Cosmic Queries – Black Hole Information Paradox

Summary

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StarTalk Radio: Cosmic Queries – Black Hole Information Paradox

Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Co-host: Chuck Nice
Airdate: January 27, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this lively episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson teams up with comedian Chuck Nice for a “Cosmic Queries” session focused on black holes, the information paradox, and related astrophysical oddities. Listener questions ignite deep dives into black hole physics, entropy, time travel, villains and superheroes, cosmic hypothetical scenarios, and more. The duo blend science and pop culture with trademark humor, providing both clear explanations and plenty of laughs.

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Main Topics and Key Insights

Black Hole Information Paradox Explained

[03:34–07:07]

• Listener Brian (Portugal) asks about the black hole information paradox.
• Chuck Nice and Neil deGrasse Tyson explain:
  • Classical view: Information falling into a black hole is lost to the universe, conflicting with quantum mechanics, which insists information must be conserved.
  • Hawking Radiation: Particle-antiparticle pairs form near the event horizon; one falls in, one escapes.
  • Recent theories suggest the particles escaping (Hawking radiation) encode the information about what fell in.
  • Key insight: “If you inventory the particles that are created out of the gravitational field, it is exactly the particles that the black hole ate...the preservation of information.” — Chuck Nice [06:00]
  • The evaporation of black holes slowly returns this information to the universe, apparently resolving the paradox.

What Is “Information” in Astrophysics?

[32:03–34:06]

• Listener Colin (Berkshires, MA): Wants clarity on what “information” means here.
• Neil: It’s not just the types of particles, but how they’re put together (structure and entropy count).
• Chuck: “A molecule would have more information than a particle would.” [32:44]
• The conversation acknowledges the complexity, referencing entropy and the role of the Sun in introducing energy and lowering entropy on Earth.
• Neil: “We’re not a closed system. There’s introduction of energy…from the Sun.” [33:25]
• Deeper details are deferred to physicist Jana Levin for future follow-up.

Time Travel Logistics (Back to the Future Deep-Dive)

[22:00–31:33]

• Listener William Heisenberg (“Wilhelm”): Wonders about the time mechanics in "Back to the Future" (BTTF)—shouldn’t spatial position be considered too?
• Neil: Points out that BTTF handles this cinematically by always moving in whole years, so the Earth is in the same position in its orbit. But more precise time jumps (e.g., 30 days) would strand you in space — “…any actual time travel machine ideally should also be a space travel machine.” [25:02]
• Chuck Nice details the “Twin Pines Mall/Lone Pine Mall” Easter egg as a nod to actual changes caused by time travel in the film.
• Quote: “You can’t out Back to the Future Neil on this one.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson [31:28]

The “Moon’s Moon” Hypothetical

[07:09–11:47]

• Listener SP (Arizona): Asks if the Moon could capture an asteroid to become a “moon of the moon.”
• Neil: Explains it’s nearly impossible; capturing requires a third body to take away energy. The Moon won’t acquire a moon this way.
• Chuck: “It is almost impossible to capture an object without consequences to another object.” [10:10]
• Fun speculation about what it would look like, but ultimately not plausible.

Superhero & Villain Identities

[11:55–19:35]

• Listener Kevotron: Asks what kind of villain/superhero Neil and Chuck would be in a comic.
• Chuck: Protector of the nerds, inspired by “Mighty Mouse” (“Here I come to save the day!” [16:01])
• Neil: Wants to be “Dr. Manhattan” from Watchmen (can be everywhere at once, omniscient, “He can go anywhere in the universe he wants.” [17:53])
• Chat about how fiction and “faction” (Neil’s word for nonfiction) shape perception.

Black Holes, Multiverses, and Wormholes

[43:41–44:57]

• Listener Remy (France): Asks if wormholes could bridge between universes, or escape black holes.
• Chuck: “Everything I know about wormholes tells me they can get you anywhere... In principle, you should be able to [travel between universes].” [44:10]
• Caution about different physics in each universe — your coin (or you) might disintegrate on the other side.
• Reference to "Rick and Morty" and its portal gun.

Universe Inside a Black Hole?

[42:16–43:38]

• Listener Tom (Sweden): Hypothetical; if the universe is inside a black hole, would everything converge instead of expand? Would we see spaghettification?
• Neil & Chuck: Spaghettification only occurs near the singularity; if our universe’s black hole is as large as the universe itself, spaghettification isn’t an issue for us.

How to Survive a Black Hole Collision with Earth

[45:17–46:28]

• Listener Kristoff (Belgium): If a black hole were heading toward our solar system, what could be done?
• Chuck: “In my day, what you would say is, kiss your ass goodbye.” [45:43]
• Only option: Attach enough rockets to Earth and move the planet—evacuation on a colossal scale.
• “You’re not. You can’t touch the black hole. You can’t nudge it out of the way.” [46:04]

Accretion Disks and Asteroids

[46:40–50:36]

• Listener Jeff (UK): Why does a black hole’s accretion disk expand when an object falls in?
• Neil: Accretion disc is the “holding pattern,” heats up as new material adds energy, expands as a result.
• Chuck: The bright, hot accretion disk is what we observe, not the black hole itself—jets emerge “up and down” from heated material failing to escape through the disk.
• Neil: “When you see light from a black hole, you’re not seeing any light from inside... you’re seeing the accretion disk.” [49:32–50:21]

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Notable Quotes

• “Somehow knowledge of what the black hole ate...is communicated to the gravitational field.” [06:00]
  — Chuck Nice, on information preservation in Hawking radiation

• “Any actual time travel machine ideally should also be a space travel machine.” [25:02]
  — Neil deGrasse Tyson

• “Protector of the nerds. That’s cool. I’d be Dr. Manhattan.” [17:51]
  — Chuck Nice and Neil deGrasse Tyson, on superheroes

• “You can’t out Back to the Future Neil on this one.” [31:28]
  — Neil deGrasse Tyson, after an exhaustive BTTF Easter egg explanation

• “You’re not. You can’t touch the black hole. You can’t nudge it out of the way.” [46:04]
  — Chuck Nice, summarizing humanity’s inability to stave off a black hole

• “When you see light from a black hole, you’re not seeing any light from inside...you’re seeing the accretion disk.” [49:32]
  — Neil deGrasse Tyson

