StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries with Bill Nye and Astro Mike

Episode Date: March 9, 2014

Join guest host Bill Nye the Science Guy, Eugene Mirman and NASA astronaut Mike Massimino as they have a blast answering your questions while Neil’s off working on COSMOS. 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 Radio. Bill Nye the Science Guy here, guest hosting for my beloved colleague, Neil deGrasse Tyson. I'm here with Eugene Merman and Mike Massimino, whom we call Mass because it's a complicated name. It's hard to pronounce Massimino. I'm glad. I'm lucky I got it right. You can't tell, but I literally just tried and failed, and I just give up.

That aside, gentlemen, I want to point out, this is Cosmic Queries edition, StarTalk Radio, so we take your questions out there in the land of... Cosmic area. Yes, the cosmos, which includes the Earth and social media. So Earth and up and down. Wait a minute. So try one. What the hell is that? Here So earth and up and down. Wait a minute. So try what the hell is up. Here we go.

Here we go. Sebastian Mihalache from Romania asks. I bet he's got a nickname too. I probably am saying it wrong, but you know what? With confidence. Anyway, from Romania, he asks, which was the most important breakthrough in the history of electronics?

I think the ability to generate electricity in the first place was a big breakthrough. Instead of just getting it, if I may, just getting it from chemical processes. Is he looking for a transistor? I don't know. We don't know. Or is he looking for a starter in an automobile? Or is he looking for fuel cells? Fuel cells.

Or basically electricity and then everything. I think electricity is the big breakthrough. But then there's been some very interesting accomplishments. I just wish you were like tape recorder. fuel cells or basically electricity i think electricity is the big breakthrough but then there's been some some very very interesting accomplishment i just wish you were like tape recorders the light bulb yeah well for me the story radio of course because we're on radio well the story for me is michael faraday so michael faraday is sticking the magnet in a coil of wire and he induces a magnetic field to move a compass at the other end of the table during a lecture, the Christmas lectures in London.

This is good. A woman comes up to him and says, but Mr. Faraday, of what use is it? And he says, madam, of what use is a newborn babe? In other words, he knew this electricity had some fantastic properties, but he didn't know what it was. He didn't mean that you could eat it. Yeah, newborn babes, not that useful. It was a long time ago.

It was a different time. But in the course of human history, it wasn't that long ago. No, just a little bit ago. Just before Hogan's Heroes, I believe. Older reference, lost on many of these younger listeners. Hogan's Heroes, I'm pretty sure, was after World War II. It probably was. This was before World War II. It probably was. This was before World War II.

It didn't foreshadow World War II. Let's take another question on Cosmic Query StarTalk Radio. Okay, Jess Nudalo asks, what's new on the subject of high temperature or even room temperature superconductors. Are we getting any closer to grasping how it works? And will this knowledge in conjunction with 3D printing create a new industrial age? Sounds like he's making a prediction of his own, doesn't he? Yeah. He's like, am I right? What do you think? He's a sage. Yeah.

We'll see. Maybe she's a sage. 3D printing is fabulous. What's the state of superconductors? Well, I don't know that we have superconductors and well i don't know that though we have superconductors that work at sort of liquid helium temperatures everybody wants kind of cold though yeah yeah four to four kelvin yeah it's pretty yeah four kelvin sounds cold it is cold even colder than like canada yeah so it's like super canada yeah uh but wouldn't it

be good if they work with liquid nitrogen wouldn't it be good if they worked with liquid nitrogen? Wouldn't it be good if they worked with frozen water? Yeah. But it's a long way off as far as I know. But that doesn't mean it can't be done. What I would do where I, king of the forest, is invest again in these nanotubes and getting carbon atoms to arrange themselves in these extraordinary tubes where they have very, very low electrical resistance. All right. Let's do it. The 3D printing thing is here.

