Einstein’s Crumbs with Janna Levin

Summary

StarTalk Radio: "Einstein’s Crumbs with Janna Levin" – Episode Summary

Episode Title: Einstein’s Crumbs with Janna Levin
Release Date: April 29, 2025
Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Guest: Janna Levin

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Introduction

In this enlightening episode of StarTalk Radio, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson explores the lasting legacy of Albert Einstein through what he refers to as "Einstein's Crumbs." Joined by theoretical physicist Janna Levin, the discussion delves into Einstein's groundbreaking work, its profound impact on modern science, and the ripples his ideas have created across various fields.

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I. Einstein's 1905 Papers

Overview:
The conversation begins with an exploration of Einstein's prolific year, 1905, often dubbed his "Annus Mirabilis." During this period, Einstein published four seminal papers that revolutionized physics.

Key Points:

• Photoelectric Effect: Introduced the concept that light can behave as both a wave and a particle, laying foundational work for quantum mechanics.

  • Kristen Bell: "The photoelectric effect was the idea that sometimes light behaved like a particle and not a wave" ([06:07]).

• Brownian Motion: Provided empirical evidence for the existence of atoms by explaining the random movement of particles suspended in a fluid.

  • Neil deGrasse Tyson: "One of the first supportive bits of evidence that atoms even exist" ([11:59]).

• Special Relativity: Challenged the existing notions of absolute space and time, introducing the idea that measurements of space and time are relative to the observer.

  • Kristen Bell: "The theory of relativity became this real colloquial thing. Everything's relative" ([07:14]).

• E=mc²: Formulated the mass-energy equivalence, which has far-reaching implications in both theoretical and applied physics.

  • Harrison Greenbaum: "E equals MC squared. Equals MC squared. This has been a busy year" ([12:22]).

---

II. Nobel Prizes and Their Focus

Overview:
Despite his monumental contributions, Einstein received the Nobel Prize not for his most groundbreaking theories but for specific aspects of his work.

Key Points:

• Awarded for Photoelectric Effect and Brownian Motion: These papers provided verifiable experimental results, aligning with Nobel criteria.

  • Kristen Bell: "Two of them were stapled together for the one Nobel Prize that he got" ([13:10]).

• Excluded Theories: Special and general relativity, as well as E=mc², were not recognized by the Nobel Committee during his lifetime.

  • Neil deGrasse Tyson: "His Nobel Prize is some of the least interesting work that he's done" ([13:32]).

• Legacy in Scientific Community: Many of Einstein's other contributions continued to inspire and propel scientific advancements long after his death.

  • Kristen Bell: "Einstein's crumbs leading to Nobel prizes that at some level should have all gone to him" ([53:00]).

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III. The Cosmological Constant and Its Repercussions

Overview:
Einstein's introduction of the cosmological constant (Λ) was initially intended to allow for a static universe, a notion he later deemed his "greatest blunder."

Key Points:

• Purpose of Λ: To balance the gravitational pull and maintain a static universe.

  • Neil deGrasse Tyson: "Einstein stabilizes the universe with the cosmological constant" ([20:14]).

• Dynamic Implications: The constant later became a cornerstone in understanding dark energy and the accelerated expansion of the universe.

  • Kristen Bell: "It drives the universe not only to expand, but to expand at an accelerated rate" ([24:03]).

• Reevaluation and Nobel Recognition: Decades later, the cosmological constant gained empirical support, reaffirming Einstein's original intuition.

  • Neil deGrasse Tyson: "What he rejects as a blunder becomes an actual measurement" ([23:30]).

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IV. Gravitational Waves: Prediction and Detection

Overview:
Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime caused by massive cosmic events. However, their detection remained elusive for over a century until technological advancements made it possible.

Key Points:

• Theoretical Prediction: Gravitational waves were a direct consequence of Einstein's general relativity.

  • Kristen Bell: "He predicted gravitational waves which are these silent waves in the shape of space time" ([41:22]).

• Detection Breakthrough: The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) successfully detected gravitational waves from colliding black holes, validating Einstein's theory.

  • Neil deGrasse Tyson: "They found the first colliding black holes, which deposited so much energy into the space time continuum" ([44:51]).

• Impact on Physics: The discovery opened new avenues for astrophysics and confirmed the profound accuracy of Einstein's predictions.

  • Kristen Bell: "Gravitational waves were really confounding" ([42:53]).

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V. Black Holes and Schwarzschild's Contributions

Overview:
The concept of black holes, though not predicted by Einstein himself, emerged from solutions to his equations by other physicists, notably Karl Schwarzschild.

Key Points:

• Schwarzschild Solution: Describes the spacetime geometry surrounding a non-rotating, spherically symmetric mass, laying the groundwork for black hole theory.

  • Kristen Bell: "Imagine you took all the mass of a star and you crushed it to a point... you form this event horizon where not even light can escape" ([27:24]).

• Einstein's Skepticism: Initially, Einstein doubted the physical reality of black holes, considering them mathematical curiosities rather than actual astrophysical objects.

  • Neil deGrasse Tyson: "He couldn't believe that such a simple solution came out so quickly" ([29:36]).

• Modern Understanding: Today, black holes are integral to our understanding of the universe, with ongoing research uncovering their complexities and importance.

  • Kristen Bell: "Black holes are much more benign" ([29:14]).

---

VI. Pursuit of Unified Field Theory

Overview:
Einstein dedicated his later years to formulating a unified field theory, aiming to reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics—a quest that remains incomplete.

Key Points:

• Einstein's Ambition: To integrate gravity with the other fundamental forces into a single theoretical framework.

  • Neil deGrasse Tyson: "Einstein was a big proponent of a unified field theory" ([46:39]).

• Challenges: The fundamental differences between the geometric nature of gravity and the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics posed significant obstacles.

  • Kristen Bell: "Gravity behaves so differently from the other forces" ([49:04]).

• Ongoing Efforts: Modern physicists continue to explore theories like string theory and quantum gravity in the pursuit of this unification.

  • Neil deGrasse Tyson: "The legacy of Einstein's crumbs is leading to deep scientific advancements" ([53:00]).

---

VII. Legacy of Einstein's Work

Overview:
Einstein's theoretical innovations have spawned numerous scientific discoveries, technologies, and even Nobel Prizes awarded to those building upon his foundational ideas.

Key Points:

• Technological Advancements: Concepts like the stimulated emission of radiation led to the development of lasers, revolutionizing various industries.

  • Neil deGrasse Tyson: "Compare Stan talk to Kip Thorne... it leads to Nobel prizes for everybody on board" ([45:48]).

• Scientific Continuity: Einstein's work continues to influence contemporary research, demonstrating the enduring power of his "crumbs."

  • Neil deGrasse Tyson: "Einstein's crumbs leading to Nobel prizes that at some level should have all gone to him" ([53:00]).

• Inspirational Legacy: Einstein serves as a symbol of scientific curiosity and intellectual rigor, inspiring generations of scientists and enthusiasts alike.

  • Neil deGrasse Tyson: "The legacy of Einstein's crumbs is leading to deep scientific advancements" ([53:00]).

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VIII. Notable Quotes

• On Einstein's Impact:
  Neil deGrasse Tyson: "Crumbs from Einstein's plate leading to Nobel prizes that at some level should have all gone to him" ([53:00]).

