Our Burning Questions – Entropy & Immortality
42:19 Share

This episode is brought to you by Progressive, where drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average. Plus, auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Quote now at Progressive.com to see if you could save.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates national average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations.

Oh, it feels great to make progress on a language, learning new words and phrases. Are you feeling ready to make conversation? This holiday season, share a new language with your loved ones. A lifetime membership to Reseta Stone makes a meaningful present for friends and family. My brother vowed to move to Spain recently, and he's always walking around now saying things like, In España, la comida es deliciosa.

And soon the two of us will have a secret language that everybody who speaks Spanish knows. Start learning today with Rosetta Stone's Lifetime Membership Holiday Special. Visit rosettastone.com slash startalk for unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Available for a short time at rosettastone.com slash startalk.

With incredible new features and upgrades, there's never been a better time to armour up and play the critically acclaimed action RPG Diablo 4. Get ready to continue the epic story in your battle against evil in the new expansion Vessel of Hatred. As darkness spreads through the lands of Sanctuary, it's up to you to fight back the encroaching corruption.

Reap the benefits of massive updates to character progression, loot systems, difficulties and tons of added activities. Face off against new and iconic bosses teeming with the spoils of Sanctuary. Plus, harness formidable powers of the jungle with the all-new Spiritborn class, now yours to customise and progress alongside five other iconic bosses.

iconic classes. Embark on the epic journey solo or with friends. You'll quickly understand why Diablo 4 has been called one of the best action RPGs of the last decade by PC Gamer. Forge your own path through hell-torn lands of Sanctuary. Save 35% off Diablo 4 and Vessel of Hatred in the expansion bundle today. Rated M for Mature.

So that was a different special edition, Gary. Yes, it was. But I appreciate the curiosity that the two of you have maintained strongly into adulthood. I know, we couldn't sit on it any longer. Okay. We had to share. Coming up, Chuck and Gary's burning questions. I believe there's an ointment for that. For me. On StarTalk Special Edition. Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

begins right now.

This is StarTalk Special Edition, which means I got with me Gary O'Reilly. Gary. Hi, Neil. All right. Chuck, always good to have you, man. Always a pleasure. Good to be here. So, you guys invented this variant. Can I use that word these days with viruses? Yeah, I was going to say, wow, you just turned this into a viral infection. You invented this variant of Special Edition where you guys apparently, I didn't know this, over the years...

have collected questions that had tap roots in previous shows that you want to bring back to me. Yeah, so the things we get involved in, which is such a variety, as much as it's informational, educational, and fascinating, you kind of always seem to come out of one with...

What if we ask that? Oh, okay. So we're trying to scratch this itch to a certain extent. Now you've mentioned variant. I'm now scratching an itch. Yeah, there you go. Okay. All right. I don't know if I'll have the answers, but I'll try. Okay. Chuck, stop looking at me like that. Please do. You know, listen, you won't have an answer. An answer. That's what's good. All right. I'll kick us off. Okay, who's first? Go.

Which direction do you see human evolution taking in the future? Do we stay biological, head to a transhuman existence, or do we go totally post-biological and just become the super intelligent AI? I think we will resist. Just an opinion. Of course. I think we will resist merging technology with our biology.

Neurologically, I think we will resist. There's a lot of spoken about this. Oh, that's so disappointed! I think we'll resist it. I think you're right. Because they say, "Let's put the whole internet on your frontal lobe." And people are like, "No." I have the internet in the palm of my hand without the surgery required to open up my brain and stick it there. So I'll take the ten seconds to find the information I need, rather than the instant information that would otherwise be the case. See, I want the chip. I have evidence of this. What? Okay?

We're old enough, he's not old enough, but you and I are old enough to watch planes get ever faster over the decades. Yes. From the Wright Brothers up through the 50s. You did not see the Wright Brothers. I remember the Wright Brothers. I'll tell you, I remember that day on Kitty Hawk. Never thought they'd get it off the ground. I said to myself, those boys are wasting their time. They need to go back to building bicycles.

Was it all fields? So, what I'm saying is, you can ask the question, why did we want planes to go faster and faster? Because we're impatient. We're impatient, and we want to reduce the time you are in transit between where you are and where you're going. Yes. Okay? Then there's a point where planes just didn't get faster. In fact, they're going a little slower today than they were in the early 1970s.

It's not uncommon to cross the Atlantic at 500, 550 miles an hour. My day, it was like 600 miles an hour, 650, okay? So what's going on? Do you really need it to get there an hour faster when you have a thousand movies you can watch, you have access to the internet, you can sleep, you can be plied with alcohol and food?

