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Can you keep a wormhole open for long enough to travel through it? Can you orbit a black hole and extract information from it? All that and more coming up on StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. We're doing cosmic queries today.
with Chuck Nice. Hey. Lord Chuck Nice. How you doing, man? I'm doing great. All right. What's the topic today? Let me see. They did not put one down here. It's a grab bag then. Grab bag. Grab bag. Reach in the bag. Whatever it is. Whatever it is. Yep. The bite's back? It is. All right. We'll get right in it. Yeah, yeah. No hesitation. And if I don't know an answer, I'm going to say, don't look at me like that.
I was about to say, I'm waiting for that to happen. So in another explainer, you said, I don't know. You know what? I just, I don't know. I don't know. And then halfway through your explanation of I don't know, you went, wait a minute. And then you gave the answer. Okay. So thus far,
In all the time that we've been doing this, you have never not had an answer. Okay, so let me clarify that other one. Okay. When I realized what the answer was, I was repeating what I had heard from a colleague. I understand. And it didn't come from a deep understanding of...
from within myself. So I don't count that as me answering a question. What are you talking about? You don't count that. You gave an answer. No, because I'm aping comments from someone else, and so it's not genuine. I'm just relaying information. No, no, no. If somebody asked me, do you know how aspirin works? I'd be like, hell no, but do you need one? Because I have them. Okay. I don't know.
I don't need a deep understanding of aspirin to know that I can give you one. All right. No, no, no. That doesn't count. All right. All right. Anyway. So, you know. Now, see, I shouldn't do this because now at some point I'm going to ask you a question. You'll be like, I don't know. I don't know. Next one. There you go. There you go. All right. Go. All right. Here we go. This is Cicero Artifon. Cicero? Cicero.
Isn't that a name from like a thousand years ago? Is there an emperor Cicero or something? Cicero. And Artifon like really brings it home. This is badass. Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. I am Cicero Artifon.
Once you say that, there's nothing anybody can do. Exactly. That's the end of the conversation. Oh, my God. That's right. Cicero Atifan, prefect of the Northern Territories. And I don't even know what prefect is, but it sounds badass. You know it meant something, right? Okay. Prefect Cicero, what do you have? He says, hey, Dr. Tyson. But Cicero was the name of the servant of the gladiator.
Who got hanged from his horse. Really? At the end. I think his name was Cicero. Cicero. Oh, cool. I could be wrong. All right. I could be wrong. That'll work. All right. All right. I do not know. Okay. You didn't see Gladiator? Oh, the movie with, what's his face? Yes, that. That guy. Russell Crowe. Russell Crowe. Yes, yes. Oh. I think he's,
His servant was Cicero. Yeah. Yeah. I think. But okay. By the way, just still a great movie. One of the best ever. It's just awesome. Ever. On every level. Yeah. It just really, you know, like in terms of one of those like slow burn revenge movies. Yeah. You can't get any better than this. Yeah. Yeah. All right. He says, hi, Dr. Neil and the lovely comic for the episode. Okay. Oh. Yeah.
Thank you. Okay, Chuck. Yeah, I'll take that. Cicero Artifon from Toronto, Canada here. How do we entangle? How do we entangle particles? It's mentioned that when we measure one particle, we instantly know the measurement of another. But how exactly do we entangle them? Is it a matter of taking two particles, entangling them, placing one in a box, shipping them to a different city, and then conducting the measurement?
How do we know they are entangled? Oh, because they were born together. Ooh, look at that. Ooh.
So there's a state of existence of a pocket of energy or matter. And if you create two particles out of that state, the two particles have complementary properties, which when combined, equal the properties of the conjoined state. Right. When you separate them, they take properties of that state with them. With them. Okay? And then they go apart. Right. And then they are quantum mechanically entangled. Got it.
That's four. They're born together. You can't, right? You can't. You don't go recruit particles. Recruit particles. No. Hey, you want to get entangled? Right, yeah. What you doing later, man? What you doing later? Oh, why you ask? You want to get entangled? We're going to get a drink and then get entangled.
