StarTalk Radio - Stars Ask Neil To Save The Universe

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

Could there be other universes out there? On this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly answer science questions from celebrities like Steven Spielberg, Josh Scherer, Emily Blunt, and more. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here:  https://startalkmedia.com/show/stars-ask-neil-to-save-the-universe/ Thanks to our Patrons teonie, Dixie Gamoning, Greg Meyer, Mike Bilodeau, Mitchell Keesler, john hutt, Karen Buss, The Merry Widow, Casandra Martin, Swaraj Jaiswal, Hoang Nguyen, Knooble Gooble, Panainte Victor, Peter Jensen, Rajesh Bhaidasna, Victor Pomales, George Mulder, Life Space and the Lot, RandomBrian423, blitzgrub, Travis Bridges, Sreya Kumpatla, Erik Scheirer, Natalie Tabor, SwaZam!, KILOCREAMYY, Lisa Peldiak, Tosin Awofeso, Joe Buzz, daevon pearson, Amie Christy, Simone Adair, Philippe, Logan Davis, Ted Parsons, Macs Ton, Ben, Quentin Ferguson, Ash De Zylva, Evalena Marie, Nancy Bijok, Jacob Garcia, The Preschool Doctor, Amber Shaw, Erin, ilya, Kevin Nguyen, Austin Weets, and Alan G for supporting us this week. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of StarTalk Radio ad-free and a whole week early.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I love Celebrities Ask Meal. Yeah. Okay. It's just a reminder that, you know, they're people too, and they have a geek soft. They have cosmic curiosity just like the rest of us. And they got really personal, those people. I got to tell you. I was offended by some of those questions.

Seamus Spielberg's question, you were that offended you? Yes. What a nut he is. Coming right up. Celebrities Ask Neal. StarTalk, special edition. Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk, special edition, which means I got Gary O'Reilly. Hello. Hey, Gary. Okay, so today we have one of our occasional installments of Celebrities Ask Neal. Oh. Oh, those are fun. And generally, you know, if I find myself around town on a movie set, as you do.

As you do. As can happen on occasion. I'll just pull out my smartphone and see if they have a question for me. If one of the celebs have a question for me. Because everybody's got a question about the universe. Right. And so we gather enough of them on the shelf and bring them out as an entire episode. You know, I do the same thing when I'm on set, and the answer always comes back.

How did you get past a cure? So it's kind of like cosmic queries for celebs. Oh, that's cool. That's a way to think about it. All right. Do we charge them like Patreon now? Yeah, give me my $5. By the way, $5.00 is top tier.

Forget the $5. These are stars we're talking about. All right. So, first up, let's see who we've got on the docket. Okay. Neil, Stephen Spielberg here to ask you a question. I'm not a physicist. and I don't have any real knowledge of quantum mechanics or any of this,

but I am curious about what is the gap between, you know, an electron. What is that gap when the nucleus, you know, is separated and you've got this gap? And is that gap a way to travel, to be able to defy having to go the speed of light to get somewhere? Wow. Where did you get to talk to Steven Spiel? I mean, that was kind of wild. Hey, Neil, Steven Spielberg here. Where does that happen? Well, so I had access. Yeah, we just saw that. So, two things. As a StarTalk entity, we were invited to the early press encounters with the actors

and producers and writers for Disclosure Day. Nice. And not only that, I also got a red carpet invite. Oh, cool. Yeah, that was fun. Yours is in the mail. Yeah. Well, no, I got the blue carpet invite.

I got the cease and desist. Exclusions of him. So here we caught up with him when we were chatting with him about the film, putting together a whole episode on what's, the film was about and aliens. Cool, cool, cool, cool. Yeah. So, he asks a perceptive question

that most people don't even think about. Okay. All right. So, in an atom, there's empty space between the nucleus and the electron. Right. What's the charge on the nucleus?

It's a positive charge. That's where all the protons are. All right. Okay. What's the charge on an electron? That's negative. It's the opposite charge. Right.

All right. They attract. Of course. Why doesn't the electron slam into the nucleus? Well, they want to, but it's kind of a Montecchio and Capulet type thing. So they're being kept apart from one another,

even though they love each other dearly. Oh, thank you, Shakespeare for that. Roman and Juliet. So the distance is taught, is that the max plank sort of scenario? Oh, the plank is much smaller. A much smaller than them. Okay. But if you want to get a sense of how big that gap is,

right? You have a few kernels of, what's that popcorn they eat in stadiums? A popcorn. Oh, Cracker Jack. We have a few crackerjack kernels in the middle of the field. The volume of the stadium is approximately where the electronic. It's amazing. It's that much space. That much space.

