Neil deGrasse Tyson Answers Your Wildest Questions | For Facts Sake Compilation

So this is Kevotron, and Kevotron says, "Uh, hey Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice. I'm Kevin from Charlotte, North Carolina."

"Nice. I was just there in Charlotte."

"Oh, cool. He says, 'Fiction has always been my preferred type of literature throughout my life. From long novels to short comic books, I love the imagination authors put into their characters and stories. I want to see what your imagination is like. My question for both of you is if both were in a superhero comic book, what type of villain do you think each of you would be?'"

"Why can't you be a hero if you can't see yourself as a villain?"

"Gosh."

"So, let me preface that by saying I want what I do, which is I write non-fiction. I don't want what I write to be referenced as the negative of something else."

"You, you want every assertion to be positive."

"Yes."

"You want every assertion to be positive."

"Yes."

"So, I invented the word. I think what I write and others who are in the non-fiction world, we should, if you write fiction, we write faction."

"That's, that's actually a better word."

"A way better word."

"Yes. Except it also means a splintering of a group. But many words have more than one meaning. So that shouldn't be the first time that happened. Okay. So, so Chuck, would you be a villain or a superhero?"

"Oh, that's a rough one, man. 'Cause the villains are often far more cool."

"Really? Oh. Oh."

"And the reason they do that is because if it makes the superheroes the underdog, and you always want to root for the underdog. There's something about them where you feel for them."

"Yeah. Like, you look at the Transformers. The Autobots are cars. Big deal."

"Whereas the Decepticons are, they're jet planes."

"Okay."

"Well, the Decepticons are far more cool than the Autobots. Okay. But the Autobots always win, you know."

"But I never wanted to be Lex Luthor."

"Okay."

"Oh, no."

"I wanted his money, but that's it."

"I got to say, I wouldn't mind being Lex Luthor. 'Cause Lex Luthor is nothing more than Batman gone wrong."

"What?"

"Yeah. Think about it. Batman is a billionaire who creates all these toys so that he can fight crime and uphold justice. Lex Luthor is a billionaire who is also a psychopath. So, he creates toys to try and kill Superman."

"Okay."

"But if he were good, he would be an awesome, like, count. He would be an awesome, like, tandem hero with Superman."

"Allow me to quote the Joker in Batman."

"Go ahead."

"'You complete me.'"

"Yes."

"'Or I complete you.'"

"No. He says, 'Yeah, you complete me.'"

"Yeah. Yeah. Was talking directly to Batman."

"To Batman, right? 'Without you, I'm nothing.'"

"Right."

"Yeah."

"So, you know, the yin and yang. I like."

"There's another saying which is said in geopolitics. You're only as great as the greatness of your enemy."

"Ooh, that's a great, that's a really profound statement. So, there was Saddam Hussein trying to hide in the desert. Then he says, 'I got the entire US military after me. I am no longer a badass. I went from badass to dumbass.'"

"No, no. What I'm saying is, while he's alive to say that, right? That's quite a boast."

"Yes, it is. Right."

"Right."

"But back at the club."

"But the fact is that he was, he was the biggest baddest dude in the Middle East."

"Mhm. Until Uncle Red, White, and Blue showed up."

"Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah."

"So, so, so who would you be? Would you..."

"I'd be a superhero. I'd be Mighty Mouse."

"Don't laugh."

"I'm confessing my inner..."

"By the way, everybody loves Mighty Mouse. But why Mighty Mouse? Just..."

"'Cause I'd like that he sings when he goes to save people. 'Here I come to save the day!' And that's how you know he's, he's showing up on the scene."

"Yeah. You can hear him echoing through the corridors."

"'Hey, give me your money!'"

"'Here I come to save the day!'"

"Oh man."

"And then there's another key he sings it in."

"Yes."

"So, I, I somehow I was enchanted by that as a kid. Mighty Mouse."

"Mighty Mouse."

"Big old chest, you know."

"Yes. He was more chest than he was anything else."

"He was all chest."

"He was all chest. But I, but my mission wouldn't be to save the damsel or whatever he..."

"Okay."

"My mission would be to save the geeks who being pummeled by the football quarterbacks. 'Cause in my day, that's what happened."

"Any geek being bullied, you would show up."

"Bullied. Exactly. And back in my day, we hadn't figured out that you could report bullies to the principal yet."

"Well, that's because..."

"They were a fundamental part of your life, right? And you were forced to deal with them. Because what happens is you go to an adult and you say, 'This guy's bullying me.' And they say, 'Yeah, 'cause you're a you're a snitch. Look at you.'"

"You know, my father said, he said, 'Anybody bullied you, punch him in the face.'"

"And that's what everybody..."

"Not only that, my grandmother told me that."

"Yes. Okay. That was punch him in the face and they will never bully you."

"And they said they'll never bully you again. I said, 'Yeah, but they are going to beat my ass right then.' You know, you do have to take one ass-whooping if you're going to stand up to a bully. Okay, that's the thing. And they will never mess with you again. But that one time that you did that..."

"In my day, nerds had very low stock value in society. Today, it's the richest people in the world."

"Yes."

"And I was around just before the transition where the quarterback and the athletes, they needed the nerd to help them with their computer homework, right?"

"So, you can't there's a limit to how much..."

"There's a limit to how much you can get on a nerd on a nerd."

"Also, you're probably going to work for them one day."

"Uh, well, that wasn't yet quite fully established. Not future. Okay. And..."

"Also, you might want to cheat off of them one day in class."

"Well, that's always been the case."

"That's always been the case. So, I would be protector of the nerds."

"That's cool. I'd be Dr. Manhattan."

"Ooh."

"Because he can go anywhere in the universe he wants."

"Anywhere, anytime. Anywhere."

"Anytime. And also be in several places at the same time."

"Yeah."

"So, that's kind of really cool. Plus, he knew he knew all..."

"Made me feel bad for just wanting to be Mighty Mouse. Well, listen, it's fun to think about. That's a cool..."

"Dr. Manhattan from the..."

"A Watchman."

"The Watchman series. Yes."

"Yeah. Um, the movie got me. I mean, I always..."

"The Watchman was the the graphic novel. Correct. Then there was the movie, then there was the series."

"Yes. And I was going to say I always liked him in the graphic novels. But it wasn't until the movie that I wanted to be Dr. Manhattan because he was in his lab working and in the bedroom having a threesome with his wife with himself, which is awesome. Man was still working on his science and getting it in with his wife..."

