- This is StarTalk.
I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson,
your personal astrophysicist.
I hail from the American
Museum of Natural History
right here in New York City,
where I serve as Director
of the Hayden Planetarium.
And today we've got a Cosmic
Queries edition of StarTalk,
with my co-host Chuck Nice.
- Hey, Neil.
- Chuck, always good to have you here.
- Good to be here.
- Tweeting at @ChuckNiceComic.
- Yes.
And I am the director of parts of my home
on certain days of the week.
(Neil laughs)
- Even that only in certain hours.
- Certain hours of certain days.
That's all I get.
- So, I think today the topic is
the physics of everyday life.
- Yes.
- Yeah.
Love me some physics of everyday life.
- [Chuck] I know you do.
- Oh man.
- I've been around you long enough
to actually hear you speak on
the physics of everyday life,
whether I want you to or not.
- You know what's good
about learning physics?
- Yes.
- It's not a satchel of facts.
- That's right.
- To be regurgitated.
It is an understanding of
the operations of nature.
- That's great, I was about to say,
it is actually the understanding
of your own experiences.
- Yes.
Or even things that are
not your experience,
things that transcend your experience,
physics is there waiting for you.
- Yeah, yeah, that's
what makes it so cool.
I mean, there's--
- But what it means is
you don't have to learn
every single example
of how physics manifests in the universe.
- Thank god.
- You can learn the foundational things
and then apply that
knowledge to what you see.
So that's the beauty of it.
And that's why physics books
are not the fattest books on the shelf.
Accounting books are fatter
than the complete works of physics.
- Right, 'cause they get
to change accounting.
(Neil laughs)
You can't change physics.
Physics is what it is.
- It's what it is and what it be like.
(Neil laughs)
- And what it be like
(Neil laughs)
is what it be like.
But you can change
accounting all you want.
- You change it.
There's so many other fields
where the books are just so fat and thick.
Books on human physiology,
you gotta learn every little,
of course there are some
systems that you learn about.
The circulatory system
and the endocrine system
and that sort of thing,
and that's very helpful
for new situations.
But physics is the ultimate
example of learning the basics
that then apply to everything,
stuff you've never even seen before.
- And even all of those different systems
actually have some
applied physics at work.
- Oh, okay, let me take
you there, you're ready?
- Okay, let's do it.
- So, biology.
- Yes.
- Is the extreme
representation of chemistry.
- Interesting.
- Yes.
- Give me one second, please.
- Biology is chemistry come alive.
- Okay, now I just got it.
You just gave me a little
light bulb and I got it.
That makes sense, right.
- Yes, you can have complex chemistry
but once you talk about life--
- [Chuck] That's biology.
- Earned its own field.
- Absolutely.
And life is really a collection
of chemical reactions.
- Correct.
Have you ever seen the Physicians'
Desk Reference, the PDR?
- No, I have not.
- It's a zillion pages and
it is every single medicine
prescribable in the world,
or at least in the West.
- Is it really?
- Yes, yes.
So when a doctor looks back
and you don't know what
pages they're turning,
they're looking in the PDR.
- They're looking in the PDR.
- So it's every company's medicine
that gives what it's supposed to heal,
what the contraindications are,
the side effects, all
of this is in this book.
So all I'm saying is,
it's a reminder that we are
basically sacs of chemistry.
But where I'm getting at is--
- Which, I mean, it sounds so derogatory
when you say it like that.
- Pass me my vitamin, please. (laughs)
- Hey, listen here, you sac of chemistry!
(Neil laughs)
- Yeah, we all take vitamins
or some pills for some purpose,
most of us.
Or we eat certain foods to
get the chemistry in the foods
that'll, you know.
You're drinking a cup of coffee right now.
- Yes, I am.
- Why?
- It's having a chemical
reaction in my brain.
- Correct.
- It turns off a little
teeny part of your brain
that says, "Go to sleep."
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
- So, there is no understanding of biology
without chemistry.
And there is no understanding
of chemistry without physics.
- Nice!
- And there's a kind
of audacious statement
which is really nasty but kinda true.
- Okay.
- After the laws of physics,
everything else is opinion.
- Oh, damn.
That's a drop the mic type.
- That's a drop the mic.
- You know who made that saying up?
A physicist.
(Neil laughs)
Clearly.
- In your opinion.
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
All right, so, give it to me.
We solicited these from our fan base.
I haven't seen the
questions yet, as usual.
So, what do you have?
- We always start with a Patreon patron.
Because if you support us
on Patreon financially,
we give you a preference to everything.
- I think they get more than that.
It's not just they
their question answered.
There's a whole list of stuff.
- [Chuck] There is.
- At one level they get
invited to our holiday party.
- That is correct.
If you give enough--
- Is that right?
Just verifying, yeah, yeah.
- If you give enough money,
you get invited to the StarTalk--
- If you give a zillion dollars.
(Neil laughs)
- Right.
A kabillion.
- A bajillion.
- A bajillion!
Is that a real word?
- That's the biggest number ever.
- That's the biggest number, bajillion.
- Bajillion.
- That's cool, I like it.
- If you're eight, the
biggest number ever.
(Neil laughs)
- Bajillion, oh my god!
And really it's like, there's 16 of them.
That's to a kid.
It's like my son, I told my
son I was 30 and he was like,
"You're gonna die soon."
(Neil laughs)
And mind you, I'm much older than 30.
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
Why am I lying to my son about my age?
I don't know.
- Don't trust anyone older than 30.
- There you go, that's it, there you go.
All right, so, Renee Douglas
from Patron says this.
"Why is the periodic table of elements
"not an exact rectangle?
(Neil laughs)
"My OCD will not let this go!
"Missing elements or what?
"Who cares!
"It should be a rectangle!"
(Neil laughs)
All of a sudden at the end
she started sounding like Jerry Seinfeld.
