Cosmic Queries – The Big Stretch

Summary

StarTalk Radio Episode Summary: "Cosmic Queries – The Big Stretch"

Podcast Information:

• Title: StarTalk Radio
• Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Co-Host: Harrison Greenbaum
• Episode: Cosmic Queries – The Big Stretch
• Release Date: October 22, 2024

Description: In this engaging episode of StarTalk Radio, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson teams up with his comedic co-host, Harrison Greenbaum, to delve into a variety of listener-submitted cosmic questions. From the origins of photons to the mysteries of gravitational waves and the nature of dark matter, this episode offers a blend of scientific insights and humor, making complex topics accessible and entertaining for all audiences.

---

1. Photons and the Nature of Light

Listener Question:
Laina McGrath from Orlando asks, “Where do photons come from? For instance, are they already inside my birthday candles or are they created from the fire?”
(Timestamp: 03:00)

Discussion Highlights: Neil begins by likening the question to Michael Faraday's essay, "What Is Fire?" He explains that photons are packets of energy emitted when electrons in atoms transition between energy levels. This process is what causes the emission of light from sources like birthday candles.

Notable Quote:
Neil deGrasse Tyson at [03:20]:
"A photon is a packet of energy, a pure energy, and it moves at the speed of light."

Insights:

• Photon Origin: Photons are not pre-existing within the candle but are generated by the energy released during combustion.
• Energy Manifestation: Energy can manifest in various forms, including potential and kinetic energy, which are key to understanding everyday phenomena like why jumping from a height can be dangerous.

---

2. Understanding Gravitational Waves

Listener Question:
Alan Reer from Lithuania inquires, “Always wondered about gravitational waves. Please explain how and what did they actually detect in 2015.”
(Timestamp: 17:00)

Discussion Highlights: Neil delves into Einstein's prediction of gravitational waves—a rippling in the fabric of space-time caused by massive cosmic events, such as black hole collisions. He explains how the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected these waves by measuring minute changes in laser beam paths due to these distortions.

Notable Quote:
Neil deGrasse Tyson at [17:42]:
"Gravitational waves are disturbances in the fabric of space and time made by the existence of matter and energy."

Insights:

• Einstein’s Legacy: Gravitational waves were predicted a century prior and finally detected in 2015, validating a key aspect of General Relativity.
• Detection Mechanism: LIGO’s advanced laser interferometry allows scientists to observe these elusive waves, opening a new window into understanding cosmic events.

---

3. The Fabric of Space-Time and Singularities

Listener Question:
Matt D. from Oklahoma asks in all caps, “What is the fabric of space? Do you tear it like cloth fiber and sew it back together?”
(Timestamp: 25:11)

Discussion Highlights: Neil clarifies that the "fabric" of the universe is a metaphor for the properties of space-time, which can stretch, curve, and potentially tear under extreme conditions like the Big Rip scenario. He emphasizes that this fabric isn't a physical material but a way to conceptualize the dynamic nature of the cosmos.

Notable Quote:
Neil deGrasse Tyson at [25:28]:
"Space behaves as though it is a stretchy substance."

Insights:

• Metaphorical Language: Terms like "fabric" help illustrate complex concepts but should not be taken literally.
• Big Rip Theory: One possible fate of the universe involves its ongoing expansion accelerating to the point where space-time itself tears apart, though this is expected to occur in approximately 22 billion years.

---

4. Gravitational Singularities and the Big Rip

Listener Questions:

• Vinay from India asks, “Why black holes can't just be dark matter?”
• Yogesh Jog inquires, “If someone keeps traveling back and forth at Planck length distance, does it mean that it's traveling eternally?”
  (Timestamps: 38:15 & 36:38)

Discussion Highlights: Neil addresses the nature of gravitational singularities—points of infinite density within black holes—and explains why black holes cannot account for dark matter. He emphasizes that dark matter is believed to consist of exotic particles not accounted for by ordinary matter, including black holes.

Notable Quote:
Neil deGrasse Tyson at [39:25]:
"Dark matter can't be black holes because black holes count as ordinary matter, and dark matter requires something beyond the standard model."

Insights:

• Dark Matter Composition: Dark matter remains one of the universe's greatest mysteries, necessitating components beyond known particles and black holes.
• Singularity Challenges: Theoretical constructs like singularities highlight the limitations of current physics, underscoring the need for a unified theory that bridges quantum mechanics and general relativity.

---

5. Sources and Sustainability of Tidal Energy

Listener Question:
Mike Mohammed Kakay from Berlin asks, “While it's well known that most of Earth's energy originates from the sun, I'm curious about the source of tidal energy. Can it be traced back to the sun or does it stem from a different origin?”
(Timestamp: 40:22)

Discussion Highlights: Neil explains that tidal energy primarily originates from the gravitational interactions between the Earth and the Moon, with a smaller contribution from the Sun. He elaborates on how tidal forces are harnessed for renewable energy and discusses the sustainability of various energy sources.

Notable Quote:
Neil deGrasse Tyson at [49:44]:
"Tides are primarily driven by the Moon, but one third of the tidal force comes from the Sun."

Insights:

• Renewable Energy: Tidal energy is a reliable renewable resource, largely unaffected by the day-night cycle, unlike solar energy.
• Solar Influence: Although tides are mainly influenced by the Moon, solar contributions play a significant role in their dynamics.

---

6. Element Density: Osmium vs. Gold

Listener Question:
Cicero Artifon from Toronto, Canada asks, “Neil mentioned once that the element osmium (76) is heavier than gold (79). How can that be possible? Don't the elements have an increase of mass the lower they are on the table?”
(Timestamp: 53:12)

Discussion Highlights: Neil corrects a slight misstatement, clarifying that osmium (76) and gold (79) differ in atomic mass and density. He explains that osmium is denser than gold due to the way its atoms are packed, making it the densest naturally occurring element.

