Thing You Thought You Knew – Red Hot, Blue Hot

Summary

StarTalk Radio: "Things You Thought You Knew – Red Hot, Blue Hot"

Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Co-host: Chuck Nice
Air Date: February 10, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this lively and comedic episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson joins co-host Chuck Nice to debunk some common misconceptions about molecules, color temperature, and what really happens when food “goes bad.” Blending science, relatable humor, and thoughtful explanations, they challenge how we think about everyday things—from drinking water, to setting up lights for a photo, to the mysterious shelf life of a Twinkie.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. How Small are Molecules?

[02:09–14:41]

• The Immensity of the Microscale:

  • Neil asks Chuck to contemplate the number of molecules in a glass of water versus all the cups of water in Earth’s oceans. The answer surprises: “There are more molecules of water in that cup than there are cups of water in all the world's oceans.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 06:11)
  • This leads to the realization that, over time, you inevitably drink molecules passed through countless people and animals throughout history, including notable figures:
    “Every glass of water you drink contains molecules that passed through the kidneys of Abe Lincoln, of Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc. Pick your favorite historical character.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 07:41)
  • The same concept applies to the air:
    “There are more molecules, air molecules, in a breath of air you take, than there are breaths of air in all of the Earth's atmosphere.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 08:11)

• Avogadro’s Number & Perspective:

  • They discuss Avogadro’s Number (6.022 × 10²³) to represent the staggering number of molecules in a mole of substance.
    “It’s 100 times bigger than the number of stars in the observable universe.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 14:20)

• Notable Moments:

  • Chuck’s comic discomfort:
    "You've made it so I am never again going to drink water." (Chuck Nice, 07:45)
  • On the challenges of understanding extremes:
    “This is a problem when you are dealing with extremes... our own physiology's ability to come to terms with things that fall far outside of our life experience.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 14:41)

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2. Red Hot vs. Blue Hot: The Science of Color Temperature

[17:32–29:16]

• Physics of Thermal Radiation:

  • Neil explains how objects emit light at different temperatures, progressing from infrared (invisible) to red-hot (coolest visible heat), white-hot (hotter), and finally blue-hot (hottest).
  • “A red hot object is the coolest of all hots... hot things are blue. Medium temperature things are white. Cooler things that are still glowing are red.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 20:45 & 19:29)
  • Chuck’s realization:
    “Damn. Sorry, red. Dad.” (Chuck Nice, 20:54)

• Artistic Interpretation & the Temperature Paradox:

  • The artistic and photographic communities label blue lighting as "cool" and red as "warm," which annoys Neil since, in physics, it's the reverse.
  • “If you're gonna be numerical about whether something is warm or cool, do you have permission to leave the artists behind?” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 23:17)
  • “Increase the color temperature of the lamp so that the scene it's illuminating is cooler.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 23:52)
  • The Sun, commonly thought of as yellow, is technically white at about 5,600K:
    “The sun is freaking white.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 24:14)

• Everyday Examples:

  • Electric stoves, arc lamps in printing, and even water coolers reinforce these color associations in society—even if they're technically wrong.

• Memorable Humor:

  • Neil on drinking water from color-coded spigots:
    “I can't tell you how much of my life I've wasted staring at twin spigots on a water cooler, figuring out which one is the cold water.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 28:23)
  • Chuck on updating language:
    “I'm changing red hot to white hot from now on... Blue hot is my newest thing. I'm going blue hot all the time.” (Chuck Nice, 25:34 & 25:50)

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3. When Food Goes Bad: Microbes, Chemistry, and the Quantum

[31:16–45:19]

• Biological Spoilage:

  • Normal food spoilage involves microbes (bacteria, mold) multiplying as food ages and is exposed to warmth.
  • Smell evolutionarily saves us:
    “If you enjoyed the smell of rotting food, that is a genetic branch that's headed for extinction.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 34:09)
  • “There's bacteria on the food all the time. It's just a matter of how much is there.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 32:25)

• Role of Temperature:

  • Biological and chemical processes accelerate as temperature rises—about doubling in rate for every 10°C—explaining why refrigeration dramatically prolongs shelf life.
    “Chemical and biological processes double their rate every 10 degrees Celsius.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 35:29)
  • Pasteurization and ultra-pasteurization explained by microbe elimination levels.

