- [Neil] This episode of Wheel of Science
is brought to you by Wix.
- This week on Wheel of Science,
we're talking space
death or apocalypse wow.
- Chuck, there's no end
of ways to die in space.
- Which is why I keep my black
behind right here on Earth.
- Welcome to Wheel of Science.
(upbeat music)
- Hello, hello, hello.
Welcome to Wheel of Science,
I'm your host Chuck Nice.
This is the interactive
show where we answer
your questions about the universe,
but I don't answer your
questions about the universe.
The one, the only, the inimitable,
Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson
answers your questions about
science, what's up Neil?
- I'm doing good Chuck,
hailing from my office
at the American Museum of Natural History,
right here in New York City.
- Do you ever go home?
I mean seriously, do you ever go home?
- My home is the universe,
so wherever I am I'm home.
- I don't think your family
would appreciate that answer.
(laughing)
- All right Neil, what time is it?
- It's time to play Wheel of Science.
- You heard the man, spin that wheel.
(cosmic spinning)
- [Chuck] Michael Gordon wants
to know will our sun go nova?
- Or supernova?
- Asking for a friend (laughs).
(Neil laughs)
- You lying (laughs).
The sun will do neither.
Neither.
The sun is not that kind of star.
The sun, as it gets older
and wiser,
it will ultimately exhaust
the fuel in its core and
one of the things that goes on inside
is that it begins
sort of converting hydrogen into helium
in an outer shell that works it's way,
it's no longer doing it in the core,
it's this shell that works it's way out.
And, while it's doing
that, the sun will bloat
and get huge and
it will engulf the orbit of Mercury,
then Venus, then it will
render Earth's oceans a boil.
They will then evaporate
into the atmosphere,
Earth's atmosphere will
evaporate into space
as we lose our orbital stability
and descend into the stellar abyss,
vaporizing along the way.
Have a nice day.
- Wow Neil, you should really
write children's books.
(Neil laughs)
- There you go Michael,
I hope you're happy
you killed us all.
All right Neil, you ready
for another question?
- Spin that wheel.
(cosmic spinning)
- [Chuck] Here we go,
Dorothy Wiseman wants to know
how big of an asteroid would it take
to totally destroy the Earth?
- Sometimes when people say destroy Earth,
they mean destroy life on Earth
and all that takes is
asteroid 10 miles across
that'll do it because you
don't have to kill everybody,
well, yeah, you'll kill
anybody who is where you hit,
all right, they're gone instantly,
but then how about everybody else?
Well, since we all eat off of one another,
if you take out the base of the food chain
because you've cloaked the Earth
in darkness from this asteroid impact,
then that takes out the plants.
And if you take out the plants,
you take out the animals
that eat the plants,
then you take out the animals
that eat the animals that eat the plants.
And this is a wave of extinction
that percolates across the tree of life.
10 miles across would do it.
The one that took out the dinosaurs
was about the size of Mount
Everest, about six miles across.
If you want to obliterate
the entire Earth,
there is no such object
out there to do so.
- Cool!
I mean not cool, that's not cool.
Will it make a difference
where that 10 mile asteroid
will hit?
- It won't make any difference at all.
We're talking about how much energy
is being plunked down onto Earth's surface
and it's an energy
calculation at that point.
Doesn't matter if it hits
land or ocean, doesn't matter.
We think that something hits the ocean,
the way we normally want to think about it
is there's a tsunami
and the tsunami's bad.
If your 10 miles across,
you are bigger than the depth
of most of the world's ocean,
so the ocean just doesn't even matter.
You're making a crater in
the bottom of the ocean
when you hit, so no,
it just doesn't matter.
Kiss your ass goodbye.
- You know what I love about this episode?
It's so uplifting, which is
why we're gonna take a break
while I contemplate my own death.
We'll be right back.
(cosmic spinning)
[Neil] Even after the apocalypse,
you'll want to have a website
and you'll want to
create that site on Wix.
Wix is what I used to
make wheelofscience.com.
