Cosmic Queries - Black Hole Universe

Summary

StarTalk Radio – Cosmic Queries: Black Hole Universe

Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Co-Host: Baron Paul Mercurio
Air Date: September 9, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this lively “Cosmic Queries Grab Bag” episode, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian (now “Baron”) Paul Mercurio answer listener questions about black holes, the nature of the universe, AI, nuclear power on the moon, the multiverse, and more. The blend of science, humor, and pop culture delivers both insight and entertainment, with discussions ranging from deep theoretical physics to relatable rants about public transit.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. How Much of the Universe Do We Really Understand?

Listener Question: Opal, Atlanta (15yo)
[05:09–08:45]

• Are there whole new types of science yet to discover, or is everything a branch of what we already know?
  • Tyson explains that traditional science categories (physics, chemistry, biology) are artificial, made for convenience. Nature doesn’t draw these boundaries ([05:47]).
  • NASA created "origins centers," bringing together different scientific fields to answer big-picture questions such as the origin of life.
  • He argues new sciences can emerge when disciplines intersect, not simply as sub-branches ([06:51]).
  • Tyson highlights neuroscience as a field still in its infancy and anticipates the development of AI may eventually foster new sciences—"But AI today only synthesizes what's already known or online" ([07:48]).
  • He questions whether AI can originate completely new ideas, e.g., something as revolutionary as general relativity.

“Suppose you had a thought that no one ever thought of before and it’s not on the internet. Does AI have access to that thought? The answer is no.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson [08:14]

2. Hawking Radiation & Black Hole Particle Pairs

Listener Question: Daumire da Silva, Brazil
[09:43–12:44]

• Does Hawking radiation favor the escape of antiparticles over particles from black holes?
  • Tyson confirms the process is random; either particle of the pair can fall into the black hole ([10:44]).
  • There is no evidence that antiparticles are favored over particles. The directions are random by quantum design ([11:09]–[12:44]).
  • Paul and Tyson playfully comment on the familiarity of “BH” as short for black hole.

“You can just as easily have a regular particle going in as an antiparticle…he’s right to be suspicious.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson [12:23]

3. Are Humans Closer in Size to an Atom or to the Universe?

Listener Question: Araya, Utah (12yo)
[16:02–19:29]

• Tyson reads from his upcoming book “Just Visiting This Planet,” providing a calculation in powers of ten ([16:34]).
  • It takes only 15 factors of ten to get from human size to the nucleus of an atom, and 25 factors of ten to reach the edge of the visible universe.
  • Therefore, we are physically closer to the scale of atoms than to the universe's edge.

“You are closer to the atoms in your toe. It’s only 15 powers of ten down, and it’s 25 powers of ten to the edge of the universe.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson [18:50]

4. What’s the Best Power Source for a Moon Base?

Listener Question: Ethan Henning, Houston, TX
[21:24–28:13]

• Is it nuclear, solar, or something else?
  • Tyson discusses “transportable” nuclear fission power plants, about the size of a large truck and capable of 100 kilowatts—enough to run around 100 hairdryers simultaneously ([23:50]–[24:52]).
  • Such reactors can operate for 8–10 years without maintenance ([25:36]).
  • Solar is possible, but the lunar night (about two weeks) and extreme cold hinder battery performance.
  • Main threat: meteors, since the Moon has no atmosphere for protection—possible to bury reactors for safety ([28:13]).
  • Tyson claims we’re only “years, not decades” from deploying such tech ([28:45]).

“A nuclear power generator about the size that I described, one of those would give you 100 kilowatts…That’s the energy level that NASA is looking at to send to the moon right now.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson [23:01]

5. Hazards of Micro Black Holes for Interstellar Travel

Listener Question: Derek Evans, Connecticut
[29:00–33:13]

• Tyson explains smaller black holes evaporate (via Hawking radiation) much faster than larger ones—tiny black holes wouldn’t persist long enough to threaten spacecraft in flight ([30:07]).
• Space is extremely empty; even in the asteroid belt, distances between objects are vast ([31:29]–[32:45]).
• Thus, micro black holes pose no likely hazard to deep space travel.

“A tiny enough black hole will not last long enough for you to come upon it and then put your life at risk. Plus, we don’t expect there to be many of them. Space is really vast and really empty.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson [31:29]

6. The Mysterious “Wow” Signal

Listener Question: Lily Rose, Virginia
[33:23–36:47]

• The “Wow” signal was a one-time radio burst detected in the 1970s—not sound, strictly a radio wave ([34:13]).
• Scientists never found a repeat of the signal.
• Tyson cautions against leaping to conclusions involving aliens; extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence ([36:18]).
• Reminder: absence of an explanation is not evidence of any specific explanation.

“Just because you don’t know what you’re looking at doesn’t mean you know what you’re looking at. That needs to be a bumper sticker.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson [36:34]

7. Are We Living Inside a Black Hole? The Multiverse and the Black Hole Universe Hypothesis

Listener Question: Conrad Dunphy, Portland, OR
[40:14–44:14]

• Tyson explains how recent findings (from the JWST—James Webb Space Telescope) of possible “rotation among an ensemble of galaxies” could hint at a universe with properties analogous to a black hole ([41:01]).
• In some multiverse theories, each black hole could create its own universe with potentially different physical laws.
• If universes have different physics, entering another could “collapse you into a pile of goo” ([42:25]).
• Only if another universe had identical physics could you safely travel there, but wormholes remain hypothetical.

“If there’s an infinite number [of universes], there’d be one with identical [physics].”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson [42:55]

8. Unexpectedly Mature Early Galaxies Seen by JWST—Alternative Explanations?

Listener Question: John Swiley, Athens, GA
[44:15–47:17]

• Are we seeing light from beyond our universe, or do rapid galaxy formations challenge our models?
  • Tyson leans toward updating galaxy formation models rather than proposing radical explanations like “portals to other universes” ([45:47]–[45:59]).
  • Invokes Occam’s Razor: don’t propose additional complexity unless necessary.

