Cosmic Queries – Total Darkness

Summary

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StarTalk Radio: Cosmic Queries – Total Darkness

Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Co-Host: Chuck Nice
Date: April 21, 2026
Theme: Science, pop culture, and comedy collide as listeners' questions on darkness, thermodynamics, photons, telescopes, and the big mysteries of the universe are explored in a classic "Cosmic Queries Grab Bag."

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Episode Overview

In this lively Cosmic Queries episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice tackle a grab bag of listener questions spanning topics from the impossibility of reaching absolute zero and the omnipresence of photons, to the hunt for dark matter and Neil's first telescope. With humor, clarity, and the characteristic StarTalk blend of science and pop culture, the hosts explore the frontiers of knowledge, the overlap of classical and quantum physics, and the tools that enable us to “keep looking up.”

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Absolute Zero, Quantum Paradoxes, and Thermodynamics

(Timestamps: 03:23 - 09:21)

• Listener Dalton asks if one could extract infinite energy by getting closer and closer to absolute zero, and if that would violate the laws of thermodynamics.
• Neil explains:
  • There is no “cold” as a substance; cold is simply the absence of heat. (“There's no such thing as cold, right? You can't, like, put cold in something.” – Neil, 04:30)
  • Removing heat reduces temperature, but quantum effects prevent reaching absolute zero.
  • At very low temperatures, quantum fluctuations – “zero-point energy” – persist; you can’t extract energy past this point because there’s no lower state to drop to.
  • “Taking heat out means that particles are moving slower and slower… there's a regime where the quantum fluctuations prevent it from ever stopping its motion.” (Neil, 07:16)
• Popular misconception: Turning the search for “zero-point energy” into sci-fi rocket fuel “doesn’t seem likely… based on what we know.” (Neil, 09:09)
• Notable quote:
  • “Everything that happens in the universe is an electron looking for a place for us. Looking to hang its hat. Yeah. And so, honey, I'm home. A hard day in the circuit.” (Neil, referencing previous guest Betul, 08:38-08:52)

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2. Are Photons Everywhere? Seeing in Total Darkness

(Timestamps: 10:04 - 14:45)

• Listener Rachel: Photons must be everywhere if we can see—even in a dark room. Are Big Bang photons (cosmic microwave background) still here?
• Neil answers:
  • Your eyes can only detect visible light, but all objects with any temperature emit photons across the electromagnetic spectrum.
  • “Anything that is at any temperature at all is radiating photons.” (Neil, 12:04)
  • Humans primarily emit infrared photons; cold objects shift to emitting microwaves/radio waves.
  • Cosmic Microwave Background: Photons from the Big Bang, now cooled to microwave energies, fill the universe.
  • Experiencing total darkness: Only truly achievable deep in a cave, after a few turns—no ambient photons from above ground. “Not many people have been in complete total darkness in their life. True.” (Neil, 13:35)
• Memorable moment: Muhammad Ali quote about turning off the lights and being in bed before the room gets dark. (Neil/Chuck, 10:10-10:25)
• Humor: Chuck joking about who actually goes cave spelunking: “That's some white people stuff.” (Chuck, 14:12)

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3. Newton’s Law of Cooling

(Timestamps: 16:57 - 20:06)

• Listener Max: “As a side quest, Newton came up with a law of cooling. What are your thoughts?”
• Neil confesses:
  • Surprised Newton originated it, but explains the law: The greater the temperature difference between two materials, the faster the temperature shifts until equilibrium.
  • “The bigger the temperature difference, the faster the rate of change of temperature will be.” (Neil, 19:08)
  • Everyday relevance: Glass of ice water eventually matches room temperature—a “cooling curve.”

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4. Unlimited Energy—What Would You Do?

(Timestamps: 20:35 - 23:40)

• Listener “God”/Ben Gruns: If gifted limitless energy, what would you do?
• Neil’s practical answers:
  • Tapping the sun (or beaming solar energy from space, as planned by China).
  • Replicating Iceland’s system: Heat water with geothermal energy, melt city snow—no plows or salt needed.
• Chuck: End energy-related wars—“Most of these wars that we fight are over some form of energy.”
• Neil: With unlimited energy, we could produce food and water abundantly, addressing global needs.

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5. Do Galaxies Orbit a Superstructure? The Shape of the Universe

(Timestamps: 24:37 - 27:59)

• Listener Scott: Is the universe pancake-shaped, do galaxies orbit a central structure?
• Neil:
  • Misconception: The universe isn’t a “pancake”—galaxy motions are mostly random, except within clusters.
  • Large-scale galaxy clusters may not even have completed an orbit yet (“not virialized”).
  • “Virialization is the sharing of [orbital/thermal] energy among systems.” (Neil, 27:15)

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6. Gravity: Curvature, Force, or Gravitons?

(Timestamps: 28:09 - 30:41)

• Listener Seamus: Is gravity just a side-effect of curved space? Does it need a carrier particle?
• Neil’s nuanced answer:
  • Quantum expectation: Each force has a carrier particle (as with photons for EM force).
  • Hypothetical graviton is proposed, but gravity, as Einstein describes it, may not be a force needing a particle—it could be simply the curvature of spacetime.
  • “Maybe it sits outside the quantum paradigms that would require that there be a graviton.” (Neil, 30:20)
• Memorable story: Neil’s relativity class with the legendary John Archibald Wheeler, where he met his wife. (29:41 - 29:57)

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7. Building the Ultimate Telescope with Infinite Budget

(Timestamps: 32:36 - 34:46)

• Listener John Meyer: What would you build with an unlimited telescope budget?
• Neil’s dream:
  • An array of telescopes of all types and bandwidths on the far side of the moon: no atmosphere, no Earth radio noise.
  • Go beyond electromagnetic spectrum: Next-gen telescopes for gravitational waves and neutrinos.
  • “I want...the next generation of telescope that can see gravitational waves and neutrinos. That is not electromagnetic.” (Neil, 34:37-34:44)

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8. Is Time Permanent?

(Timestamps: 35:00 - 37:44)

• Listener Tuomas: “Is time permanent?”
• Neil:
  • Quotes Wheeler: “Matter tells space how to curve. Space tells matter how to move. And that motion is defined to make time look simple.” (Neil, 35:48-36:09)
  • Deep musings: Without change or motion, the concept of time dissolves. “Where there is no time reckoning, then nothing moves.”
  • Discusses how eternity in afterlife is conceived as “outside of time”—but for physical objects, it's unclear what that would mean.

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9. How Much Does the Universe Weigh?

(Timestamps: 38:03 - 42:19)

• Listener Gavin: “How much does the universe weigh?”
• Neil:
  • Crunches the math—starting from the sun’s mass, stars per galaxy, and galaxies in the observable universe—ends up with a ridiculously big number (“ton”).
  • Don’t forget dark matter: Multiply by six for all the unseen mass.
  • Humor: The “vulgar metric system” of cosmic weight: ass-load < shit-load < ton. (40:03 - 40:18)

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10. Dark Matter and Gamma Ray Glow

(Timestamps: 42:34 - 44:11)

• Listener Mile: New findings of gamma ray glow from center of Milky Way, possibly from dark matter (WIMPs). How are these particles different from ordinary matter?
• Neil:
  • “No.” (On whether we can truly explain how WIMPs are different from regular matter, 43:14.)
  • Directs to expert Katie Freese's work.
  • Sceptical: If dark matter annihilation produced gamma rays, we’d expect to see this everywhere, not just at the Milky Way center.

