Cosmic Queries – LIGO, Light, & Lycanthropy

Summary

StarTalk Radio: Cosmic Queries – LIGO, Light, & Lycanthropy

Date: June 2, 2026
Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Co-host: Negeen Farsad

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Episode Overview

In this "Cosmic Queries: Grab Bag Edition," Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Negeen Farsad answer thought-provoking questions from Patreon supporters. The episode covers a wide range of topics, from potential future technologies and the philosophy of science to cosmic phenomena like gravitational waves, redshift, the influence of the moon, and the nature of time and consciousness. The tone is witty, curious, and accessible, combining deep science with playful banter.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Science, Technology, and the Limits of Possibility

Q1: Could we launch microsatellites as relay points in space?

• [04:19] Listener Nathan asks about microsatellites creating a network for long-distance missions.
  • Neil: Relay points mainly boost signals or act as "filling stations" (fuel supply stops), not so much for communication due to the emptiness of space and lack of obstacles.
  • Quote: "Blockage does not tend to be a problem in the vastness of space." – Neil deGrasse Tyson [05:29]
  • Implication: Future space travel might feature refueling nodes, supplied by "space tankers" (not communication relays).

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The Philosophy of Scientific Limits

Q2: What current scientific "impossibility" would you like to see overturned?

• [10:00] Leo, from Canada, asks about scientific impossibilities becoming realities (with historic references: flying, new periodic elements).
  • Neil: Distinguishes between things forbidden by physics vs. things not yet technologically possible.
  • Quote: "There's a difference between stuff we haven't figured out how to do yet and things that are forbidden by the laws of physics." – Neil [12:22]
  • Insight: Laws of physics may be incomplete, but are reliable in contexts where tested; technological "impossibilities" often become possible.
  • Notable Anecdote: Newton's gravity got us to the Moon; Einstein's relativity refines but doesn't replace Newton, just as new scientific laws may "enclose" old ones, not discard them [14:53].
  • UItra-tech revealed: Maglev trains (magnetically levitated) already fulfill Negeen's wish for a hover subway [18:02].

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The Nature of Redshift and Our Cosmic View

Q3: How does redshift work, and can we see infinitely distant light?

• [22:42] Martin from Denmark inquires about redshift, distance, and observational limits.
  • Neil: Redshift is a speed (motion) phenomenon, not a distance one per se.
  • Quote: "The redshift is only a speed thing. Forget distance for the moment. Just for the moment." – Neil [23:07]
  • Visible spectral features shift based on movement—toward you (blue/violet shift), away (red shift).
  • The universe's expansion means the farther a galaxy is, the more its light is redshifted—a signature of the Big Bang.
  • Quote: "That's why we didn't pull Big Bang out of our ass. That is what an explosion looks like." – Neil [26:46]

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Moon Myths, Human Biology, & Cosmic Meanings

Q4: Do cosmic events like the full moon affect human neurology or behavior?

• [28:31] William from Maryland asks if seizures are more common during full moons.
  • Neil: Moon phase does not affect gravity or tides significantly; tidal effects during full/new moons are due to the sun and moon aligning, not the moon solo [31:33].
  • Quote: "The phase of the moon has nothing to do with its gravity." – Neil [30:34]
  • Romantic associations with full moon nights, not physics, explain slight "birth rate spikes" at those times [30:07].
  • Myth-busting: Human perception overemphasizes events (like seizures, mood changes) near full moons and underreports other times (confirmation bias).
  • Werewolves: If moonlight turned people, sunlight would too—it's the same reflected light [33:19].
  • Conclusion: No scientific evidence for lunar influence on epilepsy or behavior.

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Gravitational Waves & Observational Limits

Q5: Why didn’t we see colliding black holes with telescopes, only with LIGO?

• [41:41] Gregory from Ottawa is skeptical about black hole mergers only detected by LIGO.
  • Neil: Black holes do not emit light, so telescopes can't see such mergers; LIGO detects space-time ripples (gravitational waves).
  • Quote: "Black holes don't emit light. ... But you will see it with a telescope that uses gravitational waves." – Neil [44:07]
  • Collisions of pulsars/neutron stars, which do emit light, have been seen by both LIGO and optical telescopes, confirming multi-messenger astronomy [45:49].

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The Future: Unasked Questions & the Search for Life

Q6: Which big cosmic questions will be answered in 30 years?

• [46:13] James from Alabama wants predictions of soon-to-be-solved mysteries.
  • Neil: Truly transformative questions are those we haven’t even learned to ask yet.
  • Quote: "As our knowledge grows, so too does the perimeter of our ignorance." – Neil [46:50]
  • Personal hope: Discovery of past/present life on Mars or another nearby planet/moon.
  • Panspermia explained: If Martian life shares DNA with Earth life, Earthlings might literally be Martians [49:10].

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The Nature of Time

Q7: Is time fundamental or emergent? What about time travel?

• [51:02] Donatis from Lithuania asks about emergent time, quantum loops, and Bell’s paradox.
  • Neil: Emergent time is an intriguing idea; perhaps, like consciousness, time arises from more fundamental phenomena [52:10].
  • Wishes for physicist Brian Greene to weigh in; Einstein's view paraphrased: time is a tool for making sense of motion [53:22].
  • Quote: "I'm just angered that as a dimension of our existence, we are prisoners of the present." – Neil [53:22]

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Artificial Intelligence & Natural Evolution

Q8: Is making AI unnatural?

• [54:28] Andor from the Netherlands asks if creating AI is "unnatural" or part of cosmic evolution.
  • Neil: Nothing we do is unnatural; creating AI is as natural as a beaver building a dam.
  • Quote: "Whatever we do, since we are of this universe, is natural." – Neil [54:47]
  • Limits (like the 4-minute mile) are often psychological, not truly physical constraints [56:01].

