StarTalk Radio - Why Do We Exist with Hakeem Oluseyi

Episode Date: September 15, 2026

What is fundamental in the universe? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice welcome back Hakeem Oluseyi to dive deep into cosmology, plasma physics, the origins of life, and some of the most provocative ideas in modern astrophysics.NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://startalkmedia.com/show/why-do-we-exist-with-hakeem-oluseyi/Thanks to our Patrons Elias Clarke, Alex Carrion, Pwp4853, Terry Emmel, Laura Belter, Daniel Cossette, Bechamel, Enrique Gracia, Troy Plewe, Kyle Knoche, Dr. Tom, Brian Hatwell, Andrew Parziale, Brian O'Brien, Billy Behman, Abhimat Subedi, Sarah, Joseph Gates, Cnidarian, Raja Tadimeti, John Grivas, Francis De Marchena, Wayne Loco, Michael Saunders, Akbar, Jeffrey Dyal, Ryan Inverso, Michael Kloby, Inquiring Mind, David Gerstein, Joyce M, Robert Dodson, Andrii Repula, Barbara, Steven Klein, Jeremiah The Space Guy, Ron, Gordon Beran, Tziporah Rammel, Joanne Adams Boyle, Marcus Morel, Diana Lopez, WiED, Heather Clint, Roger, Justinsailor17, John Doe, Mailo de Zwart, mark solutions, Taylor Kurian, and omari mcknight 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.

Chuck, I don't think we can find a container to hold a full Akeem Olishe. No, I don't even think a magnetic field would do it. Yeah, he's coming up. Boundless energy coming your way. Delivered from the universe. Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

This is... StarTalk. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, you're a personal astrophysic. Chuck Nice right next to me. What's up, Neil? All right, man. How are you, buddy? Doing good, doing good.

Doing great. We've got to Cosmic queries today. Yes, we do. Inquiring minds want to know. Indeed. And in fact, it's on cosmology. Ooh. As a topic.

It is the expertise of our guest. Third time on StarTalk? Yeah. I think so. That's right. Hakeem Olishe. Thank you so much. And it is the fourth.

Oh, fourth time. Oh, that's right, because this, yeah, no, wait, fourth time? Memoir, cosmic queries, both remote, and then finally, remote. That's right, the remote doesn't, yeah, kind of mess me up. Exactly, yeah. Well, we got an astrophysicist cosmologist, which is a subdivision of all astrophysicists who thinks about the origin, evolution, and fate of the universe. Ooh. Right.

Plus, he's been practicing my open for this show. And I don't know if I should be happy about it or kick his ass later. Let me hear, go. Let's see. This is Star Talk. You know, that's pretty good. Not bad. You know.

Right now with three black guys up here, I don't know who's who. Wait a bit, wait a minute. I want to get back to this kick your ass comment. That's hilarious. Yeah. So, your host of the podcast, Articles of Thought. Nice.

Love that title. And it's a Nova podcast. It's a Nova podcast. PBS Nova, GBA out of Boston. Very good. Very nice. And CEO. How many people get to say to CEO?

Because you're CEO, you demand. That's right. CEO of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Very nice. And I'm going to ask you about that in a minute. And you've also associated with Ness's IMAP satellite. Yes. Remind me what IMAP stands for.

Interstellar mapping and acceleration probe. Nice. Who's accelerating? The sun's magnetic fields both at the surface of the sun and interactions with the sun solar wind and particles trapped in the heliosphere. Right? And those generate neutral atoms that come back

into the solar system and get measured by eye map. Wow. Yeah. Okay. And may I ask why? And if you worry about the sun, That doesn't sound very cosmological. It doesn't.

How do you stitch that together? Because I started out doing instrumentation and calculations, computational, and understanding plasmas really well. So it's kind of like I have this toolbox that I can travel from field to field with, right? So I've done propulsion. Because plasma is everywhere in the freaking universe. Absolutely. Oh, my gosh.

And tell people we're not talking about blood plasma. No. I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah. There's a whole other kind of, there's a different plasma. So this is when you take a gas, heat it even more. break more bonds, right? And you break the solid to liquid bond, liquid to gas.

Now, once you're a gas, you're just molecules or atoms, you start breaking those apart. So once you break apart electrons from atoms, you now have a plasma. Yeah, it's an electron soup. Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so this gas will respond to

magnetic fields. You can do really cool things with it. Right. Including feed a fusion reactor for the future of energy. Very nice. That's where anybody's going to go. Yeah. And that's, but that's, but That'd be the only way you would be able to hold the energy is in a magnetic field bottle, right?

Not necessarily. No, really? You can also put it in a little pellet and close it in a metal and blast it generating x-rays that create fusion. Oh, but that's not a, I'm sorry. I was thinking fusion. That's not a plasma.

