Things You Thought You Knew – Faster Than Light

Summary

StarTalk Radio: “Things You Thought You Knew – Faster Than Light”

Host: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Guests: Joel Cherico & Chuck Nice
Release Date: July 15, 2025

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Introduction to Dimensions

Timestamp: 01:47 – 04:05

The episode kicks off with Joel Cherico introducing the topic of dimensions, isotopes, and tachyons. He emphasizes the often-overlooked complexity of dimensions beyond our familiar three.

Joel Cherico (01:47):
"Plus coming up on StarTalk, we've got another things you thought you knew episode. This time we talk about dimensions, isotopes and tachyons. Check it out."

Chuck Nice engages humorously, mistaking "dimensions" for "dementia," which lightens the atmosphere before delving into the scientific discussion.

Chuck Nice (02:22):
"Dementia, huh?"
Joel Cherico (02:23):
"No, no. I can say to you, Chuck, I'll meet you tomorrow at Starbucks, right? And what's your reply to me?"

They explore the concept of world lines, explaining how space and time coordinates must intersect for events to coincide.

Joel Cherico (03:03):
"So for our world lines to intersect, we have to be at the same place at the same time."
Chuck Nice (03:10):
"See, now, fellas, if you're smart and you're single, you will hold this one in the back. Put it away in your back pocket, okay, girl? I just need you as a part of my world line. You know."

Exploring Dimensions Beyond the Third

Timestamp: 04:15 – 10:04

Joel breaks down dimensions starting from one to four, using relatable analogies to illustrate how higher dimensions would perceive and interact with lower-dimensional beings.

Joel Cherico (05:18):
"If we live in three dimensions, you get to look down on that flat world and see all the inner guts of every living creature in that universe."

They humorously discuss the implications of higher-dimensional beings performing surgeries without invasive procedures, highlighting the fascinating possibilities of understanding and manipulating dimensions.

Chuck Nice (07:32):
"Anyone from the fourth spatial dimension has full access to your entire body's innards. Oh, they could pull stuff out, put stuff in, operate whatever."

The conversation shifts to how our perception of time confines us, comparing it to being imprisoned within temporal boundaries.

Joel Cherico (09:35):
"So time can serve that same role if you had access to the past and to the future."
Chuck Nice (10:04):
"That's pretty cool, man."

Unraveling Isotopes

Timestamp: 24:45 – 34:39

Joel introduces isotopes, explaining the fundamental structure of elements based on the number of protons and neutrons in their nuclei.

Joel Cherico (24:53):
"It's all about isotopes. There's a sequence of elements beginning with hydrogen, and they get sort of heavier and heavier and heavier."

They discuss specific isotopes like deuterium and tritium, and how these variants play a crucial role in applications such as carbon-14 dating. This segment elucidates how isotopes decay over time, allowing scientists to date archaeological finds accurately.

Joel Cherico (30:17):
"Carbon 14 is an isotope of carbon... its half-life is around 5,000 years."

Chuck humorously suggests creative applications for isotopes, blending scientific facts with light-hearted banter.

Chuck Nice (30:17):
"Carbon 14 as in carbon 14 dating? Maybe a Carbon 14 app. A dating app. That'd be kind of cool."

Faster-Than-Light Travel and Tachyons

Timestamp: 14:12 – 23:02

Delving into the realm of theoretical physics, Joel and Chuck explore the concept of traveling faster than light. They discuss the limitations imposed by Einstein's theory of relativity, where approaching the speed of light results in time dilation, length contraction, and infinite mass.

Joel Cherico (15:42):
"Your time slows down as you near the speed of light."

The conversation progresses to the hypothetical existence of tachyons, particles that travel faster than light, moving backward in time. They humorously personify tachyons, highlighting their elusive and unpredictable nature.

Chuck Nice (16:59):
"But electrons are protons. They're badass."
Joel Cherico (17:15):
"So tachyons, don't invite them to the... of course they'll come late, come early."

They further examine Cherenkov radiation, the phenomenon that occurs when particles exceed the speed of light within a medium like water or glass, analogous to a sonic boom but with light.

Joel Cherico (21:33):
"So you get a... get a four bend path on that... think of it as kind of a light shockwave."

The duo ties these concepts to practical applications and theoretical possibilities, such as wormholes, which could allow instantaneous travel across vast distances without violating the speed of light in a vacuum.