I suppose we 3D printed carbon tubes. Could we ever do that? Is that a thing in the future? It seems very reasonable to me, but I'm not a carbon tube printer. Have you guys ever 3D printed? I've never done that. Oh, it's cool.

They're affordable now, sort of, for universities. You can get them at Staples. Really? Yeah. Wait, how much are, like, meaning a few thousand dollars? Yeah, less than $2,000. Oh, wow. And then you can make your own salt shakers.

I can't wait to go home and make salt shakers and plastic swords. Too bad people can't see this because it's radio, but Eugene's eyes have just lit up. Yeah, I was like, that is- He's ready to get out of here and go buy a 3D printer. Yeah. But, you know know They use them We have them in the Labs in the shops

At Columbia for example And the students Learn how to use them And they do Incredible things with them The next generation Of kids will be like Why aren't you

3D printing that Exactly Why are you going To a store to buy Something like this Right yes So it's additive Machining

If you've not Thought about it Generally when you Shape something You remove material Generally But this is a Process by which You add material Oh meaning you Don't cut out not thought about it generally when you shape something you remove material generally but this is a process by which you add material that's right it's quite a different idea and you can make shapes that are literally were literally impossible to make wow heretofore it's quite a

time to be alive it's exciting it's great all right and a sapien asks what is the most revolutionary engineering challenge that humanity must overcome in the next 20 to 30 years well i'd say it's climate change so how are you going to do that i i would say it's going to be engineering the whole earth i mean thinking of the whole earth as a system and getting people to work together to can to manage that system which would be engineering engineers use science to do what? Solve problems And make things

That's it Create parties Make things and solve problems So basically climate change That's what I would say We have a lot of people in the world And a lot more coming Things like water and healthcare

Transportation All those things that are going to face us, engineers need to solve. Yes. All right. That's a very reasonable and correct answer. Oh, it's correct. Yeah. Okay.

Deplorable perception. That is probably not someone's real name. I am guessing that is some form of pseudonym. Unless their parents were diabolical yeah thank you yeah uh so here's his question i like that i'm like it's a guy how will we solve the looming question of energy storage that's a great question i am all for the liquid metal batteries these are batteries that have uh magnesium floating on a layer of molten salt, essentially table salt. And at the bottom is a layer of antimony or antimony, which is the one that's atomic number 51, I believe, next to tin on the periodic table.

And so you pump all this. So far, this is all correct. Where's our fact checker? So you pump in energy and it gets hot. And it's molten. And it works. And it's a battery. And how long does the storage?

Well, as my understanding, as long as it's hot, it's storing electricity. So you'd put these things in the basement of every building, in the basement of every New York skyscraper, of every school and library. You produce electricity with sunlight and wind during the day. You store it underground. You're ready for it all night. And we revolutionize society. And whoever goes into this business gets, dare I say it, rich. It's an opportunity for somebody.

If we could find ways to efficiently store electricity, better batteries, we would change the world and make a much higher quality of life for everybody. So we have to move on gentlemen. I include you Eugene. Thank you. And we'll be back after this. Check us out at www. startalkradio.net We'll be right back. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio.

Bill Nye, the science guy here, guest hosting, yet again, the time of my life, with Eugene Merman. And astronaut Mike Massimino, call him Mass. We're here. He's an engineer. Mike Mass is an engineer. Eugene, you are a? Comedian. Comedian. I'm an engineer, but when I was in eighth grade, I got a negative eight on a math assignment, just to give you a sense of my knowledge of math and science. So you do understand the number line and you appreciate negative numbers. And I appreciate that that is an absurd thing to get. Very unusual.

What did your parents say when that happened? I think they were disappointed in a teacher that would stick to logic. They defended you. Well, I think they wrote him a letter saying he breeds a disgust in math. Did they go and say he deserves at least a minus four? It was like, you should give him a zero. He earned it. All right.

Gentlemen. Here we go. This is the Cosmic Queries edition of StarTalk Radio. And so where we take your questions. And eat them. From your Facebooks, your Twitters, all the electric computer questions that the kids send in. What do you got there?

