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situations. Coming

1:39

up on StarTalk, Cosmic Queries,

1:42

Grab Bag Edition, from right here

1:44

at my office, The Hayden

1:47

Planetarium, American Museum of

1:49

Natural History. Your

1:51

questions this time touched on

1:54

all kinds of wacky,

1:57

weird things. Like what happens in a black and

1:59

white? out of a black hole,

2:01

quantum entanglement. This universe, other

2:04

universes, the shape of the universe,

2:06

all of the above. And

2:08

more. Coming up. Welcome to Star

2:10

Talk. Star Talk

2:12

begins right now. This is Star Talk. You're

2:15

the grass tyson

2:18

here, if you're

2:20

a personal astrophysicist.

2:35

Today it's going to be Cosmic

2:37

Queries grab bag. Chuck.

2:40

Hey. You the grab bag man.

2:43

Uh, no, I'm, I'm just part of the

2:45

bag. I'm

2:47

not really much of the grab. I'm

2:50

part of the bag. We got Gary

2:52

O'Reilly joining us here. And

2:54

apparently in previous grab bags,

2:56

I was insufficient to

3:00

serve the needs of the questions.

3:03

Oh, you got that email. Y'all

3:05

went out and got one of my

3:08

colleagues. Well, of course. It's all about

3:10

sharing care. So

3:12

Charles Lou, our returning champion,

3:15

Charles Lou, friend and colleague.

3:17

And we go back a

3:19

long way, almost 30 years

3:22

now. What a pleasure. Yeah.

3:25

So thanks for all you bring to Star Talk.

3:27

Oh, always happy to be here. Happy to see

3:29

you. You're still our geek in chief. Thank you.

3:32

And you are the evidence that the

3:34

geek spectrum is infinite in

3:37

all directions because however geeky I am,

3:40

one need not be impressed by that when

3:43

they see the geeky or person. Okay. So

3:46

I would not presume, but

3:49

thank you so much. It's very kind. I really had to

3:51

be here. So you guys got the questions from our Patreon.

3:53

We do. All right. I'll

3:55

kick us off. All right. Let's

3:57

do that. Gary. very

4:00

much. Yes. Go on, you want to jump in? Here

4:02

we go. This is Laz and Laz

4:04

says, Hey, Neil and Chuck. He's talking about...

4:06

Tell me about Chuck. Oh, thanks, Chuck. And

4:09

he says, this is Justin from Houston, Texas.

4:11

I was wondering... Wait, I thought it was

4:14

Laz. Well, he goes by Laz. Laz is his handle. Yeah.

4:16

That's his handle. You don't have to be

4:18

your name, dude. Get with

4:21

the century. We're having another

4:23

Nerdfighter. Press X to the

4:27

deck. That was rather aggressive.

4:29

Okay, here we go. It's

4:31

all right. He says, I was

4:34

wondering the other week, if gravity

4:36

affects the flow of time and

4:38

black holes are concentrated gravity, would

4:41

the age of the universe be different

4:44

based on the size of your nearest

4:46

black hole? Side question, if

4:48

I were to make a theoretical

4:50

cloak of black holes around my

4:52

body, would time cease to exist

4:54

for me or would it change

4:56

the rate of time inside the

4:58

cloak at all? Wow. Yeah. He's

5:00

feeling Harry Potter. He really is. The

5:02

invisibility cloak of Harry Potter. It's a

5:05

time cloak. It's a time cloak. Yes.

5:07

To answer the cloak question

5:12

first, you can't make a

5:15

cloak of theoretical black holes because

5:19

you create basically one big black

5:21

hole as a result. Right. In

5:23

the stuff on the inside, time

5:25

could stand still, but

5:28

you've created essentially an event horizon

5:30

around the interior of this cloak.

5:33

So time

5:36

could stand still for you if you were keeping time

5:38

still at that point. So could

5:40

you make like a Lagrange

5:42

point of black holes where

5:45

all the black holes are in

5:47

a stable little environment

5:51

and each event horizon is touching

5:53

just enough where it doesn't tug

5:56

and then you're just perfectly perched

5:58

right in that. middle of

6:00

that. That is not him talking about Lagrange

6:02

point. No this is a very serious

6:06

and valuable question. In fact, I

6:09

learned from watching you. How's from that? From

6:13

the drug commercial back in the

6:16

day. Kids, parents, you're doing drugs. Where

6:18

did you learn this? And he says

6:20

to his dad, I learned it from

6:22

you alright. Parents who do

6:24

drugs have kids who do

6:27

drugs. Yes. Did

6:30

you guys grow up together? There's

6:35

no way I could have done that. You

6:41

cannot put black holes just so they

6:44

barely touch by event horizon and keep

6:47

them stable. The quantum mechanical

6:49

effects gravitational radiation will inevitably cause

6:51

them to crash into one another

6:53

because they're not that way. However,

6:56

Boden Paczynski, who is an astronomer from a

6:58

long long time ago, or maybe Andrei Pachulczyk,

7:00

one of those two guys, maybe

7:03

decades ago, suggested that the centers

7:05

of galaxies might contain configurations of

7:07

black holes that were indeed kind

7:09

of buzzing around a common center

7:11

of gravity like bees swarming around.

