StarTalk Radio - Extended Classic: Madame Saturn: A Conversation with Carolyn Porco (Part 1)

Episode Date: July 5, 2015

Neil deGrasse Tyson talks about exploring space with planetary scientist Carolyn Porco, a.k.a. Madame Saturn, who led the Cassini Imaging Science team. Now including 10 minutes of new Cosmic Queries with Neil, Bill Nye and Chuck Nice! Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Chuck, you like my James Earl Jones? I like it. You know, I taught him everything he knows. This is what Talk. Chuck, you like my James Earl Jones invitation? I like it. You know, I taught him everything, you know. This is what he told me. I just got off the phone with him.

He was like, how's Neil? You know, he taught me everything. I know. I got Chuck Nice in studio with me. Chuck, always good to have you. Good to be here. Thanks for doing this. We've got one of my favorite people in the world.

There's a friend and colleague, Caroline Porco. Okay. And I call her Madam Saturn because she's head of NASA's imaging team for the Cassini mission to Saturn. Wow. And so she's in charge, all the beautiful images you ever seen in the last 10 years, they came out of her lab. Nice. I know. I know. How could you not do it? And so, you know, Cassini mission was in 1997, and Saturn is a long way away. It took seven years to get there. Wow. And so it finally pulled into orbit, and a lot of things happened on that mission.

It had a little probe that it dropped off of itself and plunked down on what are Saturn's moons, Titan, which is one of the few places in the solar system that has an atmosphere. Right. And it's a moon because our moon don't have an atmosphere. That's right. All right. Titan's got an atmosphere. This probe went down there and it saw mountains and valleys and rivers and lakes. But the lakes were not made of water.

They were made of liquefied methane. That's how cold it is. Methane, the gas that comes out of your stove that you light. Freezes. It liquefies. Liquefies. Right. Lique freezes. It liquefies. It's an alien landscape. And you know that missions will go

clear through 2017? And then guess what they're going to do with it? No. We can't bring it back. So what are they going to do? Just leave it? Is that what we do? Plunk it down in the atmosphere. Just let it go. They're still talking about it, but we'll figure it out when we get closer to the time. That's how aliens will know where we have been.

All of our stuff is sitting up on blocks. Space car. It'll be the toilet bowl of missions that have been there. So let's go to my first clip with Carolyn Porco. She came to my office. I interviewed her. And find out just where she's coming from, where she's been, where she's going. Let's check it out.

So, Carolyn, you're a native New Yorker, I understand. I am. I come from the Bronx, where you do. The Bronx. The Bronx, yes. So what part of the Bronx? The northeast part, Pelham Bay. Pelham Bay.

Cool. So your first night sky would have been the same as my first night sky. Oh, I have a story, I think, like yours about the night sky. The Hayden Planetarium? No. Well, I have a story that starts with me waiting for the bus, Westchester Square in the Bronx. I used to work in the library and I'd have to catch the bus at Westchester Square. And I just remember looking up and seeing like one or two bright stars. Probably one of them was Jupiter. And like everybody else in New York, I had the same experience going to the Hayden that I guess apparently you did. Is that the real universe or not?

Right, yeah. So how early did you know you wanted to do this? So I got into astronomy the back door. I was attracted more from my spiritual questioning when I was just a young teenager. I was like 13 going on 80. And I was thinking things like, what am I doing here? What is the meaning of life? I was probably very depressed.

That's probably why I was thinking these things. So you had existential angst at age 13. I had enormous existential angst. That is the beginning of a troubled teenage. I know. And I read about Hinduism. I read about Buddhism. I read about...

So you were totally messed up. I was totally messed up. I even for a while got very, very serious about my religion, Catholicism. And for a period of about four months, I went to church like four times a week. And I did all the indulgences. And you're still around 13. Yeah. And I thought that just didn't cut it for me.

I even did read about existentialism, and that was really depressing. But, you know, thinking about what is the meaning of life and, you know, who am I, where am I, got me thinking, all right, where am I? Well, you know, where is where? Beyond just being in the Bronx. Yeah, really. If you ask anyone, you're in the Bronx right now, ma'am. The ultimate existential question, is there anything outside the Bronx. If you ask anyone, you're in the Bronx right now, ma'am. The ultimate existential question, is there anything outside the Bronx? So I started reading about the universe and about

galaxies and stars and so on. And that's how I became interested in astronomy. That's the first that I've ever heard. But you know, most males, I don't know if this worked for you, most males seem to get interested in astronomy by doing things like grinding lenses and building telescopes. I was never a tinkerer. I was a seeker. That's how I describe myself. I was a seeker. And I thought the answers to the question of the meaning of life, you know, lay in the universe.

So if this were a few thousand years ago, you could have been a prophet. Think about it. Because if you're young and you're having these kinds of questions, most adults don't even think that way. So you would have been labeled as someone with a search for wisdom, and then you'd acquire it and share it with others. And they probably would have hung me for it. People burn you. You're a girl. They burn girls and they hang boys. They hang boys, they burn girls. From the Bronx. Everybody from the Bronx got a story.

