The Joe Rogan Experience - #919 - Neil deGrasse Tyson

Episode Date: February 21, 2017

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, and science communicator.

Four, three, two, and boom. That's a nice hat. I've told you already, but live, I gotta tell you, that is a nice... It's very kind of Indiana Jones, but... It's not quite that, and not quite cowboy. Yeah, you're like in the middle of that. Yeah, yeah. You're riding the wave.

You're dancing on the edge. Look, I have a really fat head, and so there's this website called bigheads.com. There's a website for it? Yes, a total website for fat-headed people. I've got to get my friend Bert Kreischer a hat, then. I put his hat on. I couldn't believe how big his head was. There was like an inch gap all around my head.

I thought I had a big head. Yeah, so if you know your head size, do you know your head size? No, I do not. So it turns out if you know your head size, that number comes from somewhere. Can I tell you what it is? Sure. So if you measure the circumference of your head, just get a tape measure, like you're measuring your waistline, but do it around your head, and take that number, divide it

by pi, then that's your hat size. Whoa. Yeah. Seems complicated. Divide by two? Why can't it be just like your waist, 32? You know, your waist is what your waist is. I know, it just is what it is, right?

Why can't it just be the circumference, right? So what it turns out to be, so what that means is, if you're dividing by pi, you're getting the diameter of the circle that has the same dimension as the circumference of your head. So if you have an oblong head, then what it's doing is finding out what the circle is, the diameter of the circle that has that same circumference as your head. Oh, okay. And that's what that's doing, for whether that helps the hat maker. So immediately I started thinking about Dan Aykroyd on Saturday Night Live as a cone head.

Oh. Right? Remember? Well, then you need a tall hat for that, too. Yeah, there's an issue there. There's an issue there. So, dude, you're still doing stand-up? That's great.

Constantly. I'm loving it. Yeah. Thank you. And I caught you a few months ago. You were emceeing some MMA, was it? Well, I'm always doing that, yeah. Oh, you're always doing that.

I'll catch some of it then. Well, I'm the color. I think it's great you stayed in shape because I'm a fat slob right nowlob right you were ripped back in the day man i saw a picture of you when you were wrestling and i was like damn neil you look good i had some street cred back then do you exercise at all now no i try it's not that i don't have the energy to it's it's trying to find the time there's's you back in the day. Look at you, shredded. How much did you weigh back then? Let me guess.

Oh, go on. 176. No, no, no. I'm 6'2", so I'm 190 pounds in that. Oh, you look great. I have big thighs and stuff. Other wrestlers would have skinnier thighs and things. So I was also taller than anyone I wrestled.

So since we're the same height, it meant they had bigger muscles, actually. Because we're the same weight, right? Did I say that right? I'm taller, but we're the same weight. it meant they had bigger muscles, actually. Because we're the same weight, right? Did I say that right? I'm taller, but we're the same weight. So that means they have bigger muscles. Right. Because none of us have fat, right? So I had to do things that my lankiness would enable me to do and to accomplish that they couldn't.

So I have long reach, this sort of thing. I scoop an ankle, that kind of thing. There's great advantages to having long limbs in martial arts, particularly in wrestling, grappling, because of leverage. Yeah, also if you're quick and with long limbs. And I was both. But if they got me in their grip, it was hard for me to get out. So what kind of exercise do you do these days?

No, that's not, no. Nothing? Nothing? No, I'm trying. You know, I get, yeah, I'm trying. When I'm in, I'm good. But I've just got so much going on. Yeah. You have to, like, make'm trying. You know, I guess. Yeah, I'm trying. When I'm in, I'm good. But I've just got so much going on. Yeah.

And I have to, like, make the time. That's a problem, right? When you become a little bit too successful for your own good. I saw some food. There's a lot of food documentaries, you know, trying to get you to eat differently. So I thought I'd watch them all. I binged on them one weekend while I was doing other stuff. And I.

Got hungry? No, one of the guys, he was trying to lose 100 pounds or something. So every 15 pounds he lost, he put a bowling ball up on the counter and said, that is what I'm not carrying around with me. Whoa. Because a bowling ball is about 15 pounds. And I said, wow, he's measuring weight in bowling balls. That's something.

Because we say, oh, I'm three pounds less and two pounds less. That doesn't hit you emotionally the way a bowling ball does after you've lost 15 pounds. Because no one wants to be carrying that around. So psychologically, I thought that was quite potent. That is potent. I think we do need, so I usually use like plates. I think of weight plates or dumbbells.

Okay, yeah, that works too. I started doing intermittent fasting pretty recently where I only allow myself to eat 10 hours in a day. Oh, wow. That's it. 10 hours out of the 24-hour day. Yes, so 14. I had Terry Crews on my radio show on StarTalk.

That boy, my boy's ripped, okay? Yeah, he looks great. And he's like 47 or something. I mean, so he doesn't eat until 12 noon. Oh, same sort of deal. And he doesn't eat until after 10 o'clock. That's right. Yeah, 10 hours.

And then he doesn't eat after 10, right? Yeah. It's a 10 hour thing. And so he has to, he's watching everyone else have brunch and breakfast. And so he's got to overcome that. But, so it's a little bit of fasting. Yeah. Each day.

Intermittent fasting. Just to keep the discipline. I think it's, at the end of the day, it's really just discipline. Well, it's not just that. It also forces your body to burn fat instead of carbohydrates. And when it forces your body to burn fat, that state of ketosis is actually easier to maintain because you don't get hungry. Yeah, then there's no roller coaster. Yeah.

The crash, the carbohydrate crash that you get. Right, right. Is that outside of the realm of possibility for you? No, I can totally. I'm a ketosis guy anything involving science come on it's in there baby it's in there i once got raked over the coals not by everyone but uh i tweeted once i said if there was a diet book written by a physicist it would contain one sentence Consume calories at a lesser rate Then not a greater rate. No consume calories at a lesser rate than you burn them. That is sort of true That's the one sentence diet. No, it's more complicated than that

We just try to get all know what this is that and that and one of the great things of physics when you when you Do physics is all the details are just cut off. It's window dressing. And you get down to the window itself. And that's what the analysis works on. I have rarely seen you attacked. But I did see you attacked when you were celebrating Sir Isaac Newton's birthday. Oh!

I was like, that, people were so mad. People lost their minds. They lost their mind when you were, by the way, incorrect in the date of Jesus' birthday. That is not the date of Jesus' birthday. Jesus was not born on the 25th. No. Plus, I didn't even mention it. So what I said was, by the way, that to this day is my highest retweeted tweet.

I tweeted it. I retweeted it. So you it. I retweeted it. So you remember. It's actually a couple years ago now. Yeah. So it was on December 25th comes. There it is. Oh, you got good.

Child was born by the age of 30 who transformed the world. Happy birthday, Sir Isaac Newton. So on this day long ago, a child was born who by age 30 would transform the world. Happy birthday, Isaac Newton.

Born December 25th, 1642. 79,000 retweets, 86,000 likes. People just lost their mind. They were so mad. They were angry and I thought, well, interesting because I'm just speaking the truth here. Yes. He transformed civilization

by, actually he did it by the time he was 26. So, yes, it's provocative because you're expecting that jesus is going to end that but i thought i'd share some act some actual truth with people and so some people celebrated it deeply religious people uh one had a headline saying neil degrasse is trolling christians on christmas day and i said i said newton at least has the benefit of actually having been born that day then later on it's actually more subtle than that with newton because he was on the julian calendar

which was which is 10 days shifted from the gregorian calendar so if you ask what would his birthday be today it would be january 4th not december 25th so yeah but when he was born his mother was celebrating Christmas. So that's really what matters for that tweet. Well, it's such a bizarre thing anyway, because if you're a real Christian, you would understand that the birthday was shifted in order to comply with pagan religion. Exactly. It landed.

I don't know how many people know that, actually. I mean, you're a well-read guy. But so if you give me a minute to just explain that. So December 21st, we know is the first day of winter, shortest day of the year. And what makes it short? Shortest daylight of the year. And what makes it short? The arc of the sun across the sky is very low. The sun doesn't get very high and it doesn't stay up for very long. And it's been coming a lower and lower arc every day en route to December 21st. The ancient peoples were worried about this because everyone worshipped the sun because it made your crops come and it gave you warmth.

And you say, whoa, if this keeps going lower and lower in the sky, we're going to lose the sun entirely. December 21st, the sun slows down and it stops this drop in its movement across the sky from day to day. So that stopping of the sun is solstice. That's Latin, the stationary sun, like armistice, stationary arms, right, from the end of the First World War. November 11th, that was. Armistice, solstice. So the movement of the sun lower in the sky stops. But that doesn't mean it's going to come back. It takes a few days for it to slow down, stop, and then reverse.

He said, oh, it is coming back. Let's celebrate that. And that's a few days after December 21st. It's about December 25th, a pagan holiday celebrating the return of the sun. Christianity is trying to take foothold where pagans once roamed. And you put celebrations that match theirs just so that the shift is not as hard for you. And the unknown birthday of Jesus was then assigned this pagan day of celebration to

make that transition easier for the pagans to become Christians. And sure enough, it remained Christmas Day. And isn't it speculated? It remained the birth of Jesus. The speculated birthday of Jesus is like the spring, right? The spring. There's some passages, of course, in the New Testament that reference what the sheep were doing. Plus, there's a census being taken by the Romans, and Mary goes to the manger.

The animals are not in the manger. So there's secondary evidence for this probably happened in the spring. Now, with the advent of commercial space travel, which seems inevitable. Seems inevitable, right? Love your segues. Do you think that it's possible that maybe you could even offer up a flat earth believer tour where you take them, like at the very least, take them up to Alaska where it's light for 23 hours a day? Is this calling into you? Tweeting me constantly. Tweeting me constantly. Yeah. Call

me a sellout. I'm a sellout. I'm a round earth sellout like as if there's some round earth money Wow You're on the payroll I'm getting some round earth check you get some payola round earth payola for your show I'm sure you've seen the basketball player who graduated from Duke from Duke that was hitting the news last couple of days I saw believes that dinosaurs are fake and that the world is flat. Okay. So here's the thing Joe, okay I've thought about this. I bet you have as an educator. I've thought about this. Okay, so Here's here's what matters We live in a free country

People should be able to think whatever they want Whenever they want provided it doesn't subtract away from someone else's rights. Okay. So thinking the earth is flat doesn't harm anyone unless you want to run for office or you want some position of power over other people. That's when it's dangerous. I thinking of elevator banks where they have numbers. You know, I have a photo essay of what elevators look like inside. I know it's just... You mean the gears and all that? No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Not even that geeky. Just what are the numbers on the panel? Oh, without the 13, you mean? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So about 80% of buildings taller than 12 stories don't have a 13th floor. Okay? buildings taller than 12 stories don't have a 13th floor. Okay. And so this tricks a deck of phobia is again in a free country. If you, if you want to be afraid of the number 13, go right ahead. It just seems to me you should not be tasked with designing elevators.

If that's your fear, find something else to do. Holding aside the fact that I'm a little scared that in this 21st century United States of America, we have people walking among us afraid of the number 13. What does that mean? I don't know in the long run. But if you keep to yourself, don't harm others, think whatever you want. So the rubber hits the road is you now have power over others. And that's where the failure of the educational system actually manifests. That's how societies and cultures collapse. But it's not that they don't know that there's a 13th floor and that you're just calling it the 14th floor. I want to take my Sharpie, cross out the 14th floor.

That's the 13th floor. You're not fooling anybody. Now, when you see it on an elevator and you're like, you see no 13. And plus they try to fake you out. How do they do that? So they go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. And then you have to go to the next row to begin for the 14th. So you don't see 12 right next to 14.

next to 14, and some modern buildings will put their heavy machinery, like the HVAC, on the 13th floor so that there's no residency there. But they could still say it's the 13th floor and then there's the 14th floor. Yeah, yeah. Does anybody ever have a dummy 13th button where you press it and it never lights up? Like, I don't get it. I can't get in there. Oh, that's interesting. That's what I would do.

Oh, you just put it there to satisfy me, but still nobody lives there. Exactly. That's too clever. Oh, this is one of the 20% of people that make sense. What a great building. Meanwhile, there is no 13th floor. It's just a dummy button that never lights up. Remember that Twilight Zone episode with the mannequins?

They went up to the 11th floor, but there is no 11th floor. And the mannequins come to life at night. Ooh, I forgot about that one. Yeah, they leave the store floors, and they all go up to 11. They have a cocktail party. And they vote which one of them is going to go out and become human for a day. The Twilight Zone was so good. I think it was the best television there ever was.

Like, still, to this day, ever. They've used up so many great premises. Great premises, great actors, great cinematography. And it was in black and white, so shadows were completely dark. Yeah. Because shadows don't have much meaning when you're filming color, because everything is just there. But in black and white, the shadows create mood. Yeah.

And, yeah, so. I watched To Serve Man the other night. Oh! Oh! I hadn't seen it in a while. To Serve Man. I had it on the DVR. I'm like, let's just sit down and watch this one.

And they had Big Guy, who played played Lurch on The Addams Family. Yeah. That was a great one. Because it was just like it had all the elements of people going, well, you know, they seem nice. They seem nice. Yeah, yeah. And they solved all of our war and our famine. It's a cookbook.

Yeah. God, it was great. They had so many. Another good one was The Invaders. Do you remember this one? No. This was a one-woman performance. And I forgot who it was.

Was it not Agnes Moorhead? One of these women of that era. It'll come to me in a minute. And she's living alone in a farmhouse. No electricity. She's got a farm. And she's alone. And some alien

spacecraft lands on her roof And it's got these devices. It's got these saws and blazers cutting through things and she's freaking out she's got the pan in the pots and the rolling pin and And she then she'd get the gun the shotgun and she's attacking this thing It's and and you don't know what it is and it's got lights and a thing and it's this tiny little thing it's like three inches across right and it turns out that's the thing that's attacking her and then she finally like comes that's it see the little robot okay and and and so she's like and then i gotta give it away the show's 40 years old i can give the punchline, okay?