• Ultimate Food Preservation & The Quantum Twist:

  • Remove all microbes, vacuum-seal, and chemically sterilize for near-perfect preservation—a necessity on long-duration space missions.
  • But even then, food degrades—due to quantum tunneling, which eventually breaks down chemical bonds in proteins, changing texture even in perfect isolation:
    “Given enough time, quantum physics degrades the texture of the food. So your meat will still be meat in five years, but you’ll start noticing, 'It's not real meaty.'” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 39:42)
  • Crystals (like salt and sugar) represent stable low-energy states:
    “Crystals have the lowest energy of that molecule. So it’s just weird, knowing physics and chemistry, to see this [cult-like fascination with crystals] unfold.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 42:21)

• Notable Humor:

  • Chuck on depression-era food wisdom:
    “Mom, this thing is moving... ‘That ain’t nothing but a little mold.’” (Chuck Nice, 31:41)
  • Neil on salt:
    “When you go to buy salt, are you checking the freshness date on the salt?” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 42:41)

• Fun Fact:

  • Tabasco doubled its sales by simply making the bottle’s opening bigger! (44:09)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On drinking history:
  “Every glass of water you drink contains molecules that passed through the kidneys of Abe Lincoln, of Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 07:41)
• On numbers beyond imagination:
  “It's 100 times bigger than the number of stars in the observable universe.” —on Avogadro's number (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 14:20)
• On red-hot vs. blue-hot:
  “A red hot object is the coolest of all hots…hot things are blue.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 20:45, 19:29)
• On scent and survival:
  “If you enjoyed the smell of rotting food, that is a genetic branch that's headed for extinction.” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, 34:09)

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Key Timestamps

| Segment | Timestamps | |------------------------------------------------------|---------------| | Molecules & Shared Atoms in Water/Air | 02:09–14:41 | | Avogadro’s Number & Scale of Microworld | 12:37–14:41 | | Color Temperature: Red Hot, White Hot, Blue Hot | 17:32–29:16 | | Artistic vs. Scientific Use of Color in Photography | 21:17–29:16 | | Microbial Food Spoilage | 31:16–36:56 | | Chemical & Quantum Food Decomposition | 37:45–41:56 | | Crystal Stability & "Forever" Foods | 42:00–43:48 | | Tabasco Sauce Fun Fact | 44:02–44:22 |

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Episode Tone

The episode is full of humor, fast banter, and pop culture references, balanced by Neil’s characteristic clarity and insight. Chuck’s running jokes and reactions provide comic relief, making complex science approachable and memorable.

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Final Thoughts

StarTalk's “Things You Thought You Knew – Red Hot, Blue Hot” combines science demystification and everyday wisdom with personality. Whether pondering microscopic molecules, debating color temperature lingo, or considering how to survive an apocalypse with shelf-stable food, Neil and Chuck skillfully bridge the gap between cosmic perspective and the familiar realities of daily life.

As always: Keep Looking Up!

Transcript

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Another things you thought you knew episode. We're talking about small molecules, the temperature of light and food gone bad. Check it out. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. Do you have any idea how small molecules are?

[Chuck Nice]

Well, seeing as I can't see them, I'm gonna say I do not.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right? And even if you did say you knew, I would say you didn't know. I'm just pulling rank here. I'm just saying molecules. I mean, think about it. Our understanding of the existence of atoms did not even come into age until the 20th century. Atoms were still a hypothesis that there'd be this sort of smallest unit of a material called the atom. By the way, the word atom from the Greek means indivisible. So they imagined that there was some indivisible minimal part of a thing. But of course, we break out bust atoms all the time. So no, they're not indivisible. But we kept the term, right? We kept the term atom to describe the electrons, protons, neutrons, the classical particles you learn about in. In high school chemistry and maybe physics. So molecules are. I could give an example. Okay. And this is my favorite example of them all. So I ask you, think about how much water there is in the world in all the oceans.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And if you go in the middle of the ocean, it's miles deep. Okay. The Titanic was like three and a half mile. I forgot the exact number. Multiple miles below Earth's surface. Okay. That's a lot of water.

[Chuck Nice]

It's a lot of water.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And what is the water molecule?

[Chuck Nice]

H2O?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

H2O. Okay. So two hydrogen, one oxygen, H2O. So that just salts and dissolves salts and fish poop and stuff like that. But it's basically H2O all over the world. All right.

[Chuck Nice]

I love that you threw in the fish poop. I'm so proud of you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Thank you. That's the juvenile. The eight year olds will want to know that. Yes. There's also fish poop in the ocean. So where else does it go? Right. And just to recite the title of a book they may have grown up on, Everything Poops and It shows. It's just a story. It's for little kids. I know. Because they poop and they know they poop and they're fascinated by it. And it's just an account that everybody poops and all the fish poop in the ocean. Okay. They don't go onto land to poop.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. I read that book to my daughter. She thought it was crappy. I couldn't help it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So they don't have outhouses on the land. Right.

[Chuck Nice]

That would be amazing, though, poop in situ.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Wouldn't that be.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, God. You just gave me the best thought in the world where a fish just shows up at somebody's apartment door or house and just lets one go and goes, how do you like it?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Put it into your own house. Cause we put all our sewage into it.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. We put everything to theirs.