You're starting with a little seed, right? But yeah, so if you're going to confine a plasma, you're going to do that with magnetic fields. Okay, a magnetic bottle. You were right, you were on the case. Totally on the case. Yeah, you totally shook my confidence there. Last, last you were here,

You've been busy. You wrote a book. A book with the audacious title, the bodacious title, the out of this world title, why do we exist? Wow. The nine realms of universe

that make you possible. This sounds very asgardian. So the realm. That's right. They're realms. So you say they make you exist. Does that mean because you're speaking to the reader, does that mean you have a different point of origin?

Because otherwise, that word really should be a we. Just saying. I think it is a we. Why do we exist? Absolutely. The nine realms of the universe that make you possible. That's right. That's kind of like, you know, when you talk to your spouse and you say, let me tell you something, your son.

Got you. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. That's a new one right there. That's what that. Okay.

That sounds it up because, let me know, I don't know. I've said those words many times. And sometimes you're about here. You mean our son? Yeah. So what is a realm? So in this case, what I do is I listen to what the universe told me and I report on it. Essentially, what I realize as a physicist is that when you study the universe, we typically do it in a disjointed way, right?

But there is a cohesive story, but what the average person doesn't understand is how the rules that, and that our, intuition gives us just doesn't scale and the universe as it scales the rules change fundamentally so you have to really start looking at the universe completely differently so here we're in the middle realm I call a middle realm bigger than an atom or molecule smaller than a galactic arm right it's middle earth like yeah exactly what about second breakfast are you going to the shower what happened so anyway the cosmological realm, right? So now the dynamics of space-time dominate. In the middle realm, you know,

and what dominates is based on the flow of energy through that realm. So what you see, the trend is, is energy is constantly leaving matter going from, and is really a story of quantum fields, going from the matter to fermionic quantum fields into the electromagnetic quantum fields. So every day there is more photons than there were the day before. There's less energy and matter, right? Ultimately, leading to this heat death, right, the long time in the future. Now, Now, we go, if you study the cosmological realm, you realize something ain't right, that leads you to the dark realm.

So these are energy realms in a sense. Well, no, there are realms of emergence as well, right? So when you go to, for example, the temporal realm, the story of how time unfolds, but listen, in other realms, there are still unfoldings. In the middle realm, I discuss how stars and the planets come into existence. In the realm of life, we talk about abiogenesis

and how that leads ultimately, you know, through this energy ladder from chemosynthesis to anoxic photosynthesis to oxygenic photosynthesis to oxygenic respiration, right? This energy ladder that leads to a brain like yours. Right, okay, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, exactly. And then you have the realms beyond horizons,

beyond our cosmic event horizons, within the black hole event horizons. Okay, which that's unknowable. Yeah, yeah. Then you have the multiverse. So now when you look at the cosmic microwave background radiation's super horizon signature, that seems to indicate that inflation occurred. So is that just the edge of the observable universe?

What's the super horizon? I don't know that. So if you look at the TT spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which you get from looking at the sizes of these blobs, hot holes, right? You'll see, beyond the biggest lump, there's a dip, right? And that's known as the super horizon fluctuation. Okay. So when you look at the inflationary epic of the universe, right?

You have a situation now where our boundary, the cosmic event horizon, is moving outward. Right. But at early times during inflation, right? It could have been moving inwards. And so areas that were separated that were within your, you know, outside your horizon now would have been inside your horizon.

So you can get these bigger fluctuates. You know, I screwed up when I described the Andromeda paradox here slightly, even though the world now knows it. And I'm screwing this up to. All right. But the super horizon fluctuation signal is in the data at a high precision.

And that suggests, you know, that signal is predicted by the inflationary model. So when you look at the inflationary model, what you find is that if you say, how did this happen, you come upon this idea of the inflaton field, right? And so if there is this field that's popped out our universes, our universe wasn't the first time, and it would not be the last time. And in fact, it should be happening all the time, right? And just to be clear, Inflaton is a hypothetical particle that has a field that is responsible for the inflationary epics.

Exactly. So all these universes are popping out all the time. So that means that we do live in a multiverse. Not the, you know, my cosmic event horizon doesn't overlap with your event, right? So it's different from the bubble version of the multiverse. It is the bubble version. It is the bubble. But there's two ways people think of the bubble version.

Yes. One way is you're so far away that you're not within my cosmic event horizon and not within my observable universe. That's one type of bubble universe, but you're still in the same universe. Right. Right.

The other bubble you're talking about is that Inflaton field inflates so rapidly, even if you pop off one universe side by side next to another with a nanosecond later, the distance between them is so great, they'll never overlap, right? Just because of the rapid expansion of the Inflaton field.

So you're isolated forever. So the distinction is there's a, space time that has expanding bubbles within it. Yeah. Versus multiple space times with each its own independently expanding bubble. Right. Exactly. That's wild.

