Our Burning Questions – Entropy & Immortality

Summary

StarTalk Radio: Episode Summary Title: Our Burning Questions – Entropy & Immortality
Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Co-Hosts: Chuck Nice & Gary O'Reilly
Release Date: December 27, 2024

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of StarTalk Radio, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, along with his co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O'Reilly, delves into some of humanity’s most profound questions surrounding entropy and immortality. The trio navigates through complex scientific concepts with a blend of humor and insightful discussions, making the episode both informative and entertaining for listeners.

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Human Evolution and the Future of Humanity

The conversation kicks off with a thought-provoking question about the direction of human evolution. Gary asks:

[04:24] Gary O'Reilly: “Which direction do you see human evolution taking in the future? Do we stay biological, head to a transhuman existence, or do we go totally post-biological and just become this super intelligent AI?”

Neil responds with a reflective stance:

[04:42] Neil deGrasse Tyson: “I think we will resist merging technology with our biology neurologically.” He elaborates on humanity’s reluctance to integrate directly with technology, emphasizing a preference for non-invasive advancements like using smartphones over brain implants.

Energy Consumption and Sustainable Solutions

The discussion transitions to the critical topic of energy consumption, particularly in relation to data centers and emerging technologies like AI and Bitcoin mining. Gary raises concerns about sustainable energy sources:

[27:04] Gary O'Reilly: “Data centers, AI plus Bitcoin, Bitcoin mining. Energy consumption. How are they going to be powered in the future? Is the answer nuclear? Is it solar? Is it wind?”

Neil counters optimistically:

[27:22] Neil deGrasse Tyson: “There's no shortage of energy. We have access to more energy than we'll ever use coming down every second from the sun.” He discusses various renewable energy sources, highlighting the vast potential of solar power, wind energy, and geothermal solutions like those implemented in Iceland.

Wave-Particle Duality and Electron Microscopes

Chuck introduces a physics-based question about wave-particle duality:

[30:28] Chuck Nice: “So electrons are waves and particles just like photons. But how do we use electrons as a wave instead of as a particle?”

Neil provides a concise explanation:

[31:38] Neil deGrasse Tyson: “We use the wave aspect of electrons in electron microscopes by exciting them to wavelengths similar to X-rays, allowing us to visualize structures at a much smaller scale than visible light permits.” This discussion underscores the practical applications of quantum physics in advancing technology.

Communication with Alien Life Forms

The topic shifts to the possibility of communicating with extraterrestrial intelligence. Gary poses an intriguing scenario:

[36:16] Gary O'Reilly: “Reason we haven't encountered alien life forms now is maybe that these alien life forms are billions and billions of years old and have gone from a biological to an artificial intelligence and are living for eternity, and therefore we can't see, touch, feel.”

Neil explores this idea, referencing cultural portrayals and theoretical possibilities:

[36:50] Neil deGrasse Tyson: “They could exist in a computer state, living on their own planet forever, akin to the virtual realities depicted in films like The Matrix or series like Black Mirror.” He further discusses how advanced civilizations might perceive and interact with the universe differently.

Entropy and the Possibility of Immortality

One of the core discussions revolves around the laws of thermodynamics and their implications for human immortality.

[41:05] Chuck Nice: “How does the notion of human immortality gel with the concept of entropy? Do the laws of thermodynamics forbid humans from ever living forever?”

Neil provides a scientifically grounded response:

[41:10] Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Yes, you would never live forever if you were a closed system. Entropy would take its toll. But life on Earth is not a closed system; it constantly receives energy from the Sun.” He explains that as long as humans remain open systems exchanging energy with their environment, the principles of entropy do not outright prevent the possibility of extended lifespans.

Practical Examples and Thought Experiments

To illustrate complex concepts, Neil shares relatable examples and thought experiments. For instance, he describes how altering the gravitational constant would drastically affect stellar luminosity and the universe’s evolution:

[12:38] Neil deGrasse Tyson: “If you change the gravitational constant even slightly, the luminosity of stars would grow exponentially, reducing their life expectancy and making the universe a much brighter but less hospitable place for life.”

Additionally, Neil recounts a hands-on exhibit from the Boston Museum of Science that demonstrates the Pythagorean theorem, emphasizing its potential role in communicating with alien civilizations:

[47:14] Neil deGrasse Tyson: “You can rotate this exhibit with liquid in squares to visually represent A squared plus B squared equals C squared, signaling our understanding of basic geometry to any observing extraterrestrial intelligence.”

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Notable Quotes

• Neil deGrasse Tyson: “I think we will resist merging technology with our biology neurologically.” — [04:42]
• Gary O'Reilly: “Data centers, AI plus Bitcoin, Bitcoin mining. Energy consumption...” — [27:04]
• Neil deGrasse Tyson: “There's no shortage of energy. We have access to more energy than we'll ever use coming down every second from the sun.” — [27:22]
• Neil deGrasse Tyson: “You would never live forever if you were a closed system. Entropy would take its toll.” — [41:10]

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with a reflection on humanity’s quest for knowledge and the balance between progress and sustainability. Neil, Chuck, and Gary emphasize the importance of scientific inquiry and the continuous pursuit of understanding the universe, urging listeners to remain curious and keep looking up.