"And himself."

"And himself."

"In a threesome."

"In a threesome. Okay, you can't beat that."

"Okay, that's weird."

"All right, here we go."

"That's a little weird."

"Yeah. And and and and and add to this though to understand the severity of what I had to come save, there'd be a little signal for me."

"What would it be?"

"It would be digits of pi in the sky."

"Oh, that is cool."

"And so the more digits, the more serious..."

"The more serious the case. Increase the urgency."

"Wow, that's so funny."

"It was just three point..."

"52 decimal places."

"That's atomic wedging. Have to go interrupt there. If it's one decimal place, it's just someone trash-talking you."

"Right."

"Right. That's great. So, that's what it would be."

"That's funny."

"Thank you for that question."

"All right. This is Vic G. He says, 'Hey there, um, Lord Nice. Dr. Tyson, Big G here from California with a question for each of you. Are there any cosmic mysteries that you are most looking forward to knowing their resolutions, but sadly may not be resolved in our lifetimes?' Bonus points if you can name mysteries that we are so close to resolving, but is probably just beyond our reach."

"Okay, you go first."

"Well, see, mine is the easiest because I just want to know, um, what exactly is causing the acceleration, the expansion of the universe."

"You, like everybody else, wants to know that."

"Because that's everybody else. But the reason is because I believe that it's a pressure from outside of our universe that bleeds through. That's what I think it is. And I just..."

"You think there's a puppet master?"

"No. Well, I don't. I'm not going to call it a puppet master. I think there's a bleeding. That's what I'll call it."

"An injured puppet master."

"A leakage. A leakage. Leakage of pressure. Because what that, if we were to find that out, now we have to explore the leak. And that means we're looking at a whole another universe. And to me, that's fascinating."

"That's interesting."

"Yeah. Yeah."

"You have to then explore the leak."

"Explore the leak. Now."

"Okay. I can't, I can't top that. That's good."

"No, I would say I don't think we're going to know, um, for sure, if there's life in the universe in my lifetime."

"Whoa."

"Intelligent life in the univer..."

"Well, then you, you, you win the bonus points because that is something we are very, very close to. But it's very possible we may not find in our lifetime."

"Yeah. I don't think in my lifetime we will know that. What we will know in our lifetime is if there's any life at all outside."

"No. In our own sol, in our own sol..."

"Okay. Because we're looking at Europa, right? We did a whole episode. We went to JPL, right? Jet Propulsion Labs. That's right. NASA in Pasadena. That's right. Talked to the, the Europa Clipper people. That's right. Talking about what are they going to do? What are they going to measure it? What's beneath the ice? So, we will know whether or not there has ever been or is currently life in our solar system other than on Earth."

"Yes."

"I think that will happen. But it would be sad if there is no life other than life on Earth. You know, you know what has been said?"

"Mhm."

"How profound it would be if we discovered intelligent life in the universe. But how more profound it would be if we discovered that we're alone."

"Listen, the second one is far scarier."

"It's a little scarier than the first 'cause that means you kind of want neighbors, don't you? All of this was a mistake."

"No, it would feed many religious thinking that the whole universe is just for us."

"That kind of face was that..."

"Some some branches of Christianity and perhaps other religions as well require that life on Earth be the sole object of God's creation."

"Okay, I'm just gonna say it and please don't judge me here. I'm being logical and I'm thinking like God. All right, that's the dumbest crap I ever heard. And here's why it's stupid. I don't need to do all this. Okay, I don't need to do... Oh, you're God. You're God."

"I'm God right now. I don't need to do all this to show you that you're the only thing necessary and uh good and my central and crowning creation. As a matter of fact, all I really need is the sun and the Earth because that's our, that's the energy system that makes all of this happen."

"Yeah. Nothing else matters."

"Nothing else matters. So if the sun, like a hydrogen atom, had just the Earth going around it, then I would say there is a God and he made this just for us. But when you look at the vastness of the universe and the trillions of galaxies, all of which containing stars, billions and billions of stars in each galaxy, to a, to a place where we can't even fathom the number of celestial bodies that are out there, then what you're saying to me is I'm stupid and I like to waste my time. Thank God."

"I like to waste my time. That's what I'm doing."

"That God is an inefficient manufacturer. And that's it. World, right? It doesn't make any sense. So either there's a lot more of us out there, not meaning us, but life all over the place."

"This was Giordano Bruno's argument."

"Who is that?"

"You don't know Giordano?"

"I never met..."

"We never talked about Bruno."

"Bruno."

"Who's Bruno?"

"He's a monk."

"I'm sorry, that just sounds funny, but go ahead."

"A 16th century monk in Italy."

"Yeah."

"Yeah. He had just, he had just read Copernicus's book, The Revolution, which is puts the sun back in the..."

"I say back because the Greeks knew this, but it got lost in the Dark Ages, but the sun back in the middle of the known universe."

"Okay."

"He, religious man."

"Okay."

"God-fearing man said, 'Hmm, if the sun is in the middle and not Earth, that means Earth is a planet going around the sun like Jupiter and Mercury and Mars and Venus. If the sun has planets and we're life on a planet, maybe these stars in the night sky are just like our sun. And if they are, maybe they have planets. And if they have planets, maybe they have, uh, life.'"

"Life."

"Right."

"Heretical."

"Oh, they killed him."

"They killed him because that meant Earth was not the object of God's creation."

"There you go."

"So, they put him on trial, sentenced him to death."

"Oh my god."

"Burned him upside down, naked, in the Campo de' Fiori, uh, the piazza in Rome."

"Right."

"And I think that's in Rome, not Florence. And they drove a stake into his mouth to shut his ass up so that even in the afterlife, he would not... the heresies. We don't, we do not deserve to be a species running."

"Okay."

"You know what his one of his last words were?"

"Uh, let me guess."

"Okay. Before that."

"Okay. What was his last word?"

"He says, he had a few good last words. My favorite among them was, 'Your God is too small.'"

"Yes. Way to go out."

"Way to go out."

"Way to go out, man. 'Your God is too small.'"

"Too small. Your god of just Earth and the sun."

"Yes."

"Yeah. So, anyhow."

"Oh my god. Okay. First of all, I'm gonna read up on this guy. Bruno is his name. Huh?"

"Giordano. Cool name, too."

