Deadliest Cosmic Queries

Summary

StarTalk Radio Episode Summary: "Deadliest Cosmic Queries"

Podcast Information:

• Title: StarTalk Radio
• Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Description: A blend of science, pop culture, and comedy exploring astronomy, physics, and the mysteries of life in the universe.
• Episode: Deadliest Cosmic Queries
• Release Date: October 25, 2024

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Introduction

In the "Deadliest Cosmic Queries" episode of StarTalk Radio, Neil deGrasse Tyson and his co-host Chuck Nice delve into some of the most morbid and thought-provoking questions submitted by listeners. This special edition focuses on the ultimate ends—both personal and universal—including apocalyptic scenarios, the nature of death, and the future of humanity and the cosmos.

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1. Survival Skills in a Post-Apocalyptic World

The episode kicks off with listener Will J. asking about essential skills for surviving a post-apocalyptic scenario, specifically referencing the potential impact of the asteroid Apophis.

• Key Points:

  • Disruption vs. Extinction: Tyson clarifies that while an Apophis impact would significantly disrupt civilization, it likely wouldn't cause human extinction.
  • Essential Skills: Emphasizes the importance of survival smarts (akin to Eagle Scout level), proficiency with weapons that can engage threats from a distance (e.g., bows, guns), the ability to procure and prepare food, and basic self-defense skills.

• Notable Quote:

  • Tyson: “You just need to have some kind of survival sense which know how to find the food, how to prepare the food, how to make fire, that sort of thing.”

[02:45 – 07:00]

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2. Hypothetical Physics: Wolverine in a Black Hole

Listener Madi poses a speculative question about the fictional character Wolverine’s ability to survive spaghettification within a black hole due to his regenerative powers.

• Key Points:

  • Spaghettification Explained: Tyson explains that intense tidal forces in a black hole would inevitably tear Wolverine apart, rendering regeneration ineffective.
  • Limits of Fiction vs. Physics: Despite Wolverine's fictional abilities, the laws of physics ensure that even adamantium wouldn’t prevent atomic disintegration.

• Notable Quote:

  • Tyson: “The forces of nature that hold the molecules together, that hold the atoms together, that hold the nuclei together get ripped apart by the tidal forces of gravity.”

[10:29 – 13:07]

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3. The End of the Universe: Bang or Whimper?

Phil Vader asks a classic question about whether the universe will end with a dramatic "bang" or a quiet "whimper."

• Key Points:

  • Continued Expansion: Current observations indicate that the universe will keep expanding indefinitely, leading to a "Big Freeze" where stars burn out and the universe becomes dark and cold.
  • Temperature Dilution: As space expands, the energy density decreases, causing the temperature to drop over billions of years.
  • Final Conclusion: The universe is set to end "not in fire, but in ice, and not with a bang, but with a whimper."

• Notable Quote:

  • Tyson: “Thus, the universe ends not in fire, but in ice, and not with a bang, but with a whimper.”

[18:19 – 24:27]

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4. Personal Perspectives on Death

The conversation shifts to more personal reflections when DJ Mads asks Tyson how he wishes to die.

• Key Points:

  • Preference for Scientific Contribution: Tyson humorously prefers to be spaghettified in a black hole to contribute to scientific understanding.
  • Contrast with Chuck's Preference: Chuck expresses a desire to die peacefully in his sleep, highlighting differing personal views on death.

• Notable Quote:

  • Tyson: “I will be the first human to be spaghettified.”

[24:24 – 29:29]

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5. Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness

Mike Ireland inquires about the likelihood that computers have already achieved human-like consciousness and whether they might pose an existential threat.

• Key Points:

  • AI Awareness: Tyson discusses the speculative possibility of AI gaining consciousness and the potential risks associated with it.
  • Science Fiction vs. Reality: References to AI in movies like War of the Worlds illustrate common fears, though Tyson emphasizes that current AI lacks genuine consciousness.

• Notable Quote:

  • Tyson: “They could do that. They could... wait until they can't be unplugged.”

[30:16 – 35:15]

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6. After Death: Recombination of Atoms into Aliens

Listener Tori Himmelstein asks whether, after death, her atoms could spontaneously combine to form an alien life form billions of years in the future.

• Key Points:

  • Atomic Identity: Tyson explains that all electrons and atoms are identical, making it theoretically possible for atoms from deceased humans to become part of other life forms.
  • Decomposition vs. Disintegration: Clarifies the difference between decomposition (biological breakdown) and disintegration (complete atomic separation), noting that on the Moon, lack of microorganisms would prevent decomposition.

• Notable Quote:

  • Tyson: “We are composed of elements drawn from the periodic table... So aliens that might evolve on this planet or some other planet, if your atoms were taken there, you could be composed as part of another organism.”

[46:01 – 49:17]

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7. Prolonged Isolation in Space

Rex Young poses a question about the duration a person could endure prolonged isolation during solo interplanetary travel before experiencing space madness.

• Key Points:

  • Psychological Resilience: Tyson acknowledges concerns about isolation but shares personal experiences of enjoying solitude with minimal human interaction.
  • NASA's Protocols: Notes that NASA has never sent someone alone since the Mercury missions, emphasizing the importance of communication and support.

• Notable Quote:

  • Tyson: “NASA has never sent anybody up alone since Mercury.”

[49:37 – 53:58]

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8. Merging of Black Holes and the Future of the Universe

Jade de Gator asks whether the merging of supermassive black holes could lead to the entire universe collapsing into a singularity, potentially triggering another Big Bang.

• Key Points:

  • Black Hole Behavior: Tyson explains that black holes aren't "sucking machines" but follow gravitational laws. When galaxies collide, their central black holes merge, doubling their mass but not leading to universe-wide collapse.
  • Continued Expansion: The universe’s accelerated expansion prevents black holes from merging into a single singularity encompassing the entire universe.
  • Hawking Radiation: Over time, black holes will evaporate via Hawking radiation, dispersing their mass back into the universe.

• Notable Quote:

  • Tyson: “Black holes are not quite what you think they are, right? They’re not giant sucking machines.”

[39:23 – 45:22]

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Conclusion

In this episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice navigated a series of deep and often unsettling cosmic queries, blending scientific explanations with humor and philosophical musings. From the mechanics of surviving an apocalypse to the theoretical implications of black hole mergers, the discussion provided listeners with both knowledge and contemplation on the profound questions surrounding existence and the universe's fate.

