Superhero Science: StarTalk Live! With Charles Liu

Summary

StarTalk Radio – Superhero Science: StarTalk Live! With Charles Liu

Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Guests: Dr. Charles Liu, Gary O’Reilly, Chuck Nice
Date: November 14, 2025
Location: Guild Hall, East Hampton (Live Recording)

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Episode Overview

In this lively, humor-filled live episode, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson leads a deep-dive into the "science of superheroes" with help from comic co-host Chuck Nice, former footballer Gary O’Reilly, and quantum physicist Dr. Charles Liu. The team explores how quantum mechanics, exotic physics, and technology are woven into superhero stories, questioning which aspects may one day shape our own future. They take apart iconic superpowers—from flying, X-ray vision, and force fields, to quantum tunneling, teleportation, and the concept of parallel universes—connecting the comic book imagination with current scientific knowledge and open questions.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Superman, Physics, and Super Physiology

(06:04 – 13:15)

• Rescue Physics:
  • Problem: What really happens if Superman catches a falling person mid-air?
  • Dr. Charles Liu [07:00]: “If Superman is a man of steel...it’s like hitting the concrete ground. That poor damsel in distress would be quite rescued, but also quite squished.”
  • Hypothesis: Superman could absorb momentum and energy like an airbag, making his rescue less lethal.
• Super Digestion:
  • Tyson’s Tangent [08:45]: If everything about Superman is “super,” then his digestion (and flatulence) would be as well, leading to comic speculation about “super farts” as a crimefighting tool ignited by his laser vision.
  • Dr. Charles Liu [11:15]: Superman’s gut bacteria originates from Earth. “Does Superman have super gut bacteria or just ordinary gut bacteria? ...It might be so good as to eliminate all gaseous emission.”
• X-Ray Vision Realism:
  • Superman’s X-ray vision in the comics/movies is inaccurate, as X-rays don’t allow you to “see” color.
  • Tyson [12:42]: “If you’re going to use X-rays, then stay in the X-ray world. Otherwise invent some other rays... you better stick with what we know.”

2. Superman’s Journey & Relativity

(17:10 – 21:39)

• Tyson’s Real DC Consultation Story:
  • Tyson recounts consulting with DC Comics to make Superman’s journey from Krypton to Earth scientifically plausible.
  • Relativity Problem: Traveling at light speed would mean he’d see Krypton’s destruction as he arrives—unless he traveled via a wormhole.
  • Tyson [19:44]: “…the only way you can get him here and have all this work is through a wormhole. …So in this comic I am meeting Superman, and there’s a tender moment because he sees the destruction of Krypton, and he’s sad.”
• Integration with Real Astronomy:
  • Tyson helped select a real star in the constellation Corvus to serve as “Krypton’s sun,” linking comic lore with real space.

3. Quantum, Warp Drives, and Travel Tech

(22:02 – 29:12)

• Star Trek vs. Physics:
  • Tyson [22:27]: “The day we have wormholes, you won't need transporters.”
  • Energy Dilemma: Wormholes require immense energy—possibly more than warp drives, which are theoretically possible via a “warp bubble” (Miguel Alcubierre’s equations)—but beyond current tech.
  • Dr. Liu [25:04]: “The bubble can move faster than the speed of light, even though you yourself cannot.”
• Future Prospects:
  • Controlled nuclear fusion is likely before true space warping, but even that’s still a technical hurdle.

4. Invisibility—From Cloaks to Stealth

(28:39 – 33:21)

• Real-World Progress:
  • Reflector systems can make objects “functionally invisible,” but only from certain angles.
  • Tyson [29:18]: “Instead of blocking the light, they have a series of reflectors that coherently move the light around your body and then send it forward as though it didn’t take this detour.”
• Stealth Tech Analogy:
  • Stealth bombers reflect radar away, making them invisible to detection but not to the naked eye—each wavelength needs different stealth solutions.

5. Force Fields and Quantum Effects

(33:21 – 36:38)

• Invisible Woman’s Upgrade:
  • Her force fields are a creative quantum-inspired power.
• The Casimir Effect:
  • Quantum fluctuations generate real, measurable forces between objects.
  • Dr. Liu [35:39]: “There are things called quantum fluctuations...there is a little bit of this happening all the time all around you.”

6. Quantum Tunneling and Walking Through Walls

(40:00 – 47:39)

• Empty Atoms & Quantum Tunneling:
  • Matter is mostly empty space; we don’t fall through things due to force fields (mainly electromagnetic).
  • The Flash “runs through walls” via quantum tunneling: statistically improbable for us, but not for a superhero.
  • Dr. Liu [45:04]: “Quantum tunneling is a real phenomenon and it happens all the time...”
• Quantum Teleportation vs. Tunneling:
  • Teleportation in quantum mechanics is the perfect transfer of information, not matter (yet).

7. Quantum Internet & Absolute Zero

(47:39 – 54:43)

• Quantum Communication:
  • Quantum teleportation promises perfectly secure, unbreakable codes.
• Limitations of Cold:
  • Achieving absolute zero is impossible; best results are millionths of a degree above.
  • Cosmic background radiation keeps space at ~3° above absolute zero.

8. Size-Changing & Mass - Ant-Man and the Quantum Realm

(59:06 – 61:59)

• Ant-Man and the Pym Particle:
  • In comics, the Pym Particle exploits quantum space to shrink/grow objects.
  • Dr. Liu [60:32]: “This fictional particle is exploiting known physics...you would have to add mass as you were growing them and reduce it when shrinking. Otherwise, when you put your car in your pocket, it would still weigh thousands of pounds.”
  • Raises the issue of higher dimensions and conservation of mass.

9. Superposition, Many Worlds, and Quantum Weirdness

(62:29 – 76:12)

• Superposition & Dr. Manhattan:
  • Dr. Manhattan exploits quantum superposition—existing in multiple places as a probability wave function.
  • Quantum entanglement: two particles share state instantaneously at any distance.
• Many Worlds Interpretation:
  • Every quantum event splits off a new universe. Tyson is skeptical, calling it a “statistical cop out.”
  • Dr. Liu [73:32]: “Our universe...is a collective collapse of the wave function...all of our wave functions...have all collapsed to this moment that makes our universe unique.”
• Quantum as Industry Foundation:
  • Quantum effects are the bedrock of modern IT and technology.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Physics vs. Humanity:
  Dr. Charles Liu [07:00]: “That poor damsel in distress would be quite rescued, but also quite squished.”
• Comic Science, Tangential:
  Neil deGrasse Tyson [10:42]: “He would just sort of load it up, okay, and point that at me, pull down his pants and just let one out. And he's got the vision...he could just ignite it. And so it would be a new kind of flamethrower.”
• Comic Consulting:
  Tyson [19:44]: “The only way you can get him here and have all this work is through a wormhole...So in this comic I am meeting Superman, and there’s a tender moment ...and he’s sad.”
• Quantum Humility:
  Dr. Charles Liu [23:23]: “A wormhole requires something much more supernatural, more powerful...the wormhole strategy is less likely to be our strategy than a warp drive type strategy.”
• Human Limitations:
  Neil deGrasse Tyson [80:09]: “Your life experience is insufficient to absorb that which stands far outside of your life experience. So it’s not that it’s wrong. It just...doesn’t fit.”
• Quantum Reality:
  Dr. Charles Liu [80:46]: “If I can embrace that part of me which I don’t understand and don’t know...then I'm going to be better off in this world.”
• Cosmic Perspective Finale:
  Neil deGrasse Tyson [82:00]: “As the area of our knowledge grows...so too does the perimeter of your ignorance. ...What I enjoy about our world is that we have creative people...who are not content with just the world...Let’s reach out to all the places science can take us and stoke our imagination beyond what is otherwise visible.”