[48:39] Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Keep looking up.”

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This episode of StarTalk Radio beautifully encapsulates the intricate dance between fundamental physics and the future of human existence, providing listeners with both enlightenment and entertainment.

Transcript

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So that was a different special edition. Gary yes, it was.

[Chuck Nice]

Well.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But I appreciate the curiosity that the two of you have maintained strongly into adulthood.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I know we couldn't sit on it any longer. Okay, we had to share.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Coming up, Chuck and Gary's burning questions.

[Chuck Nice]

I believe there's an ointment for that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

For me on StarTalk Special Edition. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now this is StarTalk Special Edition, which means I got with me. Gary O'Reilly. Gary.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Hi, Neil.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, Chuck. Always good to have you, man.

[Chuck Nice]

Always a pleasure to be here.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So you guys invented this variant. Can I use that word these days? With viruses?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, I was gonna say, wow. Just turned this into a viral infection.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You invented this variant of Special Edition where you guys apparently. I didn't know this.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Over the years, have collected questions that had tap roots in previous shows that you wanna bring back to me.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah. So the things we get involved in, which is such a variety, as much as it's informational, educational and fascinating, you kind of always seem to come out of one with, oh, what if we ask that?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, okay.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So it's. It's. And, you know, so we're trying to scratch this itch.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Gary O'Reilly]

To a certain extent. Now you've mentioned variant. I'm now scratching an itch. Yeah, there you go.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

All right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Now, I don't know if I'll have the answers, but I'll try. Okay, well, please do stop looking at me like that, please.

[Chuck Nice]

Do you know, listen, you won't have an answer.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

An answer, that's what's good.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, so there will be answers.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I'll kick yourself.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, who's first? Go.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Which direction do you see human evolution taking in the future? Do we stay biological, head to a transhuman existence, or do we go totally post biological and just become this super intelligent AI?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I think we will resist. Just an opinion.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Of course.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I think we will resist merging technology with our biology neurologically. I think we will resist. There's a lot spoken about this.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, I'm disappointed.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I think we'll resist it.

[Chuck Nice]

I think you're right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because they say, let's put the whole Internet on your frontal lobe and people will like, I have the Internet in the palm of my hand without the surgery required to open up my brain and stick it there. So I'll take the 10 seconds to find the information I need rather than the instant information that would otherwise be the case.

[Chuck Nice]

I want the chip.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I have evidence of this.

[Chuck Nice]

What?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, we're old enough. He's not old enough. But you and I are old enough to watch planes get ever faster over the decades, from the Wright brothers up through the 50s.

[Chuck Nice]

You did not see the Wright brothers. I'm sorry.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I remember the Wright brothers.

[Chuck Nice]

I'll tell you, I remember that day on Kitty Hawk.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Never thought they'd get it off the ground. Said to myself, those boys are wasting their time.

[Chuck Nice]

They need to go back to building bicycles.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Was it all fields?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So what I'm saying is, yes, you can ask the question. Why did we want planes to go faster and faster?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Because we're impatient.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We're impatient and we want to reduce the time you are in transit between where you are and where you're going. Yes. Okay, then there's a point where planes just didn't get faster. In fact, they're going a little slower today than they were in the early 1970s. It's not uncommon to cross the Atlantic at 500, 550 miles an hour. My day, it was like 600 miles an hour. 650. Okay, so what's going on? Do you really need it to get there an hour faster? When you have a thousand movies you can watch, you have access to the Internet, you can sleep, you can be plied with alcohol and food, do you really need to get there fast? My point is, you're not getting any.

[Chuck Nice]

Of that on Spirit Airlines.

[Gary O'Reilly]

What's the.

[Chuck Nice]

What you said is happening on Spirit Airlines, sir?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I'm saying in that case, the speed, which sounded like a good idea when you're otherwise wasting your time on an airplane getting from A to B. The moment you were no longer wasting your time, in fact, you were being productive, the urge to fly supersonic evaporated. And so I'm saying I have access to the Internet. You want me to have 1 second access to the Internet or instant rather than 10 seconds? I don't know that I'm gonna go there if I gotta sit under a scalpel and you poke into my brain. So I think we will resist that. That's my opinion. I think you're right.

[Chuck Nice]

But I still want the chip. Because first of all, you can barely see them. And they can take four of them and put em together and just slide it in. And unless Elon's doing it, then I don't want it. I do not want it if Elon is doing it. I don't want Elon's chip.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We'll give you access to the Internet, right?

[Chuck Nice]

But here's the reason why I want the chip. And I don't mean for me personally. I mean for a friend. For mankind. Okay?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

For all mankind.