Here we go. Julian Razo asks, what is magnetism? How do magnets work? I know there's those things that stick to your fridge, but the force is all around us and protects us from solar bursts. I like that that's, at the end, it's a question. It's a question? Yeah.

That's true. He's in the band Insane Clown Posse. Never mind. It was really... Great reference. Really? No. But they have a song about magnetism.

It was really their early stuff. Now they're just completely overproduced. But that said, yeah, magnetism is generally thought of as a current, a flow of electrons, which have an electric field, which induces a magnetic field, through a term coined by my personal hero, Michael Faraday, all one word, electromagnetism. Now, Mass, you're an engineer. Yeah. You took a lot of physics.

I did. But I'm just amazed to hear it. This is Bill Nye, the science guy, explaining magnetism. Well, as best I can. Yes, we're going with the physics. Fire away. Well, when we have a. Yes, we're going with the physics. When we have a permanent magnet, well, when we have a permanent magnet, we think of a virtual current.

That is to say, it's as though there's a current flowing in the magnetic material, iron, cobalt, nickel, or some of these fabulous rare earths. But in the earth, which the questioner referred to, to which the questioner referred, in the earth, which the questioner referred to, to which the questioner referred, in the earth we have somehow a spinning giant mass of, by our standards, very large mass of molten iron, which carries a lot of electrons, which are in motion, which induce a current, which creates a magnetic field.

Which is very important for our survival. It keeps our atmosphere in place. It would be a whole nother. Our atmosphere is kept here by magnets. Partially so, yes. If we did not have our magnetic field, we would, in fact, there's some theories, if you look at Mars, which does not have a magnetic field, that why did Earth survive?

And as far as we know, at least on the surface, there's nothing obvious that's living on Mars. If we could fill Mars' core with a hot giant ball of iron that spun would it spin naturally if it was there well mars is spinning at about the same so if we could get in a magnetic field it might have had a different destiny could it create what an atmosphere be created if a magnetic field was added to it it might be able to be captured possibly okay so it's generally believed that since mars was too was is smaller than the earth it radiated more heat into space cooled off solidified and any molten motion of metal inside uh came to a standstill and then

the solar wind little particles streaming off the sun stripped the martian atmosphere away and while we all sit here just a couple weeks ago i went to cape canaveral for the launch of the maven mission cool mars atmospheric volatile evolution spacecraft it's a tortured acronym but they're going to assess the cool acronym it is a cool act maven's pretty good it's pretty good they're going to assess the atmosphere or learn more about the atmosphere of Mars and what happened there, why Mars is different from the Earth. And that will, I guarantee you, questioner,

that will tell us more about us and our, dare I say it, place in space. So what I'm getting from this is, theoretically, we could create an atmosphere on another planet using a great deal of iron and a bunch of uh various and scuba tanks scuba tanks basically scuba tanks a handful of whales uh all right but a magnetic field is very important it's the first step is a magnetic field then we

do the thing from search for spock where we uh bioengineer a planet but okay never you've got a crazy plan there that is crazy eugene but it i have the same i don't know what you're even talking about but it sounds good it's not that crazy i'm looking at bill nye the science guy just to for you know for confirmation on this but it sounds good all right when you start getting into the star trek movies yeah there's going to be some inconsistencies terraforming a planet is just not that easy but it's not i'm not saying it's easy i'm just saying here's a few ways we could do it don't underestimate the magnetic field exactly well said awesome all right so lorenzo alfondo castanon gonzalez asks i would like to know more about

magnetars can humanity one day create such a strong magnet And how much would such a magnet advance technology? I don't know what magnetars are Do you know what a magnetar is, Bill? No, it sounds like If Bill doesn't know, forget it Well, it just sounds like A very powerful magnet? A musical instrument that somehow uses magnetism

And I guess if one's big enough You could influence a lot of people It's a deadly theremin. He's talking about some huge, strong magnet, obviously, here. He definitely is. By the way, we in the skeptic community are troubled deeply by people who wear magnets believing that it's going to influence their health. Really?