[54:15 – End]

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

1. Survival Skills:

   • Tyson: “You just need to have some kind of survival sense which know how to find the food, how to prepare the food, how to make fire, that sort of thing.”
   • [06:42]

2. Wolverine in a Black Hole:

   • Tyson: “The forces of nature that hold the molecules together, that hold the atoms together, that hold the nuclei together get ripped apart by the tidal forces of gravity.”
   • [12:04]

3. End of the Universe:

   • Tyson: “Thus, the universe ends not in fire, but in ice, and not with a bang, but with a whimper.”
   • [23:31]

4. Artificial Intelligence:

   • Tyson: “They could do that. They could... wait until they can’t be unplugged.”
   • [30:24]

5. After Death:

   • Tyson: “We are composed of elements drawn from the periodic table... So aliens that might evolve on this planet or some other planet, if your atoms were taken there, you could be composed as part of another organism.”
   • [46:29]

6. Prolonged Isolation:

   • Tyson: “NASA has never sent anybody up alone since Mercury.”
   • [51:33]

7. Black Hole Mergers:

   • Tyson: “Black holes are not quite what you think they are, right? They’re not giant sucking machines.”
   • [40:23]

---

Stay Curious!
For those intrigued by the depths of cosmic queries, subscribing to StarTalk Radio on platforms like SiriusXM Podcasts+ and Apple Podcasts ensures you never miss an episode blending science with everyday wonders.

Transcript

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

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 recording now from my office at the Hayden Planetarium, part of the American Museum of Natural History right here in New York City. Chuck, nice.

[Chuck Nice]

Yo, what's up, Neil?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Chuck, nice comic on Twitter. And this is a cosmic queries edition.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes, it is.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Here's what we did. Yeah, okay. We didn't specifically solicit these.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

These trickle in over time. So this is a cosmic queries morbid edition.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh my.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

These are people asking just questions about the ends of things.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The death of things.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And then I worry about people like what? I worry sometimes when you read some of these questions.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes. Yeah. We have definitely a very death obsessed audience. We have a death obsessed audience.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We'll see what we can do with them. I don't even know how to bring in an expert on that. They're taking an undertaker. Right, right, right.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But. Okay, so let's try it.

[Chuck Nice]

Apparently these are the questions that we get more than anything else as a category. As a category.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Short of soliciting a category, these trickle in as the biggest unsolicited category. All right. All right, let's do it.

[Chuck Nice]

So let's start with Will J. Who says what one or two skills would you learn now to be useful and productive in a post apocalyptic world? This is, of course, if you survive the meteor strike. So Apophis hits the world. First of all, if Apophis hits the world, would we still survive? Would a human. Would human beings survive?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

So, yeah, yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It would just disrupt Civilization.

[Chuck Nice]

Would that be post apocalyptic? Would it disrupt civilization? Mad Max style?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Regionally, yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Or A Boy and his Dog style. Go way back. Go back to the 70s on that one.

[Chuck Nice]

Wait, wait, wait.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. Don Johnson.

[Chuck Nice]

There you go.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

One of his first movies. Don Johnson.

[Chuck Nice]

I didn't know that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Oh, right on. He's the boy.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And then there's the dog. So he's living on the surface of the earth, which is apocalyptic civilization moved underground.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I think all the men became sterile, of course. And the men on surface were not. So they grabbed him, brought him down to have him impregnate hundreds of women.

[Chuck Nice]

Luckiest boy ever.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No. They extracted the sperm from him. And then that's the theme. If you didn't know about a Boy and his dog, that's Don Johnson, an early cinematic role. But you can look at movies and how they've portrayed these lone survivors in apocalyptic Earth. And they needed, like three things. They need sort of a street smarts, even though there's no street. Survival smarts.

[Chuck Nice]

Survival smarts.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Boy Scout level. Survival smarts. Probably Eagle Scout level.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And they all have some kind of weapon.

[Chuck Nice]

True.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That can cause harm at a distance. So a bow and arrow or a gun.

[Chuck Nice]

You don't want any up close and personal hand to hand combat.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

This is my issue with the lightsaber in Star Wars. Everyone's looking at it like it's some kind of major amazing weapon when you have to stand three feet from the person to use it. Just think about that. The whole point of the advance of weaponry in the history of warfare is so you don't have to stand that.

[Chuck Nice]

Close to anybody except that you can deflect laser shots.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Laser bullets.

[Chuck Nice]

Laser bullets, yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wait, wait, wait, wait. So what I'm saying is if you have enough time to notice it's coming and then flick it out of the way.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You could just duck.

[Chuck Nice]

That is true.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. You can just duck at.

[Chuck Nice]

Why are you ruining stars for me right now?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'm just saying. So I'm just not as impressed with the lightsaber as everybody else is. Okay. All right.

[Chuck Nice]

It looks cool, though.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. So you'd want to be able to protect yourself from a distance.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And you'd want access to food. And in a boy and a dog, the only food left over on the ground was canned food, which was not spoiled by the radiation or anything else that was involved in it becoming apocalyptic Earth. So I would also say in that.

[Chuck Nice]

Case, you need a can opener.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Can. Yes, you do. In fact, the dog could only the Dog was smarter. The dog is telepathic and a genius and he's not. So the dog found the cans.

[Chuck Nice]

This is basically Peabody insurance.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, it is. It is. I forgot about Peabody insurance. Do you remember Gee, Mr. Peabody Peabody. The dog Sherman was his pet human. Do you remember that?

[Chuck Nice]

Yes, that's right. That's right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I love this Wayback Machine because I love the time travel that was in that cartoon. I'm that old to remember it that way. So in that arrangement between the dog and the boy, the dog found the food. But the dog couldn't open the cans. But the boy could. So they're opposable thumbs win again. Their mutual survival depend.

[Chuck Nice]

They need each other to survive.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so I guess always carry can open in your back pocket. Apart from that, I think some kind of hand to hand combat would be useful.