"So, check this out. Um, you know, some people know my background, but uh, one of my last words before I left my other life, my religious life, uh, was over this whole idea of homosexuality. I never understood it. I still don't understand it. Like, why people have a problem with it and why would God have a problem with it? I couldn't get around it as I'm studying to become, you know, a minister."

"But I thought it's because it's in Leviticus."

"Yeah, but Leviticus is full of [ __ ]. Anyway, I mean, honestly, you know how many people have read Leviticus? Me being one. Okay. So, anyway, um, so I, my one of my last..."

"You know what someone told me? A Jewish person told me Leviticus are just suggestions."

"Kind of."

"'Cause if they were important enough, they would have been a commandment."

"They would have been commandments, right? No, seriously. The Levitical law, and by the way, it's a Levitical law for the priests. Okay. Anyway, anyway, um, I said, a, a God that needs me to fight this battle for him is not a God I want to serve."

"Oo."

"If God needs me to fight this battle, homosexuality, and if that's the battle that I got to fight, I got to be worried about two dudes doing it. Like that's what my God is all about. Two consenting dudes doing it. Like that's what I got to worry about. I, I can't serve that. I, I got to be out. Anyway, so I love this Bruno dude and I'm going to..."

"Yeah. Check him out."

"I'm going to check him out."

"All right."

"Awesome."

"Oh, by the way, there's a, there's a memorial to him in the square. Look..."

"I'm sorry."

"Looking very..."

"Little late. Sorry."

"He's there. He's, he's got his monk robe on and he's very solemn."

"Mhm."

"There, Bruno. Yeah. Oh, I can't..."

"Here in, I think it was 1601, something like that. Yeah."

"That's amazing. Wow. What a great, great story. I love it."

"Up until the 20th century, Mhm. Everything that physics discovered about the universe that applied everywhere as far as we knew, right? They were called laws. Newton's laws of motion. Newton's laws of gravity. Law is something that you don't break. Okay."

"It is a law."

"That's right."

"'Thou shalt not go faster than light.'"

"'Thou shalt not.' Those were the original tablets, if you're wondering."

"No, that's the other one that broke."

"That's the one that broke off. 'I COME DOWN WITH THESE 10...'"

"Tens. 10. 10."

"11 to 15 with speed of light."

"So, beginning of the 20th century, we stopped calling them laws."

"Okay. Why is that?"

"It was a humble recognition that the experiments you do that establish the laws might not have been conducted in every possible extreme to test the law that you're establishing."

"Mhm. That makes sense."

"Okay."

"Right."

"Let me give a really stupid example. All right. I can make a law that if I drop something, it'll fall at a particular rate. I'll call that my gravity law."

"Well, that kind of is the case."

"Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is. It is. I'm not. However, if I go to a mountaintop, it'll fall slightly slower if I have very careful measurements. My gravity law is different at the top of a mountain."

"So, I have to adjust it somehow. And then I learn, oh my gosh, my gravity law depends on how far away you are from the center of the Earth."

"The center of the Earth. Okay."

"Okay."

"'Cause that's what it's falling into."

"Oh, that's what it's falling into. But you have to. This is new understanding of what's going on, right? But if no one ever ascended a mountain, this law would work for everybody at all times at sea level, right? Okay."

"Yeah."

"But so now, let me give a more realistic example. Isaac Newton has his laws of motion, laws of gravity. They apply everywhere. The moon going around Earth, Earth going around the sun, Jupiter's satellites going around Jupiter. It's not just here's what the sun does with planets. It's what anything does that's got mass, right? If it's got mass, you can have gravity. You got this, right?"

"So, oh my gosh, this is amazing. But then Uranus gets discovered. Mhm. It's not following Newton's laws of gravity. Have we found the limits of this law? It only applies maybe to our solar system. Maybe other star systems it's different. Or maybe beyond a certain distance, the universe is somehow interfering with it. We didn't know, right? And we had Newton's boys on his side saying, 'Not is so badass. We are sure the law still works. There must be some other planet talking on it that you haven't put into your equations,' right? Let's look for it.' You have to invert the equation to find the thing that would be making the force of gravity. It's called an inversion problem. Took some high-level math in the day. Sure enough, they said, 'Look here.' Bada bing, there it is. Newton's law still held."

"Still held."

"Now, we keep going. How about these stars that orbit each other? Do we know their masses? Not quite yet. We have to learn more about what stars are. We get their masses. Whoa. They're following Newton's laws."

"Wow. Right."

"Stars. That's beyond our solar system. So, we were good with Newton's laws until we had to understand what Mercury was doing. Mercury, its orbit around the sun was not following Newton's laws."

"We said, 'We've been down that road before,' right?"

"But there's a planet, right? Inside the sun."

"No, no."

"There's another planet in the sun."

"No, the next best thing. There's a planet so close to the sun, we can't see it. It's lost in the glare, but clearly it's there."

"Clearly, it's there."

"Okay, because that would account for the fact that Mercury's path is not exactly following Newton's laws, right?"

"Turns out, can't explain it with Newton's laws. We're in the presence of severe force of gravity, the sun. Obviously, Earth is near the sun. We're orbiting it. But these effects don't show up until you're really close. And Mercury is really close to the sun and a whole other understanding of physics needed to be invoked. Einstein's general theory of relativity."

"Enter Einstein."

"Enter Einstein, which accounts for very high sources of gravity, very high speeds. So, you, you invoke Einstein. Mercury is bang on exactly as it should be behaving. Do we throw out Newton?"

"YES."

"NO. NO. NEWTON."

"Get out Newton, you dumbass."

"Get out of here."

"Newton got us to that doorstep."

"Right. Took us as far as we could go."

"And according to Newton's laws of motion, if I'm going two-thirds the speed of light, Mhm. And you're going two-thirds the speed of light and we pass each other, how fast are we going relative to each other?"

"Half the speed of light. One. One. In Newtonian way, it'd be one and a third. So two, adding them 'cause I'm going fast, you're going fast, but we're passing."

"Yeah. A simpler way to do it is I'm going the speed of light. You're going the speed of light. You're passing me twice the speed of light. Twice. Okay. That's it."

"No."

"It doesn't work that way."

"No."

"Okay. Because the speed of light..."

"Can't do it, right?"

"The speed of light sets a limit unknown to Newton. Unknown."

"Right. That there should be any such limit at all because he never dealt with anything going faster than running horses or just planets in orbit around their stars."

"Okay."

"They're not going fast enough to manifest that failure of Newton's laws."

"Okay, you take..."