[Chuck Nice]

For all mankind. There are certain responses that we have that are neurochemical. There are certain things that we possess that are detrimental to who we are as a species. And they.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The wiring of our brain.

[Chuck Nice]

The wiring of our brain that come out of evolution.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. So go in, fix the wiring, but get your ass back out of my head.

[Chuck Nice]

But my thing Is that only the chip could actually do that on an ongoing basis.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It doesn't have to be ongoing if you know exactly where the bad wiring is. Fix the wiring and get the hell out of my head. So if I have a phobia or a. What's the one where you have. You keep doing something repeatedly obsessive compulsive? If I'm compulsive or a phobia, one day, perhaps neuroscientists will know exactly where that spot is in the head. Go in there, nip, tuck, snip, snap, reattach, bada bing, we're good. You. You no longer have a phobia, and you no longer have a compulsion. So that's all I'm saying. I think we will resist that. That's all.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So you're talking about improving mental health. What if we now get to the stage where we can improve our biology and start to live that much longer, and then all of a sudden, you've become totally post biological and you'll live for eternity?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, no. We will figure out how to manipulate the biology so that it does not age. But you're still biological.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah, but do you. Do you have that transhuman part where you have to have the chips and the bits and pieces and the upgrades?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Why would you need that? If we can fix your brain. That's all I'm saying.

[Gary O'Reilly]

But does the brain control every single aspect?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No. Okay. There are people with artificial hips and knees and shoulders.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Head, shoulders, knees and toes.

[Chuck Nice]

That's why I say I don't see the difference.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I think we will resist that next question. Chuck, is it your turn?

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, here we go. If an unobstructed photon is traveling towards the edge of the universe, but the universe is simultaneously expanding, which it is. And redshifting increases the photon's wavelength. Okay. At some point. Because from what I understand, the increase in the wavelength actually reduces the energy of the photon. At some point, does the photon just disappear? If it just keeps going and going.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And going and going, it redshifts to infinity. So, yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

What?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So that happens at the horizon of the universe.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So if we have a horizon where at that place, all the objects are receding at the speed of light.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. So when the photon sort of catches up with that.

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

At that point, it has redshifted to infinity and it's got nothing for you.

[Chuck Nice]

It's got nothing for you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow. So that's the end. It redshifts to infinity.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry about that.

[Chuck Nice]

So unsatisfying.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Now you sound like that photon. So as. As part of the sort of star talk group think that we had, Alex Picardis came up with a.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

One of our producers. Yes.

[Gary O'Reilly]

One of our production team. If you could bend the laws of physics to your will, what would you change, if anything?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ooh, okay, so in graduate school, there's a calculation you do where you look at the gravitational constant, which was first proposed by Isaac Newton, but it would take centuries later to measure its value reliably. What is the gravitational constant? It's the thing that's in the gravity equation that tells you how to calculate how much gravitational force you get from how much mass. So the force is proportional to the mass. How do you turn that into an equation? You have what's called a proportionality constant, the gravitational constant. You don't know this, but you've been invoking that ever since you recited the equation E equals MC squared. All that equation says is energy is proportional to mass. How do you turn that into an equation? You need a proportionality constant. The. That's the C squared, the speed of light squared. So all of these understandings of how the universe works, we have something on one side of the equation, some on the other. There's a constant there, constant of proportionality. You make the measurement. Okay, so one of the calculations we do is we take the gravitational constant and say, what happens if we change it by a little bit? What are the consequences to the universe? It turns out that you run the gravitational constant through your equations of a star, and if you change the gravitational constant by a little bit, increase it by a little bit, it has stupendous consequences on the luminosity of stars. The luminosity of a star is dependent on the seventh power of the value of the gravitational constant. So if I double the value of the gravitational constant was 2 to the seventh power. Okay, 2 times 2 is 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128. The luminosity of stars would grow by a factor of 256, thereby reducing their life expectancy. The universe would be much brighter. Yes, but they would burn their energy faster, and they wouldn't last long enough for planets around them to evolve into complex life. It would be devastating. That's a lesson to us all. If you want to mess with the universe, you gotta, you know, be prepared. Be prepared for the consequences.

[Chuck Nice]

F around and find out.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Now, that being said, there's a book series called Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland, written by a physicist, George Gamow, the mid 20th century physicist. Brilliant, brilliant. Guy. He first calculated that after the Big Bang, you would have a cosmic microwave background. Okay. Very important calculation. Anyhow, he wrote a series he wrote for the public. So he's after my own Heart here. Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland. In each of these books, Mr. Tompkins was in a world where one of the constants of nature was different. So one of them is the speed of light is 60 miles an hour.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So he's driving down the street in the dark, and he sees phenomena that you would see only if you went very fast, near the speed of light, like in a normal situation, but the speed of light's not 60 miles an hour. Very creative. It's beautiful.