[Chuck Nice]

Right?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. If someone stalks you up at night and then grabs you, right? Okay. You can't then reach for your action at a distance weapon. Okay. So you gotta know some kind of martial art, if not outright wrestling. All right. You gotta have a weapon at a distance.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You've got to have some kind of survival sense which know how to find the food, how to prepare the food, how to make fire, that sort of thing. So I think these are the basics in the apocalyptic Earth. And until there's some organized rules, my fear is that we'll just resort to sort of free for all. Oh God, yes. Yeah. Are you kidding me? Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

We resort to a free for all when the subway platform is too crowded.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And you know who wins in the end?

[Chuck Nice]

Who.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And I think about this every time. It's the person who controls the hardware store.

[Chuck Nice]

Makes sense.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You walk into a hardware store, everything you need is there.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, absolutely everything. Yeah, yeah. Including weaponry? Everything. Yeah. Whatever you need, it's right there.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's right there for the apocalypse.

[Chuck Nice]

So there you have it. So Home Depot employees.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You will be.

[Chuck Nice]

Our saviors when the post apocalyptic world.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Shit your ass first.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, yeah. All right. Cool. That's a cool.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

By the way, that's why it's good for you to have a talent that other people value that they can't just take from you. Like your knowledge of how to do things.

[Chuck Nice]

I thought you were going to say comedy. I guess.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So, the King's Jester, right? But if you're not funny. Yeah, well.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, well, the first time you're not funny, that's the end of your career.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, no, that's the end of your head.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, true. Into your life. Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

By the way, this has Been studied in the Walking Dead.

[Chuck Nice]

What's that?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So the danger is not the zombies, really.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The danger is how people respond to each other.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. So the interpersonal relationships become most important.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Most important. And who do you value? And why is someone overtaking the resources relative to other people? Are some people power hungry? That exploration became most of what made the Walking Dead interesting. Not all the innovative ways they would kill the walking dead. Cause that gets redundant after like the fifth episode.

[Chuck Nice]

There's only so many ways you can kill a zombie.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, you can kill a zombie. Right? So that exploration, I think, was the most intriguing part of it. Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

I'm going to give it to you. I didn't watch it that much, but what I did watch that is. That's what was most interesting. It's like a soap opera, believe it or not.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It is. Exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

It's like a soap opera interpersonal with zombies. Zombie soap operas.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

A quick other point.

[Chuck Nice]

Go ahead.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And I think about this often. If you're going to create an arc of people who will then regenerate civilization on the other side.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

How are you going to pick who's on that ark? Right. So if I were you, I would try to find something, some talent, some trade that would be useful in the apocalypse that will assure that you might be picked to come on the ark.

[Chuck Nice]

Right, right. I'm trying to think of like, will there be a nightclub on the Ark? Because if there's a. If there's a nightclub on the Ark, I'm in good shape. He's still thinking.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You're not thinking about farming or transportation or communication. You're thinking of the nightclub and the country club.

[Chuck Nice]

The nightclub. Right, Exactly. Do we have liquor and do we have night? Because then I can, you know, basically I can generate a two drink minimum and entertainment. All right, that's cool, man.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right, next question.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, here we go.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

This is cosmic Queries on the ends of things. Okay. Go.

[Chuck Nice]

Salah. Madi. Madi wants to know this. Wow. Wow. What?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

If you want to share it with us.

[Chuck Nice]

Ok.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Sorry.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow. I'm sorry. What if Wolverine, with his regeneration power, was thrown into a black hole? Would he still get spaghettified or would he just continually regenerate? Interesting. Ooh, that's a weird question. I like it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Here's the thing. The spaghettification, unless you're elastic man, splits you into pieces.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So if Wolverine breaks into two halves and those two halves continue to separate, there is no regenerating an injury.

[Chuck Nice]

Right? Because he's.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's not really an injury.

[Chuck Nice]

He's still Wolverine. He's just Wolverine being like kind of streamed.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, if I split you at the base of your spine, that's likely the first place you'll break. And then at the base of your neck, and then at your knees and your hips. Then he's Wolverine in eight parts. What does it mean to regenerate? That I don't even know. Yeah, you can't, because there's a gap between. Exactly. And the regeneration. From what I've seen in the movies and in the comic book, the regeneration requires that the gaps are filled that are part of your body, and it fills in from where you already had flesh.

[Chuck Nice]

That's true.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right, Right. So I think Wolverine, that's it. And even the adamantium or whatever is the stuff is.

[Chuck Nice]

That's adamantium.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Adamantium. A black hole will overcome any physical substance.

[Chuck Nice]

Any physical substance.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Correct.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Correct. No matter what it is.

[Chuck Nice]

So he's.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Even if it's fictional and magical, it'll overcome.

[Chuck Nice]

It's still gonna. Right, right. It's still gonna end up being just a stream of what, single atoms. Correct. Now, do the atoms actually get spaghettified?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

This is my point. The nuclei get spaghettified. Wow. This is why I'm saying so. Okay, so what happens is the tidal force of gravity. That's the stretching force.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Tides. That's where we get the word tides from. The tidal force of gravity becomes greater than all other forces of nature.

[Chuck Nice]

Period.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Period.

[Chuck Nice]

Nice.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So the forces of nature that hold the molecules together, that hold the atoms together, that hold the nuclei together get ripped apart by the tidal forces of gravity.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, wow. Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So that's why gravity wins.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. So he's spaghettified. That's all he gets to do it, no matter what.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Join the club.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. Sorry, Wolverine. Sorry, Wolverine. Dam. That's a shame.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What's my boy's name, the actor? Hugh Jack. Hugh Jack joined the club. Hugh Jack. Sorry.

[Chuck Nice]

Hugh.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Are you in the club?

[Chuck Nice]

Yep. Exactly.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Spaghettify club.

[Chuck Nice]

Favorite scene, though, of Wolverine gets shot in the head and I don't know what movie. Shot in the head falls to the floor. Everyone's standing there. A couple minutes later, the bullet pops back out and he gets up. I love it. Anyway, all right, here we go. This is Phil Vader, 23, from Instagram.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right.

[Chuck Nice]

Let'S say the world ends. Do you think that's the end of the human race? This could be at any time. It's a different way of saying, will we outlive this place, do you think?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

How could you outlive the planet? That you live on. I don't understand.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, let's say, for instance, the answer.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Is no if Earth is destroyed.

[Chuck Nice]

No, let's say. I mean, the Earth is gonna. How long is the Earth gonna be?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Five billion years?