What's the deal with the rectangle?
(Neil laughs)
Why?
Who are these elements?
- Okay, then we should call it
the periodic irregular table of elements.
So, I'm with her on this.
There's the urge to want nature
to be symmetric in its beauty
and beauty in its symmetry.
- [Chuck] Wow.
- That sentence is symmetric.
- It is.
(Neil laughs)
Yes, it is, it is symmetric
in a mirrored way.
- Okay, so, I'll give you an example.
When we were filming Cosmos,
one of the scenes was in a
forest in Northern California.
And I'm looking at the tree,
I'm from the Northeast
and we don't have California trees here.
Our trees are kinda raggedy.
Kinda gnarly raggedy
compared to the mighty redwoods and other.
- They don't see the trouble
(Neil laughs)
that our trees see.
Our trees see a great
deal of trouble here.
- Our trees are like--
- Our trees are grizzled.
- They've seen the Northeast issues.
- That's right.
They're grizzled veterans of
Northeasters and hurricanes
and harsh winters.
You talk to a tree in the
Northeast, it's gonna be like,
"I'll tell you what I've seen.
"I've seen some things."
- That's the old tree on the
front porch in a rocking chair.
- Yeah, our trees are like the
two trees and the two towers
of Lord of the Rings.
Just like, "I remember a time
(Neil laughs)
"long ago."
- Slow down, you're talking too fast.
- For those, for the trees, yeah.
Redwood trees are just like.
- They're just badasses.
They're like, "I'm here and
nobody messing with me."
- Because they get to grow
unfettered by anything.
- Plus, they have fireproof bark.
- Wow.
- You try to burn a redwood,
it's like, there you go, going
around, you know? (laughs)
Keep going, keep moving,
nothing to see here.
- That's amazing.
- Yeah, they have fireproof bark.
- They need to make all of California
out of redwood tree bark.
- So, here's my point.
Some of the trees,
and I'm not a botanist so I
can't identify what tree it is,
the bark had striations that
spiraled in one direction
around the tree.
And I'm thinking,
if nature itself were symmetric,
that could never happen.
These things are twisting
on their way as they grow.
In one direction and
not the other direction,
and nothing else was twisting
in the other direction.
It means at the molecular level
you have asymmetries in
the foundations of nature.
Now, here's something I read.
I'm not a chemist, I've
just read this, okay?
- All right.
- The molecule
that you taste as spearmint.
- All right.
I believe that's the double-mint molecule.
(Neil laughs)
But go ahead.
- If you take the mirrored
image of that molecule,
make that molecule,
if you write down the chemical
form, it'll be the same.
'Cause the chemical form doesn't tell you
how to build the spirals in it.
It's just the same number of carbons,
same number of hydrogens,
same number of everything.
If you build the mirror
image of it and taste that.
- It tastes like poop.
(Neil laughs)
- No, it tastes like caraway.
- Caraway?
- And so, this is an assymetry in nature.
You don't taste the same thing
because of the mirrored image
of one molecule versus another.
So, the universe if full of assymetries.
And you know, our amino acids
have a handedness to them.
These are the building
blocks of our protein.
- So if there was a left
hand and a right hand.
- All amino acids of all life
on earth is one handedness.
Okay?
There is no life that's the other.
But there's no reason in principle
why you could not make it so.
'Cause it would just be,
we're right-handed, it'd be a left-handed,
just the way it spirals in a mirror, okay?
I mean, the way it spirals
versus what it would do in a mirror.
So this...
It's intriguing because if you
find life on another planet
and it has the other,
it's called chirality,
then you know it didn't come from us.
We had nothing to do with that.
- 'Cause it's a different handed.
- It's a different handedness.
- Wow, so what is the sound--
- And what we're not sure about is
whether if you eat the other life,
'cause that's all we do
is eat other life, okay?
- I mean if it's not alive
and you're eating it,
then you're probably gonna have
a little trip to the hospital.
(Neil laughs)
- No, no, the only thing we eat
that was never alive is salt.
- True.
- Everything else was once alive
or derived from something
that was alive, right.
- Even pepper, it comes from a seed.
- Yeah, it's a plant, right.
- Interesting.
- That's why salt and pepper
are not really equal partners.
- No, they're not, no.
Salt is cheating.
(Neil laughs)
Pepper gave its life to be on that table.
Salt just showed up.
- [Neil] Just showed up
for the party. (laughs)
- Just like white salt.
No, I'm joking.
- What?
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
- That is so white as salt.
- Actually, there's black
salt, I got black salt.
There's black salt and red salt.
- And there's pink salt too.
- Himalayan salt and there's Hawaiian salt
and there's pink salt, yeah.
- Wait a minute, man.
How racist are you that
your salt is black?
(Neil laughs)
Seriously? (laughs)
All right.
- All I'm saying is.
And another assymetry in physics, okay?
- [Chuck] Okay.
- Do you realize an electron
is a positive charge.
I'm sorry, negative
charge, negative charge.
Now watch.
I can draw field lines
coming off the electron
and they'll be straight lines coming out.
They're called the electric
field lines, and that's fine.
I have a formula that describes that.
Okay.
Electricity and magnetism are
two sides of the same coin.
That's why we have the
word electromagnetic,
that's why we have that word.
So, if things were symmetric,
I should be able to find just
a negative pole of a magnet.
Just the same way I have a
negative charge on an electron.
- But you can't.
- You can't.
- 'Cause the moment you have magnet,
you gotta have two poles.
- Exactly.
So, get yourself a magnet.
Bar magnet, horseshoe
magnet, I don't care.
There's a plus side and a negative side.
Cut it in half.
Now you have two magnets
with a plus and a minus side.
Cut them in half.
You have four magnets,
each with a plus and minus side.
You cannot cut off the
negative from the positive
in a magnet.
But you can in electricity.