That's incredible. Okay. And the first guy who discovered there was that much space, his name is Ernst Rutherford. He loved baseball. In fact, he's a New Zealander. New Zealander. Yes. Ernst Rutherford.

Kiwi. A Kiwi. One of your colonies. Thank you for reminding me of our colonial past again. Plus, I think they still have your Union Jack on their flag. Yeah, that's... So he went to and peed on all their flags and it's still there. Okay.

I don't think we actually did that. But... Don't let it get away of a good story. All right, right, fine. So, he was the first to discover all this empty space. and it's rumored, just rumored that the next morning he was afraid to step out of his bed

out of fear that he would fall through the floor. Nice. That was one hell of a dreamy. I don't say the night before he got high, I don't know what. Realizing that most of the matter was just simply empty space. All right, so that's one factor.

That alone has nothing to do with faster than light travel, but it is an intriguing fact that the electron does not collapse into the nuclear. Great. So what Spielberg is doing there, is he foreseeing a movie that he wants to make to explore?

Could be. Through the gap, I want to call it space, but not in the classic terms. It wouldn't be the first time that happened with me. Yeah. Okay.

I got a phone call from Seth McFarly and said, you know, I would be in town. Can we do lunch? And I definitely made lunch for Seth. And we had lunch and asked me all these questions about the Big Bang, the age of the universe and everything.

And then six months later there's an entire family guy episode where Stewie's time machine takes them back to the Big Bang. Yeah. And at the end, it says, science consultant, Neil Grassdison. Nice.

It should have said lunch conversation with Neil Grasson. So does that gap? So here's why the electron can't just fall in. All right. Because the space occupied by the electron

is set by its wavelength because it's also a wave. The wave particle duality. And the way it can't fit in a smaller space, it's not going there. It's going to occupy the bigger volume. Cool. Okay. So, just something to keep in mind.

You can't just stick it anywhere. Right. Okay. So now what he might have also been hinting to was quantum tunneling. Right. Okay? And quantum tunneling, when you have entangled particles. Right.

They're entangled and they know about each other. And when you observe one of them, the other one, manifest at faster than the speed of light. Right. So I think he was... He was kind of conflating the two there. A little bit, but I think his heart's in the right place. Yeah.

Because he's thinking this. What happens if you change the frequency on the wavelength? Of the what? Of the electron is what he's saying? You can adjust the energy levels of the electron with a magnetic field. You can excite them or de-excite them. You can do things.

But the structure of the nucleus is really what's responsible for all of what the electrons will do outside of it. Right. Right. So, and so badly did we want atoms to resemble solar systems. Right. So badly, because we want to, it's easy to think that. To think you have a center like the sun and then other things.

It's just that all the way down. Right. Yeah. It's just all the way up and all the right down. It's Mother Nature replicating. Replicles so badly did we want that that we call the electron positions orbitals. Yeah. Instead of orbits.

Right. Orbitals. So there's statistically configured places where you would find the electron around the nucleus. The point is, when anything tunnels in quantum physics, it goes across a barrier instantaneously. Right. And when you have two quantum entangled particles, they manifest instantaneously, okay, as far as any of our measurements and calculations go. In different positions. Okay, one is here and one is here.

Yeah. Right. So how close are we to harnessing that? We got top people working on doing, trying to do just that. How long? They've been working for like at least 10 years. It's slacking. Quantum physics is hard stuff.

Step it up, I am kidding. Quantum physicists. Step it up. So the electron has a field. Yeah, so do the proton. So does a proton. So is it the fields that are interfering that keeps them apart? No, no, it's the fact that you cannot physically put.

An electron in that space. Right, right. It's no different from why a microwave can't get out of a microwave oven. Right. Because the holes in the door. It's smaller than the wave itself. So the wave came, doesn't even know the holes there. Right.

Right. So anyhow, I think you're right. He might be thinking of a movie or something. Yeah, maybe. It wouldn't be a surprise. That'd be kind of cool. Yeah, yeah. What'd wrong with that?