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Memorable Moments & Humorous Asides

• Mighty Mouse and Dr. Manhattan: Chuck’s heartfelt nod to nerdy kids (“save the geeks who are being pummeled by the football quarterbacks” [16:10]) and Neil’s wanting “to be everywhere at once.”
• Back to the Future Super-Geekery: Neil’s detailed explanation of the “Twin Pines Mall” and subsequent continuity changes in the film — a flex for detail-oriented fandom.
• Clothes Shrinking in the Dryer: The age-old mysteries (Wool shrinking, sock disappearance, refrigerator light!) spark comedic riffs. [37:55–41:59]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Time | Segment / Topic | |-----------|-----------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:34 | Black Hole Information Paradox Explained | | 07:09 | Moon’s Moon Hypothetical | | 11:55 | Superhero vs. Villain Dialogues | | 22:00 | Time Travel & Back to the Future Logic | | 32:03 | What Does “Information” Mean in Physics? | | 37:55 | Do Clothes Shrink in the Dryer? (And Other Mysteries) | | 42:16 | Could the Universe Be Inside a Black Hole? | | 43:41 | Wormholes, Black Holes, and the Multiverse | | 45:17 | Stopping a Black Hole Headed for Earth | | 46:40 | Accretion Disks and “Feeding” Black Holes | | 50:40 | Closing and Book Plug: “Just Visiting this Planet” |

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Further Reading & Follow-up

• Referenced Experts:

  • Prof. Jana Levin (Black Hole Theorist)
  • Prof. Brian Greene (“The Elegant Universe”)

• Recommended Viewing/Reading:

  • "Back to the Future" film series (Continuity details abound)
  • “The Black Hole Blues” by Jana Levin
  • “The Elegant Universe” by Brian Greene
  • “Watchmen” (Graphic novel and film)

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Summary by [YOUR PODCAST SUMMARIZER] – Bringing astrophysics down to Earth, one cosmic query at a time.

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Transcript

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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[Chuck Nice]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive, where drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average. Plus auto customers qualify for an average of 7 discounts. Quote [e-mail] to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates national average 12 month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. Chucks about time. We finally have a cosmic queries with.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

A theme, a proper cosmic queries like.

[Chuck Nice]

In the old days.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

This one is black hole leaning.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, black hole leaning.

[Chuck Nice]

Leaning.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, you can't.

[Chuck Nice]

But you don't want to lean up against. Bad analogy there. All right, coming up, cosmic queries, mostly black holes additional. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. And we're gonna do cosmic queries today. Cosmic Queries with Chuck Knight.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Chucky, baby, what's up? All right.

[Chuck Nice]

How's it feeling?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Feeling great.

[Chuck Nice]

Have you been practicing how to read people's names? Because you got a little better.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And as far as I am concerned, if I mispronounce your name, you are now officially in the StarTalk family.

[Chuck Nice]

Because you mispronounce them with affection.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's right. Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

So I'm told. This time is not entirely a grab bag. It leans towards which subject?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Black holes.

[Chuck Nice]

Black holes. Everybody's favorite subject.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Everybody loves black holes.

[Chuck Nice]

Everybody. Nobody doesn't love a black hole.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's all right.

[Chuck Nice]

So just go right in.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Let's rock and roll here. We're going to start off with Brian Berg. And Brian says, hey, Dr. Tyson Lord. Nice, Chuck. You should be able to nail this one. Brian from Portugal. You know what, Brian? So then he says, hey, can you help explain the information paradox with black holes? My understanding is that quantum mechanics and Hawking radiation are at odds about this. One says information is forever and the other says information Disappears. When a black hole evaporates. Are we any closer to understanding how this can be? Thanks for keeping on doing what you're doing.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, thank you. So I can answer this to the best of my ability, but I think that that's really a Jana question.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Jana Levin Greene and Brian Greene.

[Chuck Nice]

Especially Jana, because she must.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

She's the black hole expert.

[Chuck Nice]

She's totally into this with the black hole blues. The black hole blues. She got a whole book.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's her book.

[Chuck Nice]

No, no. The black hole blues.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Black hole blues.

[Chuck Nice]

She so badly wants to be able to say it that way. The black hole blues. So here is my understanding of that situation. Okay. All right. You have a black hole. You go in and you never come out.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

So if something contains information at all and it goes into the black hole, did that information leave your universe? That's a question. Because once you're inside the black hole, it's no longer part of your universe. You've crossed over an event horizon. So that was a question, and I think it was even a bet that involved Kip Thorne and Stephen Hawking. Okay. Okay. There's a history of bets with fun sort of frontier questions on new science that's being developed and discovered.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And what do you win? The universe.

[Chuck Nice]

I thought that was a dinner at a fancy restaurant.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Bottled wine. It's actually a real bet thing.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. Something in reach of, you know, your firstborn or anything like that. Or your house. Right. That's a bet. So information theory is very important. And there's sort of a latter emergent understanding of how we also need to think about the world. It's not just an interplay of forces and matter, motion and energy. There's information contained within it. And entropy is a measure of the disorder of information. Correct. Okay, so we have this energy field outside of the event horizon that belongs to the black hole.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

The black hole is responsible for that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Particle antiparticle pairs get created.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Gotcha.

[Chuck Nice]

And they fly in opposite directions. If the angle is right, one of them will just fall back in and.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The other one will escape. And the other one goes out.

[Chuck Nice]

Goes out.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. If you inventory the particles that are created out of the gravitational field, it is exactly the particles that the black hole ate. Oh, so somehow. Somehow knowledge of what the black hole ate that was living inside the event horizon is communicated to the gravitational field.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

And it's pulling it out of what was inside the event horizon and then releasing it into the universe.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And therein lies the evaporation.

[Chuck Nice]

That is the evaporation of the black hole. But the preservation of information.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But the preservation of information.

[Chuck Nice]

The preservation of the information.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's wild.

[Chuck Nice]

Completely wild.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

While I love it.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh my gosh, that's crazy good. Yeah. Now there may be nuances to that that I'm not getting or I haven't, but. But that, that's the basic thing that's going on there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

And so that resolved the information paradox.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. So the information is not lost. The information is somehow known, preserved and then demonstrated or expressed in the gravitational field.

