StarTalk Radio - Season 8 Time Capsule (Part 2)

Episode Date: January 19, 2018

Neil deGrasse Tyson guides us through this year's favorite Cosmic Queries episodes, with Matt O’ Dowd, Bill Nye, Godfrey, Chuck Nice, John Allen Paulos, James Kakalios, and Harrison Greenbaum talking about quantum physics, planetary defense, cosmic phenomena and more!NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/season-8-time-capsule-part-2/ 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. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your host and your personal astrophysicist. I'm also director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. Tonight, we give you the final episode of StarTalk's eighth season. It's part two of our annual time capsule. Of course, we sent out a survey to you, our fans, and you got back to us with all your favorite episodes, favorite co-hosts, and guests over the year. And we used those data to choose which episodes to splice together in the single potpourri of StarTalk's best moments. This week, we focused

only on our Cosmic Query episodes. You sent in your queries about the cosmos, and I did my best to answer. On your number one favorite Cosmic Query episode, according to your votes, we took your questions about all things space-time. My comedic co-host was the one and only Godfrey. Check it out. You ready? Yeah, go.

This guy, he has an interesting last name. Jeff Sostorek. Because it's like, I think it's Polish. Sostorek. I don't know. He's from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Gotcha. Is there anywhere in the universe where you can find a zero?

Usually, yes. No matter what follows in that question, the answer is probably yes. Okay? The universe is large, it's old, and stuff happens in the universe. Where you can find a zero state of energy, perhaps where even the cosmic background

radiation does not permeate. Man, these questions are something else. That would be an absolute zero. As far as we know, the vacuum of space is a seething ocean of what we call virtual particles that are predicted by quantum physics. And quantum physics has been right in every other way it's ever made a prediction. So we have high confidence that what it's saying is true.

But as long as you have particles, even in the vacuum, there's going to be an energy level there. And you never actually get to perfect zero energy because of the quantum. And so the quantum prevents it. We would need some higher theory of understanding of the universe that might enclose quantum physics that will enable us to get to places that our current understanding does not. But right now, there's no way to get to a perfect zero energy. Because every state, even the zero energy state, has a probability

of having real energy. Quantum physics requires it. Yeah. Quantum physics, everything bows to quantum physics. Always. At the end of the day. Invisible math, man. Where do you get this from?

Invisible math. There's math that can describe invisible things. That's what I mean. But the math itself is not invisible. What are you getting this? No, I'm not accepting it. It's invisible, man. I'm not accepting it.

Mathematica de invisibility. I'm not going there. You don't like to call it invisible math? No. I love calling it invisible. Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's not there. Well, I call it invisible to me because I don't want to see it. Okay, because you look the other way. That's why I call it invisible math because I suck at it.

Here's the fun part. Here's the fun part. I suck at it. We observe weird stuff happening in the lab, and for people who hate math, this must freak them out. happening in the lab. Yeah. And for people who hate math, this must freak them out.

So we have scientists of the day saying, hmm, let's attach math to this to make it easier so we can bring some understanding to it. Oh. So the mathematics

of quantum physics is an extraordinary achievement of the human mind. Yeah. Yeah, that's another brain that you, that's something,

I don't have that. No, but maybe you did and it still has to be found. You think that I could bring that out? I can get good at quantum physics? I think we can all always get better.

Whether or not we can become great at anything, we can always become better at it. You're naturally good at math. I think it's a natural knack. It is. There's people I knew in grade school like some guys I knew and girls that would just do they didn't even study they even study I had to use the teachers example and flip the page over to do a look at the eggs

Answer in the back of the friends were just certain got they were just naturally good at it You know that come on naturally good at math. I'd I spent a lot of time at home reading books What's your man? Yeah, I mean, I on math. Does that mean I'm naturally good? Does that mean I'm naturally curious? And I happen to apply that curiosity to math and therefore got higher grades in math than you did. What were you doing when you went home after school? I was confused.

So I just kept watching cartoons, man. You know what I mean? And the stuff that you were reading, you were probably reading. I was reading. You were reading radical stuff about mathematics. I was reading math, yeah. You naturally have an inclination for that because you were reading, you were probably reading. I was reading. You were reading theoretical stuff about mathematics. I was reading math, yeah. I was reading. You naturally have an inclination for that because you were naturally gifted for math.

That's what it is. I had a curiosity in childhood that never left me. Guess what I watched? I watched comedies, man. I loved them. You loved comedies, too? You're a funny guy. But I continued my funniness in that way, comedian.

You, funny guy, but astrophysicist. Because you're amazing at math and invisible math. Because you see the invisibility of it. Okay. You made your case. Are you ready? Yeah, what's the next question? Yeah.