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11. Neil’s First Telescope & Stargazing Origins

(Timestamps: 45:28 - 57:01)

• Listener Larry: What was Neil’s first telescope, and does he still have one?
• Neil recounts:
  • First “night sky” was Hayden Planetarium’s dome due to light pollution in the Bronx.
  • First used binoculars, then received a 2.4-inch refractor for his 12th birthday; saw Saturn's rings, Jupiter’s bands, nebulae.
  • Later bought a 6-inch reflector, took it to Africa for a solar eclipse (age 14, claimed he was 15).
  • That 6-inch telescope is now in a Kentucky science museum.
  • Currently owns two digital telescopes, sometimes prefers “old school” observing.
  • Adorably recounts how as a child he’d carve out a path in snowy yards for observing.
  • Memorable story: Police once called by neighbors seeing a “kid with a bazooka” on the roof—it was Neil with his telescope. (55:15-55:40)
  • Children’s book about this incident was “banned in Pennsylvania for showing a police officer in a bad light” (56:23).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On reaching absolute zero:
  “You reach a point where quantum phenomena dominates, and you can no longer use classical reasoning.” — Neil (06:59)

• On photons everywhere:
  “Anything that is at any temperature at all is radiating photons.” — Neil (12:04)

• On the mass of the universe:
  “Who cares at that point? The number is too big.” — Chuck (39:39)
  “That is the biggest unit of measure there is: ton.” — Neil (39:50)

• On gravity and quantum theory:
  “Maybe it sits outside the quantum paradigms that would require that there be a graviton.” — Neil (30:20)

• On the beginnings of cosmic curiosity:
  “The binoculars were the gateway drug.” — Neil (48:20)

• On childhood stargazing in the Bronx:
  “There's no night sky to New Yorkers. We had no relationship.” — Neil (46:13)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Time | Segment/Question | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:23 | Absolute zero, quantum limits, and thermodynamics | | 10:04 | Photons everywhere, seeing in darkness, CMBR | | 16:57 | Newton’s law of cooling explained | | 20:35 | Unlimited energy—what would you do? | | 24:37 | Galaxy motions, cluster shapes, and virialization | | 28:09 | Gravity—force or side-effect of curved spacetime? | | 32:36 | The ultimate telescope with infinite budget | | 35:00 | Is time permanent? | | 38:03 | Calculating the mass of the universe | | 42:34 | Dark matter, gamma rays, and WIMPs | | 45:28 | Neil’s first telescope and stargazing origins |

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Tone & Style

The episode is fast-paced, interactive, and peppered with humor, pop culture references, and friendly banter (“That's some white people stuff.” – Chuck, about cave exploration; “Like so many...I mean, no disrespect, but I hate you.” – Chuck, mocking detractors, 41:01). Neil delivers deep scientific concepts with clear analogies, while Chuck brings levity and relatability.

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Final Takeaway

A classic StarTalk “cosmic queries” episode: big ideas broken down for everyone, playful yet profound, and anchored by the core StarTalk message—keep looking up, question everything, and laugh while you do it.

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Transcript

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[Liberty Mutual Insurance Partner]

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, no.

[Liberty Mutual Insurance Spokesperson]

We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Liberty Mutual Insurance Partner]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Insurance Spokesperson]

Anyways, only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty.

[Liberty Mutual Insurance Partner]

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, Chuck, we just rolled out another grab bag cosmiquaries.

[Chuck Nice]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And people grabbed all parts of the bag on that one.

[Chuck Nice]

Black holes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Personal question about me and my telescopes.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What's up with that? We got it all coming up on StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is Start Talk. Neil Degrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Chuck. Nice. Over here.

[Chuck Nice]

What's up?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, Neil, we're going to do another cosmic queries.

[Chuck Nice]

A grab a bag.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's all we're doing lately, Our grab bags.

[Chuck Nice]

It's a fan favorite, man.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's like you close your eye, reach in the. In the bin and pull it out.

[Chuck Nice]

Pull out a snake.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You know, I actually have a black hole bag over there. Did I ever show you that?

[Chuck Nice]

Wait, did. I thought it was the black hole lunchbox.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Can I only have one black hole thing? Is this what you're talking.

[Chuck Nice]

Who am I talking?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm gonna show you.

[Chuck Nice]

You might have shown me this a long time ago. This is a black hole bag. Oh, Lord, Lord Jesus.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What?

[Chuck Nice]

Help.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's a. Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

I love it. And then there's the eyes. Oh, no.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I forgot what I put in here.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I put a hole in here.

[Chuck Nice]

You put a hole in the hole?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. What a place to put a hole. Don't you remember the. My hole?

[Chuck Nice]

I remember the hole.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You remember the hole.

[Chuck Nice]

We did that whole thing where we cut. This is a hole. And Then you could walk.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What I said was like, here's a sheet of paper. I'm gonna cut a hole in this sheet of paper that you can walk through.

[Chuck Nice]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And you said, no.

[Chuck Nice]

And I said, no, you can't.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, you can't.

[Chuck Nice]

But you did.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And I still.

[Chuck Nice]

That's a very cool thing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Chuck, what you got for me?

[Chuck Nice]

All right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

A grab bag.

[Chuck Nice]

This is the grab bag, and I will pull it out of this black hole made by Apple Computers. Galactic Gumbo. Galactic Gumbo, this is Dalton. Hey, Dr. Tyson. Lord, nice greetings from Huntsville, Alabama. I was watching Huntsville Rocket City.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Rocket City, which Trump officially named. Well, by the way, it was always named Rocket City, right? And then Trump decided to.

[Chuck Nice]

I'm gonna officially name it Rocket City. Not to be confused with little Rocket Man.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's like coming to New York and say, I'm gonna rename New York the

[Chuck Nice]

Big Apple, which he would do that, by the way. So funny. Greetings from Huntsville, Alabama. I was watching an old explainer on absolute zero, and why it's impossible to reach it. If it is impossible by quantum physics to have a particle become completely stationary, then would it not be possible to extract infinite energy from it in the form of heat, in doing so violating the first and second laws of thermodynamics? It seems a bit paradoxical to never be able to reach absolute zero, since you seemingly can always have something colder, but that. I don't know why you would say you seemingly could have something cold.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, no. This is Dalton. He's merging a classical brain with a quantum brain. Quantum brain. Okay. In terms of his interest in answering the question. Right. So just let me talk you through this.

[Chuck Nice]

All right? Talk you off the ledge, Dalton. It's gonna be okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Talk you off the absolute zero ledge.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. So let me just remind people that there's no such thing as cold, right? You can't, like, put cold in something.

[Chuck Nice]

That's where I was going when I said it's.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

If you could do that, then you can make something, like, infinitely cold. Add more cold.

[Chuck Nice]

Add more cold.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So what we sense as cold is just the absence of heat, right? So you start pulling heat out, right? This is what your refrigerator does. Right? It pulls heat out of your food.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You don't think of it that way.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You put in something that's room temperature, it takes the heat out, Right? If you take heat out of something, what happens to its temperature? It goes down and you take it out. Where does that heat go?