[Chuck Nice]

In the gravitational field. And as the black hole gets smaller and smaller because the evaporation is slow. Slow evaporation is slow, but it happens. There's a point where the black hole disappears altogether and so it has returned to the universe whence it came.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow, man, there it is. That's the kind of stuff that's. Tell you man, that's good stuff.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, all right, what else you got?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, this is sp. SP says greetings my lord and my doctor Shay from Arizona here. All right, I love start and this is my very first question.

[Chuck Nice]

Excellent.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm welcome. I wonder about it.

[Chuck Nice]

Welcome, welcome to Star talks. Very good.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

SP says I wonder about asteroid 2024 yr 4 and what might happen in 2032 as it makes its approach to our planet. The odds of it impacting the Earth are almost nothing. But it has about a 4% chance of impacting our moon. My question is what are the OD of it being captured by our moon instead? According to the paper, can moons have moons by somebody? Raymond and Raymond Columier and Raymond. Our moon is large enough to host a moon of its own. And my curiosity has peaked. Can you also talk about the effects of what we might experience if our moon has another moon?

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, cool. So a couple things.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Good question.

[Chuck Nice]

So we are getting better and better. We have better and better data on asteroids that put Earth at risk.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

And these are called Near Earth asteroids or near earth objects. NEOs which would include comets. NEAs would be a near earth asteroid. NEO's anybody who's gonna near Earth object. All right. And just for context, if I had Earth here as a schoolroom globe and I asked how far away is the moon? If you're thinking about how it's drawn in textbooks, the moon is like somewhere over here. A few feet away.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, it's right there.

[Chuck Nice]

Right there. It's not. It's actually not. It's 30ft away.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

If you were doing it 30ft away.

[Chuck Nice]

There'S a lot of empty space there between the Moon. And that's why it takes eight minutes to get to Earth orbit. But people say, are you going into space? It takes eight minutes to get to Earth orbit. It takes three days to get to the moon.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow, that is a lot of empty space.

[Chuck Nice]

That's a lot of empty space. All right, so it is of interest if an asteroid or comet comes between us and the moon. It's what's called CIS lunar space. So that's the area of the moon's orbit around the Earth. If it comes in there, that feels a little tight. But it's not as tight as you'd think because you're remembering the textbook picture of the moon sitting right off our elbow. Oh, my gosh. You're gonna thread that. That's dangerous. But no, it's 30ft away.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's like a field gold post. That's the size of the stadium itself.

[Chuck Nice]

I don'.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

If I can make it.

[Chuck Nice]

That's an exact analogy here. So when we think of danger and close approaches, anything closer than the moon will get reported that way in the press. All right. This one has a chance of hitting the moon. That'd be fun to watch. But consider the moon has been hit before.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

True.

[Chuck Nice]

Have you looked at its face?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, so it wouldn't be.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I wouldn't have a pizza face for nothing.

[Chuck Nice]

It wouldn't be the first time the moon got slammed by an asteroid out there. Just keep that in mind. Second, it is almost impossible to capture an object without consequences to another object.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

The Earth and the moon. If there was a third object in the system and that other object came in from outside, moving very fast, something has to slow it down. So it's gonna need a close approach with some other object, like a third object where it exchanges gravitational energy so that the asteroid slows down while the other one speeds up and then the other one escapes the system and then it stays with us. So it needs a third body to carry away that extra energy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I see.

[Chuck Nice]

That's not gonna happen. So the moon will not capture a moon. Not by that mechanism, no. Now, what would it be kind of cool to see the moon at night and then a moon going around a moon. They would each have exactly the same phase, which was kind of cool. If you have a half moon, you have a half other thing that's up there because they're both in the same angle between you and the sun. Right. So, yeah, so it works. So that'd be kind of fun. That's all. But yeah, don't expect it to ever.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Get Fun to think about, but not going to happen.

[Chuck Nice]

Capture Orbit is a special case, okay? Not impossible, but.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But very, very, very special.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Got you. So this is Kevotron, and Kevotron says, hey, Dr. Tyson Lord. Nice. I'm Kevin from Charlotte, North Carolina.

[Chuck Nice]

Nice. I was just there in Charlotte.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, cool. He says, fiction has always been my preferred type of literature throughout my life, from long novels to short comic books. I love the imagination authors put into their characters and stories to see what your imag. My question for both of you is, if both were in a superhero comic book, what type of villain do you think each of you would be?

[Chuck Nice]

Why can't he have a hero if.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You can't see yourself as a villain? Gosh.

[Chuck Nice]

So let me preface that by saying I want what I do, which is I write nonfiction. I don't want what I write to be referenced as the negative of something else.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You want every assertion to be positive.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You want every assertion to be positive.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes. So I invented the word I think what I write and others who are in the nonfiction world. If you write fiction, we write faction.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's actually a better word.

[Chuck Nice]

A way better word.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. Except it also means a splintering of a group.

[Chuck Nice]

But many words have more than one meaning.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So true.

[Chuck Nice]

So that wouldn't be the first time that happens. Okay, so. So, Chuck, would you be a villain or a superhero?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, that's a rough one, man. Because the villains are often far more cool. Really? Oh.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And the reason they do that is because if it makes the superheroes the underdog, and you always want to root for the underdog.

[Chuck Nice]

There's something about him where you feel for them.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Like you look at the Transformers. The Autobots are cars. Big deal. Whereas the Decepticons are. They're jet planes. Okay, well, the Decepticons are far more cool than the Autobots. Okay? But the Autobots always win, you know?

[Chuck Nice]

But I never wanted to be Lex Luthor, okay?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, no.

[Chuck Nice]

I wanted his money, but that's it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I gotta say, I wouldn't mind being Lex Luthor, because Lex Luthor is nothing more than Batman gone wrong.

[Chuck Nice]

What?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Think about it. Batman is a billionaire who creates all these toys so that he can fight crime and uphold justice. Lex Luthor is a billionaire who is also a psychopath. So he creates toys to try and kill Superman. Okay, but if he were good, he would be an awesome. He would be an awesome, like, tandem hero with Superman.

[Chuck Nice]

Allow me to quote the Joker in Batman.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Go ahead.

[Chuck Nice]

You complete me.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Or I complete you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, he says, yeah, you complete me.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, yeah. Talking directly to Batman.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. Without you, I'm nothing.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So, you know the yin and yang I like.