7:14

Now the problem in the end

7:16

is going to be the gravitational radiation that

7:19

comes from that. They will eventually collapse. If

7:21

they're that close they just can't stay in

7:23

a stable configuration purely gravitationally.

7:25

They need something else to keep them

7:27

apart. Otherwise they coalesce. They release gravitational

7:29

waves. We see it at LIGO and

7:32

we can find out. Yeah but we

7:34

don't have to be that exotic. Just

7:36

put them on a planet orbiting very

7:38

close to the black hole. As

7:40

we saw in the film Interstellar,

7:43

if you're really close to a black

7:45

hole your time takes way more slowly

7:47

than everybody else. So is that all

7:49

you need to solve his question? Well

7:52

yeah if you get close to the black

7:55

hole time for you runs more slowly

7:57

but the rest of you... We see your time... time

8:00

was. So the time for you runs normal.

8:02

Yeah, for me what I felt like was

8:04

a second or two. It doesn't change anything.

8:06

But you guys see me, right, having

8:08

only been one second while you guys

8:10

experience decades of life. So

8:14

that particular question is hard

8:16

to answer specifically that way.

8:18

But the answer is, like you said, we solve

8:20

the problem. In the New York Times, science

8:24

journalist from the 60s and 70s,

8:26

Walter Sullivan wrote a book called

8:28

Frozen Star back in the early

8:30

days of Black Holes, where if you see

8:32

someone about to fall in, they're basically frozen

8:35

relative to you. You'll just see them just

8:38

sort of pause. Yeah, and that's

8:41

been used in a number of places.

8:43

There was a TV show called Andromeda

8:45

starring Kevin Sorbo, where

8:47

he in fact was in the ship and

8:50

was caught almost falling

8:52

in. And during that moment, where he was kind

8:54

of caught, he didn't age at all. But

8:57

other people did. And 300

8:59

years later, using more advanced technology, someone

9:01

salvages a ship. And so now he's

9:03

like fish out of water. He's

9:06

300 years older than everybody else. And

9:08

somehow he still can save the universe.

9:10

So the first part of this question,

9:12

which was, if

9:15

gravity, if flux, the flow of time, are

9:17

black holes concentrated gravity?

9:21

So is a black hole, is

9:25

the gravitational effects of a black

9:27

hole the result of the black

9:29

hole, its density, or is

9:32

it actually gravity itself

9:35

concentrated? Well, gravity,

9:37

Neil, tell me if I'm explaining

9:39

this okay. Is essentially the

9:42

curvature of space time caused by

9:44

mass? Mass and energy. Yeah, mass

9:46

and energy. So if a

9:49

black hole is sitting there, we

9:51

don't necessarily think of it as

9:53

a concentrated point of gravity, but

9:56

rather as an object

9:59

that happens. happens to warp space and

10:01

time so significantly that it has an

10:03

event horizon around it. So to

10:06

answer that question, I think is to express it.

10:08

Yeah, I don't know if it's semantic at that

10:10

level. After

10:14

Einstein, Newton was, there's

10:16

an object and there's a gravitational field. All

10:19

right. Einstein is, there's

10:21

an object and space time

10:24

is warped in the presence of

10:26

that object and everything you do

10:28

and how you move is

10:30

influenced by this curvature of space time

10:32

and you measure that curvature to be

10:34

gravity. So that's,

10:39

it turns out that might sound semantic, but that Einsteinian

10:42

description is way more accurate

10:44

in predicting phenomenon in the

10:46

universe. And so, but

10:48

to quibble over what happens

10:50

to the time. Yes,

10:52

time slows down for you. After that, I don't

10:55

know what more interesting there is to talk about.

10:57

And there's a, of course,

10:59

one of the most important parts of the

11:01

general theory of relativity is the equivalence principle,

11:04

which means that at some point you can't tell the

11:06

difference between the curvature of

11:08

space time causing you to move differently

11:10

and some sort of acceleration that's causing

11:12

you to move differently. So as

11:15

far as the time changing and differing,

11:17

I think Neil has the

11:19

right idea. All

11:22

parts of the general theory of relativity

11:24

important. Yes.

11:27

So some parts are more important than that.

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for the love

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of home. Hello,

14:13

I'm think you broke Allen and

14:15

I support StarTalk on Patreon. This

14:18

is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

14:29

All right. And

14:32

Bill Bailey. Hi Bill. Says

14:34

Guardians of the Galactic Groove. Okay.

14:39

You too Gary. My innocent bystander.