Joel Cherico (22:13):
"You don't need rockets, you don't need transporters like what they have on Star Trek. Just open a portal, step through, you're there."

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Timestamp: 33:29 – 34:39

Joel wraps up the discussion by revisiting key points about isotopes and their significance in the periodic table, emphasizing the immutable nature of protons in defining elements.

Joel Cherico (33:30):
"So the moment you die, you no longer refreshing the carbon. And the carbon 14 then decays."

Chuck adds his signature humor, keeping the conversation engaging and accessible.

Chuck Nice (33:55):
"Helium three is one of the particles ejected by the sun and it gets embedded into the lunar surface."

Neil deGrasse Tyson concludes the episode with his signature sign-off, encouraging listeners to keep exploring and staying curious.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (34:39):
"Things you thought you knew. Neil Degrasse Tyson here as always. Keep looking up."

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Notable Quotes

• Joel Cherico (03:03):
  "So for our world lines to intersect, we have to be at the same place at the same time."

• Chuck Nice (07:32):
  "Anyone from the fourth spatial dimension has full access to your entire body's innards. Oh, they could pull stuff out, put stuff in, operate whatever."

• Joel Cherico (15:42):
  "Your time slows down as you near the speed of light."

• Joel Cherico (21:33):
  "Think of it as kind of a light shockwave."

---

Key Takeaways

1. Dimensions Explained: Understanding higher dimensions offers profound insights into the nature of our universe and the limitations of our perception.

2. Isotopes' Role: Isotopes are critical in various scientific applications, including dating archaeological finds and understanding atomic structures.

3. Faster-Than-Light Concepts: While current physics prohibits conventional faster-than-light travel, theoretical particles like tachyons and phenomena like Cherenkov radiation provide fascinating avenues for exploration.

4. Interconnectedness of Space and Time: The discussion underscores the intricate relationship between space and time, highlighting how advancements in one can influence our understanding of the other.

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Keep Looking Up!

Transcript

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

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[Chuck Nice]

You ever walked around a neighborhood and wish you could see inside somewhere that was available for rent? Well, let me just give you a tip. Don't climb up on the ledge and look in the window. People will call the cops. Well, maybe you've walked past a place for rent and you wished you could peek inside. Maybe even explore the layout. Envision the natural light streaming through the windows. Or plan where your vinyl record collection would go. Well, at apartments.com you can. With tools like their 3D virtual tours, you can see the exact unit you could be living in at all from the comfort of your couch. And if you end up wanting to see it in person, you can book a tour online without having to speak to a leasing rep. Really envision yourself in your new home with apartments.com the place to find a place. Get ready to leave the world behind because July 17th on Paramount plus Star Trek strange new worlds is back. Back for an all new season of genre bending adventures. Romance, mystery, action, space zombies. Special guests. This show is going where no show has gone before. One show. Infinite Adventures, the new season of Star Trek Strange new Worlds streams July 17th exclusively on Paramount.

[Joel Cherico]

Plus coming up on StarTalk, we've got another things you thought you knew episode. This time we talk about dimensions, Isotopes and tachyons. Check it out. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. So, Chuck, here's a topic. I don't think we talk enough about dimensions.

[Chuck Nice]

Dementia, huh?

[Joel Cherico]

No, no. I can say to you, chuck, I'll meet you tomorrow at Starbucks, right? And what's your reply to me?

[Chuck Nice]

I'll be there all day waiting, man, because I got nothing to do. I got nothing to do. So I'll just be at Starbucks. I'll start off in the morning with some breakfast, maybe a little muffin, and then I'll just stay there until you get there.

[Joel Cherico]

Okay, Sorry. I'll meet you at Starbucks at 12 noon, okay?

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, thanks, thanks, thanks. Appreciate that.

[Joel Cherico]

I gave you a location in space and you had to wait until I gave you a location in time.

[Chuck Nice]

Time.

[Joel Cherico]

And that intersection of space and time is called your world line.

[Chuck Nice]

Whoa. Love It.

[Joel Cherico]

It's called a world line.

[Chuck Nice]

World line.

[Joel Cherico]

So for our world lines to intersect, we have to be at the same place at the same time.

[Chuck Nice]

See, now, fellas, if you're smart and you're single, you will hold this one in the back. Put it away in your back pocket, okay, girl? I just need you as a part of my world line. You know.