“If you have a complex hypothesis to explain something and someone else is walking around with a simpler explanation, the simpler explanation is probably correct.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson [45:47]

9. Gravitons, Negative Gravity, and Wormholes

Listener Question: Dennis, Salisbury, IN
[47:19–49:14]

• Could we use interference (like in the double-slit experiment) to cancel out gravitational waves—or even gravity itself?
  • Tyson explains LIGO is detecting changes in gravity, not static gravity—a necessary distinction ([48:21]).
  • Negative gravity (required to stabilize wormholes in theory) has not been observed, but if wormholes exist, negative gravity must exist too ([48:49]–[49:14]).

“If we see a wormhole out there, somebody discovered negative gravity. That’s correct.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson [49:14]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On New Sciences Emerging:
  “Nature doesn’t draw those boundaries. We did.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson [05:47]

• On AI’s Current Limitations:
  “Could AI come up with a thought that none of us have ever had nor have ever put it on the internet? There’s a limit to where AI can take us.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson [08:14]

• On Powers of Ten & Perspective:
  “Adding the two sets of jumps reveals that the entire known universe spans about 40 powers of 10 in one direction.” — Read from Tyson’s upcoming book [18:32]

• Comic Banter:
  “You need a nip and a tuck. You really do. That’s not even a real mustache…” — Paul Mercurio [07:32]
  “If you see me on the street, please salute and curtsy.” — Paul Mercurio [49:39]

• On Speculative Theories in Astrophysics:
  “Extraordinary explanations require extraordinary evidence.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson [46:09]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [05:09] – New kinds of science, AI, and the future
• [09:43] – Hawking radiation and black holes
• [16:02] – Human size vs atom vs universe
• [21:24] – Power sources for the Moon
• [29:00] – Micro black holes and interstellar travel
• [33:23] – The “Wow” radio signal mystery
• [40:14] – Black hole universe hypothesis & multiverse
• [44:15] – JWST discoveries and galaxy formation
• [47:19] – Gravitons, gravity waves, and negative gravity

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Tone & Style

The episode is hallmark StarTalk: equal parts insightful, humble, occasionally irreverent, and always accessible. Tyson is both patient and playful with listener questions. Mercurio brings comic relief and presses for relatable clarifications, making advanced cosmology both approachable and entertaining.

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Conclusion

This “Cosmic Queries” episode is a fast-paced science variety hour, myth-busting and theorizing with both expertise and wit. Tyson and Mercurio engage beginner and advanced listeners alike, addressing cosmic mysteries and everyday curiosities about the universe, always with a dose of humor and humility. Audiences come away with a better understanding not only of black holes, AI, and the nature of inquiry itself, but of the wonder and uncertainty at the heart of science.

Transcript

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm gonna put you on, nephew. All right, unc. Welcome to McDonald's. Can I take your order, miss? I've been hitting up McDonald's for years.

[Paul Mercurio]

Now it's back.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great.

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Paul, there were a lot of cosmology questions in there.

[Paul Mercurio]

Oh, it's the big bang, multiverse, black holes, negative gr.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, people into that.

[Paul Mercurio]

Yeah, I see you as a negative gravity person. Tend to be negative.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Coming up, cosmic queries on StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. Startalk begins right now. This is startalking. Neil Degrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. This is gonna be a cosmic queries grab bag edition. And to help me get through these questions, I got Paul Mercurio. Paul, how you doing, man?

[Paul Mercurio]

I'm doing well. It's Baron. Paul Mercurio.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Baron? Oh, yeah, sorry. Not barren as in you cannot reproduce. Your womb is barren.

[Paul Mercurio]

No, I actually. Am I trying to keep that under wraps?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You have evidence. You have one son, so that evidence that.

[Paul Mercurio]

By the way, look at you, all dressed up like a little schoolboy. Going to look at you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I dressed up for you. Clearly you have no such reciprocal feeling.

[Paul Mercurio]

For me because you asked me to help you move furniture and so that's what I did.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Plus, like, you're out of a job.

[Paul Mercurio]

I'm out of a job.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What the hell happened down there? What did you do? What did you do to piss off Paramount?

[Paul Mercurio]

I broke CBS and Paramount, apparently. On the late Show.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, because you're on the staff of the late show.

[Paul Mercurio]

I work on the late show, perform on the show, and we are not gonna be in existence. Come maybe. Wow. And I am going to be sleeping outside in your bushes looking for any nickels I can find.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I live in lower Manhattan. I don't have bushes in my backyard.

[Paul Mercurio]

I'll get you something. Yeah, so, you know, I'm looking, you know, whatever.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right.

[Paul Mercurio]

You know, if you know anybody.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, if I Know someone needs lawn mow.

[Paul Mercurio]

Ex lawyer.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ex lawyer. I forgot you went to law school.

[Paul Mercurio]

Investment banker. I could do M and A deals and make you laugh and make you ravioli all at the same time. Come on. But I'm Baron.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

In case people are wondering, during one of our Patreon exclusive segments, one of our Patreon members, where they get to view a Q and A session live, felt sorry for Paul Mercurio for not having a title.

[Paul Mercurio]

And he came up with a great.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Commensurate with Lord Nice of Chuck. Nice. So he got knighted some number of episodes ago. So they felt pity upon you.

[Paul Mercurio]

That's a lot of people there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And so they decided to call you Baron. Yes, I thought Baron. That feels. Baron Paul Mercurio.

[Paul Mercurio]

I have a presence. I command attention.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I felt that worked. And so I happen to have Excalibur in the office. Why wouldn't I? I got everything else. I got Excalibur. And so we. I knighted you, Baron Paul Mercurio.

[Paul Mercurio]

You did cut me on the neck. Eight stitches, but otherwise it was great. So I'm honored and I want to thank Patreon.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It was an accidental cut. What makes you think that was an accident?