[Chuck Nice]

It's gotta Go somewhere.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You ever go around back of refrigerator? You ever go around back?

[Chuck Nice]

Hot as hell back there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You ever go around back?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Those coils are dissipating. Coils to. To send out the heat.

[Chuck Nice]

Send out the heat.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It not only radiates the heat, but it's in touch with air. So the air will conduct heat away as well. Right, okay. But this is a major issue with spacecraft.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because if you're in space and you have machines that generate heat, how do you get rid of the heat? You gotta dump the heat somehow. Okay, so you can't just have. Well, you can have radiators. Yes, but each radiator has to be pointing away into space. They can't point to each other. You can't have a battery of radiators. Not a literal battery, but like an array, an alignment. An array of radiators that are like. If they point to each other, nothing just feeds each other the same heat.

[Chuck Nice]

Like, I'll heat you, you heat me.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Exactly. So they all have to face space. But it doesn't have the benefit of air whisking away the heat. It can only radiate it away. Whereas on Earth, you can release heat both ways.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It can radiate away, and you can convect air around it, and it just takes it away. Very efficient.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

When you have a medium such as an atmosphere to do that. All right, so cool breeze. Yeah, cool breeze will cool you down faster than just you radiating. Radiating away your whole heat. Okay. Right. It's slightly different. The cool breeze is forcing your sweat to evaporate, and the evaporation takes energy out of you. But. So let's get back to the absolute zero. So I keep taking heat out, and the temperature gets lower and lower and lower. You reach a point where quantum phenomena dominates, and you can no longer use classical reasoning. By the way, Dalton's not alone in this intersection, this troubled paradoxical intersection between classical physics and what we call modern physics. So you get down there and you try to take more heat out, and you can't, because. And by the way, taking heat out means that particles are moving slower and slower.

[Chuck Nice]

Slower and slower. Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. The heat is vibrational energy, typically. Okay. So you take that out, and there's a regime where the quantum fluctuations prevent it from ever stopping its motion. All right. Okay. So you're saying. Let me. That means there's energy there.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Let me pull that energy out of that energy.

[Chuck Nice]

Let me utilize that energy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I think I'd have to confirm this with our cosmology trio, Brian And Brian.

[Chuck Nice]

And Jana.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Jana. Brian Cox. Brian Greene. And Brian Cox, of course, is in the uk, but he comes through and he's a good friend.

[Chuck Nice]

And then sometimes Sean.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Sean Carroll. Oh, yeah, yeah. He's a good guy, too. When we speak of zero point energy of the vacuum of space.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I think that's what they're referring to. The energy below, which you cannot go.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Cause it's zero point, but it's not really zero. But if you try to get to zero, that's what you're stuck with. And that's quantum fluctuations. And I don't think you can extract energy out of that lowest energy fluctuation because it needs a. To take energy out, you need a lower energy state to land on.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And you can't.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. Cause that's it. You hit the.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Who's that guest we had in another show, a biologist who said the universe is just electrons looking for a place to rest.

[Chuck Nice]

That's it. Yeah. That was Betul.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Betul from University of Madison, Wisconsin. Yes, Bitul. The universe. Everything that happens in the universe is an electron looking for a place for us.

[Chuck Nice]

Looking for us.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Looking to hang its hat. Yeah. And so, honey, I'm home. A hard day in the circuit.

[Chuck Nice]

So.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. But people are. Imagine that you could tap this zero point energy and make, like, rockets out of it and travel through space. And I don't have problems people imagining that. It doesn't seem likely to me, though, based on what we know of the behavior of quantum physics.

[Chuck Nice]

Gotcha.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So there you have it.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, Dalton. Way to go, brother. Hope that keeps you from, you know,

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

keep you on the ledge, from jumping off the ledge.

[Chuck Nice]

All right. This is Rachel Ambrose. Rachel says Rachel here from Austin, Texas. Photons have to be literally everywhere, all the time. Even in a dark room. If I can see, then there's photons hitting my eyeballs. I feel like people don't talk about this enough. They are filling every inch of space all the time. They're everywhere. Furthermore, somehow, photons from the Big Bang are still here right now in the form of cosmic microwave background radiation. Neil, can you please speak to this?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, I think Muhammad Ali said it best. Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

I'm pretty. That's right, Howard. Look at me. I'm pretty. Howard.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Howard Cosel.

[Chuck Nice]

Howard Cosel. I'm so fast. I'm so fast. I turn off the lights and I'm in bed before the room get dark. That's the one I'm talking about.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's the one I'm talking about.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So he's he knows that photons have to go, you know.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, he's thinking that dark is penetrating the room, but light is exiting the room. When you turn off the light, there's no. The light gets absorbed and it's gone. Your eyes are not the ultimate arbiter of whether there are photons in the room.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because your eyes only see red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Roy G. Biv. Oh, sorry. Indigo, violet, if you gotta get the biv going there.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You know, Isaac Newton put in the eye. Did he? Yeah. Because he was. He was fascinated, mystically fascinated by the number seven. The spectrum can't have six colors.

[Chuck Nice]

You can't have six colors.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You gotta.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. Kind of animals has six colors.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What kind of stupid universe would that be?

[Chuck Nice]

Throw some indigo in there. Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, but if he got deeply religious, he could say, well, the universe was created in six days.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You know, it's not seven days. Six days.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

People forget it was six days.

[Chuck Nice]

Seven day. He rested.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He rested.

[Chuck Nice]

Which, I'm just saying. What kind of God is this?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He needs to take a break.

[Chuck Nice]

God, Me is so damn hard. Oh, me is hard.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, me oh, my me oh, my

[Chuck Nice]

me it's so hard to make a universe I need a rep. Oh, Lord, I can't do no more. Did I say Lord? Who am I talking to? Lord, Me. It's hot in this. Oh, I'm so tired. Anyway. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But now I forgot what we were talking about.

[Chuck Nice]

There's photons everywhere, right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So anything that is at any temperature at all.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Is radiating photons.

[Chuck Nice]

There you go. That's what I was gonna say. Cause if you're a predator, you see photons all the time.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You mean the movie character.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, the monster with the dreadlocks.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, he had dreads. Yeah, he had Dreadloc. Yeah. So predator.

[Chuck Nice]

I didn't appreciate that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Could see in infrared. Right. Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You know what's interesting? Just a little fact. I think about movies all the time.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So that was only cool because the infrared was the shadowy shape.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That means he has low resolution infrared cameras, right? Yeah, we got better cameras than that today. We do high resolution. You see the full person there. Depending on your temperature, it will determine what kind of light you are predominantly going to emit.

[Chuck Nice]

Emit. Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So at our temperature, we emit primarily infrared. So we'll show up in infrared. We reflect visible light, but we emit infrared. Your walls are room temperature, so they emit a little less infrared. Cause they're not as warm as we are.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You keep dropping the Temperature. What's on the other side of infrared? Microwaves.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And then radio waves. So the colder it is, the further down the spectrum, it shifts so that when you're only 3 degrees Kelvin, 3 degrees above absolute, you're given off microwaves.

