Cosmic Queries – Planet 9

Summary

StarTalk Radio – Cosmic Queries: Planet 9

Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Co-host: Chuck Nice
Date: August 4, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this lively grab-bag edition of Cosmic Queries, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice field listener questions on a range of topics in astronomy and astrophysics, with a focus on the elusive Planet 9 (aka Planet X), Pluto’s planetary status, the nature of galaxies, quantum and modern physics, dark matter, and the future of the International Space Station (ISS). As always, the duo blends scientific insight, humor, pop culture, and accessible explanations to illuminate current debates and cosmic mysteries.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Search for Planet 9 (Planet X)

Listener Question: What evidence suggests the existence of a large planet beyond Pluto? Can the Rubin Observatory find it?
— Andy L. from Thousand Oaks, CA
Response Highlights:

• Detection Technique: To discover an unknown planet, repeated observations are necessary to track objects that move relative to the fixed background of stars, since stars remain mostly stationary from night to night (05:25).
• Role of the Rubin Telescope: The Rubin telescope is a survey instrument meant to cover large areas of the sky, looking for moving objects. While it could, in principle, detect Planet 9, it would only do so if the object happened to move through its field of view (05:25).
• The Case for Planet 9:
  • “Observations of Kuiper Belt objects tell us that maybe they’re responding to another source of gravity in the outer solar system...that allows you to say maybe there’s another source of gravity out there that’s mysteriously tugging on these objects.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson (06:40)
  • The hypothetical planet is thought to be massive and very distant, explaining why it has not yet been seen.
  • The idea is based on the unexplained movements of certain trans-Neptunian objects that suggest gravitational influence from something unseen (07:00).

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2. Why Pluto Isn’t a Planet

Listener Question: What are the IAU’s requirements for planetary status, and is Pluto’s demotion justified?
— Eric Laroy, NYC
Response Highlights:

• Historical Context: The discovery of Kuiper Belt objects similar in size to Pluto prompted a re-evaluation of what constitutes a planet (09:56).

• Criteria for Planetary Status:

  • 1. Must orbit the Sun.
  • 2. Must be massive enough for its gravity to make it almost spherical.
  • 3. Must have “cleared its neighborhood” of other debris (15:43).
  • Pluto fails on points 3 and (arguably) 1, as it shares its orbital space with many Kuiper Belt objects and crosses Neptune’s orbit (16:55).

• Historical Precedent:

  • Similar to Ceres’ “demotion” from planet to asteroid after multiple similar bodies were found in the asteroid belt.
  • “Once we started discovering dozens of these things, we said we can’t call them planets. Instead, we have discovered a brand new swath of real estate in the solar system...another belt: the asteroid belt.” – Neil (13:16)

• Fun Fact: Pluto gave its name to element 94, plutonium, when it still had planet status (17:57).

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3. From Relativity to Quantum Physics to Semiconductors

Listener Question: Is there a direct connection between relativity, quantum physics, and semiconductor technology?
— Nirav Shah, India/Arizona
Response Highlights:

• No direct role for relativity in semiconductors; quantum physics is the essential science for understanding atomic and subatomic behaviors, such as electron flow in semiconductors.
• “Quantum physics enables the IT revolution entirely. Civilization as we know it would not exist without it.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson (26:54)

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4. The Shapes of Galaxies

Listener Question: What determines a galaxy’s shape?
— Derek Evans, Connecticut
Response Highlights:

• Rotation Rate: Determines whether a galaxy becomes an elliptical (slow, low rotation) or spiral (higher rotation and flattening during collapse).
• Gas Content: Elliptical galaxies used their gas efficiently to form stars rapidly; little gas remains. Spiral galaxies are less efficient, retaining gas for ongoing star formation (28:31).
  • “Spiral galaxies are inefficient, converting their gas into stars. Elliptical galaxies are very efficient.” – Neil (30:16)
• Irregular & Disturbed Galaxies: Many “peculiar” shaped galaxies result from collisions or gravitational interactions (31:54).
  • “A crashed Lexus is not a different kind of Lexus. It’s still a Lexus.” – Neil, quoting a mentor (32:25)

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5. How to Learn Astrophysics as an Autodidact

Listener Question: How should I structure my self-study in astrophysics?
— Melinda Washington, NC
Response Highlights:

• Neil recommends starting with “A Brief Welcome to the Universe” and graduating to “Welcome to the Universe,” his readable, pedagogically structured textbook.
• “It’s a page turner. You can sit on the couch and get lost.” – Neil (37:05)
• “Don’t read my bestselling book ‘Astrophysics for People in a Hurry’...I cherry picked the coolest things and put it in one volume. But in a college course, lots gets left out.” – Neil (37:49)

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6. Speculative Questions: Dark Matter Hiding in Spacetime Folds

Listener Question: Could dark matter be ordinary matter hidden in spacetime’s folds?
— Christy Jianju, Romania/Italy
Response Highlights:

• Neil doubts that spacetime hides information but muses that dark matter could be ordinary matter in a parallel universe.
  • “Maybe dark matter is ordinary matter in a parallel universe...its gravity leaking into ours, forcing us to say ‘Oh, what is this mysterious substance?’” – Neil (41:21)
• Chuck jokes about sending an advanced team (or a gerbil!) to parallel universes before visiting ourselves (42:16).