You know. So, yeah. So, born together. Born together. And the tricky part is if you meddle with one of the particles in the slightest way, then it just, you collect what's called collapsing the wave function. They're entangled because their waves overlap. Right. And they have a common knowledge of each other. Right. And if you make any measurement at all, the way we say it,
without declaring that we truly know what the hell is going on here. The wave function collapses and it becomes the particle, the discrete individual particles. And they're no longer entangled. That's really cool. Right. That's amazing. Right. And that entanglement, they communicate with each other instantly. Instantly. Yeah. It's not even about the speed of light. Yeah. Not even the speed of light. Just instantly. Instantly. Yeah. It's mysterious. Yeah. But still not a way to send information, which is...
No, you can't. You can't send information. Right. Wow. Well, why not? Yeah, that's a good idea. You can't send information. So why wouldn't you be able to send information? Because, well, if there's a way to do it, no one's figured it out yet. Okay, and that's the way you should say it, right? I'm a scientist. That's the right way to say it. Right now, so we want to send information. Am I sending information in a locked box and then the box opens when you get it? Right. In a way. Okay.
But when you send information, it's because you learned something and you want to alert your troops or alert your friend. At that point, you're not opening a portal through the space-time continuum to send information. Right. You're not doing that. Gotcha. At that point. So we're still thinking it through. All right. Cool. By the way, we have a quantum entanglement gap between the United States and China. They've been quantum entangling more than we have, and they have the distance record for it.
Oh, I understand. Like from orbit to Earth's surface. Right, right, right, right. They found a way to isolate the particles so that they don't get messed up. And then... So if it matters in the future, who has the biggest quantum entangled distance, we're going to lose that...
We're going to lose it. Get with it, America. Now you know. That is. Listen, can't let somebody out entangle you. That's the deal. All right. Ernesto Medina. Man, where these names come from? I love it. I'll tell you where they're at. Ernesto. Ernesto. I am Ernesto Medina.
Meet my friend. Oh, I take it back. He goes, hi, everyone. Ernesto from Cuba here. So it's like, Ernesto. I am Ernesto from Cuba. So we have Cuba in there. Yeah, he's actually. I was in Cuba a couple of years ago. Oh, really? Very much enjoyed it. Yeah. Nice. He says, is it true that you get more wet when running in the rain than if you walk? Yeah. So that's a fun question. Yeah. And I've thought about that my entire life.
Really? Yes. I find that oddly surprising. No, it's an interesting question because if you go slowly, then the rain just accumulates. If you run fast, then you're running into raindrops. So, while I did not arrive at a definitive answer, I arrived at an answer. Okay. It depends...
how fat your head is and what your cross-section frontal body is. Right. Okay? Because if you walk in the rain, the only part of you that's getting wet is the part that's falling directly on top of you. So your shoulders and the top of your head. Hence the umbrella. And so you get the... And you want to... If you have an umbrella, you want to send it away from you. Away from you. Right. So you get that
area. Right. And you look at the raindrops per minute that's hitting that area and how fast you're walking across the street. You can calculate that and get a total number of raindrops that you hit if you go slowly. If you go slowly enough, you're not going to hit rain in front of you. Right. It's all just going to come to you. Right. Exactly. Now, if you run, rain is still going to hit you on your head and shoulders, but for not as long. But now you have your entire surface area of the front of your body that's
running into falling raindrops. Right. Okay? Right. So, you have to calculate those two. Because the rain, let's assume, is all falling at approximately the same rate. There's gravity and air and air resistance in the rain. So, it's really a matter of how far you're going, how fast you're going, how fat is your head, and what is your frontal cross-sectional area. And those two operate against each other in the equations. Right. And so, you solve the simultaneous equations.
And then you get, it's called a, in calculus, it's called a minimization problem. Okay. Okay. And you use the tools of calculus to either minimize or maximize the
Okay. And typically you have two equations that are operating in opposite ways. Right. And it's the middle where they intersect. Yeah, it's not much different from in economics. Right. Where you have the supply and demand. And they're both going in different directions. Because the higher the price, the lower the demand. And there's a point where the right price and the right demand maximizes it. And that's your point of equilibrium. No, your point of maximum profit. Maximum profit.
Right. So that's... Maximum revenue, I should say. Your profit... Right, your profit is dependent on everything, other factors. How much you pay your elves. Right, exactly. Which is nothing. Nothing. That's right. Yeah. I wonder if there's an elf union up in the North Pole. Now, you know Santa Claus would never stand for that.