Notable Quote:
Neil deGrasse Tyson at [53:42]:
"Osmium is the densest element because its atoms can be packed closer together than those of any other element."

Insights:

• Density vs. Atomic Mass: While element numbers increase with atomic mass, density depends on atomic packing and structural properties.
• Practical Applications: Osmium's density makes it ideal for specific industrial uses, such as in the tips of fountain pens, though its rarity limits widespread use.

---

7. Conclusion and Closing Remarks

Throughout the episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson adeptly balances complex astrophysical concepts with approachable explanations and wit, while Harrison Greenbaum adds a comedic flair that keeps the conversation lively. The episode underscores the interconnectedness of various scientific phenomena and the perpetual quest to understand the universe's underlying principles.

Final Notable Quote:
Neil deGrasse Tyson at [56:42]:
"All right, this has been StarTalk, a cosmic queries grab bag edition with Harrison Greenbaum. As always, keep looking up."

Closing Insights:

• Educational Entertainment: StarTalk continues to demystify science, making it accessible and entertaining.
• Engagement with Audience: By addressing a diverse array of questions, the show fosters a deeper appreciation for the cosmos among its listeners.

---

Stay Connected:

• Harrison Greenbaum: Follow Harrison on Instagram @harrisongreenbaum or visit harrisongreenbaum.com for more of his comedy and magic performances.

Subscribe to StarTalk Radio on SiriusXM Podcasts+ or Apple Podcasts to enjoy new episodes ad-free and a week early.

Keep Looking Up!

Transcript

[Harrison Greenbaum]

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

This episode is brought to you by progressif where drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average. Plus auto customers qualify for an average of 7 discounts. Quote [e-mail] to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates national average 12 month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Neil DeGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. We're doing cosmic queries today. Grab bag. Ooh, yeah. And I look to my left, I don't see Chuck. Nice, Chuck. What did you do?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

We look a little different.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Harrison Greenbaum, welcome back to StarTalk.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yes. It's so nice to be here. Thank you for having me.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Last time it was BC before COVID That's right. When you last me made an appearance.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

We had a whole pandemic in between.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

A whole pandemic in between. And also you had like a Las Vegas residency in there.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yeah, I went across the country and.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Back in that time and back. So just congratulations on where your talents have taken you.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Thank you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And now you're right here in my office at the American Museum of Natural History.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

As much going on here as the circus, I will say no.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, the universe is a circus unto itself.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Absolutely.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And it's many more than three rings going on there. Yes. Saturn's got rings. Multiple ring. Circus in the cosmos. So this is a grab bag. Fantastic. And you got the questions. I haven't seen them. And because it's a grab bag, it's a grab bag without an expert that we bring in. So I'm your expert.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Fantastic.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'll do my best. If I don't know an answer, I'll just say I don't know. Okay.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But you have to.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

We have Siri, we do have. We have tools that are.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We have ChatGPT. You've got you the ways to Bail me out is what you're saying. Okay, all right.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

We don't know. It might be known. Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right, so what do you have first?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

All right, so we have Laina McGrath. She writes, hello, Neil. I am Laina from Orlando. Where do photons come from? For instance, are they already inside my birthday candles or are they created from the fire?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, I love. That.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Does not specify what birthday she is on.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Does not. Okay.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Does not.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But the fact that she still uses candles.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What age would you say you stopped.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Using candles once the cake is too full?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, I think I stopped at.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Oh, wow, that's longer than I lasted.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I made it high in there.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I think after high school, I was candle free.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So it's a great question. It's reminiscent of a famous essay from the 19th century written by Michael Faraday, and it's called what Is Fire? Ooh. Cause what is it?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

It's an emoji I use too often.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, okay. I've seen the emoji. Can you touch it? Can you grab it? Can you hold it? Not really. So what is it? So there's a famous essay from the 19th century. So a photon is a packet of energy, a pure energy, and it moves at the speed of light. It's the only thing it knows how to do is move at the speed of light. And so if, by the way, energy can manifest in a dozen, many different ways. Okay. You can have potential energy. Now, why is it that you can harm yourself by jumping out of a window? Okay. There's a reason for it. Because when you hit the ground, energy killed you.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I thought it was the sidewalk.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. You had energy in your body.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

While you were falling.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

One Red Bull right before the ship. Right, right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And that. Oh, yes. And the energy kept accumulating as you fell faster and faster.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Then you hit the sidewalk. All the energy that was in you from your motion, kinetic energy, goes back into you as mechanical energy. And the only way your body can accommodate mechanical energy is to break stuff. Cause it takes energy to break your bones.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Sure.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Energy can manifest in different ways. And the higher you take the elevator before you jump out the window, the more energy you have to break your bones upon hitting the sidewalk. That's why jumps from higher altitudes will do more damage than from lower altitudes.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

But if you're watching this and thinking about it, don't do it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Do not try this at home.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Don't do it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Above a certain height, there's an air resistance. You hit what's called a terminal velocity, where the air is absorbing Away. Some of that energy I am about.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