That shows up in the
formulas as an assymetry
in what's called Maxwell's equations.
They're not symmetric.
- That's awesome.
- And as physicist,
you gotta get over that
when you first learn these equations.
So, getting back to the woman's point.
The periodic table of elements
has a remarkable and profound
level of symmetry in it.
The reason why it wraps
around to another row
and certain elements line up in columns
is because the elements
that line up in columns
have the same mating
properties with other elements.
- So you can combine them.
- Right, so, take carbon for example.
We are a carbon-based life.
If you're a science fiction fan,
you'd think about a silicon-based life.
You ever hear about it?
Did they just pull that out of the ether?
No, silicon sits below
carbon on the periodic table,
directly below it.
It makes the same families of
molecules that carbon does.
So they're saying, if
we're a carbon-based life,
why not swap a silicon
atom in with the carbon
and make all the same molecules.
And then you have life based
on silicon rather than carbon.
The period table of
elements captures this fact
in its structure and in its form.
As you get to heavier
and heavier elements,
things get more complex.
They get...
And so you have entire groups of elements
that all behave in the same way.
So, are you gonna shoehorn
them into one column?
You can't, because now
they're next to each other.
So you have these things
that spread out underneath.
There's the twos of the lanthanum series.
So if you go back to your periodic table,
you'll see these rows of elements
not sitting in with the
other rows of elements.
And we're still discovering elements.
- And sometimes creating elements.
- Oh, sorry.
And we're creating elements.
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
We are better at nature
at creating elements on the
periodic table than nature is.
- Wow.
- Did I say that right?
We are better...
We are better at creating
elements than nature is, yes.
- Nice.
- That's why we've got like 20,
what are we up to?
Yeah...
No, about 30 artificial elements now.
- Wow, look at that.
- And they're real.
They're made of electrons,
protons, neutrons.
And they're in there, yeah.
- Look at us playing God.
(Neil laughs)
- Well, that was a great answer
to a really cool question.
- That was a long answer too.
- Who cares, it was
fascinating, that's all.
Worry about quality, not quantity.
- So, it's...
If you have issues with
assymetries in nature,
then you're in the wrong universe.
- You're in the wrong universe, right.
But I'm sure that there is
some place in the multi-verse
that is just right for you, Renee Douglas.
- Oh, by the way, just a quick thing.
Isaac Newton was a big fan of God,
as everyone was in the day.
So it's not isolating him in
particular in this regard,
but everybody was a God fan back then.
- God, dude, I'm such a fan.
Hey God, what's up?
I'm such a fan, dude!
Love your work.
- Friend me!
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
So, yeah, love your work, right.
So, in a lot of Newton's writing,
he's extolling the beauties of nature
as the handiwork of God.
And in one place he comments
about the beautiful symmetry
that the human form takes.
Left and right.
But he has to then say,
but only on the outside. (laughs)
- Only on the outside, right.
'Cause the inside is all messed up.
- Right, yeah.
There's some things that are
symmetric but not really.
- Right down to your heart,
where one side is bigger than the other.
- One side is louder than the other.
You only have one liver.
- Yeah, the inside of
your body kinda looks like
Jeff Bezos' eyes.
- What?
- I'm just saying.
(Neil laughs)
He's got like one tiny one and
one big one, I'm just saying.
- So, your organs are so mildly symmetric
and there's a lot of--
- His eyes are so weird.
- And we're not 50% left-handed
and 50% right-handed.
- [Chuck] No, we're not.
- So there's some asymmetries going on,
that's all I'm saying.
So, he had to sort of except
that from his praise of God.
Because he assumed that God--
- [Chuck] That there's a plan.
- Plan and the plan would be symmetry.
Same with the Vitruvian Man
that is widely associated with--
- Was it da Vinci?
- Da Vinci.
With the man with his hands
sticking out, left and right,
centered on a circle.
So, the idea was, your bellybutton,
'cause if we're divine then
our form would be geometric,
so your bellybutton would
be the center of a circle
that you could trace with a compass,
and then your arms
extend and your legs out
would further trace the circle,
and this was the perfect human form.
- Had da Vinci ever met a human being?
(Neil laughs)
Because there's no one who fits that.
- He drew it but he didn't come up with.
It long pre-dates him.
From what I've read,
it longs pre-dates him.
So, my point is,
when you actually do
that with actual people,
bellybuttons are not in the same place,
people have longer arms, shorter arms,
relative to their height.
So you want it all to be perfect
because you have a philosophical urge
for nature to be symmetric and perfect.
And if that's what's driving you,
history tells us you're just
gonna get the wrong answer,
so get over it.
So in physics we get over it early
when we first learn Maxwell's equations.
- Sweet!
- Man, that was a whole segment--
- We did one segment on one question.
- Oh, that ain't right.
- But that's why this show is good.
Because we can do cosmic queries forever.
- Oh, you could do cosmic queries forever?
(Neil laughs)
- Yeah.
- Who's the one answering the questions?
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
I'm gonna let you think.
- Why do you think we can do it for hours?
- I'm glad you think
we can do this forever.
- This is nothing for me.
- When we come back,
more Cosmic Queries: The
Physics of Everyday Life,
when StarTalk returns.
We're back on StarTalk Cosmic Queries.
In this edition, it is The
Physics of Everyday Life.
Chuck, I love me some
physics of everyday life.
- Yeah, man, so do I.
This is really good stuff.
- [Neil] Okay, so, what do you have?
- Let's jump right back.
This is
Raphael Cattaback
from Facebook.
- You've been practicing, Chuck.
- No, not at all.
- (laughs) All right, what do you have?
- It probably says Smith there,
(Neil laughs)
as far as I know.
But anyway.
"If we were visited by a
more advanced alien race,
"what do you think they would
admire most about humans?
"And with regards to our
current scientific knowledge
"and understanding,
"what particular theory or law
"do you think they might disprove?"