[Paul Mercurio]

I need security when I come on this show. Tamson's got my back. So we're gonna. We're gonna do some.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, let's do some Q and A here. All right.

[Paul Mercurio]

All right. Just. Just some general grab bag.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But you're at least employed through June, is that correct?

[Paul Mercurio]

Through May.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

May.

[Paul Mercurio]

May, 2020. Unless something happens and I screw something else up and get us fired earlier. But may. All right. And I'm also doing my off Broadway show, permission to Speak, touring with it. And we have it on Patreon now, so people can go and enjoy it there and support it. Because I don't have any money. I'm poor, I'm out of a job. You know, I'm eating hay, if you care. I'm a baron. I shouldn't be eating hay. I'm a Baron. Okay. All right, here we go. Opal Lehman. Hello, everyone. Opal from Atlanta. I'm 15 years old and was wondering, you said recently that we only know 4% of the universe. Well, Neil does. We know more. 4% of the universe, which includes everything we know. So do you think there are more types of science out there left? Sorry. To create or discover? Or would the rest of what we would know about the universe just be branches of what we already know?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Love that question.

[Paul Mercurio]

Yeah, it's a great question.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ooh, good one. Good One. So let me not just, Let me never say that something's just a branch of something else that makes it sort of subservient to it. Let me give a slightly longer answer than he might have bargained for beginning in the 1990s.

[Paul Mercurio]

You know it's bad when Neil says it's gonna be a long answer.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

In the 1990s, NASA realized that there was some scientific questions that needed answering that did not sit comfortably within the.

[Paul Mercurio]

Known body of knowledge.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, but certainly not even within the siloed sciences as they have been laid out as we've come to think of them. In college, you major in chemistry, I'm majoring in physics. I'm majoring in this, majoring in that. Nature doesn't draw those boundaries. We did. So one of the questions was origins. Origins of life. Is that just biology? No, life began on a planet in a solar system.

[Paul Mercurio]

It could be stellar or.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, no, just the forces operating on this. And how is a biologist going to answer that question without knowing what the sun was doing at the time life began or what Earth was doing? And so what NASA created were these origin centers. Rather they created funding umbrellas, origins funding umbrellas, where you could enter into the room with the figurative room from all these different branches of science and they would come together and ask questions of.

[Paul Mercurio]

Each other because they're interdependent. Interdependent. To answer this other question, some of.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

These questions, I don't want to call that a spinoff. I want to say that's a whole brand new way to explore the world.

[Paul Mercurio]

An extrapolation or an extension of.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, yes, there's new sciences to be plumbed. I don't want to think of them as an entire branch of science. I'd like to think of them as new things out there where people with different expertise may have to come together to address those questions. And I would say, that being said, probably the newest science out there is neuroscience. We're in our infancy and I look forward to when it's in its maturity. Then we nip, tuck and fix all your, especially your mental problems.

[Paul Mercurio]

Well, you need a nip and a tuck. You really do. That's not even a real mustache. Anybody. What about AI? Does AI potentially bring us to. Not either through the use of AI or AI itself, other types of science or the uses of various sciences.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I haven't seen AI. That doesn't mean it won't still happen. But AI at its best today, I've yet to see discover something that was not otherwise on the Internet or Put together. It's putting together things on the Internet. But suppose you had a thought that no one ever thought of before and it's not on the Internet. Does AI have access to that thought? The answer is no. Could AI come up with that thought? That's my question. If it can't come up with a thought that none of us have ever had nor have ever put it on the Internet, there's a limit to where AI can take us.

[Paul Mercurio]

But my thought is a manifestation of several things that I know. And the chances are, statistically, that AI knows some of those things as well? Of course not.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Just chances are it does.

[Paul Mercurio]

And so it could.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Provided those things are online.

[Paul Mercurio]

Right. Which statistically probably. So it could probably formulate the same question. Not as good as my.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Definitely. My point is to make a completely new discovery. Could AI come up with the general theory of relativity? Could AI have invented QBism? Cubism doesn't look like it came from much before it. Okay, there's no early cubistic paintings of Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo.

[Paul Mercurio]

Can you tell me what branch of science we can use that compels people to take their bike on the subway? It's a bike. Ride the bike. It's not a moving bike rack. Okay. I don't take my car to the airport.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's a little weird.

[Paul Mercurio]

And check it on the plane.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It is a little weird.

[Paul Mercurio]

No, it's a lot weird. And it needs to stop.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's a little weird.

[Paul Mercurio]

And I don't care if you live in New York or don't try to.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Get it out of your way. They'll lift up the front wheel. They'll tuck it to the side where the door is.

[Paul Mercurio]

Yeah, and their handlebars end up my butt. And that's not what I paid 290 for. Whatever I'm paying.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so the neuroscience surgery will adjust that for in your brain.

[Paul Mercurio]

Don't defend it, please. Dalmire da Silva. Da Silva. Daumire da Silva. Hey, Dr. Tyson. Oh, this is from Brazil. Verado Zalanzo, Brazil. Assuming I got this right, we can intuitively think of Hawking radiation as matter escaping a black hole when a pair of virtual particles is created outside of it. The antiparno.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's precisely correct.

[Paul Mercurio]

Okay, you got that part right. And you get a dishwasher. The antiparticle falls into the black hole and annihilate itself with its counterpart already in the black hole. This sounds like a movie leaving the other one loose to fly away. And since particles don't have identity.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So if you make an adjustment there. It wouldn't have to be the antiparticle. But one of those two particles would fall in.

[Paul Mercurio]

One of the two. Okay. And since particles don't have identity. It's like that particle just escaped from the bh. My question is, the bh, he's on.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

A friendly basis with the black hole. No black hole ever told me I could call it bh.