Nicholas Lambert, Facebook. Why is dark matter presumed to exist when modified Newtonian dynamics is able to account for most of the missing mass? Have physicists forgotten the principle of Occam's razor? Occam's razor. So Occam's razor, there was like, I think it was Earl of Occam. Okay. British fellow.

I think he was British. Who uttered the following words, multiplicity ought not be posited without simplicity. Okay. Which is, what he means is, I think I got that quote right. What he means is, if you have an explanation for something that is long and complicated, and someone else has a really simple explanation, the simplest explanation is probably the correct one. Gotcha. That's all. Okay?

So, for example, let's take epilepsy. Before we understood epilepsy, there you are writhing on the ground, and so people had an argument for it. Well, the creator of the universe in the Judeo-Christian tradition has a nemesis called the devil, and that devil has occupied the body of this particular person because of the things this person has done. Right.

Okay? Or the brain is misfiring in its neurosynapses. Okay? So this is what we're contending with. Right. Right? So there you have it. So in the movie The Exorcist, it's like this is the 21st century, the 20th century, I think.

We got this one. All right. So the notion there is if you modify Newton's equations of gravity, then you don't need to posit dark matter to explain things in the universe. to posit dark matter to explain things in the universe. And it would mean that our understanding of gravity was flawed in this way, where when we corrected it, we wouldn't need to invoke this magical, mystical thing called dark matter. And so it turns out you can modify Newton's laws of gravity to explain some of the places where dark matter was otherwise invoked.

There are other places where it fails completely, and we have no way around that. You can't modify Newton's gravity in the same way to account for it. And so that's why we all haven't jumped on the bandwagon adding terms to Newton's equations of gravity. That's why. Awesome. Awesome. I'm going to keep going. I like that one.

Go for it. Here we go. Adrian Gray-Martson from California. California. We currently can go... We can... I'm sorry. We currently can only go forward in time with regards to black hole tricknology.

Tricknology? Tricknology. Whoa. Given what little we know about dark matter and dark energy, being our physics opposite, do you think our future insights and education on all things dark will grant the option to move backwards in time. Ooh. Ooh. All things dark.

Man. All right. And black hole. Hole. Techno. What is it? Black hole tech. It's black hole trichology.

Trichology. Okay, so it turns out if you can warp the fabric of space and time. By the way, I have been told this. I have not double checked the math. These are people whose By the way, I have been told this. I have not double-checked the math. These are people whose math, in other cases, I trust implicitly. So that there's a configuration of curved space-time where if you go around a black hole in a particular trajectory and come back around another one,

you can actually go back in your own space-time. So effectively go backwards in time. Okay. But it's still a little bit mysterious to me. Okay? I got people who do this. I'm not the one who does it. Right.

Okay? As a colleague of mine, J. Richard Gott III, who I actually am co-author on in a book that was just released. Right. Princeton University Press. There it is. What's the title? The title is Welcome to the Universe.

Yeah, yeah. An astrophysical tour. Ow! Just at a local bookstore near you. I'm going to get it. So in there he talks about these solutions to Einstein's equations where you go back in time. But they involve very exotic trajectories.

The point is, the bigger point of the question is, we've got dark matter. We don't know anything about it. Dark energy. We don't know anything about it. And who knows what else we don't know anything about. That's kind of the fun part of not knowing about something. Not even knowing that you don't know about something. Right. Okay. So with all of this, could it be that once all of that's figured out, we can have access to the past. I can't rule that out. I will not rule that out. Almost everything we have discovered that came about from profound ignorance

has transformed civilization. Think about the discovery of electricity, what it has done. Yes. It's probably the greatest thing to ever happen to civilization. I can't even imagine not having it. Imagine. I can't even imagine not having it. Imagine. I can't even imagine not plugging stuff in. Plugging stuff in, flicking a switch.

Flicking a switch. Right. Don't know how it works, don't care, it's here. It's not even, and we've made it into something that's not even only about light. Movies and... Movies, just... Everything, everything.

Okay, so this is harnessing something that previously we ran away from or didn't understand. So I look forward to a future where dark matter and dark energy come to be understood. But then that only puts us in a new place to stand, possibly observing new unknowns that today are yet to be dreamt of. new unknowns that today are yet to be dreamt of. Every now and then fan queries are related to a specific topic outside of my expertise. And so I got to call in an expert or two to help delve in a little bit deeper. Such was the case with one of your favorite episodes of the season about higher dimensions. Joining me in studio was mathematician and good friend, John Allen Palos.

And via Skype, we had physicist and superhero expert, James Kakalios. In the StarTalk co-host seat for the first time was comedian Harrison Greenbaum. Let's take a listen. Bring it on. All right. Bring it on.

