Cosmic Queries – Death of a Black Hole

Summary

StarTalk Radio: Cosmic Queries – Death of a Black Hole
Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Co-Host: Chuck Nice
Date: October 14, 2025

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Episode Overview

This StarTalk "Cosmic Queries: Grab Bag Edition" episode features Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Chuck Nice fielding listener questions about astronomy, black holes, time travel, entropy, vacuums, and more. With characteristic humor and clarity, the duo addresses a range of topics blending science, philosophy, and pop culture—while highlighting insights from the latest astrophysics and cosmic mysteries.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Don't We Have Lunar Eclipses Every Month?

[02:17–06:06]

• The moon's orbital plane is tilted relative to Earth’s path (the ecliptic).
• Eclipses occur only when the sun, Earth, and moon all line up perfectly; this doesn't happen every month.
• Lunar eclipses occur when the full moon crosses Earth's shadow; solar eclipses occur when the new moon blocks the sun.
• Quote: "You can only get an eclipse if both the sun and the moon are in the same place in their tilted orbits." — Chuck Nice [03:35]
• Cultural references: Frequent eclipses in fictional worlds like Dune make eclipses less significant.

2. The Death (or Explosion) of a Black Hole and Hawking Radiation

[06:39–10:41]

• As black holes evaporate via Hawking radiation, mass and energy are emitted over time, culminating in a final burst of gamma rays.
• The "explosion" at the end is the black hole’s last gasp, not a universe-filling event.
• Addressing speculative ideas: the Big Bang likely wasn't an "exploding black hole"; and the gravity attributed to dark energy can't be explained by a gigantic external object pulling our universe.
• Quote: "The very last gasp of the black hole will be of such high energy, it'll be a burst of gamma rays." — Chuck Nice [08:06]
• Dark energy remains one of the major unsolved questions in cosmology.

3. Should "Black Hole" be Renamed?

[11:11–15:24]

• Listener suggests "Black Omega Star" as an alternative name.
• Tyson and Nice riff on the idea, noting the term "hole" describes a 3D phenomenon: objects (and light) fall in from any direction.
• Quote: "I think it's the best named thing there ever was." — Chuck Nice [13:54]
• Fun tangent about the etymology of "galaxy" (from Greek for "milk," hence "Milky Way") and the poetic Chinese name "Silver River."

4. Causality, Time Travel, and the Structure of Spacetime

[21:05–27:53]

• Listener asks: Could spacetime "split" to preserve consistency if causality is violated via time travel?
• Discussion of time travel paradoxes and Stephen Hawking’s "time travel conjecture."
• Real-world sci-fi references: TV series Time Tunnel, Hawking’s real-life "Time Traveler Party."
• Quote: "Is the universe going to get angry if you manage to go back in time, then tell yourself to not go back in time?" — Neil deGrasse Tyson [24:30]
• Theoretical possibility: If causality is breached, maybe the universe splits into multiple timelines.

5. Jupiter as Earth’s "Shield"

[28:35–31:21]

• Jupiter's massive gravity prevents many comets/asteroids from reaching the inner solar system.
• All inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) benefit from this giant planet's defense.
• Discussion of orbital distances and how formation of solar systems can vary—e.g., "hot Jupiters" in exoplanetary systems.

6. Entropy, Life, and "Order" on Earth

[32:11–37:36]

• Second law of thermodynamics: Entropy increases in closed systems.
• Earth isn't closed; it receives the sun’s energy, which enables complexity and life.
• As life's entropy decreases, the sun’s entropy increases; when the sun "dies," so does our respite from disorder.
• Example: A glass sphere ecosystem in the Rose Center—only works because sunlight gets in.
• Quote: "If our entropy is going down, life is lower entropy...somebody's entropy had to go up—the sun." — Chuck Nice [34:37]

7. Entropy & Death, Calories and Life

[37:46–39:19]

• Living beings avoid entropy by consuming food (energy); death renders the body a closed system, leading to decay and disorder.
• Fun asides on calorie counts and energy in different cultures.

8. Relativity and "Speed Limits"

[39:20–43:14]

• If two ships travel near the speed of light in opposite directions, neither would see the other go faster than light—a result of special relativity’s velocity addition formula.
• At everyday speeds, velocities add simply; at relativistic speeds, a special formula must be used.
• Quote: "The universe is not obeying our formulas. We've made the formula to tell us what the universe is doing." — Chuck Nice [42:33]

9. Is the Universe a Four-Dimensional Tesseract?

[46:02–48:47]

• Question: Since the universe is expanding, is space 4D like a tesseract?
• Time is not a space dimension—our universe is 3D space + 1 time dimension (very different from 4 spatial dimensions).
• If there were four spatial dimensions plus time, that would be a five-dimensional universe.

10. The Value of Scientific Literacy

[49:23–53:39]

• What does one truly gain from scientific understanding, beyond knowledge?
• Tyson: The power to recognize falsehoods and charlatanism.
• Understanding one's own ignorance is profoundly valuable.
• Science often involves measuring things before understanding them (e.g., stellar spectra).
• "Just because you can measure it, doesn't mean you understand it." — Chuck Nice [51:31]

11. The Nature of Vacuum and "Nothing"

[55:02–60:31]

• What is a vacuum—how does it differ in space?
• Fans don’t work in space because they require air to move.
• True vacuum in space: even regions between galaxies have a few particles per cubic meter.
• At the deepest level, even a perfect vacuum is still governed by laws of physics, virtual particles, and spacetime fabric.
• Quote: "If you want a place where there's nothing, shouldn't you be removing the laws of physics as well?" — Chuck Nice [58:15]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "It empowers you to know when someone else is full of shit." — Chuck Nice on scientific literacy [50:30]
• "We're a prisoner of the present, forever transitioning between our inaccessible past and our unknowable future." — Neil deGrasse Tyson [47:16]
• Running joke: The creation of a superhero "Black Omega Star" as an alternative name for black holes, blending science and 1970s pop culture.
• Key & Peele skit reference about Neil’s home life, poking fun at his cosmic perspective [16:22].
• The recurring friendly banter between Tyson and Nice interweaves the science with levity and relatability.