To terminate, be terminated.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Terminal velocity to be terminated. So there are other ways that energy can be stored. Like inside of an atom. An electron can sit in many different energy levels. The atom has energy levels within it. It's not a continuous placement of energies. If there's an electron at a higher energy level and something happens to make it drop to a lower energy level, it just lost energy. Where did it go? Actually, it can go in one of two places. If another atom hits it, some of the energy of that electron can go to the kinetic energy of the other atom as it careens off. This happens a lot. So it's a kinetic energy, a mugging, a fly by looting of its energy. All right, so but occasionally it just sort of jostles it. The electron de excites, goes to a lower energy level. Where does that energy go? Bada bing. A photon is released from the atomic of exactly the same energy as the difference between the energy levels of the electron. All the energy is accounted for, and the photon goes in a random direction at the speed of light. That's where photons come from. They come from ways that used to be energy in an atom or the vibrations of atoms and molecules and other particles. And in those vibrations, it can lose energy by releasing a photon. And that's what's going on. And it happens all kinds of ways. If you have an electric stove and you turn it on, and eventually it glows.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

It's like blue, orange. Those are different colors.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I hope your stove doesn't glow blue glow.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

You can tell by the way how much I cook by my inability to answer this question.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You have no idea how stone is. You have no idea what. You were right, astrophysically, but in a kitchen, you're completely wrong. Okay, so the hottest your stove is gonna get is red hot.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Gotcha.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But if you could. If you had an infinite knob, it would go white hot. And eventually, blue hot doesn't mean my band name.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

If I ever form a blue hot. Infinite knob.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, infinite knob. Blue hot's better, but one of those. Pick one. I'm good with you. I'll come see you.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Okay, great.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So the fact that the stove is glowing red means it's emitting light. Red light. So you have vibrating particles in the heating element of the stove, and those vibrations will actually release light. And that, in a way, is cooling the stove. Except you keep pumping energy into the stove.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But if you turn off the stove, it's still glowing red, but then it sort of fades away. Why because it's giving up all its energy without it being replaced. And if it's hot but not glowing red, it's still giving off photons, but not red photons. If it's hot, generally. What is that? Do you remember?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Don't touch it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, don't touch it. Still don't touch it until it's cool. So it would actually, if you put on infrared goggles, it would be glowing in the infrared. That's still a form of light. You have infrared photons. So all these ways will generate photons. And stars are doing it every moment of their lives. And photons are crisscrossing through the universe and it'll continue that way until the last star dies.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

So what does that have to do with birthday candles?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, oh, good. Very good. Okay, thank you for bringing it back on point.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I feel like Lena is at home right now. She's celebrating her birthday. The candle's already melted down to ruin the cake.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's like, Neil, where's the answer? So you have to give energy to the candle from somewhere else, a lighter or a match. Right. There's no free lunch here. Right. The energy's gotta come. So what that will do.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Free cake.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, Free cake. You will light the.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

The wick.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You'll light the wick of the candle, which is typically coated in wax because the candles are made of wax. So you ignite the wick that will use molten wax as a fuel source. There you have it. Now why doesn't the whole candle burn up in one instant? Because the wick is drawing the molten wax in. And if you have too much of the wax, it'll put out the flame. You need just the right amount to feed it and keep it going. And candles are beautiful this way. Okay. If the candle gets sort of, you know, have you tried this? Who has candles anymore? But you have like a 3 inch candle, let's say, and it's got liquid. There's. If you sort of tip liquid towards the wick, you can extinguish the wick. Right? You say, well, why is that? If it's using the wick to light. Have you ever questioned this?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I have a couple of scented candles. Most of them smell like my apartment burning down when I fall asleep.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Why does the liquid wax put out the wick when the wick needs the liquid wax to burn?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Right?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Because it's too much. At a given time, it's too much. So the wick draws it at just the right amount that it could burn. The little bitty drops that come in at the rate that you need. So the energy, the starter energy, comes from the match or from a lighter, and you hit the wick. Now, the wick simply burns the wax. And wax is one of the great things that kept us lit for centuries. Wax candles, you know, 17th, 18th centuries, we didn't have light bulbs, so candles was a thing. Wax candles. So wax is a fuel source, by the way. If you get wax hot enough where it goes molten and you just keep heating it, it can burn without a wick.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

What?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So this happened to me at home. I ignited the entire surface of the liquid wax in the pot and I.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Thought you told the police it was an accident.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, I used to make candles. Okay.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I'm just trying to picture this birthday party.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I used to make candles. So you melt the candles and you can dip. What happens is you dip a wick in so it gets wet with wet wax, you put it in the air, room temperature. Air will cool the wax. And then it's a skinny candle. You dip it again and it keeps building layers and layers until it has the thickness you want. Okay, that's one way to make it as you make a dip candle. Another way, you just pour it into a mold. Okay, so I melted this pot. I had all these candle shards, right? And you put them all in there. You pull out the dead wicks, and now I have liquid candle wax. And I left it on the stove too long. It ignited. You can't put water on it.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Oh, no.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It is hotter than boiling water. So if you put water in there, the water will be heated, start to boil, and then it'll boil fragments of flaming wax out of the. So there's only one way to put out that fire.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Throw it out the window. Hope its potential energy is high enough.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Now you're going to give it extra potential energy, so. Or kinetic energy. So, no, you got to take a lid and cover it and that'll smother it.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

That's a less exciting answer.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Totally less exciting. But I knew enough. I knew enough about. Yeah, you're suffocating it. I knew enough about thermodynamics that that's how you do that. So the candle doesn't all burn at once because it can only burn a little bit at a time, and it burns its way down. And there you have it.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Nice. Well, happy birthday. Lena, I assume?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes. However old you.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

The kind of burgers you get today tells you a lot about yourself. You're either someone who settles for sad.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Same old, same old burgers, or you're.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Eddie Carl's junior Obsessed with a tangy OG Western bacon cheeseburger demanding a house made guacamole loaded guac bacon fired up for the insanely hot El Diablo or craving a classic charmer Old famous star Give in to your flavor cravings your mouth to Carl's Jr.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Hi, I'm Ernie Carducci from Columbus, Ohio. I'm here with my son Ernie because we listen to StarTalk every night and support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson oh, by the way, these are all our Patreon supporters. They pay.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Amazing.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So you get to ask questions as a Patreon supporter at our entry level amount, which is like $5 a month. So go for it.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