You know, dog on wood. And you know they need a union. You know they need a union, man. You know they never stand for that. You're right. Let me tell you something. You're right. There are several... Because he's working them. There are several upstart elves buried in the snow. That is all I'm saying. So in global warming, we'll see their ears first emerge from the ice. Little pointed ears coming up out of the ice. That one couldn't keep his mouth shut.
Is that what Santa sounds like? That's what he sounds like in the North Pole. You know what I mean? When he's slave driver. Yeah, exactly. Shut your trap and get back to work.
All right, here we go. This is Adam Weiler. He says, you say that on Earth, we don't experience physics like the rest of the universe. I've never said that, but go on. I don't know where he... I've said exactly the opposite of that. Oh! In fact, I have an entire essay titled, On Earth As It Is In The Heavens. Ooh!
In fact, it's a chapter in my Death by Black Hole book. Okay. I don't know what this man is saying. We'll hear him out anyway. No, listen. That was it. He said, and he was upset. On Earth as it is in heaven. He says, you say that on Earth we don't experience physics like the rest of the universe. Why would things be different?
That's what he says. This is Adam Wyler. I will offer Adam an answer, even though he didn't pay any attention to anything I said or wrote. Right, exactly. First of all, here's the answer. Adam, get your damn facts straight. Okay. That's number one. No, I ain't saying nothing. Wait, so in fact, I'm going to have to... I have in my hand Death by Black Hole. And all I'm going to do is read the first paragraph of that chapter. Okay. I'm going to put on my glasses.
Here, let me read it because I don't need glasses. You didn't look like you didn't need glasses the last time I saw you. Okay, it's chapter freaking two of this book. Okay. Okay. On Earth as it is in the heavens. So now we're going to go to page 31. You ready? Go ahead. Until Isaac Newton wrote down the universal law of gravitation, there was little reason to presume that the laws of physics on Earth were the same as everywhere else in the universe.
Earth had earthly things going on, and heavens had heavenly things going on. Indeed, according to many scholars of the day, the heavens were unknowable to our feeble mortal mind. The universality of physical laws drives scientific discovery like nothing else. Gravity was just the beginning. Imagine the excitement among 19th century astronomers when laboratory prisms, which break light beams into a spectrum of colors, were first turned to the sun.
Wow.
Wow. In other words, it's the same no matter where you are. Not only in space, but in time. But in time. Yes. So now that he's been chided, let me offer him a comment. Okay. A reflection on the clip. Okay? We're talking to you, Adam.
We experience macroscopic laws of physics. Okay. Newton's law of gravity, electricity, this macroscopic laws of physics. Okay. If we were really, really tiny, the world would look different to us because then we'd be experiencing the world of atoms and molecules. Right. And quantum physics rules in that regime. Right. Okay. Whereas macroscopically...
The laws of classical physics, here's the precise way to say it. Macroscopically, quantum physics manifests as classical physics. Gotcha. Quantum physics is everywhere. Right. But the detailed behavior manifests more readily on the small particles than a big particle. So, you know, we thought, oh my gosh, the atom has electrons that orbit it?
Just like the sun has planets that orbit it. Maybe it's orbiting things all the way down. Right. Just a whole other little universe. Right. No. No. No. It's not. In fact, it still holds the word orbit, but we made a new word and call it orbital.
Right. Okay, so electrons move in orbitals around the nucleus. But the orbit in that phrase comes from classical physics. So things are different when you're small. But when you're our size, no, same macroscopic physics. Same deal. No matter where you are. Correct. There you go. All right.
All right. Actually, Adam, thank you so much for that question because that was really cool. That was good stuff. Okay. Yeah. I mean, he was incorrect in his assertions, but still, it was good. It's an important thought that needs to be addressed. Exactly.
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This is Troy. He says, hello, Neil. Just Troy from Virginia. Troy. He says, hello, Neil. Hey, Chuck. Troy from Virginia here. Can objects exchange dimensions with one another in a way that would be similar to thermodynamics or entropy? Ooh. Damn. Somebody was smoking some good weed, boy. Let me tell you. Ooh. So I don't think we could.
command dimension. Yeah, right. We are prisoners within them. Yeah. Take time, for example. We are a prisoner of the present. Right. Forever transitioning between our inaccessible past and our unknowable future. Right. We don't wield this dimension. We live it.