"Einstein. I love the way you put this."

"Special. Well, no, it, it's like people who work out and they say, 'Work out to fail.' Like, in other words, you push the weight as far as you can until you just can't lift it anymore. And that's the point of failure. You can lift that. You could, but you get to a point where, yeah, this doesn't work anymore."

"You've tested the limits of the limits of your muscle. So now you're in a new world now."

"Are you going to get there or you not? You maybe need a different regimen, right?"

"To get there."

"Exactly."

"That's very cool. Einstein's general theory of relativity and special theory of relativity combined accommodated the extremes where Newton's laws had never explored. This was a humble recognition that that which we used to call a law had limits."

"Yes."

"You can't call things laws going forward, right? Because the next thing might also have limits, right? So, let's be humble about this. And so Einstein's theories of relativity are called his theory of relativity. So, out of a point of historical perspective, we still call them Newton's laws."

"Okay."

"Just that's an historical artifact."

"Like an homage."

"An homage. Yes. Yes. But entering the 20th century where these laws of 19th century classical physics fell at their limits, we said, 'We're not going to make that mistake again.'"

"Okay. So here's what's important. If you take Einstein's relativity, plug in low speeds and low gravity, they become Newton's laws. So Einstein's laws did not replace Newton."

"They extended them."

"That's pretty wild."

"That's how science works. Newton's laws don't all of a sudden not work."

"They're not supplanted or erased in the realm in which they had been experimentally tested and verified. That's still true. The Apollo program, we went to the moon on Newton's laws. There's no Einstein in any of those equations."

"Come the 1920s, we are recording this in 2026. We are in the centennial decade of the discovery of quantum physics. In the day, we called it quantum mechanics. That extends classical mechanics into the realm of particles and nuclei and the like. Okay? Still call it quantum theory. Even though every experiment ever suggested by it has verified its predictions."

"Oh, okay."

"It is as much a law as we have ever measured anything to be. We still call it quantum theory because at some point there's a failure."

"We haven't gotten there yet."

"We haven't gotten there yet."

"But we know at some point. We don't know."

"Well, we don't know. We can allow for it."

"Allow for that possibility. People think a theory scientifically is just some idea you happen to have that's not yet verified. Yes. Nothing could be farther from the truth in, in physics."

"Because they think it's a murder mystery. Just like I have a theory."

"Okay. So when people say, 'I have a theory,' right? You know what my reply is?"

"What?"

"I say, 'Einstein had a theory. You have a hypothesis.'"

"Right? And guess what? You don't even have that 'cause that's a, 'cause that's an educated guess."

"Okay."

"You know what you got? You got an idea. A thought."

"You have a thought."

"That's what you have. A thought. So the difference is a theory, as we now use the term and have been using it for 100 years now, Okay. Is an organizing understanding of how the universe works in some realm or another. It not only organizes it. It says we understand this, that, and the other because of this idea. And not only that, this idea is so fertile. I can make predictions on it. You can go test it and those predictions will show up and be correct."

"That makes sense. And especially because it eliminates the perception that a theory is a thought or an idea like, 'Oh, that's why I whenever I get the occasion, I say, 'You don't have a theory. Einstein had a theory. You have a hypothesis,' right?"

"You, you hypothesize something, right?"

"It's not. Nothing works yet. It hasn't been tested yet."

"Okay. Right."

"I have a hypothesis. Can we test it? Yeah. Here's an idea. Test it. We test it. Did it? Yeah. Okay. Hold on to that. Right. Is there more testing? Is there more understanding that this will give us as this builds? You achieve the level of a theory."

"Gotcha. Yeah. Okay. So we have quantum field theory, theory of relativity. We have the theory of evolution, right? Nothing makes sense in biology without evolution by natural selection."

"And by natural selection, we mean God decided to like, 'I'm going to select you and I'm going to select you and I'm going to select you.' And..."

"That's divine selection."

"That's divine selection. Okay. So evolutionary theory, for example, would say if you understand that mammals came later in the tree of life, uh, you know, we didn't really become interesting mammals till after the dinosaurs, the big dinosaurs left the scene. I think there were some early mammals, but if you go back millions of years before the dinosaurs, and there's a sedimentary layer with dinosaur fossils, evolutionary theory predicts you will not find mammals in that layer. If you find a layer that has dinosaurs and rabbits, that's a problem for the theory of evolution."

"It's also a hoax."

"So, you have to ask, is it a hoax? Because evolution has been so thoroughly tested, right? Is it a hoax? Is there some uplifting of the surface, which happens in continental drift? So, check for that, right? You want because it's been so successful. Your first thought is, 'No, let me throw the whole thing out the window because of this one data point,' because it's been so successful. That would put a theory to the test."

"Right."

"Now, Copernicus had a theory, the heliocentric theory, that the sun is in the middle of the known universe, not the Earth. He came up with this. It was like, 'Whoa, brilliant Copernicus. He's right. Sun is in the middle of things, right?' But his orbits were perfect circles. He's religious, like everybody else. If God made the universe, what's the most perfect shape? Circle. Circle. So, he made the universe. Give, give the boy circles. And it didn't match the paths of the planets in the sky. How could this be a correct theory if it's getting that wrong?"

"So, here's what happens."

"'The Lord works in mysterious ways.'"

"That's one answer. Another one is maybe I have to adjust my theory. Maybe the basics are correct, but I got to make an adjustment on the edges. What is that adjustment? We would learn 70 years later, they're not perfect circles. They're slightly squashed circles. Ellipses. Once you put in ellipses, it's bang on. Just because you find something that tickles the edge of a theory, right? That alone does not mean you're going to throw the theory out. If the theory has a lot of supportive experimental evidence, take the Big Bang. I cannot begin to list for you the supportive evidence for the Big Bang. Even though it makes no sense that the whole universe was once smaller than a marble. What's, what's am I saying?"

"The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you."

"Thank you."

"Right."

"Thank you."

"And I have a response to that. F you, universe. You're going to make sense to me whether you like it or not. Sorry. I want to make you make sense. Don't make me make you make sense to me. So, so right now, they're measurements of the Hubble constant that don't agree with each other. Okay. The Hubble constant is like the expansion rate of the universe. What's up with that, right? Headlines all over the place. We have to revisit the Big Bang, the Big Bang this, we have to... Okay, excuse me. No, this is like an edge effect. If we have to redo the Big Bang, it's going to take more than that. This is one thing. Let's keep exploring it because so much else works. If you have another idea that can explain the Hubble constant, you have to explain all this other stuff, too. Right."