All right, so we have Alan Reer. He wrote hello, everyone, waving emoji. Cowboy emoji. It's Alan from Lithuania. A lot of cowboys there. Always wondered about gravitational waves. Please explain how and what did they actually detect in 2015.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, very nice. Yeah. So that's the first detection of gravitational waves. Was then nice. Interestingly, it was the centennial, the near centennial. I think the prediction came out in 1916, but basically the centennial of Einstein's prediction that such a thing even exists. So it took a century to verify that what he predicted was correct. So just to put that in context. All right, so the way this works is, according to Einstein's general theory of relativity, you're here and we say you have a gravitational force. I don't know if you knew that, but you do, right?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I like it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. And the more mass you have, the more is your gravitational force.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I've had an increasing amount of gravitational force over the last few years.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Is that right? Okay. So it'll go up according to your mass, and we can measure that. More importantly, if you move through space and time, then your gravitational field needs to respond to that in some way, because it used to be over here and now you're over there. Newton described gravity as just a force at a distance. Okay, action at a distance. But he was still mystified. How could it gap the vacuum of space? What's going on? How do we know each other? How do we know about why? Do we know why? He knew his equations worked, so he went with it.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

But that's some confidence. It's still. He's like, I know these are right. I can't prove it, but I am 100% sure.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Demonstrated what's going on in the mystery of the vacuum of space. But it's working.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Exhibit A. Trust me.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Trust me. So it's working. And Einstein said gravity is not so much action at a distance. Gravity is. Is a disturbance in the fabric of space and time. So disturbance is too violent. It is a shape of the fabric of space and time made by the existence of matter and energy, wherever you might find it. Let's take a black hole, for example. A black hole is such a distortion of space and time that light cannot even escape. That's why we call it black. And you can't come out. It's a black hole. Best named thing there ever was. Ever. So if you're just somebody wandering by a black hole, you'll feel your trajectory altered by it. Newton would say that's action at a distance. Einstein would say that is the shape of curved space time. And you're just following where space and time wants to bring you. It's like in nascar. Are they actually turning left? No, because the track is banked. The bank turns them forth, turns the car.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I feel like the drivers would be very upset by this. What are we training for?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So their steering is primarily maneuvering in the traffic rather than making a left turn as they go around the track. So the track is shaping their path in the same way space and time will shape the path of anything moving. But light is the best tracer of this. What happens when two black holes collide? Omg. Black holes collide. They are already a disturbance in the space time continuum. Now they come together, it is such a disturbance that they will create a ripple in the fabric of space and time, emanating at the speed of light. A ripple. Because as they come closer and closer, they spiral in faster and faster and then they come together. And right at that instant, poof, there's a ripple. The first of these that was discovered have been traveling for 3 billion years. How do you detect it? We need special equipment. We call it ligo. Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory. Sensibly abbreviated ligo. So they have two. I forgot how long they were. Kilometer long tunnels evacuated no air. They have lasers that simultaneously go up the tunnel and back from a mirror that's at the other end. These two laser beams know about each other. They are coherent. They march to the beat of the same drummer when emitted. If on the up and back trip something happened to the fabric of space time, then one of those paths will be slightly different from the other, slightly longer or slightly shorter. And then the waves will no longer match up. And you can conclude that something happened here that didn't happen there. They're at right angles to each other. So this wave, this gravitational wave, as it washes over the observatory, depending on which angle was oriented relative to the wave, they will stretch or expand by different amounts from each other. And they measure this. They measured it. They knew what two colliding black holes should look like in their experiment. Matched up. The announcement gets made. Nobel Prize is awarded. Now, just for context, you said with.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

A tone of voice that they were. It was later discovered that it was wrong.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, no, no, no. I have a follow on to that.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

2017, they took it back. It turns out one of them just jostled the machine a little bit.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, they only discovered it in 2015 Nobel prizes later.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Gotcha.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. All right. So many people don't know that Einstein wrote down the first equations that enabled the laser to be invented later on. This is crumbs on his plate, Right? Okay. When you're that brilliant, crumbs do great things because you're focusing on the main events like the theory of relativity and other things.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

The back page of his notebook just had tunnel laser.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So Einstein invents a new theory of the universe, the general theory of relativity that predicts the existence of gravitational waves. Shortly after that, he writes down the equation that permits the invention of the laser. Decades later, people invent the laser. Decades after that, they use the laser to measure and discover the existence of gravitational waves.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

And entertain cats.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes. Einstein's a badass. 100% people get Nobel prizes off of crumbs that fell off his plate. He should have had eight Nobel Prizes, right?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Did he get one?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, he got one. He got one.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Okay. Okay, good.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

He got one. But for other stuff. I mean, not for his greatest work. He did. For really important work, but not his greatest work. He demonstrated that atoms actually exist. That's pretty good.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yeah, I would say. I would say. Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And he demonstrated that light comes in discrete packets called photons, which we just talked about. We just talked about. So that's good.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

That's pretty good.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

If you do that in a lifetime. You did good. But you did that and then just kept going.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yeah, but at the same time, I was learning magic and you were nearly burning your house down with the biggest wax candle.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's the backstory. And the lead scientist on this was Kip Thorne.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Kip Thorne. People who read movie credits will recognize Kip Thorne as one of the co executive producers of the film Interstellar. Nice. That's how you knew if there's gonna be any black holes in it, they're gonna get it, right?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. You don't have to double check that one. He's got it. Yeah.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yeah, I love that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right, give me some more.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