[Chuck Nice]

Smart guy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. And another. So one would be kind of cool, is, you know, there's something called dispersion, and it's diffraction. Dispersion. Refraction is what light does as it goes through a hole in the wall or goes around a corner or goes into another medium. If you change the value of Planck's constant.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's the constant for quantum physics. There's a value. You can make it so that if you walk through a doorway, you will defract. It'll affect you macroscopically in the way it previously only affected particles. And so I thought it'd be fun to dial that up just so I can live in the world of quantum physics just for a day.

[Chuck Nice]

Now, that'd be cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's what I'm saying. That's all those rules are different.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, that's a completely.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I would do that just as an amusement park, not as a thing.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm not messing with the laws of the universe. Otherwise.

[Gary O'Reilly]

That's good news.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Good. Thank you.

[Chuck Nice]

I won't let my moderate to severe.

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[Chuck Nice]

Hello, I'm Alexander Harvey and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So our producer asked that question?

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

And here's another producer, Lane. Lane, we've learned on the show that your position on human evolution is that it was contingent on the extinction of dinosaurs. Is our civilization contingent on the formation of hydrocarbons over millions of years? Did the progression of human energy sources require that we utilize fossil fuels? Could we have gone from wood fire straight to electricity?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I think about that all the time. Yeah, I think about, could we have landed on the moon in the year 1700, for example? Right. Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Why not?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. So one of our other producers, Lindsey and I co wrote a book called To Infinity and Beyond, where we tracked what people were thinking in their day and how far away was whatever dream they had technologically, intellectually, scientifically. In the year 1700, he said, I want to go to the moon. How would you do that? You don't even have a periodic table of elements yet. How do you do that? Will the material science allow it? Does physics develop? Do you have enough astronomy knowledge? Do you even know what the moon is? So I think about that all the time. Did everything have to happen in the way it did? Because many other factors have to come together. Many other discoveries matter at the same time. So one cannot just run off by itself.

[Chuck Nice]

No. And they all build upon each other.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They all build upon each other like.

[Gary O'Reilly]

A sliding doors scenario where everything has to happen, or at that moment, if you go in through it.

[Chuck Nice]

See, that's what. I don't agree with that. I agree that they are definitely platformed, where they build on top of each other and they have to be made so that that can be done. But I think it's a matter of human beings have progressed and regressed and progressed and regressed. And if we had just progressed, I think we might have got to the moon long before the 1700s. Well, you know, because when you think about it, we're like, we built the pyramids. You know, I mean, all right, or at least aliens built the pyramids. You know, we had civilizations, great civilizations, but then we always have war, and that is the request slams us back to a place before we started. So we take one step forward and three steps back.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Or does it? Let me read for you.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, oh, here we go.

[Gary O'Reilly]

He's got his phone out.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Let me read for you.

[Chuck Nice]

Go ahead.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

A passage written by Christian Huygens.

[Chuck Nice]

Huygens.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Dutch polymath.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He. He discovered what Saturn's rings were.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Before him, they were just like blobs of light. Right. So this is a ring system. It's rotating. Exactly. He's done a lot of brilliant things. I'll read to you from his book Cosmotheros.

[Chuck Nice]

Cosmotheros, 1898.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, okay. The vices of man are no hindrance to their being the glory of the planet they inhabit deeply. All the scientists back then were religious. Okay, so it's folded in here, but watch how he says it. Besides, the vices of men themselves are of excellent use. These are the vices that you said regress us.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Are they not excellent use? And are not permitted and allowed in the world without wise design. For since it has so pleased God to order the earth and everything in it as we see it is for it's nonsense to say it happened against his will or knowledge. We must not think that those different opinions and that various multiplicity of minds were placed in different men to no end or purpose. But that this mixture of bad men with good, and the consequence of such a mixture as misfortunes, wars, afflictions, poverty, and the like were given to us for this very good end, for exercising our wits and sharpening our inventions by forcing us to provide for our own necessary defense against our enemies, Saturn notwithstanding.

[Chuck Nice]

That guy's an idiot.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He goes on. I'm sure he does poverty, what role that plays.

[Chuck Nice]

But he's taking kind of a fatalistic view. It's a bit more like his thing is kind of like you know, we're here because we're meant to be. And I don't.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He's right in a lot of ways here, especially since I wrote a whole book on this. Okay, Accessory to war, the unspoken alliance of astrophysics and the military. What's going on when we're at war, innovation happens. Always it's the I don't want to die drive. Always the I don't want to die gene.

[Chuck Nice]

And I'm cool with that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And well it's just, I'm just.

[Chuck Nice]

No, I'm saying your book is smarter than that guy because I'm not valued. Because self preservation will always outstrip anything.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And he's saying, he's saying that you would only need self preservation when you have a holes trying to not preserve you.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. When a holes try to kill you, you kick in high gear.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You kick in high gear. So if we go from burning wood, I don't see us going to the moon without a whole middle piece there. Where our capacity to generate energy gets greater and greater and greater. And there's a lot written about consumption of energy in the historical record where people say oh America's use so much energy per capita and we have to reduce that. However, again I'm just observing this, I'm not value judging it. The history of the world, the greatest civilizations, the ones that were most powerful, however you measure that, were the ones that consumed the most energy per person. Always per capita.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, you can't rule the world unless you using up a bunch of energy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Figure out how to use the energy.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Be it human capital, chemical energy, whatever.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I think we needed ways to develop enough energy in the system to create elements of society that are high consumers of energy. Like a transportation system. Okay, think about that, airplanes, rockets, you don't have that unless you command energy.