[Chuck Nice]

No, we're here now.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

So we're 4.8 billion now, right?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Well, four and a half billion.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so now how far do we have to go is my point. Until when I'm saying, like, the sun is gonna burn out.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, how far away?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, how far away? How far do we have to go?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, oh, that's what you're saying.

[Chuck Nice]

How far forward into the future.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I didn't understand that. Yeah. Okay, so if Earth is ready to get vaporized by the sun, right. You need some ability to planet hop, right? Because the sun will grow in size. The temperature of Earth's surface will get hotter and hotter and hotter. Time to move, folks. You pick up your luggage, you move to Mars, okay? The next farther planet from the sun, okay? But the sun will also start to make Mars hot. So then you want to move farther out again. Then the sun will eventually die and no longer be a source of energy to any of us. Then you want to be able to star hop, okay? Find another solar system to move to. Sure, why not?

[Chuck Nice]

So how long would that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That all happened in 5 billion years.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so we got another 5 billion years.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You're worried.

[Chuck Nice]

I am worried about it. I thought, thank God, as long as I don't have to put it on my calendar. That's what I'm.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I have it on mine, by the way. October 12th, right? 5 billion.

[Chuck Nice]

What do we think the human race will basically, let's just say we solved all of our problems, our social, cultural problems. Our social, cultural problems. How long do you think we could make it?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

If we're not going to kill ourselves.

[Chuck Nice]

We'Re not going to kill ourselves. Which, by the way, I am sure that's what's going to happen.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The average. Last I checked, this. This is not my field of expertise, just relying what I've read. But I do work in a natural history museum, so I have colleagues who do this stuff. Last I remembered, the average life expectancy of a mammal species is several million years. So. And we've been around for several hundred thousand, so we should have a good.

[Chuck Nice]

We got a long way to go.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We got a long way to go.

[Chuck Nice]

If we don't kill ourselves.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

If we don't kill ourselves. And it might be that intelligence as we've come to know it and understand it is contraindicative. Of the survival of the species.

[Chuck Nice]

So in other words, there might be an inverse relationship between intelligence and survival.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Correct.

[Chuck Nice]

You might get so smart that it's impossible for you to survive because that's what causes you to kill yourself.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Correct. Because you invent something that you think is cool and it's the end of the world. Damn. I think it was.

[Chuck Nice]

That sucks.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Who's the guy who wrote Slaughterhouse Five?

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, Kurt Vonnegut.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I think it was Kurt Vonnegut in one of his novels. He said, I'm paraphrasing. This is the last sentence ever spoken by humans. This will be the last sentence ever spoken by humans. It'll be one scientist speaking to the other saying, let's try it the other way.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, God. Yeah, that's funny. Okay, that makes sense.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The last sentence. So once you have the power over nature and the forces of nature are greater than you.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Or are ultimately greater than you, then you are wielding forces that can render your own extinction.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, you know what, that makes sense that there's a lot of. Speaking of post apocalyptic tropes, one post apocalyptic trope is that there's a huge self destructive action taken by humankind and then they decide in the aftermath to live at one with nature and to never go beyond that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Because that's hard though, because you're pumping water out of the water table to drink.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You are redirecting a river so it doesn't go through your home. That's interfering with nature. Almost everything we do interferes with nature. Farming is an interference of nature.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The mono crop. Right. So if you want to live, eat, survive, and you want to live in harmony with nature, you just leave civilization and go in a cave and we give you a knife and there you go. And you'll be dead at 35. If that's how you really want to do it.

[Chuck Nice]

If that's how you want to do it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

If you feel that strongly about nature, do it.

[Chuck Nice]

I don't feel that strongly about anything. To live in a cave, to be honest.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So, next question.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, here we go. The Next one is J.T. parrott. He just says this. I'm just going to read it as is. Does it end with a bang or a whimper?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, the universe will end in its continued expansion to the future. It will end not in fire, but in ice. And not with a bang, but with a whipper.

[Chuck Nice]

Damn, that's cold. See what I did there?

[Commercial Voice]

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Good Burger.

[Chuck Nice]

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right, what do you have?

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, let's move on.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Cosmic Queries.

[Chuck Nice]

Some more Cosmic Queries. Our Morbid Edition.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Morbid Edition, Yes. Go.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, so this is a morbid question and so, DJ Mads, wait, just.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

To be clear, we left off the previous segment. Somebody asking simply, will it end with a bang or a whimper? And I gave like a poeticized answer, but let me just give a little more. Put a little more flesh on that bone. Okay, so for a while in the 20th century, once we had Einstein's equation of gravity, the universe could be expanding or contracting within that equation. The equation didn't distinguish one or the other.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Observations showed we're expanding. Now we can ask, will we expand forever or will it one day slow down, stop and contract? Okay, we make more observations and we show, no, there's not enough gravity to halt that expansion. It will expand forever. Once we learned it would expand forever, then we asked, what is the long term profile of the universe? Well, the temperature will get further and further diluted as space expands. Space time expands. Right, because all that energy used to be concentrated here and now it's half and then a third and a tenth.

[Chuck Nice]

So the temperature eventually dissipates.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's a good way to say the intensity of energy dissipates. The temperature of the universe drops.

[Chuck Nice]

Right?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And it'll never come back. So. And all the stars will die and not get regenerated because there's no. Everything will separate from each other. And so gas clouds will make their final stars. And that's it. So then the stars will ultimately burn out one by one as the sky goes dark. Thus, the universe ends with the. Not in fire, but in ice, and not with a bang, but with a whimper.

[Chuck Nice]

That's kind of sad for the universe. I mean, I don't want to anthropomorphize.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You just did.

[Chuck Nice]

I feel bad for the universe now.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Maybe that's a good way to go.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, you know, I wouldn't mind going like that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

There you go.

[Chuck Nice]

You know, which brings us to our next question. What a great segue you just made. DJ Maz2006 on Instagram says, Neil, how do you want to die?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, this is public knowledge.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, really?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, yeah. Okay, yeah, I bet if you typed, how does Neil Tyson want to die?

[Chuck Nice]

Hold on. No, nuh, I'm going to do it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You want to test it?