[Chuck Nice]

That's it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And that's the cosmic microwave background.

[Chuck Nice]

Cosmos.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, that's it.

[Chuck Nice]

Cosmic microwave background.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Cosmic background.

[Chuck Nice]

So.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. And it could be dark for you, no problem. Not many people have been in complete total darkness in their life. True. Do you know how to get it?

[Chuck Nice]

I. I'm going to say blindfold, and that can help. And then bury yourself alive. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I was thinking of other ways for that. But if. If you go spelunking.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, you mean to a cave? That's wave.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You go deep into a cave, make

[Chuck Nice]

a few turns so there's no light getting in at all.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Turn off your flashlight. You cannot see anything. Anything.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. See now. And no disrespect to anybody, but that's some white people stuff.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No black man ever died.

[Chuck Nice]

Never find a black man dead in a cave with no light at all. First of all, I'm not going in there. Because even with a flashlight, be like, where'd Chuck go? I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it. Okay, These are jokes. Don't write. Don't write. All right, we better move. I'm going to stop. Let's move on. All right, so there you go. There you go, Rachel.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So. But I like the Muhammad Tate to give me the Muhammad Ali commenting.

[Chuck Nice]

That's right. I'm so. I'm so fast. I turn off the light. I'm in the bed before the room get dark.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, that's good. That's a really good one.

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[Shopify Business Owner (Kiana)]

I'm Kiana, and I leveled up my business with Shopify. Once I figured out that Shopify was a thing, I never turned back. I can create a site with my eyes closed. Shopify thinks ahead of us, you know, and it thinks about the customer more than anything. Every day I'm thinking about some Other new business, but Shopify is doing it to me because it's so easy to use. It's like I can't stop. Stop. I'm addicted.

[Chuck Nice]

Start your free [e-mail].

[Liberty Mutual Insurance Spokesperson]

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[Liberty Mutual Insurance Partner]

Hey, everyone. Check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, no.

[Liberty Mutual Insurance Spokesperson]

We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Liberty Mutual Insurance Partner]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league anyways.

[Liberty Mutual Insurance Spokesperson]

Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty.

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Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.

[StarTalk Supporter / Sponsor Voice]

Hello, I'm Vicky Baruch Allen and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with nailed grass Tyson.

[Chuck Nice]

This is Max Wilburn who says. Hey, Chuck. Hey, Neil. This is Maxwell from Lexington, Kentucky. And I know Neil thinks very highly of Newton as he has accomplished so much. But recently I learned about Newton's law of cooling. Although it's not as fundamental and such a stepping stone for the world of physics, I just find it insane that as an aside, as a side quest, he did that. What a badass. What are your thoughts?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I did not know about his law of cooling.

[Chuck Nice]

I don't know about the law. I think his law of cooling was. Don't you love my hair? Look how cool it is.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But I think that was the wig he was wearing.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, no.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I was so distraught upon learning this.

[Chuck Nice]

Really?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

So his hair notwithstanding, do you have anything to say about the law of cooling?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I didn't know he came up with that. But it is a well known means of calculating the rate of temperature change in physics class.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So the way you do it is you have two materials at different temperatures, all right? Okay. And you bring them in contact in some way, either physically so that atoms are touching each other or have air molecules bouncing back and forth where they're radiatively connected. Connect them in some way.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. And then you measure the rate at which the temperature changes so that they reach equilibrium to each other.

[Chuck Nice]

Cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. Right. So it's not just that the hot. Sorry, sorry. One of them might have a continual source of energy going in. So then the cool thing comes up to its temperature. Do you see what I'm saying? But if they're two isolated objects at different temperatures, they will meet in the middle somewhere at a temperature lower than the high one and higher than the low one.

[Chuck Nice]

Gotcha.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. So you can calculate the rate at which the temperature changes.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, okay. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And deduce, as Isaac Newton apparently did, I own everything that man's ever written. And I've got to go dig that up.

[Chuck Nice]

You gotta go dig up the law of cooling.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That must be a chapter I missed.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so what it states is the bigger the temperature difference, the faster the rate of change of temperature will be.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Which kind of makes sense. It just kind of makes sense.

[Chuck Nice]

Absolutely.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And if you do some measurements of that, you can actually represent it with an equation.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And you make a prediction.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

This is the temperature difference. They'll be the same temperature in 10 minutes.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Or by the way, this is happening every day. You get a glass of water, you put ice in it, Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Eventually it's gonna be water.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And then you have water that's cold, but it's still air temperature out here.

[Chuck Nice]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Eventually that comes up.

[Chuck Nice]

And that comes up. That was an assignment in physics class when I was in eighth grade. And what we had to do was plot the melting of the ice in a graph to see whether or not it was linear. And it was.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, that would be a cooling curve.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, that's a cooling curve.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because it's gaining heat from the outside.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So there you go.

[Chuck Nice]

Look at that. See, people? These are the things you can think of when you are not busy thinking about sex. Like Isaac Newton. This is what happens. You become a genius. Because you're just like, well, I ain't having sex, so I might as well think about how do things melt.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. He never married, had no children, had no known intimate relationships. And so we're pretty sure when he came up with his law of gravitation and motion and calculus, Right. That he was a virgin.

[Chuck Nice]

There you go, babe. That's it. Like a prize fighter. You know what I mean? You know what they say, you know, you gotta stay hungry. All right, here we go. Ben Gruns. Hey, Startalk. This is God here to bestow upon you the keys of limitless energy. Ooh. What do you do?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, wow. Well, first, I don't think it requires God. We just have to tap the energy from the sun.

[Chuck Nice]

There you go, bro. We got this.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

God, we got. Yeah, we're worried about somebody else. Take care of that homeless man in the street. We got the energy thing. We're kind of slow on the go here. But the sun has basically unlimited energy. And the Chinese are now wanna put up a solar array in orbit where there's no clouds. And if it's far enough away from Earth, it always sees the sun 24. 7. Beam it down to Earth by microwaves. So then you have this column of. Microwaves.

[Chuck Nice]

Microwaves.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What could go wrong?

[Chuck Nice]

I wanna cross that path for sure.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So. But unlimited energy. Here's what I would do. You ready?

[Chuck Nice]

Go ahead.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I would do what they did in Iceland.

[Chuck Nice]

What's that?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Iceland is sitting on top of volcanoes. You know this?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. It's volcano land. It's not Iceland.

[Chuck Nice]

It's not Iceland. Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Greenland is Iceland.

[Chuck Nice]

Not Greenland. Right. Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. It's the opposite here. So I want to do what they do in Iceland.

[Chuck Nice]

Go ahead.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They heat their water at these lava pits. Okay. Up in the mountains. And then send the water into town. But they do it under the streets so that snow melts never accumulates.

[Chuck Nice]

Genius.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You never. You don't need snow plows. You don't need salt. You don't need accident reports. Nope.

[Chuck Nice]

It snows. And then the streets are just. They're just clear.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I would run hot water under everything. And then you just. Snow. Snow be damned.

[Chuck Nice]

It's radiant heating for your whole city.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow. That's cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. And other things I might use unlimited energy for.