[Paul Mercurio]

Well, you know, someday you'll be cool enough you gotta hang out with the cool kids to hang out with the bh. The question is, why do black holes favor antiparticles? The creation of virtual particles should be random all the time, every direction. So it should be 50. 50.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. And my understanding is that's the case, as is his understanding. If I'm wrong, I don't know why I'm wrong. Because when the particle antiparticle pair is created. The momentum that they have is in random directions. So it's by quantum design, random. So they have to go exactly opposite directions. So that their momentum cancel. Okay. Into that spot at the same speed. Well, sorry. It depends on what the momentum was of the photons that begat the particles. The point is, everything has to check out in the end. And when it checks out, check out, meaning arithmetically balance out. Okay. So my understanding is you could just as equally have an antiparticle on the black hole as a particle. If it's not that, I don't know why it's not that. And if that's the case, we've got to check with Jan11 on that. So, yeah, his whole question is predicated on something that I also don't think is true.

[Paul Mercurio]

Which is that that only the anti.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Particles fall back in and the regular particles escape.

[Paul Mercurio]

But we don't have proof that it. We don't have proof of that. Isn't that the case?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, I'm saying if it's true that only the antiparticles go in. I don't know why that's true. Any understanding I have of particle pair creation, they fly off in opposite directions. And that set of directions are random to each other. So you can just as easily have a regular particle going in as an antiparticle. So he's right to be suspicious of this.

[Paul Mercurio]

Right? It should be 50, 50.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm thinking yes.

[Paul Mercurio]

Yeah. Okay. Okay, got it. All right. Great question.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Tron.

[Paul Mercurio]

Ares has arrived.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I would like you to meet Ares.

[Paul Mercurio]

The ultimate AI soldier. He is biblically strong and supremely intelligent.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You think you're in control of this? You're not. On October 10th what are you?

[Paul Mercurio]

My world is coming to destroy yours. But I can help you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The war for our world begins in Imax. Tron Ares rated PG13 may be inappropriate for children under 13. Only in theaters October 10th. Get tickets now.

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Hi, I'm.

[Paul Mercurio]

Ernie Carducci from Columbus, Ohio. I'm here with my son Ernie because.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We listen to StarTalk every night and support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[Paul Mercurio]

This is Pratik Nagar. Hello Dr. Tyson. My name is Araya, 12 years old. I'm from Salt Lake City, Utah. I love watching your explainers and the fun and knowledge that comes with it. While in class, the question came up in size, which Are we humans closer to the universe or an atom? I was very intrigued by this question, especially because atoms are incomprehensibly small and the universe is incredibly big. If we are closer to the size of the universe, could there be a time knowing that the universe is expanding, that we are closer to the size of an atom?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Cool question.

[Paul Mercurio]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I've actually answered that question in my next book.

[Paul Mercurio]

Whoa.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Called Just Visiting this Planet. And I will read you that question and answer from my book, if I may.

[Paul Mercurio]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Can someone pass my computer?

[Paul Mercurio]

Go ahead. Read me a bedtime story.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

May I read you a bedtime story?

[Paul Mercurio]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, as you may know, for 12 or so years, I wrote a question and answer column for the public under a pen name, Merlin. That's why I have Excalibur in this office.

[Paul Mercurio]

I didn't know you did that, because.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Me and Merlin go way back.

[Paul Mercurio]

You're tight. You're like this literally.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We're tight. We're totally tight. And so people ask Merlin these questions. Merlin was the pen name. So here it is. If I may. Dear Merlin, I am six feet tall, comparatively speaking, which is the farthest away from my eye. The atomic particles in my little toe were the most distant galaxies. That's the same question, right? Since you're only 6ft tall, there is no doubt that the distant galaxies are farther from your eyeballs than your pinky toe. Another way to address your inquiry, however, is to imagine you suddenly became 10 times taller. 10 times taller again, and so forth. After about 25 of these stretching exercises, your head will brush up against the most distant galaxies in the visible universe. Returning to your eyeball, imagine you now shrink in successive steps so that each shift takes you within one tenth of the distance to the atoms in your toe. So we increase by factors of 10, decrease by factors of 10. It would take only 15 shrinks to enter the nuclei of your toe atoms. Adding the two sets of jumps reveals that the entire known universe spans about.

[Paul Mercurio]

40 powers of 10 in one direction.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, you add them together, it's 40 powers of 10. But this seems just from small to large.

[Paul Mercurio]

And I don't mean this.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So what this means is you are closer to the atoms in your toe. It's only 15 powers of 10 down, and it's 25 powers of 10 to the edge of the universe.

[Paul Mercurio]

Right. And I'm not trying.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's the only way to answer this.

[Paul Mercurio]

Seems like. And I'm not saying this to people.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

By the way, that book is just visiting this planet. Available October 2025.

[Paul Mercurio]

Okay. Not available in paperback. This seems like an obvious question that doesn't even need to be asked. And I don't mean that to be mean spirited, but like, to me, I'm a complete layperson. The answer was your toe. Of course. It's 15 versus 25.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, you didn't know that in advance. These are powers of 10.

[Paul Mercurio]

I understand, but it's. There's no question that you're the atoms in your toe.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

If I take a tape measure, the toe is six feet away and the universe is a. It's 14 billion light years.

[Paul Mercurio]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

If you want to say it's obvious, the answer is obvious. That's what you should be citing. But in powers of ten, it's not obvious.

[Paul Mercurio]

This question wasn't in the context of.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Powers of two, but that's the only sensible way to answer it in the way they were debating it in their class. Elevate yourself to the level of the 12 year old.

[Paul Mercurio]

Man. You were asking a lot of me today. That's impossible.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so online, there's on YouTube somewhere, it's there. There's a 10 minute movie called Powers of 10. It was made in the 1970s. 78. And it starts with a man laying down at a picnic in a park outside of Chicago. And we start with a scene one meter wide and one meter tall of a man. And every ten seconds we're gonna go ten times farther away. And we do that with the camera. You see how many jumps. It's an early cgi, but it wasn't even used computers. It was very well done in its day.