[Kaitlin Coleman]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

How great would that be? Now you know how it feels.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, So I now take a glass and fill it with water. Okay. A regular cup.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That you might drink water out of.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Fill it Up. So stare at that cup and I will tell you that there are more molecules of water in that cup then there are cups of water in all the world's oceans.

[Chuck Nice]

Holy crap. Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, now, the reason why I couched it that way is because that leads to fascinating conclusions. Okay? If this cup of water has more molecules than there are cups of water in all the world, that means when I drink this cup of water and it comes out of me eventually, right through snot, spit, sweat, pee, whatever, it'll come out of you and it goes back into the environment. Okay. You have excreted enough molecules to populate every single cup of water that is ever drawn from the oceans. Just gotta give it enough time. Okay. Wow. So this moisture goes back into the environment, and the molecules that pass through my kidneys are now working their way around the world. Give it enough time, I can guarantee you that there will be some molecules in that next cup of water you scoop that pass through my kidneys. So I get to make the following statement. Every glass of water you drink contains molecules that pass through the kidneys of Abe Lincoln, of Genghis Khan, Joan of Arc. Pick your favorite historical character.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You have shared water molecules with that person.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, all I can say is that somehow you've done it, Neil. You've done it. You've made it. So I am never again going to drink water.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I think I ran the calculation. It's about 100 molecules per cup of water. That's how small molecules are. That's my point. That's the whole point of this exercise. I'll give you one more. You ready?

[Chuck Nice]

Go for it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There are more molecules in a breath of air. This would be now nitrogen molecules, mostly nitrogen, and then oxygen, N2 and O2 because they're each in a molecular form. A little bit of argon and some carbon dioxide, but it's predominantly nitrogen and oxygen. There are more molecules, air molecules, in a breath of air you take, than there are breaths of air in all of the Earth's atmosphere.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, got you. Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. So it means when you exhale.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Air that comes out of your lungs scatters back into the air. And there are plenty of air molecules to scatter into every other breath that will ever be taken in the future history of the world.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So you're not only sharing water molecules with people who come before you, you're sharing air molecules that you have breathed. That's how small they are. This is my point. It's remarkable that we were able to discover them at all, much less the atoms that they comprise. What you do is you look at things that they do that you can see through microscopes, electron microscopes, this sort of thing. And you say the only understanding of this is if the atoms got together and made a molecule. But nobody's holding up a molecule here, take this and plug it in this way. There's some ways to image molecules. We're on the verge of that. It's something called quantum construction. There's a real term for it. But what they're actually doing is if you get tools small enough, you can take a molecule and put it here and add an atom and build things at a molecular level, the way carpenters or construction workers assemble buildings by putting bricks together.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, that's freaky and scary.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's a little freaky and scary, Right? If you have a brick that's a smaller part of a larger hole, you just need tools that can maneuver the bricks.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

If I want to make a molecule that's never been made before, and I make sure that it's a stable molecule, how am I going to do that? Do I just put all the. And jiggle them? Maybe they won't want to do that on their own. But if I make it happen with quantum tweezers, then I can start making molecules. And you might even be able to make life at that point and not wait for it to happen by chance. Wow. So a frontier is our ability to manipulate those things that we could never see.

[Chuck Nice]

Interesting. That is amazing.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But why think of it not as creepy that you're drinking water that passed through someone else's kidneys?

[Chuck Nice]

No. I don't ever want to have that thought again. I'm so sorry that you brought it up.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You're gonna stop drinking water entirely.

[Chuck Nice]

Let me tell you, the whole time you've been talking, I've been wanting to drink this right here. I'm not doing it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You're not doing it.

[Chuck Nice]

I'm not doing it now. It's over. I just can't. I can't drink water anymore. I'm gonna have to go my whole life now. It's gonna have to be great Kool Aid, because guess what? I know that I'm not sharing that with Jesus and Genghis Khan.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They didn't have Kool Aid.

[Chuck Nice]

I know that. Jesus and Genghis Khan did not have Kool Aid. So now I can only drink drape Kool Aid.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Thank you so much. Yeah. So it's just they are impressively little.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And here we are in our big macroscopic scale. I Mean, think about most of the history of research and investigation and trying to understand the world around us. We were anchored to our five senses as the one and only, as the only means of measuring and decoding what the world was doing around us. Right? And forget molecules. We didn't even know about bacteria or viruses. Right? And so you catch a disease, you find somebody to blame, or you were sinner, you know, you had other explanations for it, none of which bore any correspondence with an objective reality that we would not then glean until many, many centuries later.

[Chuck Nice]

I don't know what you're talking about. We still haven't learned that lesson.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, that's true. People say, yeah, people don't know how to relate to viruses.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, we still don't know. Oh, man. Oh, that is really cool, though.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah. So there it is. I have nothing more to add to that. Oh, and by the way, this is how you get Avogadro's number. That's the count of molecules in a mole.