Do you really need to get there fast? My point is... You're not getting any of that on Spirit Airlines. What's the menu? I know what you said is happening on Spirit Airlines, sir. So I'm saying, in that case, the speed, which sounded like a good idea when you're otherwise wasting your time on an airplane, getting from A to B, the moment you were no longer wasting your time, in fact, you were being productive, the urge to fly supersonic...

evaporated. And so I'm saying, I have access to the internet. You want me to have one second access to the internet or instant rather than 10 seconds, I don't know that I'm gonna go there if I gotta sit under a scalpel and you poke into my brain.

So I think we will resist that. That's my opinion. I think you're right, but I still want the chip because, first of all, you can barely see them, and they can take four of them and put them together and just slide it in. And unless Elon's doing it, then I don't want it. I do not want it if Elon is doing it. I don't want Elon's chip. We'll give you access to the Internet. Right. But here's the reason why I want the chip. And I don't mean for me personally. I mean for mankind. For a friend.

Okay? For all mankind. For all mankind. There are certain responses that we have that are neurochemical. There are certain things that we possess that are detrimental to who we are as a species. Mm-hmm.

The wiring of our brain. The wiring of our brain that come out of evolution. Yeah, so go in, fix the wiring, but get your ass back out of my head. But my thing is that only the chip could actually do that on an ongoing basis. It doesn't have to be ongoing if you know exactly where the bad wiring is, fix the wiring, and get the hell out of my head.

So if I have a phobia or a- Right. What's the one where you keep doing something repeatedly? Obsessive compulsive. Yeah, if I have compulsive or a phobia, and you know, one day perhaps, neuroscientists will know exactly where that spot is in the head, go in there, nip, tuck, snip, snap, reattach, bada bing,

We're good. You no longer have a phobia and you no longer have a compulsion. So that's all I'm saying. I think we will resist that. That's all. So you're talking about improving mental health. What if we now get to the stage where we can...

improve our biology and start to live that much longer and then all of a sudden you've become totally post-biological and you'll live for eternity. No, no. We will figure out how to manipulate the biology so that it does not age. But you're still biological. Yeah. But do you have that transhuman part where you have to have the chips and the bits and pieces and the upgrades? Why would you need that if we can...

Fix your brain. That's all I'm saying. But does the brain control every single aspect? No, okay, there are people with artificial hips and knees and shoulders. Yeah, exactly. You know, head, shoulders, knees and toes. That's why I say I don't see the difference. I think we will resist that. Next question. Chuck, is it your turn? Okay, here we go. If an unobstructed photon is traveling towards the edge of the universe...

But the universe is simultaneously expanding, which it is. And redshifting increases the photon's wavelength. Okay? At some point, because from what I understand, the increase in the wavelength actually reduces the energy of the photon. At some point, does the photon just disappear if it just keeps going and going and going and going? It redshifts to infinity. Okay.

So, yeah. What? So that happens at the horizon of the universe. Oh, okay. Yeah. So if we have a horizon where at that place all the objects are receding at the speed of light. Right. Okay. So when the photon sort of catches up with that, at that point it has redshifted to infinity and it's got nothing for you. It's got nothing for you. Yeah. Wow. So that's the end. It redshifts to infinity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's so unsatisfying! Now you sound like that photon. So, as part of the sort of StarTalk groupthink that we had, Alex Bicardas came up with a... One of our producers. Yes, one of our production team. If you could bend the laws of physics to your will, what would you change, if anything? Ooh, okay. So, in graduate school, it's a calculation you do. Mm-hmm.

where you look at the gravitational constant, which was first proposed by Isaac Newton, but it would take centuries later to measure its value reliably. What is the gravitational constant? It's the thing that's in the gravity equation that tells you how to calculate how much gravitational force you get from how much mass.

So the force is proportional to the mass. How do you turn that into an equation? You have what's called a proportionality constant, the gravitational constant. You don't know this, but you've been invoking that ever since you recited the equation E equals mc squared. All that equation says is energy is proportional to mass. How do you turn that into an equation? You need a proportionality constant. That's the c squared.