You'll be spending your time running
from an asteroid or fending off zombies,
so you'll want to conserve
your time and energy
by using the Wix drag
and drop website builder.
Upgrade to a premium plan
and you can get your own
website domain name right away.
Go to wix.com/go/StarTalk
and begin your site now.
(cosmic spinning)
- Welcome back to Wheel of
Science, what's up Neil?
Are you ready for your next question?
- Chuck, spin the wheel.
(cosmic spinning)
- [Chuck] Knagor Drak wants to know
what's the most realistic
way that space could kill us?
- Ooh, I like that, okay.
If the sun
begins to
misbehave,
we expect that to happen in
about five billion years,
they'll be considerably more solar storms,
considerably more an intense
radiative particles
emanating from the sun.
As that happens, it will
begin to ablate our atmosphere
and, basically, taking
out the highest level
layers of the atmosphere systematically.
And as it continues to do this,
atmospheric pressure will drop.
We'll have less and less air to breathe
as this process continues and, eventually,
we'll have no air to breathe at all.
And unless we become fish
(laughing) real fast,
we get to breathe the remaining air
that's dissolved in the ocean,
but that'll go away too.
All the fishes will die.
And, when that happens,
we all suffocate.
That's space killing
us in a diabolical way.
- And it's space finally making Aquaman
the preeminent superhero.
(Neil laughs)
- Chuck, you know another
way for space to kill us?
- What?
- So, if there's a gamma ray burst
that happens a little too close?
What'll happen is the
high energy radiation
hitting Earth will first
hit the ozone layer,
that's our first line of
protection right there.
Ozone takes out the x-rays
and the ultraviolet,
but then, there's so much of it
the ozone layer will not
have a chance to recover.
And so, it's just waves
and waves of radiation
until the entire ozone layer is gone.
And the next wave of that
high energy radiation
then reaches Earth, giving
everyone skin cancer.
Some people, skin cancer
sooner than others.
- I'm pretty sure I'm
in the later category.
(Neil laughs)
- Oh Chuck.
- All right it's caption time,
where we took a picture of you Neil
and, of course, asked for captions.
- So, can I offer my own caption?
- Go ahead.
- Back up!
I'm about to drop some science on you!
- All right, well let's
see how that stacks up
against the winner, Elaine
Ricklin, who said this.
"I should not have had
three tacos for lunch."
(Neil laughing)
- I can't argue that
one, that's a good one.
- Hey, it's time for this week's poll.
How would you like the cosmos to kill us?
Would it be the expansion of the sun,
meteor impact, or gamma radiation?
I'm going with gamma radiation
'cause it'll turn me
into the black hulk, yes!
Neil, do you have any preferences?
- I think about this all the time.
If I were to go, rather
than getting hit by a bus
or dying from cancer or so many
other, sort of, ways to go,
I want to be swallowed by a black hole.
In fact, let the black
hole swallow all of Earth,
that would just be,
talk about how to use the
word awesome correctly,
that would be awesome.
- Somethin' wrong with you man.
Hey, look at that, we're out of time.
As always, we have to say thank
you to Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Thanks Neil!
- I'm here for you at arm's reach
whenever you need me Chuck.
- Kinda sounds like you don't
like me, but you know what?
I appreciate it anyway Neil.
- As always, I bid you to keep looking up.
- We'll see you next time.
- [Neil] Okay, so now you know
how space is gonna kill you,
but we're at least a few
years away from that.
Why not spend the end of days
with a beautiful website
you created on Wix?
You'll still have time to
feed you and your family,
so you can use the Wix website builder
to manage your business,
add an online store,
add a blog, and optimize
for search engines
so all your living humans
can find your stuff.
It automatically makes you a mobile site
and you can modify it in a mobile editor
or personalize it even more.
- How cool is that!
- [Neil] Go to wix.com/go/StarTalk
and begin your site now.
Trust me, even a comedian can
do it and, believe me, I did.
(upbeat music)