See how he wants to take that forward. All right. Do we three get an assist? If the film gets made? Oh, get a mention, honorable mention. Really? And the first time I ever met him, it was in this office. Oh, really?

He came by. V.I.P. Services, apparently he made a request, brought one of his sons in, who was just at that age, maybe 14, 13. Oh, very nice. Yeah, yeah. And we chatted. And that's when I learned, because I asked that E.T. was a vegetable, not an animal. That makes sense.

E.T. was plant-based. I believe that. That's why E.T. had that magic finger that can make plants come back to life. Oh, the biolumines. Yeah, that finger, it could touch a plant and the plant rejuvenated. I basically remember it. So, there it is. That's very cool.

All right. Okay. Hi, I'm Ernie Carducci from Columbus, Ohio. I'm here with my son Ernie because we listen to StarTalk every night and support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil Diorgio. Degrass Tyson. All right, next up. Hi, I'm Bill Prady, co-creator of the new HBO Max series,

Stewart Fails to Save the Universe, and I have a really critical question for you, Neil. And this is, everything depends on it. Are multiverses real? Or should that be, is the multiverse real? Or should it be, are there multiple universes? One of those three questions is critical. Okay, so you know what Bill Brady is?

Other than, so he's got this new show, Stuart fails to save the universe. The premise of that is, this character, Stuart, is he breaks the spacetime continuum and is accidentally wandering into multiple universes. Yes. Okay? Now, what did he break?

A device made by Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory. So Bill Prady co-created the Big Bank Theory with Chuck Lurie. Chuck Lurie, who also created two and a half men. And every other thing that you've seen on TV. Yeah, pretty much Chuck Lory. And so I'm known to them, perhaps through StarTalk, but even in the day, I was invited to give two cameos on the Big Bang Theory. Oh, very nice.

One in season three and one in season seven or eight, the last season. Nice, easy. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. That's very cool. Well, first cameo, I argue with Sheldon about Pluto's planet status. Okay.

Okay. Then the second one, I'm settling scores by phone. Okay, I'm calling people up in sequence. And one of the lines that was written on the spot was not in the script. On the spot is, who else needs a degrass whooping? Oh, that's funny. That was good. That's a good one.

That's a good line. All right. So, anyway, that's who he is. And so apparently, Stuart, who's a character from the Big Bank theory, perhaps the most awkward, geekiest character among the geeky characters is Stuart. He owns the comic book store. He needs to know if there's a real multiverse. Otherwise, the premise of the whole show fails.

Pretty much. Okay. When you do the math, merging quantum physics, And general relativity, the physics of the small and the physics of the large. There was a point in the past when the large was small. Uh-huh. That was the big bang.

There's the shotgun marriage. When you do that at a math level beyond my reach, that's what we need Brian Green for. Multiple universes pop out of the equations. Right. It wasn't like we tried to pull it up. You didn't try to make it happen. You got it for free.

You got it for free. And you know, quantum. fluctuations, and every time you have quantum fluctuation, things happen. Right. And if you're having quantum fluctuations, when the whole universe is the size of a fluctuation, the whole universe becomes one of those fluctuations.

Exactly. Okay? And there are variations on the multiverse? In fact, I invite the listener-reader to see the StarTalk book Cosmic Queries. There's a whole section on there on how the universe will end. And it talks about multiverses. There's a whole discussion in there on that.

So Bill Prady, Bill Prady, all theoretical evidence points to the existence of a multiverse. Whether we will ever one day be able to interact with it by some backdoor method remains to be seen. But if it's a fluctuation, other things would have fluctuated as well, such as the laws of physics. Very dangerous. Which means we don't want to go there. Correct. Yeah. Very dangerous. So, Bill, take it and run with it.

And send the check here. No, stop. You send a Star Talk here. Chuck Nice. So, so there it is. That's cool, man. Bill, keep up the good, fun work. You finally gave the Geekiverse a Hollywood voice.

Yeah, man. I don't know how else to say that. No, that's a good way to say. I think he's part of the reason from, I'll say, a pop culture and general culture framing, that people are far more open to scientific information because of his show. And as long as it's been on the air.