[Chuck Nice]

There's another saying which is said in geopolitics, you're only as great as the greatness of your enemy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ooh, that's a great. I mean, that's a really profound statement.

[Chuck Nice]

So there was Saddam Hussein trying to hide in the desert. Then he says, I got the entire US military after me.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I am no longer a badass. I went from badass to dumbass.

[Chuck Nice]

No, no, what I'm saying is, while he's alive to say that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

That's quite a boast.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, it is.

[Chuck Nice]

Right, Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But back to the club. But the fact is that he was. He was the biggest, baddest dude in the Middle east until Uncle Red, White and Blue showed up.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So who would you be?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Would you.

[Chuck Nice]

I'd be a superhero. I'd be Mighty Mouse. Mighty Mouse.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Don't laugh.

[Chuck Nice]

I'm confessing my inner.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

By the way, everybody loves Mighty Mouse, but why Mighty Mouse?

[Chuck Nice]

Just because I like that he sings when he goes to save people. Here I come to save the day.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And that's how you know he's showing up on the scene.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. You can hear him echoing through the corridors.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Give me your money Here I come.

[Chuck Nice]

To save the day.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, man.

[Chuck Nice]

And then there's another key. He sings it in.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

So somehow I was enchanted by that as a kid.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Mighty Mouse.

[Chuck Nice]

Mighty Mouse. He had a big old chest. Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He was more chest than he was anything else.

[Chuck Nice]

He was all chest. He was all chest. But my mission wouldn't to be to save the damsel or whatever he. Okay. My mission would be to save the geeks who are being pummeled by the football quarterbacks. Because in my day, that's what happened.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Any geek being bullied, you would show up.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly. And back in my day, we hadn't figured out that you could report bullies to the principal.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, that's because they were a fundamental.

[Chuck Nice]

Part of your life.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. And you were forced to deal with them. Because what happens is, you go to an adult and you say, this guy's bullying me. And they say, yeah, because you're. You're a snitch. Look at you.

[Chuck Nice]

You know, my father said. He said, anybody bullied you, punch him in the face.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And that's what everybody.

[Chuck Nice]

Not only is that. My grandmother told me that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, okay? That was the trouble.

[Chuck Nice]

And they will never bully you, so.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They'Ll never bully you again. I Said, yeah, but they are going to beat my ass. Right then. You know, you do have to take one ass whooping if you're going to stand up to a bully. Okay. That's the thing. They will never mess with you again. But that one time, the. You did that.

[Chuck Nice]

In my day, nerds had very low stock value. In society today, it's the richest people in the world.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

And I was around just before the transition where the quarterback and the athletes, they needed the nerd to help them with their computer homework.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

So you can't. There's a limit to how much you can on a nerd.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Also, you're probably going to work for them one day.

[Chuck Nice]

That wasn't.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. That wasn't quite fully established.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

And also, you might want to cheat off of them one day in class.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, that's always been the case.

[Chuck Nice]

That's always been the case. So I would be protector of the nerds.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's cool. I'd be Dr. Manhattan.

[Rich Gannon]

Oh.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because he can go anywhere in the universe he wants.

[Chuck Nice]

Anywhere, Anytime, Anywhere.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And also be in several places at the same time.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So that's kind of really cool. Plus, he knew.

[Chuck Nice]

He knew all make me feel bad for just want to be Mighty Mouse.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, listen, it's fun to think about.

[Chuck Nice]

There's a Dr. Manhattan from the Watchmen.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Series. Yeah, yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The movie got me.

[Chuck Nice]

I mean, always Watchman was the. The graphic novel.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Correct.

[Chuck Nice]

Then there was the movie.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Then there was the series.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. And I was gonna say I always liked him in the graphic novels, but it wasn't until the movie that I wanted to be Dr. Manhattan because he was in his lab working and in the bedroom and having a threesome with his wife. With himself. Which is awesome. Man was still working on his science and getting it in with his wife, Adams, himself.

[Chuck Nice]

In a threesome.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

In the threesome. Okay. You can't beat that.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, that's weird.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, here we go.

[Chuck Nice]

That's a little weird.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

And, and, and, and add to this though, to understand the severity of what I had to come save, there'd be a little signal for me. What would it be? It would be digits of PI in the sky.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, that's cool, man.

[Chuck Nice]

So the more digits, the more serious.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The more serious the case.

[Chuck Nice]

Increase the urgency.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow, that's so funny. It was just three 52 decimal places.

[Chuck Nice]

That's atomic wedge. I have to go interrupt there. If it's one decimal place, it's just someone trash talking you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, Right. That's great.

[Chuck Nice]

So that's what it would be.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's funny.

[Chuck Nice]

Thank you for that question.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. Now streaming on Paramount an all new series Star Trek Starfleet Academy. Set in a San Francisco of the future. A bold new class of cadets from across the galaxy begin their journey as strive to discover who they are and their place among the stars. Starring Academy Award winner Holly Hunter as Captain Nala Ake and Emmy award winner Paul Giamatti as villain Noose Braca. There's never been a better time to enroll in Star Trek Starfleet Academy. New series now streaming on Paramount/T mobile 5G home Internet has some big news you should know about. They now have the fastest 5G home Internet according to the experts at Ookla Speed Test. Alright, so let's unpack that. It means photo backups happen faster. Streaming a documentary does install halfway through. What's really notable is that the jump in speed doesn't come with added complexity. Setup is simple. Plug it in and you're online in less than 15 minutes. And the value side of the equation holds too with a plan price that's backed by a five year price guarantee. So if you want the fastest 5G home Internet with a simple setup and savings that stick, get t mobile 5G home Internet. And if you don't want that, wait a minute, why wouldn't you want that? Just visit t mobile.com homeinternet to check availability today. Price guarantee exclusions like taxes and fees apply. Fastest based on OOKLA Speed test intelligence data second half 2025 all rights reserved.

[Commercial Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by peloton. The new cross training series balances your workouts with 15 workout types for endless movements on and off your equipment. Stay motivated with weekly personalized plans that guide you from beginner to expert. And push past your goals with routines tailored to you. Get the new cross training series. Terms apply.

[Rich Gannon]

I'm Joel Cherico and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Is William Heisenberg III. He says, Greetings Dr. Tyson and Lord. Nice.

[Chuck Nice]

My name is Heisenberg.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He says, I'm William Heisenberg.