The speed of light squared. So all of these understandings of how the universe works, we have something on one side of the equation, something on the other. There's a constant there. Constant of proportionality. You make the measurement. Okay. So one of the calculations we do is we take the gravitational constant and say, what happens if we change it by a little bit? What are the consequences to the universe? It turns out...

that you run the gravitational constant through your equations of a star, and if you change the gravitational constant by a little bit, increase it by a little bit, it has stupendous consequences on the luminosity of stars. The luminosity of a star is dependent on the seventh power of the value of the gravitational constant.

So if I double the value of the gravitational constant, it was 2 to the seventh power. Okay? 2 times 2 is 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 200. The luminosity of stars would grow by a factor of 256, thereby reducing their life expectancy. All this, the universe would be much brighter. Yes. But they would burn their energy faster.

and they wouldn't last long enough for planets around them to evolve into complex life, it would be devastating. That's a lesson to us all. If you want to mess with the universe, you got to, you know, be prepared for the consequences. F around and find out.

Now, that being said, there's a book series called Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland written by a physicist, George Gamow, a mid-20th century physicist. Brilliant. Yeah. Brilliant guy. He first calculated that after the Big Bang, you would have a cosmic microwave background. Okay? Very important calculation. Anyhow.

He wrote a series, he wrote for the public, so he's after my own heart here. Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland. In each of these books, Mr. Tompkins was in a world where one of the constants of nature was different.

So one of them is the speed of light is 60 miles an hour. Oh, wow. So he's driving down the street. In the dark. And he sees phenomenon that you would see only if you went very fast near the speed of light, like in a normal situation. But the speed of light is not 60 miles an hour. How creative is that? Very creative. It's beautiful. Smart guy. Yeah. And another, so one would be kind of cool is, you know, there's something called dispersion.

and this diffraction dispersion refraction is what light does as it goes through a hole in the wall or goes around a corner or goes into another medium if you change the value of Planck's constant Yes, that's the constant for quantum physics. There's a value you can make it so that if you walk through a doorway you will diffract You it'll affect you macroscopically in the way it previously only affected

And so I thought it'd be fun to dial that up just so I can live in the world of quantum physics just for a day. Now that'd be cool. That's what I'm saying. All those rules are different. Yeah, that's a completely... So I would do that just as an amusement park, not as a thing. I'm not messing with the laws of the universe otherwise. That's good news. Yeah, good. Thank you.

I'm General Manager Ethan Rosignol at Dark Cars Toyota in Silver Spring. Having trouble finding a car? Come to Dark Cars Toyota in Silver Spring. Dark Cars Toyota is the Central Atlantic region's number one Toyota dealer year after year. We are here to help you with all your car buying needs. Take advantage of our large inventory and pricing. Come visit us at Dark Cars Toyota in Silver Spring or online at darkcarstoyota.com.

And now, a next-level moment from AT&T business. Say you've sent out a gigantic shipment of pillows, and they need to be there in time for International Sleep Day. You've got AT&T 5G, so you're fully confident. But the vendor isn't responding, and International Sleep Day is tomorrow. Luckily, AT&T 5G lets you deal with any issues with ease, so the pillows will get delivered and everyone can sleep soundly, especially you. AT&T 5G requires a compatible plan and device. 5G is not available everywhere. See att.com slash 5G for you for details. ♪

Hey, D.C., did you know it's illegal to toss household batteries in the trash? That's right. Batteries must be recycled. The good news? Call to Recycle makes it easy. As D.C.'s official battery recycling program, we've got drop-off locations all across the city. Find one near you at calltorecycle.org slash locator. That's calltorecycle.org slash locator. Let's keep D.C. clean and green.

Hello, I'm Alexander Harvey and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

So our producer asked that question. Yes. Okay. And here's another producer, Lane. Lane. We've learned on the show that your position on human evolution is that it was contingent on the extinction of dinosaurs. Is our civilization contingent on the formation of hydrocarbons over millions of years? Did the progression of human energy sources require that we utilize fossil fuels? Could we have gone from wood fire straight to electricity? No.

I think about that all the time. Yeah. I think about, could we have landed on the moon in the year 1700? Yeah. For example. Right. Okay. Why not? Okay. So one of our other producers, Lindsay, and I co-wrote a book called To Infinity and Beyond. Mm-hmm. Where we tracked what people were thinking in their day and how far away was whatever dream they had technologically, intellectually, scientifically. Right.

In the year 1700, he said, I want to go to the moon. How would you do that? You don't even have a periodic table of elements yet. How do you do that? Will the material science allow it? Does physics develop? Do you have enough astronomy knowledge? Do you even know what the moon is? So I think about that all the time. Did everything have to happen in the way it did because...