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Blockage does not tend to be a problem in the vastness of space." – Neil [05:29]
• "There's a difference between stuff we haven't figured out how to do yet and things that are forbidden by the laws of physics." – Neil [12:22]
• "We didn't pull Big Bang out of our ass. That is what an explosion looks like." – Neil [26:46]
• "If you turn into a werewolf under moonlight, you should turn into a werewolf every waking moment of the daytime." – Neil [33:42]
• "As our knowledge grows, so too does the perimeter of our ignorance." – Neil [46:50]
• "Whatever we do, since we are of this universe, is natural." – Neil [54:47]
• Negeen’s brunch-with-aliens scenario (humor): "I'm taking them to brunch. ... Let's have some mimosas and talk about how you guys..." [50:37]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Microsatellites & Space Relays: [04:19]–[09:58]
• Impossibilities & Scientific Progress: [10:00]–[18:19]
• Redshift and the Expanding Universe: [22:42]–[28:23]
• Lunar Effects on Humans: [28:31]–[37:12]
• Gravitational Waves & LIGO: [41:41]–[46:12]
• Near-future Discoveries & Unasked Questions: [46:13]–[51:02]
• Nature of Time & Emergence: [51:02]–[54:18]
• Artificial Intelligence and Evolution: [54:28]–[56:40]

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Tone & Language

The exchange is clever, upbeat, and philosophy-infused. Neil’s analogies and stories clarify complex concepts. Negeen’s comedic timing keeps it light, with both hosts making science accessible and inviting.

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Conclusion

This edition of StarTalk’s Cosmic Queries dives deep into the philosophical and scientific mysteries of the cosmos and our place within it, blending scientific rigor with humor and wonder. Listeners are left with new perspectives on technological progress, cosmic limits, and the ever-fascinating human tendency to find meaning (and sometimes werewolves) in the universe.

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Find Negeen on social: @NegeenFarsad
Neil’s book: "Take Me to Your Leader"

Transcript

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Negeen. This round had a lot of deep philosophy in it.

[Negeen Farsad]

Ooh, people got juicy, juicy about time

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

and space and dimensions and just things

[Negeen Farsad]

that don't exist and maybe never will. Or will they?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All that and more coming up on StarTalk's cosmic queries. The grab bag. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. We're gonna do a cosmic queries grab bag edition. And today I've got with me as my co host, Negeen Farsad Nagin.

[Negeen Farsad]

Hello.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Welcome back.

[Negeen Farsad]

Oh, my God. So excited to be here. So excited to launch myself into space.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, yes. And you've got all the questions from our Patreon supporters.

[Negeen Farsad]

Oh, by the way, just reading through these questions, I have to say, I feel so much better about humanity. There are some extraordinarily smart people out there. You don't get the set. You don't know that in your regular life.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So you're saying I'm biased into thinking the world is smarter than it actually is?

[Negeen Farsad]

No, it's not.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because of our fan base.

[Negeen Farsad]

Because these are not the kinds of things I get from my fans. Just so we're clear, okay, Maybe there'll

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

be some spillage over. So what Your podcast is.

[Negeen Farsad]

My podcast is called Fake the Nation. You can also hear me on. Wait, wait, don't tell me.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, we all love. Wait, Wait, don't tell me.

Npr.

[Negeen Farsad]

I feel like there's probably a big crossover.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I've only ever heard that on the radio, but it sounds like it's live. Is that.

[Negeen Farsad]

That's right. We tape in Chicago usually, and other cities around the country in, like, a huge auditorium with like, 800 people. And it's a really good time. Yeah, I. I highly recommend a live taping if you haven't been to one.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, so I was. I think I bought. Been on them once or twice. It was very hard. They asked me hard questions.

[Negeen Farsad]

I couldn't feel because the questions were so dumb. You couldn't believe that they were happening.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's why I did. Thank you for stroking my ego there.

[Negeen Farsad]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's right.

So I haven't seen the questions.

[Negeen Farsad]

Well, let's get into it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's a grab bag, so I don't know what it is.

[Negeen Farsad]

Well, I'm gonna start with a question from Nathan sproul. Nathan writes. Dr. Tyson, could we launch microsatellites as relay points between larger space spacecraft on long distance missions, effectively creating a network like a cosmic hyperlink? Would the main spacecraft release these microsatellites directly, or would we need a separate deployment system to keep them spaced out over the journey? And what would be the biggest challenges, like keeping them aligned or dealing with the signal delay?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So that's a great thought.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

This is a person imagining a future where the solar system is our backyard or it's an extension of civilization into the solar system or beyond. And what I would ask is, what is the point of having a relay station if instead I could just beam my signal straight to Earth? Why do I have to go off of your relay station? Well, I guess unless your relay station boosts the signal, that could happen.

[Negeen Farsad]

Like, it gives us better pathways of communication strength to something super far away.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, but I'm saying that there's the straight way, which is just my own beam of radio waves. But if it goes to you and you wanna boost it, you need a source of energy to do that.

[Negeen Farsad]

What if there's, like, a planet in between you? Your signal, your beam is my.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

If I'm blocked, yeah. Space is so empty. This is not.

Not your concern.

[Negeen Farsad]

It's, like, not happening. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And even if a planet is there, it's in motion.

[Negeen Farsad]

Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Negeen Farsad]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So imagine you say, oh, I wanna go sunbathing. Oh, darn There's a total solar eclipse. What am I gonna do, wait four minutes? Okay. Because the moon orbits Earth and it's not gonna be blocking the sun the whole time. So blockage does not tend to be a problem in the vastness of space. But here is what we do need such places for.

[Negeen Farsad]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

If you're going on a very long distance and you need fuel, like long

[Negeen Farsad]

distance, like Mars or something.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, no, Even farther. Okay, okay. Or let's take a simple case. I don't want to get to Mars in nine months. I want to get to Mars in a week. There's a way to do that. Okay. We always say, how far away is nine months away?