• On Mathematics and the Universe:
  Neil deGrasse Tyson: "The language of the universe is mathematics... leaves me in awe of not only the existence of mathematics, but of the human mind that took us there" ([51:39]).

• On Gravitational Waves:
  Kristen Bell: "Gravitational waves... they are not visible. It's pure gravity" ([41:22]).

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Conclusion

In "Einstein’s Crumbs with Janna Levin," Neil deGrasse Tyson masterfully unpacks the profound and multifaceted legacy of Albert Einstein. Through detailed discussions on his pivotal 1905 papers, the enigmatic cosmological constant, the eventual detection of gravitational waves, and the ongoing quest for a unified field theory, the episode underscores how Einstein's foundational ideas continue to shape and inspire scientific inquiry. The dialogue highlights the intricate tapestry of physics woven from Einstein's original "crumbs," demonstrating that his intellectual generosity has propelled humanity to deeper cosmic understandings and technological marvels.

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Keep looking up! For more insightful discussions, subscribe to StarTalk Radio and explore the wonders of the universe with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Transcript

[Adam Pally]

Adam Pali here and I'm John Gabris. We're a couple actors and best friends who you may know as the host of the TV show 101 Places to Party before youe Die. Now we're bringing you a comedic look at health and wellness with our new show, Staying Alive. We'll have guests like our friend, actor Jerry O'Connell, ketamine therapist, Dr. Steven Radowitz, Paul Scheer, Ego Wodem, Gillian Bell, Dr. Dolittle. Staying alive with John Gabris. And Adam Pali is out right now. Get them a week early and ad free with SiriusXM podcast plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Kristen Bell]

Hey, Kristen, how's it tracking with Carvana Value Tracker?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What else?

[Kristen Bell]

Oh, it's tracking, in fact. Value surge alert. Trucks up 2.5%, vans down 1.7. Just as predicted. So we gonna. I don't know. Could sell.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Could hold the power to always know our car's worth.

[Kristen Bell]

Exhilarating, isn't it? Tracking Always know your car's worth with Carvana Value tracker.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So, Harrison, if you loved Einstein before, how do you love the man now?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Oh, my gosh, so much. And I already loved him. I had a T shirt when I was a kid of Albert Einstein on a surfboard.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So you a geek kid?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Oh, 100%.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And was that like a backhanded reference to gravitational waves?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I think I didn't know that at the time, but now I do.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Who knew that Einstein's smorgasbord left crumbs for the rest of us to discover and and win Nobel prizes on? Oh, my gosh. All that and more coming up on StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Neil DeGrasse Tyson. You're a personal astrophysicist. Got with me is my co host, Harrison Greenbound. Harrison, hello. How you doing, dude?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Good to be here. All right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Not your first star talk rodeo?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Nope.

[Kristen Bell]

Not at all.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

All right, Maybe it will be my first rodeo. I've never done a rodeo. I think I would die immediately.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's not happening here. I promise. We're going to talk about Einstein today.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Love it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You want to help me out on that?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I've heard of him.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I need more help than that.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

He married his cousin. I know that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Every time we talk about Einstein and related subjects, we have our go to person at large, Jana Levin. Jana, welcome back to StarTalk.

[Kristen Bell]

I'm always glad to be here.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You like a regular?

[Kristen Bell]

Practically always. I know.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Because Einstein's a regular.

[Kristen Bell]

I know. I feel like I just want to hang around here all the time.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So, Janet, you are the Tao professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University. Theoretical cosmologist.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah. I mean, I say astrophysicist these days.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Okay.

[Kristen Bell]

Or theoretical physicist only because people think cosmology is like cosmetology and stuff.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, okay. Right, right.

[Kristen Bell]

They wanted me to do their makeup.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I want a fancy title.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Fine.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I'm not a comedian. I'm a punchline engineer specializing in haha building and giggle construction.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So you're Director of Sciences at the Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, One of my favorite places. This is quite the juxtaposition of science, creativity and art. And it's just we're creative people on both sides of that fence, if there really is one, come together and express themselves.

[Kristen Bell]

I really feel like Pioneer Works as a sanctuary because science is part of culture. We're not trying to hide it in something else. We're not packaging it in something else. It just exists out there and it's a big appetite for it. People wanna know.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And you've also written a bunch of books. I have two with me, like, right now. The Black Hole Survival Guide.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

It looks tiny, but it's dense like a black car.

[Kristen Bell]

Spoiler alert. It does not end well.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It does not end well. I could have guessed that. I think so. Black Hole Death Guide. Black Hole Survival Guy.

[Kristen Bell]

Right, Exactly.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

The book is normal size. Neil's hand is gigantic.

[Kristen Bell]

There's an element of truth to that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And my favorite book, I like to pronounce the Black hole blue.

[Kristen Bell]

I love that. That's the British cover. That's very nice.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, yeah. So, yeah, I get around. Cool. I get around.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

What's the difference between the British and the. Is there an extra U?

[Kristen Bell]

Yes. Right. Well, actually, they're completely different covers.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Whoa. Yeah, they decide. Yeah. Different countries. They have issues with each other's.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

They change the Albert Einstein's teeth to make them feel less bad.

[Kristen Bell]

That's what I was expecting in one language and translation. They changed my last name.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

To what?

[Kristen Bell]

Levinova. I think it was Czech.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wow.

[Kristen Bell]

I thought that was some serious license.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

We'll help you out. We'll make it less Jewy.

[Kristen Bell]

I kind of like.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yeah, because it made it like Italian almost.

[Kristen Bell]

It's just a thing women are. Levanova the ova. Okay, yeah, all right. It was a female thing.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So we're here to talk about what I've intermittently referenced as Einstein's crumbs. You know, when you Eat a meal that you enjoy and something spills over the edge. You don't even notice. Cause the meal is so good. And then you walk away with your plate and other people see what's spilled off of your plate, say, hey, that's tasty. I want that. I can work with that.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

So in this analogy, the other scientists are. My dog, dude comes in and is like, crumbs. This is the best. So these Nobel prize winning scientists are. Rufus.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Thank you. I had not thought about it. Just that way. Let's benchmark ourselves. Jana, to do I pronounce this right? Annus mirabulus.

[Kristen Bell]

It's Latin. I'll take it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

1905.

[Kristen Bell]

Yes. Quite a year.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Just list for me, what did Einstein do in 1905? And by, the dude was 26 years old when this happened. Go for it.

[Kristen Bell]

So he writes a series of papers, all of which completely knock the world on its proverbial. Each one.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yes, each one on its anis, if you will.

[Kristen Bell]

I'm sure there's Latin for that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Mirabulous anus.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

That's my dating profile.

[Kristen Bell]

So let's see, what are they? Photoelectric effect.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes. Which.

[Kristen Bell]

Which the photoelectric effect was the idea that sometimes light behaved like a particle and not a wave. And so sometimes when you bombard a surface with light, it will knock it like a basketball might dislodge something from place as opposed to accumulating energy like a wave might. And so it really was very shocking.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Was that the first demonstration that light could be also referenced as particles?

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah, it was the first observation. Connection between theory and observation. That it is actually behaving like a particle sometimes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Gotcha.

[Kristen Bell]

Very shocking because 1800s we thought of light as a wave, and we often still do because it's very convenient to do so sometimes. And sometimes it's acting like a wave. But here was an instance where it really acted more like you threw a basketball at something.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

A really tiny basketball.