[Joel Cherico]

Lines from relativity, right?

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Joel Cherico]

Okay, and let's reverse that. I'll say, Chuck, I'll meet you tomorrow.

[Chuck Nice]

At noon, North America. Good for you.

[Joel Cherico]

Thank you.

[Chuck Nice]

Earth.

[Joel Cherico]

Yeah, Earth.

[Chuck Nice]

Is that all right?

[Joel Cherico]

Yeah. So we know intuitively you need both the time and the space coordinates conjoined in order to actually meet. Absurd variants on that would be you cross the street and 10 minutes later a truck barrels through in that same location.

[Chuck Nice]

Right?

[Joel Cherico]

So you were in the same location as the truck, but not at the same time.

[Chuck Nice]

You wouldn't say, oh, man, almost died today.

[Joel Cherico]

You wouldn't. Because your world lines missed each other.

[Chuck Nice]

Right?

[Joel Cherico]

And you can do that another way. You exist at the same time as the truck, but you know, we're near each other in location.

[Chuck Nice]

Right?

[Joel Cherico]

So what made Zoom and other video conferencing so useful during COVID is that you only had to be at the same time, right? You didn't have to be at the same place. So you take away one of the components of the worldlines, right? And then many more people can participate.

[Chuck Nice]

But you are converging at the same place virtually or digitally. So.

[Joel Cherico]

Okay, well, your image is on. I mean, I have my image of you on my computer, but it's not you. So let's keep talking about dimensions. Ready? So we have one dimension, which is just a line. The measure of the line is the length. There's no other measurement you can make of it that has any meaning, right? Right. It does not have a width. Now, you can add another dimension, call that X. We add a Y, and now you have a surface, a plane. A plane and that it's two dimensions, X and Y. Okay? So you can make a square out of that, couldn't you?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Joel Cherico]

Two dimensional beings who live in that surface, to everyone else in that surface, they only have an outer perimeter, Right? You can't see inside their bodies.

[Chuck Nice]

They're all inside the flat plane.

[Joel Cherico]

They're inside the flat plane. All you see is the edge of them.

[Chuck Nice]

Right? The edge.

[Joel Cherico]

So medical surgery in a two dimensional universe, they'd have to cut you open, part you, and then reach in and do what they need to come out, and then stitch you up again. Okay?

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

If we live in three dimensions, you get to look down on that flat world and see all the inner guts of every living creature in that universe. Because there is no boundary above and below. It's only within the plane itself. You can see the heart beating. You can see the spleen, the liver, the pancreas, the lungs. You can see it all. In fact, if you wanted to be a surgeon for that world, you could go in, cut out the appendix if they needed appendectomy and never have to cut through their outer boundary. You'd be like magically going into their body.

[Chuck Nice]

Dimensional surgery.

[Joel Cherico]

Dimensional surgery. They would have no access or even awareness that that was even possible. But you do, and you can go in and rectify that. So now we are in three dimensions. We reveal our skin in all directions to the other people.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

Our skin is the boundary between our innards and a medical doctor. If they want to get inside you, they got to cut you open.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

A four dimensional creature can just look inside our bodies.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, I feel violated. I know. I hope no one's watching. Right now.

[Joel Cherico]

Anyone from the fourth spatial dimension has full access to your entire body's innards. Oh, they could pull stuff out, put stuff in, operate whatever.

[Chuck Nice]

We are the game operation to anybody in the fourth dimension.

[Joel Cherico]

What I'm saying is if you had what you beautifully refer to as dimensional surgery, you would be able to operate without ever cutting someone open, provided you come from a higher dimension inward.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

And it is completely analogous to be a four dimensional surgeon operating on us without cutting us open, to be we as three dimensional surgeons operating on two dimensional creatures. Because you could just see all their organs just sitting there. Now we can move forward and back, left and right, up and down. Okay. Those are the three spatial dimensions. But the time dimension, you don't have access to the past or the future. We are prisoners of the present, forever transitioning between our inaccessible past and our unknowable future. But let's think this through. How would you imprison a two dimensional creature?

[Chuck Nice]

Draw a line.

[Joel Cherico]

What kind of line?

[Chuck Nice]

A square.

[Joel Cherico]

A square. Just draw a square. That's its prison cell. Yeah, but we say wait, just step up out of it and then you escape.

[Chuck Nice]

Good to go.

[Joel Cherico]

I don't know what you're talking about. I'm fully locked in.