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Do you know what they mean by that? You load up your rocket with fuel, you burn it all until you have just the right speed, and you coast to where Mars gravity then grabs you, and then you go land on Mars. And since you're coasting the whole way, that takes time. It takes extra time. So you'd want to accelerate at 1G. Because we on Earth, we live in a 1G environment. If you put it to 2G, that's just. You'll feel that beyond what you're comfortable,

[Negeen Farsad]

like what your body can't handle.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Body did not evolve in 2G.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I don't want to travel to the planets in 2G.

[Negeen Farsad]

That's just like if you eat a bunch of Taco Bell and then go speed racing. You don't want to do that. That's like going 2G.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Multiply that by 10 and you get it. Your digestive tract and all your circulation does not. Now 2G is what you'll feel on roller coasters and things, sometimes even 3G. But you don't want to live on a roller coaster and dine and socialize on a roller coaster. So a 1G is an interesting nice force to put on your rocket. And at 1G, you will accelerate through space and get faster and faster and faster and faster and faster. And then you turn the ship around, fire the rockets in the opposite direction to slow you down. Because there's no other way to break in space. If you were to drive across the country or around the world, and you needed to carry all the fuel you were gonna use with you, you'd have a tanker behind you. Right. Something huge. But we don't. We just have, you know, 15, 20 gallon gas tanks. You run out of gas, what do you do?

[Negeen Farsad]

You charge it. You go to a charging station or refill your gas. I'm sorry, it's 20, 26. Neil, I'm driving an electric car in this imaginary scenario because I don't have a car at all, okay?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So you either have a power station behind you, or you'll run out of batteries and you have to recharge. So in space, we either carry all our fuel with us, or you recharge at one of these nodes that the person is referencing. But they're not communication nodes. They would be filling stations. And look at, for example, Artemis just went around the moon and back, you know, where the astronauts were. They went up a little bitty. That's the way they were. And the whole rest and the big stars thing, all the rest of that is fuel.

[Negeen Farsad]

Fuel.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And by the time they come back, that's all that's left. Cause they spent all the fuel.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So space travel, ideally in the future, you would refill that nodes.

[Negeen Farsad]

And is that just like regular unleaded or like what's in the.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, I mean, it depends on what kind of rocket technology you use. And. Yeah, give me high octane, you mean? Yeah, I don't know. So the real challenge will be, as we have on Earth, if that's a filling station, you would have to continually supply the filling station. But you can do that on your own time. Yeah, right. You can send slow ships to refill. They're not trying to get somewhere on a, you know, on a timed trip. And so there would be this continuous source of fuel brought to them by tankers, space tankers, if I call them that. So there is an occasion for such things.

[Negeen Farsad]

All right. Okay. So no. So not really to microsatellites, but yes, really to fueling stat.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Love that. That's right.

[Negeen Farsad]

Okay, well, our next question comes from LEO B. Hello or leo. There's an accent on the E, so I feel like it's leo.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's a very LEO thing to do.

[Negeen Farsad]

Hello, Doctor.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I know. Put an accent on, you know.

[Negeen Farsad]

Right. I feel like the E is meant to really be observed. So this is a question for all of you. Once upon a time, I was a child in junior high school. Back in the mid-80s when talking about the periodic table, teachers in school used to say that no element, slash metals, would ever be discovered. That it without any doubt at all impossible. Yet here we are today with a bunch of new elements on the table. In another category of science and tech. Humans used to say that we would never fly slash travel in the air. Now we have all kinds of flying transportation available. Planes, jets, even hot air balloons. If you could choose a thing that Science says can't be done yet without a doubt. Which would. Which would you most want to see become possible in your lifetime? Thanks. And this is Leo from the Canadian Atlantic Province. He didn't want to get specific about which promise.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, he's in witness protection program.

[Negeen Farsad]

Just the vague region.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

His name really is Leo, but he's hiding under Leo, so. That's a great question.

[Negeen Farsad]

I love this question, but I have

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

to put it in proper context. Okay? In science, if something violates well tested known laws of physics, it's not gonna be possible later. It's just not.

[Negeen Farsad]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because that's what testing the idea means. So the people who said we will never go, we'll never break the sound barrier, let's look at those folks. Excuse me. We had rifle bullets that move faster than sound. Did you ever do a towel? Like someone's buttocks?

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. Have you ever did that?

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Was that just a guy thing that we did?

[Negeen Farsad]

I mean, it's mostly a guy thing. Yeah. I mean, I can't say that me and my gal pals have ever done that. Whipping each other with towels. But yes, I'm familiar with the accent.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Especially mostly damp towels.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah, no, it just sounds rather unpleasant.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The tip of the towel makes a snapping sound at the end. Even if it doesn't hit something, the tip of the towel in that instant went faster than sound. It was a mini sonic whip.

[Negeen Farsad]

Really?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. And that is equivalent to what happens at the end of a whip. That's why it makes a cracking sound. It's not just cause it hits something, the tip. That's why whatever the material is, typically leather, it's moving this way and rapidly snaps back. And in that rapid change of direction, it's briefly moving faster than sound. And it's a mini sonic boom. We've had things that move faster than sound. So don't tell me we'll never go faster than sound. You just haven't figured it out yet. Don't tell me we will never fly. Birds fly, right? So just say I'm too stupid to figure out how to fly. But don't tell me that the laws of physics are preventing us from flying. There's a difference between stuff we haven't figured out how to do yet and things that are forbidden by the laws of physics. Two completely different things. That's all. So is there something that is forbidden by laws of physics that one day,

[Negeen Farsad]

right, like, what if the laws of physics are wrong? Oh my God. Are you gonna like explode right now? Are you sweating? Oh, no. I broke Neil Degrasse Tyson here's the

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

worst that can happen to a law of physics. Yeah, we learn that it's, it doesn't apply in as many cases as we thought that there's situations where those laws of physics fail. And we need a deeper understanding of how the universe works in order to account for those failures. Well, if these laws of physics failed, why don't we just discard them? We don't discard them because they still work in all the places where they were tested. And the best example of this is Newton's laws of motion and gravity. We went to the moon, the Apollo missions went to the moon on Newton's laws of gravity. Einstein has his own laws of motion and gravity. It's called the theories of relativity. When do you use that? If speeds are really high or gravity is really strong, Newton's laws begin to teeter and then they fail miserably. Whereas Einstein's laws precisely predict what's going on. But you know what happens if you put low speeds or low gravity into Einstein's equations? They become Newton's equations.