[Kristen Bell]

A really tiny basketball.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Which was incredible for Einstein to observe because basketball hadn't been invented yet.

[Kristen Bell]

Right. And I somehow don't see him, I don't know, jiving with the sports analogy. But anyway, so photoelectric effect. Shocker. Paper 1, paper 2, paper 2. Special relativity, where he.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, just that.

[Kristen Bell]

Just that. So a lot of times. So the theory of relativity became this real colloquial thing. Everything's relative. And it became invested in society. I often say it could have been called the theory of absolutism. Because what Einstein really had done is he had adhered to the absolute limit of the speed of light. He took that more seriously than anybody else was taking it at the time. In fact, people were struggling to get rid of it. This idea that the speed of light was a constant and they were doing everything they can to dethrone that concept, which really wasn't taking well.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So it's not just that it's a constant, it's that it's a constant no matter how, when or where you measure it.

[Kristen Bell]

Absolutely.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You're getting the same answer.

[Kristen Bell]

That's right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Even if you're moving and the light is moving relative to you, you measure the same speed of light.

[Kristen Bell]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Which doesn't exist for anything else.

[Kristen Bell]

That's insane. That was an insane concept. Two cars coming at each other or coming at each other faster than if one of the cars stops.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Kristen Bell]

Okay, but that is not true at the speed of light. You run at the speed of light. Maybe you're running slowly, maybe you're running near the speed of light yourself. It's still coming at you at the speed of light. It is chilling, strange, seems impossible.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I think a simpler example is I'm on the front of a train. Let's say a train goes 60 miles an hour and I throw a ball 40 miles an hour. Can I throw that fast? Probably not.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I know I definitely can.

[Kristen Bell]

I think you can do anything, Neil. I think you can do anything.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I throw 40 miles, miles an hour. In front of the train you're standing on at the platform, how fast is the ball passing you?

[Kristen Bell]

Right.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Is it not adding the two up? Yeah, it's 100 miles.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

100 miles an hour should be.

[Kristen Bell]

I mean, that was common experience.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But on the front of the train.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I mean, I'm not calculating the speed. I'm worried that Needlegrass Tyson's on the top of a train throwing the ball, and I'm very confused.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So now I'm on the same 60 mile an hour train and I shine a beam of light, and you measure the beam of light going by you. It is the same speed of light.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

We don't add the trail, we don't add the trail.

[Kristen Bell]

We don't add the trail.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's batshit crazy.

[Kristen Bell]

It is crazy. And Einstein meditated on this for so long, and there's kind of a simple way to see. He said, well, you know, what is speed? It's the distance you cover in space divided by the time elapsed. So it has to do with space and time. I mean. I mean, that's a huge leap already. And he said, I'd rather that your measures of space and time are relative, then give up the absolute nature of the speed of light.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wow.

[Kristen Bell]

So two.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So your very measuring stick changes.

[Kristen Bell]

Changes relative to the.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So that you get the same answer.

[Kristen Bell]

So that you get the same answer.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's. That's. That's not the measure stick. And your rate, the time ticks that. That's crazy.

[Kristen Bell]

I still get chills a little bit.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

So he's. Which drug is he on?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I know.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Is it opium?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

He was available at the time.

[Kristen Bell]

Either he's not doing ketamine shots.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No. Okay, give me more.

[Kristen Bell]

So that's two Brownie in motion.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Talk about. Give me some Brownie in motion.

[Kristen Bell]

So if you.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I mean, I think that feels like a dirty topic. I don't know if that's appropriate for this.

[Kristen Bell]

Actually, I'm not. I bet Neil knows why it was called Brownie.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

There's a guy.

[Kristen Bell]

There's a guy who first talked about the statistical.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Observed it, but didn't fully understand it.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Mr. Brown.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Mr. Brown.

[Kristen Bell]

We've all observed it. So you go to a window. The dustier the house, the better. You pull the curtains aside, and you start to see all the particles move around. They don't fall like rain. They bounce around.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Dust particles.

[Kristen Bell]

The dust particles. And you can see the reflection of the dust in the air. You know, it's kind of a beautiful image. The sunlight hitting, reflecting off the dust particles. I was gonna say of grandma's.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

My OCD is like, duh, clean mat. Yeah. Why have you let it go so far?

[Kristen Bell]

But we all have had that observation, and we all know it doesn't fall like rain. So Einstein also relates this to the quantum nature of matter. He says, fundamentally, air is not a continuum. If I look at it at the microscopic level, I'm going to realize it's made up of individual molecules. And the molecules are moving randomly because they're knocking into each other. They're bouncing around. He called that Brownian motion. So they bounce around randomly because they're kind of constantly knocking it. Banging into each other as they move around. And it was more evidence for the quantum nature of reality in very early days.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

In fact, I think it was one of the first supportive bits of evidence that atoms even exist. That's right, because in other words, you can have a big. You use the air dust analogy, but in a liquid solution, if you have a suspended particle that's larger than the molecules themselves, the particles sort of moves around in response to the collective energy of all the particles that are around it. And you can calculate what should happen if this liquid is composed of these tiny particles, and then you only get this motion when you have atoms doing the constant agitation.

[Kristen Bell]

Jostling.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's a better word.

[Kristen Bell]

To get it, we talk about the temperature in the room all the time. But what that really is is the average of the thermal motions of an awful lot of particles and the statistical behavior later, very well predicted by Planck. And so this was all part of that early era of starting to understand that if I look at a glass of water, it is not a continuum. If I get small enough, it is actually made up of individual molecules.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And it was in the fourth paper, wasn't there?

[Kristen Bell]

E equals MC squared.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Oh, that's a pretty good one.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay. Yeah. How can I forget about that one?

[Kristen Bell]

Which so excited.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

That was the whole paper he just wrote. Equals MC squared.

[Kristen Bell]

Equals MC squared.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Mic drop.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

This has been a busy year.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Except they didn't have mics then, but dropped totally.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I'll get a speaker. What was that?

[Kristen Bell]

Refrigerator drop. He was working in a patent office, right. Refining things like refrigerator coolants and refrigerator cooling mechanisms. And at the bottom drawer of his desk, he had what he called the physics department. And in the physics department, he was working on these papers between refining people's patents. And E equals MC squared is one of the most gorgeous results, obviously, most famous equation, obviously, we all love this result. And the implications of it went so far beyond his initial motivation for thinking about it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's the point of this whole episode.

[Kristen Bell]

It's so far beyond. I mean, it's changed the world as we know it in so many ways.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But, okay, so of those four results, two of them were stapled together for the one Nobel Prize that he got.

[Kristen Bell]

Brownian and photoelectric.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Correct, Right.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And so he's got one Nobel Prize for two things that are not for eagles.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

NC square and not for eagles.

[Kristen Bell]

Not for relativity, let alone general relativity, which comes 11 years later.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So for me, what's intriguing is his Nobel Prize is some of the least interesting work that he's done.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Somebody wins a Grammy for their worst album.

[Kristen Bell]

Well, it was practical. It was practical. The Nobel was always very attached to verifiable results. So it was very hard for Stephen Hawking to get nominated for a Nobel Prize. It was surprising to me that even Roger Penrose not only was nominated, but was awarded the Nobel Prize because they were so theoretical. And the Nobel Prize is often awarded for things that have been verified by experiment not a minute before, certainly in the day. That's the intention.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's correct. That's correct. Because it was the idea that if it's a theoretical result could go with the wins, you know, whereas if you anchor it in an experiment, then we got legit. You become legit.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

You did this all at 26.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

By the time you turn 26. Yeah.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I'm 38, so this is very demotivated.