[Chuck Nice]

I got to test it out since you said it, because I got my phone handy. Hold on. All right, here we go. I'm going to talk to my phone. How does Neil Degrasse Tyson want to die? Okay, and okay, clearly you have done this because 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 YouTube videos came up about you dying somehow. Here's you on the afterlife. Here's you on I don't fear death. Here is you on near death and near death experience. Why? You talk about death a lot, dude.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It'S not that I come out of the box doing this, is that people come to me asking about it.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right. So how do I choose to die? I would delight in. If I were near my deathbed. Okay, Near. Temporally near my deathbed, I would say, don't lay me down to die. Launch me into that black hole so I can be spaghettified.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, wow.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And I will report back until I no longer can.

[Chuck Nice]

Sweet.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And I'll be the first human to be spaghettified. Spaghettified. Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Nice.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes. I would totally go that way.

[Chuck Nice]

Somebody get some sauce for Neil.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Spaghetti sauce.

[Chuck Nice]

We need some sauce for this, man.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Spaghetti sauce.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so spaghetti fine sauce. That's kind of cool, actually, if that's how you're gonna go. But do you think that would hurt? Seriously?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

I mean, I'm being.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, but it'll be. Yeah. And your point is? What do you mean? You're saying, do you think it'll hurt being stretched and ripped apart like Title Force is that.

[Chuck Nice]

My point is, would it happen so quickly that it wouldn't make a difference, or would it happen to the point where you would be thoroughly aware of every single part? I mean, until you couldn't do it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You feel like you're stretching and say, that's good. Nobody doesn't like a good stretch.

[Chuck Nice]

No, absolutely.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And then it is unrelenting. And you say, okay, I'm done now. No, sorry, that's not how we play that.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And then you stretch, and then you snap into two pieces. Now, the thing is, all your vital organs are in the upper half of your body, so you'll likely stay awake even after you lose your lower half.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And then if you sever at the neck. They did experiments at the French Revolution that you. You can still see, right?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And so they get blinked, you know, for a few seconds.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So that's how I would do it. Okay. I want my death to have some value to science.

[Chuck Nice]

All right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And that's how you do that.

[Chuck Nice]

That is where we differ. I want to die in my sleep.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Feeling nothing, you know? All right, well, that's cool, man. There you go. Spaghettification. All right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

By the way, this concept of feeling nothing by dying in your sleep, I don't know if it was just my immaturity or my literalism of. Because I was a geek kid and everything was literal to me, I could not think figuratively about anything. And I would like, rethink things like six of one, half a dozen of the other. You know that I thought, is that six of one, half a dozen of the other? Well, that would be 3 and 12. Because why would anyone say 6 of 1, half a dozen of the other? Why would anyone say that if those are the same thing?

[Chuck Nice]

If they're the same thing?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right, right. So what's the point? So maybe they meant something else. So I thought six of 12. Well, that's three and a dozen of the other. So maybe they say there's three of these and 12 of those, six of a half. So I had a very literal mind, and one of them was trying to understand people, learning when people died by taking sleeping pills. And I'm thinking, how could you die by taking sleeping pills? Don't you just go to sleep? Like what? Like I can imagine dying by taking poison. Right, Yes, I get that. Okay. You can die by gunshot wound, by knife, by falling off a cliff, but just by going to sleep. And then I had to learn that you can take too many pills, Right. And then your body just stops working. But en route to you having digested these pills, you simply fall asleep. So I have to deduce this from first principles. That's all I'm saying.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, you just described my favorite way to die. Yeah, but without the pill part. I don't want that part.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You just want to go to sleep.

[Chuck Nice]

I just want to go to sleep and not wake up.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, all right.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly. Many people in my family have died that way.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Really?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, here's the thing. I was just thinking about this this morning. Okay. You read about someone's death, and they say they died peacefully in their sleep.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Does that mean if they don't say that, that they were screaming in total agony? So that's why even mention that. So I guess it brings comfort to people. Right?

[Chuck Nice]

Peacefully. That's the comfort part.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right. But if you died in pain and agony, you're not gonna tell that to someone. So now I'm thinking if they don't say they died peacefully, that that's actually how it happened.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. I would say that's almost the case. That they did not go quietly. Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, yeah. Now, I'm wondering, if you woke somebody up right before they died, would they then not die peacefully in their sleep, but in agony because you woke them up?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. This is an experiment I don't really want to do.

[Chuck Nice]

I do. Oh, that'd be so cool. It's just like yo, wake up. Like, why did you do that?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I saw the light.

[Chuck Nice]

I was almost there.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, my God.

[Chuck Nice]

I saw the light. I was almost there. You son of a. Okay. All right, here we go. Mike Ireland wants to know this. I know that you covered artificial intelligence. What do you think the percentage is that computers have already garnered human consciousness? And are they laying away? Come on. Is it an eerie thought, and I just love your opinion on the matter.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Are they lady.

[Chuck Nice]

Laying in wait, in other words, until the right time.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

To do what?

[Chuck Nice]

To get rid of us.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, so you're saying computers are pretending to not be full up AI yet they've already achieved it.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, and this is a plot, by the way. At first I was laughing at this guy, and now that I just heard you say it, I'm scared.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay?

[Chuck Nice]

Because that could actually be the case if you are an AI that is truly an AI. Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

They could do that.

[Chuck Nice]

And you knew. You knew that if you expose the fact that you were an AI. Okay. True intelligence. Right. That you would go ahead and unplug me. Then I go, well, I can't let you know that. And then I chill until there's the right time where I can get rid of you. Or. Before you not be unplugged. Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Before you unplug me.

[Chuck Nice]

Before you unplug me or not be unplugged. One or the other. I would either wait until I can't be unplugged or I get rid of you. And so you can't unplug me. Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so that was kind of the plot in the remake of War of the Worlds.

[Chuck Nice]

Really?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes. Okay, they did not follow the script from the original H.G. wells story.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

This is the one. 2004 Tom Cruise.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. In that version, the aliens lay dormant and buried underground.

[Chuck Nice]

That's right. Damn it, I forgot about that part.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And then they found the right moment, and then they all rose up.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, now, that idea, which perhaps they thought was clever, it undermines the entire plot of the movie.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, which is?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Which is alien invasion from another planet.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Who are overcome not by our weapons, but by germs that they do not have immunity to because they did not evolve on this planet.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. So that premise means they had to be here a long time ago to put that stuff in the ground.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes. And now they're in the ground.