- Oh, very interesting.
I like that.
- That's a great question.
- I like that.
So, if I may be cynical.
- [Chuck] Cynical.
- May I?
Only with your permission.
- Go, please, I'm all about it.
It's rare that I see you
actually admit to being cynical.
- I think aliens more advanced than us
would be impressed how far we've come...
- For being such dumbasses.
- For being such... (laughs)
- For being such dumbasses.
You were trying to find
out a very diplomatic way--
- How far we've come
in spite of ourselves.
- Exactly, that's what I said.
- I think they would've said,
"We never thought you'd get there."
- Oh, that's hilarious.
- 'Cause y'all been on Earth
for thousands of years,
you've had what you call civilizations
for thousands of years,
and it took you 10,000
years of civilization
before you even visited the Moon.
You could've been there a long time ago.
But let me just be happy
with what you did achieve.
- Oh my god.
Oh my god.
- [Neil] What?
Imagine if we'd landed on
the Moon 6,000 years ago.
- No, I'm imagining right now.
- [Neil] Imagine if
the Romans had rockets.
- Yeah.
But no, I'm imagining right
now, just where we are--
- Imagine if the Egyptians
said, "Let's leave Earth."
- Well, they did, they were aliens.
- (laughs) Oh, that's true, (mumbles).
I saw Stargate, it's true.
- Right, exactly.
They had a wormhole so we can't, really.
(Neil laughs)
But, anyway.
No, think about it.
Look at all the technology
that we have right now,
and if we were to take all
of the energy that we put
into trying to destroy one another
and keep one another from advancing,
and we were to take all of that energy
and just pour it into humanity--
- [Neil] Not just pure physics
energy but intellectual.
- Intellectual, the political
energy that we spend.
- Our cultural, political,
and financial capital
that we've used to destroy one another.
Imagine.
- Just take that.
- Imagine.
- And it was all pointed at the
propulsion of the human race
in a positive direction.
- You want me to quantify this?
- Oh, snap.
- You ready, you ready?
- You've been thinking about this.
- You ready?
- Go ahead.
- In today's knowledge,
you know what it costs to go to the moon,
in total?
- No, I don't.
- $100 billion.
- Who are you, Dr. Evil?
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
One $100 billion.
(Neil laughs)
- Okay, so, we went to
the Moon on $100 billion.
The entire US interstate
system is $100 billion.
Okay.
100 billion is
1/6
a single year's allocation
of the military budget
in the United States.
- That's disgusting.
- [Neil] It just is!
(Chuck groans)
It just is.
- You should've never told me that.
- No, I used to judge that
but I stopped judging,
you know why?
- How could you not judge that?
- I will tell you why.
- Please do!
- I will tell you why.
- Please.
You should be judging that.
- I will tell you why.
- Okay, you tell me.
- I'm telling you.
- That's deserving of judgment.
- I'm telling you.
- Okay.
- Okay.
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
What are we in sixth grade?
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
I said it first.
I know you are but what am I?
So, where does the budget come from?
It comes from Congress.
- Where does Congress come from?
(Chuck laughs)
- We vote for Congress.
So, so, what does it mean?
- [Chuck] That's very funny.
- That's what I'm saying.
As an educator--
- Oh my god.
I gotta stop judging it now.
- [Neil] That's what I'm saying.
(Chuck groans)
Dude.
The collective representatives
of the electorate
allocates this money.
And they all agreed to it.
- Raphael, you sent us the
most depressing question ever.
- Wait, wait, but I didn't
finish answering this.
So I think they'll be happy.
Yeah, we would have been on
the Moon 4,000 years ago.
It would've been like
cavemen next, chapter two.
- Right, we would've been
on the Moon just going,
(Chuck grunts like a caveman)
- Fire. (laughs)
- Rock.
(Neil laughs)
- Okay, that's A.
B, I think they would be impressed
with our engineering ingenuities.
- [Chuck] Okay.
- 'Cause that's not the
laws of physics now.
'Cause they would know all the
laws of physics that we know
and then some.
Oh, by the way, the laws of physics
is not later shown to be false.
When we demonstrate a new
theory of the universe,
it's because it has been
experimentally verified
multiple times by competing factions
and we say, this is how it
is, we're moving on from here.
What can happen is
you have a deeper
understanding of the world
that encompasses this smaller
understanding that you have
that works.
That can happen, it happens all the time.
All of Newtonian physics
got subsumed into Einsteinian physics.
But Newton is not all of a sudden wrong
and all the regimes in
which it was tested.
So, I think they'll say,
"Not that you're wrong.
"Oh, you think this is the full story?
"There's a bigger story.
"You've got the Big Bang
starting the universe?
"No, we've got multiple bangs.
"We have higher dimensions.
"We've got this, we've got that,
"and you're just one little
cog in this much larger wheel."
That would be highly enlightening for us.
On a scale of learning,
and this is an unheralded
point of discovery
in the history of my field.
In the 1920s, 1920, the
year, going into 1921,
we did not know whether spiral
fuzzy things in the night sky
were just spiral fuzzy
things in our galaxy
or entire other spiral
galaxies in the universe.
- [Chuck] Wow.
- There are people alive today who
were alive before we knew
that our galaxy was one
of only 100 billion in the universe.
So, the idea that you're
not alone in some concept,
we've been hit with that
multiple times before.
So, the astrophysicists,
we'd be ready for it.
We'd love it to death.
But there's some people who are happy
with their contained knowledge
of what is and is not.
- Exactly.
- But they'd just have to get over it.
- Don't make me think about something
other than what I already think of.
- Other than what I
already can think about
and already can grasp.
- I've actually accepted this.
- Correct.
- The Earth is flat, that's it.
- So, the other part of that question.
So, I think they'd be impressed
with some of our engineering technologies.
I think they would like the smartphone.