[Chuck Nice]

What's the mole number?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, so you have to look at the element on the periodic table or the atomic weight of the molecule itself. And so let's look at carbon. Carbon has. Is its atomic number is 12. The natural carbon has six protons and six neutrons. So a mole of carbon is 12 grams of carbon.

[Chuck Nice]

Gotcha.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. A mole of silicon would be 18 grams of silicon. Okay, so because its Atomic number is 18.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm sorry. Sorry, I didn't say this. Right. Carbon's atomic number is six because you're counting protons, but its atomic weight is six plus six, you get 12.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, so that's six protons, six neutrons. So my only point here is, so you can ask, if you have a mole of a substance, how many molecules is that? Okay, so 12 grams, you know, 12 grams is not very much.

[Chuck Nice]

No, it's not.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, it's not. So 12 grams is a third of an ounce of carbon. How many molecules in there? Well, it's Avogadro's number of molecules, and that's 6.022. Just call it six times ten to the 23rd power.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. Okay, cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

23Rd.

[Chuck Nice]

That's insane.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's insane.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yes.

[Chuck Nice]

I mean, that's. I mean, that's really not a conceivable number.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's 100 times bigger than the number of stars in the observable universe.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, I was gonna say that's not a conceivable number because, like, the 23 zeros, like once at once.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You can't say oh, it's twice as big as this other thing you already know about.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly. Because there is no other thing. It just doesn't. There's just nothing that. It's crazy. That's crazy.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right? Right. This is a problem when you are dealing with extremes and we confront this all the time in astrophysics. Right. How do you talk about the biggest explosion in the universe? How do you measure that? Right. Usually you measure something because you have other things that are bigger, other things that are smaller, and then you say it's somewhere in there and then you triangulate on it and now I understand. But if it's more than anything you've seen before, it becomes a challenge to explain. It's a philosophical issue of communication. Right. And our own physiology's ability to come to terms with things that fall far outside of our life experience.

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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[Chuck Nice]

I'm Alikon Hemraj and I support Star Talk on patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I as an Astrophysicist know we have something called color temperature.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, I am aware of that.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

We practically invented that concept.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, well, I like photography, so that's how I know color temperature.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, I'm going to get there and you're going to find out why I have issues. Okay. Uh. Oh. So here's what happens. If you have an object that is of a given temperature. If it's higher, if it's hotter than absolute zero, it will be radiating some electromagnetic energy. Okay. Right. So the colder it is, the longer are the wavelengths of light it emits. Radio waves. The universe is pretty cold. It's only 3 degrees Kelvin. That's emitting microwaves. And the hotter it gets, the more it emits light of higher and higher energy. So let's keep going. Eventually you can heat this thing up so that some of the energy that comes out that it emits comes out in the red part of the spectrum. That object, if you looked at it with your eyes, you'd say it's red. Okay. It'll start doing that at 1500 degrees. Okay. Keep increasing the temperature. It's not only giving you red light, it's also giving you light from the rest of the rainbow, from the rest of the optical spectrum. So it'll give you not only red, but also orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. If you do that in roughly equal amounts, the glowing object turns white.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because you have equal amounts of all the colors of the rainbow. So now if you keep raising the temperature, this energy output continues to shift and now it's emitting more blue light than red light. If you're emitting more blue than red through the spectrum, that object will look blue.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. So I'm going from like a couple of thousand degrees to like 6,000 degrees to 10, 12, 15, 20,000 degrees. We go from.

[Chuck Nice]

Am I on my stove?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm getting there. I'm getting there, I'm getting there. So what? I'm getting there. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Hang with me. Hang with me. So an object goes from what is basically invisible to you, unless you had radio wave eyeballs or microwave eyeballs, to something that's glowing kind of red and then it goes to amber, and then it starts glowing white, and then it'll start glowing blue and it'll forevermore glow blue. But it keeps giving you higher and higher energy. It'll give you X rays, it can even give you gamma rays. But the part of it that comes through the spectrum is more in the red than in the blue. So hot things are blue. Medium temperature things are white. Cooler things that are still glowing are red. Okay? So if you have an electric stove, when you first turn it on, it feels warm, but you can't see it in the dark.

[Chuck Nice]

No.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, that's giving you infrared. We can't see infrared. It's got a glow so hot that it's giving you a little bit of red. Right. And then you say, oh, it's glowing red hot.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But a red hot object is the coolest of all hots. Ah. Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Damn.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Damn. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying.

[Chuck Nice]

Sorry. Red, dad. Okay, man.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So when I see red hot this and red hot that, I'm saying that ain't so bad, right? That ain't so bad. Okay, so now watch. Okay, so that is what's happening astrophysically. That's what's happening in the laws of physics. But now bring in the artistic photographer. Okay?