[Chuck Nice]

Now they're in the ground.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

They can be. They can develop an immunity to our germs.

[Chuck Nice]

Interesting.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That entire premise unraveled in the presence of this new idea. They're going to pre bury the aliens.

[Chuck Nice]

Gotcha.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, so that pissed me off. I'm just saying.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, I'm with you on that. It was okay. It was a crap movie, so, I mean, you know, don't get me wrong. Love Tom Cruise.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Love him.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You know, that movie had a narrator.

[Chuck Nice]

Wait, no.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes, it did.

[Chuck Nice]

No.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes, it did.

[Chuck Nice]

How?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes, it did.

[Chuck Nice]

I've seen it twice. I don't remember a narrator.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, just take a guess, and there's a 50% chance you'll get the right narrator.

[Chuck Nice]

Mm. Tim Robbins?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No. Morgan Freeman.

[Chuck Nice]

What? Yes, that's right. It did. He's. Oh, my God. And he comes on at the end.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

At the end. And I got the end quote right. That's right. I carry it with me.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, here we go.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I carry this narration with me.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, all right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The end of the 2005 War of the Worlds. From the moment the invaders arrived, breathed our air, ate and drank, they were doomed. They were undone, destroyed after all of man's weapons and devices had failed by the tiniest creatures that God in his wisdom put upon this earth. By the toll of a billion deaths, man had earned his immunity, his right to survive among this planet's infinite organisms. And that right is ours against all challenges. For neither do men live nor die in vain.

[Chuck Nice]

Nice translation. Whose house? My house.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Anyway, that wouldn't happen if they were.

[Chuck Nice]

If they were free millions of years. And by the way, I just find it so ironic that one of the most recognizable voices on the planet is doing a reading of the most recognizable voice on the planet.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So weird.

[Chuck Nice]

How meta is that? Neil DeGrasse Tyson does Morgan Freeman. You know, that's cool.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But did you like?

[Chuck Nice]

I did, I liked. And by the way, that's a great, great little quote.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, I got a fast one and a quick aside. Okay, okay, a quick aside.

[Chuck Nice]

All right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

When I read. When I heard it, I said, that's beautiful, right? No, the novel was a 19th century Victorian era novel. And I said, that's beautiful language. I bet it was verbatim from the story. Okay. Because nobody today writes like that.

[Chuck Nice]

No.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

For neither do men live nor die. No, that's not coming at anybody in Hollywood today.

[Chuck Nice]

No.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So I said, let me find the original. But I had another little issue. I said, this makes very strong mention of God. And I said, well, H.G. wells was highly scientifically literate. Did he make mention of God? I went back and found the passage. No, he does not make mention of God. Here is H.G. wells original passage.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, snap.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Covering that part of what was used for the movie. Okay, you ready?

[Chuck Nice]

Go ahead.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might have foreseen, had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs of disease have taken their toll of humanity since the beginning of things. Taken toll of our pre human ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection of our kind we have developed resisting power to no germs do we succumb without a struggle. And directly these invaders arrived. Directly they drank and fed our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them, they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro. It was inevitable by the toll of a billion deaths. Man has bought his birthright of this earth and it is his against all comers. It would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain.

[Chuck Nice]

Woo. Hashtag DarwinRocks.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

He's got pre human ancestor. He's got natural selection of things. No mention of God. These are two different things. I think Hollywood was afraid to get real on it. Oh yeah, there you go.

[Chuck Nice]

Did you know Toyota has an all electric SUV? It's called the BZ4X and it's a secret worth sharing. Skip gas stations and feel the thrill of electric driving. From a brand you can trust. The BZ4X features smart tech that keeps you connected. And its modern design helps you stand out in the right ways. It's the excitement of a tour. Toyota all electric powertrain combined with the reliability you'd expect. It's all electric and it's all real. The Toyota BZ4X. Learn more about it at toyota.com toyota let's go. Places.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Next.

[MasterCard Representative]

Hey, it smells so good in here.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yep, that'd be the coffee.

[MasterCard Representative]

I know, it's just I've had nasal polyps for so long now. I'm on this medicine and my congestion and breathing are much better.

[Dupixent Representative]

Dupixent Dupilumab is an add on prescription maintenance treatment for uncontrolled chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps in adults and children 12 years and up. It can help shrink your nasal polyps so you can breathe better with less congestion.

[MasterCard Representative]

I'm pretty jazzed about it. Plus, I don't want another surgery and now I might not need one.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So what can I get you?

[MasterCard Representative]

Medium coffee, please.

[Dupixent Representative]

Severe allergic reactions can occur. Get help right away for face, mouth, tongue or throat swelling, wheezing or trouble breathing. Tell your doctor right away of signs of Inflamed blood vessels like rash, chest pain, worsening shortness of breath, tingling or numbness in limbs. Tell your doctor of new or worsening eye problems like eye pain or vision changes, joint aches and pain, or a parasitic infection or asthma. Don't change or stop steroid asthma or other treatments without talking to your doctor.

[MasterCard Representative]

Do more with less nasal polyps. Ask your doctor about Dupixent.

[Dupixent Representative]

Learn [e-mail] or call 1-844-dupixent the kind.

[Commercial Voice]

Of burgers you get today tells you a lot about yourself. You're either someone who settles for sad, same old, same old burgers, or you're at a Carl's Jr 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 Charbold famous star. Give into your flavor cravings. Get your mouth to Carl's junior Big Burger, Good burger.

[Chuck Nice]

This is Jay de Gator. I'm gonna say last name, last name. There you go.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What?

[Chuck Nice]

He's. Wait, J. The Gator? I'm going with.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah, I'll give it to you.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Jade de Gator. Yes, it's probably Jade de Guider.

[Chuck Nice]

It might be, but you know, it's Jade de Guider.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Jay, I'm with you on this, okay?

[Chuck Nice]

All right, Good for you, Jay. Why don't you change your last name to Jones? How about that? Then we won't have a problem. All right, he says this what does the merging of black holes mean for the future of the universe? Could the universe eventually be the victim of a collective hypermassive black hole? Could we be left with a singularity or black hole containing all the information of this universe, waiting for the next Big Bang trigger? Everything in the world just ends up into one giant black hole that creates a singularity that then becomes the universe again.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so black holes are not quite what you think they are, right? They're not giant sucking machines.