[Chuck Nice]

I'll tell you what I'd use it for. Pretty much shutting down every war that's ever been fought. Cause most of these wars that we fight are over some form of energy, you know? And so it's just like, well, guess what? It's unlimited, Guys. What are you fighting over?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, it could also be over food or water supplies. There are other causes.

[Chuck Nice]

There are other scarcity resources.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. But I think we'd be smart enough,

[Chuck Nice]

but with unlimited energy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You would make water today. Nobody is going hungry because there's not enough food in the world.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

If you're going hungry, it's because somebody,

[Chuck Nice]

Greedy bastard, is keeping you from getting food.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Disrupting the food chain.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I don't think that was predicted back in 1900.

[Chuck Nice]

No. Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We saw the population growing exponentially and we saw the food supplies growing linearly.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes. And there was a point where people thought that we would run out of

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

food and just completely starve. Right. And so run out of food to feed everyone. Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Rich people always want to eat now.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow. So that's cool, man. I love the idea of heating for your city, though. Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Just for the city. Just so you don't have to. You don't have to do it.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. Especially since we got two feet of snow. All right. I love that answer. All right. By the way, I think this is why Trump wants Greenland, because he really thinks he wants Iceland. I think if you gave him Greenland, he'd be like, what is all this snow everywhere? I don't understand. I don't get it. There's so much ice here.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Plus there are references to penguins there. There are no penguins in the north. Yeah, they're all. There are no free penguins north of the equator.

[Chuck Nice]

Right, Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They're all in captivity.

[Chuck Nice]

They're in captivity.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, this is Scott Oppenlander or Oppenlander. Not open. Oppenlander. And he says, hey, Neil. Hey, Lord. Nice. Scott Oppenlander here, tuning in from Phoenix,

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Arizona, which I'm told is a quarter mile from the surface of the sun. Yeah, Arizona. Yeah. I was in Phoenix one time.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

My. For my first time. And the sun came out and I said, oh, this is a beautiful day. The sun is out. No one is in the streets. No one is in the parks. And when they walk in the streets, they walk on the side of the street that's shadowed.

[Chuck Nice]

Shadowed.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And they only follow shadows around. It gets hot, you know. Whoa.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, yeah, Scottsdale. It's like night, night. The sun goes down and all the vampires come out. Where were you people all day? Like, Anyway, since our universe appears to be a pancake shape, like planetary systems and galaxies, do galaxies orbit around some larger central structure, like an even more super mega massive black hole? Or are galaxy motions just more random or un uniformed? There you go.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Universe is not pancake shaped. So, next question.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, there you have it. It's waffle shape.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, but. But to the point, galaxy motions are mostly random. And what I mean by random is they're not coordinated in some big way. Unless you're part of a galaxy cluster.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And then there's some ballet of movement. However, some structures in the universe are so large that the average speed of the galaxy moving among other galaxies in that cluster is insufficient for the galaxy to have made one complete loop through that cluster.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So that has significant consequences to what's going on there. It's called. It's not virialized. A vialized cluster is a cluster that has a very mature shape where like a beehive, all the galaxies are moving around you step back. It has a spherical kind of envelope that contains them. But if it's kind of ratty like that, it's not yet virialized. It comes from what's called the Virial theorem, which talks about how energy can be transmitted, shared from objects with high energy to objects with lower energy, so that everybody has approximately the same energy at the end of the process.

[Chuck Nice]

Very cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So virialization is the sharing of that

[Chuck Nice]

energy, the sharing of the energy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So it drops the energy of the high energy objects. It could be thermal energy, it could just be orbital energy, and the lower energies come up. So by the way, it's a whole branch of physics. We talk about virilization of galaxies of matter in whatever situation. So the ratty looking galaxy clusters tend to not have been viralized.

[Chuck Nice]

Gotcha.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And so. Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

All right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And by the way, we moving around the center of our galaxy takes about 200 and 200 million years.

[Chuck Nice]

200 million years.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's much smaller than the age of the galaxy, which is 13 billion.

[Chuck Nice]

13 billion years, right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. So. So galaxies is a mature shape and

[Chuck Nice]

we're in a spiral galaxy. Correct. That's very cool, man. Good question. This is MX self destruct. Okay. Is that a.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Is that a.

[Chuck Nice]

That's what it says.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Is that a thing here?

[Chuck Nice]

MX self destruct? I have no idea. But his name is Seamus and he says.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Seamus?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, he says Dr. Tyson Lord Nice. Seamus here from Los Angele. We know that gravity is the result of the way space time curves. So wouldn't it be more likely that gravity is simply a side effect of this curvature rather than a force with a carrier particle like a strong, weak or an electromagnetic force? If there is a carrier particle, why is it not just the Higgs boson, since that imparts mass, thus providing the curvature for the universe that we call gravity?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow.

[Chuck Nice]

Man, people, man, people are doing some work, man, people, man, people are doing some thinking, man.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I can answer 80% of that question.

[Chuck Nice]

All right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's an assumption that gravitation as a force in the universe has a force carrying particle. Right. And the assumption is that if you represented classical gravity, even Einsteinian gravity with quantum physics, it would have to have a particle.

[Chuck Nice]

A particle.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So we even named this hypothetical particle, okay, the graviton. The graviton, Right. Exactly. So the hunt for the graviton is on.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. And so the effect of the graviton and mass and energy is to curve the fabric of space and time, forcing you to move in certain ways that would not otherwise be the case if that were not occupying that space.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

John Archibald Wheeler, a great physicist of the 20th century. I had him as a professor in graduate school.

[Dr. Horton Sales Announcer]

Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. In fact, I met my wife in relativity class that he was teaching. Cool. I was sitting in the back row. She was in the front row.

[Chuck Nice]

And then you guys made relatives.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What I can't quite wrap my head around is if gravity is just the curvature of space and time, maybe it's not a force. Okay. Forces have these carrier particles, right? And if you're just falling along a curvature of space and time, what does it even mean to think of that as a force?

[Chuck Nice]

As a force?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, right. So maybe it sits outside of the quantum paradigms that would require that there be a graviton.

[Chuck Nice]

Boy, that's something. That's kind of cool, man. In a way, because that means that there would be something in between the

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

quantum an understanding that we don't yet have.

[Chuck Nice]

An understanding we don't have.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, right, right. It's a frontier.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, that's cool. All right, well, there you go, buddy. I mean, listen, you did some good. That's a great question.

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[Chuck Nice]

This is John Mayer. I think it's Meyer. Or Meyer. He's M E I E R. Meyer.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Meyer, yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

John Meyer. Salutations from John in Carlsbad, California.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Carlsbad, California.

[Chuck Nice]

CarLSbad, California. He says Dr. Tyson Lord. Nice. The great defenders of art curiosity. I have A question that has flagged me.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, my T shirt, if there ever was one.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, the great start talk.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The defenders of curiosity.

[Chuck Nice]

Of curiosity, he says, as budgets seem to be one of the significant components of innovation in science.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. It's not a component of whether or not something is found to be true. It's a component of whether or not the research is conducted at all. Exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

He says, if we were to greatly increase the national, or hypothetically the global science budget for building telescopes, what would you propose to maximize mankind's current technological possibilities and what could they deliver in order to create the most powerful telescope possible? What would it look like? What would you point it at? And what might we see?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ooh. I would put an entire array of telescopes on the far side of the moon.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There's no atmosphere, so there's no clouds or anything. So there's no value to be on a mountaintop you don't even have. There's no value to being in an orbit.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The whole point of the orbit is you're outside the atmosphere. On the Moon, there's no atmosphere. You're good, you're good to go. So I put them all on the far side of the moon. And it doesn't even have to look towards Earth, where we have all of this contaminating radio wave noise and everything. I mean, Earth is just this messy thing in space.