[Chuck Nice]

And you're absolutely right. My only caveat I will say because I do not disagree with anything you just said. I don't necessarily disagree with Chihuahu, but you're being desperate. But my caveat is that if our chief goal were one of enlightenment, we would constantly be seeking a higher level. With or without the threat of destruction, the threat of war. We would be training ourselves and this is part of who we are as human beings. We'd be training ourselves to constantly want to advance.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Except I think the urge to be enlightened is not as strong as the urge to not die.

[Chuck Nice]

Absolutely. I agree with that. Okay, so my point is, if we cultivate, if that were our chief goal was to cultivate, that we would be able to burgeon, that the species would.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Have to rethink itself.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. And that's my point.

[Gary O'Reilly]

That's such a bad thing because were we to chase enlightenment, to innovate rather than create a thousand year war, wouldn't that serve humanity better?

[Chuck Nice]

Also, when you think about war, think about this. War is very rarely a large swath of a population saying, let's go do this. It's normally a few people making the decision that a bunch of other people are going to go and fight in the battle.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Convincing you that they should do that.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's part of the problem here. He just goes on here and says, tis the fear of poverty and misery that we are beholden for all our arts, for that natural knowledge which was the product of laborious industry and which makes us that we cannot but admire the power and wisdom of the Creator. Again, he's going back to, is the Creator putting the bad people and the bad things around us. Okay. Which otherwise we might have passed by with the same indifference as beasts. And if men were to lead their whole lives in an undisturbed continued peace, in no fear of poverty, no danger of war, I don't doubt they would live little better than brutes without all knowledge or enjoyment of these advantages that made our lives pass on with pleasure and profit. I'm just saying.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I disagree with that.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, he's saying we're complacent because we have it all. That's basically if it weren't for a holes, he said, messing things up.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

God put a holes on so everyone else can make life better.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Basically saying God gives you lemons, make lemonade.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. And that's, that's the best invention of God there ever was. Lemonade.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Right. Okay, so while we were discuss.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Give me another question.

[Gary O'Reilly]

All right, While we're discussing energies.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Data centers, AI plus Bitcoin, Bitcoin mining. Energy consumption.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, it's huge.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I mean, this is not just a single nation. This is a global phenomenon. So how are they going to be powered in the future? Is the answer nuclear? Is it solar? Is it wind? Is it burn more wood, burn more gas, burn more oil.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There's no shortage of energy.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I know, but these guys, they can't keep burning up energy like.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, they can.

[Gary O'Reilly]

It's a small nation.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Just. I want to be clear. There are some who walk among us who want to demonize the consumption of Energy. And I'm saying fine. On the assumption that the energy you're demonizing, that the production or utility of that energy somehow badly affects the environment. But solar power, wind power, hydroelectric. There's no shortage of other ways to generate as much energy as you want. You drive through the southwest of the United States, the Sahara, any desert. There are no solar panels there. There's just sand. There's not even plants. There's just sand that gets hot and re. Radiates the sun's energy at night. Not serving anybody at all. I'm saying if you're gonna need energy to mine Bitcoin or whatever else, you. There are ways to produce energy that doesn't mess up the environment. True. And I don't care how much energy it is. Because we're getting more energy than we'll ever use coming down every second from the sun.

[Chuck Nice]

And believe it or not, there's energy beneath us. All you gotta do is drill a hole down and you can actually pull energy from the Earth itself.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Just in Iceland, they have tubes on the mountainside that go down into the. I would say the lava into the very hot layers beneath the crust. Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They cycle water down there. It gets hot, bring it back out, and they send the water down into town. They actually have to cool down the water before it gets to your shower. Cause you get scalded.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Gary O'Reilly]

But we're gonna produce massive data centers.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I don't care.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And they're gonna need energy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Fine.

[Chuck Nice]

And we have it. I mean, Neil's saying we have all the energy that we need.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Correct.

[Chuck Nice]

And I've been saying this for years. I don't care what anybody says. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And. Or just use nukes.

[Chuck Nice]

The sun itself is enough energy for any and everything we need. I don't care what anybody has told you. Just because we haven't made the necessary strides to harness that power doesn't mean that that power is not available.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Nor does it mean that we shouldn think of using things that invoke a lot of it. I don't have a problem with energy.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No issues.

[Chuck Nice]

And this is what I'll say.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And if you could nukes, you would want to use fusion, not fission. Fission has byproducts.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Aren't there new, newer ones coming out, sort of like modular? Smaller.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The direction we want to take down the future is fusion, where there's no. No unpleasant byproducts. Yeah, that would be good. Yeah. It's just turning hydrogen into helium.