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And in art, if you're going to paint a picture, a painting, you're going to create a painting and you want the scene to feel cool, like it's in the Arctic. What is your predominant color in the painting?

[Chuck Nice]

White.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

White or not just white. Blue. Blue. Especially blue. Okay. So they say that it's cool, right? This is a cool color. Okay. And then when they want to show something hot, like hell and devils and everything, they use the color red. All right? Because that's how our emotions, we see ice cubes and it's bluish. And anything that got hot enough to hurt us is glowing red hot. It's rare that you'll see something so hot that it's glowing white or glowing blue on Earth, because that stuff gets hot enough when it's red hot. All right? So our entire life experience is shifted to the cool end of the spectrum with us thinking that red hot is actually hot. As a result, we have the absurd conversation between an astrophysicist and a photographer. It's okay, I need a cooler lamp for this. Right? So what do they do? They get the 6000 degree bulb instead of the 3000 degree bulb. This is in the days when you use tungsten, but we still think of those temperatures even in the LED world. Okay, so when they say make this scene cooler, they mean get a higher temperature lamp. And when they say we want to make this scene warmer, it means they want to put in a lower temperature lamp that glows at like 3,000 degrees or 2,500 degrees. And I'm pissed off at this yeah, I'm just saying.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, that's great.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

If you're gonna be numerical about whether something is warm or cool, do you have permission to leave the artists behind.

[Chuck Nice]

In this conversation, you scientifically illiterate troglodyte? No, I'm just saying. Damn photographers.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I'm just saying. If you wanna say the scene is cool blue and warm red, fine, but don't hand it a temperature, right? Don't give it temperatures because you have the absurd conversation. Increase the color temperature of the lamp so that the scene it's illuminating is cooler.

[Chuck Nice]

Well, see, you gotta hate that. You have to talk to each other in temperatures, otherwise we wouldn't know what to do. So if you're ever shooting something and somebody says, all right, yo, let's give me that daylight. And daylight is 5,600, right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's basically between that and 6,000. And by the way, that is the temperature of the sun.

[Chuck Nice]

Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. And wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. And that is the temperature of the sun. And so in daylight, does that look blue to you? No, I mean, it's bluer than a cooler, well, cooler lamp. It's blueer than a low temperature lamp. But. But if you look at the 5600, that's daylight, by the way. It's not yellow. That is not a yellow lamp. Yet you still have people saying the sun is yellow. No, it's not. The sun is freaking white. Okay, all right, I interrupted you. What are you saying?

[Chuck Nice]

I mean, basically, that's what it is. But it's really like the only reference that photographers have. But what you're saying is photographers need to come up with a new reference because what they're saying is scientifically wrong. The numbers are wrong.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's artistically sensible. But then don't put numbers on it, because these numbers mean things. If you're going to put a 10,000 degree lamp, that's a hot lamp, and that's a very blue lamp. Blue is hot in the universe.

[Chuck Nice]

That makes sense.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I mean, now we have blue stars. They're 20, 30,000 fricking degrees. We have red stars. They're called red giants. They're hovering around 1000, 1500, 2000 degrees, barely glowing. So I'm.

[Chuck Nice]

I like what you're saying. I just like the fact that I'm changing red hot to white hot from now on.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Now, some people know that white hot is hotter than red hot, right? It's just not common in society.

[Chuck Nice]

Blue hotel is my newest thing. I'm going blue hot all the time. You know what I Mean, don't you know what? All the way with a blue hot poker. That's what I want for you.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, no, the problem is it's melted. By then. You mean a fireplace poker. That's a problem.

[Chuck Nice]

That's right. You're right. Because it's. Oh, yeah, that would melt. Damn.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You start melting stuff. That's a problem. That's why we have very little experience with white hot and blue hotel. But red hot, you can get almost anything to red hot temperatures.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, you don't see a lot of white hot, though.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No, you don't.

[Chuck Nice]

You know, my dad was a printer. And so in printing, he owned a printing company. And the coolest thing in the plant was how you make photo plates. So the plate is treated with a chemical that when exposed to this super white hot light, the image is blue burned onto the plate. And it's called burning a plate. Right. And then that image is the only thing on the plate now that will transfer ink, and that's how you transfer image.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But they used.

[Chuck Nice]

I forget the name of these little tubes. They came together and they. And I forget the.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Oh, it's an arc lamp. That's. Yes, yeah, yeah. Carbon.

[Chuck Nice]

And the light in between.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's a very high temperature arc between there. That's correct.

[Chuck Nice]

And it was the coolest thing in the world. And you weren't allowed to look at it. Cause it would make you blind.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Right. Cause it's high in ultraviolet light. It's very high energy light. And what they do is they have these carbon rods, basically, and you attempt to send current through it, but it has to gap across an air gap. And depending on what your separation was and how big your current was, you could determine what the threshold was before you jumped the arc. And there it was.