[Negeen Farsad]

Right. So it still fundamentally works.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's still fun in many ways. So Einstein's equations enclosed Newton's equations. And Newton we didn't know at the time was a special case of Einstein's equations. But it's not discarded in the way that you, I think implied when you said maybe with the attitude maybe your laws of physics are wrong. And so it's a matter of technology. And today when I say we're not going to Mars for 100 years, it's not cause we don't know how to get to Mars. No one is denying our ability. We have an SUV sized rover on Mars. We plunked down and it's rover and we took a helicopter with it. It's not about whether we know how to get to Mars. It's whether we have sufficient geopolitical or national motivation to send people to Mars. That's a whole other thing than in the 1990s.

[Negeen Farsad]

But we do have the scientific capacity to do it, the technological capacity to do it. And okay, oh my gosh.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And that's different from in the 1940s and 50s. I collected comments from people, people from writers saying we will never get to the moon for another 200, that they couldn't imagine the pace of technology going exponentially right past their capacity to imagine. And they're people who are alien adjacent. Let's say they're the ones who would have thought in the 1950s we weren't going anywhere. And then 15 years later, we're on the Moon. Where did you get that technology from? Okay, you must have been chilling with the aliens. And these are people who are in denial of a true exponential growth of science and technology, which is the period in which we live. Right now, in the era of having gone to the Moon, no one is imagining that anything is impossible that became a thing. We can land a man on the Moon, but we can't feed the hungry or whatever.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah, it was a constant refrain.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It was. This is the reference point for what we're capable of.

[Negeen Farsad]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And after that, people say, oh, we can go to the moon by 1969. We'll be on Mars by 1985. And there were these. The people were over predicting where we'd end up landing. Right now, it's not a matter of what can or cannot happen when it's a subject of debate or conversation. It's. We're pretty sure it's gonna happen, but how soon? So it's a time reference thing, not whether it's the laws of physics allow it.

[Negeen Farsad]

Well, you and Leo both mentioned forms of transportation, and I have one that I don't think is possible right now, but I would like to see it happen. It is a hovering subway. Like a subway that doesn't have, like, hit tracks. It hovers above tracks so that it doesn't make, like a. A screeching noise.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Negeen Farsad]

And that it's, like, a little faster and just a little more agile.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It already exists in the world.

[Negeen Farsad]

Like a hovering subway already.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. Okay, well, then they're called maglev trains. You never heard of these?

[Negeen Farsad]

Oh, in China.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, China has them, but we're not up to China's practicality yet.

[Negeen Farsad]

So they hover.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Literally.

[Negeen Farsad]

Like, how much do they hover?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They magnetically levitate right over a track.

[Negeen Farsad]

Okay, so I just want the thing that already exists.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What would you do if an alien actually showed up? Would you shake its hand or run? Does it even have a hand to shake? In my latest book, Take Me to youo Leader, I explore not only how they might have gotten here, but what they might want and how you should respond. Because the real question is not are we alone? It's are we ready? By the way, I also narrated Take Me to your Leader. And I'm duly informed that you can get a copy of that book or the audiobook now, wherever books are sold. You should probably get the book sooner rather than later. You don't want to have a first alien encounter and not be ready for it. I'm Just saying.

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[Negeen Farsad]

All right, well, listen, I have another question. This one's like very scientifically advanced, I think, from Martin. Martin in Denmark says, I have a question about Denmark.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I love it.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah, about red shifting. What makes the light red shift when traveling great distances? And do we know that? Do we know that we're directing all the red shifted light? Or is our current equipment not good enough to detect light from, for example, 50 to 100 billion light years away?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so that's a very common question that confabulates to. Is that the right word? Confabulates?

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah, conflates.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Conflates. That's the word that conflates. Two different things going on. The redshift is only a speed thing. Okay, okay. Forget distance for the moment. Just for the moment. Okay. If you are approaching someone and you are emitting light and light you can think of as waves. Let's think of it as a wave. So I begin to emit a wave of light of a certain wavelength. But as I'm emitting the light, I'm getting closer to you while I'm emitting that light. So the wavelength that finally comes out of me is shorter than the wavelength would be if I just were stationary. So if something comes towards you, all the light shifts to smaller wavelengths. And if something's moving away from you, you're stretching out the wave. Yeah, I start emitting the wave and I finish emitting the wave. It got stretched. Cause now I'm. I've increased my distance, so it's a speed. And the faster I'm moving, the longer is that shift in its wavelength either towards you or away from you. Okay. We call it a red shift because we're kind of stuck with just a visible part of the spectrum in the history of this exercise. And whatever features in the spectrum you saw, if the object was moving away from you, those features shifted to the red side of the spectrum. So we called it a red shift. And these are like the Fingerprints of elements that are in the light. You know, hydrogen and carbon and nitrogen. They're called spectral lines. They're the fingerprints of these elements. They're all shifted, every single one of them, by the same amount. We call that a redshift. If it's moving towards you, they all shift the other way, call it a blue shift. Now, another little confusing fact. All the colors of the rainbow, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. So really it's a violet shift.