[Chuck Nice]

Fully locked in.

[Joel Cherico]

How do we put us in a cell? We have six walls, a ceiling floor, four walls around us.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

We think we are completely contained within it. A higher dimensional creature, just step out and then step back in and you're Outside the cell, we said, I don't know what you're talking about.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

Wait a minute. I said a four dimensional creature. If we had access to the fourth dimension, which for us is what?

[Chuck Nice]

Time.

[Joel Cherico]

Time. But wait, we're prisoners of time. So suppose we weren't prisoners of time. Suppose you could move through time the way we move through space. Could you then escape the prison?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah, just move to a time when I'm not in prison.

[Joel Cherico]

Exactly. Just say, let me get out of these six walls here. You just go back to a time before you got put into prison or go to the future where you would let go from the prison.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

Each of those counts as escaping the prison without ever breaking down the wall.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

So time can serve that same role if you had access to the past and to the future.

[Chuck Nice]

That's pretty cool, man.

[Joel Cherico]

Of course we go higher this fifth dimension, six dimensions, this sort of thing. And mathematically you can calculate what all the properties are. And it's fascinating to watch. Another quick one. You ready?

[Chuck Nice]

Go ahead.

[Joel Cherico]

Knots in strings only exist in three dimensions.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Joel Cherico]

In other words, in a fourth dimension, you hand them a knot in the fourth dimension and say, wait, just pull the ends and it unravels itself. That's the same thing as we three dimensional people looking at two dimensional people.

[Chuck Nice]

And.

[Joel Cherico]

And they have a string that just has this loop in it. One loop.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

And they say, how do I untie this? I can't untie say, dude, pick up the two ends and stretch. They can't do that.

[Chuck Nice]

Right?

[Joel Cherico]

They can't do that. So knots are different things in higher dimensions. The way to do it is you have to make a knot out of a two dimensional ribbon. And there are ways to do that, I think. And rather than just out of a string. So a lot of interesting things change and are mind boggling for ascending to a higher dimension.

[Chuck Nice]

Sweet.

[Joel Cherico]

One last quick thing. Why does anyone want a flying car?

[Chuck Nice]

So you can get up and over traffic.

[Joel Cherico]

So you only really think about flying cars in cities where you're like plugged with traffic. And what a flying car gets you is another dimension of travel.

[Chuck Nice]

True.

[Joel Cherico]

You know, when stuck in a one lane road. Because that's bad. All right. But even if you go two dimensions and you have multiple lanes, because now you're in a plane that can get cloggy too.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

So get a third dimension is wide open. But wait a minute. That means we already have flying cars. It's called the subway. Instead of being in the air, it's underground, bypassing the traffic. You're in. It still invoked the third dimension, but also it means overpasses where the freeway goes right through and the overpass goes over. That's a flying car right there. You invoked another dimension.

[Chuck Nice]

You have a very low bar for what you call.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Thanks for selling your car to Carvana. Here's your check.

[Chuck Nice]

Whoa. When did I get here?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

What do you mean?

[Chuck Nice]

I swear it was just moments ago that I accepted a great offer from Carvana online.

[Joel Cherico]

I must have time traveled to the future.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It was just moments ago. We do same day pickup. Here's your check for that great offer.

[Kristen Bell]

It is the future.

[Joel Cherico]

It's.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

It's the present and just the convenience of Carvana. Sorry to blow your mind.

[Joel Cherico]

It's all good. Happens all the time.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Sell your car the convenient way to Carvana. Pickup times may vary and fees may apply.

[Kristen Bell]

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[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

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[Joel Cherico]

I'm Joel Cherico and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Chuck. Yeah. Have you ever wanted to travel faster than light?

[Chuck Nice]

Sure. I mean, who doesn't? I mean, I spent countless hours just sitting around saying to myself, I wish I could go to like Proxima B and just float above it and be there.

[Joel Cherico]

You may know that Voyager 1 is the fastest thing we've ever sent out of the solar system, right? If we had aimed that towards Alpha Centauri, the star system that contains Proxima, this very closest star to the sun, right? You would get there in plus or minus a few months, 70,000 years. But even if you went there at the speed of light, we would watch you take four years, your time would stop, right? So you would get there instantly. But you want to cross the galaxy. That's a hundred thousand years Earth time for you to do that. So we need other ways to travel experimentally and theoretically that you cannot Travel faster than light, right? Through space, right? However, some decades ago, someone hypothesized, suppose you don't increase your speed to try to get to the speed of light. Suppose you exist on the other side of that boundary. You just start life on the other side of that boundary. What would that be? What does that even mean? Okay, so if you look at the equations of relativity, there are three things that happen. As you travel faster, your time slows down as you near the speed of light.