[Chuck Nice]

That's exactly it. And the whole thing. Thing was just those two tubes and the light in between. And you had to look at it with like the same way you look at. I forget the glass.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Welders. Gargles.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, welders. Guy. You got to look at it with that same thing you look at a. An eclipse with. And it was the. It was the coolest thing in the world, but it was white hot.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, yeah. And hot. Very clearly hotter than anything. Red hot. Right. Is what that is. So these are my issues that I'm bringing to you, Chuck. I don't have a solution for them. I'm just highlighting them. And by the way, when I walk up to a water cooler and the two spigots are color coded, one is Red. And I say, okay, I'm no longer in my lab. I'm in the real world. And so blue is not hotter than red. They think blue is cold. So that's my. I can't tell you how much of my life I've wasted staring at twin spigots on a water cooler, figuring out which one is the cold water.

[Chuck Nice]

So what we should do is maybe the red is hot and then maybe pink for, like, the cooler, blue for the cooler.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Like, you want the water. Keep working on that, Chuck. I don't know about that. Keep working.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, great.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

No.

[Chuck Nice]

Nobody wants to drink gray water. That's for sure. I'm trying to think.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, that's all. That's the. That's all I want to do on this explainer.

[Chuck Nice]

That's a really cool pussy. Now you got me mad at the fact that all these things exist in life that tell us that blue is cooler than red because that it's everywhere.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And even the photographers know it's hotter because they ask for a higher temperature. That's right. That's. That's the insidiousness of it all.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, cool.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Anyhow, I know what we should do.

[Chuck Nice]

Here's the solution. Next time you see a photographer, people just punch.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Did that work for you so far? Is that really. Is that how you. You did that to your boss a few times. How far did that get you? No, exactly. Did we find you on the street before you had this gig? Right. I punched my boss one too many.

[Kaitlin Coleman]

Hi, I'm Kaitlin Coleman, winner of Target's HBCU design challenge. This challenge moved me closer to my dream of becoming a fashion designer. Through mentorship and support. You can find my design, along with creations from other black founders, in Target's Black History Month collection.

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[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I want to talk about when food goes bad.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, See, already you got me. I love it when food goes bad because. Something I'm very well aware of, because I come from a childhood where mom and grandmom almost refused to. Almost throw away. I mean, refused to throw away.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

They don't want to waste food. They don't want to waste food.

[Chuck Nice]

Never.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Even if the food would kill you, they wouldn't throw away the food.

[Chuck Nice]

I'm just like, mom, this thing is moving. What are you talking about? You know, look, you put that in a pan, it'll be just fine. That ain't nothing but a little mold. Ain't nothing but a little mold.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Firm that right back up.

[Chuck Nice]

You cut that mold off of there, and you. That's just fine.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

These are people who, like, grew up in the Depression, you know, and where hunger was a thing.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, man.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So they don't want them young whippersnappers just throwing away food.

[Chuck Nice]

It's like, how dare you waste food?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And one of my favorite comics was Gary Larson, and the subtitle was, when the potato salad goes bad, and you go inside the refrigerator and the potato salad's got a gun and it's holding it up to the lettuce or something funny. It's like mugging other foods when it goes bad, right? It shows the right thing. The potato salad. Right, because that's the one you got to watch out for.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So why am I an astrophysicist talking about that? I'll tell you why. Because there's the normal kind of way food goes bad, all right? You leave it in there too long, and something grows on it, all right? Something else wants to eat the food, and it's some kind of microbe, some bacteria. Bacteria or combination of bacteria that start eating the food. And there could be mold that's enjoying the food that you were going to eat. All right? Now, first of all, there's this bacteria on the food all the time. It's just a matter of how much is there. And you have a digestive tract, and depending on what you ate, the food will take a certain amount of time to go from your mouth to come out the other side or to get metabolized, all right? So if you ingest bacteria on your food that would otherwise be bad for you, that bacteria begins to multiply, all right? It's multiplying. At some rate in the refrigerator. But when it warms up to your body temperature because you've just eaten it, it'll duplicate faster. Okay, so there it is, duplicate. Now it's in your throat and it's in your stomach, duplicating faster. It's in your small intestine, your large intestine. If it gets out before it takes over, then you don't even think anything of it.

[Chuck Nice]

No, it's no problem.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There's no problem. So. But there are these thresholds where if you ingest a certain amount, the doubling time of that bacteria will then manifest itself while it's still in your digestive tract. Probably end up with nausea, diarrhea, whatever. Okay, so that's sort of normal food poisoning. All right, normal. And we also, we've developed a means to detect by the smell when something goes bad. Okay. Evolutionarily, if you casually ingested things that would make you sick and possibly die, if you enjoyed the smell of rotting food, that is a genetic branch that's headed for extinction. Because you and all your descendants who like the. The smell of rotting food, that would kill you, you would end up with none of you to then propagate this feature about yourself. All right, so we do.