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [06:04 – 13:15] Superman rescue physics, digestion, and X-ray vision
• [17:10 – 21:39] Neil’s Superman/DC Comics wormhole consultation
• [22:02 – 29:12] How future humans might travel—warp drives vs. wormholes
• [28:39 – 33:21] Science and limits of invisibility
• [35:22 – 36:38] The Casimir effect and quantum force fields
• [40:00 – 47:39] Quantum tunneling (“running through walls”), Flash, teleportation
• [51:01 – 54:43] Why absolute zero is impossible in practice
• [59:06 – 61:59] Ant-Man, shrinking tech, and “Pym Particles”
• [62:29 – 76:12] Superposition, the Many Worlds interpretation, quantum computing
• [80:09 – End] Dr. Liu and Tyson’s closing thoughts on embracing the unknown

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Tone & Style

• The episode moves fluidly between rigorous science, comic-style speculation, and playful banter.
• Neil deGrasse Tyson’s trademark mix of awe, skepticism, and showmanship is met by Dr. Liu’s approachable expertise and Chuck Nice’s comic timing.
• Jokes abound: “Super taco Tuesday” [09:22], “Firewall” defense [11:12], “Why don’t we fall through the floor?” [43:33]
• Audience is drawn into accessible, often hilarious, yet genuinely mind-bending explanations.

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For New Listeners

This episode is a perfect StarTalk sampler, demonstrating how cutting-edge physics can be explained through familiar superhero lore—inviting listeners to imagine the universe’s strangest truths without ever losing the fun. Whether you’re a lifelong comics geek, a science fan, or simply “quantum curious,” you’ll find both laughter and learning at every turn.

Transcript

[Gary O'Reilly]

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Got a StarTalk special edition filmed live at Guild Hall. We have our geek in chief, Charles Liu with us. We needed him for this one because we explore the role of the quantum and other exotic scientific elements that have appeared in the powers of superheroes. Coming right up. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right, right now.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Welcome.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

This is a live recording of this Star Talk podcast here in East Hampton in Guild Hall. Thanks for coming out on a Sunday night. Tonight you probably came and didn't know what the subject would be, Is that correct? So I feel the love because you come no matter what. That's a good fact. The subject tonight is superhero science.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Ooh.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ooh. And we got the expertise for that. Cause we found it. But let me introduce the rest of our panel up here. First of all, Gary O'Reilly. Gary, come on out. Gary.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Thank you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Gary, former soccer pro. There's a wiki page on him, actually.

[Gary O'Reilly]

We go there again.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, we got it. Yeah, we got it. I got to say it every time A former soccer pro in the uk. Soccer announcer. And he's with us for this branch of StarTalk that we call Special Edition, which focuses on how science and technology come together to enhance, augment, or adjust human performance. And when we speak of the science of superheroes, some of that might come reach us one day in terms of what may lie in our future. So who else we have. We have Chuck. Nice. Come on out, Chuck Nice.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He's an actor, a professional comedian, and my long term co host for the series. I love him because he's scientifically literate and.

[Chuck Nice]

And cute.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They'll be the judge of that. Okay, so we have an empty seat there because that's our special guest this evening. I don't know if you know this, perhaps you attended this evening because you have a little bit of geek in you, but there's something you should know. That no matter how geeky you think you are, there's someone geekier than you. Okay, so I carry strong street cred in the geekiverse, but our guest tonight is geekier than I am. Please welcome my friend and colleague, Dr. Charles Liu. Charles. Come on out, Charles. A professor of astrophysics at the College of Staten island in City University of New York. And he's also recently the author. Check this out. Here's a title. Oh, my gosh. The Handy Quantum Physics Answer Book.

[Chuck Nice]

Is that geeky enough for you?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because you know, you have these burning quantum questions that must be answered. So, Charles, welcome to the show.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Thank you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

This is not your first rodeo with us.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But anytime we want to reach out to the geekdom or the geek universe, you are a prime person for that.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

I don't know what to say.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, thank you. I hope not later on, because we need you to say stuff. So. So, Gary, you conceived this show. So what? You set it up. Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Well, as you said, we always try to consider the human condition. And superhero movies aren't strictly sort of science fiction, but they kind of are. And they've been long part of our pop culture. We've idolized them, we've scrutinized them, and we've wondered. And they've been riding the wave of quantum theory, that golden age of quantum theory. I think tonight we'll kind of explore the pillars of science fiction and superhero science. Let's start off with a classic scenario. I'm going to you, Charles, for this. It's the OG Superman.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Superman, right.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Wow.

[Gary O'Reilly]

The damsel once again.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But just to be clear, was not the first Superman.

[Gary O'Reilly]

No, he's one of the OGs.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, no, no. I think you go back. I mean, we had Hercules.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Oh, okay. We're going that far back?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Lots of legendary storytelling. Is Hercules any different to that world of Hercules? Hercules? No. I mean, Superman is our version of Hercules.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Every culture has their own superhero they've thrown forward.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

As I was saying, Superman's origins is from comic books. Hercules was not in a comic book first.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, I thought he was in a comic book. Okay.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yeah. It's chiseled into stones.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Got that settled.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

So.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So as I was saying, the damsel's being pushed off the balcony of the 32nd floor. Again. She's hurtling.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's her.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And so then he comes in. He swoops in, and he grabs her. But from a physics perspective, Charles, what would really happen?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Well, the problem is, of course, if Superman is a man of steel and the thing is coming down, right. And you're coming up with the steel, it's like hitting the concrete ground. Right. So that poor damsel in distress would be quite rescued, but also quite squished.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So quite dead, basically.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

He kills her.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

This is.

[Gary O'Reilly]

She's a bug on the windshield.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Well, the problem is, of course, that moment of impact. Right. And so it has been hypothesized that Superman actually has a way to absorb motion. In other words, the momentum and the energy, he actually not only can do, get there and stop the person from hitting the ground, but also can absorb the impact so that he himself, who is invulnerable, is unharmed. But the person who is falling is also unharmed because it's as if they had fallen and just stopped in midair.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So it's like airbags.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Like airbags.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. So.

[Gary O'Reilly]

That'S flying.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He wouldn't have to do that. He could just wait until they fall. But typically, you see Superman flying horizontally, so that's quite a calculation. To fly horizontally and perfectly intersect.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

When the person is where you are.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yes. Superman's brain has to be at least as good as your average computer.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, Right. So Superman, he's. Everything about him is super.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. And I wondered. We actually got a question, a branch of our podcast that goes online are questions open to the public, our fan base. And one of them just simply asked, would Superman's physiology be the same as humans, even if he's sort of steel on the outside? And it got me thinking, if he's got super everything. But he does eat food. We've seen him eat.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So the food would be digested in some super way, perhaps. Okay. So what would that mean? And then I thought, so everything that's going on in you would happen to in a super way in Superman. So it would digest faster. It goes into your intestines. And a lot of the action is in your lower intestines where the microbial action happens anaerobically. Uh, oh, here we go. And anaerobic gases.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Methane, sulfur compound.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Sulfur. Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Super taco Tuesday.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So hydrogen sulfide. That's the smell of rotten eggs. You have a methane, which. I didn't know this when I was in camp when I was 10, but my fellow campers were right when they said, have you ever ignited.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That thing. Which, I mean, we can.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Come on.

[Chuck Nice]

I mean, I know we're in the Hamptons, but everybody knows what a fart is.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Come on.

[Chuck Nice]

Come on.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, but. So, okay, fine. So you can ask, what is the gaseous composition of that?

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And in Superman, it would be super. Right. And methane, of course, is highly flammable.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And in cities, it's the gas of choice for your stove, if you still have a gas stove. Suburbs tend to have propane. These are varieties of flammable gases that you get from crude oil. So. So methane is flammable. So it occurred to me that this is another tool Superman would have in crime fighting because he would just sort of load it up, okay. And point that at me, pull down his pants and just let one out. And he's got the vision.

[Chuck Nice]

Laser vision.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Laser vision.

[Gary O'Reilly]

X ray vision. Then.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Then he. But no, we can get to X rays.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

All right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He's got. He can. He got laser vision. Laser vision. He could just ignite it. And so it would be a new kind of flamethrower.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, what a terrible death for those villains.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, no, that would be a. It's. It's. It's physiological. Yeah, it's.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

It works.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I think it would work. Yeah.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

You could never sneak up on Superman with kryptonite.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Why?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Because there'd be a rear guard defense.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, yes, yes. You couldn't get close enough.

[Chuck Nice]

Couldn't take them from behind, Literally.

[Gary O'Reilly]

It would be a firewall.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, yes. Fireball.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

The only problem with this very reasonable reasoning is that when Superman came to the world from Krypton, he did not have gut bacteria yet. He was still, like, pre colonoscopy. Okay? So any gut bacteria he has achieved from eating here on Earth has come from Earth. So this is a fascinating question, which I would love for your opinions. Okay. Does Superman have super gut bacteria or just ordinary gut bacteria? In which Case, Right. If he has super digestion, which you said earlier, which would be great, it might be so good as to eliminate all gaseous emission. In which case, Superman never passes gas.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, all right. So Superman has X ray vision.