That shows created a comfort zone for geeks to exist in. Yes. That's the better way to say. better way to say it. It's a comfort zone. It's a comfort zone for geeks. And while still celebrating their brilliance, you can still make fun, but no one at the end of the day, you don't get the sense that anyone's feelings are getting hurt, or they're getting exploited

for their lack of social skills. It's kind of a celebration of this who I am, deal with it. And I'll make a mistake here, but that's, I'm self-aware, and I'm shy when others are not, but that's just what I am. It's been crafted. And he doesn't, he doesn't talk down to make the jokes. Good point. You know, he actually makes, he leaves the science to science and then writes a sitcom around that.

Ooh, good thinking about that. Which is really cool. Yeah, yeah. All right. Next up. Hey, Neil, it's comedian Hassan Minhaj. Look, I got a question for you. Why is pink Himalayan salt pink?

Like, are the Himalayas pink or is the rock pink? or am I eating a piece of the Himalayas? What's going on? So, first of all, I was duly informed by who I don't remember, that if you have more than one kind of salt in your cabinet, you're rich. That is not true. I can bouts for that for certain, okay? Because I have coarse sea salt. I have pink Himalayan salt.

I have black salt. okay and then of course Morton's evidence of how much we're paying you no that's what I'm saying

no no I'm just saying what they don't what the people don't know is they pay me in salt no like it's 200 BC

back in the day back in the day that's where the word salary comes from Oh, cool. Yes. When the Romans paid their soldiers in salt. And salt.

Yeah. Nice. So I'm just saying if you go up in the hood, nobody's got more than one kind of salt in the cabinet. Now that's true. I'm just saying. That's true. That's because, you know, black people know how to flavor their food. They don't need five kinds of salt.

They got other things. We got stuff like fat back. Right? You don't need no damn Himalayan salt when you got fat back. Okay. Wait, do you know what fat back is? No. That's what I was wondering.

I was just thinking, I don't want to ask. I don't want to. I'll tell you, a fat bag is a slab of a pig that doesn't have enough meat to even slice it into bacon. Right. Which is itself half fat. Right. Right.

This has less meat than a fatty bacon does. And you pop that in your... But used correctly, it will flavor the hell out of anything. Especially collard greens. Collar greens. You just throw it in there. Yeah. Yeah.

And the vegetarians be damned. You don't let them know that it's in there. They just go, oh my God, you never have it. What green is this good? Oh, my God. What's your secret? I'm just, oh, it's just wonderful. I just never had greens so flavorful.

Oh. So I think Fat Back is the... The between state of existence of bacon and lard. Yeah, basically. What do you think of that? Yeah, it is. That's a pretty accurate. Okay.

Yeah. All right. I'm not to be confused with the pork belly. Yes. Which is just the opposite of the fat back. Okay. Yeah. But go ahead.

So, there's salt in so many places on earth, because you just need a lake that has been around long enough to become salty, and then the lake evaporates and leaves a salt residue, and then it gets buried. and we have on another episode, we learn that the crystalline state of atoms or molecules is the lowest energy state

that it can acquire so that once it hits that state is that way basically forever. Basically. All right? So that's why you can dig up salt. That's why salt is in mines where the salt's been there for a million years.

There it is. Why is it pink then? Says the man who today is wearing a pink polar shirt. good in it. I like it. Yeah, I don't agree. You don't like it? No.

What's wrong? You don't have to wear it. So it comes from impurities in the pure crystal lattice of the salt molecule, which is sodium chloride. Okay. And in this case, the impurity is an iron oxide. Rust. So, infusion. Oh, okay.

What we call that? Okay. Hassam Minaj, it's rust. It's rust. You're eating. Rusty salt. Oh, rust. Rusty ass salt, that's what's eating.

Would you pay for that song? How much do you pay for that rusty ass salt? Let's make him feel slightly better. It's centuries of crushed flamingos. Oh, pinks flamingos. I like that. Yeah, but they have to get pink first. Well, they got to eat.

They got to eat the fist. The little shrimp and krill. The krill and gives them the keratine. They got to eat that first, then they become pink. Then they get crushed. And then you get your pink. Thank you for that new hypothesis. But first they have to hike to them legs.

Which named, last time, Flamingos ain't going to the Himalayas. I promise you. Oh, hilarious. These are trace amounts of this iron oxide that's in there. And you can ask, well, how much is in there? Right. Is it a good source of iron? Yes, it is a source of iron, but so many other foods you eat in a day, especially fresh vegetables.