[Negeen Farsad]

Oh, right. Cause we're going to the other end.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. There's indigo and violet beyond the blue. Right. So technically, if you're gonna say one side is a red shift, we should call the other side a violet shift. But we don't. We just say blue shift.

[Negeen Farsad]

You famously demoted Pluto. Maybe you can change.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Why are you gonna bring up Pluto right now?

[Negeen Farsad]

Maybe you can change blue shift to violet shift.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, you're respecting the power that I wield.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah. You're respecting the power that you wield.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I thought you're trying to pick a fight.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, as an educator, I want to minimize confusion. So, ideally it would be a violet shift, but. So now what's interesting, these features can shift so much, they go beyond the red and come out at the other side. And then they're like infrared or microwaves or even radio waves. And if they keep shifting, they're shifting away from the red. It's a matter of semantics to say it's a redshift.

[Negeen Farsad]

It's not like a line like that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. It's just the red was where, when we first discovered it, it happened to be headed. Right, but we know of other branches of the spectrum beyond that. And we can say that it's infrared shifted or, or microwave shifted or radio shifted, but we don't. We still say red shifted. Okay. Turns out in the expanding universe, the farther away you are, the faster galaxies are receding from us.

[Negeen Farsad]

The farther away you are, the faster galaxies.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, it just. It's the signature of an explosion.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yep.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's why we didn't pull Big Bang out of our ass. That is what an explosion looks like.

[Negeen Farsad]

Although it is something I can picture a scientist saying after, like a particularly good poop. You know what I mean? Like, he called it a Big Bang, and then someone heard that, and it's like, that's a good name for existence everywhere.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, we know exactly where the word Big Bang came from, though. There was a physicist astrophysicist named Fred Hoyle. He hated the idea of a Big Bang. It was on A radio show, I think it was. And he pejoratively says, these people who believe in a big bang say, hey, that's a good idea. It'll stick. He imagined the universe was eternally static, right? Well, not static, but was always the same. It didn't have a beginning. So he was in the other camp. But the point is, the universe is expanding. So when we look at the spectra of galaxies, they're all redshifted because they're moving away from us.

[Negeen Farsad]

Right, right, right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And because the amount of the redshift correlates with how far away the galaxy is. Because if you're farther away, your redshifted even faster. It's why we get to say, the higher your redshift is, the farther away you are.

[Negeen Farsad]

And then also then.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But that's just a fact.

[Negeen Farsad]

You sort of like, then never see a blue shift as a result.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So if a galaxy is close enough, we might be falling into each other, as we currently are with Andromeda, that has a blueshift, but on a large enough scale where the expansion of the universe dominates. Every galaxy is redshifted.

[Negeen Farsad]

All right. Every galaxy is redshifted. Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So what else you got?

[Negeen Farsad]

So, from William Warren in Abington, Maryland, we have. I have epilepsy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Sounds very British. Yeah, Abington.

[Negeen Farsad]

I've never heard of it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Negeen Farsad]

But now we. Now we know. So they write, I have epilepsy and a neuropace device implanted in my brain to help control seizures. I've heard claims, even from medical professionals, that seizures can be more common during full moons. You might see where this is going scientifically. Is there any plausible mechanism by which cosmic events like the moon could influence neurological activity in the human brain more broadly? What do you think about the idea that the universe can influence human experiences in ways that feel meaningful but may not have a measurable physical cause? How do you personally separate scientific reality from perceived cosmic connection? Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow. Okay. So in some municipalities. I'll get to the epilepsy in a minute, but let's start simple. In some municipalities, there's slightly more babies born during full moon than other phases.

[Negeen Farsad]

Really?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And so people say, oh, is it the extra gravity, or is it the. Is it the this? And people want to just put meaning into it, keep it all onto the cosmos and. Right. They want the cosmos to deliver meaning into their lives. It turns out the gestation period of the human female is almost exactly equal to 10 cycles of the moon. If you gave birth during a full moon, you got pregnant during a full moon.

[Negeen Farsad]

Right? Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I just want to put the math.

[Negeen Farsad]

The math.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Let's do the math here. No one debates the. The beauty of a full moon on a romantic night. So that easily explains the slightly higher birth rate during a full moon.

[Negeen Farsad]

That's it. I mean, that's how.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's kind of all I can give you.

[Negeen Farsad]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's kind of all I can give you because. Because now you're gonna take. Keep a list. Keep a mental list. You ready?

[Negeen Farsad]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The phase of the moon has nothing to do with its gravity. The moon's gravity on Earth is the same no matter what the phase of the moon is a B. The tidal forces exacted by the moon on Earth itself is unrelated to the phase of the moon. You might say, well, how about the famously high tides during the.

[Negeen Farsad]

Oh, the full moon. Full moon, yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. Those high tides are not because of the moon.

[Negeen Farsad]

They're. I thought it really.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The sun also raises tides on Earth, they're about a third. The strength or its effect on the waters is about one third that of the moon. And so. But on full moon, the sun lines up with Earth and the moon, okay?

[Negeen Farsad]

So they're both acting.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They both act together.

[Negeen Farsad]

They can do it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And what you're seeing is the sun's tides added to what was otherwise be a constant moon tide throughout the month. So it's the sun's fault that the full Moon has higher tides than other phases of the moon.

[Negeen Farsad]

Now, see, that needs a rebranding because I really think. Of course, no one knows that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Nobody knows that.

