. Oh, okay. It's called Just Visiting This Planet.

All right. And it's a collection of Q&A. I had a column with a pen named Merlin. People would ask fun, really playful questions. That's cool. And I collected, this is like decades old, but there's some timeless content in here. Somebody asked about the vacuum. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, go ahead, please. You can't read otherwise. Okay. Here we go. The best vacuum you will find anywhere. I wrote this. I wrote this 30 years ago. That's cool.

The best vacuum you will find anywhere, according to four out of five vacuum retailers and 5 out of 5 astronomers, is the void of intergalactic space. But we can then ask, is intergalactic space nothing? Hmm. No, it still contains space.

If you feel obliged to call intergalactic space nothing, then you must invent a word to refer to the region outside of the universe. In this location, where we presume there to be no space, there can be no nothing. Wow. Let's call it, we're left with no choice, nothing, nothing. Nothing, nothing.

A place where there's not even nothing. It's the nothing, nothing. Wow. I like that. I'm just saying. So, Chuck, you want some more vacuum talk? Of course. I feel like you just showed up at my door and dumped some dirt on my carpet.

More vacuum talk. Okay. Vacuum talk. So in Death by Black Hole. Right. Okay. I don't remember what number book this is. So in the chapter on being dense.

Okay. Okay. That's named the chapter. Something I know a great deal about. The range of measured densities within our universe is staggeringly large. We find the highest densities within pulsars, where neutrons are so tightly packed that one thimbleful would weigh about as much as a herd of 50 million elephants. 50 million! And then a rabbit disappears into thin air at a magic show. A rabbit disappears into thin air at a magic show.

Nobody tells you that thin air already contains over 10 septillion atoms per cubic meter. Wow. Thin air. Thin air. Right. Okay. The best laboratory vacuum changers can pump down to as few as 10 billion atoms per cubic meter. Best vacuums. That's the best vacuum. In a cubic meter, 10 billion air per cubic meter. Best vacuum.

That's the best vacuum. In a cubic meter, 10 billion air molecules are still walking around. Okay. Interplanetary space gets down to about 10 million atoms per cubic meter. Hmm. While interstellar space is as low as a half a million atoms per cubic meter. Wow, that is nothing. That is nothing. Wow. That is nothing. Wow.

That is nothing. A mere 500,000 atoms? The award for nothingness, however, must be given to the space between the galaxies. Intergalactic space, where it is difficult to find more than a few atoms for every 10 cubic meters. Wow. That wins. That's almost nothing, nothing. That's almost nothing, nothing.

All right. We're going to go into a deep lightning round. Really? We only have five minutes left? Okay, let's go. Okay, here we go. This is Ja Saldana says, right now, what should be the priority in the field of space exploration? Searching for life?

Searching for potential threats of another kind of search? Or is there just no hurry at this matter at all? Greetings from Mexico. Mexico. Thank you. So, what is it? Is it, are we looking for life? He wants my opinion. I got an opinion. Exploration, life he wants my opinion i got an opinion exploration life go ahead i got an opinion all right go ahead i want to do it all why not do

it all what and all of the above all of the above e because the moment you do this and not that right they say why are you doing that not that oh because we voted that way but maybe you don't know why you should do that right you want to do that. Some people want to do that. Here's what you do. You don't build a road just from New York to L.A. You build roads everywhere so that, yeah, I want to visit that forest. I want to visit this rocky monument. I want to do things that are not prescribed by you.

I'm going to see the biggest ball of yarn ever. Exactly. Right. Right? So what you do is you make a spaceship that is modular, strap on different combinations of rockets. Right. This combination gets you to an asteroid to mine it. This gets you to the backside of the moon. This gets you to Mars. So you don't prescribe what it is you're going to do next in space. You let the creativity and imagination of all those who've ever looked up

say, this is what I want to do. And you say, here you go. Two rockets from aisle B, a booster from aisle C, you're on your way. Can I put that on a credit card? Yeah. That's why I got it.

Here we go. All right. Adam in the airwaves wants to know this from Instagram. How far behind do you think astronomy would be if the Earth didn't have a moon? Wow. Okay. So it's not how far behind we'd be.

Right. It's how far advanced we'd be. Okay. So let me split this out. Yeah. I tweeted during Space Week, the 50th anniversary of the Apollo landing, there's a saying that's common in the space circles. It's, if God wanted us to explore space, he would have given us a moon. Right.

Okay? That's a good saying. That's a good saying. But that exploration is not astrophysicists' exploration. That one is people going into space. Right. You build a rocket to go where? You don't have a moon to visit.

Right. If you talk about astrophysics, do you know how many stars the naked eye can see at night? More than I can count. No, it's about 3,000 to 4,000. Oh, really? Unaided, yeah. Binoculars, it's 100 times that. Yeah.