[Chuck Nice]

Heisenberg. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, the third. And then he phonetically Vilheim. Vilhelm Heisenberg. So Heisenberg, he says. So I got it right. Will Willem. I didn't say Wilhelm though, okay? Cuz I'm not that pretentious. And you're in America now. It's Bill, okay? All right, buddy, here we go. He says in Back to the Future you had to hit 88mph to activate time travel. I was thinking about that. First, you have to set the date to 1955. Who's to say that the actual cosmic time reference is. For all we know, time could interpret that as 1955 years from the big, fat big bang. Now, that would be an uncomfortable arrival. Second, they never programmed a location. So you probably appear in open space. And without anything to slow you down from 88 miles per hour, would you be stuck endlessly slipping through time, unable to decelerate below the activation speed? What do you think? Whoa. So here's what I think.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Here's what I think. You need a second job. You just spent too much time thinking about this.

[Chuck Nice]

You need.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm going to say ship building is what you need. In a bottle. Sips in a bottle. This is too much thought. I'm joking. What an interesting thing, though.

[Chuck Nice]

So a couple of things.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Couple things.

[Chuck Nice]

We can unpack that one bit at a time.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

All right. The time machine panel, okay. Which you program, that knows that it's 1955 on the Gregorian calendar.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. You see it on the display?

[Chuck Nice]

It's on the display. Right. And I don't remember if it said AD but it's completely implicit in how the whole thing was conceived.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, okay.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, all right. So that's the first point. So there's no risk of going back to 1955. A B, B. After bag. Right. You're not gonna get it after Big Bang.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

All right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Of course, AD The A doesn't stand for after.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What's it stand for?

[Chuck Nice]

It says for year. It stands for what year in Latin.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Anno.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Anno.

[Chuck Nice]

It's anno, Dominique.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So that's the gear in time.

[Chuck Nice]

Because the whole panel lit up. All right? And now, significantly, he goes back a number of years, not a number of months or a number of days. If he'd gone back 30 days, he'd land in the middle of space because Earth is not there now.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Correct.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. Or then.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Any actual time travel machine ideally should also be a space travel machine. Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. Because you're sitting here, you say, I want to go back to yesterday. And you walk in, you want to come out, you want to still be here.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

That had to transport you in space as well.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. So it's a space time machine. It's not just a time machine. Correct. It's got to be a space station.

[Chuck Nice]

It has to be. Otherwise you'd be dead on your first transport.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

Because you'll be in empty space.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, so had he gone back 30 days, 30 minutes, 30 hours, 30 days, 30 months, he'd be dead. But he went back 30 years and a year. Earth returns to its place in its orbit.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

He's still on Earth in any whole number of years. Because you're.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's. It's a whole year. So you're right with the. A year ago to. No, a year ago, this time the Earth was here.

[Chuck Nice]

Correct. Right. Now we're ignoring the leap days.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But also, what about the fact that in our solar system, on the tip of that spiral, that thing is moving too?

[Chuck Nice]

Are you talking about the whole sources are moving through.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The whole solar system is moving too.

[Chuck Nice]

So the question is, how far do the solar system move in a day?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so you have to factor that in. Okay, you would, but. But to factor in one of them cinematically, that's good enough.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

All right. To get them all, then you just being. Yeah, well, you're being annoying.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, Exactly. Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. If they.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That it's like saying that football is not. You're not first in 10. You're first in 30ft. Okay, shut up. Not first in 10 yards.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, it would be.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, but you don't say it that way because you're just over complicating things.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, I got you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You know what I'm saying? Like you don't say first down 30ft to. You know. Because we know what it is.

[Chuck Nice]

We know.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I got you.

[Chuck Nice]

So 30 years. So now apparently. What's his name?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

This is Wilhelm.

[Chuck Nice]

Wilhelm. Bill, you didn't pay close enough attention to that scene.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Really?

[Chuck Nice]

That mall is called Twin Pines Mall. Where do we think it got its name? Marty? Exactly. 30 years, goes back in time and he arrives at Twin Pines Ranch. The ranch gave itself up to be a mall, as is so common with the strip malls of the suburbs.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, and so out of an homage, you keep the name that it once was. Twin Pines Ranch.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

And it says it in that scene back in 1955 when he arrives, crashing down the door of the barn of Mr. Peabody's ranch. Okay, so we've got him going back in time, still arriving on Earth. We've got him going back in time, arriving in Twin Pines Ranch, which is the same place as where the mall was that he just left.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

It's America. So what does the farmer do upon seeing a DeLorean arrive with Marty, who has a Hazmat outfit on because he's handling plutonium?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, what does the farmer do?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He invokes his second Amendment rights. God damn. Better get off my property right now. I'll tell you what.

[Chuck Nice]

No, you don't ask them first. You shoot first and then ask.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's right. Yeah, I forgot. That's the best.

[Chuck Nice]

So the shotgun comes out. Marty is trying to escape. He's driving fast. He bowls over one of the two saplings that are the twin pines of his ranch. There are two five foot tall saplings with a picket fence around it. And that's the twin pines of the Twin Pines ranch. Marty bowls over it, attempting to escape and not get shot. Okay, okay, now hang on, hang on.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I thought Wilhelm put too much thought into this. Damn.

[Chuck Nice]

Wait a minute. Go ahead. So the second shot against Marty hits Mr. Peabody's mailbox.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

And that's how you know it says Peabody on it. So that's how you know he's Mr. Peabody. When it hits the mailbox, the mailbox explodes with his shotgun. I didn't think anything of it until I gave this talk. I gave a talk where I described that scene in Southern Georgia. And somebody in the audience, you know, looked like, you know, someone who owns a few guns, of course, you know, had like a. Like a camouflage, you know, like a.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

A camo hat.

[Chuck Nice]

Camo hat. You know, somebody probably held a few guns. He said, I had something to comment. I said, oh, did I miss something? He says, yeah, that shotgun would not have blown up the mailbox. I said, what would have done? He said, it just would have put holes in it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Like shotgun pellets would do.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And where were you when you gave this talk?

[Chuck Nice]

Southern Georgia.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, he would know.

[Chuck Nice]

So that's when I said, that's where I discovered. He introduced himself as a nerd redneck. And that's where I discovered this beautiful nerd. A new kind of nerd. Welcome to the nerd club.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The nerdneck.