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7. Deorbiting the International Space Station

Listener Question: Will you watch the ISS de-orbit, and is it possible to see?
— Stephen Schultz, Dayton, OH
Response Highlights:

• The ISS is scheduled to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere around 2030-31; the Pacific Ocean is the prime re-entry zone due to its vast size (43:01).
  • “The Pacific Ocean is the great space toilet bowl on Earth...it’s huge.” – Neil (43:12)
• Most of the station will burn up, only some pieces may reach the surface. Watching it in person would be unlikely unless you were in exactly the right spot (43:58).
• “If you visited someone’s home and they had a television from the early 1990s, they would be the object of mockery.” – Neil (44:24), comparing the ISS’s aging technology.

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8. Meteors Striking Humans – What Are the Odds?

Listener Question: Actual odds of being hit by a meteorite (excluding extinction events)?
— Steven Skilton
Response Highlights:

• Calculating the true odds involves population, habitable land, size and frequency of meteorites, and the protective effect of Earth’s atmosphere (48:56).
• Neil recounts his near-miss experience with a meteor during the 1999 Leonid meteor shower:
  • “The day you die from a meteor strike is the day you are staring up at a light that gets brighter and brighter, and that'll be the last thing you saw in your life. I almost got hit...I was protected by Earth’s atmosphere.” – Neil (52:28)

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9. Can Black Holes Absorb Dark Matter?

Listener Question (from 7-year-old Vale in Philly): Do black holes absorb dark matter? Does it change their properties?
Response Highlights:

• Black holes can absorb dark matter via gravity just as they do ordinary matter. Dark matter can't escape once inside the event horizon, and a black hole's mass increases accordingly (53:58).
• “Everything we know and understand about [dark matter] tells us that it wouldn’t have different properties near a black hole.” – Neil (55:25)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On planetary status:
  “Pluto is orbiting a region of the solar system that we would discover has countless thousands of other icy bodies in the outer solar system.” – Neil (10:22)

• On finding Planet 9:
  “Maybe there’s another source of gravity out there that’s mysteriously tugging on these objects.” – Neil (06:40)

• On the nature of galaxies:
  “Spiral galaxies are inefficient, converting their gas into stars. Elliptical galaxies are very efficient.” – Neil (30:16)

• On black holes and dark matter (addressed to a 7-year-old):
  “If it has gravity, we are left with no skepticism over whether a black hole would just as happily absorb dark matter as it does regular matter.” – Neil (54:24)

• Chuck Nice on school systems:
  “Let me just say this: If you are from Philly, you damn sure ain’t going to Philadelphia public schools...There’s a 7-year-old asking that question?!” – Chuck (53:45)

• Near-miss meteor incident:
  “I saw a star in the sky just appear. And it got brighter and brighter...then it disappeared in a puff of smoke. I said, oh my God, this was a meteor headed straight for me!” – Neil (51:20)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Planet 9: 05:00–08:40
• Pluto’s Demotion: 09:55–18:23
• Quantum/Relativity/Semiconductors: 23:54–26:54
• Galaxy Shapes: 26:54–35:14
• Studying Astrophysics: 35:14–39:39
• Dark Matter Speculation: 39:39–42:06
• ISS Deorbit/Funding: 42:15–45:44
• Meteorite Impact Odds: 47:43–52:39
• Black Holes & Dark Matter: 52:43–55:44

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Episode Tone & Style

• Language: Conversational, witty, and scientifically precise, balancing humor (often led by Chuck Nice) with Neil’s encyclopedic and engaging explanations.
• Atmosphere: Lighthearted yet knowledgeable; the hosts banter about pop culture (Shaft, Lady Gaga), self-deprecating humor about textbooks and previous missteps, and patient, thoughtful responses to even the most speculative questions.

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Conclusion

This StarTalk Cosmic Queries episode delivers an entertaining exploration of hot topics in planetary science, cosmology, and quantum physics, tackling the mysteries of Planet 9, the fate of Pluto, galaxy evolution, and what the universe’s hidden mass might be. Whether you’re a science novice or a seasoned stargazer, you’ll leave with a stack of cosmic curiosities—and a few book recommendations—thanks to Neil’s insight and Chuck’s endless charm.

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Closing Quote: “As always bidding you to keep looking up.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson (55:55)

Transcript

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[Chuck Nice]

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Amigos Chuck another queries grab bag. Yes, my favorite one is the person wants to know what Are the chances of getting hit by a meteor?

[Chuck Nice]

Yes. And you were actually taken out by a meteor?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Almost. Okay, film at 11 on StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries. And as always, it's a grab bag edition. And I got Chuck nice with me. How you doing, Chuck?