Absolutely. Are excellent sources of iron. Yeah. Far beyond what you're getting in the salt. Right. So, while it might look pretty in a transparent salt shaker, salt grinder, which I have at all. Of course.

But of course. Wouldn't be so gosest to put my salt in it. To buy it. To buy it on the premise that you are somehow healthier for it is an overstatement of its nutritional value. You're ripping yourself off. So salt is overly processed and pink Himalayan salt is. It's just lazy salt. So, correct.

So other salts might have some tinge to them, but they refine it to remove the other minerals. Exactly. And you're left with pure salt, sodium chloride. Yeah. Because everybody wants, you know, for table salt, it's supposedly, you know, white is better. You know, because, like, all right, let's be real, right?

Anyway. But if you went back in a day and you got salt, it was gray. Yeah, I have gray salt as well. Your salt was gray, and that's like the most natural salt you're going to get. So, yeah, and Assaminaj, we love him.

And I was on his podcast. Okay. And I just thought I can't exit his podcast. He was on your live show. Yes, he was. He was on StarTalk Live. Yeah. Really smart guy, and I first saw him

through his appearances on The Daily Show. Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And Hassan, something else about your pink salt from the Himalayas. Other salt that is white or otherwise colorless, if you look at it. Colonized that Himalayan salt and went in there and took that Himalayan salt and said,

listen, y'all pink salt, y'all don't understand something. Chuck is still in therapy. Nobody seems quite happy. It's been completely happy. Anytime I can get a chance, that's all I'm saying. Next up. Hey, my name's Josh Cher, and I'm the host of Last Meals on Mythical Kitchen, and I have a question for Neil. Since the beginning of time, humans have been manipulating plants via cross-breeding and later GMOs.

What of the plants that we eat do you think is most currently lacking and needs an update? Oh, I love that. I love that. There's hardly any food in the grocery store that has not been genetically modified from its original form. There's almost no food on earth that has not been genetically modified. That's basically true. There are few things like wild caught tuna, okay? That's not been genetically modified.

But almost everything else, we have modified it. Right. And even if we haven't modified it, nature genetically modifies itself. Just think of corn. Just think of the original corn. Original corn is big. Yeah. And now we're...

Now they're this big. People say, oh, I want natural corn. Yeah. I don't want GMO corn. Oh, you want natural corn, you want some, like, malnutrition. I know that's what you want. Some corn that you could eat 18 of them and you still be hungry. Right, exactly.

So the only difference is GMOs, what we think of at GMOs, are accomplishing the same thing that we did in artificial selection. Correct. But we just do it in a laboratory. We just do it in a lab. And both of those are what nature does all by itself. How else are you going to get from single cell organisms to elephants? Absolutely.

He's doing some serious genetically. Some of the genetic modification. Right. But sometimes you can just leave plants and they will do it themselves. Yeah. They'll actually cross breed. Flowers will...

Do it. Yeah. Do it. It's crazy. Do it to you satisfy. I say, we'll do it. That's a 70s disco. Oh, man, that's hilarious.

Yeah, they'll cross me with whatever they might. In a limiting case, I'm told by experts in the field that there are apple trees where different, trunks of the tree are differently grafted so that the same tree can give you multiple kinds of apples. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool.

That's like... I love that. Nature. I'm going to make my old cornucopia. Right, exactly. I want a Fuji Gela Granny Smith tree. So I have to pick a plant that I think is in dire need

of some more genetic modification. Right? Hmm. Okay. Let me think about that. Do you have a, are you thinking one? Yeah, I'm trying. I'm just racking my brains.

Mainly it's vegetables to give them a flavor that allow kids to want to eat them. Oh. Ooh, that's good. Chocolate flavored broccoli. Chocolate broccoli. We'll call it chocolate. Oh! Oh!

There you go. It's chocolate broccoli. It's chocolate broccoli. Chocolate broccoli It's a reference from 1980s Saturday Night Live All right True

Very true I wasn't aware of that That's right So let's agree on that That broccoli The famous food to be hated by children We need to get them to like that food And we need to infuse it with something

We know they will like That they will like So let's get the chocolate gene Either that or we work on the jelly belly multiple flavors and then you choose which when you can tell them. In the broccoli?

Yeah. Okay. Oh, interesting. Different florets. Right. Oh. How you like my vocabulary? I'm good with that.