All right, well, you were talking about the fabric of space, so it makes sense to bring this question up because Matt d. Wrote, Greetings, Dr. Tyson, I'm Matt from Oklahoma and have a question about the fabric of space in all caps. What is it? You tear it like cloth fiber and sew it back together. Take it easy, Matt.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. All right. So he has issues with the word fabric.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Maybe. It sounds like he Thinks it is a fabric.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, it does stretch Lycra style. Right. So the universe stretches, but we don't know how much longer it will continue to stretch.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Oh, it's like my pants. Eventually it snaps. Been there, done that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I think we did a whole episode or a whole section of an episode on the future of the universe. One of the possible futures is it will expand so rapidly that the fabric of the universe cannot keep up with it, and it will rip. And it's called the big rip. And I'm terrified. I'm terrified by this, because I finally grew accustomed to the stretching of space and time, whatever even that means. Right now you're gonna tell me it's stretching and it's gonna rip. Oh, my gosh.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

So do we know where it's gonna rip? Are we near the rip site? Do we need to move a little bit?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Put some pre stitches in it to keep it going? Yeah, no. It would rip at its very core. All places within the fabric would just disassemble. Rip and fabric go together as two words. But before we use the word rip and the fabric, we spoke of space as a rubber sheet that stretches, and maybe it can stretch forever. Like, we don't know. We just don't know. So now, the specifics of the question.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Was what it just said. What is it?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What is the fabric? All we can say is space behaves as though it is a stretchy substance. Pick any words you want to give it.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Maybe we should have called the lycra of the universe or the neoprene. Neoprene. Right. I don't know. Call it anything, but we try to find an analogy that can make it more understandable to you, to anyone, to ourselves. So fabric of the universe seems to fit the bill very well. Right on up to the rip.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So that's why. And.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

And that's when everything in the universe disassembles, including us.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, you're made of things in the universe. So, yeah, I was trying to be optimistic. Yeah, all the electrons, protons, and neutrons, they're not all going to break apart, but you'll be intact. Okay.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Exactly.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That'll be.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Do I feel it?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. I'm terrified by it. If it happens at all, It'll happen in 22 billion years.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Oh, so we're okay. We're okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, I got it on my calendar. So fabric is metaphor, but it's a very apt metaphor for what the universe is, because the universe can curve. It can curve back on itself. It can stretch. If you're not happy with fabric. Come up with another term, but I think we're good.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

That looks pretty good. All right, all right. This question comes from geezer windbag. Greetings, Dr. Tyson. I'm curious why we say the universe exploded in the Big Bang. It seems to me more likely that the singularity expanded and fragmented, and the universe we see is still all within the singularity. An observer outside the original singularity would still see a singularity, though from our perspective, the universe is incredibly huge. Thoughts?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so a couple of things. The if he doesn't like the word explosion, I'm okay with that. Because the singularity that birthed the universe was the rapid stretching of space time.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

There we go.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

See what I did there? So the rapid stretching, you can say, was there an explosion? You know what an explosion is? It is a rapidly moving shockwave within a medium. That's what blows out windows and blows down doors. It's a shockwave moving through the air. Well, the Big Bang is not a thing moving through something else. It is the expansion of space and time. So it's more accurate to say it's the big stretch rather than the Big Bang. The Big Bang was used pejoratively by now, going back 70 years, by an opponent of the Big Bang who couldn't imagine the universe would begin this way. He wanted the universe to be in a steady state at all times. And he's so. He used the term Big Bang as an insult to the ideas that people were having.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

He came and he said, you know what? This theory is a big stretch. And they're like, you have no idea how right you are. That's exactly right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

This is a stretch. So, yeah, it's metaphor, but we're good with it.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

All right, cool. Well, thank you, Geezer Winback.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, no, but he asked something else about it. Yes?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Well, he said, is it more likely that the singularity expanded and fragmented and the universe we see is still all within the singularity?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We are no longer the singularity. So anyone observing us will not say they look like a singularity. The interesting question is, if you look at the math of our universe out to the horizon, the density of matter within it, the size of the horizon. If you run the math, we have all the same properties of an authentic black hole, and black holes have singularities in their center. So are we some mondo black hole? Is there a point where the similarities end? We don't know.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

We could all be in a black hole.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes, yes, yes. I have a book on my shelf that describes the new Space time that opens up after you fall into a black hole, time changes for you. It ticks more slowly relative to everybody outside the black hole. So as you fall in, you will see the entire future history of the universe unfold before your very eyes. And a new space time continuum open up.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

That sounds awesome. A whole minus the being ripped apart.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Minus the being ripped apart part. Yeah. So if the black hole's big enough, the tidal forces won't rip you apart. You can survive the fall.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Oh, that's cool.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

It kind of feels like a way to go.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Like, if I totally want to go that way. You know, rather get hit by a bus or laid up in the hospital. Launch me into a black hole. I'll give all my reports until I can't. Yeah.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

All right, so we have eliezer Vega. Hello, Dr. Tyson. This is Eliezer from Puerto Rico.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Puerto Rico.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I love that place.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Is that your best way you could pronounce it?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Puerto Rico?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right, I'll give you a B plus. All right, Puerto Rico.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I have a last gap to fill with gravity. If gravity is the effect of the mass bending space, then why, when a star goes supernova, space still bent for a black hole to form instead of immediately unbending it is as matter is blown apart. Or better said, what makes space remember what was there before. So when it blows and matter is dispersed, space won't recover back, but stay bent as a black hole. Did you get all of that? Wow.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Stars above a certain mass, when they die, will go as supernova and they'll leave behind a neutron star. Stars of even higher mass, we're not entirely certain of the the boundary of this, but stars of a higher mass can go supernova and make a black hole. Stars of even higher mass, the supernova never gets out. Black hole all the way. So only in that last case, is all the mass of the entire system part of the black hole. And the space time curvature at the end was the same as it was in the beginning. Whereas the one where some gets blown out and others become a black hole. Yeah. That black hole does not have the full gravity that the whole system had before because half of it got blown away. It's that simple. So he's right to think about this, but the answer is not that deep.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