"And that's hard. Be my guest. But just don't turn around and say, 'I found this one thing that conflicts.' Therefore, all of it's wrong."

"All of it's wrong."

"That's called the baby with the bath water."

"Exactly."

"Exactly. In Copernicus, the baby was right there. The sun was in the middle. You're not throwing that out. Right."

"'Cause it explains so many other things. Yeah."

"Okay. Yeah."

"All right. So theories are powerful ideas that have been experimentally verified, and we ought to be calling them laws, but we don't because we're humble and we're going to say, 'One day we might find a deeper idea in which this theory is embedded that gives us a deeper understanding of how the universe works.' Right? But whatever that new theory is that supplants it, it doesn't push it to the side because there it's experimentally verified. It will enclose it as a special case of the deeper understanding of nature."

"Nice. to say, and this was spoken in the halls of Congress, 'We should teach evolution as the theory that it is and make sure that we can also teach biblical creation because evolution is just a theory.' That is a profound misunderstanding of what theories are and how and why they work. As our understanding grows deeper, so does the nesting doll of the prior understandings and how they manifest in the world that we explore."

"Pretty cool, man. I love it."

"That's it, Chuck."

"That's it."

"We good on that?"

"Yeah, we are. Uh, takeaway: All your theories are wrong."

"'Cause they're hypotheses."

"Hypotheses. You don't have one."

"This has been another Star Talk explainer. Chuck, always good to have you here. Love your feedback. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Do keep looking up."

"About parsecs."

"1.4 parsecs travel cap. It's a ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs somewhere in a thousand cubic parsecs of space. So, parsec, you've heard the word, of course. It was used in Star Trek, in Star Wars. And for me, as an astrophysicist, Mhm. It's one of the most embarrassing units of measure to come out of my field."

"Oh."

"First, it's an authentic term."

"So, it is real."

"Yeah. We invented it."

"Okay."

"And I'm embarrassed by it."

"Wow."

"I'm so embarrassed by it. I never used it when I taught Astro 101."

"Damn. It's that bad."

"It's. And even it's in the textbook, I would like Sharpie it out and then give them another way unit of measure."

"What is it? Like, I don't know, the distance between the mainland and Epstein Island? Is that how is that how y'all? What is so disgraceful about this measurement?"

"It is, it is just, you know, forgive me if we knew not what the term, we did, you know, forgive me, Lord, for for the sins we committed with that term. Really?"

"Yes. Long ago, right?"

"Someone declared that a full circle had 360 degrees, right? There was set up millennia ago, I think in in Babylon. Okay, where base 60 was a, was a big thing. Okay."

"Before you had decimals, if you wanted to divide up a number, you, you'd want it to be able to divide evenly. 60."

"Oh my gosh, it's evenly divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Okay."

"10, 12, 15. Okay. 30."

"20."

"20 and 30. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's a lot of division."

"So, it's a, it's a very flexible number in that regard. You can take whole fractions of it, right?"

"So, I understand why 60 was used. I'm just saying somebody made that decision long ago. So, 360 degrees in a circle. Each degree is split into how many parts?"

"The degree in a circle."

"Yeah."

"What? I didn't know there..."

"I didn't know we split degrees in a circle. I just thought it was 360 degrees."

"Yeah. Yeah. So, a degree has 60 minutes."

"Oh, I did not know that."

"You did not know that. Okay."

"60 minutes in a degree."

"Yes. That's a, that's a smaller unit within the degree."

"Nice."

"And you can split the minutes into seconds."

"Into seconds. Even though it's got nothing to do with time, right?"

"Okay."

"So, 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in a degree, 360° in a circle."

"There you go. In order to distinguish minutes and seconds of an angle from minutes and seconds of time, we will say arc minute, okay? Or an arc second."

"Well, that would make sense."

"Just to help you out 'cause an angle has an arc."

"An arc."

"In between every angle, there's a little arc. And we don't have to say arc degree 'cause that's, we, we know we're talking about temperature. It's inherent. It's easy to get that. Okay."

"Are we together?"

"I'm, I'm with you."

"Put a pin in that."

"Okay. Now I want you to take your thumb, point it to me."

"No, no. I mean, sorry. Point it facing you."

"Face me. And line up your, close one eye and line your thumb up with me. You did that."

"Okay, I did."

"Now you're a thumb head."

"Okay, great. Now switch eyes."

"Hello, camera one. Camera two."

"What?"

"So what happened?"

"Well, my thumb moved out the way."

"Your thumb moved out the way. Yeah."

"Your thumb jumped."

"Yes."

"Okay, you can do that. So, right now I'm blocking the view of my left eye to that camera. I switch eyes. The thumb moved over and now I can see the camera."

"Exactly."

"Okay. Your thumb moved, right?"

"It moved, but it didn't really. It's still there in space. Your point of view on your thumb changed. It was first at this angle, then it was at that angle."

"Mhm."

"Okay. So, the angle that your thumb shifted. You, we can measure. We can measure that. Okay."

"That is an angle."

"Okay. Right."

"So, now watch. Do the same thing with me except move your thumb much closer."

"Okay."

"To you."

"To me."

"Mhm. Okay. Line me up. Okay. Now, switch eyes."

"Well, yeah. Now my thumb's gone."

"Your thumb goes way farther."

"Yeah. I can barely see it."

"You can bar. So, the closer your thumb is as you switch eyes, the, the bigger the angle."

"The bigger the angle. Right. That is a precise geometric relationship between the angle that the thing moves and how far away it is."

"Gotcha."

"Provided you know the separation of your two eyes. Okay. Those three things. Separation of your eyes. The angle the thing shifts. There's an equation. You put in those two numbers. Out pops the distance."

"That sounds very cool."

"All right. And you, and you see how that can vary depending on how far away the object is, how far away your thumb is. So, are you ready? Go ahead."

"We do this with stars in the galaxy to find their distance."

"To find their distance."

"Okay."

"But we don't have eyeballs to do it. We have Earth's orbit."

"Ah."

"So, we're in one side of Earth's orbit. Let's call it June. You take a picture of the sky in June."

"All right."

"You come around December, you take another picture. Some of the stars would have shifted."

"Yes. Now, the really far away stars, they're going to be in the same place."

"They're basically going to be in the same place. So, this works for stars that are kind of nearby and intermediate distance, right? 'Cause you can see the shift in the position against the background."