14:42

Say I fall into a black hole, I

14:44

cross the event horizon. If, let me back

14:46

to Kevin Sorbo. If there really was a

14:49

singularity in my future, not a point in

14:51

space, would it take me till the end

14:53

of time to reach it? Are

14:55

you of the opinion that black holes are

14:57

really places as opposed to objects? Bill

15:00

Bailey. So here we go. Our

15:03

black holes, places are objects. Black holes

15:06

are definitely objects. They can move through

15:08

space and time. They can collide. So

15:10

clearly, they are objects. But the singularity

15:12

that Bill is

15:17

describing would be a place,

15:19

possibly a place inside the black

15:21

hole. Because singularities

15:23

might not even have to exist.

15:26

As long as something is inside

15:28

an event horizon, we actually don't

15:30

know how the material is structured inside. So

15:33

when you're falling, you

15:36

actually are falling in toward the event horizon. You

15:38

don't know if there's a singularity there. And in

15:40

fact, it would take you a huge amount of

15:42

time, possibly an infinite amount of time to fall

15:45

into the black hole as

15:47

you. Because what happens is that the

15:49

black hole's event horizon grows to meet

15:51

you. And as you

15:54

look in toward the event horizon, the things

15:56

closer to the event horizon to you, you

15:58

see their time. going more

16:01

slowly, but if you look

16:03

backwards then the time is going more

16:05

fast or quickly and the other

16:07

direction. So at the moment

16:10

you are reaching the black

16:12

holes event horizon you see the

16:14

entire history of the

16:16

entire universe of that location simultaneously.

16:19

The entire future history of the universe

16:22

behind you unfolding,

16:24

right? Because you slow down and

16:26

the entire time is basically stopped

16:28

for you. Yeah, that's... I'm

16:32

crazy! I'm insane! The

16:36

universe is under no obligation

16:39

to make sense to you. Well it

16:41

succeeded. It

16:43

certainly succeeded. That

16:45

is insane! In

16:48

these big huge concepts that we're

16:50

talking about here, about quantum versus

16:52

general relativity versus space and time,

16:54

it sometimes can be helpful

16:57

to think of time as always existing,

17:00

past, present and future, and you're

17:02

just filling in that dimension as

17:04

you happen to pass through it.

17:07

We are prisoners of the present forever

17:10

transitioning between our

17:12

inaccessible past and our unknowable

17:15

future. Oh, that's in the Bible! According

17:20

to Captain Kirk! The

17:23

prisoner sounds so depressing.

17:26

Makes me feel like I'm Patrick

17:28

McGooin or number six. Oh, wait,

17:30

don't put emotion in what I

17:32

just said. It just is. Maybe

17:34

we're not prisoners, maybe we're privileged

17:36

participants in the present. Oh,

17:38

that sounds like a creepy prisoner to me. Don't

17:42

worry, one day you'll be able to leave the basement. But

17:46

not now. Not now! Not today. What

17:50

do we say to the gods of freedom? By the way,

17:53

me uttering that line was

17:55

lifted by Beyonce for her

17:57

international tour between songs. Are we serious?

18:00

I'm serious. All right. So

18:02

who is the author of that particular quote?

18:04

That's him, man. It would be

18:06

me. That's him. Thank you. I

18:09

didn't know that before. That's why I... Oh,

18:11

you didn't know? Okay. No

18:13

sarcasm. Yeah. What did I

18:15

say? Okay. Wait a

18:17

minute. Okay. Now I'm D-real

18:19

in the show. You're like, what? I gotta

18:21

D-real the show. I'm sorry. Because somebody mentioned

18:24

Beyoncé. Yes, exactly. You can't keep a focus.

18:26

Stay focused. Come on. We

18:28

can't stay... Come on. We can't

18:30

stay focused. Okay. Do one of

18:32

the greatest videos of all time. Which was?

18:35

Of all time. Of all time. Oh,

18:37

that's right. I'm gonna let you finish. I'm gonna let

18:39

you finish. Okay. Okay. Please.

18:43

What? What? What? How

18:45

did Beyoncé get this quote to...

18:48

I'm on the internet somewhere saying it.

18:52

And her people or she saw it,

18:54

said, that's cool. No, but what I'm

18:56

saying is they use your voice. Yes.

18:59

Is she violent? Okay. So

19:01

here's what I'm thinking. Okay. I'm

19:03

thinking, it's like, you know, got me looking

19:06

for crazy right now. Thank you. We

19:08

are all prisoners. Like,

19:11

that's how I thought it went down. But it's

19:13

you. It's actually you saying... It's my voice. Of

19:16

course. That's cool. That's

19:18

my voice. Yeah. It was my voice.

19:20

Okay. It wasn't for the domain.

19:22

It was for the international tour. Okay. But

19:24

I thought she was quoting you, but really when they

19:27

were using you as a part of the actual concert.

19:29

Yeah. That's so cool. That's

19:31

really cool. You know, we get back on the road. Oh,

19:34

and people ask me, well, how much did they pay you?

19:36

So I told them how much and they say, dude,

19:39

you should have gotten Beyoncé tickets. It would have worked

19:41

much worse. It

19:43

was like, no, but I'm not. Now we got to

19:45

get you in a Taylor Swift concert. Who's

19:47

next? You want

19:50

to go to a child's concert? No, you go.