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Important Timestamps

| Segment Description | Timestamp | |-------------------------------------------|--------------| | Why aren’t there monthly lunar eclipses? | 02:17–06:06 | | Black hole evaporation and Hawking radi. | 06:39–10:41 | | Should "black hole" be renamed? | 11:11–15:24 | | Causality, time travel, universe splits | 21:05–27:53 | | Jupiter’s orbit and planetary protection | 28:35–31:21 | | Entropy, open systems, and sun’s role | 32:11–37:36 | | Life, entropy, and death (calories) | 37:46–39:19 | | Special relativity and speed addition | 39:20–43:14 | | Is the universe a four-spatial-D tesseract?| 46:02–48:47 | | Scientific literacy and life perspective | 49:23–53:39 | | The nature of vacuum and "nothingness" | 55:02–60:31 |

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Summary & Takeaway

The episode delivers classic StarTalk: physics made engaging, approachable, and humorous, while also unapologetically precise. Whether addressing black holes, the weirdness of time, the mystery of vacuum, or the value of a skeptical mind, Tyson and Nice offer equal parts science and storytelling—creating an episode that both informs and entertains.

Closing Encouragement:
"Keep looking up."
— Neil deGrasse Tyson

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Transcript

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

A massage chair might seem a bit extravagant, especially these days. Eight different settings, adjustable intensity. Plus it's heated and it just feels so good. Yes, a massage chair might seem a bit extravagant, but when it can come with a car, suddenly it seems quite practical. The all new 2025 Volkswagen Tiguan. Packed with premium features like available massaging front seats, it only feels extravagant.

[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 progr between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. Chuck, that was a brilliant set of questions.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, it was.

[Chuck Nice]

Some bordered on the philosophical. Even the spiritual maybe.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, I was feeling it and I wrote them all. I'm taking credit for every question. You were lying.

[Chuck Nice]

You did pretty good with pronouncing people's names. This round.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I would give myself a C. He's still working it.

[Chuck Nice]

Coming up, cosmic queries grab bag edition on StarTalk. 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. We got cosmic queries grab bag today, Chuck.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Hey, what's happening? Yeah, we got a grab bag.

[Chuck Nice]

You grabbed inside the bag.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I did it. Sometimes they let you do that. Stop.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, so let's go right in.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, we might as well jump right into it. This is Roger McVeigh who says hello, Dr. Tyson. Lord. Nice. Roger from Wisconsin here, currently in Surin, Thailand. Wow. Way to go, Roger.

[Chuck Nice]

Ooh, Good food in Thailand.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. He says, why is there not a lunar eclipse every month? Is it just the distance or the wobble or something else?

[Chuck Nice]

Great question. That's an observant question. Yeah, very good, Very good. So if you look at the path the sun takes in the sky throughout the year. Right. Okay. So the sun actually moves against the background stars. You can't see the stars, but you can kind of see them at twilight, like before sunrise. But it's not so bright that you can't see the stars. Look at the stars that are there. They come back in a month. It's a different set of stars because I say the sun is moving. We are orbiting the sun. So our sight line on the sun is changing every month. The sun is in front of a different set of stars. All right? That is called the ecliptic. The moon orbits in a plane that is tilted to the ecliptic.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Gotcha.

[Chuck Nice]

You can only get an eclipse if both the sun and the moon are in the same place.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

In their tilted orbits. Okay, okay. I'm saying the sun has an orbit. I'm very pre Copernican in this description.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

When they're in the same place, then Earth, the sun and the moon line up. But at any other time, the Moon is above the sun, below the sun, to the side, and it's not. It's got to be. Right. And it's called the ecliptic because when the sun, Moon, and Earth line up, you get an eclipse.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, gosh darn. That makes sense, doesn't it? Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

We good here?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

So you can have a full moon, but it's not crossing the ecliptic.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

So it's not going to enter our shadow. You can have a new moon, and it's not crossing the ecliptic, and so it's not going to pass in front of the sun. You need a new moon or a full Moon coinciding with when they cross the ecliptic.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

And so that doesn't happen every month, right? Not every month. And in Dune, was it Dune, okay. Where there were eclipses every day, there's something. Something getting eclipsed all the time.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I don't know which.

[Chuck Nice]

So it was not even interesting anymore because it was a kind of a daily phenomenon.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's like a sunrise at that point.

[Chuck Nice]

The sunrise. Yeah, it's still fun, but it's not. You're not gonna plan your life around observing it. That's the simple reason. So if the two were aligned, we would have a.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

If they were always in the same plane, it would happen that way every.

[Chuck Nice]

Month we'd have a total solar eclipse. And the difference is not that this was in the question. A solar eclipse, you have to be on the spot on Earth where moon shadow drags across Earth's surface. And if you're not in that spot, you're not going to see the eclipse. Right. Whereas in a lunar eclipse, the Moon is entering Earth's shadow in space. Right. Anybody who can see the full moon will watch it enter Earth's shadow. The entire half of the Earth that faces the Moon will see a lunar eclipse. Lunar eclipses are slightly. Last I remember, it's slightly less common than solar eclipses, but everybody gets to see it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, that's cool.

[Chuck Nice]

You don't have to travel, you don't.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Have to go anywhere.

[Chuck Nice]

Very kind. Very kind of the universe.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, it is, it is very cool.

[Chuck Nice]

Roger.

[Sponsor/Advertiser Voice]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

That's the only reason.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Elise. What?

[Chuck Nice]

What?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What?

[Chuck Nice]

Spell it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

E L, Y, S S I E, L. Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

I don't know how you, where you do it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm going with Elise.

[Chuck Nice]

This is a one name person. Like share, like Madonna.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, but it's like the, the more difficult version. See? Cher, Madonna. Salutations from Newcastle, Australia.

[Chuck Nice]

Love them.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Which. If it is the case that a black hole explodes at the end of its life, would that explosion contain all the energy the black hole ever sucked in? Or has all that energy already escaped via Hawking radiation? And I wonder if the Big Bang could have possibly been an exploding black hole of such mass that the event horizon was larger than our observable universe. And the universe as we know it is now stretching out out to fill the void left by the universally large black hole. Perhaps beyond is a far larger, far older galaxy that is pulling on the mass of our observable universe at great enough distance. Would seem that, like, it would seem that the pull attributed to dark energy. Thank you so much. Did we get a black hole farthest.

[Chuck Nice]

Out and was that the translation?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Basically. And then there's another galaxy that's older that is actually pulling on us, but what we're feeling is the gravity of that other galaxy. And that's why we think we have dark matter.