[Chuck Nice]

Helium.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's all that happens there.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. So anyway, Chuck, next Okay, here we go. In wave particle duality, we know that photons can kick out electrons, showing that they are both particles. Right? We also know that the double split experiment shows that electrons create wave interference that interferes with itself. So it's a wave. Okay? So electrons are waves and particles just like photons. But anybody who's ever used a battery knows how we use electrons for, you know, anything as a particle. All right, how do we use electrons as a wave? Is there anything we do that says we take the wave part of the electron and we use that instead of the particle or as a particle?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Is that the answer? Is that it?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, so let me take a back door into your question.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, so imagine a wave, right? It has an up and down, up.

[Chuck Nice]

And a down troughed in a crest.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We call that a sinusoid. But it's up and down looking from a sine wave.

[Chuck Nice]

All right? I had a sinusoid infection once.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It was terrible. All right, so that's a wave. So if you're using light that has this wavelength and you want to take a photo of anything that has detail that's smaller than that wavelength, you ain't getting it.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That light of this wavelength cannot resolve any detail smaller than its own wavelength.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, gotcha. That makes sense.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That makes sense. Okay, so how do electron microscopes work?

[Chuck Nice]

Aha.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, well, let's look at wavelengths we get in order of reducing wavelengths. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Let's make the wavelength smaller. Then we get what on the other side of violet?

[Chuck Nice]

Indigo. No, X rays. Right. Or gamma or something.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Other side of violet. It's beyond violet.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Ultraviolet.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ultraviolet.

[Chuck Nice]

Ultraviolet. Sorry, Whose co hosts are you?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet.

[Chuck Nice]

Ultraviolet.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. What comes after ultraviolet? X rays.

[Chuck Nice]

X rays.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. Really small wavelengths.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

More energy, smaller wavelength.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. Not only is it higher energy, smaller wavelength, but if you use that light to take photos, you can see things.

[Chuck Nice]

Really tiny in that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so what you do is you heat up electrons until their wave equivalent is X rays.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, snap.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And then you beam the electrons to the.

[Chuck Nice]

And then you can take pictures of the stuff. It's at that wavelength.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Hairs on the edges of insects.

[Chuck Nice]

So that's why they call it an electron microscope. That's why.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because the wave particle duality is being exploited for that technology.

[Chuck Nice]

For that technology.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

So I didn't realize. So that you. You heat up the electrons.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. There's a way to do it.

[Chuck Nice]

You excite them to the point where they get to that wavelength.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, that's their wavelength. There it is at the energy level where that their corresponding energy is X rays. You beam it in.

[Chuck Nice]

Who the hell thought. That's brilliant science. That's amazing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's why any electron microscope you've ever seen in any book. That's some detailed stuff, right? You've seen it like bugs and cell fibers and things, right?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Scary little critters.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I know, aren't they? Ye. And that doesn't work with visible light.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The wavelength is too large.

[Chuck Nice]

That's great.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. Well, there you go.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's an example.

[Chuck Nice]

And no, that's a great example.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right.

[Chuck Nice]

I won't let my moderate to severe plaque psoriasis symptoms define me.

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[Gary O'Reilly]

Ready for the next one?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Next one.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Okay, so these are good questions.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You're all good people.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Doing our best. Reason we haven't encountered alien life forms now is maybe that these alien life forms are billions and billions of years old and have gone from a biological to an artificial intelligence and are living for eternity, and therefore we can't see, touch, feel. Is that likely as a possibility?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Why wouldn't you be able to see, touch, or feel something just because it lives for eternity?

[Gary O'Reilly]

No, no. If it's gone to an artificial intelligence and exists in a virtual capacity, if I'm thinking it correctly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So using our feeble 21st century vocabulary.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You're saying it might exist in some. A computer state, some memory state, and it's just happy existing on its own planet forever, so.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And that's why we haven't had any.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So it's living in its own matrix where. He wants to go to the beach, it goes to the beach. What's that movie? Total Recall. Okay. Everybody's just living there, and they're just machines humming. Okay. By the way, that was a recurring theme in the Netflix series Black Mirror.

[Chuck Nice]

I love.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Consciousnesses have been uploaded into just this bank of computers.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Who was the British guy that was behind all of that?

[Chuck Nice]

I forget.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Oh, heavens above. Anyway, moving on.

[Chuck Nice]

He's brilliant.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So I'm just wondering, you know, if a civilization, a race, an alien life form, has been in existence over billions and billions of years, surely it's evolved into something absolutely superior.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They've learned to ditch their biology. Yeah. And pick on. So we could visit a planet where it's just these humming data centers and that's where millions of people are living out their lives, such as in the Matrix. Okay, that's plausible. Okay. All right.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I'll keep an eye out for humming data centers.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But I wonder, how would it ever make a discovery?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

At that point, I'm saying because I still get to go to the beach and pour over the shells and rocks and I might discover a life form that my consciousness in the box will never know, see or even think.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Well, if they're really super intelligent, they'll have probably worked a way out.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I don't know how that would be. If they're not the ones doing the discovery.