[Paul Mercurio]

10 times farther away every 10 seconds.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And you go to the edge of the universe. They said now. Then we zoom back and it says now we're gonna go 10 times closer every 10 seconds. And so you go 10 times closer.

[Paul Mercurio]

And it takes fewer 10 times tens. Right, right. And that's all I'm saying is it's obvious that that would take 1510s to.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You were not thinking in powers of 10 to justify saying that.

[Paul Mercurio]

You don't know what I was thinking.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's true. I don't know what you were thinking.

[Paul Mercurio]

And that's why this relationship has never worked. And we need marriage counseling because you don't bother to think what I think.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I think we hooked up a guy with his answer.

[Paul Mercurio]

Very good question.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Paul Mercurio]

And he's 12 years old. Amazing. All right, this is Master Builder EJ.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, but he's one of our fans, so it's not amazing that he says that. It's expected.

[Paul Mercurio]

Can't even give A compliment. All right. Average question. 12 year old. Try better the next time. That's Neil talking, not me. I thought it was amazing. Hello, everyone, this is Ethan Henning from Houston, Texas. I have a question about power sources. What would be the best power source for a moon base that would have the purpose of mining and sustaining the lives of astronauts for six months? Could it be fission? Maybe it's solar. I would love to know what you think. I love this podcast. It's my favorite.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ask me why I'm dressed up. I lied to you and said I dressed up for you at the beginning of this.

[Paul Mercurio]

Why are you dressed up?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because hours ago I was on CBS Mornings, their morning show.

[Paul Mercurio]

Oh, right. I fell asleep during that segment.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They asked me. So I get dressed up for tv, but with a little bit of. You look good.

[Paul Mercurio]

Yeah. When you come on the Late show, which I work on, you wear a tie or you get your vest.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I show some Tie or the vest.

[Paul Mercurio]

The vest.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

One or the other. Both would be a little much. It would break the lens.

[Paul Mercurio]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So people will bleed from their eye sockets. So they asked me about nukes on the moon. And first we're making portable, not quite the right word, transportable nuclear power plants that could, like, fit in a truck, for example. If you fit in a truck, it can fit in a big rocket. Okay. And these are nuclear fission power plants.

[Paul Mercurio]

We've talked about this on the show. Needing portable nuclear plants to drive AI and all.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What you would do is if you have a computation farm somewhere where AI is intensely using energy.

[Paul Mercurio]

Bitcoin.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You take it off. Yeah. You're calculating for Bitcoin. You just take it off the grid, give it its own power supply. You can't put it near a waterfall or this. And then you don't know if the sun is shining all the time. A nuclear power transportable power plant. The word plant overstates it at that level. Power station. Power station, then. Yeah.

[Paul Mercurio]

Yeah. That was the expert that we had on the show who talked about a lot of those.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We did. So right now NASA is considering fast tracking a nuclear power generator and about the size that I described. And one of those would give you 100 kilowatts. Are you kilowatt fluent?

[Paul Mercurio]

Yeah, live.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Paul Mercurio]

No kW.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Let's see.

[Paul Mercurio]

I know.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Paul Mercurio]

I'm not dumb. I'm smart. I'm not dumb.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Let's become fluid together. You ready?

[Paul Mercurio]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So 100 kilowatts. Kilo is what?

[Paul Mercurio]

Thousand.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Thousand. So 100,000 watts. Okay. That's the power that it can generate. 100,000 watts. Do you know the power drain of a hairdryer?

[Paul Mercurio]

I'd say a kilowatt.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. A thousand watts. Okay, so how many hair dryers could. 100 kilowatt power generator, 100,000.

[Paul Mercurio]

I'm sorry, what?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Did you try this again?

[Paul Mercurio]

I wasn't listening.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Apparently, 100,000 watts generator, your hairdryer draws 1,000 watts.

[Paul Mercurio]

Oh, 10,000. Yeah, wasn't that the question?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Start from scratch.

[Paul Mercurio]

All right. Okay, go ahead.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

100,000 watts a kilowatt. Okay, 100,000 watts. A hair dryer uses 1,000 watts. So how many hair dryers can this sustain?

[Paul Mercurio]

It's 1,000.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You're just pulling it out of your 100,000 watts. Yeah, if a hairdryer's 1,000 watts, it can sustain 100 hair dryers. Okay. So that's the energy level that NASA is looking at to create and send to the moon right now. So it's not some mondo power plant. I can keep 50 hair dryers covered on the moon. Okay. And by the way, you wouldn't need a hairdryer because it's 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

[Paul Mercurio]

That's true. Just stick your head off the window.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Just stick your head off the window for a second. Right. And it'll completely dry. So these power plants at that size and with that wattage can run for eight to 10 years.

[Paul Mercurio]

How do they deal with maintenance and that kind of thing?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, no, this new generation, there's no.

[Paul Mercurio]

Maintenance, no maintenance at all.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And it's very efficient in how it distributes heat. And it's not gonna over meltdown. It's nuclear fission of fissionable uranium, which is not the same uranium as you might learn from an explainer we did on isolating uranium for energy or for bombs. So there's how pure the uranium is for what your use might be. It's gotta be really pure if you're gonna make a bomb out of it. If you're gonna make a power station, it doesn't have to be that pure. And so it's much more readily obtainable. So anyway, so nukes would do it for eight years. You never have to maintain it if you had solar panels, by the way, no matter where the sun is in the sky, on the moon, it's just as bright as it is anywhere else because there's no atmosphere. So the sun is just as bright on the horizon as it is directly overhead. So you can have solar panels that just track the sun. You'll get 100% sunlight as long as the sun is above the Horizon. Do you know how long a day lasts on the moon?

[Paul Mercurio]

24 hours.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

A moonth. It lasts a moonth.