That's wild. That's wild. It's a loaf of bread with the pockets of air and the bubble, air bubbles in it. You know, the loaf of bread has its own life and each bubble has its own history. You don't mean what we buy in the store. You mean like a baguette with all the little bubbles inside. That's right. Yes.

Okay, I got it. Well, what do you want people to take away from your book? Well, first thing is, the title is a provocation. It is not a book that provides the answer. And so what I'm doing is... So it's an authentic question. It's an authentic question. It's a question, and I want you to put your mind to it, and what that book does, it sets you up.

I'm not buying a book where I've got to put my mind. I'm buying your expertise. Well, listen, you're right. That's like I go to a Broadway play, and they want me to sing with them. Here's the book. I participate. I pay good money for you to act your ass off, and I don't want to do a damn thing while I'm sitting here, except listen to you. Wait, wait a minute.

Wow do we exist. You open it up. It's just blank pages. Have it at it. It comes with a little pants. Tell me your thoughts. She tell me you want me to work and bring my own interpretive powers while I'm reading your book. After you finish my book, while you're reading it, this is going to be so mind-blown at every moment that you're just going to be like, wow, damn.

Oh, oh, I never knew that. Oh, my God. But then, at the end, you now have a full picture. you now have a full cognitive map of reality across scale, across emergence, across time, and across realms. And so now you are in a place where you can now,

because I feel like Einstein felt, right, imagination. We've not, since dark energy, what have we discovered new about the universe that's fundamental, right? Everything we've found is, oh yeah, we're right about our predictions for the most part. So, you know, I think we need to tap the high of mind.

thing on this. So a dark energy got the Nobel Prize in 1998. It was discovered in 98. I think he got the prize in like 2010. Exactly. Okay. So what you're referring to is a 28-year gap in a discovery of something truly fundamental. Exactly. We can make a discovery new kind of galaxy, a new formation, a new this or a planet. Right. Okay. Right. Right. Right. The next one is probably life, right. But outside of our universe. Yeah. Oh, and in there, I do give a, the Olusha equation. I never called it that before today,

but, uh, the Oluciae equation. Well, my equation predicts the number of stellar systems that should host a planet with multicellular life, which I think is where it's at, right? Looking for civilizations, I think that's- Was that different from the Drake equation but truncated?

Essentially it is, but the difference is, is that the way it's constructed is different. But that already has a different. No, it doesn't, because Drake wrote his, how many years ago? So there were things we know that he did not know, right? Yeah, exactly. So he's like, what fraction of stars

have plans. Now we know, yeah, all of them. Oh, yeah. And so mine is very simple, right? It's just like the just right stars, just right planets. And then whether or not life actually derives, right? Fair enough, fair enough. But I get a number. I get a number. Interesting. I just want to make it clear, using a truncated version. It ain't a truncated version. It's a very differently motivated equation. Okay. Very differently motivated. When you read it, you'll be like, damn. So you're saying the information that was unavailable to him, you took and use that as the basis for your equation? Not exactly.

Okay. Here's what I did. I started my equation. He started his. His equation is written in many ways in terms of outcomes. Life is formed, a civilization forms, technology is forms. Mine is around the drivers for life, right? So if you look at the just right stars, what defines a just right star?

It has to have the right, exactly. What defines a just right planet. That's valid. What you're saying is very valid. Okay, so it's an oliget equation inspired by the Drake equation. And the Seeger equation, I don't have to add, right? Because Sarah Seeger from MIT also came out with an equation. I'm not familiar with this.

Now, Sarah Seeger is a big planet person. Okay. Yeah, all right. And now astrobiology. Yeah, yes, yes. Okay. Very cool. Well, that's excellent.

Yeah, man. So they're going to come away with a cognitive map of reality that will allow them to... Okay, so... So I think I spoke wrong. about it. What you're saying is, we'll read the book and then come away reflecting on it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, read the reviews. That's what, you know, it's like, wow, this is something different to think about. And then when the physicists, here's the thing, you're going to, so you're different from the average person, because you've heard it all. And you're probably

at a point now where you've probably heard it all. So you have a new perspective. See, that's what I loved about you. Man, when I first met you, you didn't meet me. But when I first met you, I was like, man, like the thing you did that went super viral where you're talking about the stars, when somebody asked you, you asked me what's the most mind-blowing fact about the universe. Yeah, as an astronomy dude, it's still going viral. I'd heard that, I had heard this, you know,

we all hear that young, right? Yeah. But I never heard it like that. I never heard, nobody made me feel it, right? You know what I'm saying? And so I think this particular provocation is gonna hit, hits in a different way for physicists like that.

Got it. Because you've seen it all, and now somebody comes at, from this other angle and you're just like, oh. I see what you're saying. So you're taking information that we already thought about in bits. You put it together in a new way. And there's new material.