[Chuck Nice]

It's terrible. That's a great idea. They'll put it on the far side of the moon, though, to watch. Put all the telescopes there.

[StarTalk Supporter / Sponsor Voice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And then I would you put. Of all bandwidths.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You put all the telescopes, of all the windows of the electromagnetic spectrum, the radio waves, Everything. Everything. Everything.

[Chuck Nice]

And now what would you like to see?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I want. I'm ready for the next generation of telescope that can see gravitational waves and neutrinos.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That is not electromagnetic.

[Chuck Nice]

Not electromagnetic. Yeah. That would be fantastic.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I know.

[Chuck Nice]

Look at that. Hey, great question. John Meyer. Way to go. All right. This is Tuamas Limata. Okay. Tuamas Limata.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

How do you. How do you spell it?

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. T U, O M A S L, I M A T, T A la mata. Tuamas Lamata. There you go. I'm gonna say that. All right. And he says, hey, is Tuamas from Olu, Finland. Long time lurker and first time Patreon. Lurker. Lurker, yeah. So he's been watching forever, but he's

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

decided you just look over the shoulder. Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

So now he's. He pulled the trigger and now he's welcome aboard, my friend. He says, I have a small question that I've been pondering for a very long time. Is time permanent? Thank you. Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I don't know.

[Chuck Nice]

Mm.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I mentioned John Archibald Wheeler a moment ago. He's famous for uttering the following sentence, matter tells space how to curve. Space tells matter how to move.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And that motion is defined to make time look simple.

[Chuck Nice]

I love that. That's so great. Motion is defined to make time look simple.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's right.

[Chuck Nice]

Simple.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's right.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I. So it's time without that.

[Chuck Nice]

Who knows?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. I mean, I want to believe that your whole timeline is just there, and you're occupying this point in the present

[Chuck Nice]

on the arrow on the.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's correct, right? That's correct. I want to think that. And I can sort of do it because I can lay out what's going to happen. That's what a schedule is. What's your schedule? I'm going to be here on Thursday and there on Friday and there on Saturday. And that's your future history. I don't know how you would live outside of a timeline.

[Chuck Nice]

Right, yeah, yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because where there is no time reckoning, then nothing moves.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because then you can measure time by that. Otherwise.

[Chuck Nice]

Right, Otherwise. Yeah. So that'd be kind of cool, though. I mean. No, it wouldn't be. I'd hate that idea.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

To be outside of time.

[Chuck Nice]

Outside of time. I hate the idea. However, that's what many people think eternity in the afterlife is, is that it's in a dimension that exists outside of time. And that's why it's eternity, because time does not exist, you know?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, right, right, I see.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. That's the reasoning given.

[Chuck Nice]

That's the reason given, you know, so, you know. Anyway. That's very cool, man. What a great thing to think about.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And by the way, if that's the case, if you're outside of time, then that's the realm of divinity, the realm of spiritual, these sorts of things. I just don't know how a material object could be.

[Chuck Nice]

Could actually be there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Correct.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. No, yeah. That's the whole idea. History allows us to remember our future.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Nice.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. Anyway, Gavin Bamber says this. Hello from North Vancouver. Please visit. And please tell me, how much does the universe weigh?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

In fact, I'm going to be in Vancouver giving a public talk May 4th.

[Chuck Nice]

May the 4th be with you. Yes, may the Neil be with you. Vancouver, how much does the universe weigh?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So you can just do. You can do. Do that on the back of an envelope on the back of an envelope, back of an envelope.

[Chuck Nice]

Sound like a big envelope. Must be a manila envelope at least.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, yeah, you've got. We know the mass of the sun, we know the mass of all the planets, a fraction that of the sun. We can practically ignore them because it's just in the round off error. Then we know how many stars there are in the galaxy. Then we know how many galaxies there are in the universe. Then we know because. Because we know where the edge of the observable universe is.

[Chuck Nice]

Right, Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We know these numbers. Okay, all you have to do is multiply it up. Right? Okay, so the sun is 2 times 10 to the 33 grams, times let's say 100 billion stars in the galaxy. So 2 times 10 to the 33 times 10 to the 11th, that's 100 billion. So that's 2 times 10 to the 43rd grams times possibly a trillion galaxies to the 12th power. So that 10 to the 50 something grams. Now grams is a small unit. So you want to measure in tons or something.

[Chuck Nice]

Who cares at that point? At that point. Who cares?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Who cares? The number is too big.

[Chuck Nice]

The number is too, too big to even conceive of anyway.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

So the real answer is how much does the universe weigh? Ton.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That is the biggest unit of measure there is.

[Chuck Nice]

That's right. You can't get bigger than that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I told you, I created.

[Chuck Nice]

That's where I got it from.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's what you got it from? Yeah, it's the vulgar, the vulgar metric system.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, that's where I got it from. That's why I said it so.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because it's like it's a, you know. Isn't there like an ass load of something?

[Chuck Nice]

There's a shitload.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

A shitload. No, ass load is less than that.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Take this ass load of him, take it to the market. We got more than that. That's a shitload. And then. Yeah, yeah, so it's online somewhere. I think I had it at a Facebook post, but then it kind of hit it. Yeah, but it's out there.

[Chuck Nice]

I know, I know. I just remember from that we.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And when I did that, someone wrote it and said, this is bullshit beneath you.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, this is.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Listen, then I said, I've been hanging around, Chuck.

[Chuck Nice]

I was going to say, just blame me because I get that letter every day.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You bring down Dr. Tyson.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. Why does he, why does he sully himself being around you, Chuck? Like so many. So are you really surprised?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Like this guy, you know, it's interesting.

[Chuck Nice]

Wait, this guy wrote me, he went, I'm sorry, I'm.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We gotta.

[Chuck Nice]

I gotta say this because. Cause it's so funny. He goes, hey, man, no disrespect, but I hate you. He's just like, please shut up. Please just sit there and don't say anything.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right?

[Chuck Nice]

And then he's just like. He's like, Let Dr. Tyson give his talk. Right? And I'm just like, bro, that's not the show. What you're talking about is his lectures. If you want that, go watch a lecture. But anyway, it just tickles me when people like, you know, there's a. There's a contingency out there that feels like I sully you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I mean, no disrespect.

[Chuck Nice]

I mean, no disrespect.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We try. Out of your ass.

[Chuck Nice]

But I hate you. Oh, so great.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So that's how you measure the mass.

[Chuck Nice]

That's how you measure the mass.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You just multiply it all.

[Chuck Nice]

We got the numbers.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, sorry. Sorry, I left out.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There's six times as much gravity in the universe as is what is created by that mass that I just calculated.

[Chuck Nice]

Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So if that extra gravity comes from matter, then we legitimately are calling it dark matter.

[Chuck Nice]

Dark matter.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So you take whatever number, you multiply it up, multiply by six.