[Paul Mercurio]

What is a moon?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What do you think the word month came from? Have you thought about it?

[Paul Mercurio]

No way.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's how long it takes the moon. Okay? That's the moon goes around the Earth, but as it does that, it has. And it goes through phases. As it's doing that, it's experiencing a lunar day. So a lunar day is a month. A month long. Okay, so two weeks.

[Paul Mercurio]

Except you had a speech impediment.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's why you stared at me like. What does he say? Like a dog.

[Paul Mercurio]

Yeah, exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So two weeks of sunlight, two weeks of darkness. So you got two weeks of solar power generation. Problem is, if you exceed your power needs, the energy's gotta go to somewhere. So put it to storage. Batteries. When it's dark, for two weeks. Okay? You might want to use the energy, however. Batteries don't work well in the cold. And as soon as the sun sets, the temperature drops from 200 degrees Fahrenheit to 200 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. And then.

[Paul Mercurio]

We haven't been able to come up with a battery that can fix it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We haven't. You'd have to, like, insulate the batteries and have some other heating source.

[Paul Mercurio]

So just put a Tesla up there. Just take care of it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Have you driven a Tesla in the winter?

[Paul Mercurio]

The battery, it took me an hour to get across town when it should have taken me five minutes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, yes, nuclear fission makes complete sense given what we've done with it lately. You can create a reactor and just send it to the moon.

[Paul Mercurio]

One last question on this, then we'll move on. So how do you protect the reactor from whatever something could hit? It happen. What could happen? On the moon, that is.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, a meteor could hit it. Right, because there's no atmosphere and there's nothing protecting you. Meteor could also hit you. You could say we finally have it protected. Bam, you're dead.

[Paul Mercurio]

No, I'm coming to your house and I'm going to just hide under the couch.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So a big enough meteor you're not going to protect. Maybe you could bury it, for example. Protect it that way.

[Paul Mercurio]

How far away are we from this?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Realistically, the military already has prototypes that they're using of just the size I'm describing. And so I think we're very close. Within years, not decades. Yeah.

[Paul Mercurio]

All right, let's move on.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Next question.

[Paul Mercurio]

Derek Evans. Dr. Tyson, this is Derek from South Windsor, Connecticut. I know where that is. Longtime listener and Attendee of live events.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Nice. Thank you for coming to us.

[Paul Mercurio]

First time Patreon.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We give three or four live events a year, typically in the region. One in Connecticut, the Beacon Theater here in Manhattan, and we sometimes go to Jersey and to Philly.

[Paul Mercurio]

But yeah, those are great. I think you need a juggler at the beginning of it just to kind of loosen things up. In a recent conversation, you also juggle. Okay, I'm going to do anything come May. In a recent conversation you had about micro black holes, it had me wondering about interstellar travel. How could you travel vast distances while being sure to avoid these tiny black holes? And what time dilation or other unintended consequences would exist? Or do they radiate away fast enough not to pose any problems?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So the larger the black hole, the slower it evaporates. It's obviously the inverse is then true. As the black hole gets smaller, the rate at which it radiates increases and.

[Paul Mercurio]

Grows exponentially as it gets smaller.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

As it gets smaller. So it gets smaller.

[Paul Mercurio]

It gets smaller faster still because it's compressing on itself.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, it's not compressing. It's. It's because its rate of evaporation has to do with its surface area. And the smaller it gets, the more surface area it has relative to the volume. It's an interesting fact about the geometry of surface area going as R squared, radius squared and the volume going as R cubed. The surface area of the sphere.

[Paul Mercurio]

Doesn't it decrease as it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It does. But the volume decreases faster than the surface area.

[Paul Mercurio]

And why is that?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's just the arithmetic of it.

[Paul Mercurio]

Because the volume is not a good enough answer. Specifically, why. Don't duck the question. Don't be a politician answer.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So this manifests. I think we have a whole episode on this. It's on size and life. So if you can ask, here's a certain surface area you have and how much flesh is associated with that surface area. You can do that. As you get smaller, the amount of flesh associated with the surface area drops faster than the size of your flesh. That protects it within.

[Paul Mercurio]

Within the body.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Within the volume. That's correct.

[Paul Mercurio]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And since the evaporation rate is related to the surface area, the rate it is sucking. Sucking it. Yeah.

[Paul Mercurio]

Distracting.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There's no such thing as gravity. Black holes suck.

[Paul Mercurio]

Sorry, you should put that on a business card.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So what's a business card? And explain that. So as it gets smaller, the amount of volume that's going to evaporate out gets smaller faster relative to the surface area. And so it evaporates in a flash of light. So a tiny enough black hole will not last long enough for you to come upon it and then put your life at risk. Plus, we don't expect there to be many of them, even if they were there. And space is really vast and really empty. You ever see the video? The video, the sci fi movies where person's trying to navigate the asteroid belt. Duck left, duck right, duck, duck, duck. Even in the expanse, they did this. They got asteroids. No. You know the average distance between any two random asteroids in the asteroid belt? It's like 50 miles. Some number way bigger. So you could literally have ever shown.

[Paul Mercurio]

So if you're driving through that, you could literally, like, use your knee to drive and eat a big Mac and then eventually put on makeup. Put on makeup. Answer some texts. Yeah. Yell at your kids in the backseat.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

In fact, Pioneer 10 was the. I think it was the first spacecraft to traverse the asteroid belt. Americans. Americans remain the only country to have probes outside of the asteroid belt. Okay. There was some concern. Will it survive the asteroid? Yes, it survived. Of course it survived.

[Paul Mercurio]

So we packed a lot in there. In terms of Derek's question, or do they radiate fast enough?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Paul Mercurio]

Not to pose any problems.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's the answer.

[Paul Mercurio]

Yes, that's the answer. Because of the dilation. Okay, got it. All right. Lily Rose. Hello, Dr. Tyson and Lord. Nice. Or. But he's not here.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, so put in your name with your new title. Put it in right now.