Many other factors have to come together. Many other discoveries matter at the same time. So one cannot just run off by itself. No. And they all build upon each other. They all build upon each other. Like a sliding doors...

where everything has to happen or that moment if you're going through it. See, that's what I do. I don't agree with that. I agree that they are definitely platformed where they build on top of each other and they have to be made so that that can be done. But I think it's a matter of human beings have progressed and regressed and progressed and regressed. And if we had just progressed,

I think we might have got to the moon long before the 1700s. Well. You know, because when you think about it, we built the pyramids, you know, I mean. Or at least aliens built pyramids. You know, we had civilizations, great civilizations, but then we always have war. And that slams us back to a place before we started. So we take one step forward and three steps back. Or does it?

Let me read for you. Uh-oh, here we go. He's got his phone out. Let me read for you a passage written by Christian Huygens. Huygens? Dutch polymath. Okay. Okay. He discovered what Saturn's rings were. Oh, cool. Before him, they were just like...

Blobs. Blobs of light, right? So this is a ring system. It's rotating. Exactly. He's done a lot of brilliant things. I'll read to you from his book, Cosmotheros. Cosmotheros? 1898. Oh. Okay. The vices of man are no hindrance to there being the glory of the planet they inhabit. Deeply religious. All the scientists back then were religious. Yeah, of course. Okay, so it's folded in here, but watch how he says it.

Besides, the vices of men themselves are of excellent use. These are the vices that you said regress us. Okay. Are they not? No. Excellent use and are not permitted and allowed in the world without wise design.

For since it has so pleased God to order the earth and everything in it as we see it is, for it's nonsense to say it happened against his will or knowledge, we must not think that those different opinions and that various multiplicity of minds were placed in different men to no end or purpose, but that this mixture of beliefs

of bad men with good and the consequence of such a mixture as misfortunes, wars, afflictions, poverty, and the like were given to us for this very good end, for exercising our wits and sharpening our inventions by forcing us to provide for our own necessary defense against our enemies. Saturn notwithstanding, that guy's an idiot. Ha!

He goes on. I'm sure he does. Poverty, what role that plays. He's taking kind of a fatalistic view. It's a bit more like his thing is kind of like, you know, we're here because we're meant to be. And I don't know. He's right in a lot of ways here, especially since.

I wrote a whole book on this, okay? Accessory to War, The Unspoken Alliance of Astrophysics and the Military. What's going on when we're at war? Innovation happens. Always. It's the I don't want to die driver. The I don't want to die gene. And I'm cool with that. And well, it's just, I'm just- No, I'm saying your book is smarter than that guy because- I'm not value judging it. Because self-preservation will always outstrip anything. And he's saying-

He's saying that you would only need self-preservation when you have a-holes trying to not preserve you. That's right. When a-holes try to kill you, you kick into high gear. You kick into high gear. So if we go from burning wood, I don't see us going to the moon without a whole middle piece there where our capacity to generate energy gets greater and greater and greater. There's a lot written about consumption of energy in the historical record where –

People say, "Oh, America's used so much energy per capita, and we have to reduce that." However, again, I'm just observing this. I'm not value judging it. The history of the world, the greatest civilizations, the ones that were most powerful, however you measure that, were the ones that consumed the greatest amount of energy per person. - The most energy, always. - Per capita. - Yeah, you can't rule the world unless you're using up a bunch of energy. - Figure out how to use the energy. - Exactly. - Be it human capital, chemical energy, whatever.

So I think we needed ways to develop enough energy in the system that

to create elements of society that are high consumers of energy, like a transportation system. Think about that. Airplanes, rockets. You don't have that unless you command energy. And you're absolutely right. My only caveat, I will say, because I do not disagree with anything you just said. I don't necessarily disagree with hyben-flyben, but...

You've been desperate to say that. But my caveat is that if our –

chief goal were one of enlightenment, we would constantly be seeking a higher level with or without the threat of destruction, the threat of war. We would be training ourselves, and this is part of who we are as human beings, we'd be training ourselves to constantly want to advance. Except I think the urge to be enlightened is not as strong as the urge to not die.

Absolutely. I agree with that. So my point is, if that were our chief goal was to cultivate that, we would be able to burgeon that. The species would have to rethink itself. Right. And that's my point. That's such a bad thing because were we to chase enlightenment to innovate rather than create a thousand year war, wouldn't that serve humanity better? Also, when you think about war, think about this. War is very rarely...

large swath of a population saying, let's go do this. It's normally a few people making the decision that a bunch of other people are going to go and fight and die. They're convincing you that they should do that. Exactly. That's part of the problem here. He just goes on here and says...