So she actually successfully damages the thing. And then you zoom in on it, right? And then you hear a radio transmission from the aliens that are inside. And it says, yeah, hello, hello. Houston, there's a giant who's trying to attack us. We need help. Send backups. Oh, it was great.

Whoa. We were the invaders. That was us landing on her home on some other planet. Or some parallel Earth from some other dimension. It's just Earth is small. We are, we, no, no, no. No? No.

Okay, I get it. So she's, it's another planet. She's the giant. Right. And they're saying there's a giant attacking us. Right. But the whole show, you have her point of view. These aliens are trying to hurt her.

When they're just, it was our space probe just trying to explore its environment. But isn't it possible that it's like another dimension? It's us in another dimension and they are landing on Earth? Except that it, like another dimension? It's us in another dimension and they are landing on Earth? Except it is... Hmm. No, no. I mean, they were speaking English. But couldn't they have just

parallel evolution? Well, isn't that the definition of infinity? That somewhere, some... If there is really an infinity, there is not only a you and an I, but there's a you and an I and everybody else we've ever met

and all the exact events in the exact same order have gone down an infinite number of times, including this conversation. Okay, except. Except. There is, I don't know how many people know this, but often it's mind-blowing when you learn that some infinities are bigger than others. Joe Rogan just leaned two feet away from the microphone. Sure, my kid. How's that? Yeah, not all infinities are the same size.

But if it's infinity, then it's infinity. It's infinite. What is, no? Well, okay. Don't you remember when you were a kid, they said, what's the biggest number you know? A million. Well, there's a million and one. Right.

Okay, how about a billion? Well, there's a billion and one. The annoying kid always added one to it. Okay, how about infinity? Well, infinity and one. Right. Okay, well, it it. Okay. How about infinity? Well, infinity and one. Right. Okay. Well, it turns out infinity and one and infinity are the same number.

Okay. So, for example, the number of counting numbers, so one, two, three, up to infinity. Okay. Right. The numbers you would use to count things, that's infinite. Right. The numbers you would use to count things. That's infinite.

The number of irrational numbers. So the numbers that you cannot represent as a fraction. Okay. That, there's more, there are more of those than there are counting numbers. Whoa. By far. So these are orders of infinity. Then there are more transcendental numbers than there are irrational numbers. What's a transcendental number? So that's a number that you'll never find as a solution to an algebraic equation.

So pi is a transcendental number, e is a transcendental... These are magic numbers that show up in mathematics. And it turns out there's an even bigger infinity of those than there is of these other two classes of numbers. And they use the Hebrew letter Aleph in rankings. So it's Aleph 1, Aleph 2, Aleph 3f3 lf4 i think there are five levels of infinity so my point is um just because there's infinite universes to me doesn't mean there's infinite conversations that have happened and i'd want to really explore the depths of infinities before i say and agree with you that this conversation has happened a million you know an infinite number of times in just this way except you have a different engineer sitting next to us. And an infinite number of times where it's been Jamie, too, right? Yeah.

In principle, that's the argument that's given. But I think that there's some nested infinities in there that deserve some explanation. My feeble brain is not handling this well. Well, that's fine. As I've said, as I say in the epigraph of the book. Book that's not available yet, but I have a copy. Ha ha. Astrophysicist for people in a hurry.

Astrophysics. For people in a hurry. Not astrophysicist for people in a hurry. You come over to their house. Hey, what's up? Here's what they say. It's called astrophysics for people in a hurry. Oh, you got to say it quick.

You got to say it because you're in a hurry. astrophysics for people in a hurry. Oh, you gotta say it quick. You gotta say it because you're in a hurry. So the epigram on that is the universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. That's rational. And I've tweeted that before. And so it makes sense to you

that the universe is under no obligation to make sense. So it's okay if your brain hurts when I say there's a ranking of infinities. But you shouldn't say that doesn't make sense, therefore it is not true. I definitely wouldn't say that. But what confuses me is the word infinity

because I had always taken the word infinity to mean something that has no end. So how can something that has no end be larger than something else that has no end? So the way they do that mathematically, the way to demonstrate that mathematically is you map one item in the set of this infinity to corresponding items in the set of the other infinity.

And so you do this. So you take the one and you map it to the first transcendental number. Take the two to the second. You just keep doing this. And when you do that mathematically, what you find that one infinity outstrips the other infinity. Wow. And then you're left with more numbers.

So that shows you that you have a bigger infinity. Now, when you find, I mean, there's a new NASA announcement that's supposed to, is it Monday that's supposed to be announced? Or tomorrow? Is it tomorrow? The exoplanet announcement. Yeah, it's a Wednesday. Yeah, so it's Wednesday. I don't have a secret.

You don't have juicy details? I'm not authorized to. Okay. If you did have juicy details. Okay,'t have juicy details? I'm not authorized to. If you did have juicy details, is there a time? Let me invent some juicy details that it could be. So NASA, he's been good at segueing lately. I'm just jumping in questions. He's just jumping. I know I only have a short amount of time before you've got to get that

red eye. Yeah, I'm flying back to thanks for fitting this in, Joe. My pleasure. Anytime. I would open this place up at 3 in the morning for you. Oh, man. No, I feel the love. So thank you. So here's some things it could be. Because NASA is saying that it's a stunning new announcement. Well, what could be more than the fact that we already know that there are Earth-like planets orbiting in the Goldilocks zone of the nearest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri.

Can you do better than that for me, NASA? I don't think so. Unless you got some extra stuff you're going to tell us. Like what's been a cottage industry in the last couple of years is the observation of planet atmospheres. As the planet passes in front of the host star light from the host star passes through the atmosphere and it is all and the light signatures altered by the chemistry of the atmosphere so depending what the chemicals are it'll influence the spectrum that you get and when you do that you can say what the chemical composition of the

atmosphere is that's of that star is. There's certain combinations of elements that we would call biomarkers. No, we can't look down to the surface of the planet and look at cities, if there are any. But there are consequences in the atmosphere to there being life on the surface, such as is there oxygen there? I used to think when I was watching Star Trek when I was a kid, because I saw it in real time, that's how old I am, when it first came out, original series, Star Trek characters never wore spacesuits.

Yeah. You ever wonder? I mean, you ever thought about that? Okay. What happens is they visit planets that have nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, Jim. All right. Well, that's what our atmosphere is, nitrogen-oxygen with nitrogen oxygen they go down they don't need a space suit so i've actually thought about that and that's their solution so that must mean there'd be planets that you could find that well here's the thing we have oxygen on earth only because

there is life on earth not any kind of life, photosynthesizing life. We have life that takes sunlight, turns it into chemical energy, into wood, into plants, and one of its byproducts is oxygen. Oxygen is chemically active. If you took away all plants tomorrow, that oxygen would slowly get absorbed chemically into the environment And then you would not have oxygen there to be viewed by aliens trying to see if we have life here And it's pretty surprising to people to note that we're mostly nitrogen in our oh, yeah We're 78 percent nitrogen in our atmosphere toy. You know what happens if you have too much oxygen

If you have like let's say 50% oxygen you're really high, right? No, what happens is like a forest fire would never go out oh yeah because oxygen feeds combustion and so you could basically burn all vegetation in the world if the oxygen went above certain thresholds so you need it high enough so that you can still

have oxygen metabolism but not so high that it's bad for lightning triggered forest fires. So if they see that. So if they're in this, if I don't know the announcement, but I'm just guessing here because it's been a cottage industry the last couple of years. Let's find these biomarkers. Do you have unstable chemistry going on in that atmosphere? Because if you do, it means something's generating it.

in that atmosphere because if you do it means something's generating it and and certain combinations of chemistry Tells you there's likely to be life of some kind now just a couple decades ago We had speculation of other planets, but we really didn't have any tangible proof in fact Anyone anytime I give a public talk you do this at your in your gigs ask who here is born since 1995? Okay, and you you your audience leans young so there'll be some fraction of the audience that'll raise their hand and so what I do is I I night them as generation exoplanet Because 1995 was the first year that an that a planet outside of our own solar system was discovered So they have been alive only during a time

where we've known of other star systems. That's so crazy. Generation exoplanet. That's what I, I want to start that movement. That's so, it's so crazy. That's so recent. I mean. It is.

Oh yeah. I was living out here. Yeah, it's 24 years ago. 22 years ago. Yeah. That's insane. If you stop and think about how, what a short period of time that is.

And in that period of time, we've discovered. There's like rising through 3,000 exoplanets. This is the advance of tech. That's not just science advance. That's engineering and technology and telescope quality and imaging quality. And there's a lot that goes on to the advance of science. It's not just how clever you are in an Einsteinian way. It's do you know good engineers to build a device

to make the measurement this is how we discovered gravity waves now what's your take on that planet that's supposed to be outside the kuiper belt that's oh yeah planet nine so far planet nine so far yeah yeah all the data look convincing so what what they've done is they've looked at other objects in the kuiper belt and looked at, these are colleagues of mine at Caltech. So it's Mike Brown, who, you know, I get blamed for killing Pluto, but I was an accessory for sure, but I definitely didn't kill Pluto. That dude killed Pluto. All right. He found another object that was basically the size of Pluto out there.

So either you make that a planet or you demote Pluto. And how much smaller is Pluto than, say, our moon? Oh, so don't get me started. Our moon has five times the mass of Pluto. Wow. So Pluto was lame from the beginning. We thought it was big. We wanted it to be big.

We made it one of us, one of the nine. And its size didn't settle out until the late 1970s, where we had better and better, more accurate ways to measure its size, and that's when we learned. It's small even compared to our own. But granted, we have a big moon, but if you're not going to think our moon is a planet, you're certainly not going to think that Pluto is a planet.

So this object, let me just tell you how they did it. So they found these other objects out there, the same team, a Constantine, I that gets pronounced his last name but ding yen and Mike Brown but both at Caltech and they found these objects in the outer so the Kuiper belt of icy bodies where of which Pluto is a member you track their motion and you say okay if I add up all the gravity that's affecting them and they should move this way but they don't they move another way a different way.

So either Newton's laws of gravity are failing in the outer solar system, or there's some object out there whose gravity you have yet to reconcile with the motions of these objects. So they said, let's assume Newton is right. What object do we have to put out there, at what distance and at what size, to influence the movement of these Kuiper Belt objects in the way way we see it and did they do this through Bode's law no no we wait Pat we don't know we wait wait thanks for remembering Bode's law but Bode's law was an early measure of where you might find a new planet it was based on mass and gravity no no Bode's law was a simple arithmetic tool all it

did was basically double the distance with a certain additive parameter. Double the distance of known planets? So, for example, and there's a factor in there that helped the inner planets come out right. But let's look at Mars. Mars is like two and a half times Earth's distance from the sun. What comes after Mars? Jupiter. Jupiter is five times Earth's distance. Oh Sun. What comes after Mars? Jupiter. Jupiter is five times Earth's distance.

Oh, I see. Saturn is ten times. So it went from two and a half to five to ten. So, Bode's Law is just a simple arithmetic scheme. It's not based in any known physics. And it was only based on the solar system itself. On the solar system itself. That's right.

So, and it worked, and you have to fudge your way to get Mercury to work in that. Oh, really? And it didn't have Pluto. Of course, Pluto wasn't a planet anyway. But anyhow, it was a fudgy way that was mostly right by accident. And this was in, like, what year was this? Oh, that was 1800s, basically. Oh, wow.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So now we have advanced computer programming, very high precision modeling, and they're saying there's got to be a planet somewhere here in this arc of the sky. Let's look for it because we think that's what's affecting the orbits of these other objects. And that is a completely noble way to discover a planet. That's how Neptune was discovered.

Because everyone looked at the orbit of Uranus and said, you know, Uranus is not following Newton's laws. Maybe Newton's laws don't work that far out. It's never been tested that far. And they said, well, let's assume it works and ask what would have to influence it. And by the way, it's a difficult mathematical calculation because you're not saying here's the object. What's the gravity field? You're saying here's the gravity field I need. Where must the object be and how massive must it be?

That's a much harder mathematical problem to solve. And so once the errant orbit of Uranus was known and calculated, they started looking for another planet. And that's how they discovered planet Neptune. Wow. So now when they're looking at this planet nine... I hope I said that right. The movement of Uranus' orbit was not following proper laws, and

they inferred the presence of Neptune. They said, look here, tomorrow night, and they looked there, and they found it. Wow. Yes, it was a brilliant display. And, no, we're going back to the 19th century, so, I mean, people were badass. Every generation's got their badass scientists.

Now, how much further out from the known solar system is this unknown planet supposed to be? So, I'm not quick to call it Planet 9 because it's 20,000 times farther away from the sun than the Earth is. So, I'm not, sorry, you're not in the family. You're not in the neighborhood. No, you're not in the hood is. So I'm not, sorry, you're not in the family. You're not in the neighborhood. No, you're not in the hood. Sorry, I'm not feeling it. It's like calling Connecticut New York City. I'm not feeling it.

I'm not feeling it. So, but it's something massive, right? It's like six times the mass of the earth? I forgot what mass they were assigning it, but yeah, if that were in our solar system, there'd be no question you would label it as a planet. And it wasn't their one-time speculation that it was some sort of a burnt-out star that existed? No, not at that mass. No?

No, no, no. Too small? No, you might be thinking, if that's what I think you're thinking, you've got good memory. Long ago, in a galaxy far away, so I'm talking about the 1970s, people looked at the extinction record on Earth. And every 20,000 years, they found a little blip a little dip in The fossil record where we lost some species and people were wondering why could there have been some flux of comets raining down? Periodically on the earth wreaking havoc on the ecosystem rendering species extinct in these periodic intervals if there is Maybe there's some double star to the sun.