[Chuck Nice]

Got it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, couple things. All right, so he's right. As the black hole evaporates, it is losing mass.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

And the, the smaller the black hole becomes, the faster it evaporates.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Until the rate at which it evaporates begoes exponential. And in Stephen Hawking's original paper where he describes this, he says the very last gasp of the black hole will be of such high energy, it'll be a burst of gamma rays.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Gamma.

[Chuck Nice]

Gamma rays, because the wavelength of light is the size of the black hole emitting it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

So the black hole gets smaller and smaller, the wavelength of light gets smaller and smaller, and that means it has higher and higher energy. Small wavelengths are higher energy. And so the very last gaps would be gamma rays. But that explosion means there's nothing left. So it's not like that's exploding and then you're filling the void with something that'll expand to fill that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, that was it. That's it. That was the end of everything.

[Chuck Nice]

It. Right it for the black hole.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. So it's Spent.

[Chuck Nice]

Now you want something outside our horizon, possibly pulling away, giving us the delusion that there's some mysterious force pressing outward on the universe. The reason why that's not likely. Nothing wrong with the idea coming in. All right, Somebody's tugging on it from the other side. All right, because you still. If that were the right explanation, it means you're still dealing with ordinary gravity. Right. Because that's ordinary gravity just pulling the other way. All right. And it wouldn't be a galaxy. It would be a whole other universe pulling. All right. The reason why it's probably not true is the dark energy is greatest the larger the region of space that you're describing. So it's not obvious to me why an external force of gravity would manifest that way here. Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So what you're saying is there are regions where it's greater than in other regions.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, it depends on how big is the region that you carve. That's all. So it's a property of the vacuum.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

So the more vacuum they have, the more of this you have.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

That's how you think about it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I should have said, okay. So the more.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. All right. So as the universe gets bigger, this phenomenon is more significant.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Whereas if there's just something else pulling on the other side and we got bigger, the gravity would be less and less because we're getting farther. Yeah. So any and all ideas accepted, I mean, or considered. Because we don't know what the hell dark energy is.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And, you know, that's what makes it so much fun that Alicia can say this, because what I love is when our listeners, like, think.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And come up with these, like, ideas. And it's real thinking.

[Chuck Nice]

It's real thinking.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You know, it's scientifically based. It's really cool. Yeah, yeah. All right. But the answer is no. Okay, all right, all right, here we go. This is paradox. Another one named person. Just paradox.

[Chuck Nice]

Paradox.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

There's a wine called paradox, but it has ducks on it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Par. Like a paradox.

[Chuck Nice]

Paradox. Paradox. Yeah. I think it's a play on that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's very funny. I. I kind of. At first I was just like, man. I'm like, wait a minute. That's kind of cool.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, yeah, I see what they did there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, that's a paradox. Okay, here. Greetings, Dr. Tyson. This is Dennis from Salisbury, Indiana. The case for taking the word whole out of black hole. They are not holes in space. It's very off putting to think of them that way. Renaming them could possibly give new perspective on them. B O S Black Omega Star. How about that? He is upset that we call them black holes. They are not holes. And so the Black Omega Star, which sounds like a new Marvel character.

[Chuck Nice]

No, it sounds like the blaxploitation movie that was never made in 1970s.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, that's right. He came from another planet with superpowers in his afro powered by radiation and disco music. He's Black Omega Star. Black Omega Star.

[Chuck Nice]

Something's going down at the disco.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Don't worry about it, baby. Black Omega Star will be there. Hold on for a second while I pick out my radioactive Afro.

[Chuck Nice]

So now I forgot the question.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Can we rename it?

[Chuck Nice]

I'm not one to debate word definitions.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay?

[Chuck Nice]

I'm not that guy. I'm not that guy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I see.

[Chuck Nice]

Good words are good words. And if you have a good reason to think it should be different, I'll hear you out.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But see, don't they call it a black hole because when you look at it through a telescope, first of all, you see all the light of the universe.

[Chuck Nice]

Forget the light. I call it a black hole because you fall in. You fall in.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, that's true. You are falling in. You're falling in.

[Chuck Nice]

The difference is when we think of holes, we think of a two dimensional surface and you fall through the hole. This is a three dimensional hole. Any direction you approach it, you fall in. It's a hole. So that's a little freaky, but.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And by the way, when you fall in, you fall in every direction then.

[Chuck Nice]

Every direction.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because you're falling into a three dimensional hole.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So you got to be falling in every direction at the same time. If you are falling in from any direction.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

When you get inside of it.

[Chuck Nice]

I don't know what you just said.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Neither do I. Who cares? It just makes sense that you're falling in every direction.

[Chuck Nice]

It's just we. So it's a little odd that it's a hole in every direction, but. So it's a three dimensional whole. I mean, that's what it is. And light doesn't come out, so it's black. I think it's the best named thing there ever was.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, well that ends this conversation like. Well, there you go. Sorry about that.

[Chuck Nice]

No, just think about it. Because the word galaxy, you know what that comes from?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No.

[Chuck Nice]

It's Greek. Greek for galactos.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Galactos.

[Chuck Nice]

You know what galactose means?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Let me see. He's the arch nemesis of Black Omega Star.

[Chuck Nice]

No, galactose is milk. The Milky way. This is how you get that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, that makes sense.

[Chuck Nice]

It's poetic and romantic, but it's still. You have to go there. You gotta, like, construct what's going on. Right. And in China, where milk is a less popular beverage than in Europe, they don't call it the Milky Way. They call it the Silver River.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, that's lovely.

[Chuck Nice]

That's way beautiful. For me, that's better.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I've seen them better.

[Chuck Nice]

That's better.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Sorry, Greeks.

[Chuck Nice]

And by the way, we found a sugar in milk, a couple sugars in milk. One of them, we call it galactose.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

That's one of the sugars. And the other one is lactose.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Lactose, galactose. All because of the galaxy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

That's cool. Crossing our sky. Anyway, so I think Black Hole is good, but Black Omega Star, you know, that's. Again, it's the movie that was never written.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's kind of wild, man. I kind of dig it.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. Well, there you go, Dennis.

[Chuck Nice]

We get a phone call from some Hollywood director.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

I'll make this movie.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. Black Omega Star.

[Chuck Nice]

Radioactive Half Fruit.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, all right, here we go. Sam, I'm sorry. Oh, man, I'm. Now I'm thinking about Black Omega Star coming home from work and just this woman is just like, where you been? Oh, you got time to be out there saving the universe, but you can't be in here taking care of these kids.