"'Tis the fear of poverty and misery that we are beholden for all our arts, for that natural knowledge which was the product of laborious industry, and which makes us that we cannot but admire the power and wisdom of the Creator." Again, he's going back to the Creator putting the bad people and the bad things around us, okay? "...which otherwise we might have passed by with the same indifference as beasts, and

And if men were to lead their whole lives in an undisturbed, continued peace, in no fear of poverty, no danger of war, I don't doubt they would live little better than brutes without all knowledge or enjoyment of these advantages that made our lives pass on with pleasure and profit. I disagree. I'm just saying. I disagree with that. Yeah, he's saying we're complacent because we have it all.

That's basically if it weren't for a-holes messing things up. God put a-holes under it so everyone else can make life better. Basically he's saying God gives you lemons, make lemonade. Yes. And that's the best invention of God there ever was, lemonade. Right. So while we're discussing energies, data centers, AI plus Bitcoin mining. Mm-hmm.

energy consumption. Yes. It's huge. I mean, this is not just a single nation. This is a global phenomenon. So how are they going to be powered in the future? Is the answer nuclear? Is it solar? Is it wind?

Is it burn more wood, burn more gas, burn more oil? There's no shortage of energy. I know, but these guys, they can't keep burning up energy like a small nation. I want to be clear. There are some who walk among us who want to demonize the consumption of energy. And I'm saying, fine, on the assumption that the energy you're demonizing, that the production or utility of that energy...

somehow badly affects the environment. But solar power, wind power, hydroelectric, there's no shortage of other ways to generate as much energy as you want. You drive through the southwest of the United States, the Sahara, any desert,

There are no solar panels there. There's just sand. There's not even plants. There's just sand that gets hot and re-radiates the sun's energy at night. Not serving anybody at all.

I'm saying if you're going to need energy to mine Bitcoin or whatever else, there are ways to produce energy that doesn't mess up the environment. And I don't care how much energy it is because we're getting more energy than we'll ever use coming down every second from the sun. And believe it or not, there's energy beneath us. All you've got to do is drill a hole down and you can actually pull energy from the earth itself. I was just in Iceland. They have tubes on the mountainside that go down into the –

I was going to say the lava, into the very hot layers beneath the crust. Yeah. Okay? Right. They cycle water down there. It gets hot. Bring it back up. And steams come up. And they send the water down into town. They actually have to cool down the water before it gets to your shower because you get scalded. Right. Okay? But we're going to produce massive data centers. I don't.

I don't care. And they're going to need energy. Fine. And we have it. Neil's saying we have all the energy that we need. Correct. And I've been saying this for years. I don't care what anybody says. Okay? Or just use nukes. The sun itself is enough energy.

energy for any and everything we need. I don't care what anybody has told you. Just because we haven't made the necessary strides to harness that power doesn't mean that that power is not available. Yeah, nor does it mean that we shouldn't think of using things that invoke a lot of energy. I don't have a problem with energy. Yeah, exactly.

No issues. And this is what I say. And if you could nukes, you would want to use fusion, not fission. Fission has byproducts you have to dispose of. Aren't there newer ones coming out, sort of like modular, smaller? The direction we want to take that in the future is fusion, where there's no unpleasant byproducts. That would be good. Yeah, she's turning hydrogen into helium. Helium, that's it. That's all that happens there. Chuck, next. Okay, here we go. In wave-particle duality...

We know that photons can kick out electrons, showing that they are both particles, right? We also know that the double split experiment shows that electrons create wave interference that interferes with itself, so it's a wave, okay? So electrons are waves and particles just like photons, but anybody who's ever used a battery knows how we use electrons together.

for, you know, anything as a particle, all right? How do we use electrons as a wave? Is there anything we do that says we take the wave part of the electron and we use that instead of the particle or as a particle? Yes. Yes? Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. Is that the answer? Is that it? Yes.

All right. So let me take a backdoor into your question. Okay. So imagine a wave. Right. It has an up and a down. Up and a down. Troughed and a crest. We call that a sinusoid, but it's up and down from a sine wave. All right. I had a sinusoid infection once. It was terrible. All right. So that's a wave. So if you're using light that has this wavelength and you want to –

take a photo of anything that has detail that's smaller than that wavelength, you ain't getting it. Right. Okay? Yes. The light of this wavelength cannot resolve any detail smaller than its own wavelength. Okay, gotcha. That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. Okay. So, how do electron microscopes work? Aha. Okay. Well, let's look at wavelengths. We get, in order of reducing wavelengths...