"And in your case, your thumb was the intermediate star and my head was the backdrop."

"Back, right? Okay. Okay. And if you look carefully, my head would shift against that background."

"One, two. Yeah. So..."

"But it shifts much less."

"Right. Much less."

"Much less. Yeah."

"Farther away than your thumb is."

"Yeah. Yeah. Yeah."

"I'm walk around like this now."

"So that phenomenon, that shift in your point of view is called parallax."

"Right. Okay."

"Okay. In order to get this sense of motion in a movie or in our, our space shows, if you're not going to use 3D glasses, you make sure there's sufficient parallax so that your brain knows exactly what's going on. So you have certain things that pass by faster than other things. Okay? And if they're not otherwise moving, but you're moving, the nearby things will move by much faster than the middle distance things than the far away things. That's why you're driving down the street."

"Mhm."

"The trees along the side of the road go by. The guardrail is in light speed."

"You go to the mountains, they're kind of there a while."

"Let's go to the moon. The moon just stays there."

"It's following you."

"That's it."

"Why is it following you?"

"That's why kids say, 'Why does the moon follow me?' Because they don't understand parallax yet."

"And I say, 'Because the moon is not to be trusted. Don't let the moon man come get you.'"

"So why does the moon follow me? Because it is so far away. It exhibits basically no parallax for your movement. If you kept going in in that same direction on Earth and off into space, then the moon would finally, you'd eventually leave behind, right? Eventually, right?"

"But so that's the answer to the age-old question of children. Why does the moon follow? Because of parallax, right?"

"Okay."

"So, let's get back to my people and this stupid ass unit of measure. Are you ready?"

"Okay."

"Okay."

"Okay. If a star is at a distance where half of the parallax angle is one arcsecond, its distance is one parallax second. One parsec. Was it portmanto? Is that what they call that in English class? Port..."

"Portmanto."

"Oh, portmanto."

"I don't know."

"You take pieces of other words and make a new word."

"Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So you, you staple them together and you get parsec. Now ask me how far away that is."

"How far away is that?"

"3.26 light-years. And no star is that close."

"Okay."

"The closest star is the Alpha Centauri system. That's correct. Four light-years away."

"So we have a measurement that's useless."

"No, no."

"Because it measures nothing though, because there's nothing there."

"There's nothing there. The justification is that even though nothing is that close, 3.26, 26 is kind of like four light-years. The average distance among stars in a galaxy is measured in parsecs. One to two parsecs."

"Oh, okay."

"The average distance between stars. So, generally star people will use, will still use parsecs because it was 10 parsecs away. It's, you know."

"They'll still use it. But I, in all of my classes, I just converted it all to light-years because one parsec versus 3.26, 26 light-years. A light-year is completely easy to explain, right? And we understand. We understand it because light is travels in the vacuum of space at a constant. At a constant. How far does it go in a year? And now we got it. And that, like, and then that you can, you can actually take that out to as many as. Okay. And so that itself would cause mild confusion, but you get over it quickly because people would think a light-year is a unit of time, right? But once it's explained, you never, you never think that way. You know it's not time even though it says light-years. Okay."

"So enter Star Wars."

"Yes."

"The first movie. And there's Han Solo bragging about the Millennium Falcon to Alec Guinness playing Obi-Wan."

"Obi-Wan. Okay."

"And and Luke Skywalker is looking on this bucket of bolts. 'How are we ever going to get anywhere in this bucket of bolts? And where's my sister? Because I want to kiss her.'"

"Stop."

"So he's bragging about his ship and then Obi-Wan says, 'But is it a fast ship?'"

"Right?"

"And then he gets flustered that it would even be questioned. So he says, 'He did the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.'"

"Right. Which judging from what you just told me is like saying, 'I ran the marathon in 20 in the New York Marathon. I finished the New York Marathon. I ran in 20 in.'"

"NO, it's worse than that."

"Well, go ahead."

"I finished the marathon in $12.50, right?"

"Exactly."

"How tall are you? I'm 75° F."

"Units matter."

"What time is it? Pineapples."

"Pineapples."

"Don't you KNOW YOU HOW LATE ARE YOU, MAN? YEAH, you're supposed to BE HERE AT QUUNK."

"YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE HERE IN QUOTT. YOU, YOU HEAR PINEAPPLES."

"THERE IS NO MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING OF ANY MEASURED QUANTITY UNLESS UNITS COMPORT, right?"

"Okay."

"That's ridiculous."

"So now I don't know why I got so concerned by that line given everything else that's in the movie."

"Yeah."

"Okay. Why should I? But you know what? They're using one of our words. And and they could have called me. I could..."

have helped him out. It's just one more thing to add to how Star Wars does not give a f >> about science or objective reality.

They do not care >> because it's it's fantasy and fine. Fine. You just pissed off a billion Star Wars fans out there.

I am one of you people. I love Star Wars. I mean, shoot. I mean, I I I read the books, okay? That's how bad it is. Okay. But yeah, they they don't give a crap about science.

Yeah. Yeah. So I feel guilty that the unit of measure exists at all. By the way, in Star Trek they always used parex correctly >> even though light years would have been more interesting and fun. So this is the story of parex.

That is crazy. >> It's kind of with us to stay. >> Yeah.

But I'm now tell me again what a parseek is. It's a unit of distance >> which is >> uh one parallel arc parallax parallax arc >> second uh arc second between >> what's on one side and what's on the other side.

No, half of that. >> Oh, it's one half of this and one half of this. So, it's one half of one side and one half of the other together. That makes one parallax arc.

Okay. I'll give you a B+. >> Arc second. Arc second.

I'm giving you a B+ on that. >> Okay. Yes. cuz your elbows went a little too far in.

It is the distance at which half of the parallax angle to a star is one arc second. >> There you go. That right >> per second.

Right. And it has to be half because the two together make one parallax arc second. It's No, >> it doesn't have to be half. It's just by definition. It's half that angle is one arcsec.

Oh, see that makes less sense. >> I know. I know. I'M NOT HERE >> TRYING TO MAKE IT MAKE SENSE.

I'M NOT HERE TO defend it. I'm just here to explain it. And this is an explainer, isn't it? >> Yeah. But see, now I don't like par sex.

Neither do I. Thank you. Let's shake on it. >> We're in agreement. All right.

Parex suck. >> There it is. Everything you never wanted to know about a parseek.