Right, binary star system. Some binary star system. So they invoke it, and they called it, they came and named it, they called it Nemesis. They gave it a name. And so you know what period, orbital period, that object must have. It's got to match the extinction periodicity.

And so it's got to be a 20,000 year period. And so, but people look for it. They couldn't find it. And then you reanalyze the extinction records. And you had to fudge it to make it look like it was periodic. So basically, we've abandoned the idea of nemesis. And aren't binary star systems really common? Yeah, more than half the stars you see in the night sky

are binary or multiple systems. In fact, the iconic image from Star Wars, the original Star Wars movie, before they numbered them, I think, Star Wars 4. Tatooine, right? Is that where they were? Well, yeah, whatever that desert planet that Luke was on, and he comes

out after visiting his step-parent, no, his adoptive parents, I don't parents, whoever he was visiting. He comes out and you see a double sunset. So that's basically the only accurate science in the entire series. That's it? Star Wars series. That was another thing I really enjoyed is you're taking a part of gravity, the movie

gravity, and how many people got mad at you for that? The movie. Yeah, you know, so I stopped comic-con movies. I don't need to piss people off. When I watch a movie, I'm having those thoughts anyway. So I might as well share them with people if you're interested. So I did just that. And then people, the last time I did it was for Star Wars, The Force Awakens, Star Wars 7.

I had a series of tweets. Star Wars 7. I had a series of tweets. You know, one of them was, BB-8, a smooth, rolling, metal, spherical ball, would have skidded uncontrollably on sand. People got angry. Someone tweeted back,

shut the fuck up, okay? That's so, so I said, okay, I'm not here to get people angry. I'm just here to enlighten, to help people enhance their movie-going experience. But to the extent that it's not accomplishing this, I don't need to do it. I'm just saying. I'm an educator. I thought I was being nice.

I don't need to do this. I haven't tweeted about a movie since then. I got tweets I could post. Don't let them stop you. I have tweets I could post about Arrival. Please do. I didn't watch that. I watched a little bit of it.

I shut it off. Okay. No, you got to give it a chance. As soon as I see a movie that starts out, spoiler alert, starts out with a sick kid, I'm like, fuck you. I know what you're doing. No. In fact, it's very not about the kid.

I'm sure. That's what I keep hearing. It's totally not about the kid. Jamie hated it. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So you just give it a chance. But anyhow, so I just stopped. Maybe I'll come back, but I'm- Do it. Yeah? No. Yeah. Okay. So you just give it a chance. But anyhow, so I just stopped. Maybe I'll come back, but I'm- Do it! Yeah? People need to know. Like gravity. That was good that you explained that not only is this not plausible, those two satellites

aren't anywhere near each other. Oh my gosh. Then they said, oh, there's the International Space Station and I'm on the Chinese space station. Let me just jet pack my way there. Yeah. Do you realize, excuse me, lady, do you, hey lady, do you know how far away these

are from one another? You can just jet around from one space station to another? No, can't do it. They're tens of thousands of miles from one another. For goodness sake. So, but anyhow, so yeah, you remember these tweets. Please keep doing it. It was like 15 tweets and I didn't know. That was when I realized.

Like, the press was reading my movie tweets. And those tweets, now a couple years ago when Gravity came out with Sandra Bullock and, what's the dude's name? George Clooney. So I tweeted it, and they got talked about on the, on the today show set the set, the weekend today show on NBC. Then it was talked about on NBC nightly news. Then my tweets were talked about on Saturday night lives, the weekend update. It was like the NBC trifecta. And I said, my gosh, this was, I had not, that was not the point. I didn't seek this. It's fine.

I'm glad they are reacting this way because that means they care about the science maybe. But what Seth Meyers did, because he was doing Weekend Update at the time, he said, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson harshly criticized the movie Gravity, saying it contains a number of scientific inaccuracies.

For example, there is no way George Clooney would have spent that much time talking to a woman his own age. That's hilarious. I think Sandra Bullock's still younger than George Clooney, though. So they should have got their facts right. Yeah, but not by much. I mean, yeah, they were in the same neighborhood.

Yes, they were in the neighborhood. Yeah, I think it's important. I think that you enjoy the movie. It's great. It's fun and everything like that. But it's important to point out what the science. Yeah. I think it's important. I think that you enjoy the movie. It's great. It's fun and everything like that. But it's important to point out what the science errors are. I think the movie could have done better. Honestly, I think they could have made the same movie with correct science.

People thought I didn't like the movie when all I was doing was pointing out things they got wrong. By the way, they did some stunning things correctly. For example, this is brilliant. By the way, they did some stunning things correctly. For example, this is brilliant. If you're in zero G, a fire basically puts itself out. So think about it. When you burn a candle on Earth, so you light the wick.

Do people have candles anymore? They forgot what a candle is. You light it with a match that you used to get from smoking lounges at bars. All right. So you light the candle candle and it stays lit. The fuel is the wax. The oxygen continually comes in because it heats the air around it and the air rises. Hot air rises and fresh air comes in from below and has fresh oxygen. So the candle will stay lit until it burns all the way down. In space, if you light a candle, you can light the candle. It'll heat the air, but the air will not know where to go.

Because it's not lighter than everything because it's in zero G. It'll stay clustered around the candle. The candle will use up all the oxygen in that bubble, and then it'll put itself out. They did this in the movie. So why do they have some good science? Because you can't think of everything. Why don't they just have you on staff? Bring you in.

What's wrong with my shitty movie? Maybe I couldn't think of anything. So you can't think of everything. So I wasn't judgmental so much as this movie, the fact that it got so much right is what put it on my map to criticize what it got wrong. That makes sense. Does that make sense?

Yes. Okay. Like the hair. It earned the right. Yeah, oh, the hair. Her bangs should have been floating. Floating all over the place, right? Now, if you might think, am I nitpicky?

No, because if you look at any picture of somebody with hair, okay, in space, in zero G, their hair is flying everywhere. It's the first thing you notice about them. It is so obvious. Like, wow, that's the cool. You're not thinking about the spaceship or the Thai technology. You're looking at the hair doing stuff you will never see happen on Earth. Unless someone is like underwater and they're jiggling their head.

So they would have to film it all in zero gravity. They would have to film it all in one of those drop things. Yeah, or the drop thing. They'd have to be clever about it. And she only had bangs. That's all you had to figure out how to. They did other clever things. So anyway, to be clever about it. She only had bangs. That's all you had to figure out. They did other clever things. Anyway, that's all I did.

By the way, in all fairness to movies, I'll call out something that's good, a science that a movie got right, that otherwise got no science right. I'm the first in line to do that. Like what? In the movie Monsters, Inc.? Oh my gosh.

You didn't think I was going there, did you? Those doors were four-dimensional portals to another In the movie Monsters, Inc. Oh my gosh Those doors were four-dimensional portals to another That that's possible. Well, if you had four dimensions, that's what it would look like. Do you remember the movie? Yes They take the doors home. Yes, they open the door and they're in the closet of the kid that they're gonna terrorize. Yes You that's a wormhole. That's what access to the fourth dimension looks like. Do you think scientifically that's possible one day? I hope so. I hope so.

Really? Because here's the example. We've got a nice broad desk we hear at this interview, right? So desk is two dimensions. It's got length and width. And I can start putting papers on this desk. And I can lay them out mosaic style. And then all of a sudden, I have no more room to put a sheet of paper. If I'm an ant living in this surface of the desk, I say, no more room. But wait a minute.

We are three-dimensional people. And I can put an organizer and stack things vertically. So I can take a sheet of paper. And now I can put it higher up than the surface of the desk. The ant will say, where did it go? Oh my gosh, it disappeared in some portal. No, no, what is that? It went into the third dimension

and the ant bound to, ant obviously is a three-dimensional thing. Imagine it only lives in two dimensions. You would have made that paper disappear into a third dimension and it will have no clue where it went because you had a portal, you had access to that extra dimension. So look at how much you can store on a desk when you have access to a third dimension above it. Vastly more than just papers mosaicked out on the surface. So now let's up this example by a dimension.

You're storing boxes in a room. Oh, I ran out of room. No, you didn't. Let's open this four dimensional door. You open it, put the boxes through the door, close the door, box is gone. That'd be awesome for hoarders. You look around the other side of the door,

there's nothing there. Right the other side of the door, there's nothing there. Right. Your side of the door, nothing there. It's just a door. That is a portal to a fourth dimension that can hold vastly more content than what you're stuck storing

in the three-dimensional space of your room. Now that concept- So that's a brilliant concept. And even though it has monsters that don't exist that all speak English, and one of them is a cyclops English and one of them is a Cyclops and one of them is it you know I'm not judging the biophysiology of these creatures, but they got the physics of Four dimensional portals completely accurate now the concept of dimensions is work. It's really abstract with people

I love me some dimensions, and it is abstract it is now That's why you do you take let the math take you into those higher dimensions because our intuition will not will fail for us right well that's where it gets weird or when you say take the math or let the math take you so like when quantum physicists use these legal notepads those yellow pads and write all that crazy stuff down that nobody but you and maybe them understand and when you look at all those equations no it's them maybe me maybe you then you probably understand it right but i definitely don't my point is what are they exactly figuring out that allows them to say there are i think they say at one point time was 11 but i think they've expanded that right what are they saying now i

don't have the latest dimension count on the universe But what the way it works is you you try to make sense of the world right and so you take some leaps So some some philosophical leaps leaps some mathematical leaps you say all right may be all particles that Manifest as an electron a a proton, a neutron, quarks, maybe they're just strings of energy vibrating at different frequencies. And we sense these different frequencies as different particles. Let's just go there for a minute. Well, if you're going to do that, what are the consequences to it?

to do that, what are the consequences to it? And how many dimensions do these vibrating strings require to have the properties that we see in our dimensionality? So the exercise of explaining what you see takes you to places that you've never been before. And that's fine. Intellectual places that have been previously unplumbed. There's nothing wrong with that. We've done that before. That's why we know what is happening in the center of the sun. Have we ever been there? No. No. But we know how matter behaves under pressure and temperature.

We can do that in a laboratory. We've got a sun sitting out there with a surface temperature, a mass, a certain luminosity. And we say, what must be going on down in the core let's bring our best physics a quantum physics our our chemistry our nuclear physics bring it all together and we have a complete understanding of what's going on in the center of the Sun and we're on to other problems now even though we've never visited there so when they're going over this math the mathematics and

like observable things that we have right now or at like the atomic and subatomic level well we don't you can't see do you realize the electron uh just to okay so i buy i made i did a whole series of this uh there's something called the the great courses lecture series it's a oh yeah that was a sponsor of this podcast for a while were they really okay great courses. So, cool. So I was once invited to be one of their professors for the great courses. And I taught a very short, most of them are like 30 lectures. It's like a whole college semester.

So I don't have the time, the energy. So they let me do like short bits. So one of them was only six parts. And it's called The Inexplicable Universe. And it's six parts of everything about which we know nothing in this universe. And you might say, well, that's a pretty easy course to give. Dark matter, having a clue. Okay.

On to the next lecture. It might be something. Dark matter? Yeah, it could be something. We don't know. Stay tuned. But it's interesting to learn how we come to know what we don't know. And so it's an exploration of our ignorance.

And I'm very proud of it because it's not what you'd normally find in a lecture series. And it's still out there. But one of the things I will tell you in it, and I'll tell you now, the electron has no known dimension. The electron has no known dimension. It is smaller than the smallest we have ever had the capacity to measure. So as far as we are concerned, it is infinitely small. Whoa. We have no way to even know how to measure.

By the way, how do you measure something small? You get something smaller and find out how many of those it is. Oh, my head. My stupid head. No, think about the challenges at each extreme. Ask me, how big is the universe? And I'll say, it's as big as, well, I got nothing. What am I going to say, right? There's nothing as big as the universe.

So at the biggest end and at the littlest end, there's not something else. It doesn't work as well. Okay? To try to say what it is relative to something else. Do you entertain the possibility that the biggest end and the littlest end are the same thing? Meaning that at the smallest measurable point, that literally might be a whole other universe? That might be fractal it's fun to think about uh it's i mean all the way down yeah it's fun to think about like infinitely down

like however and people by the way in in the 1920s when we discovered the atom and its structure and that there's an electron in quote orbit around a nucleus it was a way we've been there before we got planets orbiting the sun and so this this so maybe it's a Mini solar system, maybe it's it's solar systems all the way down. Well. I'm glad you brought this up I'm glad we brought this up because I wanted to bring this question that I almost forgot There's a photograph of a brain cell and side by side with a photograph of the known universe and they look eerily similar So you're talking about the large-scale of the universe where there's clumping of galaxies.

So I'll get to that in a minute. Pull that up, Jamie. Okay. So I'll get to that. So do you ever tell him to just pull up his own damn images? Yeah, but I can't put it on the TV. So he has to do it. So here's why that's not likely likely okay? It was an entertained idea, but here's why it's not likely

the Manifestation of the laws of physics are different at the atomic scale Than they are at the macroscopic scale. They're just simply different a planet can take any orbit sensible for its velocity around a host star an electron cannot Its energy levels are predetermined and quantized Hence the word quantum the prefix quanta in quantum physics so if it was a continuum of

matter and energy following the same laws of physics then i would say then it's solar systems all the way down but the rules completely change and so things can on the surface seem similar but when it comes time to understand them and to analyze them and to manipulate them and to exploit their conduct and their behavior for other means as we have done with atoms and molecules for the entire IT revolution you no longer are they the same and you abandon this romanticized concept so now with the neurons the network of neurons and the clusters of galaxies and galaxy superclusters, that would be on the right, neurons on the left. That's so eerie.