[Chuck Nice]

Unless you're a vulture.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Unless you're a vulture. Right. But they're cool.

[Chuck Nice]

But they're cool with it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Depending on how digestive your gastric juices are from one species to another. For humans, we know what those limits are. You smell it, ooh, that's bad, and you throw it away. Except for your mama.

[Chuck Nice]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, so that's the normal kind of windfall, Food goes bad. Right? But suppose you got rid of all the microbes and then you sort of vacuum sealed it, now there are no microbes anyway, and you put it in a really cold temperature. Because as far as we have been able to measure, chemical and biological processes double their rate every 10 degrees Celsius. Okay, okay. That's why cooling things, make them last longer, right? That's right. You can do this.

[Chuck Nice]

So does it mean it stops at zero?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Zero. It would have to stop, yes.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

At zero. Yes. There's nothing.

[Chuck Nice]

Nothing, nothing happens.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Absolute zero.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, no, I don't mean absolute zero. I mean, if you just start, you say every 10 degrees Celsius. Oh, okay. Yeah. So you. It would stop at absolute zero.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

At absolute zero. Oh, you think zero? Just on the.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, I was thinking on the regular.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There's nothing special about that zero. The only special zero is on the Kelvin absolute scale. And we did a whole explainer video on that. And we got a link. We put a link in there somewhere.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, that's right. That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, so every 10 degrees, it's half. So you can just keep halving all the way down. Okay, so you can do the experiment. If you want it, get milk and bring it to room temperature. Okay. Then get milk, put it in the refrigerator temperature, and then get milk, put it right at near freezing. And then get milk and just freeze it and just sit back and just watch what happens. The microbes that are already in it are doing their thing, and you can look at the temperature differences and you can calculate this up, and basically the milk might last a day or two. Oh, by the way, what does ultra pasteurized mean? Ultra pasteurized. They took out even more microbes than were there in the normal pasteurized.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow. Okay, now with twice as little, twice as little.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I would say half as much, but you can say twice as little.

[Chuck Nice]

That's fine.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So when you do that, the pasteurized milk, look at the expiration date on the ultra pasteurized milk versus the regular pasteurized milk. It's way longer in the future because there's so few microbes there. They're slowly coming along and they're doubling time. They still have a doubling time. All right. But they started out with fewer, so they're not gonna get there. This milk smells nasty threshold until much later. Okay, so that's the biological when food goes bad. But I want to take this up a notch. Are you ready? Okay, go ahead. Let us get rid of all microbes. Let us irradiate the food. All right, so now there's nothing living on it at all. Now we don't want anything to come to it after the fact. So now let's vacuum seal it.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so now nothing's getting to it. Nothing's on it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, so now I have a slab of meat, vacuum sealed. Okay? Now I don't have to refrigerate it because there's no microbes that I can put out on the counter. I can put it up in the cabinet. Okay. You can put it there for years and years and years. You know why I know about this and think about it. Because when you're gonna store food on a long space mission, you don't wanna carry freezers with you and refrigerators. You want food that can just stand. You want food that could just survive.

[Chuck Nice]

On the shelf, that could just be b. You need food that just is that food.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That is.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. You need your steak to be A Twinkie. I'm eating Twinkie steak.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Twinkies from 8 years ago taste just the same as you bought them yesterday, right?

[Chuck Nice]

My steak is good for 20 years.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, so, but here's what happens, okay?

[Chuck Nice]

Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And this is where quantum physics comes in. So you didn't see that comment, did you?

[Chuck Nice]

I did not.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

You did not see that comment.

[Chuck Nice]

All right, you totally had me.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right, so molecules exist in a state of existence, all right? All molecules do. And you can ask yourself, is the molecule happy in that state of existence? Is it happy? In other words, is there a lower state of energy that this molecule can occupy? Because if there is, it's going to want to go. There is that state of energy. I'm such a big molecule, let me break into two. Now I have less energy than before because molecules don't like remaining in higher states of energy. And those two molecules can break, and then they settle into a lower and lower form of energy. That's how the molecule wants to exist.

[Chuck Nice]

Gotcha.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

All right. So how does it get access to that lower form of energy? If you made the molecule and it's happy here, how does it decide one day to not be happy?