Everybody from the Bronx, yeah. And they got a story. Yeah, because you know what? I think the Bronx puts Everybody from the Bronx got a story. And they got a story. Yeah, because you know what? I think the Bronx puts out a good product. What does that even mean? I don't know. I don't know anything about the Bronx. But there's actually an existence proof that you can grow up in the city and fall in love with the night sky,

though never having seen it for real at night. Right. And this is the value of a local planetarium, which in New York is the Hayden Planetarium. Absolutely. It turns out. It's funny how similar your stories are. Well, minus the religion part and the existential angst part and the Buddhism part. Other than that, they're identical.

I mean, what are you saying? Other than that, they're identical. I mean, what are you saying? Oh, that's so funny. But you just never know as a kid what they're going to become. You want to keep the ground fertile, the intellectual quest fertile. She's a seeker. So what that meant was she wasn't going to really land anywhere. She was always taking flight.

She was always in search. So to have gone through these other philosophies meant there was a philosophy still waiting for her to find. That's a beautiful thing. That is. I mean, well, you know, that's. It meant she wasn't home watching TV, right? She's an explorer yeah

watching watching the beverly hillbillies or whatever the hell else i was doing at the time no explorers are rare among us the people who keep searching uh you can be a spiritual intellectual explorer or you can be a physical explorer these are the people who leave the cave and come back wiser with fruits from across the valley. Right. Right. And where the rest of us are like sitting back watching the Beverly Hills. Yes. I love explorers because I am the person waiting for them to come back with the fruit from the valley.

It's awesome. You know, the question is, if the explorers are so highly revered, how come everyone is, where is that in the genetic makeup of human beings? How come everyone isn't an explorer? You know why? Why? Because everyone who's not an explorer is back in the cave. That's true. They're back in the cave making

babies while the explorer is out finding stuff. So there's an interesting sort of fact about that. But when the explorers come back, then everyone wants to make babies with the explorer. You see? It plays both ways, but I'm just saying. When we come back, more of my interview

with Carolyn Porco, Madam Saturn. ... ... Welcome back to StarTalk. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, co-host of Chuck Nice In-House. Yes, sir. Tweeting at ChuckNiceComic. Yes, sir.

I follow you. I follow you, too. I laugh most of the time. Most of the time. I'm just kidding. Chuck, you got about a 280 batting average. That's funny. Not bad.

So we're featuring my interview with my friend and colleague, Carolyn Porco, who is probably one of the world's experts on Saturn and what Saturn looks like and how Saturn behaves, because she was head of the NASA imaging team for Cassini, which is still there, still in orbit around Saturn. Cool. Rocking the boat. Oh my gosh. And have you seen some of these jokes?

After the Beyonce song came out, if you want it, you got to put a ring on it. Right. I saw a comic. put a ring on it. Right. I saw a comic. It's a picture of Saturn and Jupiter. And it says, how Saturn got her ring.

So Saturn is saying, if you want me, I need more than just you saying you love me. How Saturn, it was a ring with Saturn. Ring with Saturn. Yeah, how Saturn got her ring. So Jupiter put a ring on Saturn. Put a ring on it. That's how you keep it. So Carolyn Porco has a fascinating background. She's a New Yorker.

And let's find out about more about her academic trajectory. I went to the State University of New York at Stony Brook. So you're still a hometown girl, basically. That's Long Island, yeah? So after that, you went to Caltech for graduate school? I did, indeed. So after that, you went to Caltech for graduate school? I did, indeed. And focused on what topics? Well, I went there because I was just told by the people who were my professors at the time,

it was absolutely the best place I could possibly go. I didn't think I'd get in, but they encouraged me. The best place to go for your interests. Yes, obviously. And I knew this much. I knew that I wanted to be a part of the American Space Program. I did not want to do stars and galaxies. We don't send ships to stars and galaxies. We send ships to planets. Yes, that's right. Maybe someday. I don't know. Maybe they'll send you, Neil. No. Not until I can assure that there's a budget to bring me back.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So Caltech operates the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Mind you, this was in 1974. So the Apollo program, of course, had came and went. Apollo had just ended in 72. Yeah, 72. But we were sending spacecraft to other planets, and I wanted to be part of that. So I was encouraged to apply to Caltech. I did. I got in, and I went sight unseen.

I find it remarkable these days. It's de rigueur for parents to take their kids to various colleges to see which ones. To parade you around, yeah, to find out, yeah. I just said, bye, guys. I got on a plane. I went to Caltech. I'd never seen the place before. Yeah, and there I arrived in California.

So it did right by you, it seems. Oh, yeah, I loved it. I loved it. And so tell me, in the 70s. I mean, excuse me, I say I loved it. It was, you know, they say getting into Caltech is incredibly hard. Getting into Caltech is easy compared to getting out. It was very hard to get out. But anyway, I did it. I got my degree and got out. And a PhD.

A PhD. Yeah. Right around then, they're planning for the Great Voyager planetary tour. Were you old enough and active enough to be a part of that? I wasn't part of the planning, no, because I was just... Voyager was launched in 1977. 77. I was in graduate school when it got launched. I remember the excitement about it. And then I took a leave of absence because I was lost and trying to find my way.