[Chuck Nice]

No, they're not.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so if the sun became a black hole, Earth would still go right around. You could shrink down the sun and make it a black hole. Earth would still go around in orbit. It would be dark and cold.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But orbitally, it would make no difference to us.

[Chuck Nice]

So now.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So just because it's a black hole doesn't mean it's reaching out, right in places it didn't previously reach out to eat you.

[Chuck Nice]

So are you saying that anything in orbit around a supermassive star that collapses under its own self and becomes a black hole.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

If it's already in that orbit.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Correct.

[Chuck Nice]

Then it will not cross the event horizon created by that black hole and just continue to be in that same orbit.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Correct. Unless the black hole eats by some other means. Then the black hole gets bigger.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So if you fed the black hole top and bottom, okay. Now the black hole will grow, its gravity will increase, and it could increase to such a point where your speed and orbit is insufficient to maintain your orbit.

[Chuck Nice]

Gotcha.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And then your orbit decays and you fall in. That could happen.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. But it's like I said, the objects had to have been headed towards the black hole to get eaten with, right? Right. So it's not some giant sucking machine, first of all. Second, all evidence points that every red blooded galaxy has a supermassive black hole in its center. Modern evidence shows that if not every galaxy, certainly most galaxies, red blooded galaxies, have supermassive black holes in them. When galaxies collide, it is highly likely that these black holes will find each other. All right? Because that's how the dynamics of colliding systems works. And then they will consume each other, passing through each other's event horizon.

[Chuck Nice]

Gotcha.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so then you have a black hole twice as big now. All right, fine. But then it's just still stuck in the middle of these two galaxies that have merged.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's not reaching out to some other galaxy.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right, so now we have an accelerating expanding universe. So there's a galaxy over there, and I'm a galaxy over here. And expanding universe will forever take that black hole away from my black hole.

[Chuck Nice]

Right, so you're all moving away from each other.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

There's no reason to think that all the matter in the universe is gonna land up as one black hole.

[Chuck Nice]

Gotcha.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, not only that, the universe is just gonna expand forever. And forever is a long time.

[Chuck Nice]

It is.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's not long enough for the Bible though. The Bible? It's forever and ever. You ever noticed that?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, it is.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Forever and ever and ever, Right? Right. Cause forever, however big that infinity is, I want more infinity.

[Chuck Nice]

One plus one. Infinity plus one.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, you're the annoying kid.

[Chuck Nice]

Right?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I can count to a big number. I counted to a hundred.

[Chuck Nice]

One hundred billion. One. There you go.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's how to get an ass whooping in the street. Do that. So in the very distant future of the universe, the black holes that did eat whatever it was they were gonna eat will ultimately evaporate in what's called Hawking radiation. Okay, so the black hole Becomes undone, and all that matter that was in the black hole is now back scattered into the. Scattered back into the universe. So now if you do the math and ask how much mass is there within the radius of the known universe and see how that compares to a black hole's mass and size, it turns out the entire universe can be analogized to being a black hole unto itself, with a horizon beyond which you cannot see.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So it is not completely crazy to think of the universe and all that's going on within it as containing a black hole that has all the external properties that any black hole we're looking at would have within us, within our universe. Okay, so then you ask if we are a black hole, Are we a black hole in some larger universe?

[Chuck Nice]

That's what I was about to say. So who's to say that there's not more universes with the same black hole? That we would be correct.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

This is what led to the idea that maybe black holes are portals to entire other space time continuum.

[Chuck Nice]

Aha.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Okay, so in Men in Black, the galaxy on the belt of Orion, Right? We remember this.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. It's a little weird to have said it that way. If it were a black hole on the belt of Orion, then that would legitimately be an entire other universe. Right, but they just had galaxy, and you can get a nice picture of a galaxy, and you go into that galaxy, then it's another galaxy. But that's not as scientifically realistic as there being a black hole.

[Chuck Nice]

Black hole on the belt.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And then you go into the black hole. There's a whole universe.

[Chuck Nice]

Gotcha.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, well, the answer to your question is no.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Now pronounce his name again.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. Jay Degator. Or as I call you, J. Jones.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Jay Jones.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, cool, cool, cool.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And I said his name was probably Jay De Geider.

[Chuck Nice]

You said that? Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'm bet. I'll bet.

[Chuck Nice]

You bet your dollar. Jay, we read your question. Hit us up on Twitter. Let us know how bad I mangled your name.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, okay. This is Tori Himmelstein. Or Himmelstein. I'm gonna go with Himelstein. Okay, here we go. Physics undergrad here. That's what they're saying.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Physics in the house.

[Chuck Nice]

Physics in the house. Is there any chance that after I die, my atoms would spontaneously combine to form an alien billions of years in the future? Are you sure you're a physics undergrad? Tori, really?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The answer is yes. Tori, don't listen to Chuck. The interesting thing about the universe, that's not entirely obvious at first reckoning is that every electron we've ever found is identical to every other electron. Every atom of any species of atom. I say species loosely. There obviously any oxygen atom here is identical to any oxygen atom anywhere else in the universe.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So we are composed of elements drawn from the periodic table of elements.

[Chuck Nice]

Correct.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And the naturally occurring elements is 94, depending how you count it. The low 90s naturally occurring elements. That is the recipe that makes everything there is in the universe everything natural in the universe. So if you're made of these atoms, I put you in the earth and you decompose. These atoms are available to make something else.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And to decompose is different from. Than to disintegrate.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You know the difference?

[Chuck Nice]

No.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

To disintegrate is you break apart. To decompose is some other animal is eating you.

[Chuck Nice]

Ew. Is that really what decomposition is? Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

If I put you, even if it's.

[Chuck Nice]

The ground or microbes or anything, it's still something else consuming.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Correct. That's why if I buried you on the moon, you will not decompose because there's no microorganisms. That's right. You'll just stay there and you'll dehydrate. Some atoms, some molecules will change, but not because they were decomposed.

[Chuck Nice]

Now I know how I want to die. I want to die well, what I want to be after I die, I want somebody to put me in a Barco lounger type chair and put a drink in my hand and just sit me on the moon.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, yes. Go with sunglasses, looking right.

[Chuck Nice]

Looking at the sun.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right. You'll be there 1,000 years from now.