19:52

Do I think all it's about black holes?

19:54

These are all about black holes in the beginning. Well, I should

19:56

have said that at the top. Oh, no, not everything. Okay. Okay.

20:00

This one's from Matthew again. These are all patreon

20:03

Patrons that are contributing these questions. So

20:05

thank you very much. I'm Neil Charles and

20:07

Chuck Matthew from Dallas. That'll be in Texas

20:11

Is there a way to transfer information of

20:13

Dallas Norway? Yes Yeah, it actually says Dallas

20:15

TX. So I'm just just in case it's

20:18

like a Paris, Texas So this is the

20:20

Paris France is America, dude. We know where

20:22

Dallas is do we? We're

20:24

so happy for you Go

20:30

to record is there a

20:32

way to transfer information is

20:34

giggling is there a way

20:36

to transfer information with quantum?

20:38

Entanglement if so, can we

20:40

instantaneous communication anywhere in the

20:42

universe? No subspace required at

20:44

the moment? quantum entanglement

20:48

could provide instantaneous

20:51

Information transfer, but we

20:53

haven't been able to confirm it There's

20:55

no way yet for us to be

20:57

able to conduct experiment that can

21:00

show that quantum entangled particles could

21:02

travel Transfer information faster than light.

21:04

There's nothing mathematical says it

21:06

can't but there's nothing physical

21:08

that says it can Okay,

21:11

so he says no subspace required Okay

21:16

What is subspace? Is there

21:18

a subspace by the subs are you really asking

21:20

that? I'm saying and you've been my you you

21:23

you asking that I think Chuck's asking you on

21:25

behalf of all I

21:27

am on behalf of the harsh on Important

21:31

okay, so that face So space

21:33

was invented by Star Trek

21:36

Yes, because it needed to find a way

21:38

to move things faster than light from one

21:40

point to another in our universe And

21:43

so that's just things about communication Yes,

21:45

I'm safe communications are even more amazing

21:47

than than actual traveling through subspace But

21:49

what you do is your warp nay

21:52

cells create a warp bubble around you

21:54

Which puts you out of our universe

21:56

and into subspace which then allows you

21:58

to squirt forward like a little bubble

22:01

through space-time at faster than

22:04

light. So warp 10 is

22:06

an infinite speed and you

22:08

get, it's a logarithmic scale, warp

22:10

9 and that warp 9.9 and

22:13

warp 9.99 and so on and so

22:15

on, just get you faster and faster

22:17

batteries. That's where the engines really can't

22:19

take it. That's right. The... Start breaking

22:21

off! Start breaking off! You

22:23

can't take it, Captain, I can't do any

22:26

more! The USS Voyager. Okay, go for it.

22:31

The Scotty and Shrek were the same. The

22:33

Scotty and Shrek were the same, you know.

22:35

The Star Trek Enterprise D could go around

22:38

warp 9.4 at a sustained period of time. But

22:42

Star Trek Voyager had 17 decks

22:45

and had a nominal cruising speed of warp

22:47

9.975. So

22:50

it was a speedy little ship.

22:52

Okay, so subspace allows...

22:54

Because with regard to communication, if

22:56

it's just having banter

22:59

with, you know,

23:02

home base, what... Starbase? Starfleet?

23:04

Starfleet Command. San Francisco? Starfleet

23:06

Command. If it's just having conversation back

23:08

and forth, it's not really

23:11

possible if it's moving at the speed of

23:13

light. That's right. So all those conversations

23:15

in Star Trek or through really any

23:17

space show had to be going through

23:20

some medium other than regular space. We're

23:23

nowhere near that right now, are we? Not

23:26

anywhere. I'm familiar with that. Okay, it'd be

23:28

nice. All right,

23:30

this is Windy Sue, and Windy

23:32

says, Hi Dr. Tyson, Dr. Liu,

23:34

Mr. Nice, the glue that holds

23:36

everything together. I'm

23:39

from Shanghai, China. I didn't know Shanghai and

23:41

China was the glue that holds everything together.

23:43

Wow. Yeah. If

23:46

gravity is the curvature of space

23:48

time, say if two celestial objects

23:50

were to stay completely still relative

23:53

to each other, they would

23:55

feel zero effect from each other's

23:57

gravity, because they are not moving...

24:00

through the fabrics. Thanks

24:02

for bringing back the joys of

24:04

learning. Okay, I don't think, I

24:08

missed the question. If

24:11

gravity is the curvature of space-time, say

24:13

if two celestial objects were to stay

24:15

completely relative to each other, they

24:18

would feel zero effect from each other's

24:20

gravity. They would. They would.