And by the time I came back, it was... So all that existential meanderings earlier resurfaced within you? Well, kind of, yeah. I've been wrestling with this all my life, Neil. Had I known, I would have been more sensitive to your needs. Really, you need to be more sensitive. But anyway, so there I am at Caltech struggling along, intimidated so much because everyone there is so incredibly smart. Feynman would have been there at the time.

So here I was about to say. Feynman, Nobel Prize winning physicist. I see Richard Feynman walking around talking to himself. That was a common scene at Caltech. He was so brilliant, he probably had no one else to talk to. So he was talking to himself or, you know, we'd be, you you know the cookies and tea before seminars you'd see people milling around having pleasantries and feinman would be on a blackboard probably writing string theory or something and i was so intimidated and this is a regret of mine so scared i didn't take

a class from him but anyway so i took a leave of absence at one point i was kind of lost the project i was working on didn't go well. I went off to live in the mountains outside of Boulder. I lived in a cabin. I was chopping wood, believe it or not. Whoa. Yeah, I was trying to live like an orgo, hippie kind of person. Ten years too late.

Yeah, 70s, that's a little late. That's a little late, but there I was. And then I went back to Caltech because I just hated the thought that I had quit. And I went back and I got immediately involved in Voyager and the rest was history. It's like I found myself hitching a ride on what I consider to be humankind's greatest scientific exploration. You needed that little excursion to find yourself again. Yeah. And land, land your plane.

I brought my spacecraft in for a landing. Excuse me, Land jet spaceship. So as a result of that, actually, I encourage people in two ways. I say it's probably good for people to take a break between either college and graduate school, maybe even between high school and college, just to go out and taste what the world is like before you. You know how restrictive and constrictive academe can be. It's all about rules. Yeah.

And when you take a break, there are no rules. But it's also an artificial environment, academics says. Even though I think it's special and I'm glad I was nurtured and raised in it, I think people need to see what the real world is like. And so that helped me. Not everybody takes a straight path. Yeah, exactly. I mean, here she is a PhD astrophysicist, and she was chopping wood in a cabin outside of Boulder, Colorado.

An unlikely departure. Especially for a New Yorker from the Bronx. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Most people who are using an axe in the Bronx are not chopping wood. I'm just saying. Don't you be talking about my home borough like that. I got people, you know. I'm just saying. Don't you be talking about my home borough like that. I got

people, you know. I know you do, and they have axes, and that's what scares me. So, she would get involved in Voyager, and Voyager is an extraordinary mission, because what we knew at the time was, here's a mission that we're going to send to more than one planet.

Well, how do you do that? because the planets are in different parts scattered around the galaxy but we were able to we i mean my my planetary brethren at the time were able to calculate a trajectory for that spacecraft that could get gravity assists from one planet to another and visit most of the planets in the solar system by doing so without using any extra fuel. So when you say gravity assist, is that like a slingshot effect? What I mean is,

if you try to go from planet to planet at will, that takes fuel. Right. And this is just a, it's a radio transmitting antenna and some scientific experiments. There's no engine pack on this thing. It's got radio transmitting antenna and some scientific experiments. There's no engine pack on this thing.

It's got some adjustment fuel, but that's about it. Okay. Once this thing is set into motion, it is a ballistic particle in the solar system. And what you want to do is aim it right so that it could slingshot around one planet, come out in a direction where the next planet is. Right. And then slingshot around that planet. And go to the third planet and the fourth planet. It's like planetary pinball.

Planetary billiards. Nice. It's like a four-cushion pool shot. Yeah. No, it was nice. It was sweet. It was sweet. It was Newton's laws of motion and gravity just rocking it.

And so, yeah, so it's like a slingshot effect. Plus, by doing so, if you do it right, in the right direction, you can gain energy for having done so. And so this is how you can make sure this thing just doesn't slow down and stop and fall back to Earth. Right. And so we built it. It was called the Grand Planetary Tour.

The Grand Planetary Tour. Oh, it was a beautiful thing. Sounds like a 60s band. The Grand Planetary Tour. Oh, it was a beautiful thing. Sounds like a 60s band. The Grand Planetary Tour. Grand Funk Railroad. And we're opening up with the Grand Planetary Tour. I love it. I love it.

I love it when bands take on names like the Fifth Dimension. That's cool. We hadn't reached five dimensions yet, but they were there already. It was the 60s. Yes. You didn't have access to dimensionality. I was going to say, I know what got them there, too. In the first Heineken party commercial, where this guy walks in and he's dancing and plays with everyone as he walks through the crowd.

Right. The band in the background is called the Asteroid Galaxy Tour. Sweet. Yeah, I know. I was loving it. Yeah, I had to tweet that. Yeah. The Asteroid Galaxy Tour.

To combine asteroid and galaxy in the same phrase is a little not right, but I'm giving props for going there. I was going to say, they're musicians. Come on, let's give them a break. They're musicians. But it's great that for people just wondering, what does it take to become a scientist? It's not about how narrow and defined your trajectory is it is how broad is your ambition right and how open is your quest for knowledge you too can take the grand planetary tour yeah and she did it and she well she will learn in upcoming clips uh how that

played out okay no no we'll find out you You are right now listening to StarTalk Radio. We're on the web, startalkradio.net. And we actually tweet at Startalk Radio. And we're Facebook. Startalk Radio. Thank you, Chuck. Chuck catches on. He is trainable.