And we got to go cuz it's strawberry. >> Until next time, this has been a Star Talk explainer. as always. Thanks, Chuck.

You're always a pleasure. >> Keep looking up. I want to talk to you about size.

Who been talking to you? >> Let me finish a sentence. Size and life.

Oh, okay. Good. Cuz you know, I'm just saying. Sometimes I feel like it's a little embarrassing down there. I think there's much more conversation that could be had on that subject in this world >> really >> because physics matters in it but typically when people talk about life they only think of biology >> of course >> or at most chemistry and biology >> okay I like the chemistry >> physics is the substrate of it all >> you would say that >> let's be honest >> I'm just telling you >> okay so let's start with some basic facts >> okay >> all right when you're growing up especially if you were a boy, they say, "How strong are you?" They would challenge you to this and and and you would like show them your muscle. Let me see the >> gun show, baby.

Let me see the bicep. >> Welcome to the gun show.

Okay. What they're measuring is the area, the cross-sectional area of your muscle. So, the bigger the muscle, >> the stronger, >> the stronger it is. Unless you were Bruce Lee. Little skinny Asian dude going to whip your natural a double scribble.

So you need to know however >> that as your muscles get bigger they become heavier. It becomes heavier according to the volume of the muscle, but the strength increases only as the cross-section of the muscle.

I don't understand what you're saying. >> Think about very heavy animals have very thick limbs. You need thick limbs to hold up that much weight.

Weight, right? Okay. >> Okay, >> that makes sense. >> Got that? All right. As you get smaller and smaller >> Mhm. >> you don't need thick limbs. How thick is an insect leg?

Yeah, not thick. >> It's not right. >> It's not. The ant picks up something that weighs as much as it does, right?

And walks around with it. >> Walks around with it. >> The smaller you are, the even less you weigh for how small you are. Because weight scales as your volume. Weight scales as your radius cubed, but your strength scales as radius squared, which is basically your cross-section. This difference means as the animal gets larger, its weight outstrips the ability of its strength to hold up its body. So, it needs really, really fat legs to compensate.

Gotcha. As you get smaller, the weight starts going away fast because now the radius is getting smaller and smaller and then the area basically wins because now your your volume gets smaller faster than the cross-sectional area gets. So try this, right? If your radius is 2, then your volume goes as radius cubed. So what is 2 * 2 * 2? You get what? Eight. Okay. Now, if your radius is a half, >> oh, it's going down.

It's going, what's a half times a half times a half, right? >> That's an eighth, right? >> Okay. So, you get this crossover point in the animal kingdom. That's how the smaller the creature, the bigger is the weight it can carry relative to its own body weighting. And the higher it can jump, >> right? Because the it's body mass isn't much relative to what the legs are, >> which is the creepiest thing in the world when you see a kangaroo mouse.

Oh, >> it's a tiny little mouse and it can jump like 6 feet like >> or flea, which is, you know, barely the size of. And then they count how high above its height >> it can jump, >> right? >> And it's what? 10 times it height or something. What? 20, 30, whatever is that number, >> right? >> You ain't jumping that high above your height. Never.

And neither is any other large macroscopic object. The laws of physics are dictating what your acrobatic skills will be depending on your size. >> That's pretty wild. >> It's no accident that there no 6'5 gymnasts. >> Think about it. >> Smaller gym. >> There was one. >> There was one >> that afternoon >> and that was the end of it.

So, it's not an accident of physiology. It's the physics of physiology that when you are smaller, >> you in general will be stronger relative to your body weight. >> That's true. >> On top of that, >> there's more going on. If you walk towards the wall, can you then just crawl up the wall?

No. You weigh too much. >> Right. >> However sticky your fingertips are, >> no. >> Even if you just had a candy cane, that's not going to get you up the wall. A spider can just walk to the wall. Walk straight up the wall. Ants can walk straight up the wall. And what about Spider-Man?

Okay. >> Are you saying that it's like the laws of physics? He's violating the laws of physics by being able to walk up the wall >> badly because at his size, >> right? He should just lose his fingers.

The stickiness is insufficient to hold his m his his weight against the wall. >> You can't just scale things up and make them all do the same things. That's why there are no humansized spiders. Okay, >> thank God. Because you know what would happen? It'd break its legs. That big juicy middle part of the spider, >> it would weigh too much compared to the thickness of the legs. If a flea were our size and in the Olympics, it would jump, right? No. It would break its legs, >> right? It would just fall under its own weight.

Under its own weight >> and lay there and scream for help. Now, I knew this when I first saw the movie, one of these 1950s bee movies. Them, they're these huge ants, and they're just ants, but they're like the size of buildings, >> right? And that cannot happen.

That cannot happen. Oh, no. >> The laws of physics will not happen. >> How much would an ant of those proportions weigh at that size and would break its own legs? What they noticed they got they met us halfway there cuz they all of physics wasn't yet invading biology.

Okay. >> So they realized that the legs would be sensitive to damage. >> So that's >> so rather than shooting at the main body of the >> go for the legs. >> They said go for the legs. >> That's funny. >> And you shoot out the leg and then it started falling down on its own and they shot the antenna. So that's how they ended up defeating them. But wait, there's more. Not only that, there are two other things that don't scale together. You have a glass and you pour water into it. Okay.

And the water takes the shape of the glass. >> Absolutely. >> Okay. If you're waxing your car and then you hose it down, >> what does the water do on the surface of the car? >> It beads up and rolls off. >> It beads up. Not always rolling off depending on the slope. Depends on the slope.

Okay. It beads up, >> right? >> Well, if it bead it up, it didn't need a receptacle. >> So why do you need a receptacle when you drink water?

Because it will just come out of me. >> Yes. It'll it it can't occupy that much volume without spilling onto the ground, >> right?

So, what's going on? There's a force called surface tension on liquids where all the molecules in the liquids, there's a force field among them. Okay? They're called the Vanderwal's forces and they all move among each other. But at the surface there are no Vanderwal's forces above it because there's no liquid there.

Right? >> So the net effect of all these forces is to create a slightly more concentrated film of molecules at the surface. >> So it becomes like a net >> like a a membrane. A membrane.

Okay. I like that. >> That's why you can toss a leaf onto the water and it doesn't just sit there just sit on it sit on top of the membrane. Okay. Also, if you fill a vessel very slowly and very carefully, even a glass of water, you you will see a convex curve on the surface of the water.