[Gary O'Reilly]

All right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, Right. There's a scene in one of the movies where Lois Lane walks behind a lead planter. Cause he asked, well, if you have X ray vision in her first interview, then what color panties am I wearing? And he says, I don't know. And he says, well, why? Oh, because you're standing behind a lead planter. Because everyone knows lead absorbs. Absorbs X rays. And then she steps down and he says, pink or red or something. But X rays should not be able to tell color of clothing.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right. Right. It's true.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It would just go through the clothing.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Right, Right.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yeah, yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You're not accepting poetic license, are you?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Not at all. No, no, no. Okay. If you're going to use X rays, then stay in the X ray world. Otherwise invent N rays or something. Invent some other rays that he had. You're going to say X rays. You better stick with what we know.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So what you want is an upgrade for Superman. Just X ray vision and then a whole load of different.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Right.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Dial up visions.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That would be interesting. See? So, see, they didn't think of that.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Well, if you think about a whole Alphabet. That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Y rays, Z rays.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Z rays, yeah.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Omega rays.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yes.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Well, X rays, as many of you know, they go right through our bodies. Right. And they go through different materials and wind up with different colors. For example, our bones look different from our soft tissues and things like that. X ray telescopes that we're familiar with, the Chandra X Ray Observatory, xmm, Newton, things like that, they can look at the X rays, but X rays are also different colors. So some of them are what we call hard X rays, some of them called soft X rays. And in the same way that we can take pictures in red, green and blue and then mix them together to form a color photo, Superman could be able to detect or even emit X rays and come back and forth in these different bands and thus create a three color image.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

This is an undeveloped feature he could have expressed.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right. This is an evolutionary superiority that he has. But instead of us having rod and cone cells, he has some sort of X ray rod and cone cells that allows him to.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We are limited to just the visible spect. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. He's got X rays as a whole, accessible part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And all he does is just see through walls with it. Yes, but it's way more useful.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Highly underdeveloped.

[Chuck Nice]

He's modest man, you know what I mean? He probably could do all that, but he just doesn't want to let you know unless you're asking him about your pant.

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Hi, I'm Ernie Carducci from Columbus, Ohio. I'm.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

I'm here with my son Ernie because.

[Gary O'Reilly]

We listen to StarTalk every night and.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Support StarTalk on Patreon.

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Now, this thing about his gut. Yes, we know Superman came here as an infant.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I once got a phone call from DC Comics in my office.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You're in trouble.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, I work at the Hayden Planetarium. In case anybody was dragged here by the person next to you and doesn't know anything else about me, that's where I work. And I don't know. Ten, 15 years ago, I got a phone call. Hello, is this Dr. Eisen? I said, yes, this is DC comics. Can we ask you some questions? I said, sure. We have a new comic book where illustrating, and we want to know if we can illustrate Superman visiting the Hayden Planetarium. Will you give permission for this? Yeah. I mean, who's going to say no to that, right? So I said, what's up? And they said, oh, Superman, in this story that they're telling, is going to come to the planetarium to use our special tools of visualization and telescopes and things to see the destruction of Krypton, which is finally reaching Earth. And I said, ooh, that's good. That's good. But I had to dig in. And I said, all right. Superman was launched Moses style in a basket as an infant, arrived on Earth in that same basket as an infant. And anyone who knows infants knows that a month, two months, you know, the difference between the baby who's two months old and with three months old, this baby did not age. So there's only two ways. I'm telling this guy on the phone, only two ways. And he's taking notes. Right. He didn't argue with anything I was telling him. I said, the two ways I could have gotten here if he traveled, because they're aliens so they could do what they want. If he traveled the speed of light to Earth, he would not age relative to Earth because that's Einstein's relativity. However, if he's traveling the speed of light, so is the destruction of Krypton. That light, those light beams from the destruction would be right alongside him, and he'd land on Earth. You'd see Krypton destroyed. He couldn't show up later and then observe the event. So it can't be the speed of light.

[Chuck Nice]

It was at this point the gentleman from DC Comics knew that he had made a mistake.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So then I said, the only way you can get him here and have all this work is through a wormhole. Okay? A wormhole. They put him through a wormhole. He gets here instantly, long before the light beam. Dude, that's.

[Chuck Nice]

That's really. That's very cool, man. Yeah, okay, so to be honest, that's really cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so now hang on.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So then I said, yeah, hang on.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

How.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

How old is Superman? And he said, he's eternally in his late 20s. So I said, okay, I can find you a star that's like 26, 27 light years away, and I can make sure it's red. Cause there are plenty of red stars in the galaxy. Because the Krypton star is red.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And we can make that the star he came from. I can find an actual star. He said, yeah. So I went back, but is there.

[Chuck Nice]

An exoplanet around that star that could actually be Krypton?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, most stars will have exoplanets. We knew at this time, so I wasn't worried about that.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I gave him a choice of two or three stars.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. And they said, we'll take this one. I said, why? Oh, Cause it's in the constellation Corvus, one of the 88 constellations of the night sky. Corvus is a crow. And I said, well, why? He said, oh, the mascot of Smallville High is the crow. I said, whoa, that's good.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Whoa.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So there it is. It's now Superman canon, this conversation. And so, yeah, they drew him. And then they called me back and said, do you mind if we have him meet you? And I said, yeah, let's do it. Okay. So in this comic, I am meeting Superman, and there's a tender moment because he sees the destruction of Krypton, and he's sad.

[Chuck Nice]

He's crying super tears.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes, he's sad. And I realized at that moment, I'd never seen Superman emotionally sad.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Angry, sure, but not just genuinely sad. And so I know a little more than usual about how Superman got here because of that conversation.

[Chuck Nice]

So here's the takeaway, people. Neil Degrasse Tyson made Superman cry.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah, you did.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. So now they didn't show him opening up a wormhole. They just sent him here.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And that was that. Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Okay. So You've touched on wormholes faster than light travel.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And I think everybody in the room, me included, wants to know, what are we going to be traveling by in the future? If we actually get to do that, is it going to be a warp drive? Is it going to be a wormhole? Is it going to be a transporter? What is it going to be?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You know, I. I was hanging out with William Shatner, as you do.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. You know, who doesn't?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And I. I told him, and I said, the day we have wormholes, you won't need transporters.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because who's papa wormhole were you and the planet's surface and step through, and there you are. You don't need the lights and the sounds and the room and the Scotty on the switch. So this is an important choice here. So, Charles, can we make a wormhole?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

No. Why not?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Thank you. All right, next, do you have it?

[Gary O'Reilly]

No, no, no.

[Chuck Nice]

Bill Sander's gonna be so disappointed, actually.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

In the original Star Trek motion picture, the Enterprise almost got sucked into a wormhole because there was a warp drive malfunction and they were forced to be pulled out. You guys all remember that? Yeah. Now, the story is, with wormholes is it requires a great deal of energy to have happen. Okay. A transporter. Supposedly they could draw the energy from some sort of mythical, mystical warp drive engine or something. Right. And so that was something that you could do person to person. A wormhole requires something much more supernatural, more powerful. A black hole, for example, or some sort of mystical creature, someone who could master magic and dimensional travel. So in that sense, the wormhole strategy is less likely to be our strategy than a warp drive type strategy where we can somehow move faster than the speed of light through space through our controlled engines.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So do we borrow this energy from another dimension?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Ooh, good question.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Because how much? Because if this is like the galaxy and you warp it, right. And then you travel through the little bridge in the warping, you unwarp. Then you can cross the galaxy during the TV commercial.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And then you can make it.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

The problem is you have. In that scenario, you are warping space. That's a lot harder than warping ourselves.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You're warping the entire galaxy.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Right, the whole galaxy. That's what a wormhole would have to do.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

You see?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, got it.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

What happens is, with warp drive, this was all sort of retroactively created after the television show. Right. Was so successful. The idea is that you put the Enterprise, or your spaceship of choice Into a little bubble, a warp cell bubble that is outside the regular spacetime that we live in, but it's inside in a little pocket. Right. So it's almost in its own extra dimensional travel. And what happens is that bubble can move faster than the speed of light, Even though you yourself cannot. So while you're in the bubble, that's when your warp drive is working. It's not warping space, it's. It's warping you into, out of, through, and otherwise bubbly bubble in space, which.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Would take much less energy around you.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

In fact, a Mexican physicist named Miguel Acubiere used Einstein's general theory of relativity and actually came up with some mathematical equations that could make a warp bubble like that exist. So mathematically, you could do it. The problem is, once you've made the bubble, how do you move that thing? The bubble itself. And we still don't have anywhere near the technology to be able to do that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, what do you do with it.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Once you've got it?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

You go through space time at once.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You've done that.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Once you've made the bubble.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

And you've traveled.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Right. Then what happens? What you have to do is literally warp the bubble in such a shape that the space behind it is changing at a faster rate than the space in front of it. And that's how you get it to move through space. You keep warping in this sort of continuous way so that the warp pushes you forward through space.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's not what he asked. How do you get out of the bubble? Yeah. Once you get to your destination, once.