[Chuck Nice]

Hey, Neil. Doing well, man, thanks for asking.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There's no shortage of people's questions.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes, people really inquiring minds want to know.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So bring it on, bring it on.

[Chuck Nice]

Let's jump right into Andy L. Says, hello, stellar intellects and also co host of the week. My name, he. He has assumed that the co host is clearly not of a stellar intellect. So this is.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But he's allowing it to have been other co hosts because we have other co hosts that come in.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes, yes. Yeah, that's why I'm not taking it personally. He says, hey, my name is pronounced Andy. See now that lets me know that he thinks it's me. See now you full of. You full of it. And D. And I know what the D stands for too. Anyway, by the way, that's another name. It's nickname for Richard. Thank you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's also a nickname for private detective.

[Chuck Nice]

That's correct. Private dick. That's right, yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And that's why in the opening song to the movie Shaft, Isaac Hayes sings who's the black private dick? That's a sex machine to all the chicks.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, I think he was talking about invest investigations.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That was a line I had to like listen to few times. And then I had to look up the definition. And one of the definitions of dick was private detective. So that was a weird sort of scripting there. Okay, go ahead, go ahead.

[Chuck Nice]

Way to go. Isaac Hayes, he said, I've heard there may be a large planet or dwarf planet orbiting beyond Pluto, the so called planet X. What exactly are the scientific observations causing this suspicion? Could the new Rubin telescope find such an object? Thank you. A. Andy from Thousand Oaks, California.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I do not know the targeted zones of the Rubin Telescope. Generally, if you're going to find a planet and you don't know that it's a planet, you need several observations because otherwise the stars, though they move to orbit the galaxy, are so far away from night to night, they basically keep the same position. But something orbiting the sun would not. From night to night, week to week, month to month. So I think in principle the Rubin telescope would be able to detect such a thing, but it would have to Be directed to a region of space where we think it is and then hang out there just for that purpose. But that's not what the telescope was designed for. It was designed as a survey telescope of the entire sky, looking for whatever moves in the survey zone. So that's my first point. Second, the way we have colleagues who think about this and do these experiments. Pluto we discovered in the last 20 years, 25 years, is just the most prominent member of a new swath of real estate discovered in our solar system called the Kuiper Belt. Named after a Dutch, I think Dutch, American astronomer Gerard Kuiper. In mid century, he hypothesized the existence of a repository of comets that didn't participate in the formation of the rest of the solar system. In fact, he made the inverse prediction. He would say, he said there's a region out there where there would be comets if they didn't participate. Okay. It was one of those kind of backhanded predictions. Turns out there are thousands of dirty ice balls orbiting well beyond Neptune, including Pluto. Okay, so. And the Kuiper Belt is huge. So observations of Kuiper Belt objects tell us that maybe they are responding to another source of gravity in the outer solar system and not just in their orbit around the sun. There's movements that can't otherwise be explained if they're simply orbiting the sun. So that allows you to say maybe there's another source of gravity out there that's mysteriously tugging on these objects. We do see now if it's a planet, it's going to be much bigger than just a Kuiper Belt object. But if you can't see it, it must be much farther away. So they're placing it at a distance below their detection limits because they're saying otherwise we would have seen it. And when you do this, this thing is really far away. So there's still a lot of speculation. There's been some skepticisms of the observations and the interpretation, but that's what it is. And that's how we infer that there might be a planet nine or a new planet X. Cause we all know Pluto got done demoted, right?

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So there you have it.

[Chuck Nice]

And Andy crawl through a mile of. Anyway.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, this is Eric, Eric Laroy, who says. Greetings Neil and Chuck. Eric Laroy here, exercise physiologist and space flight physiology researcher from nyc. And my question is what are the requirements established by the IAU that led to the demotion of Pluto as one of the major planets of our solar system? In my opinion, they Are not specific enough and should include granular measurements. In addition to the phrase clearing its neighborhood, I believe if pluto was given its title as the ninth planet back, There would be a surge in scientific and astronomical interest around the world of all ages. Thank you for all that you do in the name of science. So he's saying, let's create a controversy that will spur interest in astrology once again. Astronomy once again. But I said astrology just. Oh, jesus. Astronomy once again. By giving pluto planetary status back, the

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

rules weren't diabolically conceived Just to get rid of pluto. It's not how that worked. Okay, so here's what happened. Let me remind people. As our telescopes got better, as the keck telescope started looking in the outer solar system, in the region of space where pluto orbits, we started finding other objects. And there was an object Whose size rivaled that of pluto, and no one was prepared to call that a planet. So that forced a whole fresh look at what pluto is, where it is, how it's orbiting, and why. On doing so, we found not only is Pluto more than half ice by volume, like comets are, Pluto is orbiting a region of the solar system that we would discover has countless thousands of other icy bodies in the outer solar system. These we would more commonly call comets. Pluto was the first discovered because it was the biggest and the brightest. You would expect the biggest and the brightest to be discovered first. Then we have better telescopes, and now they're popping up. We've lost count of the number of kuiper belt objects that are out there. So this is not different from the year 1801, where a new planet was discovered Orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. There was a big gap anyway, Between Mars and Jupiter On a planetary scale. We said, something has to be there. Let's keep looking. We found a planet. We called it ceres, Named in the tradition of a roman God, as were all the other planets. Then we found another one, and then another, and then another. Ceres, Pallas, P, A L, L, A S, Vesta, and juno.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And it says, wow, the planet count.