[Negeen Farsad]

Nobody knows.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Nobody knows that. So you're not getting extra tidal force from the moon. You're not getting extra gravity. Gravity is just a matter of how close you are. So is the strength of the tidal force as well. But it's a distance thing. It's not what phase you're in. So now the moon's orbit around the Earth is not a perfect circle. Sometimes it's a little closer, sometimes it's a little farther. When it's a little closer, the gravity will be a little higher. The tidal forces will be a little higher. But that has nothing to do with the phase. That's all I'm saying. It could be that with a half moon or a crescent moon, but nobody talks about that. So let me keep going. Okay, so now people say I feel a little crazy under the full moon. Where do you think we get the term lunatic?

[Negeen Farsad]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's the Luna moon, okay? And werewolves, if you're gonna turn into

[Negeen Farsad]

a werewolf, you're gonna do it on a Full moon.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You never see a human turning into a werewolf on a night where there's a full moon but it's cloudy.

[Negeen Farsad]

No. If it's overcast, anticlimactic for the story.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. It's like, show me the cloudy sky.

[Negeen Farsad]

It's not cinematic.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's not cinematic. It's not cinematic. So then. So if they really need to see the moon to turn into a werewolf. Cause that's always how it is, right? They see it and then they turn into the werewolf. That means it's the light from the moon that might be affecting them.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

However, the life and the moon and I did this experiment in an 8th grade science fair project, okay? I got a spectrum of the sun and a spectrum of the moon and showed that they're identical. Why? Because the moon is reflected light from the sun. If you turn into a werewolf under moonlight, you should turn into werewolf every waking moment of the daytime.

[Negeen Farsad]

Daylight. Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So the light, it's just sunlight. And also, if you live in any city, the light of the street lamp you walked under is typically brighter than the light of the full moon that's in the sky, even if they're in the sky at the same time. Now, of course, as you walk away from the street lamp, it gets much dimmer. But right around where the street lamp is, street lamp is brighter than the full moon. No one is talking about the effects of street lamps on your emotional stuff on werewolves or on werewolves or anything.

[Negeen Farsad]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It comes down to how big is the human ego to suggest that the universe gives a rat's ass about you, your social life, your mental health, your love life.

[Negeen Farsad]

Because rats are not blaming the cosmos for whatever they do specifically.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So if there are studies to show that there are more neurology events, let's call it that, neurological events in the world during a full moon, then other phases, I don't know of them. I'd like to see them. I can tell you that people are so primed to think of the full moon as a force on us that if someone has a seizure and it's not the full moon, are they gonna report that you had a seizure and it was a crescent moon? Oh, my God. Who gets told that, right? Nobody.

[Negeen Farsad]

No.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But if you happen to have a seizure and there's a full moon, everybody's gonna hear about that.

[Negeen Farsad]

Again, it's cinematic, you know?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Everybody's gonna hear about that. So I remain unconvinced by such claims, especially since to the untrained eye, the moon will look full for about 4 days, 2 days on each side of the earth. To a trained astrophysicist eye and an amateur astronomer's eye, we know if you're 12 hours out of full moon, we'll know. But untrained eye, they'll give you two days. So that's four days out of 30.

[Negeen Farsad]

That psychologically you think you're in a full moon.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Correct?

[Negeen Farsad]

Right, correct.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So that's one out. Of. Call it three days. One out of 10 days. That means 10% of your seizures, if they're random, will occur under a full moon. And that's when everybody talks about it. This talk about tidal forces and things. Do you realize tides are equally as high during new moon as they are during full moon?

[Negeen Farsad]

No.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

During new moon, the earth, moon and sun also line up. But you can't see a new moon.

[Negeen Farsad]

It's like a sliver, like a nothing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, you can't. Or you can't even see it. In Islamic cultures, the term new moon refers to the especially during Ramadan, the first sighting of the new crescent moon, they call that new moon. But astronomically, new moon is not far enough to the side yet to even see a crescent. And it's there. No one sees that phase of the moon, so yet the tidal forces are just as high. Plus, if you didn't want to explain higher birth rates that way, you'd have to say, okay, did you give birth in stirrups facing an open window where the full moon happened to be in the sky at the time so that the gravity will yank the baby out? And suppose you weren't, Suppose the moon was behind you? It's gonna keep the baby in pulling. Just think this through. Think it through.

[Negeen Farsad]

Right. The baby also can't see the moon.

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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

[Negeen Farsad]

This is Star Talk with Neil DeGrasse. Jason. Well, we have another question from Gregory K. In Ottawa, Canada. Okay, a lot of Canadian questions today. It's a question about ligo. My dad used to talk and argue with other people about gravitational waves and

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

then have arguments about gravitation.

I love it.

[Negeen Farsad]

I. I mean, this is a man after your own heart.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I love arguments over dinner about science.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah. And then he celebrated when ligo L I g o Am I saying that right? Lego LIGO detected the merging black holes. Now, what I don't understand and what makes me doubt is that they haven't confirmed the merger with a telescope detecting the same event. How do they even know it's not some gravity waves? Cult cons conspiracy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ooh. So there's a lot in there. Very good. So indeed we did the calculation and we said, how often might two black holes collide in the universe? There's a lot of galaxies in the universe. You can ask, how often would that happen in our own galaxy? I don't know the number. Let me make up a number. That might happen only once in a million years. Well, you wouldn't build an experiment on the hope that something will happen. Now that happens only once in a million years. But suppose you have a billion galaxies.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah, that makes my head hurt.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so something can happen once in a million years.

[Negeen Farsad]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But if you have a billion galaxies, then it's.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah, the probability is higher.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Somebody's doing it all the time.

[Negeen Farsad]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. Not everyone at the same. You're doing it and then you're doing it and then you're doing it.