[Chuck Nice]

You get out, you pop it.

[Gary O'Reilly]

There's my.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Quite literally, your dilithium crystals in Star Trek.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Your dilithium crystals just shut off, and then the bubble just evaporates around you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, okay. So I have this dream of the future where wormholes. Because now you're putting kibosh on it. Wormholes are how we get around, which means no one needs roads. Not only that, your back of your refrigerator could be connected via wormhole to your grocer. And they pop it open. Oh, the milk is. And they put in fresh milk and eggs. And you just have a contract to have that loaded. And there's no truck. There's no. It would put Amazon out of business. Or the trucks would. The drivers.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

If we could move wormholes one end here, the other end there, and just move them around at will, then your scenario is completely likely. The problem is, it takes so much energy even to create a wormhole with two stable locations, that even if it were physically possible, which we don't know yet. When that happens, it's station to station.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. But if we told the Wright brothers one day we're going to fly 400 people at 600 miles an hour across the ocean. So that takes too much energy.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, look at that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Are you kidding me?

[Chuck Nice]

You're flying a bicycle right now.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

So that is the challenge.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Where is your sense of time perspective in that declaration that you're making?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

I would say that sometime within our lifetimes, we will be able to generate something that we have tried to do since the end of World War II, and that is controlled nuclear fusion.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Whoa.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

We will. At the moment, there is some technology that's happening, being developed all over the world, including in France at a site called.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Charles, that's a low bar. I'm talking about, like, the future.

[Chuck Nice]

But wait a minute. I don't know if that's a low bar, because when you think about it, what we're talking about here is the need for massive amounts of energy. So if we're able to control fusion, which, I mean, we know what kind of energy is packed in the bag.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I get it. I'm just saying we should have had fusion decades ago. We're not there yet.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I don't want that to be the. I want that to be a given. And now give me, like, extra cool stuff.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So now. But let me. Let me just shape the conversation a little differently. Okay, so we're talking about warping space. All right. There's another feature that we've seen in different films, and that's becoming invisible, not disappearing.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But just.

[Gary O'Reilly]

That's a different thing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's something different.

[Chuck Nice]

I know how you do that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Get older.

[Chuck Nice]

And then try to talk to young people.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yes. Visibility played a very prominent role in Fantastic Four, the most recent superhero movie featuring the Invisible Girl.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Now there's the invisibility cloak. In Harry Potter, you've got Star Trek.

[Gary O'Reilly]

The Romulan visible device.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, right. So. Oh, also in the original Predator movie.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, yeah.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

He had.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He could go. He could go invisible. But in all those cases, there was a little bit of little jittery, A.

[Chuck Nice]

Shimmery, shimmery thing like silhouette.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

A see through shimmering silhouette.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I'll tell you what I know about this. And Charles, you might know more. That there is work on this. It is real. In fact, in the. There's a James Bond I forgot which one is a Quantum of Solace, One of those where his Aston Martin has an invisibility button and he presses it and it just becomes invisible. But it shimmers into invisibility. Of course, you can still shoot it. You just can't see it. Okay. You don't know where to aim. And so there is research now, because what does it mean to be invisible? It means light from behind you continues to your sight line as though you're not there. So what you do is instead of blocking the light, they have a series of reflectors that coherently moves the light around your body and then sends it forward as though it didn't take this detour. And you're sitting on the other side of me. You just see the wall behind me and you don't even know that I'm there. There are demos of this online. There are YouTube videos. You can see this. Authentic. It's not AI fake. The problem is now it works only if you're exactly aligned with it. If you go offline, then the effect collapses, but that's a start. And you're functionally invisible when you can pull that off.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Marvelous.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

I was not aware of the technology.

[Gary O'Reilly]

But there's different types of invisibility. If you look at a stealth bomber, for instance, Right. It's invisible on the right, but that's only in that particular area.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Very important fact. So the stealth bomber has a radar cross section of a bumblebee. Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

So a dangerous bumblebee right there.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Imagine that radar.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Like a hell of a sting.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So if you are trying to detect planes with radar. So just at the risk of stating the obvious, the radar hits your intended object and it reflects back to you in the shape of what the thing is, and you can look at the blip. And if it's got any kind of detail and you put some AI on it, it'll tell you what the plane is. The Stealth bomber is designed very specially so that any incident radar reflects in a different direction than straight back.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

And can we get a version for this for speed traps?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Cause. Yeah. Cause to try to send it, then it doesn't go back and doesn't go back to. It'll whiz by. It'll just say, there's nothing there.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So if you look at how the surfaces of the stealth bomber and other stealth technologies are shaped, take a line and hit it, and it'll never send you back in the direction you came on any surface.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Okay, so it's all faceted and.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Correct. Yeah, correct. And just a side fact, the earliest of the stealth bombers, I think it was the F117, used now decades ago. Had flat surfaces on it. Okay, take a look at fascinating history of this. You know why it had flat surfaces? Because the computers were not powerful enough to perfectly solve the equation to have a continuously curving surface. So it had to approximate it with flat surfaces. So that still reduced the radar cross section, but it didn't take it to as low as the bumblebee. Once we could fit it, with high performance computing, you can curve the surfaces so that hardly any signal goes back. So here's the problem. Exactly your point. Its radar cross section is a bumblebee. But if you just step out and look up, there it is. Okay. Its optical cross section is the full plane. Okay? So where you are in the electromagnetic spectrum matters here.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Well, invisibility isn't all that great of a superpower by itself. Let's face it, if you can just hide, that's great, but you got to do something other than hide, right? And so, in fact, with the superheroine, the invisible woman, the Marvel comics back in the 60s developed an extra power for her. Not only did she have the ability to turn invisible, she also could project invisible force fields. She could actually do things invisibly to you without even touching you. All she had to do was to envision a shape of something made of force that was invisible and then be able to lift you up as if you were sitting in a chair, or to move you around or to push you back. It had the ability to protect and be invisible at the same time.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So that's effective even if the force is not invisible?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. It's a field around. You can do that. Now, we know in quantum physics there's an effect. Quantum is spooky, weird stuff. That's why everyone. It attracts people because they want to understand it. And quantum physics is not there to understand. Charles, correct me if I want, no one comes out of a quantum physics class. Oh, I understand that. No, you don't. Okay. It is just what the universe does on the small scales. We can describe it, we can calculate, but we scratch our heads every single time. And one of the effects, fascinatingly, is if you take two very smooth, very flat metal plates and evacuate the space between them so it's a vacuum. You start making them closer and closer to each other. There is a point where there's a whole new force that pulls them together, is not electromagnetic, it's not gravitational, it's not the strong nuclear force. It's some new thing.