Yes. So, yeah, they can look the same, but they're operating under completely different laws of physics. So, in other words, the laws of physics that dictate what's going on in brain cells have no relationship to what's going on in the universe. Brain cells, you're undergoing, we can tell you what forces are operating. It's electromagnetic forces. Brain cells use electrical impulses, chemical impulses. This is why drugs can affect the brain. There's chemistry going on in the brain in its natural state. You disrupt that, enhance it. You just put, you just put down some, some, some chemistry in your stomach that's now affecting your brain. What'd you just drink there?

What was it? Alpha brain. Alpha brain. Okay. Yeah. So you're entering the chemistry. So it's chemistry. What's going on on the large scale structure of the universe is not chemistry.

Right. There's some chemistry deep within, but it's not but the chemistry is not what's making that pattern. And because of that, it becomes an artistic curiosity, not something that has any kind of deep scientific insight. So it's just a fascinating similarity. Yes. It's a fascinating similarity. Put them up together and it's fun to think about it. But it's not.

It's fun to think about it artist it's not it's fun to think about it artistically but not scientifically no yeah it's great if you're hanging out with your friends going wow man it depends how high you are yeah exactly yeah but now when you're looking at subatomic particles excuse me and you're looking at these like when they observe particles in superposition where they're moving and stationary at the same time where they blink in and out of existence like when you get down to that and I repeat the the The opening page of the book the universe is under no obligation to make sense Yeah, so at that scale Things that go on with atoms and molecules fall outside of your life experience.

You don't hang out at the bar with protons, nucleons, or other nucleons or molecules. You just don't. So what they do in their day is completely foreign to you. So now you shrink down to that size and particles are popping in and out of existence. They become conjoined, quantum mechanically conjoined. And it's completely weird. And you would say none of this makes sense. And this is observable in a visual sense? Well, it depends. It depends on how big the phenomenon is.

Otherwise, you can see other things that would happen that are the manifestations of that happening. Right. So an electron is smaller even than that Oh, yes by how many factors no, no, we don't even know we don't know I don't know and so measured the size of an electron the concept of super string theory So a soup of these vibrating strings are smaller than that. Yes The strings would have to be smaller, thinner, smaller than the electron itself. By many, many.

That I couldn't quantify for you. I've got to bring in a string theory person. So it's like at the bottom of what we can observe. Well, that's a great question. What is the bottom? And you know the word atom, which was introduced by the Greeks. You know what atom means in Greek? It has a translation.

You know what it means? No. Indivisible. Ah. You know what Adam means in Greek? It has a translation. You know, it means no indivisible So they imagined that all matter was you'd come down to some thing That was indivisible how the hell and that figure that out. They did figure it out. They supposed it and they were The first they were you know, they're wealthy and had free time and you know when they weren't waging war you could think and You know what we think of as philosophy is traceable to a lot of what they were doing back then.

And the origins of what science is are traceable to back then. You'd have an idea that applies to what the universe does that enables you to predict future behavior. That is science. And so the atom, it turned out, is divisible. It's divisible into subatomic, subatom particles. So you get electrons, protons, neutrons, and a whole host of other particles less familiar. There are neutrinos and other things.

Then it turns out protons and neutrons are further divisible. You get quarks out of those. And as far as we know, there are only four fundamental particles in the universe. The photon, which is light. The electron, of which there's several species. There's the anti-electron and this and that. But just stay simple here. The photon, the electron, the quark, and the neutrino.

That's it. Everything in the universe that we've ever observed is made out of that stuff So those are quote the atoms of the universe the indivisible parts if you will now This is a no by the way dark matter could be made of yet another kind of thing that we don't know yet But we got top people trying to figure out what dark matter is we've measured it out there We just don't know what it is. Well, it's something like 90-something percent of the universe itself. If you add up dark matter and dark energy, it's 95% of all that drives the universe.

And we can measure the existence of both, yet we have no idea what's driving them. This is an awesome opportunity for you to illuminate this often. But it's all in Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. Okay. It's out in May. It comes out in May. You can pre-order it, which, by the way,

publishers love it if you pre-order. It's an adorable book. It's beautiful. It's a good size. It's adorable. You can pre-order it on Amazon?

No, the reason why publishers like you to pre-order it is so that they can accurately, they don't want to overprint, they don't want to

underprint. So they get a sense of the pre-ordering because you're not charged until they ship it. So it's a pretty harmless exercise. While we're on this subject of subatomic particles and weirdness, I wanted to, if you could, illuminate this often misused explanation for the observer effect. Because you know the particles, waves, and you watch them and observe them and it changes the reaction it is heavily misunderstood it's misunderstood because people want to attribute

it to magic the magic of the mind and the consciousness looking at it but isn't it in fact just measuring it yes thank you please explain next question no explain to people because i'm so tired of talking to hippies joe you're good it just drives me nuts carry your people with you. I try. Where are they coming from? When I'm... Where are you pulling... What, what...

Where are you getting your people? I don't know. Well, I don't own them for sure. You don't own them, okay. So they're definitely not my people. They vary greatly. You can't even loop them together. I know.

You have an admirably diverse following and not many people can claim that. And it's probably because of your diverse profile, right? I mean, well, I'm as open-minded as I can be And you read and you're thoughtful and you're also on some level respect you'll hear it somebody out and you're you know You did you got your MMA thing? So no you you're in a lot of places and a lot of spaces and that's a good thing I mean, we need more unity in this world.

Well, thank you. Thank you. So please explain what people are getting wrong. Okay, so it's much simpler than you think. Okay. All right, you ready? Yes. So I'm looking at you.

The only reason why I can see you is because there's light reflecting off of your face, your body, into my eyes. So there's light. Oh, by the way, there's stars. That's beautiful. Yeah, those are Hubble photographs. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, those are images from the Hubble.

I noticed that when I walked in. They're sheets that you put over the fluorescent light cover. Very nice. And so when we look up, we actually see the real images from the Hubble. So you're pretending it's the night sky. Yeah. Well, it doesn't look as cool as it could be. And you're not in a completely cavernous recording studio.

Well, what I want to do in the future studio, I want to actually build a glass ceiling and have a full-scale image, a high-resolution image of the stars. So a planetarium. Yes. You're describing a planetarium. Yeah, exactly. Call it that. It's a planetarium.

Well, something like that. But I just wanted an image. What you could, yeah. No, do better than that. Is there a way to do it? Tell me how to do it. I'll do it. No, do better than that. It's a planetarium. Well, something like that. But I just wanted an image. What you can, yeah. No, do better than that. Is there a way to do it? Tell me how to do it. I'll do it. No, do better than that.

You get a curved version of those very high resolution LED screens. Curved. Yeah. And then you put any image up there you want. Ooh. Okay. Then it's the night sky tonight. It's what the sky looks like from Alpha Centauri.

Oh, so like when you go to see one of those star shows at a planetarium and they show it on the ceiling above you. Well, yes, but nowadays the ceiling itself is the source of light. It's not projected from something else. So then you just feed that with image data and then it becomes whatever you want. Can you hook me up with someone who knows how to do that?

Yeah, I could totally. I'm excited. You don't know people? I got people. I mean people that do planetariums. You need my people? You need my people for something? Well, you know the real people. I thought you had people. You know the people at the top that would teach the people.

So we'll go to that. I'm looking at you. Okay. All right? Yes. And I see you. I want to know where you are. So I turn on the lights and I say, there you are.

All right. Now, let's make you tinier let's make you mini me okay like in the movie right so now there's a tiny version of you a mini me version of Joe Rogan now you're little I turn on the lights you're still there okay okay because if the lights are not on I can't see you I don't know where you are right it's that simple okay okay when you start becoming the size of molecules right on down to the size of an atom and i ask the question where is joe rogan the atom and i turn on the light to see you there, because I think you're there,

the light, the photon comes in, hits your atom, and pops you into another location. The very act of trying to measure your position prevents me from measuring your position, and it has to have jack shit to do with your consciousness, or your mind, or your eyes or? Anything it has to do with the fact that to know you're there some information has to come from you to me

like shining a light on you and the smaller you are the more susceptible you are to the the energy of the light Changing your position in space. So my question is, how do they know? You know what it's like? You ever, I don't know if this has still happened, a quarter spills out of your pants pocket in the backseat of a car and it's there in the wedge between the bottom and the backseat. And so you try to reach in to get it. And the act of reaching for the coin makes the coin move farther away from you

The act of reaching for it right because you separate you separate it and it just slides down even further That's not your mind making that happen It's the it's the act of the measurement that is affecting what it is You're trying to measure and this was discovered in quantum physics and to point where that's actually, it's a Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It's one of the basic foundations of all of quantum physics. And it's profound. It's profound. But when it's described in the woo-woo way, they show these particles going through these slots and then observing them changes the pattern that they go through with.

the pattern that they go through with and there's a there's a horrible cartoon that you see in that Movie what in the bleep I couldn't get through that movie. I tried did you go crazy with the bad science? No, can I tell you where I turn to maybe I? Well, here's what people don't know a lot of that is from a cult the woman that I didn't know the woman who is the I don't mind a cult movie. I don't know she's a channeler She's speaking as a character Like do you know that that one a blonde woman older blonde woman that's in that movie? Okay, and she speaks when she speaks She's speaking as a care. Okay. I didn't know that you have to like she's she's a part of like this very bizarre

Sort of cult okay, and should I tell you where I tuned it out or you want to finish it? very bizarre sort of cult. Okay. Should I tell you where I tuned it out or do you want to finish? Please do. No, go ahead. Okay, so I tried to watch, just couldn't watch it. There's a point where they were talking about natives in the Caribbean seeing European ships. Yes.

And then they said, well, because they'd never seen a ship before, their brain didn't register it as anything and then it just disappeared. Bullshit. And I'm thinking, no, that's not how and then it just disappeared. Bullshit. And I'm thinking, no, that's not how the brain works. Excuse me. That's not how this works. Okay? What would happen?

They might not know what they're looking at, but they'll know they're looking at something. And they've had ships. They went from island to island. That's how you get from island to island. They say, well, that's a really big version of what we're doing. We've never seen anything that big before. I don't know what it is. I don't know where it came from.

But I want to find out. I want to study it. I want to protect myself. Whatever. So just because you've never seen it doesn't mean you're not going to register it. Excuse me? No. Exactly.

No. I said, no. I can't waste my time. I got other things I got to devote my brain energy to instead of this. But someone else said, oh, it gets better later on. So I said, maybe one day. Oh, no, it doesn't. It doesn't? No, it said, oh, it gets better later on. So I said, maybe I'll one day. Oh, no, it doesn't. It doesn't?

No, it does not. It gets more confusing later on, and it does a better job of confusing you as to what science has shown and what they haven't shown. Now, by the way, just in all fairness to what they, I think that the point they were trying to make, there are things that if you don't know to recognize them, they would go undiscovered. Yes. Okay?

But that doesn't mean you wouldn't see them. Okay? So, for example, let's say you're walking and you didn't know that you were walking over this huge burial mound because the slope was really shallow and you're just walking. Okay? Well, you didn't notice that, okay? So you need a different way to see it in order to know. So from space, from an angle, measure the height, whatever.

So there are ways to miss things, and that happens all the time. Right. But if it's something there on the horizon, my gosh, this is why we have eyes. Okay? Now, they're not the best data-taking devices, but if it comes time to tell you whether there's a ship or not a ship that you've never seen before, it's a ship. Of course. Okay?

Of course. I'm sorry to be screaming at you. I mean, there's so much evidence of that when people discover new animals. Yes. New anything. They've never seen things before. Anything. New anything.

My gosh. There's no record of it whatsoever. People find it and they can still see it. Most scientific discoveries, you discover something I've never seen anything before. Anything. Knew anything. There's no record of it whatsoever. People find it and they can still see it. Most scientific discoveries, you discover something we've never seen before. Ramtha. That was the woman's name. That was the person that she was channeling. That's a cool channeling name.

Yeah. If you had to have a channeling name. Ramtha. If I were a channeler, I'd be Ramtho. I found that after the movie was done, after I watched it. They got me with a lot of things. I was like, wow, is that true? Is that real?

And then I started reading. Fortunately, that movie came out in the 2000s instead of in the 90s because if it came out in the 90s, we would all got duped because we wouldn't have the internet. We wouldn't be able to research

all the shit that's wrong with it. But in the 2000s, I started researching it and then I would send it to my friends. Like, look where the fuck this came from. And then you go, oh, that's a cult? Yeah, it's a cult. The lady's a cult.

She's talking like she's an alien. She's supposed to be an alien, right? Isn't that? Do you see it in there anywhere? Again, I don't mind if people think they're channelers. I just don't put them in charge of anything. That's all. Well, it's not that I mind.

It's just that you should probably say that when you get going with that thing in the beginning. Oh, in advance. Yeah, so I know exactly what I'm getting involved with. She's not going to say this is a cult. Nobody's ever said that. She just calls herself rampant. They think it's real and genuine, and they're very sincere because they've duped themselves. Well, that whole thing was just-

So what you need is some foundation of science literacy so that you can inoculate yourself against those who would exploit your absence of knowledge of how the science works for their own gain well not even for their own gain just youtube videos i mean someone could make a very compelling youtube video where they get you convinced that oh my god dinosaurs aren't real right they start playing these things for you they tell they tell you cell phones can pop popcorn in the you ever see that one oh i have seen that one yeah yeah you line up sometimes and then they start popping yeah you gotta like direct that was a fun one that can't really happen no of course no of course not you imagine it could jesus christ we're like what are we doing with these phones but there's there's a ton of those out there where people see that's it's one

of the problems with uh with a lack of dialogue with someone who just has one narrative. Like you sit down, you edit something, and you just talk. It's very similar to like even if you write a blog. I mean it's one thing if you're writing a blog, like say if you're an expert in electronics, you write a blog about how a television works. television works but if you're just a person and you don't really understand what you're talking about but you write something and use the right words and you say it in a very compelling way like an attack piece on someone that really has no basis in reality you can have someone convinced this person's a terrible person just by writing something without them having to respond like hold up stop never did that i tweeted a few weeks ago i tweeted a few weeks ago i'm not gonna botch

it because it's it's way better as the tweet than I will ever remember it as the tweet. So it was one of the great challenges in life is knowing enough to think you're right, but not enough to know you're wrong. Ah, yeah. Well, that is a big problem with a lot of people that watch these YouTube videos. That's what it is. They say, oh, this is right. Oh, my gosh, but they don't know enough to know why it's wrong Well, this is what I want to talk to you about it What is it about people that there's this this this is very compelling need?