[Chuck Nice]

Right?

[Joel Cherico]

Your length shortens, okay. In the direction of your motion, and your. Your mass increases.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay?

[Joel Cherico]

If you try to get to the speed of light as a physical object, your length shortens to zero. Your mass. Mass goes to infinity, and time stops. Okay, this is just insane. This is insane because the equations blow up there.

[Chuck Nice]

That's the numbers, right?

[Joel Cherico]

Okay. That's the numbers. Give you. All right, so it was hypothesized. Suppose you come at it from the other side. So you're not working your way towards the speed of light. You just exist with speeds that are already faster than the speed of light. So you don't have this violation of approaching the speed of light itself.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay?

[Joel Cherico]

When you do that, what comes out the other side is that you live backwards in time.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, it's a Benzeman button.

[Joel Cherico]

Okay, so it's not just that, you know, time slows down. So time now goes backwards. A, B. The slowest you can travel is the speed of light.

[Chuck Nice]

The speed of light, right?

[Joel Cherico]

And in fact, it would take infinite energy to slow you down to that speed.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

In the same way, it would take infinite energy to speed on this side.

[Chuck Nice]

Of that universe, to speed you up.

[Joel Cherico]

To the speed of energy, to speed you up to that speed, right? So someone said, could anything exist there? And so we came up with it. We people decades ago came up with the name tachyons.

[Chuck Nice]

And that's because they dress poorly. They just mixing stripes and polka dots and all kinds of madness.

[Joel Cherico]

But electrons are protons. They're badass.

[Chuck Nice]

Electrons and protons, they GQ to the max.

[Joel Cherico]

Tachyons, don't invite them to the. Of course they'll come late, come early.

[Chuck Nice]

They don't even know when to show up, you know? What are you on? I'm on tachyon time, brother.

[Joel Cherico]

Tachyos, from the Greek, is a word for speed.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay?

[Joel Cherico]

So tachyons, the slowest they can go is the speed of light, and the fastest they can go is infinite speed, right?

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Joel Cherico]

So in that case, you can go any distance.

[Chuck Nice]

You can go any distance you want.

[Joel Cherico]

Any amount of time.

[Chuck Nice]

Right. Because at that point, you don't need a warp engine. You need a tachyon engine.

[Joel Cherico]

You need a tachyon. Tachyon propulsion, tachyon chariot to carry you through the galaxy.

[Chuck Nice]

Look at that. Well, you made it very poetic. And it's the vehicle of the Greek gods.

[Joel Cherico]

Here's an interesting fact that the early universe expanded faster than the speed of light.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

Okay. Now, the way that happened was the space itself is expanding.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

Nothing is moving through space.

[Chuck Nice]

Nothing's moving through space.

[Joel Cherico]

Right.

[Chuck Nice]

Space is no longer a medium, and.

[Joel Cherico]

It'S the actual vehicle, the meaning through which you're moving. It is the thing itself.

[Chuck Nice]

It's the thing that's moving.

[Joel Cherico]

There's no. That's. There's no violation of the speed of light there. And we learned that from the general theory of relativity, which generalizes all of the parameters for which there were very specific descriptions in the special theory of relativity.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

In other words, the special theory of relativity involved constant motion with no acceleration. So it was a simplified case, if we can call relativity simple at all. The simplified case, the general relativity, involves accelerations and gravity and curved space time and all the rest of this.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

When you learn about space and time as a fabric of the universe, it can stretch at any speed at all. And the early universe stretches faster than light. So that's where that's coming in, in case there was a question about it.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah.

[Joel Cherico]

But now it turns out you can travel faster than light in a medium where light travels with a lower speed than it would in a vacuum.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay. So like water going, like going through.

[Joel Cherico]

Water, light going through glass, light going through diamond. All travel slower than light going through a vacuum.

[Chuck Nice]

Gotcha.