Yeah. And there's a lot of new original thinking. So that bit, you think, it was called the most astonishing fact. I was asked by Time Magazine sitting in this chair. Really? And it had a long interview said, what's the most astonishing fact? And then I had to think about it for a moment. Yeah.

And then I delivered an answer, which then other people plucked and then put B-roll visuals behind it. And that's what really took off. Not just me sitting here delivering the answer. Okay. Yeah, yeah, that's what... Okay, so that's a noble goal. It is, it is.

It is. Yeah, okay. Space fact, if you took all the mass of all the asteroids in the solar system and balled it up into one object, it would have barely 3% the mass of our moon. If you like that fact, you can find 4,99 more in Lost in Space. 5,000 facts to help navigate the universe. Latest collaboration between StarTalk and National Geographic Books.

Lost in Space is now available for pre-order wherever books are sold. So there's an acronym. associated with you called swag. Swag. Swag. As an acronym, how do you get that?

How do you get those letters? That's a scientific, wild-ass guess. Wild-ass guess. I like it. What a scientist. That's black for hypothesis. Informed. Informed hypothesis.

Informed hypothesis. So tell me, give me an example. What's that? Well, everything I've been telling you, I tell you writing the book, The whole book is my swag. This is a scientific wild-ass guess, but it's highly informed, right?

I've been thinking about this. Okay. But normally, like you'd write a paper, get it published, pure review. That's right. And then a book comes after that. That's right. Yeah.

Well, this is not that kind of work. It's not for them. So, you know, I've been in a world of the pros forever. Yes. And, you know, this is for everybody else. Okay. Yeah. But for the pros, too.

So, you know, this is not a, it's not, A quantitative study. Only one tiny part of the book has a couple of equations in it, right? So there's no data. It's an exploration of ideas. It's deeper than that, man. It's an exploration of deep ideas.

Deep ideas, right? But it's also a, man, it is just so dope. So, but if we unpack this idea, it's anyone could come out with a wild-ass guess. That's right. But not all of them would be scientifically tracked. Exactly. So help me understand that distinction.

Well, the distinction is if I were going to submit a paper, I would have a hypothesis, okay? And typically you're going to study some very narrow question, right? This is very broad. And what I'm doing is something that a professional in my position doesn't really normally do. So when a physicist interviewed me, he said, Hakeem, what I don't understand about you, bro, is how are you so courageous? How are you so brave? You just throw out your ideas and you don't care what people think. And that's what I've done in this case.

I've, you know, we talk about crazy ideas privately, right? But, hey, I'm putting it out there for the world. Once I snitched on myself in my memoir, I might as well take my crazy thoughts about the universe, too. But they're well grounded. Okay. So these are well-formed, scientifically based imaginings. Isn't everything in imagining? In many respects, yes.

But no, it's not that. I'm a serious empiricist. So I have to stay within the boundary of what we have observed to be true. That's what I said. Scientifically informed. That's the scientifically informed. Exactly.

So if you're imagining what can be within the boundaries of scientific soundness, that's what I'm talking about. Exactly. For example, one of the things that you often hear people say is we have to become an interstellar species because we must leave Earth, right?

One day the sun's gonna go red giant. Well, that's true. You know, or, you know, but look at it like this. Here's another one of my scientific wild-ass guesses. If you have the ability to be an interstellar species, you don't need to leave your solar system. Okay. Right? You can just go right out there to Titan, build your own suns, i.e. fusion reactors, and keep on harvesting energy.

You don't need the sun anymore. Better yet, move Earth. That sounds more monumental than packing up a billion people in. shipping them to a moon of Jupiter and pitch intent and rebuilding civilization, I think it'd be way easier to move Earth. In fact, they do that. Wait, who's that a billion people? There's a film series made in China

called Wandering Earth, which is exactly that. I'm looking that up. That sounds good. Wandering Earth, you've got to look at the second episode was where they actually... The first one is, I don't know what it is, but second one, they put rockets that strategically placed on Earth. and Earth goes

It doesn't go to a bigger orbit It goes to another star system Earth becomes the spaceship Interesting Yeah very interesting And I like to see how they did that Okay All right well we gotta get to some questions

Let's get to do this for the rest of the day I'm Patreon members So cool All right and of course As always thank you to the Patreon members For your financial support That allows you to submit these questions which also allows us to do many other things with StarTalk.

Let's go to Patrick. Hi, Hakeem, Dr. Tyson. Patrick, just another science nerd from Southeast Texas here again. And why do we exist? You trace the chain of events that made our existence possible. Do you think that chain points towards increasingly deeper layers of emergent organization, or do you believe physics will eventually reach a truly fundamental level beyond which there is no deeper explanation?

Ooh, I like that. So when you go turtles all the way down, is there a point where it's just, hey, man, we don't even know. You know, it seems like that question went in both directions at the same time. It kind of did. It sounds like it was like where it's going and what it is at this deepest, most fundamental level. Because in a book, I described the deepest most fundamental level.