24:23

I guess the question is, is that the case? It

24:26

turns out that, no, they would still feel

24:28

the effects. You see, because gravity, say you

24:30

have object A, it has a

24:32

gravitational field. It distorts space-time around it. Object

24:35

B is over here. It distorts space-time

24:37

around it. Even if they're

24:39

still with one another, they still feel

24:41

the distortions. The distortions do not change

24:43

with time if they're exactly a

24:45

far apart, but they still feel each other. So

24:48

they may not accelerate toward each other,

24:50

but they feel that force. They should

24:53

accelerate toward each other if no other

24:55

forces or accelerations are present. That

24:58

would have to be the case if the two of them are

25:00

staying absolutely still with respect to one another. The

25:02

only way that they would not feel each other's gravity is

25:04

if they didn't have any gravity at all. I

25:07

will quote John Archibald Wheeler. Will

25:10

you? He's

25:12

dead. He's

25:14

dead, Gary. Is

25:16

it final? Go ahead.

25:19

Mass tells space

25:21

how to curve. Space

25:23

tells mass how to move. Ooh.

25:28

Okay, so in this case, we

25:30

have two objects that have curved

25:32

space-time in their vicinity. That's

25:35

all the instructions they need to

25:38

fall towards one another or towards

25:40

each other. And

25:43

because they're following the path

25:46

that they can't help following. So

25:48

let's do a dance. I don't know how specific how you differentiated

25:52

one another from each other. I

25:55

caught that. So I had

25:57

to correct each other just between.

26:00

Two people. Right. So

26:02

if they're saying... Your mama is... I was going

26:04

to make your mama proud. She taught

26:06

English. Well, no, and I was the one who said

26:08

it incorrectly, so she's proud

26:11

of you. So

26:16

if they're perfectly still with respect to one another,

26:19

they are experiencing something else

26:21

that's keeping them perfectly still

26:23

with respect to one another. Otherwise, they would

26:25

be accelerating towards one another. I haven't addendumed

26:27

to this, if I may. One

26:30

of the most realistic scenarios to deflect

26:32

an asteroid that might be headed our

26:34

way is to take a spaceship, park

26:37

it near the asteroid in

26:40

perfect path with it. So

26:42

park it... It's a moving asteroid. It's a moving asteroid, so it's

26:44

just moving along the side of it. So you park it, so

26:46

it moves along the side of it, and

26:49

they want to move

26:51

towards each other. Yeah.

26:53

But you have little retrorockets on your

26:56

spacecraft that prevent that. So every time

26:58

it tries to move towards the retrorockets

27:01

fire, and it's just like, I'm

27:03

just going to move over here.

27:05

Over here? But I say, where

27:08

you going, babe? So

27:12

the meteor, the asteroid, the comet ends

27:15

up getting pulled towards

27:17

the spaceship through the

27:19

gravitational field. So in a way, it's

27:22

like a gravitational tractor beam. Don't stand

27:24

so close to me. Very

27:26

nice. You don't need much

27:28

of a deflection. If we get it

27:31

early enough, tiny deflection is all you need. Oh,

27:33

yeah. All right. Right. That

27:36

also has the benefit that some

27:38

asteroids comets, we think they're

27:40

not very tightly held together. Some might be

27:42

just piles of rubble moving

27:44

in unison. Whereas

27:46

if you just have a... If you just go in and bust

27:48

it up, who knows what that's going

27:51

to look like. But gravitationally, that'll affect all

27:53

the particles together. And so

27:55

you good. Oh, okay. Yeah.

27:57

Two in one. All right. Javier

28:00

Ortega. Hi,

28:02

I'm an engineer from Panama. The

28:09

spirit moved me. The

28:20

question is, the light of the

28:23

stars travels away from it in

28:25

an infinitely dense sphere of photons.

28:27

Until every unobstructed

28:29

object in the distance receive

28:31

its photons. How

28:33

can this be if in the far

28:35

distance the rays will spread apart from

28:37

the star? I know we

28:39

can be talking about quantum waves instead of

28:41

photons, but even in that case, I

28:44

can't figure how this light can maintain

28:46

its density through the

28:48

distance and size greetings from the past.