Not even on the wrist? Take off your magnet, Eugene. Yeah, I know. Oh, my my god wouldn't i be embarrassed if i was wearing a bunch of magnets there's no evidence no evidence at all that we can see yeah no evidence of all at all that magnetism affects your health it's just it's just so little just next time you get an mri yeah magnetic resonance image Just notice how much magnetism it takes just to get a few positrons to move around, just a little bit. Yeah. Let alone wearing it as a magnet hat.

Yeah, it's just not going to do it. All right. Well, so that's good to know. Okay. So Jason Hyatt has a question. The Earth has a magnetic field that protects it from space radiation. Is there any reason why a magnetic field could not be used on a spacecraft, either for the whole ship or as an emergency shelter?

An MRI scanner produces a very strong magnetic field. Why not a magnetic field generator, a la an MRI to protect astronauts? What a coincidentally happy question right there. If you had a strong enough magnet, yeah, you could pull it off. But our problem so far is generating enormous magnetic fields takes a lot of energy a lot of power you need really how much a lot like as much as a like a like a coffee maker that's like supercharged it'd be a little more than that yeah so like a boat like a giant boat a cruise ship like a diesel engine on a pretty large like a tugboat diesel engine. Okay. That's more than you would have on your average spaceship.

Because of how heavy and giant and weird that is. Yeah, you don't want any big stuff like that. You don't want to fly with a truck into space. But just imagine. Kind of defeats the purpose. Just imagine if we had solar panels big enough and some superconducting situation in the icy blackness of space, and you could create a magnetic field strong enough. That's actually a science fictional kind of cool engineering question but i think when at least right now early in the 21st century we humans can't crank that out we can't make such a

thing but who knows what the future but that but if we started doing more space exploration we would potentially come up with that technology down the line it seems like something if you had that much power it yeah seems to make sense power but there's other we do other things for for space radiation like uh suits like like space suits uh water's a pretty good insulator actually oh really yeah and uh shielding you know all the and and we try to understand how much you you take you know we always wear a dosimeter when you go into space Oh really? To measure how much radiation you're taking How much are you exposed to? It's a pretty good dose

It also depends on where you are Spacewalks you get more than when you're inside the spaceship At a higher altitude by where we were at Hubble As opposed to where the space station is Oh wow, just a few tens of kilometers make a big difference That's right, and the length of time you're going to be there, and if there's solar flares when you're up there, so it's a bunch of factors. But it's nothing, if you fly in space for over a year or so,

like some people have a combined over-year stay, they have to track it and make sure you're okay. That's when you start getting a little bit curious. But we have astronauts who have flown. Scott Kelly's going to be up for a whole year is the plan. He's already been up over six months in his life and so he has to insulate himself in water yes yeah he's going to be he's going to stay out of the sun as much as he can but uh when you say water you jacket the spacecraft well for example water can yeah so if you have a water bag like on the space station you want to get some extra extra uh

shielding if you were to to line the outside of your spaceship with uh with water for example do you line the outside or is there i mean inside no there is no layer of water i'm saying if you were trying to if you were worried about a solar flare for example in your spaceship and you had water bags that would help you that you would just add so you just yeah so no you're taking water anyway yeah so use your use it as a shielding can you drink irradiated water it's not that irradiated it's fine you're taking water anyway So use it as a shielding Can you drink irradiated water It's not that irradiated

It's fine It's great It's great It's nothing better than irradiated water from space In fact there's probably a market for it There's probably somebody who really wants this It's a pretty cool bar in Brooklyn that sells it Whole Foods is going to sell it

Actually that's a pretty good question Eugene I'm going to go ask them when I get back home. Wait a minute. Hold that thought, you guys. We will be back shortly at StarTalk Radio. Bill Nye, the science guy here, hosting this week for Neil deGrasse Tyson, who's on radiostical sabbatical, I suppose.