To find something out that other people don't know like the world is flat like dinosaurs Aren't real like that kind of stuff is very compelling to people. So what I do in those cases in the, in the, uh, yeah. So what I do is I would say, um, instead of debating them and some of, some of your listeners are listening to this right now, what all I would do is say, what is your best single bit of evidence for what you're claiming. And what would it take to show that you're wrong? All right, well, let's go with a simple one. So that's what I would ask. Okay.

And I've done this exercise and it doesn't work. You know why? Why? Because there was a guy who didn't believe we went to the moon. We spent a third of our time in our last session there. So there's someone I know who doesn't believe we went to the moon we spent a third of our time in our last session yes there so someone i know who doesn't believe we went to the moon let me just say he's skeptical so i said what kind of evidence would convince you he said images of the landing site of the apollo missions so i said okay here's a website where we sent uh in fact it wasn't west it was the chinese i think it was chinese or europeans sent a a probe to an orbiter to the moon so that it was close enough because

ground-based telescopes are not don't they don't have the resolution to see the landing sites but if you get close enough to the moon you can it it photographed the entire surface of the moon and there were the landing sites and you saw the rover tracks and the the the base for the lunar module and so he that night he went home and found it and then he came back and says well nasa could have faked that well i'm done with you we have no more to talk about because he's not ready to be convinced. Well, that's a weird one. Because I gave him the evidence he asked for. Exact evidence. That would convince him, and it did not convince him. That's a singular event.

So I said, I have no other conversation with him. That's a singular event, which you could say in one way or another, like, it is possible that someone could fake a singular event. They can't fake whether or not the world's flat, right? Like, that, to me, is the scariest one. That there's so many people out there that believe the world is flat because you could you could literally see the curvature of the earth from a plane i mean you can get to parts of the you look at the images from the space station where they circle the moon or they circle the earth rather i mean there are there's many many satellite images of the earth in its entirety.

And one of the things that the argument was is how come every photograph of the Earth is a compilation of photographs? Well, because they're all taken from 300 miles up. The Earth is huge. Yeah, hers is way bigger than 300 miles. Yeah, you have to take compilations. You have to. That's the only way to get images of the Earth. Well, except for the Apollo photo.

The Apollo 17 coming back has the Earth. That's the famous one that has Africa and Antarctica in view. It's the only way to get into the Earth. Well, except for the Apollo photo. The Apollo 17 coming back has the Earth. That's the famous one that has Africa and Antarctica in view. It's the full Earth. Very few full Earths. It's very hard to get a full Earth single photo. Of course. And when we went to the moon, the moon missions, when they're coming back, think about it. To get full Earth means the sun is behind the astronauts on the way back to Earth, which means the side of the moon facing Earth is not lit.

But that's the side of the moon they came from. So they want to visit the moon while it's sunlight there. They don't want to need flashlights when they get to the moon. So they visit the moon while there's sunlight. Earth, the view of Earth at that time will not be full. Earth the view of Earth at that time will not be full So Apollo 17 was there long enough So that by the time they left

The moon was basically a new moon Earth was full moon Earth was full earth and then they got a full earth photo those packs that they have on their back that regulate the temperature that Allows them does walk on the surface of the moon when it's 250 degrees Well the side is facing the Sun is right more than 200 degrees and the moon when it's 250 degrees above zero? Well, the side that's facing the sun is more than 200 degrees. And in the shadow, it drops. 250 degrees below, right? Below, yeah, yeah, yeah. So can it switch back and forth between those two environments? No, what you need, no, you just insulate.

The astronaut's insulated. And so when you're insulated, those temperature extremes are not felt. They're minimized. And it's regulated by the pack. Oh, yeah. In some sort of way. So it's life support. The pack goes warm or cool.

It's not only oxygen and, no, it maintains the pack. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so it's like that goes warm. No way oxygen and no it maintains the temperature But it's capable obviously of warming and cooling in the face of what's going on. It maintains the temperature That's how you need to think about it Okay So regardless of what that is cooling one side of you and chilling the others and heating the other side, right? It's maintaining a temperature for you and when you are in space, like say when they're doing a spacewalk on a space station, same thing. Same thing as being on the surface of the moon. Because there's no atmosphere.

On Earth, you are in this cocoon, dare I say, of atmosphere. So all the air in this room is the same temperature. Because the air can communicate a difference in temperature to itself, equilibrating it across the whole room. Right. If you don't have air, then your temperature is measured by where's the energy coming from that's hitting you. And if the sun is hitting you, all that energy will be raising your temperature

and the side of you that's not facing photons, that temperature will drop. So you could survive it if you put yourself on a rotisserie. Figure out the right rotation rate. And even then, you'd have to spin pretty quick in order to balance it all out. I'd have to calculate that. Yeah, you have to figure out what the right rate is. Now, when you get in a debate with a guy like that, I don't debate people.

B.O.B. guy. I don't debate people. Okay, well, when you discuss, educate. Because as the saying goes, when an argument lasts more than five minutes, both sides are wrong. Well well that's a terrible saying it's definitely it's mostly wrong and the other person's stubborn you know it could definitely last for hours yeah that's that's not true at all it's not it's true 80 of the time okay okay yeah um but you got into with that rapper that thinks that here's i'll tell you why bob because in his twitter stream he was

saying he was invoking physics and so i i gotta i gotta deal with this right yeah and so he showed a picture from bear mountain which is a mountain in in slightly upstate new york where manhattan is in the sight line of the summit of this mountain and he says given the summit of this mountain. And he says, given the curvature of the earth and this formula, you should not be able to see Manhattan at all. Okay? It depends on the height that you're viewing from. Well, thank you. Well, so you do the math

and it turns out Manhattan, the island, would not be visible at all. That's true. But any building taller than 15 stories would rise up above the curvature of the earth and you will see it. And if you look at the photo, you see the tall buildings rising above 15 stories. It's exactly what the correct formula shows and not his formula, which was wrong and misinterpreted, claims to show.

Well, it's just bizarre because snipers have been using the literal curve of the earth to plan where bullets go. That's how you plot out. Oh, yeah. You have to when you shoot at a mile. When you're shooting well out over 1,000 yards, those factors- So let me think. A mile, I have to ask, how much curvature of the earth do you get after a mile?

It's an interesting question. Well, you also get drop. You get drop and curvature. That would be gravity drop. Yes. And then curve. Yeah, so both of those. Yeah.

Well, here's a thing to say to someone. If you have a bullet in your hand and you shoot a gun, which bullet drops faster? Right. Generally, they get the wrong answer to that. Yeah, they drop at the exact same rate. They'll hit the ground at the same time. Exact same time. And that blows people's minds. Right. They can't get the wrong answer to that. Yeah. They drop at the exact same rate. They'll hit the ground at the same time. Exact same time. And that blows people's minds.

They can't believe that's fact. But you do that in Physics 101. Yeah. It's a physics demo. So that's why physics is so important. You know, people say, oh, let's take biology and this. Great. But don't leave out the physics, because that's where the fundamental operations of nature

are to be found, of the physical universe are to be found. So what you have is you have a gun at one side. It's like a thing that shoots out a projectile. I don't want to call it a gun. At one side of the stage. And then you have like a little stuffed animal at the other side of the stage held up with an electromagnet at the top of its head. And these two are exactly the same level. and these two are exactly the same level.

As the projectile comes out from this mini cannon, it trips an electric circuit that releases the electromagnet at the top of the stuffed animal. The stuffed animal begins to fall. The bullet moves horizontally but also falls because gravity is pulling them both. And you watch the projectile curve down, you watch the stuffed animal curve down, and it hits the stuffed animal every single time.

The only factor that would change that would be if you put wings on the bullet and it was dealing with the wind. Wings. Right? Yeah, wind would affect it. Yeah. Do they have bullets with wings? I haven't seen that.

No, they don't. No, but if they did, you know, if, like, you shot the bullet and then they figured out, like, clink, and the wings came out. I saw that on some James Bond movie, I thought. Yeah, I'm sure. It's just got to be frustrating for you when these things come back around. There was no flat earth theory when I was in high school. There were other things, though.

Think about it. When you were in high school, there was much more astrology going on. Oh, yeah. President Reagan. Oh, let's talk about that nancy reagan had an astrologer uh so today you don't see much of it unless you talk to steve maxwell well but it's still there it's just not it's not manifesting in public policy some people believe in it deeply i agree but it's not up there in public policy that's what i'm saying okay Okay, well, Nancy Reagan was really the only one that made it public policy. Sure,

but at the bar, do you hear people saying, what's your sign? Is that still a pickup sign? Oh, hell yeah. 100%. Don't know. Let it not be true. Listen, dude, you're married. On Tinder, I've never been married. You're an older man. I'm out of it. You don't understand. If you want to get laid, you've got to talk nonsense to people.

Well, I'm a Scorpio, and if you're a Taurus you gotta talk nonsense Mama Scorpio If you're a Taurus we should just stop I miss that I miss led myself. I thought it was fading Oh, but just but Nancy Reagan was the big proponent. Well. Yeah, it's nonsense astrology now It's not like someone who really understands astrological charts and can plot it and the moons in retrograde and you were born on you know Celsius is rising and all that crazy crap that they tried. I don't know what they're doing. I was on a talk show with an astrologer. A real one?

Apparently, yeah. She's a real one or a fake one, right? How do you know? She says she's real. Okay. And I trust her because she talks about how fake other astrologers are. Oh, she's a hater.

She's a hater. Don't trust her. And she was saying that the Kennedys all died during a lunar eclipse. Oh, scary. And, you know, this is a very checkable statement. She just says this and everyone's listening and believing. It's like, wow, that can't be by accident. Well, I don't know when other Kennedys died,

but I know when Jack Kennedy died. And it was November 22nd, 1963. So I don't need to know if there's an eclipse then. I just need to know what phase the moon is in. Right. Because you can only have a lunar eclipse when the moon is full. So the moon was nowhere near full. It was like two weeks away from full.

Even if there was an eclipse, it didn't happen during an eclipse, is my point. Right. Okay? So... Of course, because it was daylight. Well, no, you can have a lunar eclipse at any time. Oh, man.

You can have solar eclipse at any time, too. It's just not for you. It's dark. It's just not for you. It'd be for the other side of the Earth. Somewhere else in the world. Right, right. Don't be so centric.

Centric. In fact, when there's a lunar eclipse, anyone on the side of the earth that sees the moon will see the lunar eclipse. So by the way, lunar eclipses, you get several per year, by the way, partial eclipses as a minimum. And every couple of years, there's a full lunar eclipses. So these are not rare things to start. They're not rare. Okay. lunar eclipses. So these are not rare things to start. They're not rare, okay? So I said, you know, he was shot when the, I forgot what moon it was, first quarter moon.

And she said, oh, well, this counts if they're anywhere within two weeks on either side of the eclipse. What? That's a month. That's a month! Out of 12, what? So I said, let me just shut up here and let her keep, we were sharing the time, it was Pharrell had a talk show we were both on pharrell's talk show so and he

liked science by the way and he he wore a nasa shirt at the at the at the at the the academy award um group photo so i gotta give him some props for that but so but we're so i just said i'm i'm i have nothing more to say Hence, my argument with her lasted less than five minutes. Now, when they're trying to decide what your personality would be and what you can dictate from your birth date and what time you were born, what are they exactly trying to connect? Connect so I I had a deeper awareness of this recently when I learned that people Take the names of things very seriously Okay, the names mean things to people

Regardless of what the thing actually is okay Okay, okay, so what might we mean by this? So let's like astrophysically, I say we have this thing called dark matter. We don't know what it is. Well, it's got to be some kind of matter. No. No.

It shouldn't be called dark matter. It should be called FRED. All right? With no, it shouldn't lead you to think anything about it because we do not know what it is. We should really call it dark gravity. It is it is gravity that we have measured. We don't know what's causing the gravity to call it dark matter implies you think it's matter. Some people do, but we don't know. So explain to me what what is this based on?

Like when you say dark matter, what is this based on? Like when you say dark matter, what is it based on? I'd like to just call it Fred for now. Okay, let's call it Fred. And I'm saying we don't know what it is. Right. How is Fred measured? We measure the gravity of this stuff. Okay.

It's out there. It's six times the gravity of stuff that's ordinary matter. We don't know where it's coming from. We don't know the source. We don't know the origin. Is it a parallel universe? We don't know. And how are we measuring it?

By its effect on the motions of objects. So a certain strength of gravity will force you to move at a given speed as you near it and as you pull away. And we see this in galaxies, galaxy clusters, binary galaxies. And they measured entire galaxies that are made completely out of this fred at least 80 percent of the force of gravity manifested in these galaxies is fred yes and and that's why why are they calling it dark matter they shouldn't in my opinion they should call dark gravity because that's literally what it is so it's gravity that cannot be measured or gravity that's not gravity completely understood it's not understood correct so it's it's mysterious gravity or it can't be completely measured to measure it but you can't narrow down

what we measure its gravity precisely right okay so you measure it but you can't so my problem the origin because some we don't know what it is right my point is because someone called it dark matter it has swayed everybody into thinking that it is matter of some kind it has constrained people's thoughts about how to think about this problem okay so now the ancients looked up and they saw these stars and they put their culture on the sky. So there's centaurs. There's, you know, there's a centaur archer. So it's Sagittarius. We have Orion the hunter.