[Kristen Bell]

Sorry, I'm already saying, what does your mommy say? Look at us both. Both consoling. This is.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So you're 38.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

38.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So when Mozart was your age, he was already dead for a year. Okay. So I don't mean to tell your mom this.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

It's not going to happen.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You are such a disappointment.

[Adam Pally]

Adam Pally here and I'm John Gabris. We're a couple actors and best friends who you may know as the host of the TV show 101 Places to Party before you die. Now we're bringing you a comedic look at health and wellness with our new show, Staying Alive. We'll have guests like our friend, actor Jerry O'Connell, ketamine therapist Dr. Steven Radowitz, Paul Scheer, Ego Wodom, Gillian Bell, Dr. Dolittle. Staying alive with John Gabris. And Adam Pali is out right now. Get them a week early and ad free with SiriusXM podcast plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Kristen Bell]

Hi, I'm Kristen Bell. Carvana makes car buying easy. Isn't that right, hon? Dax. Dax, sorry.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Did you know about this?

[Kristen Bell]

7 day money back guarantee. A week to evaluate seat comfiness, you say a week of terrain tests? Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I can test the brake pad resistance at variable speeds.

[Kristen Bell]

Make sure all the kids stuff fits nicely.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Make sure our stuff fits nicely.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh, the right. Still need to buy the car. Getting ahead of ourselves here. Buy your car with Carvana today.

[Jana Levin]

At Capella University. Learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get dedicated support from people who care about your success. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella.

[Kristen Bell]

Edu.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Hello, I'm Alexander Harvey and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson. So let's pick up some of the crumbs now. All right, so let's talk about his cosmological constant.

[Kristen Bell]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What's up with that?

[Kristen Bell]

I love the cosmological constant. It's like the guy couldn't be wrong. It's like he couldn't be wrong even when he was terribly wrong.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Even when he was terribly wrong. He was right.

[Kristen Bell]

He was somehow later would turn out to be right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So one of the Crumbs. A crumb. You don't even know it's gonna grow into an interesting crumb later. So your dog would need to give it a chance before it laps it up.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

He put it in his bed and he's saving it.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah. I should go look up some more Einstein crumbs. Actually, now that you're. Maybe. Maybe this will give me some. Yeah, well, so Einstein writes down the general theory of relativity, which goes beyond special relativity.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

This is later, 10 years later. Okay.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah. It takes him a week.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

36.

[Kristen Bell]

All right.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Now we're talking.

[Kristen Bell]

He's feeling it. He's feeling that there's something there that he wants to describe. Not just that space and time are relative, not just that I can rotate space into time, that they're one kind of space time. But also that spacetime itself could maybe curve stretch, be mutable, respond to matter and energy, that around the Earth. The reason why the apple falls from the tree is because it's following the natural curve in space created by the mass of the Earth. This is general relativity. Now, he generalizes the theory away from flat space time to curved space time. Now, once he does this, he still cannot predict everything that this theory suggests. It's just abundant. It's so abundant that today, people are still trying to find solutions from the theory to describe universes. And people came to him, a number of different scientists from around the world, very international experiment, and over very quickly and over the next couple of years said, you know, your theory predicts that the universe is expanding. So other people are studying his theory. They're imagining, what if I have an average distribution of galaxies in there, all this stuff now. But I smooth it out. I imagine it's pretty smooth out there. And they say, how is space time mutable in response to this distribution of energy? And you would sort of think, well, lot of gravity means things are going to recollect.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Everything is mass.

[Kristen Bell]

Everything is mass. And so, you know, it's all going to pull towards each other, and it's going to cause a collapse of the universe, in which case the universe shouldn't be static, stable, or permanent. And Einstein really is resistant to this idea. He does not like it. And he says to himself, I must have made a mistake in my fundamental equations of general relativity that describe every possible scenario in the universe. And he adds something called the cosmological constant, because technically, mathematically, it was consistent with Einstein's laws. And if you're being completely thorough, you would have included this term called this cosmological constant, and it's this magic term doesn't know what it is physically, doesn't know what it refers to in terms of known forms of matter.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So you can have a math representation of an idea, not all of which actually applies to reality.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Throw that in and be like, I don't know if my theory is right, but I. There's this magical extra thing.

[Kristen Bell]

Right.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

And now it's right.

[Kristen Bell]

He knew it was mathematically consistent. That's exactly what he said.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

That's exactly what he said.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Mathematically legit.

[Kristen Bell]

He said, look, maybe nature produces an energy density that's uniform across space and time. And it is an absolute constant. And it has this very different property that it actually pushes the universe outward. And if I tune it to exactly the right value, I'm going to balance things. And the universe will not collapse, and it will be permanent. And it will exist that way forever.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Is doing anything at all. Right.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

It doesn't owe you anything.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right, Right. The universe is just there. And if it's just there, you gotta somehow stabilize it.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yes.

[Kristen Bell]

So he stabilized the universe with the cosmological constant.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

There you go.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

There.

[Kristen Bell]

Now he has a universe that's permanent, has lived forever, will last forever. But not so fast, because very quickly, people study the mathematics of this, and they say it's very unstable. You basically have stood a pencil on its tip on the top of a hill and said, it's stable. I mean, you can do it for a second. But it very quickly wants to fall over and begin to do something.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It'll fall one direction or the other or the other.

[Kristen Bell]

And the two directions in this case, collapse or expansion.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes. There you go.

[Kristen Bell]

So either the universe is collapsing or it's expanding. It does not want to stay static. And he called it his greatest blunder. Now, he made a lot of kind of mathematical mistakes. So he was not afraid of that. And he was really so experimental and so daring. So the idea that he even called it a blunder, I think, was because it was a blunder of intuition.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wait, wait, wait.

[Kristen Bell]

Or resistance.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wait. But wait. It's not a blunder until it's a blunder. So he puts it in reluctantly. And then Hubble comes along, telescope later in the.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh, that's true.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The telescope came first.

[Kristen Bell]

Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Edwin Hubble comes along in the same decade, discovers that the universe is not static, it's expanding.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

So now we're okay, because that's one of the signs.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's one of the signs. And so you don't even need the cosmological constant.

[Kristen Bell]

You don't even need the cosmological constant. So he comes along and says, look, the universe is not dominated by the cosmological constant from what he could measure. It's dominated by the galaxies. And the galaxies are, in fact, expanding away from each other. The universe is, in fact, expanding. And it was a real shock.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

We had no physical way to understand a force or pressure in the universe going opposite gravity. There was no way. There was no.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

And then philosophically, what is it expanding into?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, I know. That's not why we haven't gotten in.

[Kristen Bell]

We'll get there. But, you know, at the time Einstein was first doing this, especially 1905, I mean, he didn't know there were other galaxies out there.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, yeah.

[Kristen Bell]

I mean, imagine that we knew about the Milky Way, our little island of hundreds of years.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The whole universe was just the stars.