And I got two experts here. I can just like go to the Bahamas right now because we got all the expertise you need for higher dimensions and so much of people's access to higher dimensions and knowledge of higher dimensions comes from superhero movies so let's see what you got

so the first question comes from our Patreon so thank you for supporting us and this one is from Orlando, Florida so he's near a superhero theme park we've seen compelling theories that postulate everything from 4 to 26 dimensions in our physical world what's so special about the 4th dimension

is there anything mathematically unique about it compared to what we consider spatial dimensions it's physically there are arguments for it as I said, the second law of thermodynamics suggests that once the early universe cooled a bit it didn't have enough energy to birth out another dimension

if you wanted the second law to hold. So the fourth is beyond us. You're saying we're stuck with four dimensions. We're stuck with three and one, yeah, four dimensions. So, I mean, there are these other deficient, for lack of a better term, dimensions if you believe in string theory, but, you know. Okay.

There are lots of theories. I mean, Kant had his own theory, but I don't want to get into Kant. Immanuel Kant. Immanuel Kant. Okay, yeah. But he didn't know anything about cosmology. No. One thing he did, he made a distinction that many people derided between noumena and phenomena.

Noumena is the way things are that we'll never know. Phenomena is the way we see things. We are a priori categories. And in a way, I mean, the strength theory is something we'll never know. And the extra dimensions and other universes, we'll just never know. In physics, we don't give a rat's ass about what something is if what it is is not revealed to us

through a measurement. Yeah, but... Would you agree with that? I would. It is kind of disturbing that of all the extra dimensions, none of them are in the time domain. They all seem to be

extra spatial dimensions because if they were in the time domain, then maybe we could move back and forth in time the way we move back and forth in space. And in fact, science fiction stories have sometimes suggested that that would be how time travel would occur.

So help me on this. So if we had more than one time dimension accessible to us, does that mean we can just go off in one time coordinate while freezing our movement in the other time coordinate and do things with our life and then return and then continue because that's what i do spatially why not i i no presumably that would be in fact the case that That's kind of cool. Yeah. So that – I can't remember where. It might have been even an H.G. Wells short story about that might be a way of achieving time travel that they discovered that there's other pathways.

Just so you can get from one point to another taking alternate routes. Alternate time routes. You could – spatial routes, we do it all the time. Right, right. So that you could put, you could. You'll take a shortcut. You'll do it. You'll go backwards to where you once were.

Exactly. You'll get your old haunts. Yeah. It's like a time shortcut. Yeah. So you could have a time shortcut, right. That would be interesting, but they never want to add another time dimension when they need to add dimensions.

Is this anything different from the wiggly, wobbly, timey-wimey time of Doctor Who? I think that ultimately the reason why there are only extra spatial dimensions is in fact just that. To avoid saying, well, they kind of postulate time travel is not going to happen so everything has to stay all the extra dimensions are spatial well time travel always leads to the grandfather paradox you go back and right right your grandfather right unless the universe splits there one universe you know that's the many worlds so that's the many worlds that's right So you can go back in time, but it's an alternate

so you can kill as many grandfathers as you got bullets. In fact, it existed. Would Trump be president? There's nobody who's using their time travel

to come back and be like, what are you doing? I'm working on it. I'm working on it. All you have to do is prevent your grandfather from meeting your grandmother. Then you won't be born.

Or delay when they had sex by 10 minutes. This guy with blood on his hands, he's like, you just. Or delay when they had sex by 10 minutes. This guy with blood on his hands, he's like, you just had to go to the library. Yes, holy shit. Knock a book out of his hand. Oh, my God. Let's go to the next question.

What do you have? This gets us to our next one. From Justin Collado in Facebook, how much cannabis do I have to smoke to get to the fourth dimension? Ooh. Ooh. I'm assuming he's in Seattle.

Or Colorado. Or Colorado. We got good places for that. What are you looking at me for? I know. Okay, so John, when you get deep into your math, how much cannabis is required to reach different dimensionalities in your analysis?

I don't know. Don't know, okay. Okay, so that's an experiment that you could perform. Yeah, well, in my particular case, it would probably be a tiny amount since I don't ever engage in such. So I think a tiny little bit, and I'd be in the fifth dimension.

Okay. Time slows down when I use it, so that's a way of changing the fourth dimension. Right. So is that for you? For me, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The rest of us are looking at you like...

My friend. Oh, your friend. Yeah, my friend in Colorado. Who smokes. I don't know anything about that. All right, next one. All right, cool. This is from the StarTalk website, Gary F. Anderson.

He said, supposedly before the Big Bang, dimensions didn't exist. When the Big Bang manifested itself, dimensionality suddenly came into existence. Did that dimensionality expand at the speed of light or did it just instantly pop into existence, creating an infinite, empty universe? Well, everything we know says that we were endowed

by the matter, energy, space and dimensionality from the transition from an extremely high-temperature universe to one that's much cooler, and we're freezing out these properties as the universe expands and cools. So, James, would you add or subtract anything from that account?