We have Taurus. We have sea serpents. We have rivers. We have stuff that mattered to people back then. Okay. We have sea serpents. We have rivers. We have stuff that mattered to people back then. Okay? We have Aquarius. What is it? What's the water bearer?

Oh, the water bearer. That must mean that when the sun is in Aquarius, it's going to rain more on Earth. Why? Because the ancients called it the water bearer. Oh. Okay. And all of a sudden, the name reigns supreme. Because the ancients called it the water bearer. Ah, okay. And all of a sudden, the name reigns supreme. Over the fact that it is a random set of stars, widely separated in space, that don't even look like people holding a pitcher of water.

Of the 88 constellations, about six of them look like what you're told they're supposed to look like. The rest require opium-induced imagination to establish what they are. So they all have names. Then you go to the astrologer's tables and they say, oh, this is the rain sign or this is a dry drought sign. And they take the names of things and those names are what they interpret based on where the moon is, the sun is,

where the planets are and all, whatever the angle configurations there are. And each angle has a certain latitude over which they'll count it as a hit rather than as a miss. And so this gives extraordinary capacity of the astrologer to tell you what's going on in your life. Oh, so it's bullshit. have this real uh fascinating connection with these certain constellations and all of the different things that they thought were attached to these certain constellations you know it's you know it'd be like it'd be like um a geologist going up to the border of colorado trying to understand the shape as a geologist hmm it's it's it's an arbitrary shape colorado is a square on a curved surface it's amazing how much confirmation bias is a square on a curved surface. It's amazing how much confirmation bias is attached to astrology, though. It's not surrounded by a river, by a...

Yeah, that's right. So, Wiki has a great website on cognitive bias. And there's like 20 or so well-known by every person. It should be... There should be a course called Cognitive Bias 101. Forget college. Every high school

should have a course, Cognitive Bias. And the entire course should be about all the ways we fool ourselves. Don't you think that would be very important? And you know what science is?

I've tweeted this too. Science. The only point of the scientific method is to make sure you are not fooled into thinking that something is true that is not, or thinking that something is not true that is. That is the only point. And therefore, the scientific method could be anything you invent. And therefore, the scientific method could be anything you invent. Just take better notes.

Take a chart recorder. Be more awake next time you take the data. Bring a friend to observe it with you. Whatever it takes to minimize the chances that you will misinterpret what you're looking at so that you don't think something is true that is not or think something is not true that is. Do whatever it takes to support that mission statement. That's what the scientific method is, and that's what we do as scientists, and that's why when you bring all of these things that people do, so it's the astrology and the crystal healers and the, quote, therapeutic touch people.

Oh, don't mess with them, dude. That's real. No, that's real. You don't even understand. I'm a healer. I'm an intuitive healer. It goes on and on and on and on. Yeah.

And these are the things that fail in the double blind science. Why do you do double blind? So you don't fool yourself into thinking something is true. That's why you do double blind. And if you don't and you want something to be true, even if you do double blind. And if you don't, and you want something to be true, even if you, even if you're surprised by something that might've been true, that you were against, still you need someone else to check it. And you only get an emergent scientific truth when you have agreement among different people's experiments. And so even if

you get a result that you're happy with, it is not yet a scientific truth until you can confirm it by other people who have no investment in you, who don't care about you. In fact, we're trying to show that you're wrong. This is what made Einstein so great because no one believed his relativity and they kept devising ever more accurate experiments to show he was wrong. And it ended up showing that he was right by ever higher precision. and it ended up showing that he was right by ever higher precision. Do you think that we're doing ourselves a disservice by not teaching people how the mind works,

how confirmation bias works? Shouldn't that be a big part? We're teaching the wrong things in school. I'm working on this. What are you doing? No, no. In a few years, I'm going to have something. Why not? No, because I'm busy.

My kids are in school right now. I'm busy. Excuse me. I can't be. I can't. I understand, but let's discuss it because I can't be. I can't. I understand. But I mean, let's discuss it because I think it took me a long time. The curriculum has to include an entire course on cognitive bias.

Yes. If we are going to emerge as adults no longer susceptible to charlatans. Yes. Okay. Who are either well-meaning and just misguided or who are explicitly exploiting your ignorance. And it's a major factor in our culture, a major factor when it comes to politicians. It's a major factor when it comes to bosses. It's a major factor when it comes to how you choose what you do for a living,

how you choose to live your life. And human interaction with nature itself. Yeah. I mean, we are constantly trying to manipulate and control other people's biases, behaviors, the way they think, the way they act. And we're very vulnerable in some senses because this is not something that's taught to us at an early age. And I think that it takes a long time to figure it out on your own. And I've often thought like, man, why wasn't I explained this when I was young? Yeah. Because was it wasn't thinking about that yeah Well, we're thinking about just giving people facts instead of teaching them how to think in that your head is this vessel into which you pour?

information and nowhere and at no time are we trained how to turn a fact into knowledge knowledge into Wisdom and wisdom into insight. I think that full sequence needs to be in there in the academic system. K through 12, 13 through 16, 13, 14, 15, college. It's got to be in there somewhere. Without it, you're just this vessel of facts.

Even the people we call smart in class, these are people who get A's on everything and they know everything. But do they have the deepest insight? Do they really understand what it is that they're putting back on the test? I don't think all of them do. I think they have good short-term memory, some of them them and they do well on the exams because of that fact So they're good at acquiring data and and maintaining it Acquiring information and then bringing it back on command Not all summer are deep thinkers and I don't want to take that away from them. All I'm saying is

that the curriculum I think needs these other dimensions of Survival really so that's what it is. It's survival in a world needs these other dimensions of survival, really. That's what it is. It's survival in a world. And when a scientist says this is true, you can ask, well, why do you think that's true? Exercise some healthy skepticism. I don't have a problem with that. Say, because of, look at this evidence.

Do you know how to read evidence, by the way? And look at this evidence. Look at this chart. Look at this experiment. And this is why we conclude, overwhelmingly, that this is going to happen in our future. Ah, you pointy-headed scientist. What do you know? By the way, give me my cell phone so I can call my grandmother, okay?

While I use GPS satellites to know when to make a left turn. Right. Right? I'm going to call my astrologist. To tell them these scientists, they got their head up their ass. Right? So, so. Yeah. to tell them these scientists don't know they got their head up their ass right so so yeah well i think also would be really beneficial to teach people how to manage perspective and how to look at you know look at life in in a way that's going to be beneficial to you but we're not really giving

them any tools to manage the mind like philosophy there's some philosophy classes that can help that. Sure, but even philosophy. Not all philosophy, but there's some philosophy of just how to think about decision making and the causes and effects and consequences. There's not enough of that either.

No. Maybe they're relying on that to happen at home, but not all homes are intact. Right. In fact, perhaps most are broken homes or separated homes.

And so i think the school system school needs to be rethought and i'm trying to think that through be a few more years well anytime you talk about alternative schooling people look at you like you're some sort of a hippie freak who wants your kids to eat granola right live in the mountains and get their own spring water you know i mean that's that's what they think of when you say alternative schooling right i'll train them at home oh man good luck it they think of when you say alternative schooling. Right, right. I'll train them at home. Oh, man.

Good luck. As soon as you say homeschooling, oh, you're a religious nut. I mean, that's immediately the perception. That's the fastest growing sector of the homeschooling sector. They don't want you clouding your head with all that evolution talk. Right, right, right. Do you ever talk to that Ken Ham guy? Have you ever sat down with that guy?

No, but Bill Nye has. I mean, Bill Nye debated him. I mean, I can't debate people. It's not what I do. You just can't do it. I just can't do it. It's not what I do. I'm an educator, and I want to educate you so you can think for yourself.

Then I go away. That's it. To debate someone implies that whoever is most convincing is correct. Right. That's not how knowledge works. Right. It's just too much charisma involved. Yeah, yeah.

It's not how knowledge. Whatever charisma level I have or not have, I don't want to hinge what is true on that fact. Right. All right? So I'm an educator. I will teach you the causes and effects of knowing what science is and how and why it works. Which is why it's critical that you continue to criticize science fiction movies It's very important. Don't you back off now?

We need you there's a lot of people that wouldn't know that that Chinese space station is no one near the American space station And that her hair would be moving all over the place. That would be everywhere. Yeah Oh, my favorite one is remember when he's at the end of a tether And she's drawn to save him, but she doesn't have enough oxygen to do it. So he lets go of the tether, and that way she can't save him before she can save herself. Right. And then he flies away. It's like, no.

They're like floating in space. Yeah. He lets go of the tether. It just stays there in his hand. Yeah. He would be right there. He would be right there. Nothing.

He lets go. Nothing happened. It wouldn't be like a bungee cord now if he if she were swinging him in circles and he let go yeah he'd fly off at a tangent but that's not what was happening right and nor were they rotating i would check the what they were relative to earth below that was not what was going on so and you know what she could have just given a slight tug and then he would have drifted towards her that That could have even been a little romantic. Just a little baby tug. Yeah. That's it? Yeah, baby tug would do it.

They would slowly drift towards one another. Oh, no, I hate that movie. And then the helmets would hit, you know, and then they were- That movie makes me mad. Oh, and then the helmets would break, and then they would be freezing to death instantly, right? When you just freeze- You'd suffocate first.

Oh, that too. And then freeze to death, right? What movie nailed that? There was one movie where they were off in space, and they overdid it? Well, there was- People where they were off in space and they overdid it uh well there was uh people want you to like explode in space yeah no no i mean well they want you to freeze solid too instantly yeah right no just no there's and even in was it armageddon where the sun rose over this over the over the comet and he didn't have his visor down. And he was blinded by the sun. It's like the same sun in our daytime sky. The atmosphere doesn't protect you in any way?

The Earth's atmosphere takes out, you know, a few percent. That's it? Oh, yeah. Oh, God. A few percent. Well, in the middle of broad daylight at the top of the sky. So you'd just be squinty. It's a few percent.

Now, he'll get more UV. He'll get more UV. That's important. Get a little more brown. Yeah, but death in space is nowhere near as spectacular as movies would have you think. Yeah, they make it seem like if you take that helmet off, you just immediately freeze up. Yeah, yeah. No, no.

I mean, you can go into very... What happens is there's nothing making you cold other than you radiating heat from your skin. Oh. So you only get as cold as quickly as you can radiate away heat. That's all. So it would take quite a while. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. You just have no air. So you'd suffocate quicker. Yeah, you'd suffocate. Oh, yeah. You'd suffocate long before you saw anything like that happen. So just think about it. There's nothing touching you that's making you cold.

It has to wait for you to radiate away. That's what's happening, okay? And so, yeah, you'll feel very cold very quickly, but you're not going to die from that fast. Now, when Stephen Hawking's... Oh, by the way, you also have dissolved gases in your body, which will try to come- Because in the vacuum of space, you don't have the air pressure tamping down the dissolved gases.

So you take away the air pressure, then the dissolved gases will begin to bubble out of your blood. And it's the same problem when you have the bends. Oh. When you come up from low altitude- Right. And you go to lesser pressure around you. You get nitrogen poisoning. Yeah, you get nitrogen.

So you want to do that slowly so that it's a very slow thing. But the hazards of... Why would you be butt naked in space? I mean, you're going to have a space suit on. Well, you just want to prove to everybody that you can do it. So like, jackass. Well, they did it in 2001 in Space Odyssey. They basically did it right.

The guy without his helmet went through the airlock and just held his breath. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's all he did. Oh, well that that's way more reasonable Well, cuz it was a reasonable movie. There was a reason It had real advisors Stanley Kubrick. Well, he was a really interesting guy too because he was a mathematician Stanley I didn't know that about it, but I knew he cared about yeah that level of detail He's to do complex math and for fun. So there's a there's a there's a failed bit of physics in 2001 you want to go. Yeah. Yeah one day I'll talk about monkey suits not so The monolith which was it no no so remember when he's he's on one of the The moon crafts and he's orbiting the moon and they give him food all right, and there's a tray of nasty food obviously

It's like astronaut food remember. This is 1968 so everything here is a is a visual Taste of the future so he has another packet where he extends a straw From that plastic packet okay? Oh there. He is excellent. You're getting the good photo. You're good your boy is good right here Okay, yeah, there is so he sucks up the straw Right and this is in zero G so stuff is floating right he sucked up the straw Then he goes to another straw and the liquid in the straw goes back down. Ah That's gravity. Oh, they fucked up. Yeah, oh

He totally fucked no No, so that one obviously he can't get everything right. But it's fun to notice the things he couldn't get right or didn't think to get right. So to me, it's a celebration. Here's another one. Okay. The rotation rate of the space station. I calculated that. And I calculated what g-force would you have on the outer perimeter of the space station in 2001.

force would you have on the outer perimeter of the space station in 2001 and i did the math and i forgot the exact number something like between two and three g's oh and i said why would you do that that's stupid you wouldn't do that and i realized if they rotated it at the rate that would give you one g it would be way too slow to make an interesting scene so i I gave it to him. I said, I'll give you three Gs. Because the Strauss waltz as the thing turns and the space shuttle that's approaching it matches its rotation rate with the opening in the center of the space station. This whole ballet, this entire ballet. Wow, that's cool again. Happens at a stately but real pace.

Okay. But that pace gives him a stately but real pace. Okay? But that pace gives him a 3 Gs of gravity. So it's 3 X the correct pace. The correct pace would be much slower. It's 3 times. It might have been 2 1⁄2, but I forgot the number. But it's multiples too high. So that is possible?