I think they'd be impressed with that.
- [Chuck] Yeah, yeah.
- I think so.
- That's pretty cool.
Even though we all know
that Steve Jobs got
that idea from an alien
(Neil laughs)
because he was one.
All right, cool, man.
Okay, I'm gonna read this anyway.
Kevin Miller from Facebook
wants to know this.
Assuming the Earth is flat.
That's a big assumption, Kevin.
I just love any question that
starts off with, assuming--
- All right, let's go there.
Let's follow the reasoning.
- One of the things I like about you
is that you'll take these
and do something with it.
All right.
When the ice melts at the poles,
where is all the water going to go?
- I have no idea.
(Neil laughs)
- Exactly.
'Cause the Earth ain't flat!
No, I'm.
- It seems to me it would
spill off the edges.
- I mean, seriously,
if the Earth were flat,
it'd be like a table.
- Yeah, you spill something on a table,
it goes off the edge.
Unless you build a damn.
- Ah, so now the Earth is not flat,
it's more like a pie dish.
- Oh yeah, it's got edges to it.
- It's got edges.
- And beyond there be demons.
(Chuck and Neil laugh)
- Why do I feel like
Jack Sparrow right now?
And beyond there be demons!
- Beyond our limits! (laughs)
- All right, well, there you
go, Kevin, there you have it.
- It's a pie plate.
(Neil laughs)
- It's a pie plate, bro.
That's all we can do for you.
- All right, give me another one.
- All right, here we go.
Let's move on to
naters19872 from Instagram.
"How far away would a
black hole have to be
"in order for our solar
system to fall into it?
"I also have another question.
"Why are you so awesome?
"I love StarTalk and you
are just one of my heroes."
- He just did it--
- [Chuck] No, that last part was for me.
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
- Thank you, Chuck.
No, did he really say that?
- Yeah, I'm serious.
He was talking to you, I was joking.
Yes, he's saying,
"You are one of my heroes
and I really love StarTalk."
- Okay, we appreciate that.
And let the record show that
you were reading that question
whether or not he upended
it with that sentence.
- Well, he didn't write it to me, so.
You don't know the questions.
- We don't boost questions
just 'cause you're saying nice things.
- Well, we do boost questions
if you're saying nice
things about Chuck Nice,
'cause I'm the one who's
reading the damn questions.
You know what I mean? (laughs)
- So, thank you for those kind words.
- Now, the question after the kind,
or actually preceding the kind words was,
how far away would a black hole have to be
in order for our solar
system to fall into it?
I think what he means instead of how far,
how close would it have
to be is what he really.
- Yeah, same idea.
- Same thing.
- So, that's not how black holes work.
- Right.
- Okay.
A black hole is not some
giant sucking machine.
- Like my career.
(Chuck and Neil laugh)
Oh, I'm sorry, I'm
laughing at my own pain.
- We love you, Chuck.
- Okay.
(Chuck laughs)
- Chuck, you're a hero on our podcast,
no matter what else is
happening to your career.
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
- No matter how far in the
toilet your career may be, Chuck.
- Did you get booed off this
comedy stage last night?
(Chuck laughs)
- No, was actually a really good show.
- A good show, very nice.
Very nice.
- So, anyway--
- Should the comedian
be the one who judges
whether the comedian has a good show?
- Yes, the comedian is
always the one who judges
because here's the great thing
about being a stand-up comic.
- [Neil] Oh, you know.
- Yeah, you always know, and you can...
And I love young comedians
'cause they get off the stage
and they immediately lie to themselves.
They get off the stage and
they look at you and they go,
"Yeah, so that felt good, right?"
And I'm like, "Why are you asking me?"
If it felt good, it felt good.
You don't need my
permission for it to feel,
you know you suck.
(Neil laughs)
You know you suck.
What is your problem?
- Chuck, the mentor.
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
- No wonder no one comes to me for advice.
All right, anyway, back to naters19872.
- So, black holes are not
some giant sucking machine.
They have a gravity
commensurate with their mass,
like anything.
You have gravity.
- Yes, I do.
- The Moon has gravity,
the Earth has gravity,
the Sun has gravity.
- [Chuck] Anything with mass has gravity.
- Anything with mass
or energy has gravity,
'cause energy and mass are the same.
- [Chuck] Ah, that's right.
- So, you can ask,
how much mass does the black hole have?
And if it has a planet's worth of mass,
it can just hang out in our solar system
like another planet.
If it has a star's worth of mass,
it might acrite planets to orbit it.
- [Chuck] Interesting.
- So...
- It could even have a
galaxy's worth of mass.
- A galaxy's worth.
We have a super massive black hole
in the center of our galaxy.
So, you don't wanna get too close to it
because there are places
where there are no longer stable orbits
and then you fall in.
- And then you fall in.
- But you can calculate
what that distance is,
and it's not too hard to stay away.
It's not that hard.
- It's not like it's a siren.
You don't have to lash yourself
to a mast and just like,
I'm going to hear the song!
- You're still going on
classical voyages here.
- I am.
- Weren't they sirens?
No, the sirens.
- Yes, the siren.
- Yeah, yeah.
- [Chuck] Nothing gets sucked,
it's not just sucking stuff in.
- If we turned Earth into a black hole,
it would be like the size of a plum,
last I calculated.
And the Moon would still orbit it.
The Moon wouldn't care.
- It wouldn't fall in?
- It wouldn't care.
It's only responding to
the mass and the gravity.
So, what makes black holes interesting
is that you can get really close to them
and get ripped apart
and spaghettified, okay.
You can't get closer than Earth's surface
to Earth's center of gravity.
Okay?
- Okay.
- You'd have to shrink
her to get closer to it.
Shrink it down to a plum,
now you've been spaghettified.
So all the interesting stuff
that happens with black holes
is because you can get really close.