Not at all. I'm a humble but lovable solid state experimentalist. Don't blame me for this Big Bang stuff. No, no, but this is not my area of expertise, so I will defer. Yeah, so, I mean, you get this at different stages of the

extremely early universe, and so we're stuck with the universe we have. Get over it. Next question. We've got time for one more before we take a break. Green Meteor from Instagram said, So we're stuck with the universe we have. Get over it. Next question. That's fair. We've got time for one more before we take a break. Go. Yeah. Green Meteor from Instagram said, is death the fourth dimension?

Ooh. Sounds, seem like more of the zeroes dimension. You just disappear. That's good. Yeah, I would agree. Death is the zeroes dimension. I'm going with that. You're going with that. We got three. It zeroth dimension. I'm going with that. You're going with that.

We got three and O here. We're going with it. Okay, we got another one. Bring it on. Richard Adams on Facebook says, do accounts of powerful deities make more sense when you consider higher dimensions? Ooh.

Well, you know, when you think about like the flatland example, that if we lived in a flat dimension, Well, when you think about like the flat land example, that if we lived in a flat dimension, a three-dimensional person who could put things in and out of our flat dimension would seem extra physical, would seem beyond our realm or our understanding. And is that what Thor is to Earth? Thor exists in higher dimensions. They have access to space-time dimensions that we don't. Isn't that correct? Presumably. Well, you're my comic book guy. Don't tell me

presumably. They've gone back and forth on that. I'm saying, oh, it's magic. Or saying that there's a scientific, it's just like hyperscience. Or back to, it's magic. But I think the takeaway here It's just like hyperscience or back to it's magic. So – But I think the takeaway here is that it's clear that if you live in a higher dimension relative to some community of beings, you are all powerful and all-knowing in ways they will never understand or imagine.

Yeah. I think that's right. I think that's right. Yeah, yeah. I think the answer is basically yes. Yeah. Yeah, it's indistinguishable from what a high – and deeply religious people will say God is – knows all and is all powerful. They will describe powers to God that any of us would give to a higher dimensional being.

Yeah. I think that would be trivial. And we could have a hierarchy of gods too. The fourth dimension, the fifth dimension, sixth dimension. Yeah, yeah. So I just need to find a flatland and be God. Is that your first thought? Is that what you really?

Yes, the cult of Harrison. There'll be a bunch of flatlanders. Yes, the cult of Harrison. There'll be a bunch of flatlanders. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. And we're in the middle of our final episode of the eighth season. This is a special time capsule edition.

We've reached back into the archive of season eight. Yeah, we've been doing this for eight seasons and extracted some of your best loved moments according to your votes. Your number one favorite comedic co-host of this season, Chuck Nice, returns to serve up your smorgasbord of questions in the Galactic Gumbo edition of Cosmic Queries. Check it out. Melissa wants to know this, coming to us from Chino Valley, Arizona. Hey, Neil, I'm curious about your thoughts on somewhat combining creationism with the Big Bang. Although I am agnostic, I was raised Catholic, and I always wonder why no one seems to consider that a possible higher power is behind the Big Bang and consequently dark matter. So do you have any thoughts on that?

I mean, from a scientific standpoint, you cannot speak to this because you're speaking about, you know, the fact of a creator or some higher power creating this. Oh, sure you can. You can. Well, so let me be clear. Okay. If there's a higher power that did anything in the universe,

there's no reason why that should be beyond the ability of science to determine that. Oh, okay. All right? Interesting. So if you do science properly, you're not precluding any one explanation relative to another

if you're on the frontier of discovery. Right. Okay? So I'm not going to say there is no higher power there, and let me find something else. If the higher power is there and it manifests, then my methods and tools find it, I'll be the first one to report it.

Okay. Okay? I'll be right there at the front of the press conference. Okay? So just to make that clear. The, and let's back up. This is a deep question here. It is. We've got more going on than she may even know. Okay.

Okay? After Einstein advanced the general theory of relativity in 1916, it was, oh my gosh, the universe, there's gravity and it shapes the universe in this way. And then in 1929, Hubble discovers that the universe, there's gravity, and it shapes the universe in this way. And then in 1929, Hubble discovers that the universe is expanding. Right. You take general relativity and the data that the universe is expanding,

and a clever physicist named George Lemaître, he was a Belgian physicist, looked at that and he said, wait a minute, if we're expanding and I have this new tool, theoretical tool to understand the whole universe, let's go back in time and ask, what would the universe have been yesterday compared with today? It would have been smaller. Let's go even smaller. Take it all the way back.

We go all the way back. We got to get down to a singular point. A singular point. A beginning of things. Right. This person is a Belgian priest. Oh. An ordained priest.