[Chuck Nice]

Maybe they just really like each other.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Good point.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They pull each other together. And that discovery won a Nobel Prize. And so the Casimir effect, The Casimir effect, that's the Casimir force, the Casimir force. So what. Tell us what causes that?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

The Casimir effect is caused because there are things called quantum fluctuations in our universe. Even when things have apparently no energy or no change at all at the quantum level, levels far smaller than atoms with energies far tinier than a single, say, electrical pulse, there is a little bit of this happening all the time all around you. So if you are getting a smaller and smaller space between these two plates, you get to a small enough point where the quantum fluctuations are actually bouncing off of those plates. And so you create an attractive or sometimes a repulsive force that kicks in only just before they touch, because the quantum effects, small as they are, are definitely there. And so you can imagine actually influencing something without actually pushing on it or pulling on it. It's actually just the quantum work that's being done because the universe is shimmering.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You have to be super quick.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So I'm a villain. Just your average villain, but I want to upgrade to super villain. How am I using the Kasmir effect?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Is it like.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah, stuff.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Great point. If you somehow were a superhero or a super villain that could take advantage of quantum fluctuations, you might be able to say, I hereby declare that the quantum fluctuations in this part of the universe are going to be reduced. In exchange, the bonds in this part are going to be increased. All of a sudden, you have all this extra energy over here and much less over there. So you could imagine something literally being sucked from here to there due to quantum effects alone, because the object naturally.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wants to go from high energy to low energy.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right. So you could move something without doing anything other than just changing the quantum fluctuation.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You're creating a gradient.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

You're creating that gradient. And the problem, of course, is that this is a much larger space than the quantum fluctuation. Anytime you have a quantum fluctuation, we're talking things that are billionths of billionths of inches. Right. Going from this part of the room to that part of the room. If you wanted to carry me from here to there, that's many, many, many, many, many billions of inches. So by the time that happens, I think we're all going home.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So there's a.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Not yet. Not yet.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There's a physicist, George Gamow. He's a hero of mine because he was an active physicist and he wrote.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

For the public, and he was one of the first people who hypothesized the hot Big Bang theory.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, that's Right, that. And so he had a series of books called Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland. And each book, it's fanciful, and he illustrated it with cartoon illustrations. Each book was you living in a world where the universal constants have different values. So, for example, instead of the speed of light being as fast as it is, speed of light is 60 miles an hour. Oh, wow. So you drive down the street, he's describing this, and as you go to 30 miles an hour, he's describing how all your scenery changes. And so it was such a world to jump into. Which has me wonder, if you had real power over the universe and you could adjust the value of the physical constants that control quantum physics, maybe you could dial that up so that we respond to quantum physics in the way particles do.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yes. There is an episode of Star the Next Generation called Q who. Where this exactly happened.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Really?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yes. The great creature named Q, who was being punished by his other fellow Qs, had been powerful as one would happen. Yes. Right. Because he was being too mischievous. So what happened was that they were having a problem on a planet and trying to solve that problem, and they couldn't figure it out. And so they asked Q said, what would you do? He's like, oh, it's obvious. Change the gravitational constant of the universe. And all the rest of the humans are like, we can't do that. But the engineer Jordi laforge said, hey, maybe we could. Right. That's the superhero you're talking about. Somebody who could actually change the gravitational constant of the universe. And boom, Suddenly your planet is as light as a feather. Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Just because you change the force of gravity.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Just because you change force of gravity in that little gravity.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's a badass power right there.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Incredible power.

[Gary O'Reilly]

You're thinking like a supervillain now.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, I'm stopping. Don't bring me into your category. So what intrigues me about, I think, most about what has happened in this. In this world is there are some writers who know that matter is mostly empty space. We think we're solid objects and we're just not. And you can say, how empty are we? Well, let me first, let's go back to Ernst Rutherford, who's a New Zealand physicist, turn of the previous century around there, I think, or a little later, 1900. 1900, yeah, around there. And he did experiments where he hammered gold. Very thin. Gold is very malleable. So it's the most malleable substance on the periodic table. So you can hammer it. That's why gold makes very good leafing leaf Gold leafs?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yeah, on cakes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

What is this word for it? Gilding.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, I wonder how that happened.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Guild Hall. Yeah. Okay, so anyhow, if you gild a statue, you take gold leaf and using very little gold, you can greatly shine something up.

[Chuck Nice]

And that's why the Oval Office looks spectacular. Good leaf, everyone. Absolutely beautiful.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Don'T encourage him.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Don't encourage that. Okay, so he hammered it really, really, really, really thin. Okay, so the whole leaf is just dangling there. And he fired particles into it. 99.999% of the particles went through as though nothing was there. Oh, and occasionally one would bounce back the other way. And when he did the math on this, he realized that atoms are mostly empty space. And it is rumored that the next day he alone on earth knew this. That he was afraid to step onto the floor from his bed out of fear he would fall. Fall through. Just like the nightmares of a classical physicist transitioning into the world of the quantum.

[Chuck Nice]

Believe me, I have been that high in my.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So if you want a physical example, the nucleus of an atom is to the size of an atom as a Cracker Jack kernel of corn is to the entire stadium in which you may purchase it.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Put it out.

[Chuck Nice]

Are you sure we got the right analogy here? You said one Cracker Jack to the size of a stadium is the nucleus of an atom to the atom with the electron. The structure of an atom itself.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yes, I'll give you another analogy, Chuck.

[Chuck Nice]

Please do.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

If we took all of the Hamptons, okay. Took the space out of it. All of the Hamptons, including us, would fit in my fingernail.

[Chuck Nice]

Man, you just messed up a lot of real estate value.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

For sure.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

No, but it's true. The universe is 99.9999-999999-99999% empty space. And that's just.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Why don't we herebert double edged question. Firstly, why don't we just keep falling through stuff? And yeah, exactly. Is this the theory of probability? And we said, so having asked that question, I know the answer to it. So how is a superhero using this to their advantage to walk through walls? We've got. The Flash can run through walls and.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But the Flash can run through. Walt, I thought he just ran fast through walls.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

He could run fast.

[Chuck Nice]

He can vibrate. He can vibrate and move.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

And you have.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Dr. Manhattan can just move through things.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wait, wait.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So the Flash can do what?

[Chuck Nice]

He can. He's like, hey.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And that didn't get him through a wall.

[Chuck Nice]

And he can get through a wall by like shimmying vibrating.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wait, wait, Charles. Is he moving through the empty space of the atoms as he goes?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

He's quantum tunneling. Yeah.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Quantum tunnel. Okay, we better talk about that. Quantum tunneling.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Here we go. Okay, here's a story. Don't leave me hanging, see, because you have this 99.9999-9999% emptiness. The reason we don't keep falling through the floor and is because those itty bitty bits of material actually produce force fields. Aha. There are fields of force, mostly electromagnetic, some nuclear, some gravitational, around the particles that make us up. So for example, when I'm clapping my hands together, it is the force fields of the atoms in my fingers that are touching each other. And that is what's creating the sensation in my hands.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's why your hands don't pass through.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right, because they just tap each other. Because the fields are there. But it was shown a hundred years ago that every once in a while, because there's all this empty space and there are fields involved that make this all not fall through, that every once in a while something will go through just by accident because the shimmering quantum fluctuations every once in a while will shimmer just right so that a little particle will actually go right through. That's called quantum tunneling. And this can happen and in fact happens all the time. And I was so surprised to find out when I was writing the handy quantum physics answer book that there was part of electronics technology for decades. There's a thing called a quantum tunnel diode that was in many radios and other transisting products that were for sale in the 50s, 1960s, back in the day, 1970s. They are now obsolete. This is quantum technology that's now older than our non quantum technology that's in our cell phones, for example. But quantum tunneling is a real phenomenon and it happens all the time. But the Flash is supposedly so good at this that he can vibrate his entire body, all of his trillions and trillions of molecules, and go right through and figure out exactly the jigsaw puzzle way to get through the other side.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, it's like a game show where the wall comes at you and you have.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yeah, it's exactly that. But he's able to do it with every single atom in his body and every single atom in the wall.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He doesn't leave the body hole through the wall.

[Gary O'Reilly]

This basic probability that this continual working out of which molecule is going to pass through as opposed to which isn't.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right. The odds of any Single molecule doing something like a quantum tunnel is tiny. Now, you add it up and multiply it by every single probability of every single other quantum tunneling possibility, and you have a number that's so beyond anything that even our current supercomputers can't even computer for one tiny lake.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But the Flash can do it.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

But the Flash can do it all.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So is this the same thing as quantum teleportation? Yes.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Oh, a little bit different. A little bit different. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, do tell.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Quantum teleportation is not. Beam me up, Scotty. Okay, the term quantum teleportation actually predates the idea of teleporting, say, a human from one place to another using some sort of machine. But it was the idea of communicating information from one place to another. So copying a message perfectly and then sending that message perfectly to a different location without any kind of degradation would be what we used to call teleportation. Okay, so know that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So. So you're saying material objects were not part of that original.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right. It was an informational thing. So Morse code, for example, was actually a way of teleportation, because your dots and dashes here could be translated exactly as dots and dashes there.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

With low error.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

With very low error. Oh, quantum teleportation. Now, little bit different. You want to move quantum information from one spot to the next, and then when you do that transportation, there is always a massive amount of noise and energy lost, and your information gets lost. But if you can quantum teleport and you can get this information from one spot to another without losing, you literally have an unbreakable code, a way to transmit information that nobody else in the universe can actually ever intercept. And that's what quantum teleportation is really cool about.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And that's its greatest value going forward at this moment.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It would be a perfectly secure Internet, for example.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yes, that's right.