[Paul Mercurio]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Graft it in.

[Paul Mercurio]

Go. Okay. Hello, hello, Dr. Tyson and Baron Mercurio. Okay, Lily Rose here. That really does roll off my tongue. Lily Rose here from Virginia. My question is, was the wow audio signal ever solved? Have scientists determined what was heard, or do you have any theories on what it was? Thank you and love the show.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So back in the day when we had chart recorders, there was a radio signal. By the way, radio is not the same thing as sound. We equate the two because we used radio waves to transmit audio into a box called a radio. And we associate the word radio with sound. But radio is a band of light that travels at the speed of light.

[Paul Mercurio]

Sound is the result of.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You can transmit sound with. With optical light as you can do with fiber optics. For example, they have fiber optics speaker connections to your. So you have to be clever about the modulation of the electromagnetic signal and know how to read that and turn that into sound on the other end. So the wow. Signal was a radio signal that rose up out of the din of cosmic noise and then it never rose up again.

[Paul Mercurio]

How long did it. How long did we.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I don't remember how long it lasted, but the astronomers on, on duty, they say wow. That's why it's called the wow signal. Like wow and an exclamation.

[Paul Mercurio]

Can I just say something?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What?

[Paul Mercurio]

You guys couldn't come up with a what?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Holy. No. What did you want?

[Paul Mercurio]

I. Well, don't have a 6 year old. Name it. Golly. G Whisker.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Like, what's the G. Willigers. So it was before. Omg. No one knew how to do that yet.

[Paul Mercurio]

What's the speculation on what the source of this was?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

If that has been solved with some explanation? I don't know.

[Paul Mercurio]

But how was there anything. We speculate all the time if we.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Want it to be aliens. And aliens should know better than this. You don't just send out one pulse of signal. You want a rhythm in there so that anyone eavesdropping on you will know it's not from the universe itself. Maybe you can't do just one blip. And if you send any blips at all, send them at regular intervals.

[Paul Mercurio]

But it was a consistent signal.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, it was one. It was one blip.

[Paul Mercurio]

Maybe it was from another star system. An alien left the TV on and fell asleep?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It could have. Yeah, sure.

[Paul Mercurio]

Well, you're gonna mock me, Mr. Wow. That's as plausible as naming this thing wow. Audio screen.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, I'm saying I don't know what. And just because you don't know what it is doesn't mean you know what it is. Wow. Wow. You said wow.

[Paul Mercurio]

God.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Busted.

[Paul Mercurio]

Oh, my God.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Busted.

[Paul Mercurio]

It's not fair that you take acid for these and I don't. No, go ahead.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, just to be clear, there are people who see something in the sky that they don't understand.

[Paul Mercurio]

Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They don't know what it is. And they say, because I don't know what it is. I know what it is. It's intelligent aliens visiting from another planet.

[Paul Mercurio]

No, but that's just people wanting to believe.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's my point. Just because you don't know what you're looking at, it doesn't mean you know what you're looking at. That needs to be a bumper sticker.

[Paul Mercurio]

Exactly. Okay, has the wow signal, has that been left alone? Is anybody still pursuing that?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They went back to the. It's been revisited, as they say.

[Paul Mercurio]

You.

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[Paul Mercurio]

We'Re going to move on. Conrad Dunphy Dr. Tyson Conrad Dunphy here from Portland, Oregon.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Portland, love it.

[Paul Mercurio]

Portland. On the Multiverse ish JWST coming out with a lot of data supporting the black holed universe hypothesis. What is the likelihood that physics within a different black hole would be similar to ours? And if those physics are similar, what would be the first guess at how we escape our black hole universe to visit another wormhole?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow. It's a lot there. So there's only some tentative maybe for.

[Paul Mercurio]

Those that don't know. JWST My people. Well, you know, just because you don't know what gender might be somebody new. It might be somebody new just cause.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You don't know what j. Okay, okay. So I'll explain it for others and not you. Cause you already know it. Okay. Compelled by Paul to bring everyone onto the same page. JWST James Webb space telescope has in one recent measurement found evidence of possible rotation among an ensemble of galaxies, which we don't expect. If the universe was born in the ways we expected via the big Bang. Okay. It would mean there was some net rotation of the universe. We know from equations that are in one of these books that inside a black hole opens a whole new space time continuum. So a black hole is however accrete matter that circulate toilet bowl style. We expect black holes to have rotation rates. Wait a minute. If our universe has a rotation rate and we are a space time existing with that and we have a horizon, are we in a black hole? There's a chance of that. Can't rule that out. Okay. Now that means we're in a contained universe with our own laws of physics in the multiverse. Every multiverse would have a different, slightly different laws of physics. Quantum physics tells us that you don't want to visit those other universes.

[Paul Mercurio]

Why?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because the charge on the electron might be slightly different from what's going on in your body. And you would collapse into a pile of goo. Totally mess you up.

[Paul Mercurio]

So like Star Trek, the whole like transport me, beam me up. It could be a mess.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You'd be a pile of goo. Yes. So if you do find one with I would, dare I say, identical laws of physics, then I don't mind being the first to step in there. You would need a wormhole to connect us.

[Paul Mercurio]

Do you think it's plausible that there's one with an identical.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, if there's an infinite number, there'd be one with identical. Yes.

[Paul Mercurio]

Do you think we're ever gonna be.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Capable of discovering wormholing to another universe? I don't know. I want wormholes as badly as the Next person. And I like. I like the way Rick makes wormholes. You know, he has a gun or some device. That'll do. He uses real science. Whereas this guy from. Who's this guy? You know what I'm talking about? Dr. Strange from Marvel. He uses magic. That's. You know, what's that?

[Paul Mercurio]

That's the worst. No, I'm telling you, you should be outlawed. All right. That was a great question.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You could. You'd probably do it with a wormhole. But otherwise, the universes are not connecting.