It seems to me the evidence points to the same thing that allegedly Albert Einstein said or believed at one point, which is that the only thing that exists are these fundamental quantum fields and energy, right? And so again, I also say, and this is one of the things I say in the book where I differ and diverge from the community, like a lot of people think that space and time are emergent. And if energy and fields are required to be fundamental,

which in this inflaton model of the universe, they are, a field requires a geometry. And energy requires time because it makes change, requires a before and after, right? So if you have those two fundamental quantities, you also have space and time existing as fundamental within our universe.

Okay. Does that answer the question? If you go all the way to the bottom, that's what you got, space, time, energy, and fields. So you don't think there's anything remaining to be discovered or gleaned. Yes. Beneath that level.

Yes. What? Context. Okay. Above that level. In the other network. Here's what I mean by that. Suppose you, here's one of the mind experiments.

Now, before you go on the experiment, Hakeem. Yeah. I have to ask you this because sometimes I get this impression. You're, yes, yes, I am. Do you smoke weed? On, like, every, like. Like. Now, you read my memoir, Chuck.

I did. You read my memoir. You mean today? No, no, I'm joking, man. Come on. Are you asking me that I just. Vague, at LaGuardia? Is that what you're asking me?

That's hilarious. No, go ahead. Back to what you were saying. Coincidentally. Go ahead. Let's get back to the fundamental. Seriously. Let's get back to context.

So space and time would be fundamental. Space and time is fundamental. Not emergent. Not emergent. If quantum fields, which require a geometry, choose your dimensionality, you must have a geometry.

Yeah, but that makes sense. The quantum field thing, that totally makes sense for fundamental. Yeah. And if you have energy, you have to have time. Even quantum mechanics shows you the fundamental nature, marriage of energy and time. So you separate, go ahead.

Therefore, what was the question? Back to that weed. Fundamental. So energy makes time fundamental. Context. So here's the thing, I get it. So you're separating them off. If you accept that energy is fundamental,

you must therefore accept that time is fundamental. Because of change. All right, because energy is a change state. Now, let's move that to what's beneath that and above it, which is context, how, and what's that mean? Well, here's, suppose you were to study, when we teach observation astronomy to students. You know, people don't walk in having a cosmological perspective.

So we try to give them my way of analogy of perspective. So one of the things I used to say is, is that just like the cell is the fundamental building block of the body, the galaxy is the fundamental building block is the fundamental building block of the universe. Then one day I said, well, what if I take that seriously? What if I shrink myself down so small that the size of a cell to me is the same ratio,

20 orders of magnitude, as a ratio of me to the size of my galaxy? And then I studied my universe from that perspective. What would I do? I would do what Hubble did. People looked around and said, oh, there are these things called galaxies. They come in different types, spiral, elliptical, dwarf, right?

I look around, there's different cells, blood, muscle, bone, right? Then I'd say, hey, you know, they have internal structure, a bulge, arms, right? I'm like, oh, they got, you know, what the hell is in a cell? A goji body, a nucleus, riboflavin. No, that's not it. Ribofal. Ribosolavone. Ribosolavine.

Mitochondria. There you go. Favis is a mineral vitamin on a cereal box. But then you can zoom out. And you see, we discovered the large-scale structure, right? There's the cosmic web. and you would do the same thing. But after doing all that,

would you have any idea if you're in a whale, if you're in a horse, if you're in a tree? Right? I mean, if you're saying muscle bones, you're definitely not a tree. But the point is,

you can't get the context of our existence from the inside of the damn animal. Oh, wow. Okay. Damn. You know. Can the unborn child

know what its mother looks like? Ooh. Well, if you ask any Christian, yes. Yes. I'd have been in a lot of churches. I don't know where that comes. I don't know what it is. No, no, I'm joking.

But, okay, that is real. That's what you mean by context. That's the context. We don't understand the con. And it's definitely not a bauble on a cat's necklace. Hakeem, I got to give it to you, man. That's profound. You mean the galaxy on the belt of Orion.

Right. Oh, is that the cat's name, Orion? Right, yes. Oh. No, that's a really good example. That's a great example. And the belt was a necklace. Right.

The little pendant on the collar. Correct. That was the belt of Orion. Wow, so cool, man. All right, here we go. Let's go to some guy, 2334. That's his name? Well, that's what he put.

Okay. Hey, Neil, Lord Nice, and Dr. Olesche. Lord. He's Lord. Oh, you didn't know that? No. Yeah. He says, I'm Graham from Marina del.