[Chuck Nice]

Just look at all these planets.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

A big leap. And then we said, well, wait a minute. How come when I look at them Through a telescope, you, don't see a disk the way you see a disk? Like you see Jupiter, you see weather bands on it. Saturn, you see rings.

[Chuck Nice]

You know that's pluto calling you right now.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

When you look at the other planets, you, see the physical spherical object that is the planet. When you look at these planets, they're just dots of light. They're really tiny. And we know they're orbiting the sun and they're reflecting sunlight because we can follow the orbit. But when you look at stars, they're just dots of light. But we know these are not stars. They're just star like. Wait a minute. What's a word for star?

[Chuck Nice]

Like I'm gonna say asteroid.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Asteroid. Once we started discovering dozens of these things, we said we can't call these things planets. What instead has happened is that we have discovered a brand new swath of real estate in the solar system that we didn't previously know was there another belt? A belt. And generally it's a belt. If it's flat, but goes around the circle, it rims the sun. The asteroid belt. So overnight, those four new planets were, quote, demoted to asteroid status. And now there's countless hundreds of thousands, likely millions of asteroids discovered and cataloged, orbiting in that zone. Okay, having discovered Pluto first and thinking it's a planet, and then discovering another object and another. And we kind of been down that road before. We have countless Kuiper Belt objects all in an orbit that is spread around the sun, enclosing the trajectory of Pluto. That's the first strike against it. It's not isolated in its orbital zone. It is one among many whose size rivals it. Wow. Okay, two. Yeah, it's small, but that alone doesn't indict you. It's big enough to be a sphere. If you're small, it's got enough mass to be a sphere. If you have much less mass than that, then the gravity doesn't overcome the structural integrity of the rocks, and the rocks went out. So most asteroids look like Idaho potatoes. Okay. Whatever the rock is, that's its shape. But when you get bigger, gravity pulls the high places into the low, fills them in, and you become a sphere eventually. Interesting fact about gravitational physics. All right, so Pluto did not clear its orbit. Pluto, because it's in a swath of real estate, completely filled with other objects that rival it in size. What else do you have to be to be a planet? You have to be big enough to be round. Pluto is big enough to be round.

[Chuck Nice]

It is.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But it needs more than one criterion to be satisfied for planet status. Having failed one of those two, it got, quote, demoted to dwarf planet status. However, you know, Ceres, the first asteroid discovered, that's the only asteroid that's round, of course. So it's big enough for gravity to make it round. And of course, that's going to be the first asteroid you discover. Ceres has more mass than all the other asteroids combined. So Sirius got a promotion. At the same time, Pluto was demoted to dwarf planet, Asteroid Ceres was elevated to dwarf planet. And so Pluto has company. There are many dwarf planets in the solar system to join it. And like I said, it's half ice by volume. If you brought it to where Earth is right now, heat from the sun would evaporate the ice and it would grow a tail. And oh, the third criterion I left out, sorry, you can't cross the orbit of other planets. Oh, that's annoying. Pluto spends 20 years out of 48 year life closer to the sun than planet Neptune.

[Chuck Nice]

It crosses Neptune, it goes to the outside, to the inside, to the inside.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And by the way, that's what, comets do that routinely. They cross all the planet orbits as they plunge in towards the sun.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So out of three criteria, Pluto failed two of them.

[Chuck Nice]

It's a fraud, Pluto, you a fraud.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

However, however, while it had planetary status, we discovered a new element. It basically invented a new element in the laboratory that we named after Pluto. And so Pluto now has an element on the periodic table from false pretenses. Just thought I put it out there and in sequence there's element 92, which is uranium, named after which planet? Take a guess.

[Chuck Nice]

I'm gonna say Mars. No, of course, Uranus.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Uranus. And then there's neptunium, this element number 93, named after Neptune. And element 94, plutonium, named after Pluto. Pluto was discovered in 1930. Plutonium was isolated in 1940. It was weaponized, turned into a bomb and used in warfare five years later.

[Chuck Nice]

Damn.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Damn. That's right.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow, look at that. Pluto, the most destructive non planet ever. Wow, that was the first time I've seen you give that exhaustive list of Pluto's Pluto's failure to be a planet. I, I. Well listen Eric, I hope that did it for you man, because yeah, get over it. That's terrible, but really get over it all.