[Gary O'Reilly]

So what's our energy source for this?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

The energy source is merely the fluctuations that are caused by the quantum system itself. You're sending bits of information of bits of quantum information. We call them qubits, and then you package them in whatever physical system you want, whether it's an ion or an electron or some other set of particles, and then you send them either in a beam or along a wire or a fiber or something like that to another spot. And you want to preserve the coherence of information inside that qubit for as far as possible.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, and sculpt me. Is that happening tomorrow?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Right now, people are Actually able to quantum teleport little bits of information for actually many miles. So you can do pretty well, like send just a few pieces of. Yes, no, up, down, so forth without losing decohere, losing coherence. But the moment you have too much noise, moment the temperature goes up above a few degrees above absolute zero, you start losing information because things vibrate and they quantum fluctuations just overwhelm what it is. Absolutely.

[Chuck Nice]

It's not good for texting.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Depends on what you're texting.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Guinea pigs. You mentioned absolute zero. Yes, that comes up quite a lot in quantum, doesn't it?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That is true. It does.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Do things actually have to take place at absolute zero if it is.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Oh, that's a great question.

[Gary O'Reilly]

We might just be out of the equation.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Absolute zero is 459.16 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Ouch.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Give or take. Okay. At that temperature, no motion of atoms or molecules happens above the quantum fluctuation. Okay. That means that the reason we are warm is because the different atoms and molecules in our body actually vibrate and move and rotate and things like that. When all of that stops, that's the temperature known as absolute zero.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, can you blame them?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

No.

[Chuck Nice]

I mean, it's pretty doggone cold.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

It is pretty doggone cold. And at that temperature. See, what's interesting is it has been shown physically that we can never make a machine that reaches that temperature. It is only a theoretical minimum because you cannot create any kind of refrigerator that can get a temperature of absolute zero in a space.

[Chuck Nice]

So what is the coldest spot in the darkness of space? What would that temperature be?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Ah. The coldest temperature we've been able to achieve is actually colder here in a laboratory than out in space. Here in a laboratory, we've been able to get down to a few millionths of a degree above absolute zero. But out in space.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, what a failure.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right, right, right.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

But out in space, we have the leftover heat from the Big Bang. It's called the cosmic microwave background radiation. It's everywhere. And that's about 3 degrees above absolute.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's still damn cold.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yes. You don't want to go out there, wear a jacket.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So cool.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

But it is very.

[Chuck Nice]

So the Big Bang itself is hanging around in such a way that it's warming space to the point where we can't get to an absolute zero.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's absolutely right. And that heat is actually very important in the universe because we have these cold clouds of hydrogen gas floating around in the universe. These clouds would be doing absolutely nothing and Having no emission of energy or signal of any kind except the cosmic microwave background warms them up just enough that once every 10 to 20 million years on average, a hydrogen atom floating around in space will do a spin flip and release one single photon of radio wave emission at a wavelength of 21 centimeters. 21 centimeters. And so that.

[Chuck Nice]

And that means what? It's like the two of them is just like one foot and it releases at.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And Neil is just like 21 centimeters.

[Chuck Nice]

What the hell are you talking about?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

It's the best inside joke in the universe. Okay, okay. See, we tried hard not to laugh during that time, but as Neil can explain better than I can, because this was actually part of the area of research he was doing more than I was. 21 centimeter radiation is what tells us where the hydrogen material is in the universe and how it's moving to make new stars, new planets, and new galaxies in the universe.

[Chuck Nice]

So the excitation of these clouds.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's the right word too. Yeah. What? Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

That alone is it now a chain reaction?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

You create that bath of 3° Kelvin cosmic microwave background photons, which in a turn causes these gas clouds to do something. And that allows us as astronomers to figure out how the universe is aging and what its processes are going on billions of light years away.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But just to put this to bed, if absolute zero is the coldest possible temperature, then you need something to draw the heat away from what's there. And as you do that, it's still kind of in contact with what's doing, the drawing of the heat. So in principle, it may be physically impossible to reach absolute zero because it's always, like you said, it will always be in contact with something that's not absolute zero.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Gotcha.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because otherwise everything is absolute zero. And it's not. Right. Okay. There's some enclosure. So no matter how good your yeti is. Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Your stan lick cup.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. No matter how good it is, the ice in there eventually melts, Right? Okay. Because there's heat transfer, however slow. It's not a perfectly. If it were perfectly insulated, it would never melt. But that's not how the actual world works.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right. So even without quantum effects, you will wind up with thermodynamic losses. But even at absolute zero, we're now pretty sure that there are quantum fluctuations.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The quantum. Yes, but so what about the superheroes that can. That breathe fire or something or whatever they make fire coot dragons.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

You mean like Godzilla or something?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, I don't know any of the Ones that.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Or when Superman burps.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, we're back.

[Gary O'Reilly]

We're back there with it.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yeah. Sorry, everybody.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm just wanting to. Thermodynamically, the fire has energy, so that energy has to come from within.

[Chuck Nice]

Torch, Fantastic Four.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yes, the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four supposedly is able to convert chemically. Like, fire is basically a chemical reaction. Right. Something like a nuclear detonation or say the interior of the sun. That's a nuclear event. And so somehow that energy gets converted to heat depending on what the processes are in the sun or in the person or in the campfire.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. So the fire superheroes don't need quantum effects.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

They don't.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's a simple burning.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Even thermodynamics is extremely powerful. A lot of us don't understand just how powerful. But you know how there was this industrial evolution based on the steam engine, right? Yeah, yeah. Just the heat energy in this room right now.

[Chuck Nice]

And it is hot. People are hot.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm telling you.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

If you were to convert that into mechanical energy, you could take an 18 wheeler and drive it right through the wall from that side to that side and all the way out. You have so much kinetic energy from the thermal motions in the air alone that it's easy to see how you can have tremendous superpower, even if you don't have quantum power.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So coming out of the Industrial Revolution. That's right, yeah.

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Let's keep this going with the fact that if most of matter is yes, most of the universe is empty space and most of matter is empty space. On top of that, if you had the power to collapse particles down and then restore them.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Okay, you get a smaller version of yourself and then a bigger version of yourself.

[Chuck Nice]

That's Ant Man.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ant Man.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

By the way, worst name for a superhero.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It is really bad.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Well, but he's a pretty powerful guy.

[Gary O'Reilly]

But that's the quantum mechanics. That's exactly the quantum mechanics mystical Pym Particle, right?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yes, that's right.

[Gary O'Reilly]

They are borrowed from another dimension. So are we looking at quantum mechanics being able to enlighten us and our understanding of higher dimension?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

What a great question. Thank you.

[Gary O'Reilly]

It won't happen again. Don't worry.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

The so called Pym Particle is a fictional thing invented by Marvel Comics. There's a scientist named Henry Pym P Y M and by using these harnessing these particles, which are sort of super dimensional, you're able to make things big and small. You're literally in, in a sense, taking something like this, making it small, and then making it big or making it huge because you're taking advantage of the space in between your molecules and your atoms that we were just talking about.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So this fictional particle is exploiting known physics.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yeah. But this fictional.

[Chuck Nice]

Let me ask you, because what you just said, if you keep the same mass and you make me super big, I'm the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm a beach ball.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, I'm a beach ball.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

And so therein lies the extra dimensional part to which you refer. The only way that these particles can work in our world as if they were actually in our world. Right. But if they were really working, you would have to add mass to things as you were growing them and you would have to reduce the mass of the things that you were shrinking. Right. Otherwise if you shrunk down your vehicle and put it in your pocket so that you could ride it later, you would not be running very fast.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It would still weigh thousands of pounds.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

In your pocket.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Right. So that's.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because it fits in your pocket, doesn't mean it belongs in your pocket.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

So somehow these Pym particles, it's kind.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Of deep, actually, when I say that.