Otherwise you're hanging out
where you've always been,
you're perfectly safe,
don't have nightmares about it.
- It doesn't do anything to us.
Like, it never--
- Now, now, if I had Earth as a plum.
If I took another planet, take Venus,
made a black hole and
brought it here and let go?
It would fall through the Earth
and eat Earth Swiss cheese-style
as it bounced back and forth,
and it would be systematically dying
upon all the physical
contents of the Earth,
until Earth plus Venus became one.
- A big, right.
So, you'd have the merging of those two.
- Yes, and it'd become like the size
of an orange or something.
- So, the black hole would
actually increase in size itself?
- Physical.
- Physically.
The physical black hole
would increase in size
if you were to merge two black holes.
- It turns out to be linear with mass.
So a black hole that's twice the mass,
will have twice the diameter.
- Wow.
- It turns out.
If you do the math, yes.
And the diameter is the
diameter of the horizon.
You gotta say that.
- [Chuck] That sounds cool.
- Okay, we're out of
time for that segment.
- Okay, once again.
- When we come back, more Cosmic Queries
on the physics of everyday life,
when StarTalk returns.
We're back, StarTalk, Cosmic Queries.
The Physics of Everyday Life edition.
- All right, let's move on.
This is
totalnerd52.
- [Neil] Love total nerds.
- Total nerd.
- Proud of it.
- Yes, as opposed to--
- Partial nerds.
- That's right.
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
Yes.
- Or weekend nerds.
I want the total 24/7.
- Yeah I want the total nerd,
not a quasi-nerd.
"What degree can you do more with,
"a physics degree or
a mathematics degree?"
- Physics degree.
- Really?
- Yeah.
- Now, are you biased?
- Some things are objectively
true in the world.
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
Let's say it another way.
In spite of what it might
seem like to your parents
if you choose to major in physics or math,
both of them are highly employable
by people who know and understand
the brain wiring that
emerges from having done so.
- [Chuck] Absolutely.
- Okay?
- Yes.
- Mathematicians and
physicists are problem solvers,
and engineers are problem solvers.
They can see problems
in ways others have not.
And it's just that physics
has more places to plug into
the operations of society
than does a mathematician, that's all.
But in either case you don't see
either mathematicians or physicists
on the street begging.
- Right, exactly.
- You'll find artists,
you'll find musicians.
- We'll calculate for food.
- (laughs) That's right.
When you cite digits of Pi for...
Right, no, no.
- For pie. (laughs)
- For pie! (laughs)
And we have pie all day!
- Pie all day.
(Neil laughs)
- So, it's a reminder that
there's certain professions
that fundamentally plug
in to civilization,
and others that become
a part of civilization
because we choose it to.
So, we embrace music, we embrace art,
the kind of art that is not
otherwise self-sufficient.
So I'm not talking about pop music.
I'm talking about orchestral music
that generally is performed
in institutions that require.
- Funding.
- Funding, yes.
- And that funding
normally comes from someone
who gives a great deal of
money to make that happen
because it can sustain itself
through the appetite of the public.
- Yet, the city in which you
find those offerings of art
boasts that they have
those offerings of art.
It's in the catalog.
We have this philharmonic hall--
- The Boston Philharmonic.
- And we have this art museum
and we have all these institutions.
- That's what makes us a
cosmopolitan destination.
- Correct.
So, it's an interesting difference
that have art and science
in the same phrase.
I went to the college of arts and sciences
at the university of whatever.
Arts and sciences go way
back as a paired thing.
We have Leonardo as the epitome.
- Right, actually combined the two--
- He combined the two.
It's just one of the
greatest examples of that.
So, I'm just saying,
a society has to want
to embrace its artists
in order for them to manifest
as a fully expressed, employed community.
Whereas financial forces
can drive your interests
in having an engineer
or a physicist on staff.
- [Chuck] Absolutely.
- For example, Mayor Bloomberg.
Former Mayor Bloomberg, okay?
Successful businessman.
- Very much so.
- Very much so.
- Billionaire.
- Multi-billionaire.
- Like, a real billionaire,
not like some other people.
- Some other people you heard of?
- I'm very rich!
(Neil laughs)
Very, very rich.
(Neil laughs)
Normally when people tell you
they're very rich, they're me.
(Neil laughs)
They're me.
Like, yo, don't look
at that, I'm very rich.
- So, here's the thing.
When he built his company,
he could've hired MBAs
who know their business,
but that's not who he hired.
- [Chuck] Who did he hire?
- He majored in physics and engineering
at Johns Hopkins University.
He hired mathematicians,
physicists, and engineers,
and would teach them the
business side of the world.
But he needed people who would--
- [Chuck] Problem solvers.
- Go with gnashed teeth
and attack a problem
they've never seen before.
And my wife was one of
those earliest employees.
- Get out.
- She has a PhD in Mathematical Physics.
- Well, I knew that.
I didn't know that she
worked for Bloomberg
in the early days.
- When she was there,
Bloomberg had 100 employees.
- Oh my god.
She got more money than you.
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
Now I know.
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
- So she was early in on that
and he recognized what she
could bring to the table,
as others that she worked with, yeah.
- That's so cool.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
All right.
- So go for it.
- So, physics.
- No, either, do either.
If you're gonna pick one of those,
pick the one you love and do it.
- [Chuck] Okay, cool.
- And you'll be better at it than others
and people will beat to
pass through your door.
All right, give me some more.
- Okay, here we go.
"Why haven't there been a
greater number of advancements
"on solar energy
"given it's literally a
constant resource of energy!"
- Yeah, the source of the energy is free
but the devices to convert
it into useful forms
given the economics of
what is going on right now
has not yet reached that tipping point.
So, right now, sort of the wealthy class
that has the luxury of being green
without regard to its
impact on your pocketbook,
they're the first adopters
of the electric cars
and the electric this and the
solar panels and the like.