[Chuck Nice]

Kids.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Black Omega Star.

[Chuck Nice]

This is the home life. The home life of a superhero.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Get your ass over there to them Black Omega dishes. That's what you need to do. All right, here we go.

[Chuck Nice]

Get you a Black Omega ass on.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That lawn mower and mow the lawn.

[Chuck Nice]

Take the garbage out.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yep.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, here we go.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

This is Sam Green.

[Chuck Nice]

Have you seen the Key and Peele skit on? What? Where they imitate me and my wife.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

You have seen that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I finally did see it.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Somebody showed it to me here, and it was very funny.

[Chuck Nice]

Where Jordan Peele plays me.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

And I'm looking through a telescope, and Keegan comes in dressed like my wife.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

And said, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, why don't you stop looking through that telescope and do the dishes and take the garbage out and walk the dog. And then he says, well, in another universe, in the quantum race, that's already happened. So are we in this universe, or. He says, something really cosmic. And then she says, oh, okay. So when I first met them, it was at the Emmys. Cause during one of our nominations when Stark Talk was on. Nat Chio. And we were nominated for an Emmy three times. Very nice they were there and so I went up to him and said, dude, my wife has a PhD in mathematical physics so the conversation would not have gone down that way.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And then that's when Jordan Peele went well, actually.

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[Chuck Nice]

Hi, I'm Ernie Carducci from Columbus, Ohio. I'm here with my son Ernie because we listen to StarTalk every night and support StarTalk on Patreon.

[Sponsor/Advertiser Voice]

This is Star Talk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. This is Sam Green. He says, hi, Dr. Tyson Lord. Nice Sam here living on Tulsa time.

[Chuck Nice]

Tulsa?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's right.

[Chuck Nice]

Tulsa, Oklahoma. I rode in the. There's a. There's a river there in Tulsa.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Did not.

[Chuck Nice]

I wrote there annual festival.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Never been.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, when I was rode for the University of Texas.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, very nice.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. Beautiful town. That town has these big praying hands.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I think they need it.

[Chuck Nice]

He says.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He says, my question is about space, time and causality. We usually limit our models of space time to ones where causality is preserved. But I wonder, could spacetime behave in a sort of meiotic or metotic way to preserve itself when causality is violated? I realize in I'm borrowing from biology here, but imagine space time splitting when.

[Chuck Nice]

Encountering that mitosis where.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

M, E, I, T, O, S, I.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's mitosis. Yes, mitosis.

[Chuck Nice]

What is he. What word is that?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He said meiotic. M E, I, O, T, I, C.

[Chuck Nice]

Or maybe he's borrowing from biology words because I don't know that in physics.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, and mitotic, which maybe that is the mitosis.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I don't know either one of those words either. So maybe we can look them up, guys, because, you know, maybe I'm not even saying them right, to be honest. Who knows? I don't know.

[Chuck Nice]

People cut you slack every time now.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, you know, listen, it's an honor to have me mispronounce your name or a word. All right? You keep telling yourself that. He's like, come on, man, you got.

[Chuck Nice]

Don't, don't.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Don't let that happen. All right, let's get back to him. He says, I'm realizing I'm borrowing from biology here, but imagine space time splitting when encountering a causal mass or replicating to contain a causal characteristics. Could such a mechanism a causal as in not Causal, not cause a as in not? Could such a Mechanism be a way the universe maintains consistency.

[Chuck Nice]

I like that idea. So the only way you're gonna mess up causality is if you go back in time. Right. And Rich Gott wrote a whole. You know he's a friend of StarTalk. Yes. In fact, he's a co author of mine. We co authored a book together called welcome to the Universe.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Very nice.

[Chuck Nice]

It was based on a course that we co taught together at Princeton along with Michael Strauss. So the three of us. Okay, so it's Tyson Strauss, Gott. G O T T Wanna find that? And there are like four versions of the book. There's welcome to the Universe that's like textbook style. Then there's a brief welcome to the Universe that's like a pocket. Sorry. And then there's welcome to the universe in 3D.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Like you guys really milked that thing. I'm telling you. Wait a minute. Way to ride a horse.

[Chuck Nice]

All with Princeton University Press. So Rich Gott wrote a book called Time Travel in Einstein's Universe.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

And there turns out there are solutions. If you take a certain path around a black hole or a pair of black holes and then come back, you can come back before you left. There's a solution that I don't know how to calculate, but people who are fluent in this do. But we don't have to worry about the details of that. What we care about is the idea of it. All right. Is the universe going to get angry if you manage to go back in time, then tell yourself to not go back in time? Right. How do you square that?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That would be the most awesome thing I could see. Why the universe could get mad at that.

[Chuck Nice]

Right? Right. So does the universe split? I mean, that's kind of what he's hinting at.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's what he's saying. Because at that point, what you have done because you, you already.

[Chuck Nice]

Because you can't let it go.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You already went.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So when you come back and don't go again, what happened to the wind? See, because you already went. That's how you got back.

[Chuck Nice]

Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But in the movies, what happens is you always end up doing something else that puts you right back where you gotta go.

[Chuck Nice]

Or you disappear from the photo. Right. Stephen Hawking has something called the time travel conjecture.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

He thinks thought that one day we would find a law of nature that explicitly says you cannot go backwards in time. Okay. And so as a conjecture, he's imagining that one day we will make such a discovery. You know what he did? He had a time travel party. Did you know about this?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I did not.

[Chuck Nice]

He or his people hosted a party at Caltech and the announcement was made to all time travelers come back in time and meet us here and we will greet you. And nobody.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, that's funny.

[Chuck Nice]

So another one, you know the one about the Titanic in the TV series Time Tunnel, I don't know. That had the same producer. So there was a couple of shows that had the same kind of land of the giants Time Tunnel. It was like one hour TV shows, primetime, that were sciencey, science fiction Y and Time Tunnel. The very first episode, they go back in time and they're kind of lost in time. That's the show. They try to come back and they can't. They land up in another place. So where's the first place they went? The Titanic.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Titanic.

[Chuck Nice]

It was the Titanic.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, that was the end of the series. Oh, well, that was nice while it lasted.