[Negeen Farsad]

Somewhere it's happening.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Somewhere it's happening. It's a rare event that then would come to you frequently. Which is fun to say that. Right. This event is rare, except it's common. Okay. Armed with that calculation, they turned on the telescope. Within days of that, they made their first discovery. And we can characterize the masses of black holes and what it would look like. And so we knew these two black holes were around 30 times the mass of the Sun. They collide, send out a ripple through the fabric of space time traveling at the speed of light. And it is a signal coming from a galaxy far, far away. For billions of years, it washed over space time until it arrived at Earth, until it arrived at that detector. And they measured it. Now Black holes don't emit light. Two black holes don't emit light. They collide. They don't emit light. So you're not gonna see this with any telescope that uses light, but you will see it with a telescope that uses gravitational waves. So that person, what's the person's name?

[Negeen Farsad]

This was Gregory in Canada.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So Gregory in Canada wanted verification from a regular telescope, but it can't happen. But we built a new telescope that verified itself. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, acronymed as

[Negeen Farsad]

ligo.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ligo okay. So now using the same telescope, we've discovered two colliding pulsars. They emit light, they collide, they're not as massive as the black holes, so their LIGO signature is not as strong. But once we discovered what their masses were, we told other telescopes, look for this in this part of the sky we found. And then they turn on the telescopes, and there it is. So colliding pulsars showed up in everybody's telescope. And that's where we learned that pulsars might be the source of all the world's gold. It's very high level, high mass nuclear fusion going on. Gold, platinum, iridium, silver.

[Negeen Farsad]

This sort of thing comes from these collisions.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We think most of that in the universe comes from colliding pulsars. And nothing's coming out of a colliding black hole.

[Negeen Farsad]

They're just boring.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I love me the wiggle that they send us, but. Yeah, no, otherwise, look elsewhere if you want some action.

[Negeen Farsad]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I've been giving long answers. Should I try some short answers? You want to try that?

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah, let's do it. I mean, I find them good.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You like them?

[Negeen Farsad]

Okay. I find them fascinating. If I can follow them, I think that's a good sign.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'll try one that's short.

[Negeen Farsad]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Just so you can. And then you can pass judgment.

[Negeen Farsad]

Okay, don't. Yeah, let me see. So James Hudson from Alabama asks. We often talk about mysteries that. That may take centuries to unravel, but which cosmic questions feel close enough to touch? The ones you believe we might actually answer within the next 30 years.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so I'm gonna give a cop out answer, and then I'll give a real answer. My cop out answer is I don't think about questions yet to be answered.

Oh.

I think about questions yet to be asked. Ooh.

[Negeen Farsad]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

As our knowledge grows.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I say, as the area of our knowledge grows, so too does the perimeter of our ignorance. So I want to know the question I have yet to think to ask. Because there's a new vista we have yet to arrive at that'll show us the universe in ways we don't yet know how to question. So that's the real answer. I want to give that question.

[Negeen Farsad]

Questions like, why are two colliding black holes so boring? Why don't they make gold like colliding black holes?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

If you know to ask that question, it doesn't count in my list. It has to be a question you don't know to ask yet.

[Negeen Farsad]

Right? Gosh.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

See, for example, before black holes were developed, you wouldn't even know to ask that question. You're asking questions about other stuff black holes do, not even about the black hole.

[Negeen Farsad]

And you feel like there's things always on the precipice of being discovered to

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

put me in a new place, to ask a new question I don't even know to ask right now. That's the answer I want to give him. But now let's get back to, like, normal philosophy here.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I wanna know if there was ever life on Mars.

[Negeen Farsad]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Or if there was ever life anywhere else in our backyard. The moons of Jupiter, other planets, the solar systems, especially Mars. I wanna learn that before I die. And if I lead a healthy life and wear a seatbelt and don't smoke, I should live another 30 years. And I'm looking forward to that.

[Negeen Farsad]

You have a recent book on aliens.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Thanks for giving it a shout out.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah, no, it's a. I wonder, like a personal question for you is, what if you find out that there's life on Mars and that life is, like, really uninteresting?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, no. It would be interesting to a biologist, no matter what.

[Negeen Farsad]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Microbial life. You're not having a conversation.

[Negeen Farsad]

It's like single cell.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah. You're not having a conversation with it. That's not coming up to you and saying, take me to your leader. Okay. But it's another way of being alive, Right? And that is immense. Can I speak for biologists in this way? I'm pretty sure I got them covered here. That would be immensely fascinating. Does it have DNA? Is DNA as complex as that molecule is? Is it inevitable in any imprint of life the universe sees?

[Negeen Farsad]

Mm.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

If it has DNA, is there any DNA in common with DNA on Earth? You wouldn't expect it to have any DNA in common at all because it's from another planet. But if it does have DNA in common, could that mean life began on Mars and moved to Earth?

[Negeen Farsad]

Mm.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's called panspermia. Where an asteroid hits, it kicks life stow Away life on a rock, on an asteroid, on a meteor that moves from planet to planet. It arrives on Earth already homemade. Life on Mars, which would mean everyone on Earth would be a descendant of Martians.

[Negeen Farsad]

That would be wild.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Also, some people perhaps more so than others. Perhaps.

[Negeen Farsad]

Also. That's called panspermia.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, a guy came up with that word for sure.

[Negeen Farsad]

I'm gonna not say anything further. Let that one go. We're gonna let that one go.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We have other battles to fight here. Or suppose it was life and had no DNA at all. Yeah, that's more interesting, right?

[Negeen Farsad]

Like, you look into the microscope and it's just squigglies. And you don't. It doesn't look like anything that we know.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That would be transformative to biology. Meeting aliens, asking me to take them to their leader would be transformative to our culture.

[Negeen Farsad]

Oh, yeah, totally. It would be so fun. It would be so fun.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And I'm so not taking them to our leaders.

[Negeen Farsad]

I'm taking them to brunch. I like that. You know what I mean? Let's have some mimosas and talk about how you guys.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, yeah. Okay. If you invite me to join you with that.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah, of course.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Totally. Brunch first, and then we go to the National Academy of Sciences. Okay.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yes. Natural. Second place.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. Okay, so one more. I think we have time for.