He must have drank some good beer. A little Belgian beer. Mm-hmm. So people immediately said, oh my gosh, you have found proof of biblical creation. Oh, really? They said this to him. biblical creation. Oh, really?

They said this to him. And he, a Belgian priest, came all back in their face and said, no. What? Because the Bible says the universe was created in six days.

The Bible says Earth was created before the sun. There's a lot going on in Genesis that is scientifically untenable. Right.

But now you want to take just a little bit that God created it and say, oh, therefore it proves the Bible when nothing else that follows it has any anchoring in observational science. Right. He was smart enough to know

that this, when I say smart enough, he was sensible enough to know that this should not be invoked as evidence for God creating Genesis as described in the Jewish Bible, in the Old Testament. Old Testament. So, because nothing else works there.

Right. Okay, nothing. Nothing. Right. Okay, earth is in the middle of things. Everything revolves around the earth. Earth is flat. So this goes on and on and on.

So he knew enough about the Bible and about science to not make that connection. Gotcha. So now, so, so, by the way, higher power could be God or it could be some intelligent alien in its basement programming our universe for its own entertainment. That would be a higher power. Wow. If you think about it. entertainment. That would be a higher power. Wow. If you think about it.

Yes, that would be a higher power. Yes. That guy's really effed up, man. If that's the guy, if that, hey, look, hey, dude, if you're in your basement right now. Your parents' basement.

Your parents' basement. The alien version. You little pimply face alien bitch, you, this is effed alien version. You did. You little pimply face alien bitch, you. This is effed up what you just did. Then I wonder if we are a simulation. Right. Programmed by a higher power.

Maybe they get bored every now and then and they throw something to just mess with, throw in something in the mix. A little glitch in the matrix. A little glitch in the matrix. A little glitch in the matrix. Right. You know, they throw down a disruptive politician or a world war. Right. That would explain so much. What? Completely

explain it. Everything's going along just fine and tranquil, and they say, you're not entertaining me anymore. Lodi, Lodi, watch this. Look at what I do right here. How many times have I told you to stop screwing with those people? So, yeah. So, but a broader reference to that question is we don't know what happened before the Big Bang,

and we also don't know what dark matter is nor dark energy. Right. If you, and I've said this before, and listen to my words very carefully. Mm-hmm. If you want, if your understanding of God. Right. Flows through places where science has yet to tread. Right.

Because these are frontiers. Right. Before the Big Bang. Mm-hmm. If that's your concept of God. Right. Before the Big Bang. If that's your concept of God, then the history of this exercise shows us that God would then be an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.

Well, of course. That only makes sense because you're saying all these other things are provable and knowable. And so we know— These other things at one time in the past were mysterious, correct? So now that we know these are provable and knowable and why they happen, these phenomena are actually explainable, right? Like your plural phenomenon.

Your plural phenomenon, phenomena, very good. Do you like that I actually corrected myself there? Very good, I'm checking you out here. It's cool. And then you say, Phenomena. Very good. Do you like that I actually corrected myself there? Very good. I'm checking you out here. It's cool. And then you say, well, but what I don't know here, I just think that this is God doing this. Philosophers call it the God of the gaps. The God of the gaps.

Right. So in other words, wherever your understanding fails you, you fill it in with God. Fill it in with God. Okay. And by the way, this is a long tradition to do so. Isaac Newton did it. Oh, really? Isaac Newton wrote down his equation of gravity, and it described Earth and the moon, and the sun and the earth, Jupiter and its moons.

We would later learn it. So this is all. But how do you then describe the whole solar system all happening all at once? Right. Everything tugging on everybody in all directions at all different. And he tried to calculate this, and the solar system was unstable, and planets would fly apart. Right. Everything tugging on everybody in all directions at all different. And he tried to calculate this. Right. And the solar system was unstable and planets would fly apart.

Right. Because every time you came around the backstretch, Mars would tug on you a little bit. Right. Come around the next time, Mars would tug on you a little more. Before you know it, you're out. You're out. You're out the door. Yeah, we out.

Right. Okay. You and the Kuiper belt going, it's cold. That's right. So he was saying. God, it's cold. So he said, well, clearly I know my equations work with a one-on-one situation. With the whole system, maybe God steps in every now and then just to fix it.

And corrects things. And corrects things. He says this in his 17th century lingo. He says just that. And so that's basically God of the gaps. lingo. Okay. He says just that. Okay. And so that's basically God of the Gaps. Next up, comedic co-host Godfrey returns to pitch me your cosmic queries about cosmic phenomena. All right. I have another question. Cosmic phenomena, bring it on.

This is by William Morris, Facebook. Okay. What's a henway? About two to three pounds. Next. You can't. You can't. What, you think I was born yesterday? What's a henway? I just wanted to see that. What's a henway? There's no science behind that, huh?