So if one day we discover that we could detach a dimension from us, that would be an interesting world. Amazing. If you could give up your depth, but keep your height and width. Are you kidding me? I'd be slipping under every door there is. Yes, you could. And slip between the doorways. That's right. That would be a thing. Oh my God, you know why I'm such in trouble? Because I fell between the cracks. Right?
Chuck, you've been so two-dimensional lately. I know. I don't know.
We're being silly now. So it's a fascinating thought. Yeah. But I'm resistant to how real that could be. Right. Because everything we know about the dimensions keeps us prisoner within them. Now, could it be that something like dark energy could be the pressure that we're experiencing from another dimension since dark matter doesn't interact with anything that we...
we know of.
I could say anything I wanted about dark matter and dark energy. Right. And we'd make one bit of... They're both completely mysterious entities. They're so mysterious that people have the urge to explain other mysterious things with them. With them. Right. But we don't understand consciousness. It must be dark energy. You know what it is. It's the collective consciousness of everything that's ever been in the universe. That's the dark energy. That's the dark energy. Right. So it's fun headlines and good beer talk.
but it's not good science to take something that you don't know and explain it with something that you know even less about. That's...
Such a great point. It's just as simple. And that is why I am not a scientist because... Because you explain stuff all the time. Because that is no fun. Because people like... I don't mind mysteries, but like one at a time. Yeah. You want to stockpile mysteries and have them all be the same? No, I can't do that. Okay. All right. Well, damn. Damn, that's great. All right. Thank you, Troy. That was a great question. All right. Here we go. I want another one from Cicero. Give me another...
Cicero Artifon. Prefect of the Northern Territories. Cicero, come back to us. Exactly. When you are done conquering far lands, come back with another cosmic query. I have returned from battle with news from the front. They didn't call it the front back then. No, they didn't. That's a World War I term. That is a World War I term. With news from the conquered lands. Right. There you go. Right. All right. Here we go. This is Thomas...
Assured. Thomas Assured.
Hello, Dr. Tyson and Lord Nice. I am Thomas. I'm 24 years old and I'm writing from Southeast Norway. My question is, could we, in theory of course, send a satellite into orbit, a black hole at a safe distance, launch a probe from said satellite, and use quantum entangled particles in the satellite to probe to get any kind of data when the probe enters the event horizon, or would it all turn to spaghetti and just be unuseful?
Wow. Man, what kind of fan base we have. Listen. What? How? Listen, if we had the money, that's the way to do it, though. I mean, in terms of the probe. No, I'm just talking about how our people are thinking. They're thinking. What kind of brain wiring is in our people? This is good. This is our people. Okay, so why does the probe have to orbit the Earth if it's going to visit a black hole? No, no, it's orbiting the black hole. Oh, it's orbiting the black hole. I missed that. So we send the probe to the black hole. Got it. It's orbiting the black hole. Got it. But not at a distance where it can...
It doesn't enter the gravitational pull of the black hole. There are distances where there are no stable orbits, so you just stay outside of that. Right. So then, now, what we do is we send a probe into the black hole, much like a probe going into a tornado, and we take as much information as it approaches the black hole until we can't get any information anymore. Now, here's his next question. Could we then use... That would be cool. I would do that. I would totally do that. We would totally do that. All right, that's great. Now, the next part of the question was,
And I think you already answered it earlier in the show. Could we then use quantum entangled particles so that once we're in...
or past the event horizon where no information would be able to escape. Other than by hawking radiation. What we would then do is use the quantum entangled particles to receive information about what's inside the black hole the same way as they evaporate. One particle appears on the outside, the other one goes back in. So, boom. Okay. All that's happening is
Your particles are coming back out. Right. That's it. That's it. That's it. And they used to be you, and now they're just particles. So that's the information. Oh, Chuck was made of protons. Yeah. That's interesting. He's not half the man he used to be. Damn particles. Chuck. Yeah. So...
Yeah, so it's an interesting idea. We'd love to have an orbital thing just to get close-up data. You got to watch out, though, because if it gets too deep in there, we saw this correctly done in Interstellar. Where if you get too close, your time frame is so different. Right. So different. You...
Your data come back more slowly. So I live a year and you get 10 minutes of data you sent me. Exactly. Because for you, it's a long time. Right. But for me, up in the orbit, I'm not getting the data rate that would be useful to me. Right. Okay. You can ask, isn't this a good use of telescopes? Where? Why do I have to get all up on the black hole?