Ray, California, a long-time listener and a first-time caller, I recently learned about a millisecond pulsar whose equator moves at nearly a quarter of the speed of light. Imagine two indestructible astronauts, one standing at or near the pole and one on the equator. What would each see when they look towards each other? Rotational speeds would be much faster at the equator, so how would relatively show up for these probably quite dizzy observers? A fun analogy. if Earth were somehow rotated that fast, could familiar landmarks appear in places that seem impossible because of

relativistic effects? That's the second question. Thanks so much, and you make astrophysics fun and accessible. The first question is blowing my mind right now. It reminds me... Pole and equator, but a pulsar

relativistically, what would they see? This reminds me of that old joke, what's the last thing to go through an insect's bind when it hits your windshield? What? It's ass. That's not bad. Place you on a neutron star, bro, and you're going to be a puddle.

She gave us a very good qualifier. Which was? Two indestructible asteroids. Yes. Okay. So they are able to maintain their perspective and their physical integrity while one is at the pole, and one is at the equator of the pulsar. All right.

So one is definitely spinning faster because it's at the equator. If you're rapidly spinning, does rapidly spinning create? Well, here's the question. So this is a calculation one, right? Because relativistic

effects show up at extremes of speed and gravitational energy. So on a neutron star, you have both, a rapidly rotating neutron star. So then the question becomes, what are they looking at? Or they're looking at the distant universe? Or they're looking at each other? They're looking at each other. They're looking at each other. So that means that this body is typically like, we're talking like 10 miles or something across.

So you're not going to look at each other unless you're super tall. Okay. They're beyond each other's horizon. Okay. They're beyond each other's horizon. And if you're super tall, you're not, well, you're indestructible, but doesn't pay to be super Because that's the thing, right? If you're on the super Earth, the body, the greater gravity, the lower you need to survive. Right, yeah, yeah. Okay.

So, but I guess the question they're getting that is, you know, is one of those, like, how much is space time curved? And what would be the effect of your light is traveling to me? You're no longer there. And then the next bit of light is coming. And the next bit of light is coming. And the next bit of light is coming, right? And their paths are kind of something weird.

Right? So you're going to be distorted and smeared, is my guess. There you go. Because the light rays are not coming as one color of image. They're being smeared out. Yeah, and then you get a whole work. But they're coming from a weird angle, too, right? Yeah. So basically, it's going to be a mess is what you're going to see.

You're going to see a little mess. Yeah. And by the way, you have to do that on the pulsar because anything else, its gravity isn't strong enough to hold it together as one object while spinning that fast. Exactly. Which spin itself apart. Right. Yeah.

So Polsars can do that. Yeah, that was a great question there, man. That was really cool. From who again? Some guy, two three, three, four. That's it. Didn't even give a me. Hey, some guy.

This is Charles Coel, who says, Aloha from Honolulu. Hi, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice, and Dr. Oleschier. Could Schroender's cat and the Cheshire cat have a kitten, although the lightest, Primordial black holes have been ruled out as dark matter or dark gravity as Dr. Tyson prefers because they evaporate too quickly. Could they still leave something behind like a Cheshire Cat smile? When Hawking radiation separates the very last virtual particle pair at the event horizon and the black hole winks out of existence,

could the breaking of the final entanglement leave a topological scar, not mass, not energy, just a knot in space time? that was never there before. I think these people smoking more weed than either one of us. This is insane. Damn. Give me that last sentence again? He said, not mass, not energy,

just a knot in space time that was never there before. This sounds a lot like the so-called topological defects from the early universe, but the scenario in which they're generated is, so basically what they're saying is, is do a GR calculation, right, model the evaporation of the black hole,

and then from that, can you derive the metric that's left over, right? The spacetime configuration that's left over. Okay. And if it has fully evaporated, by definition, a spacetime metric only exists in the presence of a mass energy density or pressure, right? So it sounds like the answer would be a no, but at the same time, you know, this is going to be a little bit controversial maybe.

But there's a lot of stuff we predict and then we see it. We're so good at that, right? But not everything that pops out of the equations comes to fruition, right? You know, sometimes people play with equations in such a way and they find something interesting. We did a little explainer on that. Yes, we did. Oh, excellent. Yeah, we have equations that have.

solutions that don't have any correspondence to, exactly, to observational reality. It means nothing to the person who might need that for, right. So with that being said, you know, we've not actually observed black hole evaporation. Right. Right. And, you know, makes sense. Everything, you know, all the GR stuff is being found exactly as predicted to high precision.

So I have no reason to say GR is crap. but for a physical phenomenon that has never been observed and to then to speculate what would happen, right? That's a lot of the conversation in physics these days. And I think that, you know, black holes get more attention

than they deserve in that type of discussion, right? I think there's a practical universe discussion on black holes. Casting shade on black holes. He really is. No, no, no, no. I'm like, I didn't think they could get any blacker. But damn, you did it.

Well, they no longer swim. That helps. Right. So, okay. So we want to speculate on the speculation and the speculation. You know, there's too many layered speculations for me. I got you.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, yeah. Okay. Well, thanks a lot for that one, Charles. This is Marion who said, hello, Dr. Olishay, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice. Marion from Pennsylvania.