[Negeen Farsad]

All right, here we go. Okay, so we have one from Donatis. From Lithuania.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, Donatus. I love them.

[Negeen Farsad]

All right. Well, I love time travel movies. I suspect time travel is impossible. I lean toward loop quantum gravity, where time is emergent, not a fundamental highway. Common travel theories often ignore how gravity affects subatomic particles versus macro objects. In Bell's rocket paradox, it's argued the string breaks because the rocket rotates in the time dimension. But if a rocket is just a vast cloud of subatomic particles, can a macro object truly rotate into. Sorry. Can a macro object truly rotate into time as a single unit? Or is our perception of time just the sum of quantum interactions making the fourth dimension an illusion? Well, I mean, that's.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You had that question, too. You were thinking that this morning.

[Negeen Farsad]

I think this question comes up for me every day. Every day.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm intrigued by emergent ideas on the landscape, the cosmological landscape, that time or our perception of time could be emergent.

[Negeen Farsad]

And what does that mean, emergent?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's like, you know, people think of. Maybe consciousness is emergent in the sense that the fundamental structure of the universe does not allow for it. But once you start doing things in the Universe. There's a time reference that is very helpful to you. And so it comes out of what was otherwise fundamental within the universe itself. And so I don't have a problem with that. But it feels so science fictiony. I'm more comfortable seeing it in a science fiction setting rather than thinking it's actually going on in our own universe. I don't know how helpful I can be in reacting to that. You know who we really need for that is Brian Greene. He could totally get in there. He's our physicist at large up at Columbia University. I like time. Einstein once said that time is defined to make motion look simple because motion becomes very easy to see and interpret. It was here earlier, and that's here later.

[Negeen Farsad]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And there's a timeline. And I'm just angered that as a dimension of our existence, we are prisoners of the present.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah. And you don't think there's like a scenario. Like you agree that it's involved.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's intriguing ideas. Right now, I can't weigh in on whether what is more likely than there's no evidence for any of this, but it's intriguing. And you always need intriguing ideas on the edges just to keep you. To destabilize your comfort level with what is known. Because only when you're uncomfortable with what is known do true discoveries occur.

[Negeen Farsad]

Cause as we established earlier, it's possible that your little laws of physics.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Don't talk about little laws of physics.

[Negeen Farsad]

Are wrong. Kidding.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Or they could be expanded upon.

[Negeen Farsad]

They could be expanded upon. There it is.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I think we ran out of time. No. One last question. I'll answer it in three sentences.

[Negeen Farsad]

Okay. Andor Clomp from Schieden, the Netherlands, Nederlands.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Negeen Farsad]

If the universe tends to generate more complex ways of processing information, would creating official intelligence beyond ourselves be unnatural? Or exactly what nature has been doing all along? At what point. At what point does protecting humanity become holding back the next layer of consciousness?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ooh, Ooh. I'm loving that people feeling all philosophical about the universe. I would say that whatever we do, since we are of this universe, is natural. If we create an artificial intelligence, it's natural. Nature creates a beaver, A beaver creates a dam. We shouldn't not allow the dam just because it was created. And nature would not have done it all by itself. Nature needed the dam. Nature needs us to create artificial intelligence. I'm cool with that. People see cities as, oh, this is unnatural. We're humans and we built the city. Deal with it. If you're a bee, you build a beehive if you're a termite, you build a termite mound. I'm a person, I build a city. Chill out. And so I don't think we're getting ahead of ourself. It's just, let me call it a natural evolution of what it is to have a brain, a curious brain that wants to keep that engine moving into what are the powers and expressions that our brain can offer. So I'm all in.

[Negeen Farsad]

I love that. It's a little bit like athletes that we thought like in the 1920s, you could only run a mile at this. It's impossible to break that record.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The four minute mile was like this barrier.

[Negeen Farsad]

Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It was a psychological barrier, it turned out.

[Negeen Farsad]

And then we break it. And then we break it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And you know who broke the mile? Who broke the mile? Roger Bannister. That was okay. Now once he did that, people broke the 4 minute mile all the time. Oh my gosh. So it was a psychological barrier, not a barrier created by the laws of physics. So we perhaps are our own worst enemy in this regard. So fortunately, there are people who live among us who are not constrained by these limits of imagination foisted upon them by others.

[Negeen Farsad]

And Neil, I think you're one of them.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, well, thank you, Nick Geen. Always good to have you.

[Negeen Farsad]

So good to be here.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. This has been another installment of Cosmic Query's grab bag edition. This one was big on the philosophy.

[Negeen Farsad]

Yeah, a lot of big ideas.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, but I love big ideas. Small ideas matter too, but big ideas, you need those. And remind me of your handle.

[Negeen Farsad]

You can find me at Negeen Farsad on on all the things Nagin Farsad.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

F a R S a D. That's right. You got it. You got it. We'll look for you there.

[Negeen Farsad]

And your podcast is Fake the Nation. Subscribe Fake the Nation.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's a fun time and your book is still one of my favorites.

[Negeen Farsad]

It's how to make white people laugh.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I just laughed just thinking of that title. Really good. All right, Nagin, we'll keep up with you there. This has been another installment of Startalk Cosmic Queries. Until next time, keep looking up. Out on the road it helps to have a partner like the Love's Rewards app. Download Love's Rewards today to get sweet discounts and earn points on food, fuel, drinks and more. Every time you scan Love's Rewards, save and earn at every turn. Terms apply. See website for details.

[Negeen Farsad]

Why have we asked our contractor we found on Angie.com to be our kids legal guardian? Because he took such good care when redoing our basement that we knew we could trust him to care for our kids.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We only met a month ago. Angie the one you trust. Define the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home [e-mail].