[Joel Cherico]

Those lower speeds, hey, we can go fast. We know how to send particles faster than those speeds. We do that all the time when we accelerate electrons and protons in particle accelerator. So in a diamond, light travels 40% as fast as it does in empty space.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Joel Cherico]

If light were 60 miles an hour, in a diamond, light's going 24 miles an hour.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

So what happens now if we send a particle faster than light in the medium? We didn't know. And it was tested. And we found out that when that.

[Chuck Nice]

Happens, the whole universe explodes. Everything disintegrates like a Thanos snap.

[Joel Cherico]

So you have water, and so now you take a particle and accelerate it not only to the speed of light in water, but exceeding it. And when that happens, there's a flash of light. It's called, in that case, Cherenkov radiation. Cherenkov radiation, the speed of light would be faster in air, but still slower.

[Chuck Nice]

Slower than the vacuum of space.

[Joel Cherico]

So air is less dense.

[Chuck Nice]

The water.

[Joel Cherico]

Water is less dense than diamond.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay, so we're getting slow light. When it hits our atmosphere and comes.

[Joel Cherico]

Down too much, it's already slowed down.

[Chuck Nice]

It's already slowed down.

[Joel Cherico]

It's already slowed down. So it bends in the atmosphere, then it bends again going into the water. If you have a diamond ring underwater, it bends going into the diamond ring.

[Chuck Nice]

Wow.

[Joel Cherico]

So you get a, you know, get a four, four bend path on that. So my point is going faster than light triggers this reaction between the charged particle, electron and proton and the medium and flashes of blue light come out. It's called Cherenkov radiation. We use a shrink off light. Just to be simple, all light is radiation.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Joel Cherico]

Scares people. It was radiation. Oh my God. But it's.

[Chuck Nice]

Yeah. You're being bombarded with radiation every single day, all day.

[Joel Cherico]

Correct. It's just low energy radiation. Your arms don't fall off.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

Okay. High energy radiation that is ionizing. That's bad for you. Low energy radiation. It makes no difference to your body. Body doesn't care.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly.

[Joel Cherico]

So this thing about going faster than light and then emitting this energy is kind of like a sonic boom, right? I mean, it's conceptually similar. You go faster than sound in the medium, then there's this shockwave that comes out upon doing so. So think of it as kind of a light shockwave.

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, that's pretty cool.

[Joel Cherico]

You know, it will just bypass tachyons.

[Chuck Nice]

What's that?

[Joel Cherico]

Wormholes.

[Chuck Nice]

Of course. Yes.

[Joel Cherico]

Yeah, wormholes. You don't need rockets, you don't need transporters like what they have on Star Trek.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

Just open a portal, step through, you're there.

[Chuck Nice]

There you go.

[Joel Cherico]

You don't have to be dematerialized, beamed, and then rematerialized on the other side. And not only that, that material, I think, only goes at the speed of light. You're still limited by the speed of light even when they do beam you.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

All right. That's all I got for you.

[Chuck Nice]

All right.

[Joel Cherico]

This is the most time we've ever spent about talking about something that we don't know existed.

[Chuck Nice]

That we don't know existed. That's. That's pretty cool.

[Joel Cherico]

There it.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Wait. You're not a Hotels.com member, so you're choosing to pay full price. Did you not hear the song?

[Chuck Nice]

How could you not be a member and save up to 20%?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

That's less than 50%.

[Chuck Nice]

But it's more than zero percent. You're welcome.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

See, the math is mathing. Save up to 20% on hundreds of thousands of hotels with hotels dot com. Hi, I'm Kristen Bell, and if you know my husband Dax, then you also know he loves shopping for a car. Selling a car, not so much.

[Joel Cherico]

We're really doing this, huh?

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Thankfully, Carvana makes it easy. Answer a few questions, put in your VIN or license, and done. We sold ours in minutes this morning and they'll come pick it up and pay us this afternoon.

[Joel Cherico]

Bye bye, truckee.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Of course, we kept the favorite.

[Joel Cherico]

Hello, other truckee.

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

Sell your car with Carvana today. Terms and conditions apply.

[Kristen Bell]

At Capella University. Learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment counselor, who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella. Edu.

[Joel Cherico]

There's a word, a subject, a topic of interest that I think people don't know as much about as they should.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Joel Cherico]

It's all about isotopes. There's a sequence of elements beginning with hydrogen, and they get sort of heavier and heavier and heavier. And they each have a number. So hydrogen is number one, helium is number two. So we're not just numbering them. That is the count of protons in their nucleus.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

Who's got 12 protons? Who's got six protons? They. There is an element, and only one element that has that many protons in the nucleus. There you go, some famous ones. Carbon has six protons.