Now, unlike many of you, I'm here with Mike Massimino, who flew in space. And we call him Mass. Yep. That's what they call me. And you're an engineer. I'm an engineer. But you're also an astronaut.

And I'm here in New York City on loan at Columbia. I like that you're on loan. Engineering school. I'm on loan. I really like the idea of borrowing astronauts. There's no late fees, as far as I can tell. And the other voice you hear, of course, is Eugene Merman,

our providing color commentary. Yes. Here on the most visual medium of StarTalk Radio. Now, this is, as you may know, if you're just joining us, this is another Cosmic Queries edition of StarTalk Radio, where we embrace your

questions. Yeah. You, the listeners, viewers, wait, you, the listeners, iPodcaster, absorbers, who use your social media to provide us with your cosmic queries. Eugene. Here we go. Wow. Wayne Shaw wants to know, if one were to warp space to travel a vast distance, would people existing in the space that is being warped between takeoff and destination notice anything unusual? Well, they don't in the movies. The people in between.

The in-betweeners. It's like someone's hanging out. Some people on some planet. We're assuming there's someone else out there that's going to get it. I'm charmed by the idea that, of course, since you're going through a space warp, then of course you can see whether... You've got to understand that these things are big fun when you're trying to create a science fiction television show where you really don't have time to have people not speaking English. And you've got to get up and down from a planet and travel around various quadrants in the galaxy or galaxies. But these things are more theoretical than they are.

And so we will see how people do as they go between extraordinary destinations through unproven theoretical spaces in space. I think this person suspects they might have seen something. Would we notice anything unusual? Right, right. This person is like, I saw something weird in my might have seen something. Yeah. Would we notice anything unusual? Right, right. This person is like, I saw something weird at my house. I saw something unusual. All right.

My hamburger special looked a little bit different today than it did the other day. Is it someone warped speed through the diner? Well, it's the government. Something funny is going on here, I think. Yeah. So Josh Corona asks, in the game- That's a very good science name No

Corona No Corona's a good science name It's a good It's a solid name Yeah okay In the game Portal They have a gun That can create

What is essentially A wormhole in a wall With the ability To shoot two holes One in entrance And the other in exit I.e. the floor ceiling Alright

Is this possible In the laws of physics Oh sure You'll be fine. Just go get the gun and shoot it this way, and then very quickly shoot it the other way before the other hole closes. So, there. Two holes.

Good to know. Oh, he has another question. How bold. Wow. I need to stop playing more video games, apparently. I don't know what this kid is talking about. All right, go ahead. Okay, so he also asks, if you had to guess which would could be

first achieved first light speed travel or teleportation so teleportation is like they did on star trek you get all like wobbly next thing you know you're somewhere else but haven't scientists already teleported light isn't that a thing that somebody did in a lab just everybody no first of all as far as we know we're something. First, it's the portal game with guys shooting holes or worms or whatever it is. Where have I been? You've been in space on the government payroll. I think I've missed out on a lot of things, Bill. Like some guy teleported?

No, no person. Could that be you guys? No person did. Let's start with the first one. Right now, we don't know of any way to send something that has mass up to the speed of light. Right. Right now. There may be a whole other physics yet to be discovered.

Perhaps this questioner will be the person that makes the discovery. Yeah. He's got to stop playing the game Portal. And go back to physics class. Same guy. The second thing, teleportation where you turn mass into pure energy. Not me. No, I was going to say.

You talked about my name. You could be an example. No, I'm not doing it. You can turn mass amino into pure energy, beam him down to what we generally refer to as the planet, and then he's reconstituted. That would be converting mass into energy back into mass. Could be done, but consider E equals MC squared. It's a tremendous amount of energy to convert even a small amount of mass into something.