[Kristen Bell]

In the night sky, and that was that. I mean, he imagined. I mean. But it wasn't until Hubble that we identified that some of those objects out there really were, first of all, other galaxies and that they were all moving away, essentially on average, and that it looked like the universe was, in fact, expanding.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So at that point, he doesn't need the cosmological constant. And then he declares his greatest blunder, his greatest blunder. And then Fast forward to 1998, right?

[Kristen Bell]

And there it is.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And we discover the cosmological constant operating in the universe. It's measured, and it wins a Nobel Prize for him.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

No, God damn it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Plus, they don't give it to you if you're dead. They don't. They don't announce it might have happened unless you're alive. But if you die between the announcement and the award ceremony, then you're okay. Then you're.

[Kristen Bell]

You still get alive.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

You're still dead.

[Kristen Bell]

We gotta hold on.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

You gotta hold on to the announcement.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, if you die, you still get the award, but you're dead. So in this sense, what he rejects as a blunder becomes an actual measurement. And they get the Nobel Prize for making that measurement.

[Kristen Bell]

So now the reason why they can measure it even though it's not static, you might think, oh, they could only measure it if it made the universe static or something. It actually was very unstable. What it really wants to do is kind of dominate. So as all the energy density in the universe kind of slowly wanes, this constant is eventually there to peak above all the others. As they dilute away, it just doesn't go away. And so eventually it's a permanent feature of the permanent feature.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Crazy.

[Kristen Bell]

Of empty space.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right. There's no way that could.

[Kristen Bell]

It is the energy of empty space.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The energy of empty space.

[Kristen Bell]

So eventually it will dominate the property of the universe. And what it does when it dominates is it drives the universe not only to expand, but to expand at an accelerated rate.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I've actually heard about that.

[Kristen Bell]

It's faster and faster dark energy.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I've heard about the energy of empty space from my realtor. They walk around, they say, you should feel the. There's nothing in here yet, but you should feel this energy.

[Kristen Bell]

Do they sell you air rights?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

That's right, Exactly.

[Kristen Bell]

Maybe they should charge you extra for the dark energy. Yeah, in the air rights.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Don't give them that idea.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And in 10 to the 22 years, which is a long time from now.

[Kristen Bell]

That's a pretty long time.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Pretty long time. But I have it on my calendar. The dark energy will become so dominant and the expansion will become so accelerated that the fabric of space time cannot keep up with it, and it will rip. Oh, that's not.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

You don't want to be alive, then.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's called the Big Rip. That's if it goes unchecked, the Big Rip.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

So if there are still humans that far out, they have to figure a way to.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

To not have it rip. Right. It'll rip the very structure of the fabric of space.

[Kristen Bell]

Cosmological climate change. Like, they'll have to, you know, like.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Does it happen instantaneously or do they feel it slowly start to happen? Or is it like they're. They're just. They just know. At a certain level, I know, you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Start seeing it all around you, stuff starts flying apart. Oh, yeah. That tastes like it's going to happen in your lifetime.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

So now here's the great, great, great, grand problem.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Maybe you don't know this one.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh, yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

He predicts, based on general relativity, that if you have an alignment of two objects, one of them will get lensed around it, and you get what is called an Einstein ring, because if two objects are perfectly aligned together, the curvature of space will take that light and spread it into a perfect ring. And so you would see rings around stars in the night sky from another star that's exactly aligned behind it. Here's the problem. Back then, the universe was composed only of stars, and stars are so small at those distances, you would never get an exact alignment. So he said this will probably never get observed until we discover whole galaxies out in the universe. And so it's no longer a point of light. The galaxy has a whole field. So there are many places you can be Behind a galaxy and still have this phenomenon. So we see gravitational lenses all the time.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah, and we see it around black holes. That's how we detected a black hole. We took a picture of a black hole because the light from behind it went above and below and cast the shadow of the black hole.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

There's no above or below in space. Went around you in my office.

[Kristen Bell]

Went around. Went around.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

She got your eyes with a compass. It's all north.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So that was one that he predicted, assumed it would never be found. And then in my lifetime, like while I'm in graduate school, we discover gravitational lenses. Cause people found these objects hanging off the side. They said, what is that? Why is it a little distorted?

[Kristen Bell]

It's a whole arc.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's a whole arc. And then he took a spectrum of it and exactly matched the spectrum of the object on the other side. And that's the splitting of the light around the object. So that's another little crumb that fell off the dude's plate. Okay, so tell me about black holes themselves.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah, well, black holes also predicted from his mathematical theory.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

But did he predict?

[Kristen Bell]

Not by Einstein.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Why not?

[Kristen Bell]

He did not predict. Well, you know, there's, it's, as I said, abundant. It's endlessly productive.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So black holes are crumbs yet to be shaped. Crumbs.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah, you have to go at the equations to decide what you want to think about because it describes every possibility imaginable. Once you put matter and energy in, how will space and time curve? So I could. How does that couch curve space, time? Not a great question scientifically. Not one most people aren't going to spend their time on. But one guy decided, you know, it's. He's on the Russian front during World War I. Carl Schwarzschild.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes. Did he die on the front?

[Kristen Bell]

He did. He died like six months after. I think this correspondence with Einstein where he sends him, he said, I found a very simple solution to your equation.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Did he die in the front? Because he was busy writing letters to.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Einstein, not paying attention to the bullets.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Hey, buddy, you're on the front.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah, yeah, I think he contracted some infection. Oh, it was quite dying.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

A lot of people back then died of non bullets related.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah, so. But he said, imagine it was a thought experiment. Imagine you took all the mass of a star and you crushed it to a point. Or it could have been a planet, or it could have been anything. So you're imagining that all the masses at the center in a point. You don't ask how nature would do such a thing. I don't even think Schwarzschild believed that there was a way nature would do such a thing. Certainly Einstein didn't. But the math was sound. It described the curvature of space time if you're far away around a star or the Earth, but as you get closer and closer and all the mass is still in front of you, eventually you form this event horizon where not even light can escape. Because that's what we mean by surface.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Gravity gets higher and higher.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah, just gets. Because the mass is always in front of you. If you think about it like, if I go inside the sun, the gravity drops off because I'm leaving some of the mass behind.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Well, you're vaporized.

[Kristen Bell]

I'm vaporized.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Ignoring that complication.

[Kristen Bell]

Right. It's right. I always say, you know, black holes are much more benign and people give them credit for the star is incendiary. Right. But the black hole, you can get real close.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So this is.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

You just can't get out.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So we call this the Schwarzschild solution to Einstein's equations.

[Kristen Bell]

Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So Schwarzschild does this. Yes, but he dies. So no Nobel Prize for him. But it's still an amazing result.

[Kristen Bell]

And Einstein doesn't think they're real. He says it's beautiful. He helps get it published. And he couldn't believe that such a simple solution came out so quickly. It was within six months.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Or that nature would even allow it.

[Kristen Bell]

Yes, he thought nature would not allow it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. That there could be some. Something that arises that prevents such a catastrophic collapse.

[Kristen Bell]

Well, that makes sense itself.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I'm staring at this guy. No.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah, well, try to crush a soda can. It's nearly impossible to get past a certain point. It's hard to do. It's hard to crush things because there's matter forces that resist.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right. That's a soda can with soda in it. I could otherwise totally crush a soda can. Okay, can I be clear about that?

[Kristen Bell]

I feel like a demo that I want to see Edit, but only to a point. You can't make a black hole.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, not a black hole. Right, right, right.