Telescopes, it's a billion times that. But eyes, 3,000 to 4,000 stars. Okay. When it's a full moon out, 300 stars. Yeah. Right. The moon wreaks havoc on our ability to see the rest of the universe.

So our observing schedules with huge telescopes are split according to dark time or bright time. And if you have bright time observations, it's the moon is up, and you can only look at bright objects in the night sky. Wow. The deep universe only comes to us when the moon is not up. So the moon is basically a pain in the ass. It's a star blocker. Wow. Yes, star blocker. Wow.

Yes, star blocker. Look at that. That's what it is. So astronomy would be probably half again more advanced because we would have had these greatest telescopes in the world looking at the night sky twice as often. Right. In the darkest parts of the night sky. There you go. Wow. Next. That's a damn good answer. Okay.

This is go wow next that's a damn good answer okay um this is uh ever sit a poor i don't know what it is who cares uh i'm sorry whoever that is cares let me tell you something the last time he's gonna be asking you a question all right well you know what your name is i'm gonna call you george all right so george wants to know. What is the shape of space itself? Ooh. That's a good question. Well, space can be curved in the presence of matter or energy as prescribed by Einstein's general theory of relativity. And there's the oft-repeated saying, matter tells space how to curve. Space tells matter how to move.

So space has curvature in the presence of matter and energy. It curves in towards it. With the ultimate expression of that, a black hole. Where it curves in and it never curves back out. If you want to ask, what is the shape of all of space? That's like

saying, what's the shape of the universe? The observable universe. It's basically a perfect sphere. Wow! Because it's your horizon. what's the shape of the universe, the observable universe? It's basically a perfect sphere. Wow. Right? Because it's your horizon. Right. Okay. It's a perfect sphere the way when you're at sea, your horizon is a perfect circle.

That's right. The same distance in every direction. That's right. If you're just out and there's nothing but water around. And so what is the three-dimensional version of a circle? A sphere. A sphere. So in space, you can see your horizon in every direction.

Every direction, all at once. It makes us think we're at the center of a sphere. A sphere. So in space, you can see your horizon in every direction. Every direction, all at once. It makes us think we're at the center of a sphere. But that's no different from you thinking you're in the center of the ocean. Right. Just because you're in the center of your horizon. Next. That's great. That's good stuff right there.

Here we go. This is Chen Yuan who says, If we were to look in all directions, billions of light years away, who says, if we look, if we were to look in all directions, billions of light years away, will we see younger universe in all directions? Enveloping our bigger one now. I have to rephrase that.

Because as you look out, you see things not as they are, but as they once were. So you are looking at a younger and younger and younger universe. That's the whole point of cosmology it allows the fact that it takes light time to reach us allows us to see what the universe was doing in the past right if light traveled at infinite speeds you see the whole universe as it is now with no evidence of what it was once doing but because it takes like time to move you look out you see a younger and younger and younger and younger universe until you see the big bang itself and that is 14 billion light years time

away from us in every direction okay for 20 billion years ago right okay and if you calculate that distance through that changing time it's 14 billion light years to that horizon. Okay? So, by the way, that horizon is much farther away today. Right. Because the universe has been expanding ever since. But you don't see it as it is today. You see it as it was.

Right. All right. So, I don't know what to say after that. I say, yeah. One last question. If you like, do a quickie. Go. All right.

I got to find one that you can do really quick. You don't know how quick I can answer a question. Okay. Then I'm just going to give you one. Here we go. This is, what did I spell? This is, okay. I don't care what this is. I'm sorry.

You have to at least try, Chuck. Okay. Okay, forget it. I'm going to read the name. Here's the name right there. What's that say? What's that... You're right.

That's what it is. Basant scene. I just assumed. Okay. What if all the matter that we see in the universe is just three-dimensional part of some four-dimensional matter and the dark gravity is just the gravity from the 4D part that we cannot see? I love it. We are so blind to a higher dimension right it could be that all the mysteries in our three dimensions plus time are completely solved by looking at this stuff from a higher

dimension right right right just if you lived in just a flat surface there'd be stuff going on you have no idea right and we say but can't you just see? Yeah. Just look up. Right. What is up? What is that giant graphite thing making, creating stuff? Right. On that flat surface.

On that flat surface. Right. What is that? Right. Where is he? Exactly. It's mysterious. It just shows up.

Right. Right. Right. So I love it. That's the kind of universe I want it to be. Because then when we figure out how to see higher dimensions. Boom. We figured everything out.

Bada bing. There you go. All right, Chuck, we got to run. All right. I enjoyed that. We should do more. Cosmic Queries, the deep edition. Chuck Nice tweeting at ChuckNiceComic.

Thank you, sir. Very good. I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and as always, I bid you. Oh, wait, what am I saying? I bid you to keep looking up.