That's pretty good. Okay, Matthew Jury wrote. Hello, everyone. How can a gravitational singularity exist if infinite curvature means infinite time?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We do not have a good way to talk about the singularity.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Would you say the jury is out?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What I would say is that's why we have string theorists to bridge the gap between quantum physics and general relativity. One, the theory of the small, the other the theory of the large. But at the beginning of the universe, the large was small. Whole universes were operating in the quantum realm.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

And I've seen Ant Man. I get it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So if that's the case, what's happening at the singularity? Because you don't get singularities in quantum physics. You get it in general relativity. So that's where it's been said, the singularity is where God divides by zero. Have you divided by zero lately?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Error.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes, yes, yes. Error.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I do a magic trick where I have people put stuff into a calculator and if they divide by zero, there's no magic trick because there's just an error. So I very much. It's very salient for me.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wow. Okay.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

To avoid the divide by. By zero.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

If you divide by zero, it's an error. It's undefined. And we don't know what to do there yet. We know these two theories work in their own realm, their own regimes. The small and the large. You bring them together, it's a shotgun wedding that won't necessarily work as you had planned. So we got top people working on it. So no, we can't tell you what's happening inside the singularity.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

All right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Remains a mystery. Yes.

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[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yogesh Jog wrote hello to my personal astrophysicist. If someone keeps traveling back and forth at plank length distance, does it mean that it's traveling eternally? Ah, he did put a parenthetical which says an idea slash attempt to say that the particles don't come in and out of existence, they are just traveling eternally at plank length distances and four forces hits them at the right time to let them exist in this universe.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, yeah, that. I don't know what he's talking about. I can tell you this. A plank length is the smallest unit of length that we can measure. It's very, very small. It almost doesn't make sense.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

It's not the size, it's what you do with.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It. Turns out in quantum physics, everything is in motion. Everything vibrates at all times. So exhausting to say you have something moving back and forth across a plank length. All matter is doing that at all times because everything is always in motion. Always. So to say. Let's do it at a plank length, Planck length and his time at infinity. I don't know how the connecting Planck length and infinity time in that question, but everything is always in motion at all times and it has nothing to do with measuring time at infinity.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Gotcha.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Especially in this city. Huh? New York City. All right, I'm fired. Okay. This is from Vinay Kashyap. He says hello.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What's your first name?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Vinay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Vinay. Okay, Vinay.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

It's how I would say Vinny if I was being fancy.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. Okay. Vinay.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yes, Vinay, he's.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Hello.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

This is Vinay from India. I was just wondering why black holes can't just be dark matter. There seems to be a lot of them. They are massive and seem to have more gravity. Most importantly, we can't see them.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Let's list the dark matter candidates. Would there be dark clouds? Could there be vagabond planets that are not illuminated by a hosted arc that got ejected into the galaxy? Could it be black holes? It turns out the physics of the early universe limits how much ordinary matter there can be. Black holes count as ordinary matter because you make them from ordinary matter. It limits it. There's a delicate set of knobs that were turning in the early universe to understand what the universe was and what it became. And so these knobs are, they're fascinating because some combinations of knobs don't work at all. You don't get a universe or.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

You.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Get a universe that's very different from what we have. So the problem with dark matter is it doesn't interact with ordinary matter in any way other than by gravity. And so if you look at what it does in the universe during the early universe, it can't be regular matter. Otherwise we'd have a universe completely different from what we have. And black holes are made of ordinary matter. It has to be something completely exotic beyond the measurements we've made. Electrons, protons, neutrons, atoms, molecules, solids, biology, chemistry, physics, psychology. Everything that we know and love falls outside of what dark matter can be. So let's say we have very good theoretical evidence, theoretical support for why dark matter can't be black holes.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

All right, we have Mike Mohammed Kakay. I assume it's pronounced as a Birdwood.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

KK Greetings, Dr. Tyson. Mike Caca from Berlin, Germany. While it's well known that most of Earth's energy originates from the sun, I'm curious about the source of tidal energy. Can it be traced back to the sun or does it stem from a different origin? Is it possible that tidal energy has multiple sources?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I love that because when we talk about green energy, we're talking about renewable energy. And if you could turn plants into gasoline, which we do with ethanol, which is the one from corn.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

My wife is from Nebraska, so she's going to be very disappointed if I don't know the corn thing.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Kick your ass. Yeah, I take ethanol. We get that from corn. And corn is a renewable resource. All right? It's not fossil fuels where you take it out. You can't wait for new fossils to form. All right? That's not how that works. So that's why one is renewable and one isn't. By the way, do you know the original energy source of fossil fuels? The sun.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Oh, there you go.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You're going to say dinosaurs.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I was going to say dinosaurs.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It was mostly plant life at the time. But where does plant get its energy from?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

The sun. The sun put us into this.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So all fossil fuels is energy from sunlight. It's just not renewable because it's a one time use. So all Plants get their energy. All surface plants get their energy from the sun. You eat plants, you get energy from that. If you eat meat, you eat some animal that ate an animal or ate plants. And so the tracking is back to the sun. Here's something deep. What generally do fish eat?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I was gonna say fish food. That was okay to my first fish food.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Of course they eat.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Well, do they eat stuff in the ocean? Algae and stuff?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Eat other fish?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yeah, but then who eat.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, I'm getting there. Good one, good one. Wait, this is where I'm headed. Okay.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