28:50

I think I understand the question. Imagine

28:54

a star and

28:57

the rays come in every direction, so

29:00

those rays start spreading farther and

29:02

farther apart so that they'll not

29:04

intersect some stars, whereas they will

29:07

intersect others. Does

29:09

every single sight line onto a

29:11

star from every single distance receive

29:13

light? And how could

29:15

the star be giving off that much light? That's

29:19

a great question. But how could

29:21

it not? Seriously,

29:25

because no matter where you are, at whatever vantage

29:27

point, you would feel light. Here's what I want

29:29

to try. Just take me out on

29:31

this. I'm thinking just in

29:33

real time because I don't have the answer ready made for

29:35

this. Here's what I wonder. Here's

29:38

what I wonder. As

29:41

your distance gets greater and greater

29:43

from the star, the energy

29:46

density of the light

29:48

diminishes. The

29:51

intensity drops and drops. There

29:57

will be a point where it's below your ability to

29:59

be at the top. to detect it, maybe

30:01

that's this point in practice

30:04

for what it is you're talking about. In

30:07

practice, there is a detection

30:09

threshold. And therefore,

30:11

for any detector, any real

30:14

world, in mathematical reality, you

30:16

actually can in fact, eventually

30:18

receive light from every single

30:21

object in the universe. This

30:23

is the basis of Olber's paradox. Why

30:26

is the sky dark at night? If

30:30

there are enough stars out

30:32

there, every line of sight should

30:34

get some light from it somehow

30:36

and you eventually wind up filling the entire

30:39

night sky with stars or star light one

30:41

way or another, no matter what. So why

30:43

is the star? Why is

30:45

the sky ever dark? And

30:48

part of the answer, one way to think of

30:50

the answer is that light travels at a finite

30:52

speed and therefore, not every

30:54

spot actually has a light source where

30:56

the light has had time to reach

30:59

your eye yet. Another

31:01

point how to do it. An object can be so

31:03

far away in the time it

31:05

has turned on. It's like

31:07

one of three ways. There

31:12

are different ways out of that thing. But that's

31:14

one way that you can think about it. In

31:16

other ways, this detection limit, your

31:18

eyes can't see them even though it's there. Right

31:21

now, one of the famous things that

31:23

we do in science is to try

31:25

to find cosmic background radiation. Microwave

31:28

radiation is famous from the Big Bang but also

31:30

there's cosmic infrared radiation background, there's

31:32

cosmic visible light background, exactly how

31:34

much is it? Spaces

31:36

that we looked years ago

31:38

that were completely blank had nothing

31:41

in there. We stare at it

31:43

with the Hubble Space Telescope or

31:45

JWST and thousands of galaxies appear.

31:47

It's all a matter of detection. So

31:50

hopefully that answers the question there. We're

31:52

talking about the light from the Big

31:55

Bang where the entire

31:57

universe is being filled with all of this light

31:59

that's in there. that existed at the

32:01

moment that the universe began. What's

32:03

going on there is that the

32:05

entire spectrum of that background light

32:07

is being stretched as space

32:10

is expanding. So that's why that light

32:12

which used to be gamma rays is

32:14

now microwaves. And so you can

32:16

fill the space. A much lower branch of

32:19

energy branch of electrons. So you can fill

32:21

the space with the same amount of energy,

32:23

just each spot in space has much less

32:25

of it. Wow. So

32:28

there you go. That's a deep significant question. Yeah.

32:31

Great question. People have been on point. Good day, man.

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pod 50 or 50% off. Guys,

34:02

you got one, it's like five minutes left. Okay. Charles,

34:05

you and I have to tighten our game

34:07

here. Okay. Charles, you pulled

34:09

out your stopwatch. What's up? So I

34:11

figure if we got to get through

34:13

these quickly, then we'll just do a

34:15

time limit on each question. Okay. And

34:18

then you guys have to determine whether or not

34:20

you can answer it in that. Okay. So

34:23

what do we say? 30 seconds? I

34:25

think that's a good round number. All

34:27

right. That's a

34:29

long, easy move to find you on

34:31

the street. Make it 10. 10

34:33

seconds? No, that's too much. That's too short.

34:36

You have the Usain Bolt of Science. You don't have to use

34:38

the whole 30 seconds. I'm just saying that the most of it

34:40

can be. If you can do it in 10, do it in

34:42

10. But 30 seconds, time

34:44

is up. Let's go. Okay. All

34:47

right. I want to take five minutes

34:49

explaining why we're only going to take 10 seconds.

34:51

All right, here we go. Here we go. This

34:53

is Jamie Wilson. Greetings, Dr. Tyson and honored guest,

34:55

Charles Liu. If you could time travel to any

34:57

point in human scientific history, which time period would

34:59

you choose and why Jasmine from Santa Rosa, California?

35:01

Go. Whoa. Trinity,

35:03

first nuclear explosion. I would call travel

35:06

back to the collision of thea and

35:08

earth, which made the moon. I

35:10

want to see that in the night sky. I

35:14

would try and travel forward to a place

35:16

where black people are doing. Okay.

35:20

All right. So

35:25

thea would be now four and a half billion

35:27

years ago and Trinity would now be 70 years

35:30

ago, 80 years ago. Yeah.

35:33

Okay. Okay. All

35:35

right. Next question. Frederick Deschamps, Fredson, UP,

35:38

Michigan, and would like to know if you,

35:40

Charles, have read the Discworld books. Oh yes, by

35:42

Terry Pratchett. Yes, indeed. What kind of fun physics

35:44

can you think of taking place on a magical

35:46

land such as? Did

35:49

he also ask for Easter eggs that

35:52

we might have missed? No. There's

35:54

tons of physics Easter eggs in it. Terry

35:56

tells all kinds of cute physics jokes because

35:58

this world is literally a disc. but

36:00

it sits on elephants and then there's a

36:02

turtle that the elephants are standing on and

36:04

it just kind of swims through the universe

36:07

So it's a it's not turtles all the way

36:09

down. Right? It's just turtles one layer deep. Yes.

36:12

Okay, so it's almost like a giant disc-shaped spaceship

36:16

that's going through the universe. It's what it is.