It may happen. So maybe just a piece of corn? Let's start with something instead of a person. Or should we start with just one element? Well, I think if you could get anything, a carbon atom would be pretty extraordinary, even hydrogen. But in that sense, you're saying teleportation is potentially theoretically possible before. Just shooting from the hip, yeah. But going faster than light right now.

I'd take either one. How far are you going to teleport? You see, light speed travel, Eugene, can get you places quickly. Yes. I'm not sure about the teleport. How far are we going? Are we going like an elevator? It's sort of a tautology.

Or are we going to Mars with this? I think we might just- I got a feeling we need the light speed first. It might just be Boston. Because if you teleport somewhere, we're going to- Yeah, Boston, we can get there anyway. Yeah. So I'm going to teleport you to Mars.

You're going to get this- There's no place to go. Right, because there's no restaurants there. Exactly. I think we need light speed travel first. All right. Check the place out. Well, he's not asking what we need first.

He's asking what's more realistic. And the answer, I think, is- I know, but I don't know. I'm not a swami. Sounds like teleportation barely. You think so? That's what Bill says. Yeah.

I'd take either one. I'd rather light speed travel. Let's go fast. Let's enjoy it. All right. Let's punch it. Yeah. Let's enjoy the ride.

This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Yep. Let's enjoy the ride. This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Yep. We encourage you all to check us out on www.startalkradio.net. If you've got SoundCloud, YouTube, iTunes, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, I say party on. Start with Facebook and just go wild.

And, of course, when you're listening to StarTalk Radio, stay tuned. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. Bill Nye, the science guy here, hosting this week, your cosmic queries, your questions from the cosmos. And I am here with an astronaut, an engineer, and so far a gentleman, Mike Massimino. It's still early, Bill. Call him Mass. And, of course, everybody's favorite, Eugene Merman. Eugene, there you have questions on pieces of paper, queries from the cosmos. I say pick one.

Let's do it. David Tarazas asks, what does a rocket push against in space to gain momentum or navigate? Oh, mass. That's your thing. That's what we do in space. And it's a great question because you don't have any gravity. So when you navigate your spaceship, you need to point it in different directions. There's a couple ways to do it.

Hubble Space Telescope, for example, has no fuel on board, so there's no rocket. How does it turn? So much pushes it? Little kids? No, there's no one there to push it. You said no fuel. You didn't say no little kids. You didn't say no a lot of things.

It's reaction wheels. No lions. It's reaction wheels. What lions. It's reaction wheels. What's reaction wheels? Reaction wheels spin, and they have big control moment gyros, which is kind of the same thing on the space station. These things spin. They spin up, and it creates a reaction, and that reaction creates an opposite reaction.

You spin them in a certain direction, and you'll get a reaction in the other direction, and the thing will point where you want it. Are they sort of gyroscopes? Exactly, yes. It's spinning. That's one way. The other way we did it on the space shuttle and on other spaceships too, in fact, the space station has this on the Russian end,

what we call thrusters. What is it? It's gas. Could be nitrogen, could be something else, but just a gas. There we go. It sounds like that except you can't hear them in space. You can't hear it in space. You can't hear it in space. It's just sadness. You hear it inside of the spaceship shaking. So anyway,

these thrusters were released. Again, it'll cause an action, which is the release of a gas and a little rocket, and then you'll have a reaction the other way. So on the space shuttle, we had large and small thrusters Different varieties all over the spaceship Mainly in the front at the nose and in the back That you would fire to get the correct orientation Just like you have the steering wheels on a car in the front Yes, exactly

You can steer all you want You're not going to go anywhere Your control surfaces do not work Because there's no air When you're coming down on the shuttle Because it looked like an airplane Yeah It will not be active until you pick up atmosphere.

So the way you turned and pointed and steered that space shuttle was with these little thrusters that would fire jets. That's the one accurate thing from gravity. But let me back up on this question. Back up. Is there anything to push against? And the whole idea, when you watch the rocket leave the ground, it gives you the impression that the flames and gases are pushing against the earth. But that's not really what's going on. You're throwing gas, hot gas, out the back of the rocket so fast that the reaction is the rocket goes off in the other direction.