But it looks good. So I let him do it. It looks good. Fine. I get it. That's artistic license. That's Mark Twainian license where he says, first get your facts straight,

then distort them at your leisure. That is what I'm holding artists to. So now when you're looking at a space station, like they're in zero gravity when they're in the space station. No, they are in 1G on the edge of the space station. On the edge? Yeah, on the turning edge. Yeah, that's the whole point.

You mean that thing? I mean a real space station. If the edge? Yeah, on the turning edge. Yeah, that's the whole point. You mean that thing? I mean a real space station. If the thing, oh, our space station? Oh, oh, oh. Oh, so it's zero G, yes. Right. But it is possible. It's zero G because it is in free fall towards Earth.

So it's constantly in free fall, but it's just going around the- Yeah, it's in free fall towards Earth, but it's going sideways so fast that the amount that it has fallen equals precisely the curvature of the Earth. Uh-huh. Is that more proof that the Earth is round? Yeah.

Is it? If you've had physics 101, yes. But is it possible to generate gravity in a space station? Only if you rotate it. Only if you rotate it. It's not gravity. It's a simulated gravity. But according to Einstein, they're indistinguishable from one another.

So you can do it. So it is possible to do something where you can send people into deep space and generate gravity through some sort of rotation? At least two ways. One of them, you just rotate it. And all the good sci-fi movies have rotating sections of a space station. Right. Right.

And there's some they have rotating opposite ways so that they can spin up against one another right and uh so there's some clever ideas out there with space stations of the future uh for long voyages because i had commander hatfield on the podcast cool came back from space and was talking about the excruciating difficulty he had readjusting to gravity after being in a zero-gravity environment for so long. He's just showing off because he's, like, setting records for being in a zero-gravity environment. Wasn't he, like, six months, I believe?

Yeah, it was a long time. He was showing, yeah, I couldn't handle life with you lowly Earth people. He was talking about his body. Like, it took, like, over a year before his bone density came back and well this is it partly addressed in the film the uh the the martian kid he's born on mars comes to earth which one's that born on mars yeah the kid born on mars get your guy to research this like now what's the name of the movie it's recent yeah yeah yeah oh there's the space between us oh what the hell's that?

You got to get out more, dude. I do. Yeah. But that's beside the point. So this is a Martian colony where the first community- What movie is this? This came out a couple months ago. Really? Oh my gosh.

Oh yeah. Oh man, I'm so behind. Is this out on iTunes yet? So that's the Martian colony. All right. And one of the female astronauts they send, that one there, happens to be, they learn, is pregnant. Uh-oh. And they can't bring her back.

And so she gives birth on Mars. Oh, jeez. And the first person who is ever born on Mars. And then they keep it a secret. And then he comes back as a teenager that falls in love. See, there's the fetus. Teenager that falls in love. See, there's the fetus.

So, anyhow, he has a hard time on Earth because his heart developed in Martian gravity, which is only 38% Earth gravity. Oh, wow. And then on Earth, he just couldn't. They had to, you know, figure out what to do with him. Wow. Yeah, that's on Mars. The kid was born on Mars. Okay.

Yeah. Don't spoiler alert me, Jamie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shut that off. That's why. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what were we talking about? Generating gravity in your stellar travel. Yeah, so one way is to rotate it up.

Another way is if you're headed somewhere. Right. Like Mars. You just have a huge fuel tank and just always run your rockets. Oh, so you always have G-force. There's always a G-force. Oh, interesting. So if you accelerate at 1G towards a destination, then you'll always feel Earth gravity, and

you'll get there awesomely fast. But you would have to have so much fuel or rely on something new. Well, you need filling stations en route, this sort of thing. And if you do this, you accelerate 1G halfway there, then you turn the spaceship around, then you decelerate at 1G for the other half of the trip, so that when you get there, you're not whizzing past it in a flyby. Okay? That way you have 1G the whole trip.

That's how you would do that. Wow. So the momentum, when you would precisely hit halfway there. If you accelerate it at 1G, oh my gosh, you hit near the speed of light very quickly. Whoa. Oh my, I mean, I forgot, What is it? I have to calculate it. But it's the acceleration of Earth's gravity. If you actually move that fast, that's head snapping.

Now, would they have to have some sort of a crazy propulsion system in order to do something along those lines? How fast will 1G get you there? One year. Yeah. So, yes. So, 1G get you there? One year. Yes. So 1G would take one year. One year plus the distance in light years. Proxima and Centauri, 4.2 light years, for example, would take 5.2 years.

So the distance in light years plus a year. Wow, that's crazy. So in 1G. So that gets you basically 20, 25% the speed of light. But what happens if you just run into stuff on the way? Like there's a lot of stuff out there, right? I mean, isn't that a giant issue in getting to Mars? Well, space is actually quite empty, but if you do hit something, that's the end of everything.

So it's a low-risk, high-consequence thing that you got to put in play. Now, how much of a risk is the space junk that we've left in the environment? Oh, don't get me started. We were freaking out the other day about how many pieces are up there. There's countless thousands of bits of space junk. Yeah. From chips of paint that fell off of space. To bolts.

To bolts and nails and- Retro rocket boosters. Yeah, it's all up there. And I'm wondering whether we haven't been visited by aliens yet because they saw the space junk orbiting Earth and said, forget that. I'm going to visit some other planet. I'm going to risk my life. Crazy short-sighted approach to space travel.

So if you bring up the NASA Orbital Debris Office website, you can actually see the debris that NASA's tracking. Basic, almost in real time. It's crazy how much there is. And it's like a beehive around the Earth. So you got it? Yeah, there it is. Okay. That's the debris around the Earth that NASA tracks.

And that's a failed Japanese experiment to try to... And that outer ring that you see, that's the altitude of geosynchronous satellites. And that inner... There should be a video of that. Yeah, go to the bottom right. Go to the bottom right, right there. Click on that. Play that video.

It's not a video. Why isn't that a video? I'm sure there is a video somewhere. Yeah, there's a video on that site. So you can just see the movement of these pieces, and so launch windows have to know when to not hit stuff. So when you have launch windows, it's not just is everything aligned right. It's will you successfully get past the debris.

And there was a Japanese, they had an experiment to try to capture it with nets. It was a recent mission. Didn't work. It with nets is a recent mission. Yeah, so didn't work. Yeah, so The problem is the low orbit stuff will eventually fall in and burn up the higher orbit stuff will never go away There's nothing to destroy it and so they can't capture that stuff Well, you need a very clever the system the stuff is moving 18,000 miles an hour So what's your net? What are you doing? That's so crazy.

Oh, yeah. There you go. There's the video. Oh, my God. Go higher res on that. All right. I know there's a higher res. Oh, God.

That's 1080? No, it's not. It's not from NASA's YouTube panel. It's from somebody else. Oh, okay. Somebody else. But that's the kind. So all of that's debris that you're looking at there.

So anyway, yeah. So your concern for debris is well placed. And we may be putting so much debris in space that we will close ourselves off from space travel because of the dangers it would take to get through our own garbage heap. That's so crazy. And this was all started in the 1940s 1950s Like when did they start shooting stuff up there Oh no 1950s Sputnik

Yeah 1957 That was the first satellite right First anything in orbit And that's a short amount of time Yeah That's crazy Yeah it's like a dumpster. 60 years. Planetary dumpster. They ruined the whole thing. Ruined the whole thing. They had it for billions

of years. 60 years. They filled it up with junk. Yep. That's just. Okay, there it is. Yeah. Oh my God. That's terrifying. See that? Yeah. That's going around the earth. Oh my God. All of that. Oh my God. And has anybody ever hit anything while trying to do something? Oh, my God. And has anybody ever hit anything while trying to do something? Well, so what exacerbates it is remember when China, when was this, 2004, 2003? China destroyed one of its own satellites. Yeah, what was that about?

In upper orbit. I remember some of that. Yeah, yeah. And they basically did a kinetic kill on a satellite. So a kinetic kill, for those who don't know, is you don't need explosives if the speed of the projectile and its kinetic energy is higher than the energy that would be in the explosive shell itself. Oh. So it's a fascinating calculation to make. So here it is. So I have this delivery system with a warhead.

And I put some bomb device in the warhead. And you can calculate how much energy that is. Then I send it and it hits and it blows something up. But suppose I send this thing really, really fast. Really, really, really fast. I can calculate how much kinetic energy this thing has. There will be a point where I give it so much kinetic energy, the kinetic energy is greater than the chemical energy

of the conventional explosive that I put in the warhead. Oh, like Shoemaker-Levy. Well, for example. Yeah. No, no, I give you a terrestrial example. Okay. It's what we call a high-speed collision. This is more than you bargained for in our time together, but I'm going to tell you.

No, it isn't. Okay, you ready? Perfect. The argument for the longest time that the craters on the moon were calderas from volcanoes and not asteroid impacts, the geologists argue strenuously, these can't be asteroid impacts. They've got to be calderas, these thousand craters on the moon.

Why? Because every one is a perfect circle. And if asteroids are coming from space, they would come from all angles. And if you come in at a shallow angle, you get an oval. And even shallower, it'd be more oval. So you'd have a whole range of circles and ovals and ellipses. You don't see that.

They must be calderas. It was not until- Explain a caldera. It's a volcano that explodes and it leads a crater. Volcanic crater. Like Yellowstone. Yeah, yeah. It's a volcanic crater.

That's all. And it's a little more poetic a caldera you know but it's a it's a crater left by a volcano that has exploded like the boom was so big the mountain's gone and now it's just a big hole or at the top of the mountain there's a crater at the top of the mountain like crater lake that's uh that's a round hole in the top of a mountain. Was that once a volcano? I don't know, but it's a hole. Okay. So in the 1970s, we were able to do calculations with high-speed computers, with good computers. And what we found was if the object is moving faster, if the kinetic energy of the object is higher than the energy that's holding the thing together, ooh, okay? So what's holding together a rock?

The chemical connections of the silicon and the oxygen and everything, the iron, everything that's making the rock that's holding it together. You can calculate how much energy is holding it together. And if it's going 45,000 miles, write that right down that number. Now I send in the asteroid with a kinetic energy higher than the energy that's holding it together on impact. It explodes because all that energy goes back into the rock because the thing isn't

moving anymore where did the kinetic energy go it digs a crater number one by virtue of putting all that energy back into the stone and that explodes it so on impact even at an angle it is a singular point explosion and that's why every single crater is a perfect circle. We call that a high speed impact where the speed is greater. The energy of the speed is greater than the energy that's holding it together. Now you have experience in this. Okay. Have you ever thrown us do this next? Oh, we're in California. Sorry. Snowballs. Snowballs? Snowballs.

Take a snowball. Go to Big Bear. They have snowballs up there. And face a barn wall and throw the snowball at it. And it'll make a little circular mark on it. Now change your angle to the wall and throw the snowball again. It'll still make a small round mark. And it'll keep doing it.

You know why? Because the speed with which you threw the snowball, that energy is greater than the energy that's holding the snowball together. Because hardly energy, hardly any energy is holding the snowball together. It's just loosely packed snow.

So when you do it against the wall, you see the snowball completely disappear in a mini snowball explosion, if you will. So this works for any comparison of projectile speed and what we call the binding energy of the object itself. This is why the intercontinental ballistic missiles never carried conventional warheads. never carried conventional warheads because their speed coming out of space, because they leave the atmosphere, go from one continent to the other, and then they fall out of the sky.

That speed gives them more kinetic energy than any conventional warhead would have had. Whoa. But then we figured out how to make small nuclear warheads, the nukes. Now you're talking energy. The kinetic energy of the ICBM is not higher than the nuclear warhead that we now put in. That's why all ICBMs are nukes. Wow. The V2 rocket basically didn't need an explosive warhead in its tip. It came out of the sky going five miles per second.

There was none of this. That implies you're hearing the thing. It's coming in supersonically. You're sitting there at a cocktail table on a block, and then the block is obliterated in the next instant. You didn't even know to look up. Wow. So that's... And they added an explosive anyway,

but they probably didn't need to. Now, to go back to Shoemaker-Levy, that was a comet that slammed into Jupiter. Now Jupiter's a gas giant. Yes. I've always been confused as to what that means. Oh, most of its mass is in the form of gas. Most of its mass. Oh yeah, 90 something percent.

So when Shoemaker-Levy slammed into Jupiter and made an explosion. It was going so fast, the gaseous atmosphere was like hitting a brick wall. Whoa. That's how fast it was moving. So that's why the explosion was bigger than Earth. Exactly. Exactly. So all of its kinetic energy that it had got put back into the object itself because it

slowed down very quickly relative to its speed. I mean, relative to the... So here's this comet. I forgot how big Shoemaker-Levy was. So now it goes into the atmosphere and you say, oh, isn't it just clouds? Watch how fast it's going. You can ask the question, over how much distance will it plow through its own mass worth of gas? That's the question, right?

Right. It has to plow that much mass out of the way. That's an important resistive force, right? Yeah. So how much atmosphere? That's a lot of atmosphere because it's gas, and this thing is solid. However, the thing is going, what, 15, 20 miles per second? It's falling into Jupiter at 20 miles, whatever the speed was?

If you go at 20 miles per second, you will cover that much atmosphere in a fraction of a second. So in a fraction of a second, you go from 20 miles per second to zero. Or to a tiny fraction of that speed, all that energy has to go somewhere. It goes back into the system. It's a comet made of ice. Ice is not held together very easily. The whole thing explodes on impact. That was another terrifying statistic that I read about the impact that hit the Yucatan and killed the dinosaurs, that how deep it had gone into the earth's surface within the first second.

Oh, yeah. These are numbers that are staggering once you calculate what they are. And like I said, if you come in fast enough, Earth's atmosphere might as well be a brick wall to you. And by the way, you go 60 miles an hour down the road, roll down the window, just stick your hand out the window. You have to use muscle energy to not have your hand blown backwards against 60 miles an hour of air against your open palm. Just try that next time. See what kind of energy that requires. And that's 60 miles an hour.