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Let's make the wavelength smaller, then we get what? The other side of violet. Indigo. No, x-rays, right? Or gamma or something. Other side of violet. It's beyond violet.

Ultraviolet. Ultraviolet! Dude! Gosh, sorry. Who's co-hosts are you? So, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Ultraviolet. Okay. What comes after ultraviolet? X-rays. X-rays. Okay. Really small wavelengths. Okay. Okay. More energy, smaller wavelength.

Yes, not only is it higher energy, smaller wavelength, but if you use that light to take photos, you can see things really tiny. So what you do is you heat up electrons until their wave equivalent is tiny.

X-rays. Oh, snap. And then you beam the electrons to the... And then you can take pictures of the stuff that's at that wavelength. Of the hairs on the edges of insects. So that's why they call it an electron microscope. That's why.

Because the wave-particle duality is being exploited for that technology. For that technology, yes. So I didn't realize. So you heat up the electrons. Yeah, there's a way to do it. You excite them to the point where they get to that wavelength. Yes, that's their wavelength. There it is. They have the energy level where their corresponding energy is X-rays. You beam it in. Who the hell thought? That's brilliant. This is science. That's amazing.

Amazing! That's why any electron microscope you've ever seen in any book, that's some detailed stuff. Right. You've seen it. Like bugs and cell fibers and things. Right. Scary little critters. I know, aren't they? Yeah. And that doesn't work with visible light. Exactly. The wavelength is too large. That's great. Yeah. Okay, well, there you go. That's an example. No, that's a great example. All right.

I'm General Manager Ethan Rosignol at Dark Cars Toyota in Silver Spring. Having trouble finding a car? Come to Dark Cars Toyota in Silver Spring. Dark Cars Toyota is the Central Atlantic region's number one Toyota dealer year after year. We are here to help you with all your car buying needs. Take advantage of our large inventory and pricing. Come visit us at Dark Cars Toyota in Silver Spring or online at darkcarstoyota.com.

Hey DC, did you know it's illegal to toss household batteries in the trash? That's right, batteries must be recycled. The good news? Call to Recycle makes it easy. As DC's official battery recycling program, we've got drop-off locations all across the city. Find one near you at calltorecycle.org/locator. That's calltorecycle.org/locator. Let's keep DC clean and green.

The sizzle of McDonald's sausage. It's enough to make you crave your favorite breakfast. Enough to head over to McDonald's. Enough to make you really wish this commercial were scratch and sniff. And if you're a sausage person, now get two satisfyingly savory sausage McGriddles, sausage biscuits, or sausage burritos for just $3.33. Or mix and match. Price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer or combo meal. Single item at regular price. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba.

Ready for the next one? Next one. Okay, so. These are good questions. You're all good people. Doing our best. The reason we haven't encountered alien life forms now is maybe that these alien life forms are billions and billions of years old and have gone from a biological to an artificial intelligence and are living for eternity. And therefore, we can't see, touch, feel.

Is that likely as a possibility? Why wouldn't you be able to see, touch or feel something just because it lives for eternity? No, no, if it's gone to an artificial intelligence and exists in a virtual capacity, if I'm thinking it correctly. So, using our feeble 21st century vocabulary, you're saying it might exist in some computer state, some memory state, and it's just happy existing on its own planet. Forever. Forever.

And that's why we haven't had any encounter. So it's living in its own matrix. More or less. It wants to go to the beach, it goes to the beach. What's that movie? Total Recall. Everybody's just living there and they're just machines humming. By the way, that was a recurring theme in the Netflix series Black Mirror.

I love Black Mirror. Consciousnesses have been uploaded into just this bank of computers. Who was the British guy that was behind all of that? Oh, forget his name. Oh, heavens above. Anyway, moving on. Yeah, he's brilliant. So I'm just wondering, you know, if a civilization, a race, an alien life form has been in existence over billions and billions of years, surely it's evolved into something absolutely superior. They've learned to ditch their biology. Yeah. And pick on. So we could visit a planet where it's just these humming...