We'll be right back. We are back on StarTalk Radio. Chuck Nice across the table for me. Yes, sir. We're at Argo Sound Studios in New York City. Yes, we are. Yeah, yeah. That's cool.

We got a lot of smiles through the window. That's fine. We've got my interview with Carolyn Porco. She's a fellow astrophysicist, planetary scientist. We're finding what made her tick. Yeah. Because she's delivering us images of Saturn as head of the Cassini imaging team. And in her life's trajectory, we find out some of the people who had an influence on her, which includes Carl Sagan. Soccer.

I know. So sometimes I think everybody's got a Carl Sagan. I have a Carl Sagan story. Yes, you do. Everybody's got a Carl Sagan story. Yeah. Carl Sagan story. Yes, you do. Everybody's got a Carl Sagan story. Yeah. Well, you know, he was a very influential guy. He was an influential guy.

And that's kind of what it's all about. Let's find out what her Carl Sagan story is all about. I was immediately drawn to Carl Sagan's shtick, if you will. Let me hear you say billions and billions. Billions and billions. That's all right. Well, I don't have to try to imitate Carl saying that because Carl never said that. Yeah, he never said it. So we can say it any way we want.

Still, I'll give you a B plus on that. Okay. Anyway, I don't know where you picked up with what Carl Sagan was doing, but I got completely hooked when I was an undergraduate and my professor, Tobias Owen, who was a colleague of Carl's, invited Carl to come and give a seminar in the spring of 1972 to talk about the just fresh results from the Mariner 9 mission, the first orbital mission of Mars. And in preparation for that, the assignment was to read the book, Intelligent Life in the Universe. Which Carl Sagan co-authored. Yeah. Actually, that's a translation of the original Russian book written by, how do you pronounce the name? Shklovsky. It's very hard to say. There's a K in there where it shouldn't be. I don't know what they were thinking.

Those Russians, what do they know? What do they know about their own names? Consonants, really. Yes, but you know the genesis of that book. Sagan was very audacious as a young man. He took a book that was already written and spliced into it his own paragraphs and words and thoughts, and then went to Shklovsky and said, hey, what do you think of this? Yeah, that's audacious, actually. It was audacious.

But the book, I was supposed to read like a chapter. We're going to read the book over the whole semester or something. I stayed up all night and read that book because I felt entranced by it. I just was completely hooked. It's one of the first books of its kind to be published. Probably.

A scientifically informed assessment of life in the universe. Very precisely scientifically informed assessment of a topic that people always thought was so fluffy and science fiction-y that serious scientists never paid attention to it. it was so fluffy and science fiction-y that serious scientists never paid attention to it. That was, I think, one of Carl's greatest contributions, was getting people to consider this topic in a serious fashion. Anyway, that's how I came to know of Carl. You came to embrace his whole mission statement, I guess. I came to embrace his mission statement. But I mean, I don't feel like in the course of what I've done, and I've done a lot of Carl Sagan-y type things, I don't ever feel like I'm copying him. I feel like I was drawn to his message because of the spiritual quest I told you I was on. I feel like Carl really tapped into,

he kind of offered people the spirituality in science and the study of astronomy, don't you think? Yeah, I agree 100%. It turned astronomy from a science into... A humanities. don't you think? Yeah, I agree 100%. It turned astronomy from a science into... Humanities. To humanities. Really? Yeah. Of course, astronomy had that built-in potential because people look up and out into the universe. Anytime someone thinks of where their gods live, it's never under their feet. Right. They don't look down. They look up.

Yeah, they look up. Yeah. And I wonder if that has to do with when we're children, you know, we look up at our parents. It might even be like a physiological thing. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah, someone ought to do a thesis on that. Looking up.

You look up to something bigger than you and more important than you. Yes, you start out that way. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, look up is even idiom, right? I look up to you, but you don't literally, if I'm taller than you, I'm not looking up to you, but we all know what that means. Yeah. I hold you in high regard.

Right. We hold the universe in high regard because we have to look up to see it. I mean, if you had to look down to see the universe, it might have been a whole different show. It would still be important. Geophysics would have been the spiritual endeavor, but people don't think of digging into rocks as being spiritual. Other than geophysicists

themselves. Yeah, they probably do. Oh, shout out to geophysicists. Yeah. So the spirit of the universe. So we lucked out. So we have the spirit up in the sky and no spirits in the rocks. I think we just concluded that.

No spirits in the rocks. That's a shame. Why? You like rocks? I like rocks. Oh, you never told me that. I. No spirits in the rocks. That's a shame. Why? You like rocks? I like rocks. Oh, you never told me that. I'm a big fan of rocks. You a rock collector?

You know, for a little while, I had a little teeny rock collection. Okay. For a little while. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. You got rocks in your blood. And in my head. No, rocks in your noggin.

If it's rocks, then it's your noggin. Exactly. No, but Carolyn your noggin. If it rocks, then it's your noggin. Exactly. No, but Carolyn speaks from the heart. I mean, I think we feel that when she talks. We sense it as she, we feel her, she still has a childlike enthusiasm. Absolutely. For what she's talking about. Very passionate and enthusiastic.