Stand on a skateboard and throw a bowling ball to your best friend or maybe your enemy. And you will find that the skateboard goes off in the other direction. Stand on a skateboard and throw a bowling ball to your best friend or maybe your enemy, and you will find that the skateboard goes off in the other direction. This works whether or not you're on the Earth or in space. So basically the rocket fuel is just the biggest bowling ball we can create. And it goes fast.

More or less. All right, here's another question. And we don't throw it at our enemies. Okay, Melissa K. asks, if you had a large enough space sphere of water floating in the space station, could a fish swim in it? Oh, how cool.

Yes. In fact, we've done this with Swedish fish, the candies. But Swedish fish don't have to live. No. But theoretically, I think that would work. Water is, I mean, you could have a tank of water and have a fish floating in there. I don't see why we wouldn't be able to do that.

And water itself, it works just on surface tension, so it doesn't splatter. So if you were very creative, you could get a glob of water and try to get the fish inside of it. And have a fish in it, you wouldn't even need a tank. No, but you have to be really careful, because as soon as it hits something, it'll splatter. And you don't want the fish nosing,

nuzzling his or her way Out of the sphere of water Right But I'm pretty sure There have been experiments With fish in space And so yes This is definitely possible Because they'd have something

To bring It would be a nice Christmas gift You know Imagine having a little Pet fish A zero G Floating around We have to get pets flown

And this would be a good way So right now We've had fish As experiments This would be like A nice little gift What animals have been in space i mean with with astronauts not just like monkeys that can't make it back or something right or the dog like uh yeah uh it's been there's been spiders in space there have been uh some rodents in space that were used for for experiments okay

um no pets though again it's all experiments let me ask you this physics question, Mike, mass. Yes. The fish are going to breathe air dissolved in the water. When you have a glob of water in space, does the air bubble its way out, effervesce, or does it stay in there? It depends. It can stay in there. If nothing's acting on it, it will stay in there. In fact, this is a problem with our drink bags, Bill, when we spacewalk,

because you don't want air in your drink bag. No, no air in your drink bag. So what we do is when you fill your drink bag, when you fill a bag of water, your drink bag for your spacewalk, it's see-through. You can see that there might be air pockets. We rotate the bag. We spin it. I'm spinning right now to get the air.

Like the bucket over your head. That's right. You spin it to try to get the air to one location, and you suck it out. So you can get air pockets, and you want to get rid of them. With those air pockets, we'll be right back on Star Trek Radio. We'll be right back. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. Bill Nye the Science Guy here, guest hosting as we take your cosmic queries on StarTalk this week. And we have come to the last segment of this show, which means the lightning round, my friends,

where we take your questions from you, the cosmos, and put them on the air for your, let's say, electromagnetic enlightenment. I'm here with Mike Massimino. Call him Mass. And Eugene Meierman.

You're lucky you got a name like Nye. Yeah, that's all I can do. You know, if you had a name like, you know, Nye-owitz or Kalski. Well, you guys, I appreciate your... I mean, you've been spoiled. Bill Nye. That's a very simple name.

It's simple enough. But with that said... Eugene and I are suffering. Gentlemen, it's the lightning round. Let's do it. We can't. We just got to press. Eugene, read one.

So these are supposed to be fast answers. Fast. Like lightning. Marco Horvat from Bakersfield. He asks, people that see UFOs claim to see strange lights. Why on earth would a spaceship of an advanced civilization need lights on the outside of their ship? To see where they're going, like headlights. I don't know.