[Chuck Nice]

Just because that covers so many problems in life.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It doesn't mean it belongs there. Yeah. Right.

[Gary O'Reilly]

I love it.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yeah. So this material, this matter, had to either go into some dimension that doesn't weigh anything in our space time or be drawn from somewhere that previously didn't have any weight in our spacetime and suddenly becomes having weight. So you're really shunting these things in and out of spacetime.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Otherwise your challenge would be the creation and destruction of mass.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Correct.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

In our own space time.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And we know what happens when that happens. Those are nuclear bombs.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

If you take mass and make it energy.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's the end of your situation.

[Chuck Nice]

I'm sorry, I don't know why I got all excited just then.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, that's okay. Worries me, Charlie.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

No, no, no.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Because nuclear fusion also powers the sun.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

It's a very benign thing. We often think about on our world as being dangerous, but in fact, without it, we wouldn't be here.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Okay. We talked about quantum tunneling.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Gary O'Reilly]

There's another term that comes up. And if I think of a superhero, I go back to Dr. Manhattan, and that's the superposition, where I am simultaneously in different parts, in any part of wherever I want to be.

[Chuck Nice]

And Dr. Manhattan could be in many places at the same time. He would be on Mars and on the moon and in his laboratory and, you know, all. All at once.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wait, wait. Is that correct? That way.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Well, how many guys know Dr. Manhattan?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wait. Yeah.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

First Dr. Manhattan.

[Chuck Nice]

I know, we're geeking out here. This has turned into four guys at a bar. Does everybody know who Dr. Manhattan is?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Watchmen.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yeah. Dr. Manhattan was created in the Watchmen universe by Alan Moore in the 1980s.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

And this is a superhero, which didn't really want to be a superhero, but he's essentially blue. And he's played by Billy Crudup, and he doesn't wear any clothes. And he just sits around in this blue.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Is that your most obvious fact about him?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, the man is the most powerful entity ever created. And he's gonna say he doesn't wear clothes?

[Chuck Nice]

I gotta tell you, he looks pretty good naked.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Anyway, the idea is that he is, by himself, a kind of quantum particle. He has the powers of doing anything that quantum particles can do. But he is the size of a. And therefore, he has an unbelievably large amount of power. Because he can do all the things that can happen on microscopic scales. But out on the scale of us and our size.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So for him, his personal quantum constants are just larger.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right. It's as if George Gamow himself, as.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We were talking about earlier, he's got a. He's Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He is the Wonderland.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. So I don't think it's. That he was simultaneously in those places. He just. Like a particle has a probability. It can be found in any one of the places in its. What should we call this?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

The wave function?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The wave function. Anywhere. It's wave function. He can say, my wave function includes Mars. I'm going to be on Mars right now. So then he's on Mars.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

He doesn't actually have to travel there.

[Chuck Nice]

He doesn't travel there. He's already there all the time.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All the time.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. Because he's entangled with himself.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yes, but is it entanglement or is it manipulation?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Great question. Let me try to break that down a little bit. Okay. You guys might have heard of quantum entanglement lately. It's in the news. It's very exciting and so forth, but.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Actually it's not in the Hamptons news. That's a different. No, it's summer.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

I heard some people on the beach the other day talking about.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Quantum entanglement is the idea where you can take a particle and literally split it into two identical particles. And they can be as far apart or as old or as new or as kept or as they want, and they will still stay the same particle. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And know about each other.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right. So you have something that could be the size of a solar system, and yet if you got information on one particle, you would instantaneously get the information on the other particle as if they were entangled. When, in fact, in the quantum way of thinking about it, they are still one particle, one particle. They just still happen to be connected as both a particle and a wave that keeps changing size and shape. So you have this particle. And we in the classical world think of particles as like a piece of stone or a rock or a piece of metal or something. Just a particle. Right. But in fact, if you think quantumly, the particle and the wave are interconnected. And so the concept of size and the concepts of age are very, very different. And as long as you can keep that coherence and make sure that there isn't noise or static that interrupts the connection between these pieces, they are one particle, no matter how small.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There's a contest. Who can create the most distant particle pairs in this exercise. And the leaders in this, in the world, is China. China has the farthest separated particles.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Not for long. I'm here to say that I'm gonna take care of this.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Two weeks.

[Chuck Nice]

Two weeks, and China.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

China will lose. So, contest. We don't know. It's like an arms race, but we don't know why. What good is it?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Right at this moment, physicists are still trying to figure out whether entanglement is a perfectly normal thing that happens all the time. We just never noticed it. Or whether it's actually something profound that can be used in a way. For example, for instantaneous communications or other kinds of storage of information and so on. What we do know is that if you entangle some things, you can create this thing called a qubit, which is a piece of information that's not just one or zero that we use in our current computers.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Which are called bits.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right, they're called bits. But these qubits can take positions between 0 and 1, doing strange things in between until such time as you read them out as a zero or a one. Okay, this is a very odd concept in our heads, but what it is, it means that we, as Particles or conglomerations of particles could in fact communicate or otherwise interact as waveforms of energy in ways that we can't imagine now but might be able, for example to break computer codes instantaneously or allow us to do in kinds of computations or communications.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The future of computing.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yeah. Very, very fast.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We're on the doorstep of this.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

The doorstep of it. We're way, way, way. Well, the door is very thick.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

But we are at the doorstep. Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So what you're describing is the. I guess in the lingo, the collapse of the wave function. Because the particles are waves. The waves are particles, but when it's manifesting as a wave the wave occupies all the space that you're describing. When we think of particles, it's here or there. The wave is whatever you calculate the extent of the wave to be. The particle can manifest at any point within that volume. And so then you collapse the wave function.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

There it is.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Then there's the particle over here. So this. So Dr. Manhattan would collapse his own wave function and he'd show up on.

[Chuck Nice]

Mars, collapse it again, and he's back here.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right?

[Chuck Nice]

That's wild, right?

[Gary O'Reilly]

That's the manipulation.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yeah. Yep. There you go.

[Gary O'Reilly]

If we've gone through the collapse of a wave function and we understand that there's a duality of particles and waves where does it go when there's a many worlds theory? Because you're not quite. Are you certain about that one?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

The many Worlds. I'm.

[Chuck Nice]

What is the Many worlds theory?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Ask Charles. Charles, please, because you don't know.

[Chuck Nice]

Enlighten us.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

No, no, no. Neil knows. He just doesn't like it as much. We've had this conversation a little bit before but maybe we can expound on it later. See, here's the deal. About half a century ago, some physicists noticed that the mathematical equations that describe wave functions and quantum physics and so forth don't necessarily have to reflect our universe alone. In fact, those equations are consistent with the picture that every time a quantum particle does something or doesn't do something a whole new universe is spawned. Okay. Imagine if, for example, I go out there and I get hit by the jitney. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right.

[Chuck Nice]

But I have a good lawyer for that, thank you.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

As we determine, in most cases, I would not be in good shape. But you could imagine a scenario in the universe where I'm hit by the jitney and I'm fine. Just that one tiny possibility. If that happens, then that universe has me in it just fine. And then all the other universes they continue to coexist, but I'm not fine. Now, imagine tomorrow I get hit again by the jitney, and then that process happens all over again. There's a tiny little possibility that I'm fine and that person survives. If I keep following the surviving me in front of the jitney, I am in a universe where I live forever.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, but you keep getting hit by the damn bus, right? That sounds like hell.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That ain't so good. I agree. But you see, the vast majority of other universes that exist in this mathematical many worlds, I'm not fine. And that's the one that we are most likely going to share. Right? Because the chances of me being fine after being hit by the jitney a.

[Chuck Nice]

Few thousand times are very, very small.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Very, very, very small.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

But you can see the problem with this many worlds hypothesis of quantum physics, right? You're generating essentially a nearly infinite number of new universes every single second that the universe is around. It's not quite infinite because the universe isn't infinitely old, but in every single circumstance, you can imagine literally anything happening.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Charles, isn't this kind of a cop out? What it's saying is we have the wave function.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And the wave can collapse here or there, and we don't know until you poke it or until it does collapse. But it might have collapsed over there. In fact, maybe it did collapse over there, and you're telling me it did collapse over there, and that's a whole new universe.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

So it is a cop out what you're saying.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You're taking our statistical ignorance and trying to step out the back door by making multiple universes so that we're no longer statistically significant. Yeah, and why should I embrace that?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

You shouldn't.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

You don't have to. This is actually.