The boat's distance away and get a really big telescope and get all the data. And just get as much data as you want. Right. Okay. There you go. All right. Here we go. This is our old friend, Alejandro Reynoso. And he's from Monterey. From Monterey, Mexico. Monterey with one R. Yes. And he says...
Hello. Would you stop? Or should I say, hola. That is not, would you stop? Okay. Go on. What is your favorite discovery or invention that happened in your particular lifetime? So, there you go.
You know, I swear he probably just has like a Brooklyn accent or something. That'd be great. Hey, how you doing? I'm Alejandro Reynoso. Hey, how you doing, huh? What's going on? Listen, you know what? I'm late and my mom, she makes a great sauce. You know what I'm saying? The gravy's amazing. That's what I'm saying. You know what I mean? Listen, we're going home. We're going to have some gabagool and a taco. All right, so in my lifetime,
Right. There's some discoveries that just slowly accumulate. Right. And don't represent the work of a lone scientist burning the midnight oil. And these other categories of discoveries never make headlines because they just sort of leaked into our awareness and understanding. Aha. From the body of work of dozens and sometimes hundreds of scientists. In my lifetime. Okay. This is how old I am. We learned. Right. That
And though we haven't checked every galaxy, everyone we've ever checked has a supermassive black hole in its center. Okay. Enough so that we're going to say every big galaxy has a supermassive. That's a discovery in my lifetime. A. B. In my professional life. Mm-hmm. This stuff when I was like five. I don't care about it. Okay? Right. All right. But I was born a year after the discovery that the
Heavy elements that populate the universe and including life on Earth, including us, derive from stars that manufacture them in the crucibles that are their cores. And then exploded, scatter that enrichment across the galaxy to enable nascent star systems to have the right ingredients to make planets and some planets make stars.
I don't know. People. Yeah, people. Just spitballing here. People. So that happened the year before I was born. Wow. So I've existed in this world only in the era where we've known the origin of the chemical element. Okay, let's keep going. So discovered...
black holes, supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. Right. We've also tightened our understanding of the age of the universe. When I was in graduate school, the uncertainty to that number was a factor of two. Mm-hmm. It was a camp that said, oh, the universe is 10 billion years old. The other camp says 20 billion years old.
And that's a factor of two. That's embarrassing. That's terrible. If you don't know how old you are to a factor of two, go home. Yeah, that's bad news. Go home. But we knew a factor of two is better than a factor of 100. That's true. Okay. And so for many of us, we were fine. We were in the right ballpark. Okay. So over time, that has narrowed
to it's not 10 billion years, it's not 20 billion, it's 13.8. Okay? And there's some uncertainty there still. Of course. But it's not a factor of two uncertainty. So questions that were of paramount significance and meaning in my lifetime have become just simple knowledge that everyone carries and we're asking other questions about the universe. Cool. So if you had asked me in the 1980s, what's the most pressing question? It was the value of the Hubble constant and the age of the universe.
And now nobody's asking that question. Not in the way we were asking it back then. So I would put those very high up. That's great. Okay. That's very cool. Yeah. That's very cool. Let's go to...
This is Isaac Huerta. And Isaac says, Hey, Neil, I appreciate everything you do. You continue to inspire and motivate me to educate myself and others. I was wondering, with black holes having an infinite density, what happens to the particle's activity living inside of it and their particle lifespans? I can answer that. We have no freaking idea. Yeah. So let me say it scientifically accurate. Ready? Go ahead.
All our knowledge of matter, motion, energy, and physics tells us that when mass collapses on itself, so that it collapses smaller than what would become its own event horizon, thereby turning into a black hole, there is no known force to prevent the collapse to infinite density in zero volume.
Einstein said there's got to be something to prevent that. Something's got to save us from ourselves in this. We don't know what that is. We got top people working on it. These are the string theorists. Right. The top people who think about the singularity. That's called the singularity. Who think about it at the center. And maybe there's a loophole. Is it just a mathematical singularity rather than a real singularity?
physical singularity. So the jury's still out on that. But we got top people working on it. Okay. Yeah. Great question. Because how can anything have zero volume and infinite density? How could? I mean, they're related, of course. Right. But still. Yeah. Believe me, you're asking the wrong guy here. Yeah, but there was a day where you could say, how could the universe have had a beginning? It clearly always was. There's
There's a lot of how grumbling, how could something have happened? And then sure enough, that's what it is. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. How can particles pop out of existence? How can that even happen? That can't happen? You just can't have things pop out of nothing? Yep. Oh, that was Cicero. Yes. So for me, I never say that anything can't ever happen.