Oh. Data centers. And that's where millions of people are living out their lives. Hmm. Such as in the Matrix. Okay. That's plausible? Okay. All right. I'll keep an eye out for humming data centers. But I wonder, how would it ever make a discovery? Yeah, at that point. I'm saying, because I still get to go to the beach and pour over the shells and rocks. And I might discover a life form that my consciousness in the box will never know, see, or hear.

or even think well if they're really super intelligent they'll have probably worked a way out i don't know how that would be if they're not the ones doing the discovery we're doing 21st century thinking and they're doing billions okay what they would do they'd have to have some version of itself that's still exploring right yeah out there so then we might see their hardware emissary

Interesting, because that's most likely what we'll do once we leave. And by the way, why wouldn't they want to leave and go too? Because if you're not bound by the corporeal, then you can now get into a ship. Bound by the corporeal. I know I heard that and I liked it. I keep her. Bound by the corporeal. Well done, sir. Okay. Yes, well done. Well played. You can get into a ship and still be tethered to your planet there forever.

Still be on the ship too and then say let's go Let's go both places. Let's go to a black hole Let's see what the event horizon is and you're still let's fall into and you're still back on the front Let's fall into this black or do you dies but right that part is right? Okay. Yeah like this this is good Yeah, I mean that's if I could put myself into a con that's what I would that's the only reason I would want to keep living have

probes that went beyond their planet, they would be ossified in the moment that they stopped doing that. This is what I would claim. See, that sounds like hell to me. Could you imagine being stuck

In 2024? For eternity? Well, if you go far enough back when civilization didn't change by very much, you'd live your whole life with no expectation of living differently tomorrow than you did today. Damn. Wow. Whereas today, everybody expects tomorrow's going to be different. That's true. Okay, so back then, as far as they're concerned, all of eternity would be like that. Doesn't everybody think tomorrow's going to be worse? You know what? Yeah.

That makes a lot of sense why people want to go to heaven. Because if your life changes very little. You need some escape from that. Right. And it's like, okay. If life is changing daily, you got something to look forward to. Even the mystery is something to look forward to. You want the pot of gold. Yes, exactly. Wow. As Patton Oswalt says, they want sky cake. Yes!

I'm sorry, it's the best description of heaven I've ever heard. Sky cake. I don't care about my life down here. When I die, I'm getting sky cake. I've heard that routine. Hilarious. Yes. Hilarious. I'm sorry. Anyway, let's go to Alex P. Here we go. You said that there's a time when we will achieve exit velocity from death.

Staying on Gary's theme. How does the notion of human immortality gel with the concept of entropy? Ooh, look at that. Do the laws of thermodynamics forbid humans from ever living forever? Yes, you would never live forever if you were a closed system. Entropy would take its toll. Right. But...

Life on Earth is not a closed system. No, it isn't. It is open to energy sources beyond itself. Called the sun. It's called the sun. Okay? It's that simple. Exactly. This is one of the early attempts to out-argue the physics by fundamentalist creationists. They would say, well, you say things always decay to disorder by the second law of thermodynamics, and look at us. We are more complex than ever before. And it's just, you should pause before you try to argue physics with a physicist and

If your foundational knowledge is from a book written 4,000 years ago. You just have to pause for a moment. Okay. The entropy issue takes place only in closed systems. Right. Okay? We have a three-species sphere downstairs living in a vat of water that is completely sealed. Right.

We have kelp, we have krill, and we have snails. And they have been living off each other for 25 years. Since January 1st, 2000, that's 25 years ago, we've had, they've been...

Kicking it downstairs. Okay, one of them eats the poop of the other event that okay total symbiosis Okay, so yes, there's symbiotic lean Entangled entangled now watch when the construction was happening. Mm-hmm The construction folks it well, this looks pretty important and fragile. Let's protect it. Oh They put a tarp over here

That's great. When good deeds go wrong. Oh, and so we caught it early, but, you know, there were a couple of belly up krill. Of course. But basically they thought that this was its own thing, its own world. It kind of looks that way because it's a sealed sphere.

All right? It's not its own world. It requires energy from the outside, just as we do here on Earth. So if you want to live forever, you will do so at the expense of some energy somewhere else on your planet or in the solar system.

Cool. If you want to live forever, don't let anyone put a tarp over you. That's the lesson of the day. There it is. Yes, and maybe don't let them do that in any case. That's great. One more question. Time for one more. All right. Science fiction sometimes has stories of humans interacting with aliens and trying to find a universal commonality from mathematics or the laws of physics to bridge the inevitable communication gap that will arise between two massively different cultures.