[Chuck Nice]

And so then the reveal is there as he's walking on the deck. Then he sees the lifesaver.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

This is USS Titanic.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, no, it's not us, it's.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, that's right, because it's not the U.S. british. British.

[Chuck Nice]

Right, yeah. But I don't know. SS Titanic.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

SS Titanic.

[Chuck Nice]

It's been hypothesized because everyone is so intrigued by the Titanic and that story that the day time travel actually gets invented, everyone wants to go back to the Titanic and that's why it sank. Yeah, well, there wasn't enough boats for everybody because they're all time travelers.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I don't want to go back to the Titanic. I want to go back to a robot, the BRO boat, sitting off to the side of the Titanic like, and eating some popcorn like, wow, that is messed up. Look at that.

[Chuck Nice]

You know, who knows how that would get resolved? Either you can't go back in time or if you do, the universe splits and prevents you from altering one of the timelines. One of the timelines. Correct. And we're not there yet. Right, but it's a great question. Yeah, okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's super cool. Parker man says hello. Dr. Tyson and sir Charles. This is Parker Mann, retired geophysicist.

[Chuck Nice]

All right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

In Ventura, California. Now looking up instead of down. Oh, nice.

[Chuck Nice]

Tell me the name again.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

This is Parker Man.

[Chuck Nice]

Parker man. Shout out to you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

All right. And by the way, we need more geologists to look up than down so that they will understand that it's one of our asteroids that took out the dinosaurs. Okay? So we got a whole lot of down looking paleontologists out there. All right. I don't Want to loop you in with the paleontologist, but Earth is your place. But. Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. He says, I recently saw a video in which Dr. Tyson said that Jupiter's orbit allows it to partially protect the Earth from asteroid impacts. If it were further out, would it protect Mars and closer in, protect Venus? Can you elaborate on why Jupiter differentially protects planets based on its orbit? Thank you.

[Chuck Nice]

Good question. Yeah, well, nice question. So we say, protects Earth because we don't care if it protects Venus, anybody else.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But the truth is, it's protecting everybody.

[Chuck Nice]

It's protecting everybody within its orbit.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Within its orbit. Because what would happen is, it's like a lineman.

[Chuck Nice]

A comet would come by, and you cannot escape the gravity of Jupiter.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The gravity of Jupiter.

[Chuck Nice]

I should say that more precisely, you cannot come in and out of the solar system without having felt the influence of Jupiter.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Nice. Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Because the word escape has very precise meaning. I don't want to say it that way. So Jupiter is protecting Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, period. So a comet comes in, and it feels Jupiter, and then it swings out the other side.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

It never even comes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Never even comes in to come towards us.

[Chuck Nice]

Correct. Correct. So. So, plus, the distances between and among the planets is exponential in units of the Earth's sun distance.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Mercury is 0.4. Venus is 0.7. Earth is 11 distance. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Of course it would be.

[Chuck Nice]

Mars is 2 and a half. Oh, Jupiter is 5.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh.

[Chuck Nice]

Saturn is 10.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh.

[Chuck Nice]

Uranus is 20. Neptune is 30.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

No. But the distance was getting really big very fast. That's the point of this lame exercise. I'm trying to lay down. And so all of the inner planets basically are huddled compared to where Jupiter is and its ability to protect its inner children. Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Cool. Is that because the mass of these other planets is so much bigger that they need more distance, so they're not disturbing.

[Chuck Nice]

They would clear out more distance.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They would clear out more distance.

[Chuck Nice]

They would clear out more distance. But the formation of solar systems is still an active field. Because we used to think any other star system would look like our solar system. That's the first assumption. And none of them do.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow, that's so cool.

[Chuck Nice]

Some of them have. Jupiter's as close as Mercury is. Oh, they call hot Jupiters.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's cool.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

How you doing? I'm hot Jupiter. What's up, Saturn? That girl is ratchet, I'm telling you. Right. All right.

[Chuck Nice]

That's simple. If you want it, put a ring on it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. Parker, man, what a great question. Here we go. Freddy Abdon Hey, Neil. Hey, Chuck. My name is Freddie Abdin, an American living in Perria, Colombia.

[Chuck Nice]

But what's the name of the town? I don't know that town.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I don't either.

[Chuck Nice]

Spell it. Maybe I do know it. If you pronounced it right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

P E, R E I, R A.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, it's E I, R A. That sounds Portuguese.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

E I, R, A. Yeah, Portuguese.

[Chuck Nice]

They put the E in front of the I. Yeah. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We're. The best coffee is grown. Ooh. That's right.

[Chuck Nice]

Colombian coffee.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's right. Colombian coffee.

[Chuck Nice]

We used to get those TV commercials.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That are known as cocaine.

[Chuck Nice]

Stop.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The second law of thermodynamics says entropy must increase. Yet for a surprisingly long stretch, Earth maintained extraordinary order and complexity, enabling life to thrive in stark contrast to the decay and disorder we observed elsewhere in the cosmos. That should not have happened, statistically speaking. What could explain that rare pause in entropy, that bubble of low chaos?

[Chuck Nice]

Could it point, Captain Kirk? What could it make explain?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Could it point to the unique initial conditions? Or maybe even some odd influence beyond our natural forces?

[Chuck Nice]

Religious people who know only some physics, but not enough, enough physics, know about the second law of thermodynamics, that everything proceeds to chaos.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Correct.

[Chuck Nice]

That's a simplification. But basically it goes from order to disorder. Okay? And Earth goes from disorder to. Now we have, like, life. We can't get more complicated than life. Right? So they wanted to invoke that as a reason for. Not that physics didn't work, but that the hand of God operated.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Intervened.

[Chuck Nice]

Intervened here, reversing what would otherwise be the trend that we see everywhere else in the universe. So it was not a statement of physics not working. It's a statement of the handiwork of God. And what is a miracle if not the suspension of the laws of physics? The proper way to say the second law of thermodynamics is for any closed system. The system will move to disorder.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. Inexorably, we're not a closed system.

[Chuck Nice]

We're open to the universe. We're open to sunlight. We're bathed in sunlight. That is energy entering our system. Okay? Right. So if you have net energy flow into a system, then it's not a closed system. All right, so now. But you gotta rob Peter to pay Paul. If our entropy is going down, life is lower entropy than what was there before. Somebody's entropy had to go up, really. The sun.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, the sun is dying.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes, it is.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So that we might have life, a different kind of sun, giving up life that we might live.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, I see. What you did there. I see what you did there. So the sun will die, Right? And then when the sun dies, nothing is bolstered after that. Right. And then the whole system goes and goes to entropy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, that's. Look at that.