36:19

Yeah, are you guys feeling any flat earth

36:21

trauma going on here? It is. This is

36:24

rough. Disguised. But

36:26

Terry was one of those folks that always

36:28

told good jokes about the science. Yep.

36:33

I stole five of a second. It's all good. It's

36:35

all good. Now his humorous physics

36:37

Easter eggs were good enough for me.

36:40

I have yet to speculate aside from

36:42

this very good point that you're basically seeing

36:44

new constellations all the time. Yeah. Okay.

36:48

All right. All right. This

36:51

question's from logical hillbilly from

36:54

wonderful West Virginia. I have a question

36:56

about white holes. Here we go. The

36:58

white signs equation show that mathematically they

37:00

can exist. Nothing has been found that

37:03

fits the description. Is it possible that

37:05

there was only one white hole and

37:07

it was as what

37:09

we know as the Big Bang. Thank you for

37:11

all the awesome information. A

37:13

last note. The white hole idea

37:17

and what we have seen about the

37:19

Big Bang are not compatible. Well,

37:22

that only took nine. I told you. I

37:25

told you. Will

37:27

you yield 10 seconds to me? I

37:29

yield 20 seconds. Yeah. You'll turn

37:31

back to the gentleman from the Bronx. Okay. So

37:36

when white holes were first put forth, we deeply

37:38

wanted quasars to be white holes at the edge

37:41

of the universe. There's a very high concentration of

37:43

energy coming out of them. And

37:45

when you compared what you'd predict for

37:47

a white hole with every white hole in the universe, every

37:51

known object in the universe, nothing matched. So

37:53

the white hole remains mathematical

37:55

speculation. Unfortunately, because it'd

37:57

be really cool pairing with the...

38:00

universe as black holes. Okay,

38:02

ready, set up? That

38:04

wasn't 20 seconds, so we made it

38:06

under 30 seconds. Chase

38:09

Matthews writing from Ventura, California, do

38:11

we have the capability of creating

38:14

a Dyson swarm with

38:17

technology available today, or maybe a

38:19

similar structure in low

38:21

Earth orbit? Dyson swarm, explain please.

38:24

It's a bunch of vacuums that you put the... I'm

38:27

just setting them up, you know, come down. I

38:31

don't know what a Dyson swarm is, I just know what a Dyson sphere is. Yeah,

38:33

imagine just a whole bunch of satellites that

38:36

kind of surround anything. Okay, all right, so

38:38

it's not a full solid structure. Yeah, right.

38:41

Yeah, I mean, a Dyson sphere swarm

38:43

around Earth would be pointless. The

38:46

only point of a Dyson sphere is to

38:48

trap energy coming from the thing in the

38:50

center of the sphere. So

38:52

you would put it around the Sun, you would put it

38:54

around the galaxy, you would put it around a galaxy cluster

38:56

or a cluster of stars. So...

39:01

Time's up. Yeah, and my nine

39:03

second version... Oh, that's perfect. And

39:05

my nine second version is that you can

39:07

create a constellation like that around

39:10

the Earth. In fact, some

39:12

people might be trying to do that, like, say, star length

39:14

or something, but it

39:16

wouldn't get energy. Yeah, there you go. You

39:19

guys did it. I mean... Thank you. All

39:22

right. Next question is from Sam Green. I've

39:25

read that aerogels are heat resistant to extreme temperatures,

39:27

in some cases, 1300 degrees Celsius. Wow.

39:31

Yeah. But are

39:33

very fragile. Are there any

39:35

applications or apparatus that

39:38

could be developed to harness this property

39:40

to explore the inner Earth or use

39:42

in nuclear reactors? Oh, look at that.

39:45

Ooh. Well, one application I just

39:47

learned in the Paris fashion

39:51

week. There is a

39:53

handbag made out of aerogel as

39:56

a new fashion addition. Do you have one?

39:59

No, I don't. But I do have my own aerogel on the

40:01

shelf. Well, of course. Yeah. I'm joking. But

40:03

what it means is new materials

40:06

have always influenced the creativity of

40:08

artists. And right

40:10

up and down, whenever something new happens,

40:12

creative artists say, hey, that's a new

40:14

material. With these properties, I'm going to

40:17

do the XYZ with it. But

40:20

in terms of probing Earth, Charles, I don't

40:23

know how to work. Aerogels have been used

40:25

in spacecraft. You basically encase them in something.

40:27

And then that forms a very interesting and useful

40:29

thermal barrier between something you want to stay hot

40:32

and something you want to stay cold. So

40:34

you could do that down into the Earth. Problem

40:36

is with the Earth going into the Earth. In

40:38

order to visit? Yeah, in an Earth. All

40:40

right. The pressure is too strong. It

40:42

will crush the aerogel. Right. And then

40:45

in a nuclear situation, the

40:47

radiation will alter the structure of

40:49

the aerogel, unfortunately, over time and

40:51

therefore render it not as effective.