I'll just say we have not yet discovered whether it can. Okay. All right.
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So this is Fabio Latter. No, Fabio. That's right, Fabio. Fabio, like the dude in the... With the hair? With the hair. Romance novels? Romance novels. Fabio, romance novels. Fabio. Fabio. Fabio. Fabio. Fabulous Fabio. He says, greetings, Dr. Tyson. Hailing from...
Puyallup, Washington. Puyallup, Washington. Okay. That's probably not how you pronounce it. I'm sure it isn't. Puyallup. Puyallup. I don't believe that's how you pronounce that, but go on. I'm sure it's not how you pronounce it, but I've never heard of anything Puyallup in Washington. But first of all, I've only been to Washington State.
And both times, it didn't make a difference where I was. It looked exactly the same. So it's very different on the sides of the mountains. That's true. If you're a Leeward side. Right. Yeah, yeah. Plus the side that's east of the mountain range, they want to join Idaho.
Oh, they're crazy. Yeah, they want to, like... Because they're politically... Yeah, exactly. They're more politically aligned. Yeah. The other ones are all hippies. Hippie-dippies, right? Hippie-dippies. All right, so here we go. He says, Greetings, Dr. Tyson. Hailing from, you know, whatever. And he says...
The paradigm of time has always fascinated me, especially in regards to how it will shift or evolve after humanity explores the solar system and beyond. How do you think our understanding of time will change on different planets when drifting between stars thanks to time? So I think what he's saying is when we, and how very optimistic of him, when we seed the cosmos with our presence,
And we know that time is different in different places. What will our concept of time be when we're all trying to be in contact with one another in these disparate places? Okay, I think you added stuff to his question. Well, that's what he's saying. Okay, okay. So...
There is the flow of time. Okay. Which changes depending on how fast you're moving and how strong is the gravity field you're in. Right. We are orbiting the sun in an earth gravity field. Our time ticks at a particular rate. GPS satellites orbit high up. Right. They're in a lower gravity field. Right. Their time ticks at a different rate from ours. Right. So when it sends us the time, we have to correct it for Einstein's general theory of relativity. Okay. Okay.
People don't know that. We're just pulling time out of the sky. Super cool, man. Einstein was a badass. Yeah, he was. That's what that is. Because it's real time and it's not moving at the same rate. It's not the same rate. It's no less authentic. And it's no less authentic. It's the actual time. Actual time. In both places. In both places. Gosh. Correct. So crazy. It's crazy. Okay. So now, what you're going to have to do is, if you have people living in different gravitational wells...
Like a well is a... We think of gravitational wells, you're at the bottom of a... You have descended into a gravitational well where to escape, you have to climb back out of it using energy to do so. Okay. That's why we think of it as a well. So, if we have people living on different mass planets in different gravitational environments...
traveling at different speeds around their host planet. Right. The measurement of time will be different for all of them. All of them. Right. Okay? So, you'd have to be careful if you were planning an event that was supposed to happen simultaneously for any one particular viewer. And there's no such thing as simultaneity. Right. Because it can happen all at the same time for you, happen at a different order for someone else. Right. Depending on their speed relative to you. So...
So you have to call him and say, all right, let's synchronize our watches. But then it'll take a thousand years or whatever for that message to get there. So synchronization will become something much less useful. Right. I don't know how else to say it. Yeah. Yeah. It just won't be an order that people want to consider because
It's not happening. It's not happening. It's not happening. It's not happening. Right. You cannot do things together if you're separated by light years of time. Yeah, exactly. Right. All right. Okay. There you go. It's a cool, cool... I know why he says that. I have a weird off-ramp to this. Go ahead. Okay. There's a limit to how big a life form can be because if it has an itch and it wants to scratch it, if they're really, really, really big, let's say the size of our galaxy, it'll take them like 100,000 years just to scratch it. Mm-hmm.
That's a long time to itch. I'm telling you right now. So there's certain physical limits to how much weedy repartee you're going to have with somebody in another place. Right. Across the galaxy. All right. There you go. All right, here we go. I'm going to jump around here. Oh, guess what?