Different florets would have different flavors. Yeah. So you'd have multi-colored broccoli with different flavors. That would be, the kids would be eating that up. Yeah.

Okay, there it is. We can't have kids eating rainbow broccoli. Yeah, on a serious note, a whole other reason for GM. plants, which is more broadly called genetic engineering, is you can genetically engineer plants, for example, to have two crops in one season, if it's early maturing, and then that doubles your yield.

Okay? Right. Or you can have one that can survive colder temperatures. Right. Or drought resistant. Exactly. So they don't evaporate as much water out of their surfaces. Exactly.

So there are many reasons why one would do that. Yeah. And by the way, that's going to become far more necessary as the planet. Oh, they're already working on taking native species of plants and trees from heat, very hot areas that are drought resistant. And taking them over here. Growing them and developing them. So, yeah, they're way ahead of the story. Yeah, it has to be because crop yields are already suffering because of climate crisis and it's only going to get worse. There's a controversial GMO where they got some gene from a fish that thrives. in sub-zero temperatures of salt water,

so like 30, 31 degrees. Right. And they put that in a tomato, which prevents tomatoes from freezing in the first frost. Right, the frost, they're frost resistant. Frost resistant, yeah, correct. And people freak does it. I don't want my fish in a tomato.

And rather than say, oh my gosh, all life is connected. Exactly. Where we, that's what. No Frankenmato. Hum, oh, hmm. Not only are fish our ancestors, there's an earlier ancestor that's the ancestor of both animals and plants. Correct. And green plants.

Yes. So what a celebration of life that actually is? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Next up. Hi, I'm Ricky Lindholm. I play Ramona on Stewart Fails to Save the Universe.

And here is my question. What is the most misunderstood concept in the universe and why do people keep getting it wrong? Ooh, love that. So, Ricky Lindholm was an intermittently recurring character in the Big Bank theory. Okay. And now she's a regular in Stewart fails to save the universe. The universe. So she plays a most excellent geek in the series.

Once again, a celebration of a culture, really. The geek is geek averse. Yeah. Yeah, completely. So, that's an excellent question. And I would say what people persistently get wrong is that they put sound in space. I'm going to say, yeah, that's a good one. And they're not giving it up.

Right. I go up and slap them. They'll do it again the next time. Yeah. Okay. There's an explosion, and you hear the explosion when you see it. Which makes it doubly wrong. You don't even hear lightning when you see thunder on Earth.

That's correct. And now there's an explosion out in space. And the star blows up and you hear the explosion at the same time. Yeah. With everything that's going on in the world, that's what annoys you? In a movie where they're trying to get their science right. Yeah. Okay.

That's right. So Chuck, I remember you saying that the Thai fight just happened to have a Thai fighter here in my office, that these make sounds in the vacuum of space. Yes. And it's exactly the same sound they made in. Earth's, in a planetary atmosphere. In a planetary atmosphere, yes. Same with their cannons.

You know, and yeah, out in the vacuum of space. So, Ricky, that's my biggest issue. Yeah. And I just given up. People just get it wrong. Just get it wrong. All right, what else?

There's got to be something else. Oh, you want another one? Okay. You've got more than one itch than you want to scratch. Okay, here's a more subtle one. Okay. People think that anytime you are in space,

you are weightless. that is not true. It's not true. If your engines are firing, you have weight inside the craft. And if you want to go anywhere, you're going to fire your engines. So if you turn off your engines,

then you're coasting, falling into wherever you're going, and since you're in free fall, only then are you weightless. Right. And the movie, Ad Astra, to getting back and forth to the moon

in a matter of hours rather than three days, Three days is the coasting time that it takes to get there. Three days. In other words, you fire engines, shut them off, you coast until the moon's gravity does the rest. Does the rest, okay? And you're coasting the whole time. You're weightless the whole time.

But, you know, if you're in a hurry and you don't want to wait three days, you want to get there in three hours, you're burning your rockets the whole time. You're burning rockets. You are not weightless. And in that movie, they showed the burning rockets, and inside they're all just floating around. It's like, no. No. So what's the prohibitor on burning engines all the way to the moon? Is it the weight?