[Chuck Nice]

Six protons.

[Joel Cherico]

Oxygen has eight protons. I left one out. Nitrogen has seven protons.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Joel Cherico]

Uranium has 92 protons.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Joel Cherico]

When the periodic table of elements was being discovered, there were gaps. So you knew exactly what to look for if you were missing an element. Look for the one with 39 protons. Go. Go back to the lab.

[Chuck Nice]

It's like a. A chemical Lego set.

[Joel Cherico]

You just put it in a slot, click, clicks right in, and you move on. And so we have found 92, quote, natural elements in the universe, 1 through 92. Hydrogen. Right on up through uranium. And we have another. How Many? Up to 118. Now, going beyond uranium, we made those in the laboratory.

[Chuck Nice]

You think you can play God, Sir? Is that snow? You're just making elements now?

[Joel Cherico]

The answer is, frankly, yes.

[Chuck Nice]

There you Go.

[Joel Cherico]

So these are the protons and they're immutable. What I mean is, if you take away a proton, it's no longer that element, it's the other element.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

If you add a proton, it's now a different element. Wait a minute. Protons all have the same charge. They all have positive charge. So what does it mean to cram them into the nucleus of an atom? If left to their own devices, they would what?

[Chuck Nice]

Oh, man, they'd be the Real Housewives of New Jersey. That's what. That's what they be. Get out of. Get out of. Watch this. Hide the table.

[Joel Cherico]

So what holds them together? Well, there's a whole other force of nature called the strong force.

[Chuck Nice]

Fundamental force of nature.

[Joel Cherico]

Fundamental force of nature. And it's propagated by a particle called the gluon.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

Aptly named, I might add. And this happens by the presence of neutrons in the nucleus.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

So neutrons tamp down the resistive forces and they act as a sort of a glue for the nucleus.

[Chuck Nice]

Unless you're Martha Stewart atom, in which case it's a hot glue on. That was terrible.

[Joel Cherico]

They all can't be winners like you said.

[Chuck Nice]

Exactly. You know, I'm gonna say Martha should not have gone to prison for that. I should.

[Joel Cherico]

So hydrogen in its native state only has one proton.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

It doesn't need a neutron.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

To hold anything together. So native hydrogen is just one proton and then one electron on the other side. Oh, by the way, in a red blooded atom, they have as many electrons as. As protons. So they're electrically neutral.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

Okay, so uranium would have how many electrons?

[Chuck Nice]

As many as. It has neutrons?

[Joel Cherico]

No, no, it means it has protons.

[Chuck Nice]

Protons.

[Joel Cherico]

Protons. How many is that? You don't remember? I said it.

[Chuck Nice]

92.

[Joel Cherico]

92. Exactly. So. So matter is generally neutral for this reason. Okay, hydrogen is happy. Let's go to helium. Helium has two protons, right. Its native state has two neutrons. Okay, suppose I force hydrogen to accept a neutron and I cram it in there. Okay, I can do that. Now I have what's called heavy hydrogen.

[Chuck Nice]

Heavy hydrogen.

[Joel Cherico]

It has a whole word that we have for. It's called deuterium. Ooh, you might have heard the word deuterium.

[Chuck Nice]

Do tell. What? What does deuterium do?

[Joel Cherico]

You can make a water molecule out of deuterium. H2O. If one of those hydrogens is a deuterium, then it's DH Is that heavy water? That's heavy water. Heavy water. You might have heard of heavy Water. Yeah. You can add two neutrons to it.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Joel Cherico]

We have a word for that.

[Chuck Nice]

Obese water.

[Joel Cherico]

It's called tritium.

[Chuck Nice]

Tritium.

[Joel Cherico]

Point is, when you do this to an atom, adding neutrons, or possibly subtracting neutrons, if it has stuff, it won't miss. You made an isotope.

[Kristen Bell]

Aha.

[Joel Cherico]

So deuterium and tritium are isotopes of hydrogen.

[Chuck Nice]

Of hydrogen.

[Joel Cherico]

Let's go to carbon. Carbon has six protons in the nucleus.

[Chuck Nice]

Right?