[Chuck Nice]

Now a quick little aside. In our whole universe, right? We have a completely enclosed sphere, glass sphere that has water and three life forms in it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Why would you do that? That's terrible. Stop.

[Chuck Nice]

That is just awful.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes. They're sealed in this cavity.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, my God.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, and so we have three life forms. There's krill, like really tiny krill, like.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The little shrimpy things.

[Chuck Nice]

Little shrimpy things. We have snails and we have something like kelp, like an underwater plant. Plant Y thing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Plant, plant.

[Chuck Nice]

That creates a complete ecosystem. Okay? So the krill poops, the snails eat the poop.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right?

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And then that fertilizes the kelp and the sunlight comes in and helps the kelp. And then the exact.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, so you noticed it's not a completely closed system, Right. Cause it's made of transparent glass. So sunlight gets in. Okay, so now here's the story. When we were building the Rose center for Earth and Space in the year 1999, because we opened January 1, 2000, there was a lot of construction dust. They finally moved that into place and there's construction dust. So the construction people said, we clearly have to protect this sphere of glass. Up came the tarp.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Poor snaily.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, the plant. Yeah. I mean, so fortunately clear heads caught it. I mean, you can't blame the construction workers. I mean, they're not astrobiologists. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They weren't looking at that. Like, guys, I know it looks like a closed system, but it isn't, okay? We got a lot of sunlight in. We need photosynthesis for the. The kelp and the two life forms. Actually, they're all three life forms and they're dependent upon each other. So. Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

So I forgot how long it was. A few days. But you picked it up and there were a few belly up krill in there. But they re established their equilibrium and they're still going.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They're still going. After 25 years in that seemingly closed.

[Chuck Nice]

Seemingly closed system.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Seemingly correct system.

[Chuck Nice]

It is living off of the sun.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Nice.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. So, yeah, that's how that works.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. Very cool. All right. I love that. That was great. Little lesson in entropy. Nicholas Hayes. Hello.

[Chuck Nice]

One other thing about entropy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Go ahead.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. You're alive. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Sometimes you.

[Chuck Nice]

Right now you are consuming energy for being alive.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

For being alive.

[Chuck Nice]

Where'd the energy come from?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm going to say Jesus. No.

[Chuck Nice]

That'S the way you said that. That's very southern back.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's the only. Well, no, I mean, I ate food.

[Chuck Nice]

You ate food? People say they look at food and the calorie count is something bad. Yeah, the calories is the energy that you're using. Do you know what the word for energy is in French?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No.

[Chuck Nice]

Calorie.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But the dove.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so when you die, you stop eating.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. Well, there's. There's a reason why.

[Chuck Nice]

Sorry. You don't choose to stop eating.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I don't see too many corpses, like.

[Chuck Nice]

God, I am so hungry, man.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Hey, why don't you eat ones? What are you doing, man? You're not taking care of yourself.

[Chuck Nice]

I said it back. I'm sorry I said it the wrong way. But when you're dead, there's no more metabolism in you and you begin to decay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right?

[Chuck Nice]

You become disorder.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You're moving to Entropy.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes, there it is. Because you are now a closed system. See, as long as you got a pie hole to shove food into, you're not a closed system.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Very cool.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. This is Nicholas Hayes. He says hello, Neil and Chuck. My name is Nick and I'm an industrial designer. North Bend, Washington.

[Chuck Nice]

Love him.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

My question is, if I in my super advanced starship were traveling close to the speed of light and blew past a planet moving in the opposite direction, would it. Would I appear to be traveling faster than the speed of light to anyone watching me from the planet? Or would my reference frame constantly change based on what is being passed by?

[Chuck Nice]

By? Yeah. No. Okay, next question. No. So here's how it works. So at low speeds you can just sort of add velocities and you. So if you're in a car going 60 miles an hour one way, a car going 60 miles an hour another way, you will pass each other at.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

120 miles an hour.

[Chuck Nice]

Thank you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

120 miles an hour. Okay. What's really fun is in an airplane where you see the ground, you know, going by slowly because you high up, right. When another plane is coming towards you in the opposite direction, the relative. Because you're going maybe 500 miles an hour and they're going 500 miles an hour, it's passing you at a thousand miles an hour. If you want to see what like a supersonic jet would look like to you, if you're just standing there and it's really. Just check it out next time. Yeah. When you're. You keep looking out the window, you will find planes coming the other way. And they go by fast, very fast.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And they're pretty far away. And they're still zipping by.

[Chuck Nice]

Zipping by. So the formula to add velocities is very simple. It's this one plus that one, and that's your relative velocity. As you go faster, that formula breaks down. And you need to use a relativity formula to add velocities.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, please tell. Because I'm not familiar with that.

[Chuck Nice]

You didn't know about that. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I do not know. This is so cool.

[Chuck Nice]

And the relativity formula, it is not how fast you're going. It's how fast you're going relative to the speed of light.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Aha.

[Chuck Nice]

And that ratio is in the formula.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, okay. Very cool.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. And so when that ratio is near zero, the formula just becomes two numbers added. But as the ratio gets higher. It's a more complicated formula. It becomes a more complicated formula. And so at half the speed of light and half the speed of light, you would see the other thing going maybe at two thirds the speed of light. Not because half and half would be a full speed of light. Right, right. Going the opposite directions. So if you're going 99% that way, 99% this way, invoke the formula. You're never gonna get higher than the speed of light.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Gotcha.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. So the answer is no.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because if. Let's say you were going. I don't. 9, 10 the speed of light, without the formula, you'd be going much faster than the speed of light when you pass each other.

[Chuck Nice]

Correct.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And you can't do that. So you can't violate that law. And so because you can't violate that principle of physics or the universe, you gotta have this formula.

[Chuck Nice]

It's not just a can't. That's what we observe. And so this is the formula that describes what we observe, what we're observing. Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Gotcha.

[Chuck Nice]

The universe is not obeying our formulas.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, Right. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. We've actually made a formula to. To tell us what the universe is doing.

[Chuck Nice]

Correct.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I got you.

[Chuck Nice]

It's an important distinction.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It is.