How big is your fuel tank? Exactly, yeah. Yeah, that's the weight. Entirely. So a real future would be filling stations in space. Then you could burn all the way the filling station and then burn again. Solar powered? Sure, but the farther away from the sun you go, the less intense the sunlight is,

by the inverse square law of light that we talked about on a prior episode. That's correct. with my butter gun. So I guess it's three days. Google it, butter gun, Star Talk. So, and the show that gets it correct all the time is the expanse. Yes. They get all their accelerations correct.

They do. Two thumbs up. All right, next up. Hi, Neil. I've always had this question for you. Have you yourself had an alien encounter? Oh. Oh, we know who that is.

She did not identify herself. Yes, but you can tell by her voice. Maybe she didn't need to. Yes, that's how big she is. Mm-hmm. And she had a little bit of accent there? Oh. No, she doesn't have an accent.

Okay, fine. You have an accent. Very good. She does not. You have a number here. We can kick your ass. Very good. Watch what you say.

This is America, Jack. Basha Britt Day. Another Bashabrit Day. So I'm delighted to answer that question. And? I'm not authorized to comment further. There you go. I don't know who this guy is.

So do we end up with a, is it the Fermi paradox where the aliens are probably here anyway, or why would they go this far just to? I know. So the question was, have I encountered an alien? The answer is no. But it's not for want of trying. But have you done so not knowing that you had? But that doesn't count, because that means that maybe all of us have done so not knowing.

Exactly. Then my answer would not be. If I don't know, then you don't know. No, I agree. I'm just saying, do you think the possibility is that we, you, Chuck, everybody watching and listening, has had an alien encounter, but has no knowledge of the fact that it happened. Okay.

So if that's true for everyone, then it's true for no one. Yeah. And by the way, if aliens are here unannounced and they're observing us, it is because from wherever they came, there are more of them coming. And that is why they don't want to let us know

that they are here, which means we're totally. screwed. So I don't know these people who are just like, well, they got to be here. They have, well, you're a dumbass because quite frankly, if they are, that is the end of us. Because anybody who can reach us is so

much more advanced than we could ever hope to be. That when they come here, they're like, yeah, this is ours now. I hope y'all don't know. Only if they behave as we have. Well, my point is this. The only reason they would conceal the fact that they are here

is because they do behave. the way we do. So we've got grabby aliens. Right. What about if they're not grabby aliens, but they've got a real twisted sense of humor? That could happen. Now, that'd be awesome.

How about that? Well, then I'd be heartbroken that I didn't meet them. Okay. And I got one for you. I got one for you. Think about us and our sense of humor and how it can go in different levels.

Just imagine an alien like that. I spent a few pages on this in my book. All right. Take me to your leader. A couple of pages. Yeah, I'm about halfway through that. You are, okay. The book is not very long.

I'm a slow reader. Okay. The book is like this, the book is this thing. Okay. Anything you want to do make me feel better? I have a beginner's version of the... So I try to think about what we look like to the aliens. Because they would find it intriguing, I think,

that we have these sounds we project forward, vibrating air molecules that reach another person and that they know our thoughts for having done so. Right, if they don't otherwise interact with sound the way we do. Okay. That's kind of interesting. Then what might be more interesting is there are some sounds that come out of our mouths that are single syllables that could completely offend another person. They call curse words.

Okay. That's weird. A single syllable comes out and the other person is crying because of it. So then, so we'd have to teach the alien that this is just. cussing. The first thing you do if you're in another country

learn the curse words. Yeah. The first thing that happens is you learn the rude words. No, the first thing I do is learn their food, okay? I don't know what you,

what countries you go to, what you are after. Okay, I'm taking eating for granted. Okay. But the first words you learn in another language if you're there is true.

I have done that. Yeah, you got to learn both so that when you eat the food you can go, damn, that's true. Both. Uh-huh. So,

all I'm saying is, it would be kind of cool if the aliens also had single-syllable curse words. We'd be visited by cussing aliens. That would just be funny. Gleep, you. If you think about it, if they've got enough technology to transverse... Universal aliens speak. Gleep.

I mean, I think the technology to transverse large tracks of galaxy, galaxy's universe, and arrive here, they're not going to need to learn a language. They just bump, if they press, if they don't. They don't have access to be able to interpret everything. Yeah, either did learn their language quickly, and they'll just speak English, if they land in an English-speaking country,

or they read our minds, you know, that can happen. Because urges and emotions and thoughts don't require words to know that they exist within us. That's interesting. They don't need the audible language, which they can just go straight through. Right, exactly, and know the feeling and know the attitude. So I'm just, I burn some pages on this.