[Chuck Nice]

That's one of the universes, by the way.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

That's right.

[Chuck Nice]

In one universe, in another universe, you're just like, I love many worlds.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Chuck is exactly right. You can literally imagine any kind of universe, and it has just as good a chance of existing, assuming the laws of physics are the same in that universe as in your universe, as your own universe. Our universe, the one that we share right now in this room, is a collective collapse of the wave function, where all of our wave functions that make up who we are and where we are have all collapsed to this moment in this place that makes our universe right now unique. If we allow the existence all those other universes, what does that make this universe? Right. Mathematically, those universes are just as valid as this one. But we're in this one. Doesn't this one have some greater validity than those?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, Charles, you're dead in this unit. We've established you've been hit by the. Yeah, you're.

[Chuck Nice]

You're under the bus, buddy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So then what about the Marvel Universe where they keep going in and out of the multiverse?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Oh, yes, the quantum realm.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. Is this some of that.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Yes.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Was that some of this?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Here's the point. If you get that small right, your wave function becomes pretty much melded with all the other wave functions in this many worlds universe, right? As a result, if you figured out some way to navigate this quantum realm, which is far smaller than even what the Big Bang was just before it began to bang. This is a millionth of a billionth of a trillionth of a quadrillionth of an inch, you know, really, really, really tiny. This Marvel Universe fake quantum realm thing suggests that if you just. All you need to just be able to navigate this really weird, quantum tiny space, and you can emerge in that universe where I am living forever despite being hit day after day, right? Then you can come get me from that universe and say, here's the guy who can't be killed by the jitney. Bring him back, Navigating through the realm to here, and then bring me over there, and then you can engage in the most amazing insurance fraud in history. That's the quantum realm of Marvel Comics. Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wow.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Should we believe it?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I wonder just what's possible, right? We're not quantum sized. We can't play in Mr. Tompkins Wonderland. Fun to think about, though.

[Chuck Nice]

But you said the math works. The actual math works.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So the curious fact is, mathematics, as expressed by the physicist, is a representation of our models of how the universe works using symbols which allow us to manipulate the ideas perfectly logically. Right? You can argue what's true or not, but once you've set it up mathematically, then manipulate the math. And that's tantamount to manipulating your understanding of the universe if it's the correct model of mathematics. So everything else about this math is working in our universe.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I stepped lightly towards these other realities that are so mind blowing. But again, is it more mind blowing than what quantum physics might have looked like to the original classical physicists? But we live. There is no it revolution without the exploitation of the quantum. There is no creation, storage, and retrieval of digital information without quantum physics. It's not some other thing that other smart people worry about in the lab. It is with us. We are embedded in it. There is no modern industry without it.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

So.

[Chuck Nice]

And if you were to go back to, like, 1910 and show somebody an iPhone, you know, they. They'd burn you at the stake.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, they resurrect the witch burning.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes, they would.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

They were like, we were wrong about witches. And, you know. So are we.

[Gary O'Reilly]

Are we gradually inching towards the practical of quantum theory rather than it being able to be achieved with immediacy?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So I'm going to say it, and then I want to get Chuck's reaction. There's those parts of quantum physics that we need, that we want that help us in our technologies and our computers and everything. Then there's the part of the quantum physics that's just kind of floating out there that we have to take seriously, because it's the extensions of what we know works mathematically and conceptually. So now you go to the edge and you explore the edges of those equations. Oh, my gosh. You just gave me a whole new fricking universe. And what does that mean? And where is that going to take us? And I got entanglement and I got all of this. That's why people are taking it seriously, because the rest of it works. In fact, quantum physics is the most successful theory of physics ever put forth. It has never been shown to be wrong. And that's spooky.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, that's because nobody understands it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, let me try to land this plane here. Is what you're telling me that this sort of probabilistic understanding of a particle, the wave particle duality, when it's manifesting as a wave, we don't know where the particle is. The question doesn't even make sense. It's the wave that takes up the space, and depending on how you poke it, it will manifest the particle here, there, or somewhere else. Okay, yes. Now you want to create universes in which the particle can be in those places, turning what is probabilistic, statistical, and quantum, into something that's deterministic. So Einstein's quip declaration, even because he was slow to adopt the weirdness of the quantum physics, he said, God does not play dice with the universe. And if you're in our realm, it kind of looks that way. God is playing dice with the universe, but in your realm, God has loaded the dice and knows exactly what roll is gonna get, because every roll is happening in a universe that's out there spontaneously created in the act of the collapse of the wave function. Have I said that accurately?

[Dr. Charles Liu]

You have. God is playing all of the dice all at the same time.

[Chuck Nice]

And that's why the house always wins.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

And it's just a matter of. It's just a matter of which table you want to roll at. That's all it is. Beautifully said, Neil. Beautifully.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So if the casino. If it says God's casino, stay away. So, Charles, give us a thought to take us out.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

When we first thought of quantum physics. Heck, when I first took quantum physics in college. I was like, this can't be right. But that's only because I didn't have a good sense yet of reality as a whole. Today we understand, as I see more and more of reality happening. All the things that I don't understand is only what I don't understand, not how the universe works. So I'm hoping that as I continue to go in my journey of discovery. And studying things like galaxies and supermassive black holes and things like that. That I am open enough to see those things which I could never conceive of. Things that, in my gut, I know are wrong. And yet be able, over time, to see that actually that is reality.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And that's what you sell yourself short there. It's not that in your gut, you know it's wrong. It's that in your gut, your life experience is insufficient to absorb that which stands far outside of your life experience. So it's not that it's wrong. It's just. It doesn't fit.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

It doesn't fit. Yeah.

[Chuck Nice]

Don't be so hard on yourself, man.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

I know these guys are the most supportive, supportive friends I could ever ask for. If I can embrace that part of me which I don't understand and don't know. And perhaps even fear. Then I'm going to be better off in this world. And I hope all of us would share in that with me.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. Well, thank you for that. Thank you for that. As I'd like to do at the end of our shows is only offer a cosmic perspective. The summation of what we've discussed. And perhaps a perspective on what it means for us today, tomorrow, and beyond this. As a scientist, it's kind of your job to stand at the frontier. You put a foot in what is known and a foot in what is unknown. And you sort of work your way out there. Now, what we do know is that, of course, as the area of our knowledge grows. So, too, does the perimeter of your ignorance. So we can feel good about what we do know, as Charles surely does. He's worked hard for his expertise. But as you walk the perimeter, you Say, oh my gosh, there's so much more we don't know than what we do. And for me, I celebrate the ignorance. As the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke noted, one needs to learn to love the questions themselves because those questions are not just I don't know and then walk the other way. They draw you towards paths of discovery. And what I enjoy about our world is that we have creative people who maybe took a few physics classes, maybe read your Quantum Handy question book, whatever it's called. Sorry, Quantum Handy, that. And these are people who are creative storytellers, cinematographers, comic book illustrators, people who are not content with just the world. Let's reach out to all the places science can take us and stoke our imagination beyond what is otherwise visible, just looking at what we know today. And so I celebrate the fact that we live in a world where science is accessible to enough other people who are not scientists that we can celebrate science as a fundamental part of our culture, not just an activity conducted by pointy headed intellectuals in laboratories. And that is a cosmic perspective. Thank you, Bill Hall.

[Dr. Charles Liu]

Gary.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Pleasure, my friend. Thank you so much. Keep your teeth look nice. That was StarTalk Live Special Edition at Guild Hall, East Hampton. Neil Degrasse Tyson here, wishing you to keep looking up. Howdy, partner. Next time you get chicken at McDonald's, you won't have to choose between the creamy flavors of ranch and the tangy kick of buffalo any longer. This time, enjoy all the flavors you.

[Chuck Nice]

Love all at once.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Try new creamy and tangy buffalo ranch sauce. I participate in McDonald's for a limited time. Hey, everybody, it's Rob Lowe here. If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe. And basically it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J. Fox. There are new episodes out every Thursday, so subscribe, please and listen wherever you get your podcasts.