[Chuck Nice]

The nerdneck. And we agreed he could be a nerdneck. And this one we had when we. For our Patreon. We have private Q and A with Patreon. And one of them is also a self proclaimed nerdneck. Oh, cool. And he wrote me a letter saying, sign your nerdneck. So anyhow, so Marty leaves, right? Okay. Then he goes into town. He has to figure out how to get back and all of this. Then he goes back to the future and we rejoin him at the mall.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. Cause that's where he left.

[Chuck Nice]

That's where he left.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

It's no longer called Twin Pines Mall.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Are you for real?

[Chuck Nice]

It's Called Lone Pine Mall. Oh, snap. Oh, snap. And the camera doesn't zoom in on her anything. It's just there. It's just there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, man.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

So my boy, he's got to go back and watch.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, Wilhelm, there you have it, my friend.

[Chuck Nice]

No, no, he just got out. Geeked.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You did. I thought you had a lot of attention to detail here, but apparently you.

[Chuck Nice]

Better wake up early in the morning. You want to outgeek me?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You can't out Back to the Future Neil on this one. Wow, that was something else, man.

[Chuck Nice]

All right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That was something else. All right, let's go.

[Chuck Nice]

There it is.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Let's go to Colin Montote or Mon. Yeah, Montut. Who says, hello, this is Colin from the Berkshires of Massachusetts. He says, I'm asking this question for my wife, Billy. I would like you to explain what information means when it's used by you astrophysicists. Like the question of whether black holes destroy the information and all that Hawking radiation. What is the information?

[Chuck Nice]

I need help on that. Okay. Because for me, as I came to understand it, the information, it was good enough to simply have the inventory of particles that went in and came out. All right, but we know that if a molecule goes in, the molecule has more information there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Absolutely. Because it's a construction.

[Chuck Nice]

It's a construction of these particles.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's right.

[Chuck Nice]

And when the Hawking radiation reemerges, it doesn't give us whole molecules.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

So I cannot answer that. I have to check with my black hole people. Okay, okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, because to me, a molecule would have more information than a particle would.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Absolutely. Well, look at that. What a great question, Colin.

[Chuck Nice]

Unless. What?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We're gonna dig into a black hole and get back to you.

[Chuck Nice]

Unless. Unless the act of making the molecule reduce the information somewhere else.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ooh, okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Or reduce the. So you have less entropy here, more entropy over there. So instead of thinking about it as how much information is in the molecule, you look at the entropy budget. Right. All right. Why are we complex? Where did that come from? In a closed system, that can't happen thermodynamically.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So go ahead.

[Chuck Nice]

We're not a closed system. No.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There's introduction of energy into the system from where? Our great Lord Ra, the sun.

[Chuck Nice]

So we're getting energy from the sun, building information here, building complexity, reducing entropy here. However, the sun's entropy increased.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

The sun is gonna burn out one day.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's right.

[Chuck Nice]

So I'm thinking that's how that is reckoned.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That makes a lot of sense, though. That does.

[Chuck Nice]

I'm pretty sure that's how that'll go.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, cool.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. I love that answer, but I'm double checking.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But we still got to get away to talk with Janet. Yeah. It's a great answer, though. I hadn't thought of it that way.

[Chuck Nice]

Janet Levin, if you didn't. If you're a new subscriber, she's a friend of StarTalks. She's a professor of physics at Barnard College in Columbia University, and she's written a couple of books on black holes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Black holes, yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

And she's a theory. She's a theorist.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Theoretical physicist.

[Chuck Nice]

Physicist, yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

She's our resident black hole expert, so.

[Commercial Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by Peloton. The new Cross Training series balances your workouts with 15 workout types for endless movements on and off your equipment. Stay motivated with weekly personalized plans that guide you from beginner to expert, and push past your goals with routines tailored to you. Get the new Cross Training series terms apply.

[Chuck Nice]

This is Rich Gannon from Sirius XM.

[Rich Gannon]

NFL Radio reminding you that Sirius XM is the place to hear every NFL.

[Chuck Nice]

Playoff game from the wild card round all the way through the Super Bowl. Plus, you get to decide how you.

[Rich Gannon]

Want to listen to the game. We'll have the hometown announcers for each game and the national broadcasters on your radio and on the Sirius XM app.

[Chuck Nice]

And if it's football talk that you want, just search for NFL Radio on.

[Rich Gannon]

The app or tune to SiriusXM channel.

[Chuck Nice]

88 in your car.

[Rich Gannon]

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, this is Joe Chiarelli. Joe Chiarelli, who says this? Hey, Dr. Tyson Lord. Nice Joe Chiarelli here from Connecticut as a new Pat. Nice. A New Patreon member, he says. I had the pleasure of meeting you and Gary at Chuck Special in New York City.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Look at that.

[Chuck Nice]

Look at that. Well, thank you for coming to that. We were all there in good numbers.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, it was. It was great.

[Chuck Nice]

Chuck gave a stand up. A science informed stand up routine comedy special. Yeah. Do you have a title for it?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What's it called? It's called Chuck. Nice. Just Smart enough.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's the name of the special, all right. Because everybody I'm with is always smarter than me. That's one of the things that happens when you work here. Well, you do what I do. For I'm surrounded by him and all his buddies and they're all fricking super geniuses. And I'm a dumbass sitting here. But I'm dumb enough to know how dumb I am. That makes you smart. That's what I do. I just sit and listen and learn.

[Chuck Nice]

So my motto is from Michael Dell.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. My sister used to work for a Dell computer in Austin, Texas, and she would tell me stories. So Michael Dell said, the day you wake up and find yourself as the smartest person in the room, change rooms.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, you need to get up and leave. Cause it's just us here in this office. So you need to go right now. All right, let's see what Joe says. He says, and by the way, Joe, thanks for all the nice words he says. Neil, when we think about things getting hot, we think of them expanding. So why do clothes shrink in the dryer? Thanks for the love. Thanks for the show.

[Chuck Nice]

That's one of the three mysteries of the universe.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So funny. Wow, that's funny. Why do clothes shrink in the dryer when things normally expand when you heat them? I mean, that's. That's kind of a.

[Chuck Nice]

That's, you know. Cause you know what shrinks the most is wool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right?