[Gary O'Reilly]

We're doing 21st century thinking and they're doing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. What they would do is they'd have to have some version of itself that's still exploring.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Out there. So then we might see their hardware emissary.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Interesting, because that's most likely what we'll do once we leave.

[Chuck Nice]

And by the way, why wouldn't they want to leave and go too? Because if you're not bound by the corporeal, then you can now get into a ship bound by the corporeal.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I know, I heard that and I liked it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I keep bound by the corporeal.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Well done, sir.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, well done. Well played.

[Chuck Nice]

You can get into it ship and still be tethered to your planet. There still be on the ship too. And then say, let's go both places. Let's go both places. Let's go to a black hole. Let's see what the event horizon is.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And you're still back on the planet.

[Chuck Nice]

Let's fall into. And you're still back on the. Let's fall into this black hole.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That part of you dies, but you still.

[Chuck Nice]

That part is right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, I like this. This is good.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, I mean, that's. If. If I could put myself into a con, that's what I would. That's the only reason I would want to keep living.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Have probes that went beyond their planet. They would be ossified in the moment that they stopped doing that. This is what I would claim.

[Chuck Nice]

See, that sounds like hell to me. Could you imagine being stuck in 2024 for eternity?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, if you go far enough back when civilization didn't change by very much, you'd live your whole life with no expectation of living differently tomorrow than you did today.

[Chuck Nice]

Damn.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Whereas today, everybody expects tomorrow's gonna be different.

[Chuck Nice]

That's true.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so back then, as far as they're concerned, all of eternity would be like that.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Doesn't everybody think tomorrow's gonna be worse?

[Chuck Nice]

You know what? That makes a lot of sense why people wanna go to heaven. Because if your life changes very little.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You need some escape from that, right?

[Chuck Nice]

And it's like, okay, if life is.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Changing daily, you got something to look forward to. Even the mistake is something to look forward to.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You want the pot of gold.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes, exactly. Wow. As Patton Oswald says, they want sky cake. I'm sorry. It's the best description of heaven I've ever heard. I don't care about my life down here. When I die, I've heard this. Sky cake.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I've heard that routine.

[Chuck Nice]

Hilarious. Hilarious. I'm sorry.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right.

[Chuck Nice]

Anyway, let's go to Alex P. Here we go. You said that there is a time when we will achieve exit velocity from death. Staying on Gary's theme, how does the notion of human immortality gel with the concept of entropy? Ooh, look at that. Do the laws of thermodynamics forbid humans from ever living forever?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. You would never live forever if you were a closed system. Entropy would take its toll.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But life on Earth is not a closed system.

[Chuck Nice]

No, it isn't.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It is open to energy sources beyond.

[Chuck Nice]

Itself called the sun.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's called the sun. Okay. It's that simple.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

This is one of the early attempts to out argue the physics by fundamentalist creationists. They would say, well, you say things always decay to disorder by the second law of thermodynamics. And look at us, we are more complex than ever before. And it's just. You should pause before you try to argue physics with a physicist. If your foundational knowledge is from a book written 4,000 years ago, you just have to pause for a moment. Okay. The entropy issue takes place only in closed systems.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. We have a three species sphere downstairs, living in a vat of water that is completely sealed. We have kelp, we have krill, and we have snails. And they have been living off each other for 25 years, since January 1, 2000. That's 25 years ago. We've had. They've been kicking it downstairs, okay. One of them eats the poop of the other. Okay.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Total symbiosis.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay? So yes, they're symbiotically entangled. Entangled. Now watch. When the construction was happening, the construction folks said, well, this looks pretty important and fragile. Let's protect it.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Oh, they put.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And they put a tarp over it.

[Chuck Nice]

That's cool.

[Gary O'Reilly]

When good deeds go wrong.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And so we caught it early. But, you know, there were a couple of belly up krill, of course, but basically they thought that this was its own thing, its own world. It kind of looks that way. Cause it's a sealed sphere, all right? It's not its own world. It requires energy from the outside, just as we do here on Earth. So if you want to live forever, you will do so at the expense of some energy somewhere else on your planet or in the solar system.

[Chuck Nice]

Cool.

[Gary O'Reilly]

If you want to live forever, don't let anyone put a tarp over you.

[Chuck Nice]

That's the lesson of the.

[Gary O'Reilly]

There you go.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, and maybe don't let him do that.

[Chuck Nice]

In any case, that's great.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

One more question. Time for one more.