[Paul Mercurio]

Connected.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And that's kind of what defines them as independent universe.

[Paul Mercurio]

And even if you could go visit, you're not sure you want to because you don't know what you're gonna do.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You don't know if they're made of antimatter.

[Paul Mercurio]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The antimatter is not in our universe. Where did it go? If it exists anywhere, maybe it made another universe. So here's what you do. Bring a little coin with you. You see a person in the other universe, flip him a coin. If he spontaneously explodes, quickly go back.

[Paul Mercurio]

It's not the same. No. But the minute I entered the black hole through the wormhole, that universe, that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We have to come in contact with other matter.

[Paul Mercurio]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And you know, space is pretty empty. Deep space is very empty.

[Paul Mercurio]

So.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Time for one more.

[Paul Mercurio]

All right, John, what you got for me? John Swiley. Hi, Dr. Tyson, a longtime listener, first timer, inquirer from Athens, Georgia. With all the excitement around JWST's discoveries of unexpected.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That would be James Webb Space Telescope.

[Paul Mercurio]

So annoying. Unexpected mature galaxies. A question struck me. Why does Neil Tyson have friends? That's a weird question. What if we're not actually seeing galaxies from the early universe, but instead light entering from beyond it, not unlike a pinhole camera. Could the Big Bang have been a narrow portal from apparent universe? And JWST is now picking up photons that bled through that pinhole event horizon. Maybe those galaxies look so evolved because they are. Thanks for everything.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow. Or we don't fully understand the formation of galaxies. I mean, just have a look at. How extraordinary is your explanation to account for a mystery? Because we have mysteries all the time in modern astrophysics. So to say there's a portal to another universe. Okay, but Occam's Razor remains a very good tool to apply here. Do you know Occam's Razor? It's like Occam said, one ought not posit multiplicity without necessity.

[Paul Mercurio]

I say that every day. He stole that from me. So how is that relevant here?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What it Means is if you have a complex hypothesis to explain something and someone else is walking around with a simpler explanation, the simpler explanation is probably correct.

[Paul Mercurio]

Right, but that's sort of answering the question from 30,000ft. So if we're not actually seeing galaxies from the early universe, but instead light entering from beyond it, not unlike a pinhole camera.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So that's implying that we can see beyond the universe rather than within the universe itself. So pick, you just make judgment as to what is most likely to you. And for me, extraordinary explanations, as Carl Sagan famously said, require extraordinary evidence. And while it's unusual to have these mature galaxies so early, maybe we don't fully understand galaxy formation. And the whole point of jwst, why it looks at the universe in the infrared is to see galaxies being born that emit ultraviolet. And over the lifetime of the universe, redshift had expanded it until it has become infrared.

[Paul Mercurio]

Is it a constant that when a galaxy forms, it'll always emit ultraviolet? I mean, there's so many. To me, as we talk about this, there's things we think we know, but we don't know, that anything could be happening out there. Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, but that's true and we have to be open for that. But if you have some sense of how things do happen, there's no harm in starting with that assumption.

[Paul Mercurio]

Right, Another great question.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No harm.

[Paul Mercurio]

Nope, no harm.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

One more. I'm going to be. It's a lightning round.

[Paul Mercurio]

One more paradox. Hello, this is Dennis from Salisbury, Indiana. Dr. Tyson, if gravitons do exist, shouldn't we be able to cancel gravity waves when putting them under close scrutiny? Can an equivalent to the double slit experiment be set up at LIGO to cancel the wave?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So the bigger story is if you can cancel out light, such as in the slit experiment, there's a bright line and a dark line and it's bright, dark and bright because the troughs add together and you get darkness and the crests add together and you get bright. All right. They're wondering if you can take gravity. If it's a wave, cancel it out. And if you cancel it out, did you cancel out the gravity itself? That's an interesting question. Can you create negative gravity in this way or zero out the gravity in this way? And I don't think so.

[Paul Mercurio]

Why are you hesitant on that?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, also, what LIGO is detecting is a change in the gravity, not the gravity itself. So, yeah, you can, surely.

[Paul Mercurio]

But if you can have change, then you could have negative gravity.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. In principle, isn't that possible?

[Paul Mercurio]

Yes, but we've not.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

However, is it really negative gravity if it's just the part of the wave that is a trough?

[Paul Mercurio]

Well, isn't negative gravity basically static?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I would think. Correct?

[Paul Mercurio]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Correct.

[Paul Mercurio]

Or frozen?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Correct. And you would need that if you wanted to make a wormhole. Because wormholes take negative gravity and expand well.

[Paul Mercurio]

Therefore, if a wormhole exists, then there was negative gravity. Must exist, right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, but you can use negative gravity. Oh, sorry. Oh, yes. Well, I don't know. Unless aliens found another way to make a wormhole. If we see a wormhole out there, somebody discovered negative gravity. That's correct.

[Paul Mercurio]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There you go.

[Paul Mercurio]

That was it. All right, Great questions. Done.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Love you, man. Thanks for coming through.

[Paul Mercurio]

Always great to see you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right.

[Paul Mercurio]

And I think I'm going to try to dress up a little bit more.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

When I come here.

[Paul Mercurio]

I am a Baron now, so, you know.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I don't know how Barons dress. So. This has been Another installment of StarTalk Cosmic Queries grab Bag edition with Baron Paul Mercurio.

[Paul Mercurio]

If you see me on the street, please salute and curtsy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And he's out of a job beginning May May and the Late Show.

[Paul Mercurio]

Anybody needs their house painted out. Moving. I'm handy with tools.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Alright. This is StarTalk. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always. Keep looking up, honey. Do not make plans. Saturday, September 13th, okay?

[Paul Mercurio]

Why? What's happening?

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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[Paul Mercurio]

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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[Paul Mercurio]

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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