[Kristen Bell]

Because the. The atomic forces will resist now.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So I have to share this quick story with you. I'm having dinner with Stephen Hawking and Nice flex. And so I was talking about Isaac Newton, where he did not figure out that the solar system was stable using his own equations. Okay. It turns out in the solar system, here's the sun and here's like Earth going around. You're Jupiter. Every time I go between the sun and Jupiter.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Are you saying I'm very big.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, I'm saying you're gaseous.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I've been working to get to Mars.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I'm saying you're bulbous and gaseous. So Earth comes around and it feels you tug a little because you're closer here, right? And then over here, and it comes back around, it feels a little tug. So all these little tugs. He knew that if this continued, Earth would just fly out of its orbit for thousands, millions of years, this would just be this runaway destabilizing force going on in the solar system. And so know what he said? He said, God must step in and fix things. Newton, because that's how badass he is. He said, I know my equation.

[Kristen Bell]

I can't do it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So the only thing. Because we see a stable solar system, okay? But hundred years later, 100 years later, Laplace comes up with a formalism, a branch of. He develops with others, but he develops a branch of calculus that can demonstrate that these little tugs, which are multiple little tugs on a major system, all cancel out. It's called perturbation theory. But it's just a branch of calculus. The dude invented calculus, right?

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So you can't put. You can't figure that out. So I asked Hawking, I said, how come he didn't figure it out? Because who else are you going to ask if not Stephen Hawking, right? So.

[Kristen Bell]

And you waited a very, very long time for a review.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yes, I did. Thank you.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So I went on to other conversations, right?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

And when he was ready, with his.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Eye blinks, he's assembling the answer. Wow. And it must have been 20 minutes, 20 minutes later, he said something simple and brilliant. He said, you can't think of everything.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

That took him 20 minutes to type.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, no, you can't think of everything. And I said, that is so beautiful. And then he went on to say, to follow that with. Einstein did not come up with black holes.

[Kristen Bell]

That's right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Because you can't think of everything.

[Kristen Bell]

You can't think of everything.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And I said, that's comforting, actually.

[Kristen Bell]

I mean, an entire industry of scientists have been since. Still working on Einstein's equations.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I got another one for you.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

He wrote a research paper on the stimulated emission of radiation. This is an extraordinary result that you have to kind of be on the inside to appreciate. Okay, I'll tell you what it is. You ready? So you have an atom with these energy levels where the electron hangs out. It's in discrete energy levels. It can't hang out anywhere. This quantum. A quantum is units of anything. Okay. So it's quantized.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Even solace quantized.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Think about it.

[Kristen Bell]

If you have a quantum of solace very marques somehow.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes, it is. So the electron can only be in any one of these discrete levels at any given time. And if it's at a higher level, left to itself, it'll want to de excite back to a lower level and it shoots out a photon in so doing. So this is what atoms just want to do. If you excite them, they want to de excite. We got this. Okay, so let's go back to our atom. And we have an electron hanging out in an energy level. Now I send in light photons that are exactly the energy level. That'll boost this up. So it's gonna absorb those and take them up. Okay, it's gonna do that. However.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Oh, no.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Here's what he discovers. That if you bathe an atom with an electron at a given level of photons, that would boost it. It will also spontaneously trigger it to.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

De excite at the same time. Yes, Exciting. And de.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

No, no, no. I mean, it will not. All the photons will not go to just boost it.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Gotcha.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Being in that bath will also de excite it. There's no classical understanding of that. Okay, so it's the stimulated emission of radiation. Normally when you stimulate it, it absorbs it. This one, you shine on it, it de excites. Okay, that's a weird result. It's a quantum result that he deduces using math and quantum physics. Okay, and what do we get out of this?

[Kristen Bell]

Well, we get lasers.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Lasers. You say that so calmly.

[Kristen Bell]

Lasers.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

We get lasers. Pull your hair.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Pull some. Grab some.

[Kristen Bell]

So it's really an interesting history because there were also masers before lasers, which were microwave versions of this. And Joe Weber, who wanted to study gravitational waves, was working on masers, and they were. They were completely overrun. Microwave amplitude, stimulated emission, resonance. Or I think laser.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Laser stands for you get a C.

[Kristen Bell]

Minus on the light.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Laser stands for look and stare, experience regret. Oh, very good.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

On the spot.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Or it's like, remember George Costanza with the laser pointer? So it's like, look, a Seinfeld episode reference.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, hey, this guy's good.

[Kristen Bell]

That's very good.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's very good. Let's from here on, let us call it. Yeah, well, so the laser is an acronym, like SCUBA and all these fun acronyms. Laser light amplification. Amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation. And those are the three words.

[Kristen Bell]

I did it really, in his paper.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So light would be.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

He has a Sir. Of laser.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So it'd be visible light. But it works with any kind of photons. Microwaves. It turns out it's easier to make a microwave laser. Microwave amplification by the stimulated emission of radius. So this was. This is just some paper he does like while he's taking a crap.

[Kristen Bell]

Right.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And publishes it. And then his poop paper. I don't know if he was actually on the podium.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

He was experiencing some Brownian motion, if you will.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

A Brownian movement. Yes. Yes. So that for me, that's my favorite.

[Kristen Bell]

Is it of his crumbs.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Of his crumbs.

[Kristen Bell]

Interesting. I mean it's an unbelievable technological advance. It's incredible. It's everywhere.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Because the amplification is if you emit light in this bath of light and that light you emit is the same light when brought around that will de. Excite it and emit a photon. So it's almost self feeding. The light that it emits is the same light that it then absorbs. So this loop. You can pump light that way with the right number of molecules in the right cavity. Oh my gosh.

[Kristen Bell]

And becomes very coherent and very tight beam and very intense.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Kristen Bell]

So it's a way of getting like this incredible intensity at this one very narrow frequency range or light range.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. And so at the time I'm sure he was saying to himself, skin peel.

[Kristen Bell]

Right. I was like, I'm gonna hit a laser.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. I mean the application of laser were. Oh my God. So the people who invented the laser. I think it was Charlie Townes, got a Nobel Prize for that.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Wow. Did he expect it to be in like a Walmart?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, I know. At the checkout line. Yeah. No. The first lasers were huge. And so just the idea that. Here's a paper. That 30 years later becomes a device and the device gets the Nobel Prize.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Incredible.

[Kristen Bell]

Do you know when Townes got the Nobel Prize?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So the laser was invented in 1956. 57. And Einstein died in 1955. So he would not.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

So close to seeing the laser.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So close. So close. And they were gonna operate on him. Cause he had some alien with a laser. No, no, stop. And he said he was already in his 70s or something. He said my work is done.

[Kristen Bell]

Did he really?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yes. I thought that was classy.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

He was just scared of medical care.

[Kristen Bell]

Wow. I mean he was still so combative with quantum mechanics.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

He.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Gimme the quote.

[Kristen Bell]

Which one? The God does not play dice.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

God does not play dice.

[Kristen Bell]

There are others.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Was it Niels Bohr who said back to him another physicist Einstein stopped telling God what to do. It was one of several times he talked about God and God's intentions. Because quantum physics is fundamentally statistical, it's not does not describe a unique objective reality. It only describes a statistical reality. And this felt very bad to Einstein, even though he made significant contributions to quantum physics.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

This feels like a trend though, because Newton also is like, I don't know God.