And you put, you know, three parts that and four parts Carl Sagan, or two parts one, three parts the other, you got a whole, you have the person who would be heir apparent to going to the most majestic planet and telling everyone about it. Nice.

In a spiritual way. Look at you waxing poetic about Carolyn. Very cool. Do you know Saturn is mostly gas and its density is less than that of water so that it would actually float? So, wait a minute. We got to go. When we come back. More StarTalk Radio in a moment.

We're back. StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson. Co-hosting Check Nice. Yes, sir. Love having you, Check. I love being here. We got my interview with a planetary scientist, a friend and colleague, Carolyn Porco. Yes.

Fascinating woman. Did I leave you dangling at the break? Yes, you did. And I, you basically. I didn't do that on purpose. We just ran out of time. I'm sorry. You hit me with the Saturn floats thing.

Yeah. I thought everybody knew that. Nobody knows that. What do you mean by Saturn would float? Okay, people say things are heavy or light. They don't really mean that when they talk about it, okay? Usually, they're really referencing the density of a thing. Okay. So yes, a watermelon is heavy, but it floats. Gotcha. All right? So Saturn, the density is so low because it has so much gas in it that any piece of it you scoop out, if you scooped out an average piece, it would float on water.

Nice. And when I was a kid, I wanted a rubber Saturn instead of a rubber ducky because I knew Saturn floated. That's great. To play with in my tub, but no one made it. So anyhow. Get right on that. Get top people. Put one of those right um so carolyn is is head of the imaging team at cassini and let's find out let's find out what that is

i want to know here she comes the pictures that we create because you're head of the imaging team i'm the head of the imaging team and they are kick-ass. Freaking awesome. Especially because we never see Saturn from these extra angles that the spaceship gets because the spaceship is orbiting the planet. And so you're showing us pictures with Saturn eclipsing the sun. You got to be on the backside of Saturn to see that. I know. It's spectacular. I do want to say though that I have made it my calling to make our pictures, process them to be as beautiful as possible. I just went over the top with this, and no one had really gone through this kind of effort before. They're very, very beautiful. I'm proud of that. They're like my babies.

Now, you realize, maybe you know the story, the idea of even putting a normal camera on a space probe was a controversial decision when it was first done back in the 1960s. The public doesn't really know that scientists don't really care about photographs. They want to measure something else. They want to measure the magnetic field or the polarization. They want to measure things that are not just what the thing looks like. So now you've raised this to high art, right? Yes, I have. But a camera is just a telescope with a two-dimensional array of detectors. The detectors gather scientific information. Just the fact that we can composite it into a beautiful picture does not undermine the scientific utility of the information collected in that picture.

So they are still scientifically useful. But it is true that in the very beginning of the space program, the first spacecraft to go to a planet, I'm not talking about our lunar missions, but the first spacecraft to go to a planet, I think was launched in 1962. It was the Mariner 2 to Venus. And I'm told it was Carl Sagan who was arguing to put a camera on the instrument payload. It was some combination of Carl Sagan who was arguing to put a camera on the instrument payload. I think it was some combination of Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray. I guess. I guess. I'm hearing now that Bruce Murray played a role in this, too.

A former head of the Jet Propulsion Lab. And a professor, a former professor of mine. Professor of geology. At Caltech, yeah. And they, I guess, were arguing for the camera and the other people, the opposing side won. There was no camera on Mariner 2, but on every mission since. They put the idea on the table to be reckoned with on later missions. Right.

And the people who opposed it were just, in the end, shown to be ridiculous. They had to head up their butt. They thought images were for kids. And it turned out that they have collected some of the most scientifically useful information. Images. Yeah. It turns out to have been yeah i did my thesis on basically on dynamics by measuring the positions of rings

and so on in images wow there you have it who would i mean i it's so weird that people would think that imaging of another planet after you spent money to get there. Right. Is not a good thing. Like, you know, it's like going on vacation without a camera. Who would? Hey, let's go to Paris. Hey, did you bring any pictures?

Ah, who the hell needs pictures? What the hell do you mean they'll have pictures? I went to Paris. You know? I'll just tell people about it. So there's a skeletal-looking structure that's kind of needle-like, and it's beautiful. You should see it. That's ridiculous. Yeah.

I mean, every mission has had it since then, so we're good. There's a similar sort of parallel point. The Planetary Society, which is an organization founded by Carl Sagan and others, now headed by Bill Nye, by the way. Oh. The Planetary Society wanted to put a microphone on one of the missions to Mars. So Mars has blowing winds and you'd be able to hear what's going on. And there's been resistance to that.

Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah. But these are extending our senses to another place. Right. I mean, why not? Why not? I mean, that's great.

Like I said, the people had their head up their butt, but she said, oh, they just weren't there. I mean, she was way more polite about it. Yeah. I think you were right. Head up the butt. When we come back, more of my interview with planetary scientist, Madam Saturn, Carolyn Porco. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Chuck Nice with me in studio here in New York City. Yes, sir. Chuck, love to have you here. Always a pleasure. We're like towards the end of my interview with planetary scientist Carolyn Porco. She visited me at the Hayden Planetarium, a little bit of a memory lane for her, being a Bronx native and having her first night sky, the same as my first night sky, the night sky of the Hayden Planetarium. And so I made sure to chat with her for about an hour while she visited.