What is missing from the equation
is how much our tax money,
throughout the last century,
has subsidized the oil and gas industries.
We built the roads,
bought the car that now
we put their gas in.
They didn't build the roads, okay?
So, the question is,
can and should society subsidize
the solar energy universe
in the way we have subsidized--
- The fossil fuels industry.
- The fossil fuels industry.
And in doing so,
would that tip the economics
in the favor of solar
panels and solar energy?
- That's a great point, man.
By the way, that was George
Senofontos who actually--
- Love that.
Senofontos.
- Senofontos.
And by the way, yeah.
Tan, getting a tan is free.
Solar power is not.
(Neil and Chuck laugh)
- The sun's energy is basically limitless.
But also you have to be
able to transport energy,
move it from where it
is to where you need it,
and solar power exists when the
sun is out and it's daytime,
so, where are you getting
your energy at night?
You gotta be able to store the energy.
Yeah, so, battery technology
is still a century behind
other technologies.
So, there's still some...
- But wouldn't you see
a proliferation of new battery designs
and an improvement in battery life
if you were to see the same
burgeoning of solar power?
I think one would drive the other.
- Possibly,
except we already have a
huge demand for batteries,
we're using more batteries
today than ever before.
- This is true.
- It used to be, oh, I need
a battery for my wind-up toy.
No, no, you wouldn't need it
for some wind-up toy. (laughs)
I need a battery for my motor car.
So you go buy the battery
and then the battery
would leak or it'd run out
or you'd leave it on.
The buying of batteries was
a major thing in the day.
Now, anybody's house has
30 batteries lying around.
And the batteries last longer than ever
and our machines, our
devices that use batteries--
- Use them more efficiently.
- Use them more efficiently.
Exactly.
So we think batteries are improving
at a higher rate than they actually are
because the energy demands (mumbles).
Even our flashlights are LEDs.
- Exactly, which means that
they're using much less juice.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Wow.
Okay.
Well, listen, man, I can
only hope that, George,
that what you wanna see actually happens.
- Yeah, yeah.
And so, like I said,
it's an economics thing.
So the day the economics tips,
everybody will have solar panels
in every horizontal surface in their life.
It'll happen practically overnight.
'Cause that's how these things work.
And in a free society,
there's a limit to how much you
can beat someone on the head
to get them to spend
more money for something
that's almost is good or not quite as good
as what they already have,
or even if it's a little better
but if the can do it cheaper.
So, most people wanna save the buck.
- That's true.
Yeah.
That's why I don't mind that--
- Right now you can't give
away an incandescent bulb.
- No, you can't.
- You can't.
- Because they cost you more money.
I mean, if you're smart
enough to know what you have.
- No, no, no.
So, incandescent bulbs.
No, I think they're cheaper
than a thing but if you do--
- No, they cost you more money.
- But they ultimately cost you more money
and you gotta throw them away,
and they get hot and everything.
- Yeah, well, they're
really a heat source,
not a light source.
(Chuck laughs)
- Correct.
They give off more infrared
than they do visible light.
- That's correct, yeah, yeah.
I think I learned that from you.
(Neil laughs)
That's how long we've
been working together.
- They're primarily a heat source.
- Yeah, they're primarily
a heat source, yeah.
Marco Blackwell from
Facebook wants to know this.
"With the advancements of science,
"has there been any attempts to change
"any of the established
rules/laws of physics?
"Laws of motion,
thermodynamics, et cetera.
"Or is it once that it's
a law and it's established
"that it just cannot be changed?"
So, in other words...
- You were like 10%
Captain Kirk on that one.
- I know.
- (laughs) Just saying.
- It just cannot be changed.
(Neil laughs)
Tell me, Spock, what is it with
the laws of thermodynamics?
- Once, okay, in the old days
we used to call them laws,
back in the 19th century,
the pinnacles of classical physics.
Newton's laws of motion,
the laws of thermodynamics.
20th century, we've loosened the word law,
we don't used the word law anymore.
Not because there aren't laws,
just because we're a little
more candid about the fact
that what we say is a fundamental
property of the universe
may be a small part
of a bigger understanding of the universe.
Whereas law implies there we go!
But what we are discovering
that is experimentally verified
is not later shown to be false.
And this is a misconception
that so many people have.
They say, "Oh, there's a
theory of quantum theory,
"that means we won't (mumbles)."
No, it is working, baby.
We got this, okay?
There's still some other things
we can understand about it,
there's still some frontiers,
it may plug into a larger understanding,
but the quantum theory
that we have established,
experimented on and works,
we are good to go.
So, no, it does not
change, it only expands.
- Ah-ha, there is the rub.
- Yeah, exactly.
- It expands.
- Our understanding can
expand on that understanding,
but it doesn't swap out that understanding
once it has been experimentally verified.
At that point, it elevates
to the level of theory.
So that's why I'm trying,
I may lose this battle,
but I'm trying to get people to not say
when they say, "I have a theory about."
No, you have a hypothesis.
- Right.
- Okay?
- And it's probably not even a hypothesis.
You have a feeling.
(Chuck laughs)
- Right, right.
- 'Cause, "I have a theory."
No, Einstein had a theory,
you've got a hypothesis.
- Exactly, right.
'Cause the hypothesis is the--
- And if you have a feeling,
that's another level.
I've got a feeling.
- I've got a feeling.
'Cause when people say,
"I have a hypothesis,"
and I'm like, really?
Is it educated?
- [Neil] Have you really
thought it through?
- Have you really through it through?
Because that, yeah.
- We've got two minutes left.
What do you got?
- All right, here's one. (laughs)
This is Haini--
- Don't laugh in advance to the question,
that's embarrassing for the
person who asked the question.
- I'm not laughing at the question,
I'm just laughing at the,
okay, I'm laughing at the question.
(Neil laughs)
Haini Larmp says this.