That's it. Next. That's it. What's a henway? We should call the first warp drive a henway. So that wherever they land, they say, we got to fix the henway. We got to fix the henway. What's a henway?

You could run that joke clear across the galaxy. That was awesome. What a jackass. Well, this is, I'm old enough to remember F Troop. F Troop, that's Larry Storch. Larry Storch. And what was it? It was like the cavalry and the Indians, right?

In the Wild West. And the name of the tribe were the Hakawi Indians. The Hakawi? The Hakawi. And I think in the first episode. You remember the first episode of F Troop. Damn. So I think...

Am I remembering? I think I'm remembering this correctly. In the first episode, the cavalry meets this tribe. And they say, who are you guys? And the Indians say, where the heck are we? That's hilarious. The Indians say that. They say, no, they didn't know where they are because they got lost.

The Indians did. They got lost. They say, where the heck are we? And they say, oh, you're the heck are, no, who are you? Where the heck are we? We're the Hickory Indians. I think that's how that happened in the very first episode. The Hickory Indians.

Yes. I just caught that again. I'm telling you, I'm eight years away. The Hikari Indians. Yes. I just caught that again. I'm telling you, I'm eight years away. The Hikari Indians. It took you a full 12 seconds. I was like, the Hikari, because the way you said it. Because that's how they said it all the rest of the episodes. But it's F Troop.

It was a sitcom. Okay. It's a sitcom, man. So that's good. What's the Henway? You knocked that out. Yeah, so if I invent a warp drive, it's the henway warp drive. Henway warp drive.

I like that. Is that how they sound? Wait, how do hens? Yeah. Hens? Hens are the... That sounds better. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, here we go. Ray Clark, Facebook. Okay. If the moon were to somehow be blown apart, would Earth end up with a set of Saturn-like rings? Yes. If not, what would happen?

Yes. Yes. Temporarily, we would have rings system. An awesome. Awesome. Yes, using awesome the way God intended awesome to be used. Oh, yeah. It would be awesome if you could pass the salt.

No, no. In my day, we used awesome when we discovered the cure to polio. We used awesome when we walked on the freaking moon. Do you believe that? I don't know. We were talking about that. Do you believe that they landed? I just want to know.

You're asking the wrong. I'm just saying, man. The astronauts should have been black because we would have been more excited. Upon landing? Yes. They said, Houston, we have just landed on the moon. I'm like, yeah, baby. Yeah. That's? You know, because he was, yes. They said, oh, Houston, we have just landed on the moon. I'm like,

yeah, baby. Yeah. That's how we do, baby. Forget the cosmonauts. We did it first, baby. Ugh. I'd be like this. Ugh.

No? That's one small step for a man. Come on. Land on the moon, Eagle. One small step for a man. One giant step for a man. It's like,

it's like, it's like when they, you know what for man. It's like when they... You know what it is? It's like when a white dude scores a touchdown, they just give the ball to the ref. When we score, we're like... You shake something. Yeah! You shake something.

Here's the thing. Here's the thing. I think the emotions that would come about... Yes. ...among people who would rejoice in having just landed on the moon... Yes. ...are incommensurate with how you might react in the face of disaster if you face that on your journey.

If the oxygen tank blows... Holy shit, what am I going to do? Oh, my God. Okay? That's the same person who lands on the moon saying, Oh, my gosh, I landed on the moon. Yeah. So you need some...

You need people with ice in their veins. Yeah. And Neil Armstrong was just such landed on the moon. Yeah. So you need people with ice in their veins. Yeah. And Neil Armstrong was just such a person. Okay. Yeah. Well, all right. I guess, but I just... He's landing on the moon, and he's running out of fuel.

Okay? Do you know about that? I don't know if you knew about this. We're running out of fuel. Because where they were going to land, there was, like, rocky, and it was not smooth, and he was worried that the lunar excursion module would tip. Yeah. So he starts going sideways. Right. He's, there was like rocky and it was not smooth and he was worried that the lunar excursion module would tip.

Yeah. So he starts going sideways. Okay. Using very little fuel that's left. And so Houston is saying, you got to land that puppy. No, I'm still looking. And he's monitoring how much it is. You know what his heartbeat was when it was like 85 or something.

I mean, it was some low heartbeat that any of us get just when we're irritated that we're waiting in line or something. So, no, these were a very special set of the right stuff. Okay. It was truly the right stuff. How long did it take to get there? Three days. It was three days? Yeah, three days.

In the ship? Yeah, well, how old... Drinking Tang. I'm just saying, drinking Tang and sitting there... Three days. Yeah, three days. Three days. Okay. Alright, I'm glad you explained it to me because I was doubting it. Yeah, yeah. Oh, oh.