[Chuck Nice]

That's phenomenal.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. And we can do that without going out there with a scale, right?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There are ways to do this. Didn't we have an explainer? Was it an explainer or question where we weighed a truck? Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, we did that. And basically it was about using the air tires in the truck. In the truck and all that kind of stuff. Anyway. Yeah, let's move on. Cause we're getting derailed.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Time for just a couple more.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, this is Mile from Macedonia. She says, hey, Chuck. Hey, Neil. Mile from Macedonia, Balkan, Europe, world. Japanese astrophysicists have identified a strong gamma ray glow near the Milky Way center, matching predictions for annihilating dark matter particles. WIMPs. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Weakly interacting massive particles. They call WIMPs.

[Liberty Mutual Insurance Partner]

WIMPs.

[Chuck Nice]

Could you explain how these particles are different from regular matter?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No.

[Chuck Nice]

There you go. I'm sorry. That's so great.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The hunt for dark matter.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's a. You know. You know who's. Who was doing that was Katie Freeze.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We have. We've had her class. Yes, you go dig up Katie Freeze.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, that's actually a really fascinating episode that we have.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Freeze. F R E E S E. Yes. She's an expert on dark matter detection. She's a theorist. She's a theorist. So she would Think about what particle would interact with the dark matter particle for that to happen. Now, I'd be surprised if dark matter interacted with such ferocity that it would be giving us gamma rays. That's a little bit mysterious to me because we would see that everywhere, Right?

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly. You'd think, yeah, exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You can't take this one example in our own Milky Way and say, see, when you have a trillion other galaxies.

[Chuck Nice]

Right, right, right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That should be a common phenomenon.

[Chuck Nice]

It should show up someplace.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Our sample size is so large, you can see even rare phenomenon every night.

[Chuck Nice]

Boom. That's awesome.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

I love that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, a quick reference to medicine. If I have a new pill, a new cure for something, and it's medicine that you take, it's not safe for. This is an old saying in the field. It's not safe for anyone until everyone has tested it.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Think about that. No, you could test it on a thousand people, but if you have a condition that's one in a million, it's

[Chuck Nice]

not likely that you were in that. You weren't in that sample.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You were not in that sample. Exactly. So ideally, you would test on everyone they know exactly for whom it works and who it doesn't. That's not realistic.

[Chuck Nice]

It isn't realistic.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And whereas the universe is big enough so that extremely rare things happen all the time. Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Last question. Chuck, is all we have time for.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, let's go with Larry Maguire who says, hey, Dr. Tyson.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Jerry Maguire.

[Chuck Nice]

Show me the question. This is. This is Larry Maguire. He says, hey, Dr. Tyson. Lord Knight. Larry. From Caledon, British Columbia, just down the road from the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I use software that they wrote.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, really?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There was a important colleague of mine from that observatory who wrote data reduction software.

[Chuck Nice]

All right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And it was the primary software I used for my thesis, which is sitting right there. That big old fat book.

[Chuck Nice]

That one right there. Yeah. So he says, I'm curious about your tools to keep looking up. What was your first telescope? And do you still have a telescope? And what type is it?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, very good.

[Chuck Nice]

Thank you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's a good question to end on.

[Chuck Nice]

All right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So my first encounter with the night sky was this dome of the Hayden Planetarium.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, that's so cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Cause I grew up in the Bronx. There's no night sky to New Yorkers. We had no relationship.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And so that was my first night sky. Okay, Then a friend of mine. Yeah, My best friend growing up.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He was smarter than me in, like, many countable ways.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He taught me chess. He taught Me, poker. He taught me gambling. He taught me.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow, that doesn't sound like a good friend. I'm just saying that's. That's how people feel about me hanging around you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He was your Chuck.

[Shopify Business Owner (Kiana)]

Nice.

[Chuck Nice]

Like, he was just like, all right, let me show you how to gamble.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[StarTalk Supporter / Sponsor Voice]

The time.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All grades were higher than mine and everything, so. Oh. In fact, I could give his name. His name is Philip Branford.

[Chuck Nice]

Philip Branford.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And when I was on Celebrity Jeopardy.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I pointed him out in the audience. Oh, yeah. He came to the show. Came to the show. I pointed him out. And I say he first got me to watch Jeopardy.

[Chuck Nice]

First guy that got me to watch Jeopardy. And first dude to give me drugs. What was your first telescope?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so he had a pair of binoculars.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And so I looked through the binoculars, and I never knew we weren't wealthy enough to have, like, binoculars just laying around. That's a different. You know, that's a whole. It's a whole other. When you got that.

[Chuck Nice]

That's the income level.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Exactly. That's the income. Just a level.

[Chuck Nice]

Just a little laying around the house. Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Go get the binoculars. When we go to the

[Chuck Nice]

Abner, look at what they're doing over there. Abner.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Where'd you get Abner?

[Chuck Nice]

I don't know. Anyway, okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So he invited me to look up with them, and I saw the moon. And the moon wasn't just bigger. Yeah, it was better. Yeah, it was. Oh, my gosh. And you don't want to look at a full moon because that sucks.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You want to look like a half

[Chuck Nice]

moon, half blown out.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Yeah. Any photographer knows you don't directly illuminate something. There are no shadows. There's no depth. You wait for there to be shadows. Any other phase, ideally half moon, which is officially called the first quarter or last quarter. First or third quarter moons. So. Yep. Longest shadows visible. I'm looking at it with the binoculars. I was like, whoa. This is like a whole other thing.

[Chuck Nice]

Nice.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, my God. I felt like I was there.

[Chuck Nice]

Nice.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So that was, like, tipped me off that stuff was going on up there that the human eye does not notice. Right.

[Chuck Nice]

So then that was your gateway.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

This. Yes. The binoculars were the gateway drug.

[Chuck Nice]

Those are the gateway drug.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Curiosities. Cosmic curiosity.

[Chuck Nice]

Cosmic curiosity.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Then when I'm 11.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We moved to Lexington, Massachusetts.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We spent just a year there. My father had an academic appointment.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

For just one year in the Kennedy School of Government.

[Chuck Nice]

All right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Now it's just called.

[Chuck Nice]

Now it's called the Trump Kennedy School of government. But no one wants to perform there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You're talking about the Kennedy Center. Okay. You know, I'm a city kid and we're living in a private house. Like, what's up with that? Right? You want me to do what with this shovel? You want me to do what with this rake?

[Chuck Nice]

Right, right, right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, isn't the snow pretty?

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And then they hand me a shovel.

[Chuck Nice]

Of course.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. It's like, what?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. And then it's autumn and the leaves are on the ground. What? Yeah, the grass gets long. Okay. What mo. What? Yeah, I'm a city kid.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. You're like, you're pining for the city again.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We just stayed. It was someone else's private home for a year.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's what it was. They were on sabbatical or something. Anyway, my interest in the universe was stoked. Cause I was. I learned that Harvard had a center for astrophysics.