I think we need more evidence that these are actually ufo that yeah yeah oh right yeah yes the answer is i think they're seeing airplanes yeah yeah they're seeing other stuff so that's the answer mike johnson from barstow california asks how close would an alien civilization have to be to discover earth using the same technology we have here oh that is a fabulous question now just to talk more about me when i took astronomy from carl sagan this is the first question yeah did you put it back no i was just in the room i was just one guy so we had must have been a fun class it was cool so we had this image of this organism eating little organisms ingesting them and spitting them out. This is astronomy?

Yeah. And it turned out to be an image of a swimming pool taken from a satellite. So you have to get extraordinarily close to really determine whether or not something's alive or you'll get fooled. Right. But I think they need to be pretty close to us. All right. A couple meters.

Yeah. We just left the solar system now, right, with Voyager. So they couldn't be much further than that, I guess. So hopefully they're just on the other end, but yeah. All right, here's a question from Matthew Brown. Is there a theoretical limit to the size of a sun? I keep seeing graphics comparing our sun to larger and larger solar giants. Just how big can they get?

Well, when you get to be a few hundred solar sun diameters, you become a black hole. Really? Yeah, you become a star that has so much gravity, light doesn't escape. A black hole is, in a sense, a star. So would you describe it as over a million whales? Yeah. Big whales. That wouldn't be inaccurate, but it wouldn't be the most accurate way to describe it.

A big whale. You're talking about a big whale. Well, but over a million by a factor of, I guess, 10 to the 19th or something. Yeah. Like the whale that's hanging from Neil's Museum. Exactly. For those of you who have been to New York City, the American Museum of Natural History. So a sun that was too big would just become a black hole.

It would collapse. Yeah. Well, that's what apparently it does. They do. Oh, great. Now I know how to make a black hole. Thanks. Look Oh, great. Now I know how to make a black hole. Thanks. Look out, world.

Jason Paisley asks, when the sun gradually expands, will its expanding mass push Earth farther out of orbit before Earth becomes consumed? No, it won't push it out. It will absorb it. Yes. So the Earth would stay about in its same orbit, and then the sun will expand to cook. It's not going to be a good day either way. The sun is an Earth eater.

Yeah. We don't want to experiment with that either to find out. Okay. David Loza asks, what if neuron receptors in the human body were to react at the speed of light? Well, they react at the speed of electromagnetism between atoms it's pretty quick but if we change that no but in other words uh i get it this would be instead of acting instead of acting if we instead of having diabolical instead of having the neurons go at chemical speeds they would go at speed at light speed, I guess it would be, what's that, a factor of about a million.

Maybe 10 to the seventh. It might be 10 million. Okay. That's really fast. What would be the advantage? Could we run faster? Yeah, what could we get out of it? I guess we could do everything faster.

Really? Can we think faster? A million times faster? It seems to me, yeah, but then it has to be hooked up, and you have to address capacitance issues. And we are made of a liquid chemical brain yeah it'd be tough to enjoy things speak for yourself we give a new me to take a moment and relax i just did take a second and relax all right here's a question coffee breaks would be like instantaneous okay jacob seymour asks is the shape of a black hole a sphere with high density in the

middle pulling space in toward the center or is it a flat disc with a point of high density pulling it down in the middle like a funnel uh i believe it depends and this is where neil degrasse tyson would be more into this this is a meal question i'm not an astrophysicist, but. I could answer it incorrectly, though. Go ahead. It's an oar. Take a shot. Well, just whenever you have any asymmetry, this gravity is pulling all this stuff together

from extraordinary places in space. They're not going to come in perfectly evenly. So in general, they will start spinning, like the ice skater when she pulls her arms in. And so you'll often get a disk that is measurable, perceivable, detectable. So the answer, I believe, is it depends. And Neil can get on here and light me up. See, that's a pun.

See, because it's a black hole. Get it? That's brilliant. Well, you guys, thank you all for listening to Cosmic Queries here on StarTalk Radio. I have been joined by Mass, Mike Massimino, astronaut who flew in space, and, of course, Eugene Merman. Turn us up loud on StarTalk Radio. Podcast it. Blast it. Blast it.