There's another question, and I normally don't repeat questions. You mean from the same person? Yes. Really? And guess who it is. Who's that from? Cicero. I told you. Cicero Artifan. He heard me. Yes. And he sent back a second question. And he sent a second one. He says, hello, Dr. Tyson.
If I were to construct a wormhole, how cautious would I need to be? What could happen if we were to open it in the wrong location? If the other end leads to the vacuum of space or if it's close to a black hole, would everything be drawn into the black hole from my wormhole?
Could the vacuum of space pull everything surrounding the other side of the wormhole? Through the wormhole? Through the wormhole. Yeah. I should definitely lose the battle at that point. Why do you guys think about war? Maybe he's just a peaceful guy eating, eating, you know, a bowl of fruit. Not with the name Cicero.
Cicero is the name of a conqueror. Cicero Artaban. Fetch me my horse. And my armor. Exactly. Fetch me my horse. Anyway. These are exactly the things someone would say. All right. So, if you open a wormhole and you could place it
Would you have to be careful? If you can place the wormhole anywhere, that's the whole point. I think if you can go through the wormhole, so can other matter, and so could energy and anything else while the portal is open. Right. I don't see anything preventing things. You could even be pulled through the wormhole if there's a strong gravity. So, yeah, you got to know what the other end of the wormhole is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to know in advance.
Where are you stepping? Don't want to end up in the toilet of the galaxy. Yes. Which is that black hole in the middle. Or anybody's toilet. I'm thinking. I'm thinking. I'm just thinking. Exactly. So, yeah. If you can go through, so can other things. So, be careful where your wormhole opens first. Second, we currently know of no way to, in a sustained form, keep a wormhole open, preventing it from collapsing.
Right. Because we need a negative gravity substance to pull the fabric of space-time apart. And everything we know that substance does is pull it together with the force of gravity. Right, right. So this has to be, we need a negative substance. And that might sound like, that's crazy talk. Right. Right? Negative substance gravity. But how different is that?
From the people who stood flat-footed on Earth, looked up and said, I want to go to the moon. Right. And if a future person says, well, you need rocket fuel. What's that? Exactly. Well, it's this mythical substance that can launch you from Earth into space to the moon. People look at you like you're crazy. That's right. Yeah. And then you ponder that for a while until somebody comes along and says, we go to the moon because we choose to. Yeah.
We go to the moon and do this, that, and the other thing. Not because it's easy, but because it's hard. He did that.
He didn't say this, that, and the other thing. I know. I put that in there. That was good, though. That's what he should have said, probably. Good old JFK. Yeah, man. All right. I guess we should do lightning round because we don't have a lot of time. Lightning round. Go. Lightning round. Here we go. This is Christine Tolman. She says, hi, Neil. I'm from Phoenix, Arizona. I'm a teacher. What are some good books about the nature of the universe for very young readers? Okay. Oh, there's one about a young black kid in Bronx. Ha! Ha! Ha!
That's a good one. There's a book called Look Up With Me. Right. Which is for you just barely learning how to read. And that's a bio kids book about me. I didn't write it though, but I think I wrote the foreword to it. Okay. With a preface or something. And it's got pictures and it shows me
learning how to become a scientist at age nine. So it's very early on. But it's intended... It's a picture book. It's a picture book. Which, by the way, was briefly banned in Pennsylvania. Okay. In your freaking home state. Well... Because in there...
They tell the story of when I was on the roof using my telescope as a, like, I was 13 years old, 14. And then the cops come because someone else called the cops because they see this bazooka-looking thing sticking over the roof of my apartment building. Right. And they said, must up to be no good. Right. And then they come. And I showed them Saturn and that usually wins them over. Wow. You got to do that before they, before they got to pull the trigger. I was going to say, yeah. Especially here in New York. So that one for sure. And then of my best-selling book,
the Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. There's a version of that written for tweens. Okay. Age 7 to 12. Awesome. And that's called Astrophysics for Young People in a Hurry. There you go. There it is. Both of those. And that's co-written with Gregory Moan. He's really good in transitioning from a
An adult book to a kid's book. So there it is. Okay, next. All right. This is Will Holland. He says, hey there. Will from Kentucky here. What's the coolest thing from sci-fi movies or books that you think will actually become a reality in the future? Thank you. Ooh. Yeah. Ooh. Yeah. I think the entire movie, The Matrix. What? How do you know you're not just imagining all of this? How do you even know that? You don't. No, you don't.