[Chuck Nice]

I will occasionally loosely say the planet is following Newton's laws.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

No. Newton's laws are following the planet.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

That's funny.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. That was. Oh, man. What a great question. Nicholas Hayes.

[Chuck Nice]

I can't recite it off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's a wiki page on adding relativistic velocities.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Relativistic velocities.

[Chuck Nice]

Adding relativistic. You just go there and the formula has some squares and squares roots in it. It's not complicated.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It ain't crazy.

[Chuck Nice]

It's not crazy, right? We can go crazy if you want to go crazy, but so you can do it if you've had elementary arithmetic, elementary algebra, sorry.

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[Chuck Nice]

Foreign.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

This is John Stam. He says hi Neil and Chuck. This is John from Tampa, Florida. We describe space as being three dimensional, like a cube. Is the fabric of space better described as a four dimensional or a test rack because it is also expanding. What could happen if the universe stopped expanding? Would time or the speed of light be affected?

[Chuck Nice]

We do not know what of what we measure is fundamentally linked to the expanding universe. It has been suggested that the second law of thermodynamics, since we just went in and out of that, might be a property of an expanding universe. And that if the universe slowed down and re collapsed, maybe isolated systems achieve order rather than disorder. Or does the second law of thermodynamics pass through an expanding and a collapsing universe? Does the law of physics not change? So these are unknown questions. We make some assumptions, but they're not tested. And so we do not know. Our time dimension is not a space dimension. So it's not a tesseract. Tesseract is 4D, four spatial dimensions and time is different. We need it as a coordinate. But it's not the same as the other coordinates because as I've said, we are a prisoner of the present, forever transitioning between our inaccessible past and our unknowable future. So that is not a coordinate. We can move back and forth on right. But X, Y and Z, we can go forward and back, up and down, left, right. We have full access. So it's correct to say we live in four dimensions. But one of those is space. It's a very different world from one where four space dimensions exist. And then you have time on top of that. That would be the fifth dimension.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, watch out.

[Chuck Nice]

Did I tell you the ranger of the fifth dimension was a family cousin? Who? The arranger. His name is Renee Tonight was Renee tonight.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, really? Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

And every time the fifth dimension came through New York, we got tickets.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, that's very cool.

[Chuck Nice]

I was a little kid, but we. The Ed Sullivan Theater where they performed.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The fifth dimension is huge.

[Chuck Nice]

They're huge.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They were huge. They were worldwide. Like in the moon. Moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars and P. I don't know.

[Chuck Nice]

The rest will guide the Planets and love. I don't. I don't know how to say Love.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Will steer the stars the dawning of.

[Chuck Nice]

The age of Aquarius Fifth dimension.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yep. All right.

[Chuck Nice]

Fifth dimension.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yep.

[Chuck Nice]

All right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That was for all you Aquarians out there.

[Chuck Nice]

We.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We know how needy you are. All right. This is Marcus Gustafson.

[Chuck Nice]

Gustafson.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Gustafson.

[Chuck Nice]

Is it two Fs?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yep.

[Chuck Nice]

No, one F. One Gustafson. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Is it two Ss?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, yeah. There you go. I got the wrong double there. Good.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He says, hello, everyone. Mark is here from Sweden.

[Chuck Nice]

You think?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He says, I have a question about the value of scientific understanding.

[Chuck Nice]

Love it. Love it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I've always valued gaining knowledge about the universe after following after and following StarTalk for years and reading books on the subject that I find my life has gained something for doing so. But I have a difficult notice.

[Chuck Nice]

He didn't say he read my books, he just said he read books to let the record show.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, I'm sure you're in there somewhere. And his choices, he says, but I have had a difficult time exactly pinpointing what I believe. I have gained scientific literacy, which comes with a different perspective on how to know what is true and the value of quantifying my ignorance as well as getting humbled. What will you say are some more important things a person gains from scientific understanding, aside from knowledge alone? Well, brother, you just named two huge, huge, huge things to learn.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so here it is. The number one thing is the number one feature of science literacy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

It empowers you to know when someone else is full of shit.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

It's empowerment. If someone say, oh, I have these crystals. Rub them. And you, if you understand crystals and you understand medicine, you understand you're not going to buy the crystal from the person.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right?

[Chuck Nice]

All right. You are a victim of charlatans, which implies the person selling to you knows better or you're the victim of other people who themselves are victims. So he wants more out of this. Ain't that enough?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I mean, and by the way, quantifying your ignorance is a huge, huge self awareness that most people never ever.

[Chuck Nice]

Now, where I thought he was going with the question was there are things that we can measure but don't understand.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

We measure dark matter. We don't know what's causing it. We measure dark energy. We don't know what's causing it. We know we're alive. We don't know how we got from organic molecules to self replicating life.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

We don't know. Just because you can measure it, doesn't mean you understand it. In fact, my favorite example here is once telescopes and cameras became. Once cameras, once film became sensitive enough, if you look at any old photo, like from the 1920s, 1930s, somebody's blurred in it because you have. The camera wasn't sensitive enough to light.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The film wasn't sensitive, and you need long exposures.

[Chuck Nice]

Long exposure. They say, hold it, hold the position.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. And there's always some. Especially if it's a kid in a family photo, the kid is blurred. It was very hard to get astro worthy photographs because the image is very dim. When we did, we knew that when you take the starlight and pass it through a prism, you get important information about the light chemical composition. Well, there's features in the light. We didn't know. There's features in the light. There are bright lines and dark lines. It's a spectrum. In the 1910s and 20s, we started taking spectra of stars, knowing that one day that's gonna be important. Even though we don't understand it. Right. Okay. Even though we don't really know what's going on.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Super cool.

[Chuck Nice]

And so huge data sets came down the pipe and we have laboratory counterparts to the spectrum. So we think that's hydrogen. Oh, we think that's carbon. We think because it's over here and.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We see it there and that's, I mean, unbelievable.

[Chuck Nice]

No, no, it's amazing. It's amazing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So great.

[Chuck Nice]

And we. And finally the 1920s come along, quantum physics gets developed, we understand the freaking atom, what electrons are doing, what they do to light if white light passes through it or any kind of light passes through it. And all the data we had been collecting and not understanding what the hell it was telling us became the foundations for our understanding of stellar evolution. And it's one of the great triumphs of 20th century astrophysics.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow. Yeah, man. That is very, very cool. All right, this is Alejandro Guardado.