[Gary O'Reilly]

All right. Science fiction sometimes has stories of humans interacting with aliens and trying to find a universal commonality from mathematics or the laws of physics to bridge the inevitable communication gap that would arise between two massively different cultures. Are there any good examples of this you haven't Heard in fiction or any. That you were impressed by the authors that they came up with this question from Brian.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes. I have an example.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Brian, our IT specialist.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Our IT guy. Okay. And I got this. Very good. Forgive me for not remembering on the spot who came up with this, but it was not a science fiction author. It was, like, a philosopher. Physicist, mathematician. Sure. Okay. So he said, here's what you do. You want to communicate with aliens and you want them to know that we are smart. Okay? You just make a triangle, okay? As big as you can on Earth, okay? Then you make a square off of each side of the triangle.

[Chuck Nice]

Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. And the triangle has side A, B. See? These are really crappy squares there. Okay?

[Gary O'Reilly]

We're not judging.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There you have it. Now, you make channels here with, like, fuel or something and ignite it when Earth is at night. Alien will see this and say, we got some smart people down there. Do you know why? Okay. What is the area of a square?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Well, it depends on the size of the square.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, no. A square of side circumstances. What's the area?

[Chuck Nice]

It's. I'm trying to remember my stupid job.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, the area of a rectangle is what?

[Chuck Nice]

It's. Oh, God.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's height times the width.

[Chuck Nice]

That's right. That's what I would say. Side one, side two.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Side times side two. Right. Okay, so in a square, it's. So this C was the same as there. So the area of this square is C times C times C squared. C squared. You got that?

[Gary O'Reilly]

All right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What's the area of this.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, my God. A bar. A squared plus B squared equals C squared.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What's the area of this square? What's the area of this square?

[Chuck Nice]

That's A squared.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

A squared?

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. A squared. And the area of this one is gonna go out. B squared.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, if you draw this, it means you know about the Pythagorean theorem.

[Chuck Nice]

There you go.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So that the squares of the sides of a triangle are not just an abstract concept, they're actual squares.

[Chuck Nice]

That's crazy. Okay?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You light this on fire at night, the aliens will know you've been hanging out with Pythagoras.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Only if the aliens studied geometry.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, my God. Wouldn't it be funny if we got some dumbass aliens? I failed geometry, man. I told you it was gonna come in handy at some point. You said math didn't make a difference after school.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I'm saying we all learn the Pythagorean theorem just by looking at a triangle. And we're told that A squared plus B squared equals C squared. So.

[Gary O'Reilly]

But if they were aliens, they'd just look at that. And maybe if they were coneheads, they'd like the idea that it was a triangle.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That as well.

[Chuck Nice]

Or maybe they like Doritos in there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There you go. Okay. So as a kid, the first science museum I ever attended was the Boston Museum of Science. And they had a lot of hands on exhibits as good science museums.

[Chuck Nice]

Cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And they had this on the wall.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Oh.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And you know what it was? So you would rotate it so it'd be sitting there like this. And there'd be this flat squares against the wall. And this had liquid in it. Just a thin square volume. Okay. This had liquid in it.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, that's brilliant.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And so when you turn it, you turn it. This liquid fills the other two squares and this then filled completely these other two squares.

[Chuck Nice]

That's great.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm gonna say A squared plus B squared equals square.

[Chuck Nice]

That's really cool, man. That's a great exhibit.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's some good shit.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, that's some brilliant educators thinking about it. That's very good.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And so I was just duly reminded by our producer, Alex P. That Gauss, brilliant German mathematician, obviously proposed this as a way to possibly show aliens that we're not still living in the caves.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. Because it's so intentional. That's amazing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah. And so simply simplistic. That's the genius.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's why you're not gonna say you're not gonna write an English sentence or even some other symbols might throw people off. We can throw our best equation, but they might have other symbols for equations.

[Chuck Nice]

It wouldn't make a difference.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Where's a triangle and a square?

[Chuck Nice]

They get it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We got it.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow, look at that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Gary O'Reilly]

All right, thanks.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You're on, sir.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Brian.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

This has been Chuck and gary's Burning Questions. StarTalk Special Edition. Thank you. I enjoy that. We should do that more.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, that was fun.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Maybe you can ask us some next time.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Maybe. Yeah, I will.

[Gary O'Reilly]

The answers will be interesting.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, we're done here. StarTalk Special Edition. Neil Degrasse Tyson. Thanks, Chuck. Gary. You're welcome, Gary. Chuck, same thing. Until next time. Keep looking up. I won't let my moderate to severe.

[Chuck Nice]

Plaque psoriasis symptoms define me.

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Emerge as you. In two clinical studies, Trimfaia guselcumab taken by injection, provided 90% clearer skin at 16 weeks in 7 out of 10 adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. In a study, nearly 7 out of 10 patients with 90% clearer skin at 16 weeks were still clearer at 5 years. At 1 year and thereafter, patients and healthcare providers knew that Tremphya was being used. This may have increased results. Results may vary.

Serious allergic reactions may occur. Tremphya may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. Before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms of infection, including fever, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough. Tell your doctor if you had a vaccine or plan to emerge.

As you learn more about Tremphya, including important safety information, at tremphya.com or call 1-877-578-3527. See our ad in Food and Wine magazine for patients prescribed Tremphya, cost support may be available.

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