And she can't say enough about the Voyager spacecraft. After having visited all these planets on this gravitational multi-pool cushion trajectory, it then left the solar system. Let's find out what that's about. I did think it was a momentous juncture. And it's symbolic. Okay, you're right. It's only hardware, but it's symbolic because, I mean, even the message it carries, all those pictures and sounds.

And symbols matter. Symbols matter. Symbols really, really matter. Think of myths. Myths are all built around symbols. And so this was so symbolic. And I wrote a little piece for, I think it was, I forget who it was, the BBC or something. And I said, this event, Voyager's passage out of the influence of the sun and into interstellar space was like humanity's arrival at eternity's door.

That's beautiful. That's beautiful. That's beautiful because I kept thinking it was humanity just walking out the front door. You're not into the symbolism of it. I am. I'm just thinking as creatively about it as you were. And so it was justifiably then a page one story with the New York Times. Oh, of course. What really brings people along in understanding or at least appreciating what scientists do, the work that scientists do in teasing out the workings of nature, which is kind of like their fundamental job. And Carl knew this.

He intuitively knew this, is to make them appreciate the symbolism in what scientists do and also the spiritual nourishment that it provides. Well, so it means you have to embrace the fact that as you learn something new about the universe, you are enlightened in ways that go beyond just intellectual. You can be enlightened emotionally. Yeah. And I think therein lies this whole duality of, do you look at the immensity of the universe and the almost non-existent scale of our little planet, and does it frighten you, or do you feel empowered, right?

To me, and I'm guessing you too, the fact that we can even know anything about the universe, to me, is enormously empowering. So I don't look at the universe, either pictures, look at the galaxy, the Milky Way, and appreciate, which I think is one of the coolest experiences around, right? Looking at the Milky Way. Let the listening audience know that she's gesturing with her hands upward and outward to the sky. Okay, go. Let the listening audience know that I'm an Italian American and I can't talk without my hands. Okay. So, to look at the Milky Way and appreciate that you're looking edge onto a disc that's enormous, that kind of thing, right? I mean, to me, it's empowering to know that.

But so many people seem to say, oh, but I feel so insignificant. And I think science is completely empowering. So, have you ever thought of starting a cult? You mean I'm not a cult already? Yeah, if you keep this up, a cult is going to come out of you. All the people who do feel lonely small, you give them the universe. There's the Carolyn Porco cult. Do you know that conference that both of us were at, the Beyond Belief conference,

where I said you ought to be the first reverend of our Church of Science? That was 2006 on the campus of the University of California, San Diego. The Salk Institute. Yeah, the Salk Institute. Right, and I said that to the audience. I said that I thought you should be the first reverend of the, San Diego. The Salk Institute. Yeah, the Salk Institute. Right. And I said that to the audience. I said that I thought you should be the first reverend of the Church of Science. Okay. Really?

We could start a movement. We could get you a good salary, a lot of perks. I need some robes, you know. A scepter. A scepter. Oh, my God. No, no, no. A lightsaber.

A lightsaber. Okay, but anyway, where was I going with this? I have no idea. You know those videos of us, all of us, on, no. A lightsaber. A lightsaber. Okay, but anyway, where was I going with this? I have no idea. You know those videos of us, all of us, on the web. Yeah, it was a conference talking about what does it mean to believe in something, and is it justified, is it not? Is there God? What role does science play?

What role does religion play in belief? And should they continue the way they are or change? Yeah, it was a workshop of maybe only 100 people. Well, it was a workshop of maybe only 100 people. Well, it was a workshop where we didn't actually do much. We never accomplished anything, but we talked a lot. And there were these YouTube videos, right? You have one, I have one. Well, as some group took mine, because of what I said in it. And I said things like we should start a church. It was kind of tongue in cheek. And they christened me Saint Carolyn. Really?

Yeah. Isn't that amazing? I'm Saint now. In some kind of group, I don't know what they are, but I'm Saint Carolyn. But it requires two miracles. So not according to them. Oh, okay.

Not according to them. But they've relaxed the modern requirements. Really? They're dumbing it down. That's Carol Porco. So she's totally living this spiritual boundary between science and the soul. Science and emotion. Right.

Science and insight into our place in the cosmos. And so she's surely a chip off of Carl Sagan's block right there. I kind of like the idea of a church of science. That's all I'm saying. Because I am all about not paying taxes. What? That's great. That's the wrong reason to be religious.

That's true, but it's the best reason. The best reason. Hey, Chuck Nice here. You're listening to Star Talk. And when we come back Neil and I return for our final segment To answer your cosmic queries about the universe See ya in a minute From this studio on Arms Reach Away is Bill Nye.

So I woke him up. I said, Bill, you're going to help me with this Cosmic Query. I'm ready to help. Bill. I'm the Cosmic Query quib. Here you go. My Cosmic Query partner here. All right.

Neither of us have seen these questions. That is correct. And you pulled them out of a grab bag? Yes, sir. Let's go for it. Here we go. Let's start with James Claver. And James is from Bangor, Maine.