My question is, since Dr. O'Shea was first on StarTalk, I believe five years ago, Oh, wow, she's keeping track. What's the most interesting discovering about the universe you have learned since then? Also, what do you think of the recent proposal that the ancient little red dots are now globules where massive stars are born? Thanks. It's all good. So the first part of that intrigues me. So how do you take that?

So since then, I've studied a lot of biology and a lot of geology. Here is, you know, I wish I could channel you, man. And what we started out talking about that, like, about the stars making stardust. I want to describe in such the same way the origin of the vertebrate. Because I went around telling everybody, because one day I had a realization, I was like, wait a minute. Because I have a medical condition that brought me to this realization. There's a tube that goes from my mouth to my exit. Okay.

I'm a worm with just some appendages, right? Some locomotion, some defense. I'm like, we're all worms, right? That was going around telling all my friends and families, like, hey, we're all worms, ha, ha, ha, right? And then one day I thought, you know what? What is the real origin of vertebrates? Do you know the origin of vertebrates?

No. No. No, no, pre-fish. The origin, the pre-b... So it's cordates, right? It's the nodecores. Before there's a bone wrapped around it is just a cord. So where did it come from?

We're a freaking filter feeder, bro. So these little filter feeders like corals, these little alimonys, when they're in their larval stage, they go around, they taste little spots to figure out where they want to set down, and so they look like a little sperm cell. They're a little globular tadpole with a little tail, right? So to power that tail, they had a little nerve going down it

to power those muscles. And then eventually they decided, you know what, I'm gonna skip my adult phase. And eventually it becomes the first noticord. And then the cornates, and then you get a... From that, a backbone. And then there is the new DNA data on race, which is now all over YouTube, right? So we all had the story, oh, ultraviolet light, that's what makes skin color this or that.

And the old story was, right, that the evolution of light skin, deep pigmentation happened from 40,000 years to 20,000 years ago. No, it started 8,000 years ago due to agriculture, right? agriculture created depigmentation and 5,000 years ago, Europe was only 50% depigmented. That's 3,000 years ago. So we're talking like 1,000 BCE, man. At this point, the freaking pyramid is already 1,500 years old. So when you look at these ancient, you know, Europeans 40,000 years ago, you find the oldest math

in Germany in Europe 40,000 years ago. And you think, oh, it's the ancient Germans. bro, they're not, they're brown. Yeah. You know, there's going to be a lot of Germans who are upset with you right now. I was just hanging out with Germans. They've changed. They've changed.

So I've been told. I'm Lenny Lum, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson. All right, so that's the, so biology is your big fascination now. So the second question. Angiology. Because another thing about geology that is little appreciated is the fact that our freaking outer core is liquid, bro, liquid metal. Right?

So from like 19% radius out to like 55% the Earth's interior is liquid metal. Yes. Liquid metal. That's the core. We're on a freaking, what is that cake you cut it in the lava cake? Oh, it's a lava cake. Yeah, Earth is a lava cake. Yeah, that's cool.

We're like a nut in the middle. Right. Bro. Yeah, well, that's cool. People think the ground beneath our feet is solid. No. Well, and guess what? The great thing about that is, if it wasn't, we wouldn't be here.

Exactly. Because that is what gives us the magnetic field that protects us all. Which eye map is. Very cool. All right, so here's the second thing she said. Also, what do you think about the recent proposal that the ancient little red dots are now globules where massive stars were born? Okay. My understanding is, based on the latest paper, they see that the sources of the light from those globules is reprocess light from.

an accretion disc. So it looks like it's a baby supermassive black hole with an accretion disc in there. And so there's, what is it called? You know, you see scattered light and you see, what is the word? Phosphorescent? What the hell is it called?

It's polarized. It's polarized. So it's absorbed and reemitted by the gas. So you essentially have. Oh, okay. Yeah, I didn't understand. Floresis. Okay, I didn't understand you at first.

So, damn. So supermassive black hole, accretion disc. Accretion disc is emitting high energy radiation. There'd be a mission nebula Where the atoms are charged up And then they de-charge and they re-immay Exactly because of mission nebula Plus scatter light like coming directly from the distance

They just got yeah Gotcha All right Just remind people what are these red things So it looks like it is a baby Supermassive Black Hole being born In the very very very early universe Super early universe

Right yeah In the Dark Ages In the Dark Ages So the question that we've been having Is which came first the supermassive black hole or the galaxy. That's been an eternal question. Internal question.

It's looking like it's the hole. Wow. Dude. So that's super cool, man. The hole precedes the dirt. Right. That's so cool. The reason why it's not entirely obvious is a supermassive black hole might have a billion times the mass of the sun.

Yeah. But the galaxy would have 100 billion times the mass of the sun. So the black hole is less than 1%. So how are you going to get everybody to join this? So it was not a completely obvious pathway. Okay. To know who came first in this. Yeah.