[Chuck Nice]

That's a different Alejandro.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It is.

[Chuck Nice]

We had Alejandro Reynolds and also.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's right, Alejandro Reynolds.

[Chuck Nice]

Reynolds.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And this one is Alejandro Guadardo.

[Chuck Nice]

Guadardo, okay. He coming in from where?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Alejandro from Washington State.

[Chuck Nice]

At least. The other Alejandro was from Monterrey, Mexico.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Monterrey, Mexico.

[Chuck Nice]

Wasn't he from Mexico? Yes. Yeah, he was in Mexico. Okay, so maybe it's just Alex, they call him.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You can call me Alex, though. Hey, guys.

[Chuck Nice]

What you doing? Can I join?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Got a question for you dudes.

[Chuck Nice]

The uncoolest person in the room. You go from the, the, the, the, the most, the most interesting man in the world. To right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Hey, call me Alex. Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Alejandro from Washington State. What do you mean?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He says, I'm a new Patreon member. Oh, nice.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, welcome to the budget. To my voice. Welcome to the universe.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There you go. You've been officially birthed into our family, bro.

[Chuck Nice]

And by the way, I think you do get a lower voice than me, but you don't sustain it. You have that whiskey voice.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's why I can't sustain it, because I'm drunk right now. He says, my question is, what are good ways to wrap your head around partial or even complete vacuums? For example, space. I am still trying to wrap my head around fans not working in space. And. And I'm wondering.

[Chuck Nice]

That's a weird thought.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It is. Why don't fans work in space? And I'm wondering why the.

[Chuck Nice]

Because the rotor's spinning.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, it's so still hot. I don't understand how I'm hot. And it's only like 3 degrees Kelvin in here. Anyway, he says, I'm wondering why these things work the way they do. What is the vacuum of space? I mean, that's a very weird.

[Chuck Nice]

Like, there's a deeper question there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Go ahead.

[Chuck Nice]

And it's, what is nothing?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What is nothing? Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

The best vacuum we've ever created was in the detector. Was it of the Large Hadron Collider.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, cool.

[Chuck Nice]

Because you don't want those particles hitting stuff they don't want them to hit.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's right. You gotta suck everything out of there, man.

[Chuck Nice]

And one of the problems is material. I did this when I was in college. I worked at Bell Labs for one summer, and we explored different vacuums because we were testing for superconducting materials, and you want a very sort of pristine environment for that. But anyhow, so we have a cavity, and you suck out all the gas until the pump. It can't pump out any more out. He said, that's pretty good. Here's what you do next. You heat the walls. They're gas particles that got stuck in the texture of the surface of the cavity. You heat the walls, they all jump out. You see the pressure go back up just by heating it. Then you suck that out. Now you cool it down. Then you have a way better vacuum than you otherwise would have. But still the particles left over there. So we do okay with our vacuums. You leave our atmosphere very far between the planets. That's an even better vacuum. You go outside the solar system, between the stars. That's an even better vacuum. You go outside the galaxy, between the galaxies. That's an even better vacuum. And last I ran the numbers on that, that vacuum has one particle every cubic meter.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's correct. And you're one particle.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, yeah, one particle per cubic meter. So leave your fan at home. That's the lesson here. But if you take away that particle, then what is that? Is there nothing there? No, there is still something there. The laws of physics are still there. If you want a place where there's nothing, shouldn't you be removing the laws of physics as well?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Now we talking like we're outside of matrix stuff now.

[Chuck Nice]

Let me not even get there yet.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's not even a loading program anymore.

[Chuck Nice]

Let's not even get there yet. Now there's no particles there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

There is light passing through it, the cosmic microwave background, visiting the region. Okay. And there's something called virtual particles that pop out, popping in and out of existence. Quantum physics dictates this. And so there's a vacuum of no regular particles, but other stuff is happening. And through that volume is the fabric of space and time. So a real place, a real vacuum should have not only no particles, it should have no virtual particles. It should not even have a space time continuum. And if it doesn't even have that, maybe that's how you get rid of the laws of physics. You took away the space time. Maybe laws of physics are part of space time. So, yeah, this is kind of stuff you like over a beer, you know, you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, but make sure it's a zero calorie beer.

[Chuck Nice]

No, I know I said beer because you would have said weed, right? That's a weed conversation. I never smoke, so I don't.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I don't.

[Chuck Nice]

I can't relate to what that might be.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That is definitely a weed conversation, man.

[Chuck Nice]

And by the way, and I forgot which one of my two Merlin books, they just got republished, one last year and one is coming out in a few days. Actually, the someone asked Merlin that very. Merlin was my pen name for a column that I wrote for like 10 years. And people asked the public ask. So I'm very comfortable in this Q and A environment. Just in case. I don't know. You didn't know that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, you know, we've been working together for a little while now, so I figured that out.

[Chuck Nice]

You figured that out. So one of the questions was, what's the best vacuum? And so Merlin is my pen name, goes through all the various vacuums. Oh really? And how many particles per cubic, you know, meter? You know, there's a lot and then less and less and less. And so it's in there and very cleanly described.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Very nice.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. Then all the time we have. Oh, my gosh. And all these were asked by Patreon members.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's right. Thank you all Patreon people.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We love our Patreon supporters. And you can go to patreon.com and join the StarTalk family for as little as $5 a month. You too can save a comedian in the arms of an angel.

[Chuck Nice]

You need puppy eyes. You gotta be looking through a gate.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. We need a chain link fence right here. And I'm just like, all right.

[Chuck Nice]

That's not where the money goes to. It goes to experiments that we conduct to try to.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It allows us to expand the show.

[Chuck Nice]

Expand the show in ways that are not quite commercially viable yet.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

And work on it and get people's input.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And so, yeah, we appreciate you is the point.

[Chuck Nice]

That's right. And we got Start Talk plus channel.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Now in YouTube because of Patreon. Because startalk plus makes no money at all. Not yet.

[Chuck Nice]

We're working on it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, yeah, I mean, we're working on what?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, maybe one. And we're working on it. Okay, that's it, Chuck. Another episode.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

A grab bag.

[Chuck Nice]

StarTalk grab bag.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's right.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, so this has been yet another episode of Cosmic Queries. Grab bag edition. Chuck, always good to have you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Always a pleasure.

[Chuck Nice]

All right. Neil Degrasse Tyson here as always, bidding you to keep looking up.

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