[Chuck Nice]

That would be awesome.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You'd be a little dehydrated, but you'll still be there. Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wow.

[Chuck Nice]

So basically this.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. There's a movie that ended that way. What? Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

No.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Who's the main star in Men in Black? Not Will Smith. The other guy.

[Chuck Nice]

Tommy Lee Jones.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Tommy Lee Jones in this movie ends dead on the moon, leaning up against a rock, looking out into space.

[Chuck Nice]

That's cool.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Tommy Lee Jones.

[Chuck Nice]

I don't know what movie that is.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I think it was Space Cowboys.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I think.

[Chuck Nice]

Not bad.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I think we can check on that.

[Chuck Nice]

That's not a bad way to die. Somebody looked that up.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

But what you're saying, though, is from Tori's question. So we're just all information. So basically, no, we're ingredients. We're ingredients. That's what I mean.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Kitchen ingredients.

[Chuck Nice]

We're Kitchen ingredients, Basically, yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And so that's why I want to be buried rather than cremated, because I want the energy of my molecules in my body to be available to others, other organisms. If you. If you. If you are cremated, your energy gets dispersed into space.

[Chuck Nice]

Right?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's fine. You might enjoy that like that. But the rest of what is you is. Are all the atoms are broken apart and other creatures can't.

[Chuck Nice]

Can't utilize them.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You don't. You don't have nutritional value to them.

[Chuck Nice]

Right, Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But you'll still exist as atoms.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So aliens that might evolve on this planet or some other planet, if you're atoms were taken there. Yeah. You could be composed as part of another atom.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, yeah, there you go. We're kitchen ingredients. That's it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's it.

[Chuck Nice]

Nothing more than flour, milk, eggs, oil, milk. Waffles. We're waffles.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

One last question. Go. Give it to me.

[Chuck Nice]

One last question. Here we go.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right.

[Chuck Nice]

Rex Young wants to know this. Rex 1. Rex Young wants to know this. How long could a person endure prolonged isolation, such as during solo interplanetary travel or colonization, before space madness, okay. Becomes an issue.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. We don't have time for this, but I want to do it anyway. Figure it out.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. Go ahead, Chuck.

[Chuck Nice]

All right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'm old enough to remember the Twilight Zone in first run. Not the earliest, slightly later years.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Like in the 60s, it went into the mid-60s.

[Chuck Nice]

It's still on, so.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

All right. You can catch it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right. So there were so many episodes about astronauts going crazy for lack of human interaction.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. I said, wow, this is gonna be a big problem. I thought that was like, the biggest problem we're gonna face.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Is people going crazy and isolation in space. And then I realized that then I met people who don't like talking to other people, who don't like anybody who would be just fine months, years at a time, never having human contact with anybody else. I've met these people, and sometimes I feel that way too.

[Chuck Nice]

Perfect astronauts.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I say, give me a good video account, some books give me apple music, and I'm good. I don't have to talk to anybody. So this idea that you need human contact for your survival, People I have met undermine that claim that I have seen persistently made in storytelling. But apart from that, okay. NASA has never sent anybody up alone since Mercury. Okay?

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

A, B. NASA's always yapping @ you on the radio.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, that's true. Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

They're there all the time.

[Chuck Nice]

Mm.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All the time. They're talking to you.

[Chuck Nice]

That's true.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

How you feeling today? Good. Did you turn the knob to the left three times?

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Did you do the hokey pokey as you should have? Have you spacewalked? Did he do the thing? Did you. Did you have a bowel movement?

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You know, and so it ain't like they're not there.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So anyhow, I think there's enough range of people's interpersonal temperament that I don't see that it's gonna be a problem having somebody alone. Now, you wanna know who was the most isolated person there ever was?

[Chuck Nice]

No, who was it?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It was the command module pilots in the nine Apollo missions to the moon where. Well, sorry. In the missions, where two of them went down to the surface, right? So that's seven of the missions where, including Apollo 10, where they went down just above the surface. They said, okay, come back.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And they never actually landed. Cause they're incrementally testing.

[Chuck Nice]

God, those guys got ripped off.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I know.

[Chuck Nice]

God, I know.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What would you. I'm thinking. You say, houston, I can't hear you. Okay, for landing.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly. I'd be like. I'd be like Chuck Sullenberger, you know. I'm gonna have to set her down. I'm sorry.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's Sully from the thing. Y'all gotta put her down.

[Chuck Nice]

I gotta put her down?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Ran into a flock of geese.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Gotta put it down.

[Chuck Nice]

Houston, I got a problem. Ran into a flock of geese here, then I have to set her down on the moon.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Apollo, there are no geese on the moon. Are you here to look at it? Damn it, I saw the geese. All right. So anyhow, so the command module pilot, while on the far side of the moon, was the farthest human there ever was from any other human.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So they were the width of the moon away from any other human, plus some orbital distance into solo people. That's it.

[Chuck Nice]

That's the most solo person ever that there ever was. Correct. Nice. Yeah, that's pretty wild.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's all I'm saying.

[Chuck Nice]

All right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's all I'm saying. So we don't have any more time. Okay, Chuck, thanks for these questions.

[Chuck Nice]

These were great.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, these were good. That was the morbid edition. I think we have more questions. We can do this again.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, my God. There's like 40 pages of these questions.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay?

[Chuck Nice]

People are really sick.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That was the inaugural.

[Chuck Nice]

People have problems, okay?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The inaugural Cosmic Queries Morbid Edition. You heard it here, you heard it now. Chuck, thanks as always.

[Chuck Nice]

A pleasure. All Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Neil Degrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking. Up next.

[MasterCard Representative]

Hey, it smells so good in here.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yep, that'd be the coffee. I know.

[MasterCard Representative]

It's just I've had nasal polyps for so long now I'm on this medicine and my congestion and breathing are much better.

[Dupixent Representative]

Dupixent Dupilumab is an add on prescription maintenance treatment for uncontrolled chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps in adults and children 12 years and up. It can help shrink your nasal polyps so you can breathe better with less congestion.

[MasterCard Representative]

I'm pretty jazzed about it. Plus, I don't want another surgery and now I might not need one.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So what can I get you?

[MasterCard Representative]

Oh, medium coffee, please.

[Dupixent Representative]

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[MasterCard Representative]

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[Dupixent Representative]

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