[Joel Cherico]

So red blooded carbon would have how many neutrons?

[Chuck Nice]

Six.

[Joel Cherico]

Six. And it'll have six electrons.

[Chuck Nice]

Electrons.

[Joel Cherico]

Carbon. Bada bing. Okay. Oh, wait a minute. I can add two, two neutrons to it. So now it has six protons and now eight neutrons. Add those two numbers to get, what do you get?

[Chuck Nice]

14.

[Joel Cherico]

14.

[Chuck Nice]

Carbon 14. Carbon 14 as in carbon 14 dating?

[Joel Cherico]

Yes, yes. You know, someone should make a Carbon 14 app. A dating app. That'd be kind of cool. That'd be kind of cool. So that's an isotope of carbon. All right. It turns out carbon 12 is stable. 12 is six protons, six neutrons. It's stable.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

You add two neutrons, it's not stable.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

It will decay in a half life. In a half life. And the half life of carbon 14, if I remember correctly, it's around 5,000 years. Which means after that amount of time, half of the carbon 14 is no longer there.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

It has decayed. And then you wait another 5,700 years, half is gone again.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

You wait, another 5,700 is half a half of a half is an eighth.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

So you keep doing this. And you know what it does? It gives you access to dates across all of recent human history, from when we were in caves up through recorded history. Right on up back through thousand years ago, 500 years ago. So it's very useful for dating life on Earth. Some carbon that's in your body is carbon 14.

[Chuck Nice]

So how do we end up with the carbon 14 in our bodies?

[Joel Cherico]

So carbon in nature. Add carbon 13 in there too. So carbon 12 stable. Carbon 13 stable. There's not much of that. Carbon 14 unstable.

[Chuck Nice]

Unstable.

[Joel Cherico]

Okay. So in the environment, carbon 14 would normally just disappear. Except there are sources of carbon 14 from cosmic rays, from space.

[Chuck Nice]

Space rays.

[Joel Cherico]

Space rays.

[Chuck Nice]

Space rays. Space rays. We got space rays.

[Joel Cherico]

Okay. You know what else boosted carbon 14 levels?

[Chuck Nice]

What?

[Joel Cherico]

The nuclear tests that went on in the 1950s and 60s. So here's what happens when you are alive. You uptake that native amount of carbon 12, 13 and 14 into your body.

[Chuck Nice]

Okay.

[Joel Cherico]

And it stays at that Level. Okay. Until you die. Because then you stop ingesting more carbon. There's carbon in all food you eat, basically, right. All food that has any nutritional value has carbon in it. Okay. The moment you die, you no longer refreshing the carbon. And the carbon 14 then decays.

[Chuck Nice]

And then that's when we can figure out the timing correct.

[Joel Cherico]

The nuclear tests have interfered with some of the baseline measurements of what's going on in our environment. So you have to sort of get the nuclear tables together with the tables of nature in order to figure out what the starting levels were for life forms that were exposed to it.

[Chuck Nice]

We've actually put the finger on the scale.

[Joel Cherico]

The thumb on the scale.

[Chuck Nice]

On the scale. With the nuclear test?

[Joel Cherico]

Yeah, with the nuclear test. Anyhow, I was just, you know, chewing the fat here. With isotopes, I love it. And yeah, they're fun. Other part of what's going on on the periodic table of elements.

[Chuck Nice]

Yes.

[Joel Cherico]

And one other thing. Hydrogen has one proton and helium, remember, has.

[Chuck Nice]

Has two.

[Joel Cherico]

And helium in its native state has a total of four nucleons. Two protons, two neutrons.

[Chuck Nice]

Right.

[Joel Cherico]

And it's stable. Okay. It turns out that's called helium 4 because it's got four particles in its nucleus. Two protons, two neutrons. Helium 4. If you take away one of the neutrons, guess what you have.

[Chuck Nice]

Helium three.

[Joel Cherico]

Yes. Helium three. Helium three. Now here's what's cool about Helium three. Helium three is one of the particles ejected by the sun and it gets embedded into the lunar surface. We might have talked about this in another show. So helium 3 is yet another isotope, but now that's one with one. Fewer neutrons instead of more neutrons. That was another installment of things you thought you knew. Neil Degrasse Tyson here as always. Keep looking up.

[Kristen Bell]

At Capella University. Learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment counselor, who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn [e-mail].

[Neil DeGrasse Tyson]

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