[Adam Pally]

Adam Pally here and I'm John Gabris. We're a couple actors and best friends who you may know as the hosts of the TV show 101 Places to Party before youe Die. Now we're bringing you a comedic look at health and wellness with our new show, Staying Alive. We'll have guests like our friend actor Jerry O'Connell, ketamine therapist Dr. Stephen Radowitz, Paul Scheer, Ego Wodom, Gillian Bell, Dr. Dolittle. Staying alive with John Gabriel and Adam Pally is out right now. Get them a week early and ad free with SiriusXM podcasts plus on Apple.

[Jana Levin]

Podcasts at Capella University you can learn at your own pace with our flexpath learning format. Take one or two courses at a time and complete as many as you can in a 12 week billing session. With Flexpath, you can even finish the Bachelor's degree you started in 22 months for $20,000. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn [e-mail]. fastest 25% of students cost varies by pace, transfer credits and other factors. Fees apply.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to [e-mail].

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3.

[Kristen Bell]

Month plan equivalent to $15 per month.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full [e-mail] so a couple of fast other ones. So he predicts out of general relativity that certain phenomenon should produce ripples in space time continuum Gravitational waves.

[Kristen Bell]

Right, Gravitational waves. So he says, look, if the earth can curve space time, if the sun can curve space time so that the earth falls around the sun, then if these systems move around, the curves have to move too. So the curves themselves have to modulate like waves. And he predicted something called gravitational waves which are these silent waves in the shape of space time. And they are not visible. It's not light. It's pure gravity. It's not light. But if you saw something, you could see a bobbing on the wave as its path changed around a moving object. So if the sun decides to do something crazy, we would know eight minutes later when the wave got to us.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So I think I have this right. There is a cottage industry rising up in astrophysics where they're looking at the pulsars in the galaxy. Pulsars are very fast rotating stars that have extremely precise timing. Precise. So if there's a gravitational wave not coming towards us, but passing across our field of view, we can see the effect of the turbulent space time wave on the timing of the pulsar as it goes through the wave. And then you can see them move across the universe.

[Kristen Bell]

They'll bobble around. They're like buoys on the ocean. Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

They'll just, you'll see this effect as that happens. And so it's like, whoa.

[Kristen Bell]

He wrote many papers where he thought they didn't exist. So he really struggled with whether or not these really hedging his nuts there.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I know, right?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I know black holes exist, but maybe.

[Kristen Bell]

Well, gravitational waves were really confounding. Whether they carried energy or were real in a substantive way or was just, oh, I'm just changing my coordinates. It's just, it's not physically real. There's no physical impact. This was confounding for decades. He once would write, he wrote papers where he said they do not exist. They would be accepted for publication. And in the space between publication and sending it to press, he would change the entire paper and say they do exist.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

In the space between it being accepted.

[Kristen Bell]

Yes, between it being accepted and going into print, he would change the entire conclusion, rewrite the paper and say they do exist. Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

He wants to be right no matter what.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Full of papers.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Right, right, right, right. So then we decide maybe we can detect some of these. And Kip Thorne, who was a guest on our show, we took Stark talk to him. Cause he's Kip Thorne. Right. We moved the mountain to Kip Thorne. We went to his home office in Pasadena. He's a professor at Emeritus now, I think at Caltech. And we talked about Interstellar because he was an executive producer on Interstellar.

[Kristen Bell]

He wrote the original treatment. It's like his dream idea.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

He did write the original treatment. He brought on Christopher Nolan to realize those views. It wasn't the other way around. So he petitions Congress and The National Science foundation and other agencies to. And with a lot of support from other physicists and the like, to build the first gravitational wave detector. And it's built. It's called ligo, Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatory. Ligo, sensibly abbreviated ligo. And they made it really sensitive to this. They have two lasers that go off at right angles, and if a wave washes over Earth, the length of one laser path will change relative to the other. They make this measurement. Bada bing. They found the first colliding black holes, which deposited so much energy into the space time continuum that we'd have a chance of measuring it.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah, I mean, it was the most powerful event humanity's ever observed since the observation of the Big Bang itself. More energy came out of this all in gravitational waves in utter darkness, Utter darkness. And yet. And that the power was greater than all the stars in the observable universe combined at that moment. So. But it all came out just in ringing space, literally. So darkness could not see it with a telescope.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And so think about it.

[Kristen Bell]

I love the look on your face. Thank you for that.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

He's looking back and forth like, well, no, no.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I'm trying to think of anything else that is be more powerful than those stars combining. I'm stuck at Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey. When those stars came together, we all felt it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That was a moment. It was a tectonic ship. So we discover gravitational waves that won a Nobel Prize. But more so we discover gravitational waves using lasers.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

His crumbs connected.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

His crumbs came together and made a big smorgasbord of science and physics and Nobel Prizes for everybody on board. So can you get more amazing than that? I mean, I don't.

[Kristen Bell]

The detection was essentially in the centenary too. Yes, it was in 2015, 100 years after his gravitational wave papers.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Oh, man.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah, that's.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Einstein has.

[Kristen Bell]

I mean, he's magic.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Einstein totally had something to do with that. Now, Jana, memory serves. Einstein was a big proponent of a unified field theory. And when I first heard that when I was a kid. Field? What do you mean by field? I didn't know that field was synonymous with forces. Right. So we have gravitational force, electromagnetic force, which in its day was the electric.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Force and the magnetic force and then the force. I've seen Star wars.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Maybe they figured it out. They got the one force, you know. So with the work of Heinrich Hertz and others, we figured out how to combine electricity and magnetism to make one force. And we take that word for granted, but they used to be Two whole separate words. Electromagnetic force. So Einstein, why did he fail at this? Or what was motivating him?

[Kristen Bell]

Well, we've all failed at this. So there is great success in unifying all of the matter forces, all of the quantum matter forces, electromagnetism with the weak nuclear force and the strong nuclear force. That's the whole story of matter done. Completely sealed.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, but they're not.

[Kristen Bell]

There's an outlier. Well, so the electroweak theory is combined weak and electronic.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So we went from electricity, magnetism, and the weak nuclear force. Then we got electromagnetism. And then with my guy from my high school.

[Kristen Bell]

Which guy from your high school?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What? Steve Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow, they. And what was this?

[Harrison Greenbaum]

High school?

[Kristen Bell]

No. Oh, no. Yeah.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Who's the third one in there?

[Kristen Bell]

Salaam.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Salaam. Right. That's correct. So the three of them, two of them were classmates in my high school before me, but in my high school, anyhow, they.

[Kristen Bell]

There was something in the water there.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

They managed to conjoin the electromagnetic force and the weak force, and they called it what?

[Kristen Bell]

Electroweak.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Okay, that's not very creative, but all right, we'll go with it.

[Kristen Bell]

But it is pretty magical. It says that those are really one force, which is magical. Something that. That is nuclear ranges that we do not experience in our everyday life.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Separate forces. Today, you go back in time, there's a point where they were just one expressed force in the universe. So that gives us electroweak, strong force and gravitation.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah. Now the strong easily can get in there, even though we don't talk about it very much anymore.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What do you mean easily? If you did that, you'd have a Nobel Prize now.

[Kristen Bell]

Well, there's something called the grand unified theories, and they have certain failures. There isn't like an ideal grand unified theory, but really there's nothing barring the possibility of it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I mean, it's no obvious obstacle.