Nice. Hales from Bangor, Maine. Here's what he wants to know. I've been reading your book, Death by Black Hole. I got this, Bill. Okay. That's where you get Spaghetti Fire. Yeah, that's one of them.

Okay. Nothing like Death by Chocolate. okay that's where you get spaghettified yeah that's one of them okay not nothing like death by chocolate uh you mentioned that scientists knew there were holes in the periodic table well before they were discovered i'm just wondering how they knew maybe a brief history on how they were originally organized oh brief history this is a q, not a textbook time. Oh, well, yeah, but how did they know? It was magic. Yeah, magic. That's the way we do everything.

Mendeleev predicted even the boiling points of certain elements when he realized that they could be arranged in periods. Yeah, so the periodic table of elements, you have a satchel of elements, some of which were discovered by alchemists and others who cared about this sort of thing in the day. Right. Some of which were discovered by alchemists and others who cared about this sort of thing in the day. And then you find out these elements all combine and make molecules with the same other families of elements. So what they have in common is that they make the elements – what they have in common is that they make molecules with the same other sets of atoms. That's kind of interesting. And then there's other set of elements that make molecules with different other sets of elements. And they boil at these boiling points. And so you can start –

And they have this gray quality. Exactly. So you can start grouping them in ways that, hey, these are more alike than they are different. Okay. And then they're more like each other than anything else is. And as you start doing this, then you lay them out. And then you find out when you get good at it, you can find out how much they weigh. Uh-huh.

Right? And then you line them up by how much they weigh and then there's a gap between the sequence of what weighs this much and then there's a gap and then you waste and then you you pick it up later that's after you've satisfied yourself that you have pure forms of these different things and the people did with great diligence oh yeah oh yeah it's not – a magician would say it's all done with mirrors. In chemistry, we say it's all done with molecules. Bunsen burners. Molecules. Molecules.

And let the record show on this radio broadcast that Bill Nye's business card has on its back a periodic table of elements. Very cool. And I put hydrogen off on its own, as you may know. Because if you talk to a normal person, like Mendel, a chemist, he'll tell you hydrogen donates a proton. It's like an acid. If you talk to a crazy person, like an astrophysicist, hydrogen's like a metal. It behaves with metallic.

Deep down near the center of Jupiter. Okay. Hydrogen is under such high pressure. Right. How high is it? That its properties change. And hydrogen behaves as a metal, not as a gas. And we're going to investigate that in 2016 with the Juno spacecraft.

Nice. And Juno is not an acronym. It was Jupiter's wife. They just named it like crazy. What happened with those guys? Yeah, and by the way, with hydrogen acting as a metal, it can actually conduct electricity. And when you have electrically conducting materials in the center of your planet, you have a magnetic field. Yeah, you do.

Look at that. Oh, this is awesome. Snap. James, you got way more than you bargained for, mister, with that question. That's what happens when you bring Bill Nye into the picture. Fantastic. All right, what else you got? All right, let's move on.

All right, here we go, here we go. This one is from Chris, who came to us through our very own website, startalk.net. And Chris would like to know. Nice plug, Chuck. Yeah, there you go. You like that, huh? So Chris would like to know, why does the model of an atom seem so similar to the model of a solar system? Planets orbiting a sun and electrons orbiting a nucleus.

What is it? Tell me, man. I think when Niels Bohr was thinking about it, that's what he was thinking. Wait, wait. Just to be clarified, Niels Bohr is not a comment on my charming, whether I'm charming. It's an actual physicist, a Danish physicist from 100 years ago. Go, wait. Just to be clarified, Niels Bohr is not a comment on my charming, whether I'm charming. He's an actual physicist, a Danish physicist from 100 years ago. Well, and that was what he had in his head. But now when you look at the orbits of electrons, we use an adjectival form, orbital.

They don't quite resemble the orbits of planets around the sun. But in the day, people imagined that we have planets orbiting the sun. And then you look at an atom and you have electrons orbiting the nucleus. Then what's inside the nucleus? And they were imagining orbits all the way down. But no. But big insight, where they are similar, is that if you imagine a sphere enclosed by the Earth's orbit around the sun, it's mostly empty. And so if you imagine a sphere of an electron orbiting a nucleus, it's mostly empty. And you start shooting neutrons or protons in the nuclei of atoms, and most of them go right on through.

They don't hit anything. They don't hit anything. So most of them go right on through. They don't hit anything. They don't hit anything. So most of the universe. So most of space is empty. Most of the universe, large and small, is made of nothing. Is made of nothing. I know the feeling. God.

Next one. All right. Let's keep on moving on. That was very good. Thank you, Chris, for that question. All right. Here's what Gene wants to know. Gene says.

Where are these from? This is also from Staralk.net okay okay and gene would like to and gene does not tell us where he hails from thank you okay gene says when looking for a goldilocks planet is there a cutoff for its mass if it's too massive we'd be crushed by the gravity and but and but how many newtons can us humans, or we humans, endure? I'm ready to start doing extra push-ups if that helps. Oh, that's cute. Look at that.