[Chuck Nice]

It has me as a father.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay? So think of it as in a well. But there's a lower well off to the side. How do you get to that well? You have to go up a little hill before you go down to that lower well. So this molecule has to find a way to get over that hill, and it'll immediately go to a lower energy state. If there's nothing to stick it over that hill, it would last forever. But quantum physics said all these molecules and particles are also waves, and the wave has an existence on the other side of that hill. And there's a chance that this particle can disappear from this state and reappear on the other side of that hill in a state where it slides down to a lower. A lower energy level. Quantum physics takes it there. It's called tunneling. Okay? So these bonds that are formed chemically, they're not forever. If there's another bond it could think about that has a lower energy, by the way, when it has lower energy, it gives off energy. So your food has complex molecules in it. They're these protein fibers, and it's complex, right? So given enough time, quantum physics degrades the texture of the food. So your meat will still be meat in five years, but you'll start noticing stock 10 real mealy, right? Where's that chewy meat? What is happening what's happening to that?

[Chuck Nice]

Why does my meat now taste like Soylent Green?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Because it is. Hey, what happened to Mack the astronaut? Where was he? Well, he died.

[Chuck Nice]

Why is this suit still here?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So all I'm saying is food can go bad biologically and food can go bad chemically.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Now you know the lowest energy state.

[Chuck Nice]

Of anything, Something at absolute zero?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, yes, that's by temperature. But in terms of configuration, the lowest energy state, one of the lowest energy states you can occupy is crystal. Oh, crystal form. So that's why it's weird that there's a whole cult around crystals.

[Chuck Nice]

Crystals, like I get so much energy, they get crystals.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Crystals have the lowest energy of that molecule. So it's just weird to knowing physics and chemistry to see this unfold. That's funny in this the 21st century. But anyhow, when you go to buy salt, are you checking the freshness date on the salt? Have you ever done this?

[Chuck Nice]

Are you kidding me? I actually have some Jesus salt in my cupboard.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So. Plus, where do you get salt? It gets mined from places that have been there for millions, millions of years. Okay. Salt that's down below the ground, that's just salt. It's been there, hadn't been touched.

[Chuck Nice]

That's right.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. It didn't become something else. It is salt. It has been salt. So crystalline things, diamonds are forever. Diamond is crystal. Okay. Now I learned that there's another state of carbon that's a slightly lower energy than diamond. So diamonds are not actually forever, but they're really, really long lived. Okay. And so another crystal is sugar. Okay. By the way, if sugar goes bad, it's not cause something happened to the crystal, cause you put it next to the barbecue pit or something and it took on the smells or something else.

[Chuck Nice]

Was near it or it absorbed water somehow.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Yeah, exactly.

[Chuck Nice]

So you didn't have it in a place that was dry enough.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And then the other things are what then messes with it. But the sugar crystal itself is happy. So yes, I think salt does have dates on it, but that's just that you can use it and buy the next one, right?

[Chuck Nice]

Better put some more salt on that, man. It's about to go bad.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

It's about to go bad. What happened with Tabasco sauce? I don't think this is apocryphal. I think this is real. You know what happened? You know Tabasco sauce, a little thing.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, I love Tabasco sauce. You kidding me?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. Yeah. They figured out how to double your consumption of Tabasco sauce.

[Chuck Nice]

How's that?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Someone in the company suggested that they make the hole twice as big.

[Chuck Nice]

Brilliant.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So you still think you're not using much, using twice as much as you used to.

[Chuck Nice]

And guess what? That makes perfect sense.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And they just double the sales. And that person got a raise. So anyhow, so I just want to say that when food goes bad, it can go bad by this other way that we don't think about much but for very long term storage, like in the apocalyptic Earth, this sort of thing. That's how you would need to think about that and want to know about. But that'd be true for any food stuffs at all. So you have to watch out. You can't really stop the quantum phenomenon from going on. So it would still taste like steak, but the texture tends to be one of the things that goes first.

[Chuck Nice]

So the moral of this story is, during the nuclear apocalypse, you better make sure that you have some salt.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

By the way, salt itself is the preservative of other foods.

[Chuck Nice]

I was about to say, because your meat's going to taste like crap.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And.

[Chuck Nice]

Your salt's the only thing that's going to last. So.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

So there you have it, Chuck. So that was just a quick one.

[Chuck Nice]

Now. That was a good one. I like that. Chemical decomposition of molecules, food molecules, any molecules in general.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's right.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. Super cool, man.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

There you have it. All right. This has been another StarTalk explainer video. Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Chuck, always good to have you. Always a pleasure as always. Keep looking up.

[Kaitlin Coleman]

This episode is brought to you by Peloton. The new cross training series balances your workouts with 15 plus workout types for endless movements on and off your equipment. Stay motivated with weekly personalized plans that guide you from beginner to expert. And push past your goals with routines tailored to you. Get the new cross training series terms apply. Hi, I'm Kaitlin Coleman, winner of Target's HBCU design challenge. This challenge moved me closer to my dream of becoming a fashion designer through mentorship and support. You can find my design along with creations from other black founders in Target's Black History Month collection.