Are there any good examples of this you haven't heard in fiction or any that were you were impressed? By the authors that they came up with this question from Brian Yes, I have an example Brian our IT specialist IT guy. Okay, I got this. All right, good Forgive me for not remembering on the spot who came up with this, but it was not a science fiction author. It was like a philosopher Okay, sure. Okay, so

He said, here's what you do. You want to communicate with aliens, and you want them to know that we are smart. Mm-hmm. Okay? You just make a triangle, okay? Mm-hmm. As big as you can on Earth, okay? All right. Then you make a square off of each side of the triangle. All right. Okay? And the triangle has side A, B, C. These are really crappy squares there, okay? I'm not judging. There you have it.

Now you make channels here with, like, fuel or something and ignite it when Earth is at night. Alien will see this and say, we got some smart people down there. Do you know why? Okay? What is the area of a square? Well, it depends on the size of the square. No, no. A square of side C. What's the area? I'm trying to remember my stupid job. Well, the area of a rectangle is what?

It's, oh God. It's height times the width. That's right. So a square. That's what I was saying, side one, side two. Side two. Okay, so in a square, it's, so this C was the same as there. So the area of this square is C times C. C squared. C squared. You got that? Okay. All right. What's the area of this? Oh my God. A squared plus B squared equals C squared. What's the area of this square? What's the area of this square? That's A squared. A squared. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

A squared. And the area of this one? B squared. B squared. Yeah. Okay. If you draw this, it means you know about the Pythagorean theorem. There you go. So that the squares of the size of a triangle are not just an abstract concept. They're actual squares. That's crazy. Okay. You'd light this on fire at night. The aliens will know you've been hanging out with Pythagoras. Only if the aliens studied geometry. That's funny.

Oh my god. Wouldn't it be funny if we got some dumbass aliens? That failed geometry, man. I told you it was going to come in handy at some point. You said math didn't make a difference after school. So I'm saying we all learn the Pythagorean theorem just by looking at a triangle and we're told that A squared plus B squared equals C squared. But if they were aliens, they'd just look at that and maybe if they were coneheads, they'd like the idea that it was a triangle.

That as well. Or maybe they like Doritos. There you go. Okay. So as a kid, the first science museum I ever attended was the Boston Museum of Science. And they had a lot of hands-on exhibits, as good science museums will. Cool. And they had this on the wall. Oh. And you know what it was? So you would rotate it. So it would be sitting there like this, and there'd be this flat squares against the wall, and this had liquid in it.

just a thin square volume, okay? It's had liquid in it. - Oh, that's brilliant! - And so when you turn it, you turn it, this liquid fills the--

Fills the other two squares, and this then filled completely these other two squares. That's great. I was going to say, A squared plus B squared equals B squared. That's really cool, man. That's a great exhibit. That's some good shit. Yeah. That's some brilliant educators thinking about it. That really is. That's very good. And so I was just duly reminded by our producer, Alex P., that Gauss, brilliant German mathematician, proposed this idea.

as a way to possibly show aliens that we're not still living in the caves. Yeah, because it's so intentional. That's amazing. Yes. And so simplistic. That's why. That's the genius of simplicity. You're not going to write an English sentence or even some other symbols might throw people off. We can throw our best equation, but they might have other symbols for equations. It wouldn't make a difference. Whereas a triangle and a square? They get it. We got it. Wow, look at that. Okay.

All right. There's your answer, Brian. This has been Chuck and Gary's Burning Questions, StarTalk Special Edition. Thank you. I enjoyed that. We should do that more often. Yeah, that was fun. Maybe you can ask us some next time. Maybe, yeah. I will. The answers will be interesting. All right. We're done here. StarTalk Special Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Thanks, Chuck. Gary? You're welcome. Gary, Chuck. Same thing. Until next time, keep looking up.

I'm General Manager Ethan Rosignol at Dark Cars Toyota in Silver Spring. Having trouble finding a car? Come to Dark Cars Toyota in Silver Spring. Dark Cars Toyota is the Central Atlantic region's number one Toyota dealer year after year. We are here to help you with all your car buying needs. Take advantage of our large inventory and pricing. Come visit us at Dark Cars Toyota in Silver Spring or online at darkcarstoyota.com.

The sizzle of McDonald's sausage. It's enough to make you crave your favorite breakfast. Enough to head over to McDonald's. Enough to make you really wish this commercial were scratch and sniff. And if you're a sausage person, now get two satisfyingly savory sausage McGriddles, sausage biscuits, or sausage burritos for just $3.33. Or mix and match. Price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer or combo meal. Single item at regular price. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba.

you