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

there's no direct connection that I know of between relativity and what happens in a circuit board. But relativity is what we call modern physics, which was discovered in the 20th century just as quantum physics was. So often if you take a college class in modern physics, you learn both relativity and quantum physics together in a first introduction to in your first step beyond classical physics. All right, so quantum physics, Quantum people say you took a quantum leap. A quantum is a very small unit discovered originally as a small unit of energy that cannot be continuously varied. A quanta of energy. You can't have one and a half quanta. You can have one, you can have two, you can have three, you can't have fractional quanta. That's the whole construct of that understanding. So in circuits, you're moving electrons around to understand electrons and what they do and who they behave and why. You need quantum physics. You need quantum physics to understand anything that's going on inside of molecules and atoms and nuclei so you don't have to single out the semiconductor and its importance to civilization being fed by innovations in quantum physics because it's all quantum physics. So I don't know how to reply other than to say just a couple of things about semiconductors. A semiconductor typically uses a wafer of silicon, which is an insulator, mixed with some other material that's a conductor of electricity. Insulator does not transmit it conductor does. Semiconductor is configured so that you can control the passage of electricity at will and on command, depending on the needs of the circuit. And so semiconductors became highly useful, especially in computing and the race was how to make the tiniest semiconductor that had the most number of circuits in it. So you can. When I grew up, computers were the size of whole rooms. That's how old I am. Those were four function calculators. Walk into the room and it's like it was hot because it had vacuum tubes that radiated heat. Quantum physics enables the IT revolution entirely. And so I don't know what more to say about that other than that we're in the centennial decade of quantum physics, and let's celebrate that fact, because civilization as we know it would not exist without it.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, thank you, quantum. Yeah, there you go. All right, let's move on to Derek Evans. Hi, Dr. Tyson. Lord, nice. Derek here from South Windsor, Connecticut. My question is about the shape of galaxies. As we know they take many forms outside the stereotypical spiral shape. But what ultimately dictates a galaxy's shape? Do they all rotate? And if so, does shape indicate age or developmental stage?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It sounds very psychotherapy. What is your dissolvement? Are you lagging behind?

[Chuck Nice]

I'm a little stunted, you know what I mean? All the other galaxies seem to seem to have it together. Man, you know, I'm just really confused all the time. And I'm so angry all the time, too. I don't know if it's because I'm a spiral galaxy or sombrero galaxy or I honestly don't know what my identity is.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There is a galaxy named the Sombrero Galaxy. It's not a kind of galaxy. It's the name of a galaxy.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, is that the name? But it looks like a sombrero and it looks. Well, okay, there you go.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so if you start out with a gas cloud, right? Huge gas cloud, if it's depending on how fast it's rotating, if it's hardly rotating at all and it collapses, it doesn't flatten. It stays kind of three dimensionally globular. We call them elliptical galaxies.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, really?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They're spherical elliptical shapes.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And they rotate very slowly.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. If you have more rotation than that, you will flatten as you collapse and you become very flat. Flatter than a flapjack. You become as flat as a crepe, almost as flat as a tortilla. And so our galaxy, the Milky Way, when seen edge on, would almost disappear from your sight line for that reason. And what happens is a galaxy gets stars from its gas clouds. And in this, elliptical galaxies, for reasons not fully understood or were not fully understood the last I looked at this problem, that's the more the safe way to say that elliptical galaxies were very efficient making stars. So they made all. They used up all their gas and made all the stars and there's no gas left. So when you don't have gas, you're

[Chuck Nice]

not doing what I'm going to say, ruining the dinner because you're rude at the table.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

These are different gases, Chuck, not hydrogen sulfide. So, yeah. So elliptical galaxies are mostly gas free. They made all their stars early on and the stars are just aging right now. Whereas spiral galaxies, they retained 10%, 20%, sometimes 30% of their mass in gas.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So there's still stars being formed. So when you see those beautiful photos from JWST and Hubble of these gas clouds and stuff, we probe those gas clouds. It's where stars are born.

[Chuck Nice]

Stellar nurseries.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, stellar nurseries. So these are the differences among the galaxies. Spiral galaxies are inefficient, converting their gas into stars. Elliptical galaxies are very efficient. And so there you have it. Now there are galaxies that are very disturbed looking.

[Chuck Nice]

Those are the galaxies that are like, you come near me, I'll kill you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You think you're gonna collide?

[Chuck Nice]

You think you're gonna collide with me? I will kill you. Try to collide with me and see what happens.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Those are the belligerent category of galaxies. It's reminded because it reminds me. Just bullies. You don't even know the bully. You step on their toe, you do that again, I'll kill you.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly. It's like, bro, get in therapy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What is your problem? Galactic therapy. So in my lifetime, there was a catalog of galaxies that was published by a Caltech astrophysicist named Halton Arp, nicknamed Chip Chip Arp, and it was called the ARP Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. He went around all the sky, the night sky. He cataloged galaxies that were just weird looking, disturbed looking, distorted looking. And we didn't have the answer to the question, did galaxies become this or were they born this way? The way. What's your name was Lady Gaga.