That's fascinating. Yeah. That is really cool, man. I did not know that. Okay. Chuck, we have time for one last question. One last question. Here we go.

Tristan Phillips says, Hello, Neil, Chuck Hakim. I hope you're all doing swell. Coming from Jensen Beach, Florida here, I have what may be the most important unanswered question in astrophysics. Let's say I somehow acquire a completely indestructible 16-pound brungzwick bowling ball it's immune to heat pressure radiation basically everything i gently place it on the equator of the fastest spinning pulsar we know of let it rotate with the star

and then through the power of plot armor i magically turn off the pulsar's gravity just long enough for the bowling ball to escape okay did i just throw the fastest strike in the history of the universe and how fast is that bowling ball actually leaving if that's not ridiculous enough Let's say I somehow recover the bowling ball, take it over to a supermassive black hole and launch it into one of its relativistic plasma jets. Once it's far enough away that it escapes the black hole's gravity and won't end up orbiting anything, how fast is it moving now? Two different scenarios, but I like the first one better. You basically use a pulsar as a catapult with an indestructible bowling ball sitting at the equator. It's spinning, spinning, spinning, spinning when it gets to a turtale.

terminal velocity, you stop it, boom, it goes off, how fast is it going? Well, at first it's going the speed of the spin, right? Okay. But it has to climb out of that gravitational well that neutrons are. There you go. But she said she turns off the gravity. Oh, because it's, okay, so she turns off the gravity. Turns off the gravity.

Yeah, yeah. This is a powerful being we're dealing with you. Oh, my God. Oh, I love it. I think she, did she say turn off the gravity? You're right, it's right, right, right, yeah, yeah. So, you know, what's really interesting is that I saw someone who actually modeled this, because, you know, the idea that we always have, you have something spinning and you let it go,

it takes off on this tangent line. Yeah, and they found that actually it doesn't. At the very beginning, there's some little glitch thing that happens. I don't remember the details. And then it goes on a straight line. But conservation of momentum. That sucker's going to... It's just going to go.

Yeah, so typically a fast-spending pulsar, the equator's moving at some appreciable. fraction of the speed of light. Like half the speed of light, maybe, quarter of speed light. I have no idea. So the ball goes off at that speed. That's all you got. That's all you got. Yeah, yeah. That's all you got. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But there's a pretty ornate way to just say what happens if the ball goes at half the speed of light. Right, right. But you know what it reminds me of that new launch company that spins the? Oh, yeah, it's a... The centrifuge rocket thing? Yeah. It's a... What do they call it? Yeah. I mean, in fact, I saw some old sci-fi movies where they have.

had a mechanism like this. Before they figured out multi-stage rockets, deep in the 50s before we- Oh, that makes sense. We had that going. Right. Yeah, it was a spinner. And then they deconect, they detached it.

And then shoot it through a tube and it goes, pshu- Yeah, and then it goes out. That would be kind of cool, though. They're doing it. Yeah, it's fun to think about, you know. I mean, I like it. Yeah. All right.

Okay, man, you are like, I'm tired. Oh, I mean, damn. It's so cool having you here, man. But, no, it is. That was full stop. It's so cool having you here. That's it. It's good to be true person, man.

You're brilliant. People know it too. It sounds like half of him is in this book. Why do we exist? Like, you open up, he pops out. The nine realms of the universe that make you possible. And one of them has to be Asgard, because that is a realm of the universe. I think you missed an opportunity.

I got one thing I got to say. I'm not a Marvel fan. Oh, but I am, but I am. Okay, good. But I have one thing I have to say about the astronomical society of the Pacific and that is we have just launched a YouTube channel called Astrobeat

where I do explainer videos. It's about time. It is. Because the mission is to spread the love of the universe. Absolutely. Far and wide. That's right.

And even though it's called of the Pacific, that's just incidental that it's on the West Coast outside of San Francisco. Well, now our new DBA doing business ass is the Astro Society. So that's been our website forever, astrosociety.org.

So the YouTube channel is the Astro Society. So in the future, all ASP things that don't have to do with the publications and the awards are going to be labeled as the Astro Society. And I'm a huge supporter of their work because it makes my job easier. And he is appreciated.

That's awesome. All right, dude, thanks for coming through town. Thank you for having me. I'm honored. Once again. How did we find you? Are you anywhere on the internet? I am not.

But you can find me at the astrosociety.org. You can find us. We have all our socials. I'm on the socials of the Astro Society these days. Okay. And occasionally you come through town and help out the history channel. Absolutely. I help out the history channel.

I help out Nova. Okay. We work together. Yeah, yeah. All right. That's all the time we have. This has been StarTalk, another cosmic query. the Hakeem Olishe edition.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, four-star talk. As always, I bid you to keep looking up. All right, we got it there.