You asked me if I believe it. One doesn't need to believe when confronted with evidence. Welcome back to StarTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. We sent out a survey to our fans as we do every season, and you got back to usTalk Radio. I'm your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. We sent out a survey to our fans, as we do every season. And you got back to us with your favorite episodes, guests, and co-hosts. On this next episode of Cosmic Queries, Bill Nye the Science Guy takes the driver's seat

alongside comedic co-host Chuck Nice. And together they tackle your questions about planetary defense. We're talking about planetary defense. Yes. Keeping the Earth from getting hit with a cosmic impactor. Fascinating subject. It really is. And it's important. And important. It's near and dear to us at the Planetary Society, the world's largest non-governmental space interest organization, of which I'm the CEO, because this is our old mission. because this is our old mission. Carl Sagan, when I was in his class in the disco era,

would talk about the Tunguska event, where June 30th in the modern calendar, 1908, Tunguska region of Siberia was hit with something. It blew down all the trees in a moment. And if that had happened in a big city, that would be the end of the big city. Yeah. It would be it.

And so since then, long after Carl Sagan's class, Chelyabinsk, also in Russia, got with a big sparky thing. Mm-hmm. And a much smaller event, but nevertheless recorded on countless cameras. And so it's something to think about. Don't want to get hit with an asteroid. No, you don't. With that said, Chuck, welcome back to the show. Thank you, sir. And those two events make me think that maybe Russia should be a little more involved in this.

The thing to keep in mind about Russia, first of all, let's say we take the Earth and divide it in half by hemispheres. It's going to hit one hemisphere or the other. Okay. It's one and two. Then Russia takes up nine time zones. Yes. It's a third of the, it's more than a third of the world. Right.

Or that former Soviet Union. So if it's going to hit someplace, it's likely to hit. It's likely to hit there. Yeah. There or the Pacific. Yeah, yeah. That's about it. True fact, not a false fact.

There you go. All right. I say true fact. That's a joke, everybody. Ha, ha, ha. There you go. All right. I say true fact. That's a joke, everybody. Ha, ha, ha. Let's go to Anna Bacon. The Doomsday shows about asteroids.

Let me just start this. Yeah, just do it without the breaks between every word. Slow talkers of America. Exactly. Okay, so Anna Bacon says this. The doomsday shows about asteroids always have it hitting the planet, but what would happen if the asteroid passed between the Earth or the moon, or if it hit the moon instead of the Earth? Well, we've photographed asteroids hitting the moon.

I mean, small ones. Manageable ones. And asteroids have passed closer to the Earth than the moon's orbit. That's happened. 2012, I believe, is the last one. So, if you like to worry about things, this is great for you. Right.

So far, the ones that have passed that close have been relatively small. So now, this is a, let's take a, like, extinction-level size object, all right? Listen to your fluency. Extinction-level size. How big is extinction-level size? Let's go with something like Apophis, all right? Apophis, which is the Greek, named for the Greek god of anxiety.

Really? Which is perfect. And hits the keyhole, barrels towards Earth, instead plows into the moon. I guess it would be troublesome moon-wise. But I don't think it would. Would that do anything to us? I don't think so. I'm sure.

I am sure people have run this computer model. Okay. Okay.? I don't think so. I'm sure. I am sure people have run this computer model. Okay. Okay. But I don't know it. So I imagine it would just disturb the orbit of the moon rather than it almost certainly would not be catastrophic life ending on the moon because the moon seems to be lifeless. But that's a great question. I'm sure people have run that test. And then would it deflect, you know, the moon is slowly spiraling away from us. Yes. Could it be hit hard enough

to start slowly spiraling toward us? I don't know. I don't think so. Like a pool table. That'd be not awesome. What am I talking about? That'd be the end of all of us. Well, not right away. You'd probably have several millennia to give it some thought. And you know what? You'd have some really beautiful nights in the meantime. Yeah, and I just shudder to think of all the babies that would, I just can't even. Yeah. It'd just be, it would be wild.

All right. All right, here we go. This is Ian Coleman, and Ian says this. Hey, Bill, huge fan here. I was wondering about the possibility of NASA's controversial EM drive being something that could actually work. Apparently, leaks have confirmed that this is the least moving. It's at least moving along well. And they're even saying that it may work.

Could we use this in planetary defense? I don't know what an EM drive is. Electromagnetic? What's that? No, it's... Now, there's ion drives, and there's this nuclear weapon idea, where you explode a nuclear weapon behind your spacecraft

every few seconds for a while, to get these pressure waves of particles that push you through space. But I don't know what he means by EM drive, if he means electromagnetic. No, I think it's supposed to be some kind of new rocket engine. Well, that's why I mentioned the nuclear thing. Then the other one that we're all hot for is solar electric propulsion, SEP, solar electric module.