[Chuck Nice]

That's the Gaga galaxy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Were they born this way or did something happen to them? It was not until we were able to bring computing power to this problem in the late 60s, but mostly in the 1970s, where we can say what happens to two grand design spiral galaxies if they collide? Oh my gosh, it's a train wreck. Stars don't actually collide with each other, but they feel each other's gravity and the gravity casts stars hither and yon and it looks like a train wreck. So if you Stop action. The footage of galaxies colliding. Here they are coming near each other. Here they are partly overlapping. Here they are deeply overlapping. And you do this. Then you have a template handed to you by your computer of colliding galaxies in all stages that they could collide. Now, you hold that to Chip Arp's catalog, and you can explain 90% of those galaxies. I had a mentor once who said, a crashed Lexus is not a different kind of Lexus. It's still Alexis. Why he chose Lexus, I don't know, but that was his car brand that he used. And there are also galaxies that are just irregular in shape for no good reason. You know what we call those?

[Chuck Nice]

I'm going to go with irregular galaxies.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Chuck, you're such a fast study here. So we have spiral galaxies, elliptical galaxies, irregular galaxies. They look kind of like puppy vomit, you know, on the ground. You know, it's just. It just they tend to be very gas, tend to be gaseous, which means they can make stars. And then there are galaxies that are just generally small, a catch basin of galaxies. And we call them dwarf galaxies. Of course, irregular galaxies are dwarf galaxies. You can also have small elliptical galaxies. We call those dwarf galaxies as well.

[Chuck Nice]

You can see them going off to work, singing hi ho, hi ho.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I wrote an essay, one of my early writing forays, where I was paid. I think I got paid $300 for this essay, for a newsletter. And it's called the Galaxy and the Seven Dwarfs. That's what it was called because we have. Our galaxy has at the time 7 Known dwarf galaxies that orbit us. Typically, a dwarf galaxy is a member of some other association of galaxies. So there you have it. That's more galaxy evolution than maybe you bargained for, but that's how it goes. And Chuck, those are the basic categories of galaxies. But there are also galaxies that just do weird things that might be hybrids of these others that I just listed for you. There are quasars and blazars and lenticular galaxies and radio galaxies that give mostly radio waves. So there are variants on this, but what I described to you are 95% of all the galaxies in the universe.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, well, very cool. All right, well, thanks a lot, nirav. Let's move on to Melinda Washington. She says hello from North Carolina. As a new autodidact, I am excited to explore astrophysics in a focused and structured way. Instead of jumping between topics, how would you recommend breaking the subject into manageable pieces? What materials would you suggest, and in what order should I approach them? To build a strong foundation. Thank you both for always sparking my curiosity and inspiring me to keep learning. Always looking up. Melinda, Washington oh love it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Love it. So at the risk of sounding self serving, I co authored a textbook with two colleagues at Princeton University. When we co taught a class, one of us taught stars and planets, the others taught galaxies and the third taught cosmology. And we, the class started out with 30 people and over the years it had like hundreds and hundreds. This was at Princeton University. And so we said why don't we turn this into a textbook? And we did. And the textbook is highly readable. It's not like learn this for the problem set and the syllabus. And so the book is called welcome to the Universe and if you get it through the museum's website, the museum shop, I think it's shop amnh.org I think they sell it there. If you get it, it's pre signed by me. I pre signed the books that they sell with my fancy overpriced purple ink bottle filled fountain pen.

[Chuck Nice]

Fountain pen.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

If you don't want to jump into a textbook, there's a tiny version of it that is the Cliff Notes version of it is called A brief welcome to the Universe. So what you might do is start with that. That'll whet your appetite and then you graduate to the full up textbook and it's, you know, it's 400 pages, it's a full up textbook, but it's very readable. You can sit on the couch and get lost. It's a page turner.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, I have one in my bathroom, Melinda.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So that's what I recommend. And it's very sequenced and very pedagogical I should say.

[Chuck Nice]

Very nice. All right, well that's very, that's, that's excellent.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And don't read my best selling book Astrophysics for People in a hurry.

[Chuck Nice]

Astrophysics for People in a hurry.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because clearly you're not in a hurry. A B. What's in that book is me going through an entire curriculum and cherry picking the coolest, most mind blowing things and putting it into one volume. So I skip over stuff that you don't even know would have been there. But in a full up curriculum in a college course, it belongs there. But if I just want to whet people's appetite, that's what I did. Cherry picking the coolest things in the universe for that book.

[Chuck Nice]

Very nice. Yeah, I was talking to, I was on a show yesterday and doing an interview and the host read Astrophysics for people in a Hurry and they said, I don't care how much, I'm not in a hurry. I still didn't get what he was talking about.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So. By the way, astrophysical people is not astrophysics for dummies just to make. It's real astrophysics. It's real astrophysics for its, it's interest level. So yeah, don't think it's, it's a lesser.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, don't, don't think you're gonna get in there and it's not going to be like, you know, this is a galaxy. See, galaxy spin, spin, galaxy spin. It ain't doing that. Okay. So yeah. All right. This is Christy Jiangu or Jianju. She says, hi, Dr. Tyson and Lord. Nice. This is Christy from Romania writing to you from Italy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Where do we get all these international people?