[Chuck Nice]

Right. But what I never understood is like. Cause you're not, you know, you have to wash wool. Very special, you know, special ways.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Normally. Like if it's summertime, water and woolite.

[Chuck Nice]

If it's summertime and you hose down sheep and then the sun comes out and it heats it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. They don't become tinier sheep.

[Chuck Nice]

So what's up with that? Stop leaving us out in the sun.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. Oh, that's so funny.

[Chuck Nice]

So not all material behaves in the same way by the same thermodynamic forcing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

So here's one that we just accept that ice floats, right? Well, ice is water. That is Colder than the water it's floating in.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You're right.

[Chuck Nice]

Things that get cold normally shrink and shrink. They'll shrink. They get denser and denser and shrink. Cold things shrink.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Ice at 3 degrees Celsius expands.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Expands.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, that's right. Water at 3 degrees Celsius becoming ice. Becoming. No, it's not ice yet.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

At three degrees, it expands.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

And that floats to the top of the lake where it freezes. And it stays at that larger state, floating, actually insulating the water below, allowing fishes to survive the winter. Because once you put a layer, an ice layer on top, the bottom of the lake no longer is climactically connected to the weather. Connected to what's above.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Ice actually becomes insulation.

[Chuck Nice]

Ice as insulation.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

As insulation, exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

So ice does the opposite of that. And there's a few other materials that will do this.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

And the chemists know about them. So, for example, if you want something that does not expand or contract at all, you combine two materials that have opposite properties.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's cool.

[Chuck Nice]

And then they'll work opposite each other in this way.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Nice.

[Chuck Nice]

The thermocouplers are these metals that bend when they're heated. Okay. So typically, these would be valves to a gas. Valves.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right?

[Chuck Nice]

So you heat it. It stays open. When you turn it off and it cools down, it closes back naturally just because of its own response to temperature. So with regard to clothes in the dryer. Can't help.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What can you do?

[Chuck Nice]

I gave you the rest of the physics of what's going on.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What's going on. But, yeah, with. That's a. That will remain a mystery. Along along with what happened to my other sock.

[Chuck Nice]

And along with. Does the refrigerator light go off when.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You turn the refrigerator.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, even. And people say, of course it does. Because you just press the button on the side and you see the light goes out. And I'm like, yeah, but that's because the door is open.

[Chuck Nice]

Tweeted this. I said, one of the mysteries of the universe. Does the refrigerator. So someone put their cell phone in the refrigerator.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, hilarious.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. And then started filming. And then they closed the door. And then it got dark. It got dark.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You gotta love people.

[Chuck Nice]

You gotta love people. All right, Chuck, we only got five minutes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

How many do we do?

[Chuck Nice]

We got, like, a boatload of questions there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, who cares?

[Chuck Nice]

Let me go. Let's go. Let's see how I answer them.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Fast.

[Chuck Nice]

Go.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. This is Tom Lynn Lindelius, who says. Greetings from Uppsala.

[Chuck Nice]

Uppsala, Sweden. Yes, it was an important observatory There. Oh, from the early 19th, early 20th century. It probably goes earlier, but the data that I've seen from them. Right. Is. Is quite relevant and significant.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Had no idea when they were a.

[Chuck Nice]

Player in that space. Okay, go on.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He says if our universe actually existed inside a black hole, wouldn't everything seem to be converging into a single point, the singularity, rather than expanding? Also, wouldn't we be able spot any evidence of spaghettification, like large galaxies or gas clouds appearing stretched. Thanks. In a band.

[Chuck Nice]

The spaghettification happens when you get very close to the singularity.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

The bigger the black hole, the less the spaghettification is at the outer edge. At the outer edges.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

In the beginning, you're just falling.

[Chuck Nice]

You're just falling through.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

If we are in a black hole and our black hole is the size of our universe, then spaghettification is not a thing. Okay. We're just occupying the volume inside the black hole.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Inside the black hole.

[Chuck Nice]

And we're not the collapsed system, like when a star collapses to make the black hole in the first place.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

So, yeah, spaghettification is not an inevitable fact of falling into a black hole.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

All right. Very cool. That's all. Give me another one.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. This is RID R Y D. Hey, Dr. Tyson. Lord. Nice. Remy from Nante, France. Love this show. If black holes are actually newborn universes with different physics, can a wormhole cross them or get us out of our own universe? Or our space time separated and we're just stuck?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. I do not know for sure, but everything I know about wormholes tells me they can get you anywhere.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Anywhere.

[Chuck Nice]

And if they're. For example, if there's a multiverse and there's another universe over here.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

In principle, you should be able to.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Pop a portal, the tunnel to that multiverse.

[Chuck Nice]

To that multiverse. However, in a multiverse, every universe has slightly different laws of physics.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, that's not good.

[Chuck Nice]

That's not that. So you open the. Open the portal.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

And then like flip a coin through there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

And then they grab it. If they explode or disintegrate, the coin melts. Then just stay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, we're going to stay right here. Exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

So into a. So that's another universe. In the same way the forward facing universe in a black hole would be in another universe. I don't see any reason why a black hole couldn't connect any two of those. And that's exactly what Rick's. Rick has his.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The portal gun.

[Chuck Nice]

The portal gun in Rick and Morty.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There you go. All right. This is Christophe de Massigner, who says hello? Dr. Tyson Sr. No M A E S E N E E R. Okay. Who says hello? Dr. Tyson. Lord. Nice. Kristoff calling from Belgium.

[Chuck Nice]

Love it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I know that the answer today would be we'll get spaghettified. But let's suppose our current limits in technology are an issue. What would it take to fend off a black hole coming towards our solar system? A mission like DART would be out of the question because it would get equally spaghettified. Curious to hear your encounter, your counter apocalypse ideas. So a black hole is coming at us.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. In my day what you would say is kiss your ass goodbye. Right. But more seriously, what we would have to do is get all the rockets we have, attach it to the side of the Earth and get us the hell out of the solar system before the black hole gets close enough.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Literally. Spaceship Earth.

[Chuck Nice]

Spaceship Earth. Because there's. You're not. You can't touch the black hole. You can't nudge it out of the way. Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There's nothing you can do to the.

[Chuck Nice]

Black hole, to the black hole.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And if you are on the course to fall into it, once you get to that event horizon, it's over.