[Chuck Nice]

Interesting.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Whole department of AT was like, whoa, that's like really cool. And so my parents saw this and they took me there for one of their open house nights. They had telescopes.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And it was like I died and went to heaven. And I'm 11 years old.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

For my birthday in October that year, when I turning 12, they bought me my first telescope. It was a 2.4-inch refracting telescope. That telescope I rapidly outgrew. But I mean, I saw the rings of Saturn, the weather bands on Jupiter, Jupiter's moons, nebulae, the Andromeda galaxy, the sunspots had special filters for that. And then like 12 of my parents just let me out there, observed the sun. They never even asked. I think they.

[Chuck Nice]

That's cool, man.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Trusted that I knew what the hell I was doing.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, no kid walks out with a telescope to go get in trouble. Hey, guys, I'll be right back. Yeah. Gonna go rob a bank with this telescope.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, no, I'm just. In retrospect, they were never concerned that I did not know what I was doing right now. I'm not kind of angry.

[Chuck Nice]

Listen. Yeah. I mean, you're not gonna question your kid when they're just like, yeah, I wanna go look the at.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. With a telescope.

[Chuck Nice]

With a telescope, yeah. Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So. And then when it did snow, you know, this is New England, right? So there's a lot of snow there. I'd want to take the telescope out back. And winter nights are long, right? Anywhere they're long. And the air is crisp. There's much less humidity. And so the really good observe. Some of the best observing is in very Cold nights. So I dug a path into the middle of our back. We had a backyard and a little circle. And that was my little observatory circle. Observatory circle. And I would take the telescope out there and had several eyepieces and that's what I did.

[Chuck Nice]

That's very cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. So within a year I outgrew the telescope.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Tired of looking at this thing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No. So we sold it to a friend acquaintance and then I would then buy my own telescope the next year.

[Chuck Nice]

Gotcha.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

When I was 13, maybe a year and a half later, I buy my own telescope with money I earned by walking dogs. And that was a 6 inch Newtonian optics reflecting telescope.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

A 6 inch telescope.

[Chuck Nice]

Nice.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That telescope I took to Africa to view a total solar eclipse when I was 14 and I lied and told everyone I was 15. Oh yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Cause that made a difference.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Cause I wanted the respect of a 16 year old. I went alone on this cruise. It was like a science expedition to the.

[Chuck Nice]

Very nice.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I took my telescope with a big old. The telescope is huge. And a big old crate. That telescope has since been gifted to a museum of science in Kentucky. Who decided to make an exhibit of famous people's first telescopes.

[Chuck Nice]

Interesting.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They have my telescope.

[Chuck Nice]

They have your telescope.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's like on permanent loan.

[Chuck Nice]

That's great.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I haven't visited there. I don't know if it's on display or anything. They got my telescope.

[Chuck Nice]

That's cool, man.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I also took it to the Mojave Desert where I was an astronomy. Lived nocturnally in an astronomy camp.

[Chuck Nice]

Very nice.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Talk about geeking out.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, man.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Who else is gonna be there? But like crazy other.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. Geeks. That's it. That's funny.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There were girl geeks and boy geeks and they were all there. And since then I went a long period without a telescope. When I went to college and I said, time I gotta get back in the game here. Much later when I had some cash. Then I bought a very high quality optical telescope. And since then I have two digital telescopes which take some of the fun out. You just set it. You just set up the tripod. Go back into your world.

[Chuck Nice]

It's the Rompopila telescope. Set it and forget it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You just go back in to your warm living room and you just guide it with your iPad.

[Chuck Nice]

Love it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I'm old school. Make it hard for me.

[Chuck Nice]

Love that. Love it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So yeah, so at the time I was a member of the Amateur Astronomers Club which had monthly meetings here at the American Museum of Natural History under the shadow of the Hayden Planetarium. So I go way back in this nice.

[Chuck Nice]

There you go. That's what it is.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Those are my telescopes.

[Chuck Nice]

Very nice.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, and in this office I have a 2.4 inch refracting telescope which is not my original, but it's exactly the same. And in the hallway of the astrophysics department there's a 6 inch Newtonian reflecting telescope which is exactly the size of my telescope, but they were selling them in the shop 50 years ago.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And this one was the display model and we just kept it. Now that the shop is all blended with the other shops.

[Chuck Nice]

Very nice.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And so those are my two meme. You were the first to. No one in the department knows this, right? That I had that telescope there and this telescope there, that same optics. And so when I see them I feel a little nostalgic.

[Chuck Nice]

A little nostalgic?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Except for when I was on the roof with my telescope. And then neighbors call the cops.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, well, yeah. Cause you know, you can't have a

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

black man on the roof with something that looks like a bazooka.

[Chuck Nice]

I think he's gonna murder the president.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm not sure.

[Chuck Nice]

He's up there with a big scope.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah. Cop approaches me, hand over his gun, it's like, what the hell? I'm a 15 year old kid.

[Chuck Nice]

That's funny.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You know, just absorbing the universe.

[Chuck Nice]

Nice.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

One last thing and then we gotta call it quits here.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So there's some children's books that tell my story growing up.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And one of them retells that story of me on the roof. On the roof. And they show the cops showing up, but then the cops show up and I say, have you ever seen Saturn through a telescope before?

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And then they're enchanted. They're on. But up until that moment, it's actually quite tense. Of course, they don't know what I'm telling them to look at.

[Chuck Nice]

And you know, you got them with Saturn.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You gotta have the moon or Saturn ready.

[Chuck Nice]

That's a good one to get anybody.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Get anybody. And that children's book which showed the cop was banned in Pennsylvania.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, no. For what?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because it was showing a police officer

[Chuck Nice]

in a bad light.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. Do you remember there was a period of book banning that wanted to protect the image? Yeah. And so, and I tracked it and it was only on the ban list for about six months. Six to eight months.

[Chuck Nice]

Those people who banned those books, they would like the version where the co show up and they go, oh, well, hello young negro. And then they go, we'd like to introduce you to somebody and. And. And then all of a sudden, they bring out Carl Sagan. You're like, oh, my God, everybody lives happy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's not how that one went down.

[Chuck Nice]

Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, so that's my story of my telescope.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, that was cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Thank you for that. That question. Yeah, very good. All right, all right. We gotta call it quits there.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, there you have it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That was as potpourri a selection of questions as there ever was.

[Chuck Nice]

That's why they're fun.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's. There you go. Go Chuck. Always good to have you, man.

[Chuck Nice]

Always a pleasure.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Neil Degrasse Tyson for StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Until next time. Keep looking up with or without a telescope.

[Liberty Mutual Insurance Spokesperson]

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Liberty Mutual Insurance Partner]

Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, no.

[Liberty Mutual Insurance Spokesperson]

We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Liberty Mutual Insurance Partner]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Insurance Spokesperson]

Anyways, only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty.

[Liberty Mutual Insurance Partner]

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.

[Angie.com Customer]

Why have I asked my electrician I found on Angie.com to bury my pet hamster Nibbles in our yard for me? Because I was so moved by how carefully he buried my electrical wires, I knew I could trust him to bury my sweet Nibbles after his untimely end.

[StarTalk Supporter / Sponsor Voice]

Huh.

[Angie.com Customer]

Nibbles gone too soon. May he scurry in peace.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Hey, sorry about your pet, but I just wire stuff.

[Angie.com Customer]

Nibbles would have loved you like a brother.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Connecting homeowners with skilled pros for over 30 years. Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home [e-mail].