[Kristen Bell]

There's no fundamental obstacle to a grand unified theory. Most people think it's gonna come along for the ride when we do the full unification.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So when Einstein said a unified field theory, was he thinking just that or was he also wanting to include gravity?

[Kristen Bell]

He wants gravity.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

He wants gravity.

[Kristen Bell]

He wants gravity. And it's the same thing he did when he went from special to general, when he started thinking about quantum mechanics. He wants a quantum theory, but gravity.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Behaves so differently from the other forces. Cause you can think of gravity not even as a force, but as the just falling down. The curvature of space and time.

[Kristen Bell]

It's Geometry.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's geometry. It's not really a force. So that could be a barrier to summing these together.

[Kristen Bell]

Well, nobody's ever succeeded at even.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

So how about Kip Thorne? Does he have some ideas here? Does he?

[Kristen Bell]

Oh, well, I mean, Kip has endless ideas. Yeah, he does. And I think Interstellar 2. Yeah. See, I think Kipp's ambition is for. Yes, a universe that would be completely comprehensible, which would mean we either understand quantum gravity or we understand that gravity is not fundamental. Those are the two kind of choices. Oh, yes, that everything's quantum mechanics now. I don't know.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Quantum mechanics is the most successful idea we've ever had about anything in the universe. I don't think any prediction has ever failed.

[Kristen Bell]

No. And to the largest number of decimal points of any scientific theory in the history of time.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Whereas general relativity, as bad assets as it is, we know where its limits are. Like at the center of a black hole, there's a singularity. It gives you a singularity in the equations. And I don't know what that's where you say, where God is dividing by zero. Remember, you're not supposed to divide by zero. Yes, bad.

[Kristen Bell]

Well, even Roger Penrose, who talked about the singularity, Nobel Prize, Nobel Laureate of recent years, even in that paper, he says, I don't really think this part's going to survive. He really says quantum mechanics will probably get rid of the singularity, but it hasn't. But it hasn't done any of the things it was supposed to do around gravity.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The point is more crumbs.

[Kristen Bell]

More crumbs.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

The attention of brilliant people either walk among us or are yet to be born.

[Kristen Bell]

I'm just going to throw in because this is very relevant to this. Wormholes, which Einstein talked about, the Einstein rose and bridges, which ultimately give rise to wormholes, might be involved in understanding that things like black holes and gravity aren't fundamentally real. They're just sort of embroidered out of quantum wormholes. And so it might really be another.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

One of Einstein's crumbs embroidered out of quantum wormholes and not threads.

[Kristen Bell]

So more crumbs from Einstein to come.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Is anybody. Is there.

[Kristen Bell]

Keep your eyes on wormholes.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Is there any other scientist that. Is that a Messian eater, so to speak? Has anybody else left?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Isaac Newton was badass, too.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Okay.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

In fact, I think if Isaac Newton were a contemporary of Einstein, he would have done everything Einstein did and more. Whoa. I'm a Newton guy, okay.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah, you're a real Newton guy.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah. You got to give me Something here. Yeah, I'm a Newton guy.

[Kristen Bell]

I mean, calculus is pretty impressive.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

That's pretty good.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, just like on a dare, like, why are your orbits moving in ellipses rather than circles? He said, well, I don't know. Let me get back to you on that.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

I'm gonna eat an apple.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, let me go back. And here's why. And, well, how did you do that? Well, I had to invent integral and differential calculus to show that. Okay, Isaac, so if you'll indulge me just for a moment, I need to reflect on our conversation. Love me some mathematics. Why? It was early on, when I learned, when I wanted to be an astrophysicist, that the language of the universe is mathematics. That's an extraordinary fact, because we just invented mathematics out of our heads. The history of math is filled with examples of. I don't know how that works. Let me invent a way to calculate with it so that I can figure out how it works. Thus is the rise of arithmetic and algebra and trigonometry and calculus. All of this helps us commune with the cosmos. But what makes it even more extraordinary is you start out with an idea of how the universe works, but you can't manipulate that idea because you're stuck with using only words. If you make a mathematical representation of that idea, then you can manipulate that idea using the perfect logic of mathematics. And by doing so, you can extend the idea in places you didn't even know the idea could go, because you're extending it with perfectly logical steps from the map of that idea into the world of mathematics. The fact that that works for us at all leaves me in awe of not only the existence of mathematics, but of the human mind that took us there. And here we have, in the likes of Albert Einstein, laying down a physical idea of how the universe works, attaching a mathematical model to it. And the rest of us run with that mathematical model. Crumbs from Einstein's plate leading to Nobel prizes that at some level should have all gone to him. My boy should have had 8, 9, 10 Nobel prizes, but he's sharing his genius with the rest of us in these, the 20th and 21st centuries. More to come from Einstein's crumbs. And that is a cosmic perspective. So, Janet, thank you for helping out here.

[Kristen Bell]

Thanks. I'm always glad to be here.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

And you have a podcast. Tell me.

[Kristen Bell]

Oh, right. Joy of why.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I love that joy.

[Kristen Bell]

The Joy of why that is so.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's a beautiful title.

[Kristen Bell]

Yeah. Quantum magazine. So the story is, my friend, Steve Strogatz who's the original host of the show. It's by Quantum magazine from the Simons Foundation. Wonderful science magazine. His book was called the Joy of X. Mathematician. And I thought that was a brilliant title. And so the show was originally called.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Joy of X, called the Joy of Lex, which is all about language and words.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

There's another one, I think called the Joy of Sex.

[Kristen Bell]

Yes, that was the original. So Steve and I co host the show. It's a lot of fun. We deep dive hardcore physics, excellent. Biology, computer science.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Good. And the Simon's foundation from Jim Simons. They're very successful.

[Kristen Bell]

Yes.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wall Street. I think he's the Wall street trader there ever was.

[Kristen Bell]

And he's the original quant.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

His background in in math and physics.

[Kristen Bell]

A brilliant mathematician and an accomplished mathematician like we still use his mathematical results and theoretical.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

I took a ride on his yacht. It was called the Archimedes. That's classy.

[Kristen Bell]

Jim was the best.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

All right, I think we did justice to these crumbs here.

[Kristen Bell]

Thanks so much, guys. Always fun.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, thanks for filling in those gaps and taking us to the next step. And Harrison, you're on the road with your. Your routine.

[Harrison Greenbaum]

Yes, I have my comedy magic show. We've been off Broadway. I'm taking it on the road and I'm doing stand up all over the country.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Harrison. HarrisonGreenbaum.com we'll look for it. All right, this has been StarTalk the Einstein crumbs edition. Neil Degrasse Tyson here, as always, I bid you keep looking up.

[Adam Pally]

Adam Pally here, and I'm John Gabris. We're a couple actors and best friends who you may know as the host of the TV show 101 Places to Party before you die. Now we're bringing you a comedic look at health and wellness with our new show, Staying Alive. We'll have guests like our friend, actor Jerry O'Connell, ketamine therapist Dr. Stephen Radowitz, Paul Scheer, Ego Wodem, Gillian Bell, Dr. Doolittle. Staying alive with John Gabris. And Adam Palley is out right now. Get them a week early and ad free with SiriusXM podcast plus on Apple.

[Jana Levin]

Podcasts at Capella University. Learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get dedicated support from people who care about your success. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.