[Chuck Nice]

It's over.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's over.

[Chuck Nice]

So you want to move Earth to another place, ideally to another star system. Right. Because we value.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, because we need sunlight.

[Chuck Nice]

We need sunlight. Right, Exactly. All right, very cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

One more. Here we go. This is Jeff. He says hello. Dr. Tyson. Lord. Nice. I'm Guam Hewitt from Birmingham, UK.

[Chuck Nice]

Birmingham.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Oh, I wish Gary was here. In class the other day I was reading the Elegant Universe. That's Brian Green, right?

[Chuck Nice]

Brian Green, yes. Best selling book.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. He said, and it was explaining black hole entropy and mentioned that after every interaction, for example, an asteroid falling into the black hole, its accretion disk expands. I find myself wondering why this happens, why the accretion disk expands after these interactions. By the way, love the show.

[Chuck Nice]

Excellent.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's really cool.

[Chuck Nice]

The accretion disk is. Is the holding pattern for the material that ultimately will fall in.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So that's the, the bright hot thing that you see going around the black hole. The bright hot thing.

[Chuck Nice]

Bright hot thing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's the accretion.

[Chuck Nice]

The reason why it exists at all is because rarely is anything moving through space and headed exactly toward the black hole.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Even if the black hole influences its path.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

It'll curve it around, but it's never headed straight in. It's a very rare trajectory to head straight in.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

All right. So the material gathers and. All right. It wants to fall In. Now, if you jump off a roof, why does hitting the ground kill you?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, you know, because the ground is not going anywhere.

[Chuck Nice]

When you jump off, you're speeding. You're speeding up. Yeah, you speed up.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You just fall and fall and fall and fall.

[Chuck Nice]

No, but you can jump off a curb and you're not gonna die because you weren't falling long enough to have high speed.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Gotcha. I see what you're like.

[Chuck Nice]

It's a simple point.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's a real simple point.

[Chuck Nice]

So. So where did you get the energy that was ultimately manifest as high speed? At the bottom, the elevator gave you that energy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Called gravitational potential energy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Gotcha.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, so you're at the top, you fall at the bottom, you die.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Gotcha.

[Chuck Nice]

Here is material falling into the black hole. Where does its energy go? Because it's speeding up, but then it gets stuck in the. In the.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ah, that's ah, that's so cool.

[Chuck Nice]

It gets stuck in the.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So that's the ground for the black hole. Yes, that is. Aw.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. That's why it's all hot and.

[Chuck Nice]

Right, hot. Because normally when you hit the ground, it breaks all your bones. Yes. But if you're gas clouds, really, that becomes heat.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Dude, that's amazing.

[Chuck Nice]

It heats up. It heats up to such high temperatures, it begins to radiate ultraviolet X rays. And so X ray telescopes would discover black holes. So if the asteroid simply fell straight into the black hole, nothing would happen to the accretion disk, Right? Nothing. Cause it would just speed up and get lost on the other side. But if you hit the accretion disk, all that extra speed had to go somewhere.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And it's manifested, distributed throughout. The energy is now in the accretion.

[Chuck Nice]

It's in the accretion disk, and that's why it heats up. And then it expands.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So when you see light from a black hole, you're not seeing any light from inside, because light can't escape a black hole. That's what you're seeing.

[Chuck Nice]

You're seeing the accretion disk, or the material is trying to get in so fast, then the heat is so immense that the accretion disk is preventing the heat from escaping. What's the only way the heat can escape? If it can't get out through the disk, how's it gonna get out?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It can't. It has to join.

[Chuck Nice]

No, there are other ways it can get out.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

With the heat from the disc.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, yeah. If it's very. It's ferocious. It's trying to get out of the disc. But it can't. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

There's two ways it can get out. Up and down. Okay. These are the jets that we see coming out. Black hole jets.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Very cool.

[Chuck Nice]

Black hole jets.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Nice.

[Chuck Nice]

You get the creation disc. Black hole.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Black hole jets. And that's what we're seeing. Yeah, that's.

[Chuck Nice]

Black holes are cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Dude, what a great question. Yeah, that. That was cool.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. Very good. So the only thing wrong about the question was he assumed that the black hole had eaten. No.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But it hasn't.

[Chuck Nice]

The. The accretion disk ate it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

And it gets hot and expands. You got it. That's all we got time for.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That was great, man.

[Chuck Nice]

A black hole leaning yes. Cosmic queries.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Love that. So, Chuck, we gotta call it quits there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, it's a shame. But we'll be back.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm gonna shamelessly plug my next book.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, cool.

[Chuck Nice]

Because it's a question and answer book.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I love it.

[Chuck Nice]

It's called Just Visiting this Planet.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Just Visiting this.

[Chuck Nice]

It's Merlin returning. Cause Merlin was a column that I wrote in a magazine for like 15 years. Right. And people just wrote in with questions. That's why I'm very comfortable in that space. Cause I cut my teeth as a scientist and as an educator responding to people's questions, however crazy they were.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow.

[Chuck Nice]

And so it's just coming out like.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

This is another extension of that.

[Chuck Nice]

And it's illustrated by my brother, who's an artist. He went to high school of music and art in New York City.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Very cool.

[Chuck Nice]

And I went to the Bronx High School of Science.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And now you guys are working together.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, Working out. I'm loving it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

This is true steam in a family coming together. Family steam. Nice, Nice.

[Chuck Nice]

So, yeah. So people who love queries about the universe. It's questions answered with this character called Merlin. I think it's more fun you could type it into ChatGPT. But you know and I know there's no soul behind those words.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

There's no entity. There's no personality.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Just the dead eyes of AI.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, this has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Until next time. I bid you you to keep looking up.

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[Chuck Nice]

This is Rich Gannon from Sirius XM NFL Radio, reminding you that Sirius XM.

[Rich Gannon]

Is the place to hear every NFL.

[Chuck Nice]

Playoff game from the Wild Card round all the way through the Super Bowl. Plus, you get to decide how you want to listen to the game.

[Rich Gannon]

We'll have the hometown announcers for each game and the national broadcasters on your.

[Chuck Nice]

Radio and on the Sirius XM app. And if it's football talk that you want, just search for NFL Radio on.

[Rich Gannon]

The app or tune to Sirius XM.

[Chuck Nice]

Channel 88 in your car.