This is turtles all the way down.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's all the way down. But it can't go all the way down. This is why you can't. There's no such thing as a stable cannibal society. It's not stable.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Amongst other reasons, I'm sure there's like, other.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'm sorry. I'm not ranking the reasons. I'm just offering reasons. Because you can't just keep eating each other, right. Because you will run out of people.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Sure.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But you can say, well, why don't we reproduce faster than we eat? That's not possible. Because if you're a fully nourished human being, you have to eat at least a whole other human being.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Because you are a human being. Right. You have to eat at least that. And if you just run the numbers, you can never have a stable thing where you're only eating other things that are being born within it. At some point, you need a source from the outside. So the big fish eats the littler fish, eats the littler fish eats the littler fish. This goes all the way down until you get to plankton, so the fish start eating all the way down. And then you get to some point where if that's all that was happening, the ocean would just eat itself and there'd be no living things, no fishes left in the ocean. Something has to come in from the outside. Somebody's gotta deliver the groceries.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Spongebob, he has a pineapple under the sea.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, you got it. You got it. His pineapple is actually in the sea.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yeah, that's true.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, I just.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

We need to correct that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. I'm just saying. I don't mean to get all technical on spongebob, but you finally reach the level of plankton.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Spongebob nailed it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And there are two categories of plankton, okay? One of them eats other life forms in the ocean. The other for nourishment. The other gets its energy from the sun, and they all live right at the surface where they can get sunlight. That is the base of the food chain of the ocean, the phytoplankton. If you kill them off, you will systematically render extinct every other fish in the ocean that eats other fish. Now, there might be some fish that eat like the kelp and seaweed and things. There might be some. But where does kelp get its energy? From the sun.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. So the sun is the ultimate source of all energy in the typical fishes that we think of in the ocean. However, the ocean in certain parts is open to what's below it. What's below the ocean? Well, you get through the crust, and below the crust is. Is the mantle. And in the mantle is magma beneath.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

That Godzilla, according to the films.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, is that right? Okay, I did not know that.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

The hollow Earth.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes. Okay, thank you for enriching this scientific discussion here. So I keep thinking this should be magma. PI. That would be a fun.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Sort of a really cool mustache that is past the point of boiling.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So below the crust, we get the mantle, and within the mantle is magma. Okay. Molten rock. Earth has retained still a considerable amount of heat from when it formed. And that heat wants to get out. And it gets out through volcanoes, through crevasses in the bottom of the ocean. The Mid Ocean ridge is just such a place. One of these ridges goes through Iceland. The country Iceland is growing because the continental plates are separating. Magma gurgles up, hardens, and is more Iceland.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Okay, that's a very good plan for the future.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We have discovered life forms that thrive on geochemical energy enabled by these hot vents at the bottom of the ocean. In Apocalyptic Earth, even if the sun burns out, if the sun. If someone plucked the sun out of the solar system and we fly off at a tangent into interstellar space, we will all die rapidly. But the life forms at the bottom of the ocean that are warm from the magma oozing up through the vents, they'll be just fine. They will survive the death of Earth's surface. So that's another source of energy, by the way, geothermal energy. Because Iceland is sitting on a. At the separation of two continental plates, they're almost entirely geothermally driven. Their carbon footprint is minuscule. They have so much energy, they send water under their streets so that it never gets icy in the winter. We don't need snowplows, just heat the streets.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So that's another source of. It's renewable in the sense that it's like a near infinite supply of Earth energy available to us. All right, yes. It would one day run Out. But not really because we had something to do with it. All right, It's. The volcano's got. Have you seen Earth?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Get angry. All right. It's got a lot to kill us in the future. So that's another source of energy. So these are different ways. So another way is a hydroelectric. Okay, so those would be dams. You have water up here and that has a certain height that it can fall, gaining kinetic energy. And it comes through a turbine that then drives a generator that makes electricity. So what's that based on? How did the water get up to the top of the dam? The sun evaporated it from the ocean, brought it up to a cloud. The cloud moved over the land, rained on the land, it brought the water up to the upper levels. That's solar power. Hydroelectric is solar power. How about wind? Why does air move horizontally on the Earth? You know what Ogden Nash said? He said wind is caused by trees waving their branches. And I thought that was good. Like, how would you know it wasn't that?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I feel like we do know, though. I feel like we're about to lean into the fact that that can't be.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, it was just a. It's a clever, kind of fun, stupid observation.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

The only thing I know about Nash is he had a great equilibrium.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, that's the mathematician.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Different Nash.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's a totally different Nash.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

And then the founder of Nashville.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, I don't know who that means. Yeah, I assume he's a Nashville. So wind comes from the unequal heating of Earth's surface that creates air that rises, air that falls, and that also creates pressure differences that'll move air horizontally as well as up and down. So wind energy is solar energy. Set up a solar panel. What do we call that energy?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Solar.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Solar.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's taken out the middleman, and now you have. Solar power is solar energy. So all of these are solar power that is, in principle, renewable until the sun runs out of energy. All right, how about tides? Tides slosh back and forth. Love it. Well, we associate. Commonly associate tides with the moon.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Sure.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So the moon tides have nothing to do with the sun. So if you have a tidal thing that drifts with it and generates energy, it's also renewable because you're always going to have tides, but is not traceable to the sun. However, one third of the tides you measure comes from the sun.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