My favorite one is you befriend the alien. Okay. And then after a certain number of hours, you say, excuse me, I have to lay down horizontally and go semi-comatose for a third of Earth's rotation. Right. And the alien says, what? And you say, yeah, what, don't you sleep, too?

So sleep, we just, it's just what we do. Yeah. It's a weird thing. It's a weird, it's completely weird. Right. It has to be vital to us. Otherwise, we'll have evolved not to need it. Right, and you're so vulnerable.

Like, asleep. Yeah. You're not eating, procreating, and you're in danger. Right. So I think a lot about what this might be like. And as a result, I carry some scientific tools to present to an alien in the first encounter. Because that would be language we have in common. Math.

Right. Science and math, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But otherwise Pythagoras? Pythagoras Here most certainly, yeah.

So, yeah, I'm sad that I've not met aliens, but it's not for want to trying. There's a book called Where to find them? No, a book, How to Avoid Being Abducted by aliens. Just be. How to avoid an alien abduction. I read that book

cover to cover. And I disobeyed every destruction within it. And they still didn't want shoes. Don't put it that way, Chuck. Didn't want that. So, and that was, of course, Emily Blunt.

Okay. Who was in Devil Wears Prada. Right. As Emily. Yes. And she was also Mary Poppins, one of my favorite characters. Oh, okay.

Big shoes to fill. I know. Big shoes to fill. Nice, she's great. And dare I say, dare I say, and I'm not one to do this, I think she gave an Academy Award-winning performance in Disclosure Day. Wow.

Given the range of acting she needed to display. Wow. She's inhabited by the spirit of these aliens, and so she, her character is different. I've got to see the movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very cool. Emily Bunn, thank you, Emily. Guys, we've got time of one more.

All right, bad a better, better. Here we go. Hi, I'm Kevin Sussman. I play Stewart on Stewart Fails to Save the University. Here's my question for you, Neil. If time travel were possible, could it be used to travel long distances using quantum physics?

Okay, so that is the steward character that was just lifted up from Big Bang Theory and this next show pivots on him and his exploits and he brings his friends and... Well, not according to that question, it doesn't. Just sounds like he wants to serve on airfare. So, if you can time travel, right.

Then it doesn't matter how long it takes you to get somewhere. Nope. You just time travel back into your past. There you go. And you're back to where you started. You're back to where you started, but in a different place. Right.

Seems to me. It's kind of cool. Be kind of cool. We're using kind of like a Stargate portal. You could, but I'm just saying, even if you didn't, you just, go back in time to when you didn't burn all those years. Yeah, that'd be great.

Yeah, yeah. So what's the theory about traveling back and traveling forward in time? Yeah, so we know how to travel forward in time. We don't really know how to travel backwards in time. Although Richard Gott the third wrote a book called Time Travel in Einstein's Universe. It's in our archives. You can dig it up. Okay.

He's a friend and colleague. We've co-written three books together back when I was at Princeton and germinated from back when I was in Princeton. So traveling backwards, you get the paradox problem. And hence Stephen Hawking suggested one day we will stumble on or find on purpose the time travel protection conjecture. Which prevents you from traveling back in time to kill your parents, which would then prevent you from having been born to go back in time,

kill your parents. Right. That's a paradox that he wants to avoid. So either it's not possible at all, or there's some way to do it but using other universes. No, that makes sense. That's kind of cool. Yeah, if only James Cameron,

I'm glad nobody told James Cameron this, or we would have never had the Terminator. Plus, you don't have to kill the people. You just have to prevent them from having sex in the moment that would have produced you. True. Have sex 10 minutes later. Right.

And guess what? And you'd probably be another you. Yeah. Wow. So he's the geekiest one of the whole series. Yeah. Well, I might have to check out, Stewart Fails to Save the Universe.

The only show about failure that is good to watch. So, I think this is all the time we have. We have more, though. We have more. I'm sure we got plenty of more stars than when I ask questions. All right. So, it's fun. Always good to have you guys.

Likewise. This is Neil DeGrasseis. StarTalk Special Edition, right here, from my office, the Aden Planetarium. Until next time, keep looking up.