[Chuck Nice]

Wow, I love it, man.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

She says it is possible that dark matter is actually normal matter hidden in the guts of the space time fabric. I think she meant is it possible because it actually says it is. But is it possible? I'll read it that way. Is it possible that dark matter is actually normal matter hidden in the guts of the space time fabric? Imagine that on a space time fabric there are vast regions so deformed like crumpled paper ball, that it is impossible to see directly the matter inside those regions. Will that explain why we can't see or feel it, but we can feel the gravitational effect? It's possible to verify this measure the time that light takes to travel through those regions of crumpled deformed fabric since it has no cover or larger distance than what we actually see with our telescopes. Thank you. Keep looking up. Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I don't know that space time can hide things. That's. That'd be kind of diabolical to science. The space time is hiding crucial information from the court, you know. So tricked ya. However, I've imagined multiple times that maybe dark matter, which expresses gravity in our own spacetime, maybe dark matter is ordinary matter in a parallel universe. That's similar in an idea to you're tucking it away within folds of the space time continuum. If it's from another universe than its ordinary gravity leaking into ours, forcing us to say, oh, what is this mysterious substance? We can't see it, taste it, but it's real in another dimension. And I look forward to knowing whether or not that's true because it would be kind of cool if it was.

[Chuck Nice]

I would love it because to me that theory, not theory, but that postulate says that now we gotta go ahead and start investigating other universes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, except I don't want to be the first to visit them. The laws of physics are slightly different. You could just collapse into a pile of goo on the sidewalk. Okay. Yeah, Be careful.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, we'll send an advanced team.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Send a gerbil through or.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, exactly, you know. All right, this is Stephen Schultz, who says hello. StarTalk family, Stephen Schultz from Dayton, Ohio. Thank you all for taking the time to read my question. I've recently read that the ISS is scheduled to make its fall back to Earth in 2030 or 31. Will this be something you guys plan on watching in person? Will it be possible to see it from an island in the Pacific, assuming that's where it will land? Thank you guys, for all of the amazing content. So is it going to DE orbit in 2030?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. Well, I, I think they'll probably keep it up there. You know, when you threaten to. To defund something, people come out of the woodwork and say, no, don't do that.

[Chuck Nice]

Keep.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Keep it going.

[Chuck Nice]

And by the way, what a. What a great way to get funding. Well, you can cut off this money, but when this thing fall out the sky, you'll. On your own.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, I mean, so the Pacific Ocean is the great space toilet bowl on Earth because the Pacific Ocean spans a third of all of Earth's longitude. It's huge. So that you can drop something out of the sky without much precision, and you'll still hit the Pacific Ocean.

[Chuck Nice]

Look at that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Can you watch it? Yeah. Go take a rowboat out to the middle of the Pacific Ocean when this happens, and there's no guarantee it will fall just over your head. Compared with other places, your horizon in a rowboat might be 15 miles away. But at reentering spacecraft, that horizon would be small compared to all the places it could land above your head.

[Chuck Nice]

So,

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

yeah, in principle, you could see it. Maybe we have drones out there filming it. But most of the space station will burn up in the atmosphere. Most of it. We expect that.

[Chuck Nice]

And by the way, I'm not trying to go look at that, because with my luck, it will fall on me, so I ain't trying. Yeah, I like the idea of a drone filming it, though.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Keep in mind that the space station was built beginning in the early 1990s. So how many years ago? That's 30 years. If you visited someone's home and they had a television from the early 1990s, they would be the object of mockery to you.

[Chuck Nice]

They'd also not be watching TV because you can't get anything on a TV from the early 90s

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

so technology has advanced since then, and if you sent up a space station today, it would probably look different or be much more modern than whatever we have got going up there now. So China plans to also have like a competing space station to our own. And that's why people are a little spooked in Congress that they would have the new high ground relative to what we have enjoyed over the decades.

[Chuck Nice]

So the real issue here, Stephen, is to get more funding for NASA and space research because let them know that we're going to lose to China and quite frankly, they will have the upper hand militarily.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah. That's all it takes. And then everybody will just run with it.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, there you go.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There once was a magic sorry at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. We don't do fairy tales. We do real like real adventures to Mars or real journeys into the future to see how imagination can really take us to strange new worlds and real trips into the past where we meet heroes and legends way ahead of their time. Real rockets, real astronauts, real adventure all at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Discover something real.

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[Chuck Nice]

Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why drivers of trusted progressives name your price tool for years. Just tell Progressive what you want to pay and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. Visit progressive.com to find a car insurance rate that works for you. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affil Price and coverage match limited by state law. This is Steven Skilton and Stephen Skilton says do we know the actual odds for someone, anyone to be hit by a small meteorite. Excluding large extinction level events. I find it amazing that only one person, Ann Hodges, has been recorded being struck by. And no one else in at least 1000 years of history has been recorded as being killed. With 8 billion people on Earth, would you need to see odds on the magnitude of something like 1 trillion to 1 to help explain the lack of recorded strikes?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so if we didn't have an atmosphere, you'd be dead, you'd be hit. I would need time to do a proper calculation on this. It's a population of the Earth. How much space we take up, what the surface area is, the fact that people aren't spread evenly around the world, that not all the meteors that strike Earth make it to Earth's surface, that they burn up. I'm going to do a proper calculation and report back. But here's something I can tell you. I was almost hit by a meteor. Did I tell you about this?