How's it doing that?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, the full name is Luni Solar Tides. Luni Moon, Solar Sun, Luni Solar Tides. The tides we all experience are Luni Solar Tides. And the Moon is like two thirds of it, and the sun is one third at all times. At all times. If you're using tides, some of that is the sun, most of it is the moon. And so there you have it. That's the difference from all of this. But if you pull fossils out of the ground, you're not renewing that. And when you run out of fossils, you're done. Oh, by the way, there's thermonuclear fusion. We haven't harnessed it yet. We know how to create it. They're called bombs. But when you harness it, that's a lot of energy. That's a lot of energy. You can create a power plant and that's fusing hydrogen together to make helium. The sun does that every day. So we'd just be mimicking the sun on Earth. It's the nuclear fission that has dirty byproducts. And that's what the original atom bombs were made of, fission bombs. But nuclear fusion, that's the holy grail. But here's. I saw a bumper sticker once that said no nukes. So it was a very green, sort of progressive, left leaning bumper sticker. No nukes. But the O in the no was.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

A sun, which is the ultimate nuclear weapon.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Nuclear furnace is the sun. Okay. If you had no nukes, you wouldn't be here.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

All right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But you know what they mean. Of course, they don't want, like nuclear energy, they want solar energy. But solar energy is nuclear. I think at the time I saw this bumper sticker, it was still in the Cold War. So maybe they were talking about the nuclear arsenals. For sure. But the fact that they had a sun there, it still tells me that they were thinking of generating power. Sure, yeah, use solar power rather than nuclear power. But one other quick source of energy. Because the big problem with solar energy is how do you store it if you want to use it at night, how do you use solar energy now? You can't. Okay. Tides still move in and out at night. That works. Hydroelectric. You can use that at night. That all still works. But how do you use solar panels? So there's talk now of using solar panels to lift heavy weights up a hillside to turn photons into potential energy that then becomes kinetic later. So that's your storage battery becomes solar power, lifting all these weights up into the air. So it's a successful way to store the solar energy that you had earlier, and then you could draw from it at any time of day or night.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

That's amazing.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's very clever. Yeah.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

There's a lot of balls at the top of hills and, like, don't touch them. This is powering the whole city.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So anyhow, there you have it. That's everything that was not even asked in that question answered about where energy comes from.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

And I like Dirty by products. I'm gonna make that my next comedy album.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

It's gonna be called Dirty Byproducts.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Dirty Byproducts.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

All right, we have one more question.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We got time for one more go. Give it to me.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

This is from Cicero. Artifon. Hey, Smartphone.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's a cool.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

You gotta admit, that's a really cool name. That's like a sci fi hero.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I want that name. Cicero.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

He's the hero of, like, a Blade Runner kind of trilogy. Cicero Artifact. Or he's like the president in the Hunger Games.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You need an evil variant of.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yeah, exactly. He can go either way. So hopefully, hopefully, this Cicero is leading towards good. Yeah, but he said, hey, smart people. Cicero from Toronto, Canada. He's from Canada, so probably good people. Neil mentioned once that the element osmium 76 is heavier than gold. 79. How can that be possible? Don't the elements have an increase of mass the lower they are on the table?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

He's slightly misremembering what I said. Oh, no, that's okay. So as you go up the periodic table, the elements become more and more massive, right? More and more massive. No doubt about it. You pack in more protons into the nucleus. He mentioned how many protons were in osmium. I forgot. He said 76. I'll believe him. Gold was 79. Was it? Okay, that's what he said.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. Uranium is 92. These are bigger, heavier atoms all the way. That's not what distinguishes osmium. If you create a lump of these materials, a lump of osmium, a lump of gold, a lump of them. How close together will the atoms pack in this lump that you have created? That's the question. It turns out, given the properties of atoms and the periodic table and the quantum physics of nuclei and energy levels in atoms, you can pack osmium atoms closer together than all the other kinds of atoms, thereby making the densest element, not the heaviest element, the densest element, because now they're packed in close together. So ozymium would make the world's best paperweight.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I mean, it could make a wedding ring. How come we don't use it in place of any of these precious metals?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Why would you? Why'd you want it to be heavier? We like gold this way.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

You remember that you're married. I'd be like, oh, my God, I can never forget. I can barely lift my hands.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Then it's a ball and chain analogy. Here's the osmium ball you're going to carry around. So that's the only difference. And just to quantify how dense these things are, a cubic foot of gold. Oh, my gosh. It's like, you know, gold has two and a half times the density of iron. That's gold. And osmium tops that and osmium, I think, may be used in the tips of some fountain pens because it has to be very hard because you're pressing on it. There's a lot of pressure there. So it has its utilities.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Sure.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But paper weights are not among them. So that's why we're talking about the density of an aggregate of those atoms, not the weight of an atom itself.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Nice. Well, thank you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I think that's all the time we have.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Amazing.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, it's great to have you back.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Thank you. It's been so great to be here.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's very good.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Appreciate it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah. And you're. So how do we find you in the city?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

They can find me on social media. Harrison Comedy on Instagram.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, Harrison Comedy.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Harrison comedy.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Good.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

And harrisongreenbaum.com is my website.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. Excellent. And you perform?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I perform every night. I'm all over. I have my off Broadway comedy and magic show on Saturdays at Asylum Menu.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

When you're on Broadway, I don't need this. No, no, that's great.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Well, if enough people buy tickets, maybe.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So it's a gig. No, it's great. Cause you do magic and comedy and we love you here. We'll try to get your back.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I would love that. All right, thank you so much.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right. This has been Star Talk, a cosmic queries grab bag edition with Harrison Greenbaum.

[Ernie Carducci]

That's me.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right, we'll see you next time. As always, keep looking up.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

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