Have you ever been living in a dream that was so real? Have you ever been? You sound a little like Morpheus right there. You really actually. I'm Morpheus. So I kind of like the themes covered in The Matrix. Nice. The distinction between your brain's reality and an objective reality and who's in control. Those were fun. And we're moving towards that. Yeah. And in Star Trek, I think we will have wormholes before we'll have transporters.
Just think about it. Wormholes will render transporters obsolete. Yeah, you don't need them. They don't have to particle beam you and send you somewhere. Just step through like Rick and Morty. So that's a recurring theme in the Star Trek series, that they're always in search of a stable wormhole.
Oh, yeah. They know. Yeah. And if they do, then if you can master them, then it's a wormhole transporter. Right. You just step through. Like a dude who, from the Marvel, no, no, from, yeah, Marvel, Doctor Strange. Right. And I've said this before, I got to say it again. Okay. Doctor Strange can open a portal, which is basically a wormhole, to another place.
So too can Rick and Morty. Right. Specifically. Right. Okay. The difference is. Yes. Doctor Strange uses magic and Rick uses actual science. Yes.
That's the only difference. Another one. Here we go. This might be the last one. Okay, this is Jarrett Rice. He says, hello, Brainiacs. Yeah, Chuck, that includes you too. Oh, is that a compliment or an insult? I don't know. It's a, okay. I'm going to, wow, Jarrett, I'm going to take it as a compliment. Okay. This is Jarrett from Fontina, California. I've always wondered, can rocky inner planets have rings like Saturn and with those rings impact the tide upwards?
Bulges. Oh, what a nice question. Way to go there, Jared. I like it. So, not a gas giant. Okay, so, all four gas giants have rings. Only one of them is particularly spectacular, and that is Saturn. Right. Calculations that I've seen recently suggest that in the time of the dinosaurs, Saturn might not have had any rings at all. Look at that. Or the ring that we see would not have been visible.
And that the dynamics of ring systems might be finite, lasting thousands or millions or tens of millions of years, but not a forever thing. Okay. Okay. We certainly had a ring when the moon formed. Right. Earth had a ring. Yes. We certainly had a ring when the moon formed. But what do you think happened to all the particles? They got sucked up. Well, wait.
They became the moon. They became the moon. They became the moon. Okay. Yes. Okay. If you have something there ready to grab whatever is moving by, okay, they're all going to see the gravity of this new... And if you have slightly more... Think of how the moon formed. It's a big ring of particles, of rocks, okay, from the collision of Theia with Earth in the early solar system. And if there's a slightly bigger rock than others, it has slightly more gravity than everybody else. So it'll get a few extra particles than you are.
Now it has even more gravity. Right. To get even more particles. Right. It's a runaway process. You heard the joke, there's no such thing as gravity, Earth sucks, right? Okay. So in orbit, the moon would have sucked up all the particles. Exactly. Okay. So now if you look at Saturn, Saturn's ring has gaps in it. Yes. Gaps. Yes. When we had a good enough resolution to see inside the gaps, there are satellites that cleared out those gaps.
Ah, look at that. Tiny satellite. Yeah, they're like little moons. Well, yeah, that's what I meant. Moons that vacuumed up just their little part of the ring. Exactly. So we have a big moon relative to our size, and that would have just taken the ring out. So I don't think you're going to get a fully sustained ring.
There you have it. Okay. Okay. Boom. All right, Chuck. That was fun. Cosmic Queries grab bag. Yeah. And we got some new names in it. We got Conqueror of the World. Cicero. Ernesto. Ernesto. Okay. From Cuba. From Cuba. And of course, Alejandro Renoso.
All right. This has been a Cosmic Queries Star Talk. Of course, featuring questions from our Patreon members. By the way, the Patreon members not only...
hear this, they get their own private command performance Q&A. That's right. That's behind the lockbox. Does not go out to the public. Does not go out. So, if you enjoy this, you can become a Patreon member. There's even more of it behind the wall. Absolutely. All right. So, that's a wrap, Chuck. All right. All right. We out. We are out. Neil deGrasse Tyson here. As always, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up. Bye.
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