[Chuck Nice]

Of you of all people? If you got hit by a meteor, everybody would say, see, there is a God. So the universe, the universe killed the universe guy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, what God are you talking about? Right, right.

[Chuck Nice]

So, right, right, right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I think I've told this story before. Back in 1999, I was on the Brooklyn Bridge in the middle of the night, maybe one in the morning in November for the Leonid meteor shower, which was on its 33 year cycle, where you expect not a meteor shower, but a meteor storm. Comets leave debris that make meteor showers. And that debris orbits the Earth in front of and behind the comet, and Earth plows through that at the same time each year. That's why meteor showers repeat annually. All right, this meteor shower is associated with a comet that has a 33 year orbital period around the sun. And if you're near where the comet had just passed the sun, or just come in front of the sun, you get extra meteorite flux coming in. Because all the crap that falls off a comet is closer to where the actual comet is than scattered completely in its orbit. And all this debris continues to orbit the sun. All right, I'm on the Brooklyn Bridge with my three year old daughter, three and a half year old daughter. I woke her up for this. Okay, we're there and I'm watching. We're getting a meteor every 90 seconds. Not quite storm level, but definitely satisfying. Okay. Then I'm looking up and I see a star in the sky just appear. And it got brighter and brighter. I said, that's odd. I wonder what that is. And then it disappeared in a puff. Of smoke. I said, oh my God, this was a meteor headed straight for me. But in the instant I saw it, I'm thinking, gee, I wonder what this. I was just being curious scientists until I put two and two together. And then I realized the day you die from a meteor strike is the day you are staring up at a light that gets brighter and brighter and that'll be the last thing you saw in your life. So I almost hit. I think it would have hit me because I saw no streak left, right, or sideways. And then it just simply disappeared. I was protected by earth's atmosphere.

[Chuck Nice]

Thank you. Pollution.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What?

[Chuck Nice]

It's not pollute? No.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The atmosphere protects you without the pollution. No.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, real. Okay, that's true.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We're good.

[Chuck Nice]

We good.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I. Chuck, we only have time for one more. One more. What you got?

[Chuck Nice]

All right, here's the last question. It's Vale Stein, dear Dr. Tyson and Lord. Nice. My name is Vale and I'm from. And. Oh, wait. My name is Vale and I'm a 7 year old math and science kid from Philly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What up, seven year old math and science kid? Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow. He says, do black holes absorb dark matter through the event horizon? And if so, would the black holes charge mass and spin change? Or can dark matter flow in and out of black holes as it is not electromagnetic and only has some of the properties that matter does? All right, first of all, let me just say this. If you are from Philly, you damn sure ain't going to Philadelphia public schools. Chuck, there's a seven year old asking that question. Is not happening in a Philly public school.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Damn, Chuck. No, I can't.

[Chuck Nice]

That's my hometown.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because you're from Philly, so you have,

[Chuck Nice]

you have that right. I. I can make that joke. I mean, I can make that joke. All right, Anyway.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, so it turns out the only property that dark matter has that we can interact with is gravity. It doesn't have electromagnetic coupling with any of our particles. That would mean does it have electromagnetic forces which are required to make molecules and hold atoms together?

[Chuck Nice]

So

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

it has gravity. And if it has gravity, we are left with no skepticism over whether a black hole would just happily, just as happily absorb dark matter as it does regular matter. And the matter would not be able to come out any more than regular matter could because it's responding to gravitational forces. So you can bet that a black hole sucked in all the dark matter that was just in its area. All right, but if you're at a safe distance from a black hole, it's not a giant sucking machine all of a sudden. It'll pull in anything that was close. But if the sun became a black hole, for example, we would still orbit it. It would get very cold very quickly, but we would still orbit. We're not so close that we would get sucked in. And so there's an old saying, there's no such thing as gravity. Earth just sucks.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So yes, Excell, wondering whether dark matter would have different properties in the vicinity of a black hole. And everything we know and understand about it tells us that it wouldn't. There it is. Now go back to your basement and working on a super weapon to destroy the superheroes.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly. Way to go, Vale. Nice, nice, nice work, nice work.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's all the time we had for it. So always good to have you there for these grab bags.

[Chuck Nice]

Josh, Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

This has been StarTalk, Cosmic Queries and another grab bag edition which are always crowd pleasers. I am Neil Degrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. As always bidding you to keep looking up.

[Chuck Nice]

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Just phone service that's there when it matters most.

[Chuck Nice]

TextNow, we've got your back. Download TextNow in your app store today. Wireless plants require the purchase of a sim card. Visit textnow.com for terms and conditions.