40:55

That's a good point. I hadn't thought of that. So

40:57

its thermal properties would

40:59

be different. There's energy from 1,000 degrees

41:02

Celsius, of course. But targeted

41:05

particle energy from nuclear

41:07

reactions would have completely

41:10

enough energy to break apart all those

41:12

molecules. So you'd have a pile of dust at the end

41:15

by my read. And no handbag.

41:17

And no handbag. Last

41:20

question. Last question, OK. All right. I promise I've

41:22

been doing OK with this. I got to tell

41:24

you, you guys have really been. With the yielding

41:27

of the time? You've been knocking it out pretty

41:29

cool. The last one,

41:31

you both did about, I mean, well, Charles was

41:33

30.7 seconds and you were 33 seconds. Which

41:38

for you is like 3 and 1.5 seconds. If

41:42

this was a Charles Coloring book, you'd just went over

41:44

the edges. Yeah, OK. Yeah, I know. That's a good way

41:46

to do it. Who's the guy who did the lines?

41:48

Anyway, right. Gabe Malick. I'm a high school student from

41:50

Washington, DC. I'm writing, what

41:53

is the most agreed upon geometrical

41:55

nature of the universe, Euclidean or

41:57

non-Euclidean, or is it spherical? Oh,

42:00

okay. It's Euclidean. Flat.

42:04

Absolutely. Good. Flat Euclidean. It has been confirmed

42:07

as a consensus almost completely by everyone. Yeah,

42:09

no one is denying this. And we get

42:11

that from the dark energy, which

42:14

flattens out what would otherwise be a spherical

42:17

shape or a saddle shape. The dark

42:19

energy flattens that out. That is still

42:21

a mathematical hypothesis. What is?

42:24

We have measured the universe to be

42:26

Euclidean and perfectly flat. And

42:28

then we think that it is the dark

42:30

energy that causes it to stay flat, like

42:32

inflates it just enough, but we don't really

42:35

know that. What do you think is making

42:37

it flat? We don't know, but that is

42:39

one hypothesis. I told you was making it

42:41

flat. You have to confirm that there has

42:43

not yet been an experiment. Is there something

42:45

else out there that you think could be

42:47

making it flat? Possibly. Like what? Something called

42:49

quintessence, which is not exactly dark energy. There's

42:52

also- Sounds like a fried corn. Ah! Ah!

42:54

Ah! Ah! Surely, I think

42:56

what people have in mind is quintessence.

43:00

But the idea is that the geomino

43:02

is a flat. Totally okay. I like

43:04

it. Oh, yeah. Quintessence. Yeah, it's

43:06

by Cody. Sorry. Yeah. Measured

43:09

flat. And we good. Okay.

43:11

So why? There you go, Gabe. We have more

43:13

left to figure out. There you

43:15

go. Yeah, you very young person still in high school.

43:17

So there'll be time on your side to work it

43:19

out. Yeah, I'm working. You figure it out.

43:21

Right. Well on you now, Gabe. Charles

43:24

Liu, delighted to have you back. It is always- And

43:26

we're all here in person too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're

43:28

all here. We've been like- No! No!

43:31

We're all great. Fist bumps and handshakes

43:33

all around. Fist bump in the middle

43:35

here. Yeah. One more power.

43:38

Guy in power, activate! Well,

43:42

that's like Power Rangers. They all get

43:45

together and they- The Mouseketeers.

43:48

All for one and one for all. And

43:50

the swords rooted in that history. The

43:53

Mouseketeers or the Musketeers? The Mouseketeers

43:55

came like that. I swear he said Mouseketeers.

43:58

I think that would be great. All right,

44:01

there's been another installment of

44:03

StarTalk, Cosmic Queries, Grab Bag

44:05

Edition, meaning black hole, I

44:07

must say, and cosmology, but

44:09

that made it that much sweeter. Black holes

44:11

don't suck. Right, black holes don't suck. How

44:15

long have you waited to say that? But

44:19

if you fall in one, then that's your new home. In

44:22

fact, this was composed by Harry Belafonte.

44:26

Black holes don't suck. But

44:29

if you fall in one, then that's your

44:31

new home. No,

44:34

they don't suck. They don't suck. They don't

44:36

suck. They don't suck. No, they

44:39

don't. Everyone together. But if

44:41

you fall in one, then that's your new home. I'm

44:48

so glad he's dead right now. He

44:52

did not have to hear that. It

44:54

is time. Chuck,

45:01

Gary, Charles, always good to have you in the

45:03

same room as you guys. Kneel the grass tight

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in here, as always. Whether

45:21

you're a morning person or a bedtime

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procrastinator, everyone deserves a mattress that works

45:26

for their style. And you'll find the best

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mattress for you at Ashley. The new

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Tempr Adapt Collection at Ashley brings

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you one-of-a-kind body conforming technology, making

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every sleep tailored to be your

45:36

best. The collection also features cool-to-the-touch

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covers and motion absorption to help

45:41

minimize sleep disruptions from partners, pets,

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or kids. Shop the all-new Tempr

45:45

Adapt Collection at Ashley in-store or

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online at ashley.com. Ashley, for

45:50

the love of home.