So this is where you have something like xenon in liquid form. Put in a big scuba tank there on your spacecraft. Use solar power from photovoltaic panels to make electricity. Ionize, strip the electrons off the xenon, have a grid akin to a window screen, and shoot the xenon out the back of the spacecraft really, really, really fast. And we do that. We have ion drives right now. Just everybody wants to build a big one, a really big one.

And it takes a lot of xenon. But the other thing, it takes a lot of electricity. And when you get things that big in space, it's just getting everything in alignment is tricky. But here's the idea. Although each atom of xenon or argon or whatever inert gas or element you're going to use, although it is very low mass, each individual atom, they're going so fast. Okay. 24-7 out the back of the spacecraft that you can go really, really fast. Much faster is generally presumed than you can with just a regular chemical rocket because it never stops. Right.

So it's on all the time. That's actually cool. And we use ion drives, but people want to build a really big one. That's actually cool. And we use ion drives, but people want to build a really big one. We'll close out this Time Capsule episode by remembering one of your favorite conversations of the season, according to the year-end survey. Astrophysicist and host of PBS Space Time, Matt O'Dowd, stopped by the studio to help us discuss the intersection of innovation and policy. Check it out. I want to ask you a really a simple question, overly simplistic, but your answer, I think,

who knows, who knows what it could change. So if you were given the rights, the power, to direct the entire flagship science program of an entire, let's say, administration, the moonshot of a given administration. It's going to be billions of dollars worth, but you only get to choose one thing. What would it be? What do you mean choose one thing?

Choose one destination? I'm not talking about necessarily traveling anywhere. Choose a thing to get a nation to do. Exactly. Okay. So first of all, this is a democracy. People vote for things, for people, and I value that. I guess we're also a republic in a way, but votes But votes matter, OK? And as an educator, I will not presume that I have the right to take a country to a place that I think would be a fun place to take it

without the full backing of everybody who votes. So my power that you just granted me would not be to just steer the bus. It would be to walk up and down the aisles of the bus teaching people the value of exploration, the value of knowledge, the value of moving a frontier beyond wherever it may have stagnated. Then I go back to the steering wheel and I say, where does everyone want to go? And then they all collectively say space. They might say something else and I'll respect that, but I want at least a shot at convincing them that space exploration is one of the greatest forces that can operate on our science literacy.

Imagine knowing that your country is about to colonize Mars or lasso a comet that has fresh water or to mine an asteroid or deflect an asteroid that might be headed our way and i need the best chemists and the best biologists maybe there's life on mars that we'll discover i need the best biologists i need the best aerospace engineers mechanical engineers electrical engineers chem i said chemistsologists, all of the entire portfolio of STEM fields are represented in a space mission. In a space mission that's ambitious enough. And we know that the engines of tomorrow's economy, the engines of tomorrow's growth economies, have as their center innovations in science, technology, engineering, and math. So in a democracy that is also a capitalist system, when nobody wants to die, nobody wants to die poor,

space exploration is one of the most potent ways to stimulate this kind of thinking in a country. So you can turn a sleepy country into an innovation nation by doing this. By having innovation and a dream in the right direction. A dream in the right direction that's hitting the headlines every day. Because if you're going to expand a frontier like this, you're going to have to innovate. You're going to have to invent. Patents will be awarded. That entire frontier will be awarded. That entire

frontier will be new. And that is what stimulates discovery. So you want to give me the power. I would want the power to convince people that that might be a cool thing to do. And then you implement the policy.

Gotcha. And so with space, is it, I mean, it's hard. It's extremely hard to do. That's part of why it's so inspiring. We do things not because they're hard. No. Because they're cool? No, no.

Okay. All right. No, that's good. We choose to go to the moon not because's easy, but because it's hard. I think I got that one. And it's the right thing to do. All right, so the policy is implemented. Do we go asteroid mining first? Do we build a colony on Mars first? Do we go back to the moon first? Venusian cloud cities, anyone?

So I have a slightly different view of that. I want to call it a contrarian view, but it's definitely a different lane that I'm driving in. It is, why think of destinations in order? Why think of a destination as a goal? Why not let your goal be access to the entire solar system? Let that be the goal. Okay.

And if that's the goal, then you build ships that have different combinations of boosters. You pull this one off this shelf and this combination gets you to Mars. This combination, you chase the asteroid. This other combination with this payload gets you to the backside of the moon. So the goal is your capacity to explore, not the destination. And when you build the capacity, you then can be responsive to the creativity of everyone who's there. This is the difference between a computer that solves one problem and a computer that can solve any problem. Sure.

Any problem you can think of. So don't come to me saying, do we go to the moon first or Mars first? You do it all. You've been listening to StarTalk Radio, and I've been your host, Neil deGrasse Tyson. Join us next time when we kick off a brand new season, Season 9, with more science, comedy, and pop culture. That's all for now, and as always,

I bid you to keep moving on.