- [Neil] From where?
- From Instagram.
- Okay.
- "What causes thunder?" (laughs)
- Thunder, very good.
- I know, but it just seems so weird
to ask Neil deGrasse Tyson.
- Why?
- Because you're an
astrophysicist and there's--
- It's physics, dude!
- It is physics, but I'm just saying,
there's so much that
you are associated with
in terms of your expertise.
- Maybe this person knows everything else,
and it's the only gap
left in their knowledge.
- Oh sure, yeah, right, yeah.
(Neil laughs)
They know all about red shifting
but they don't know what thunder is.
Okay, by the way,
I am not trying to disparage
you, Lauren, at all, okay?
I mean, Haini, that's his name, Haini.
- All right, so.
- What is thunder?
- Here you go.
So, during a thunderstorm,
a vigorous rainstorm,
water falls out of the clouds,
and generally those water droplets
have a net charge associated with them,
a net negative charge.
So it is separating negative
charges out of the cloud
and putting it in the ground.
There's a limit to how much
of that you can get away with
before the charges say,
we want to rebalance.
- We need more charge.
- No, we want to un...
- Oh, we want to uncharge.
- Uncharge.
- Right.
- Okay?
You are stripping
negatives from positives,
and that's not how they wanna be.
- They wanna be balanced.
- They wanna be balanced.
So this builds up enough
imbalance and it says,
I'm coming back to you, Elizabeth!
(Neil laughs)
- Elizabeth!
I'm coming to join you, honey.
- I'm coming back.
- I'm coming to uncharge.
- Okay.
So, those charges rise up
and they come out of the ground
and they create a visible arc of light
that we call lightning
back up to the cloud.
So, all lightning is cloud
to cloud or ground to cloud.
It's called ground to cloud.
Or visible lighting.
So, up comes this very hot,
extremely hot--
- Arc of light.
- Arc of light.
It is so hot--
- That when you open and look
into it, your face melts.
(Neil laughs)
It's beautiful!
(Neil and Chuck laughs)
- It's beautiful!
- It's beautiful!
(Neil and Chuck laughs)
Oh god, we are such nerds.
- Such, such Raiders nerds here.
Okay, so.
- So, it's so hot.
- It is so hot that the air,
the air catastrophically expands.
- Interesting.
- [Neil] That's what happens
in the cartridges of a bullet.
- Right.
That's why it makes the bang.
- And so it expands catastrophically,
the bullet comes out this side,
the shell drops to the ground.
So, any time you rapidly heat air,
it's how a bomb works,
it rapidly heats air.
That's how the nuclear bombs work.
You rapidly heat the air,
and the air knows only to
expand catastrophically
at that point,
and it's a shockwave.
A shockwave.
So it's not just,
I'm getting louder.
No, it's, boom!
And it's that expanding air
that you then hear as thunder.
- After the lightning.
- After the lightning.
And it moves at the speed of sound.
- Which means the lightning
you always see first.
- I forgot if it was seven
seconds a mile or something,
some number of seconds per mile.
So you can count how far
away the lightning is
and how far away that
thundercloud was from you.
- And that'll let you know
how close the storm is.
- By the time delays.
I saw a documentary once,
and he was very concerned about
the accuracy of the thing,
and he had a thunderstorm
out in the distance,
and you heard the lightning
exactly with the thunder.
So at the end. the filmmaker
was there in the room,
I said, "Why did I hear the thunder
"exactly timed with the lightning?"
I first said,
"Do you care about accuracy
in your documentary?"
"Of course, of course,
accuracy is everything."
So I said, "Why did the lightning?"
"Oh, well, we shifted the sound (laughs)
"because it was too weird to watch."
- It looks like it's out of sync.
That's because it is out of sync.
- [Neil] Because it is out of sync.
- Nature made it out of sync.
- And you know what's really cool?
If you go see, well,
a shuttle launch. (laughs)
Go back in time.
- [Chuck] I was gonna say, yeah.
- Well, watch any launch.
- Any launch?
- Any launch.
That's a catastrophic heating of the air,
it's thunderous.
And the closest you can
get if you're a civilian
is like three miles away.
So you just see this thing take
off and it's total silence.
It's total silence.
And you see the shockwave,
the front wave of the sound, move,
this is Florida so there's a lot of water,
so you see this ripple moving towards you
and birds coming up.
You still don't hear
anything, it's still silent.
And then you hear (mimics
blast) as it comes to you.
So it's just fun to watch
the sound come to you.
It's a fun thing to do that.
But anyhow, that's what thunder is.
And because the arc is
not a straight line,
it can bend.
It'll take the most
electrically expedient way
back to the cloud.
It is not always a straight line.
It can be 'cause it's wetter here,
and water conducts electricity
better than dry air does.
So what you have here is,
if there's angles to the lightning strike,
it's possible for you to be at the focus
of two of those angles.
So, in other words,
if there's a straight
segment off to your right
and a straight segment off to your left,
then you have sound coming to you
from two different directions.
And if they hit you at the same time,
you get the snap.
That crack of the thunder.
(Chuck mimics crackling)
- It sounds like it's paper tearing.
Or the sky is tearing.
- It's an extra magnification of the sound
because you get multiple sound paths
coming to you at the same time
rather than just one (mimics thunder).
It's like (mimics crackling).
That's this, that, that,
all these different angles
coming to you at different times,
some of them hitting you at the same time.
- Cool.
- Chuck, we gotta end it there.
- Oh man, that was a good one.
- [Neil] Chuck, always
great to have you, man.
- It's always great to be here.
- Love you, man.
- Love you too, man.
- I love you, Chuck.
You've been listening to,
possibly even watching, StarTalk.
I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson,
your personal astrophysicist.
And this brings an end
to our Physics of Everyday
Life Cosmic Queries.
And as always,
I bid you to keep looking up.
(soft music)