Now imagine five miles per second, 10 miles per second, 20 miles per second. You're toast. How deep did the asteroid that hit and killed the dinosaurs, how deep did that thing go in the first second? What was that? That was a 150-mile diameter crater, something like that. I forgot the exact numbers. So there's a relationship between the depth of a crater

and the diameter and the mass of the thing. No, it goes miles down. I mean, it's... Miles. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, let me think. And Earth rang for like a million years.

What happens is... Let me take that back. I don't know if it's miles. It's... I think it was when I had read. I don't remember the exact statistic. Excuse me. No, no, it's got to go miles down

because the thing is miles... The asteroid itself was the size of Mount Everest. the exact statistic. Excuse me, no, no, it's got to go miles down because the thing is miles, the asteroid itself was the size of Mount Everest, so the asteroid itself is like five miles across. So it's deep. No, you just don't mess with this. By the way, the crater in Arizona

called Meteor Crater for obvious reasons, that can sink a 60-story building and that's not even a mile across and now we're talking about a crater more than 100 miles across that took out the dinosaurs. That famous one in Arizona could sink a

60-story building? If you put dirt up to the rim of that crater, you can bury a 60-story building. Wasn't that an instance where, this is your whole calculation about explosions and about the amount of energy, they were looking for the raw materials that caused that crater. Correct. crater correct thought that they could mine it correct

They first thought is volcanic and the geologist thought it was volcanic again and the but one geologist in particular Eugene Shoemaker who was in line to be on one of the lunar missions, and then he had like a heart murmur and then they sent Jack Schmidt to in his stead who's also geologist turned u.s senator from arizona where was he senator from i forgot uh but uh can you look at jack schmidt where he was senator from forgive me for forget it because i knew i'm friends with him, so I should have known that. NASA. Jack Schmidt. S-C-H-M-I-T-T. There's no D in it. Mexico? Yeah, so I was right.

It's in New Mexico. Oh, I said Arizona, so New Mexico. But anyhow, he's saying, no, this is an impact crater. And well, if it's an impact crater, where is the meteorite? It must be buried down here. And so there were miners. There were iron miners who bought the land so they can get this huge meteor that they were sure was just sitting down there that they could mine for its natural resource. They could not find the meteor.

That's because it hit at high speed velocity. It was a high velocity impact, which means its collision energy was greater than the binding energy even of the iron atoms itself. And 90% of that thing vaporized on impact. Wow. Oh, my brain just went like this.

There it is. There it is. Wow. That looks more impressive even than I remember it. Okay, there are pieces. That's a nice low angle shot so you get the shadows of the rim. That's in Arizona. Where in Arizona? It's near Winslow, Arizona.

Where would that be near? Is that like if someone wanted to fly in to see that? Here it is. If you go to the Grand Canyon, then you drive to this and it's a couple hours, a few hours. Okay? There's Meteor Crater. I might have to go.

The map is coming up. And where's the Grand Canyon? There's Meteor Crater and Grand Canyon, which is also in Arizona. Flagstaff. Grand Canyon National Park. You can drive that. See that? Grand Canyon to Meteor Crater.

Through Flagstaff. Yeah. So you're not going to fly that. You just drive it. It has Ystaff yeah so you're not gonna fly that you just drive it and it has Yelp reviews look at that look at that when you get highlighted it's got five stars you can't Yelp review a crater look at it come on now look why doesn't it have all the stars look

I know it should have every goddamn star ever only 3.9 people are so picky it's not that big a deal man I could dig a hole better myself oh by the way so this hole was this Meteor Crater was dug in like It's not that big a deal, man. I could dig a hole better myself. Oh, by the way, so this hole was, this meteor crater was dug in like, you know, a few seconds. This crater was made. Yeah.

Just. And how many years ago was that? 50,000 years ago. That's nothing. Approximately. Nothing. Wow. There's probably some form of human living here then.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Early humans. Maybe. I don't know if they were in North America yet. They say 40,000 is the most recent, right? Yeah, it depends

on when they cross the Bering Strait. Yeah. That's when they would have just arrived. They would have said, oh, that's cool, I'm going back.

Have you gone to that? Oh yeah, multiple times. Oh yeah. Is it freaky? What's freaky about it is you walk up to it, you can't see it because the rim of the crater,

it just looks like a ridge, a ridge line. Ah. The rim is raised above the plane of the area, right? Because when you press down, it raises it up a bit. So you just walk up to it and then you come up to the ledge and then it's like. And you realize what it is. This is nearly a mile diameter hole in the ground. Oh, my God.

Oh, yeah. It's a stunning encounter with the forces of nature. And the fact that there's so many of those particles just floating around out there. Oh, yeah. That was nothing. That was nothing. How big was that one, you think? Oh, yeah.

How big was that one, you think? Oh, yeah. That was about 20 yards across, something like that. Oh, my God. That's nothing. That's nothing. That's it? 20 yards?

Yeah, between 20 and 40 yards. 20 yards is the size of this building. Oh, yeah. That's right. From that garage to that front door is exactly 19 yards. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That 19 yards. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's crazy.

Right. And that's the kind of thing that can get close enough that you don't even see, and then it's too late. And those things do speak in. That's not going to make us extinct, but it'll make a very bad day for a city. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, a city's done, and most likely the power grid's jacked for a long time, too.

Right. Now- What time is that? Is my plane left yet? grid's jacked for a long time, too. Right. Now, I wanted to— What time is that? Is my plane left yet? Ten till. No, you have ten more minutes. Okay. I had to get the Stephen Hawking's quote out for you.

Stephen Hawking was talking about the possibility of alien life discovering us, and that it would be a terrible, terrible thing if it did happen. If you look at what has happened to other primitive life forms when we discovered them, primitive cultures when we've discovered them. Do you share that same opinion? That if something did find us? I don't have a strong opinion on that question, but I have an analysis of his comment. Okay. He is worried about the possibility of aliens enslaving us.

Oh. Based on the reality that we've done that to ourselves. Yes. Just think about that. His fear of aliens derives not from actual knowledge of aliens, but from an actual knowledge of ourselves. Anytime a more advanced civilization has come upon a less technologically advanced civilization, it did not bode well for the less advanced civilization.

And that happened in North America, South America, North America with Europeans, South America, the Spanish, Australia with the Brits, never boded well for the less technologically advanced civilization. His factual knowledge of that leads him to suspect that aliens would be exactly the same. And I'm not that skeptical. I'm not that skeptical. I don't think all life forms in the universe have the basal, primal, violent attitudes that we do as a species. I've not been given reason to think so. But don't you believe that things advance because of competition and competition forces things to be fairly ruthless it has been argued that if you colonize if you're a civilization that colonizes the galaxy that it's a self-limiting exercise why because here you go you ready we start here on earth it's you and me boy all right and you take that plan i take this planet and And now we both have offspring that are just like us.

And we want more planets. We reach a point where expansion is not possible because we are warring with ourselves to gain the territory that each other has obtained. obtained. So it has been argued sociologically that the very act of wanting to colonize is self-limiting against successful colonization of the galaxy. Because to colonize the galaxy, it has to be done in an organized way. You take this sector, I take this sector. But if I want territory and I want it now, and my kids want it now, I want that territory, not this other one. In fact, I want it all. That kind of attitude breeds violence. It breeds war, intra-galactic war.

So it may be that the very kind of civilization that could peacefully colonize a galaxy is not the kind of civilization that would colonize the galaxy at all. Oof. That's heavy. Very heavy. What about the idea that any advanced- That's my first comment about Stephen Hawking. Okay.

I got another one? He made another comment about we should be a multi-planet species. What the hell does that mean? To protect ourselves against an asteroid rendering one- Okay. It's extinct. It makes a good headline and it sounds like it makes sense, but I'm not there. What the hell does that mean? To protect ourselves against an asteroid rendering one extinct. It makes a good headline and it sounds like it makes sense, but I'm not there with it.

Yeah, of course I want to... Back up. Of course. Let's be a multi-planet species. Fine. But I would do it for different reasons. I would do it because it's cool. Not because I want to protect human species from extinction. No, that wouldn't be the reason to do it.

Can I tell you why? Please. List every reason why you think we go extinct. One, we trash Earth. And we can't live off of it anymore. An asteroid is coming. There's some nanobot gone astray. Okay?

Pandemic. Virus pandemic. Okay. So, it seems to me that if we want to be a multi-planet species, Mars would be the one. Because it's a 24-hour day. It's got seasons. We would have to terraform it first, but then we'd all move there. We'd just ship a billion people there.

Here's my point. Whatever it takes to terraform Mars and ship a billion people there, it's got to be easier to deflect the asteroid. Whatever it takes to terraform Mars to turn it into Earth. If you had the power of geoengineering to do that, then you have the power of geoengineering to turn Earth back into Earth. But there are occasionally things that we miss right because of the way that so so you so you say okay whatever it takes to

geoengineer mars and ship a billion people there it's got to be easier to create a perfect viral serum that makes us immune to all possible disease. That's got to be easier. Whatever that takes. But isn't it possible that there's some asteroids that we just will not see until it's too late? Then you put up, whatever that takes. That's what I'm saying. I mean, whatever.

But they're talking about being able- Terraform Mars and ship a billion people there. A billion. Why? Of course. Why wouldn't it be? We have seven. What Terraform Mars and ship a billion people there. A billion. Why? Of course. Why wouldn't it be? What, are you going to put 10 people there? That's not good. You want to split your species.

Right. Okay? And if an asteroid is coming that you can't deflect, which would surprise me if you could ship a billion people to Mars, you just let them all die? Is that what you plan to- you're going to let all the Earth people die and the Mars people survive just so you can save this people? Don't save everybody. I'm not buying into the premise, this cable car-ology premise, that you have to save one to not save the other.

You know cable car-ology. I see what you're saying. The cable car, you know, someone's in the tracks. You let them go. You let them go. You steer it out of the way, but then you actively kill two people instead of passively killing one person. What do you do?

I'm not buying into that premise for this question. I'm simply saying that whatever it takes, it's got to be easier to put up some kind of net that finds any asteroid that could possibly harm us and zaps them out of the sky. That's got to be easier. This is the last question. Is it possible that the reason why we are never visited by extraterrestrials is because the way civilizations advance? It's because of the space debris.

One. Two. But is it because the way civilizations- They have visited. They visited during Comic-Con. Nobody noticed. Okay? They don't like cosplay.

Three. We're out of here. Their costumes weren't as good as ours. Okay. Three like cosplay. Three. We're out of here. Their costumes weren't as good as ours. Okay. Three. Three. Three. They've observed us and judged. There's no sign of intelligent life on Earth. Okay, but is there

another possibility that civilizations don't ever get to travel like that? Because what happens is, as they advance, and as their technology advances, they become instead of a biological entity seeking to spread its genetics throughout the universe they become some sort of symbiotic artificial life that as they create as they advance their technology and as they continue to innovate they reach a limitation in biology and then eventually create artificial life that sees no desire whatsoever to travel.

Oh, interesting. So I would say that's a great philosophical question. I would say that the day we create AI, if the AI is everything we are except more. And not emotional. Then it would have an urge to explore. Maybe. And not emotional. And not foolish. Then it would have an urge to explore. Maybe. Otherwise, then it's not us.

But wouldn't it create those doors like in Monsters, Inc. and start going dimension to dimension instead of fucking around with jets and 1G? With chemical jets? Yeah. Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah, they figure out the fourth dimension. Yeah, wouldn't that be the best way to do things?

And then they figure it out. And then they would figure out a way to travel better than any way we could. But if the fact that we want to travel and we're creating versions of ourselves called AI I Don't know why I wouldn't want to travel but why would it be curious if AI if it is us It's not biological it then it's not well if we create every neurosynaptic map of our brain into silicon, into a computer,

and we create our consciousness as humans, the human brain, the human brain is curious. But wouldn't that be just one version of AI? Sure. Wouldn't there be like an infinite version of AI that AI could create itself? It could. And why would it limit itself to all of our emotions and sexual desires and jealousy? And all the ridiculous things that are holding us back it could Sure sure now. I'm not as fearsome of AI as others are I

You know when we're not gonna make an AI looking human being because the human form is not the best or ideal form for anything Did you see Ex Machina? Yes, I did. Did you love it? Did you love it? It was good. It was good. You didn't love it?

Good moments. You didn't love it? No, it was good. I loved it. I want to marry it. You want to marry it. Oh, okay. Well, that's the first thing you use.

It's the sex bot. No, it's not even that. That's where the money will be for sure. For sure. Yeah, for sure. But I'm just saying it's one of my favorite movies. I want to marry the movie. It's just an awesome movie.

So then marriage would no longer be about sex or just be about reproduction because you just go to your room with your sex bot. I'm hoping that that's one of the first things that people figure out they shouldn't do anymore once they get smart enough to symbiotically attach themselves to artificial intelligence. I was watching, what was it, Family Feud? One of the questions was, if you're... We asked 100 married women. I was watching, what was it, Family Feud? One of the questions was, if you're... We asked 100 married women,

if you could have a second husband for only one purpose, what would it be? Something like 70% of them said, just for sex. Whoa. Damn. A second husband for only one purpose. Just for getting stuffed. That's rough. Just a sec.

That's a fucking wake-up call for a lot of dudes out there. A lot of guys. Let's end on that. Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysics for people in a hurry. In a hurry. Due out in May. Thank you so much, sir. You're a gentleman and a scholar.

Love you, man. I love you too, brother. Thank you so much for coming here. And thank you anytime. Open invitation. Call me up. Middle of the night. Middle of the night. Come down here. We'll open it up. And you got to wake him up. He'll do it. for coming here. And thank you anytime. Open invitation. Call me up. Middle of the night. Come down here. We'll open it up. And you gotta wake him up. He'll do it.

He's down. He loves you too. Alright. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.