Did you see what Gene just did there? Bill, what's the highest Gs that a fighter pilot can take? Well, the guy I was with could take seven. Seven Gs, yes. For a few moments. And they can probably sustain three, maybe? Yeah, three. These are the same. This is essentially what it would be like to be on a few moments. And they can probably sustain three, maybe? Yeah, three. These are the same.

This is essentially what it would be like to be on a heavier planet, a planet where you are heavier just due to the gravity itself. Not while you are heavier on the same planet. That's different. That's just getting fat, right? We're talking about yourself going to a planet that is heavy. It's the same calculation of G-forces. So about three Gs, you can sustain that?

Oh, boy, that seems like a lot. It feels like a lot. A little like one and a half. Stuff starts sagging real quick. When we started doing loops, I say, wait, my buddy, Navy pilot. When we started doing that, you can't keep your jaw closed, and the oxygen mask pulls away from your face. It's very cool. That sounds bad.

Wow. It's very cool. And, you know, guys like us, we talk all the time. And even I couldn't keep my job. So you can have Goldilocks planets, but if you want to think about humans living on them, that's another thing. You know who doesn't care a rat's ass about gravity? Bacteria.

Bacteria. Their lives thrive within the surface tension of the fluids in which they're embedded. And the relationship and the role of gravity in the life of a bacterium is negligible. And if you live really deep in the ocean, water is almost incompressible and you just live your life. If there is some evidence, if you got all the way down, that your proteins flatten out and they can't hold their shape. That would be bad. Yeah, well, there's no living things all the way down. There's something to think about.

It's astrobiology. We're coming up on four minutes. We've got to do lightning round. Chuck, let's do it. All right. Testing the bell. There it is. Go.

Okay, let's get to as many as we can. Okay, so no name for this one, and here it is. What is a planet's eccentricity, and why is it important in finding a planet that's habitable for humans? How much could we deviate from the Earth's eccentricity? Ooh, so we are 3% closer to the sun in the winter than we are in the northern hemisphere of summer. The northern hemisphere of winter. Yeah, yeah.

And so we have some eccentricity in our own planet. All right. If the eccentricity gets severe, you'll spend time very close to your host star and very far away. The temperatures can reach extremes. And civilization was founded on the stability of climate, not on extremes of climate. Once again, we're just going from the one datum we have. Who knows? There could be some extremely eccentric orbit out there, and they think we're weird.

Well, yeah. Maybe they're happy with high variations and things i can tell you you know who doesn't give who don't care about eccentricity what anything that lives deep down under earth right because they don't experience any of that climate change that's going on on its own next boom it's that simple there you have it okay uh this is joshua callas and he says on the idea that there are more special dimensions than three why don't we bump into invisible objects in the fourth dimension if you can pick up a flat lander why can't we hit be hit by it for example afford the asteroid from an axis we didn't see coming two things we do have a fourth dimension it's time the second thing is maybe that's not how it works okay maybe a four-dimensional asteroid isn't a real thing

that we actually really have no i got what no okay but asteroid deflection is a four-dimensional problem take a deal all right so that's an engineer telling you what the practicality is let me get let me get dimension on your ass all right so so here's the thing if you're in a higher dimension okay you never actually have to intersect the lower dimension. That's the point. Boom. That's it. Because they're existing on different planes.

You never even have to go there is my point. Exactly. And if you do, it could look mysterious, like particles popping in and out of existence, which is just what we see in quantum physics. Uh-oh. It may be that the weirdest stuff in physics are higher dimensions manifesting themselves through our measly three spatial dimensions and one time dimension. Well, there you go, Joshua. Neil just got dimension on your ass.

All right, let's go. Go. This is from Anton Preuss. And Anton wants to know if the concept of the multiverse, a lot of people are interested in this stuff, would be possible for us to see or physically interact, why don't we ever physically interact in 2D? So he's saying we know that there's 3D. Why don't we ever interact in 2D? Does that make any sense? Is that evidence that there aren't multiverses,

or does that mean that they're so extraordinary and different and far away that we never detect them? The multiverse is in a higher dimension. You can have expanding, contracting things. I'm sorry, audience. You can't see the waving hands. It's fantastic. Hands are waving.

Okay. So when you're in higher dimensions, you can expand in higher dimensions without ever caring what the lower dimensions are doing. This is my point. So there you have it. Yeah. What's wrong with Anton? Yeah, Anton.

Didn't you hear Joshua's answer? You can take two sheets of paper and have them extend to infinity and never intersect one another. Exactly. You can be infinitely large and not intersect everything else that's out there. There you go. That's all I'm saying. Next one, quick. Real quick. Okay, very, very quickly. Assuming two black holes came in too close

to each other, would they manage to create one black hole? Indeed. You can collide two black holes, you get a black hole twice that size, if they're the same mass and with a vent horizon twice as large. And it'll send a ripple through the fabric of space-time that possibly might get measured by our laser interferometric gravitational wave observatory in Louisiana. Ligo. U.S. of A. Wow.

Ligo. There you have it. Ligo. It's called a black hole marriage, baby. Yes! Thanks for listening to StarTalk Radio. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Many

thanks to our comedian, our guest, our experts, and I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Until next time, I bid you to keep looking up.