Really? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> As you come up to the top, >> you know what? That has definitely been done. Uh when you get to the top of the glass, if you overfill it, there's a quick little point where the water is sitting above the above the lip. that little bit, >> but it doesn't spill over.

That's surface tension. >> That's amazing, and I love it. >> That's surface tension. Okay. So, that surface tension is not enough to ball up this much water, >> but it is strong enough to ball up that much water.

Got >> Okay. Because above a certain blob of water, the weight of the water becomes greater than the surface tension and it can't hold it down.

Oh my god. It's like a giant ant at that point. >> Okay. So those two forces cross in their capacity to influence what the water is doing.

Interesting. >> Okay. So in the film A Bug's Life, if you watch any Pixar movie, you know there's a room of scientists informing their films.

That's where our science is. It's a Pixar movie. >> So there's a scene where the ant goes to the bar. He sees a mosquito at the bar and the mosquito orders a drink. So what does the mosquito order?

Blood. >> No, it's a real bar. Okay. Bloody Mary.

Bloody Mary. >> Bloody Mary. Thank you, >> dude. It's a real bar.

It's a real bar. Okay. All right. All right. So, >> sorry I didn't suspend enough disbelief for the Bug Bar in Bug's Life.

So, the mosquito orders a Bloody Mary. O positive. So, the bartender says, "Coming right up." And a blob of Bloody Mary comes out. And then the mosquito sticks a probiscus in it, sucks it out, and then he's high and he falls down. Didn't need a glass because he's small enough for surface tension to completely contain the liquid. That's, you know, I got to tell you something. This is why people love you as an educator because you take a bug's life and turn it into a physics lesson on surface tension. We got to see beyond the. So it's evidence that the world occupied by insects >> and the forces that matter within it are different >> than our world >> than our world. That's great because the balance of forces changes depending on how big or small you are.

Okay? >> And so to an insect, a drop of water is fully contained. It can drink from it. >> Doesn't need it. >> It doesn't need a a glass. Right?

So, gravity is less important to insects than other sort of forces of nature that operate. But let's keep going.

Okay. >> Okay. >> What's the smallest life you could possibly have?

Well, we have these viruses and people like arguing about whether it's really alive, but >> they seem alive to me. >> But is a molecule alive? I mean, once you're down there, then quantum physics matters, >> right?

Okay. quantum physics. We don't we don't experience the phenomena of quantum physics as big macroscopic objects. Frankly, neither do insects, right? But they're too big. There's a size below which the quantum world would be everything you ever knew or cared about.

But we don't have life that small because life has certain complexity that requires some minimum number of molecules in order to declare it life. We have a whole Star Talk episode where there's a physicist turned astrobiologist who is thinking about how to quantify the molecular identity of a life form and asking what is the smallest value it can have and still be considered life.

Life, right? >> Right. So below that, we think we're not going to find life. That's that's why Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. That's why when we discovered the solar system and or planets orbit the sun and then we probe the atom.

Oh my gosh, THERE'S ELECTRON SOLAR SYSTEM. >> IT'S a little mini solar system. So So could it be this all the way down, >> right?

In fact, the space occupied by electrons in orbit around their atoms uses a word derived from our word orbit. They're called orbit orbitals.

Right. >> Okay. because they're not they're not in clean things. They're like in probability of clouds >> where they can occupy any space within there. So it's it's different but we so wanted it to be the same >> right >> just philosophically.

Yes. >> But it's not >> right. >> All the rules are different. >> Quantum physics overrides Einstein gravity, Newtonian gravity, everything. Do you remember that scene in Men in Black where they had to find the galaxy on the belt of Orion? Then you find out there's a cat called >> Orion.

Orion >> and it's got a collar. >> It's got a collar with a pendant and independent is a galaxy. We know because the laws of physics don't scale >> right >> relative to other laws of physics.

But that's not going to be >> you. That's you're not going to get a galaxy inside of a Maruck. >> Yes. >> We haven't talked about God in a while.

Oh, there's a reason for that. for that. >> Yeah. It's just that the history of civilization, anytime people had gods, gods that they revered, they're in high places. The heavens have been associated, right, >> with deity.

Correct. >> From the beginning, >> right? >> Okay. And so my field, astrophysics, directly confronts many people's questions regarding our existence, right?

For that reason. Mommy, where's heaven? Oh, it's up there. No, it's not because I have a telescope. >> It's not up there, Mommy. >> Right. So, you have that that intersection, right, >> of people's curiosity, what actually happens in modern astrophysics.

Okay. >> And if you are religious or or prone to be religious, >> right, >> it's easy, >> which I think everyone is, >> but perhap Yeah, we're human prone to human. It's a human thing >> given how prevalent it has been.

Exactly. Throughout our entire existence. Exactly. >> And some of the earliest recordings of communication involve exactly that.

Correct. The burial rituals of Neanderthal, for example. Right. >> Right. You can only have done that if you thought there was an afterlife or a supernatural force. Yes.

There's an urge, I think, >> to see that which is unknown in the universe. You hear of it. >> Big unknowns like dark matter and dark energy. two hugely mysterious pieces of modern astrophysics that are unresolved, >> right?

And they're not little, they're big. >> Okay, >> you add them together, it's 95 96% of what is driving this universe and we have no clue what it is.

That's insane. >> No clue. >> That makes me feel like we're the mistake. >> I'm just saying >> cuz we're not the majority. >> Yeah. 97% of the stuff that's there is not you. You probably don't belong there.

Damn, Chuck. >> Yeah, I'm just saying. Anyhow, so we don't we can measure them. It's not a mystery that it's there.

That it's there. >> All right. We can measure their existence. We don't know what it is. What it is.

All right. And there's precedent for that. We knew about the spectra of stars as soon as we were able to bring a spectroscope to the telescope. So this interesting information here, we don't understand it, but we know it must be important. It's different for this star than that star. Oh, these two stars match. Let's make a catalog of all the spectra.

Later, we would learn quantum physics, and we could then interpret what was going on. And thus was the birth of our modern understanding of stellar evolution. The first steps are the measurements. So it's not so weird that we have measurements and don't know what it is, >> right? So there's not only that, there are other questions that are just simply yet to be answered as opposed to mysteries. So one of them is what was around before the big bang. It might have been a multiverse, but if even if there is a multiverse, what was around before the multiverse?

Okay. And we don't yet know how Earth went from >> organic molecules to self-replicating life.

Right. >> All right. Earth figured it out. We haven't figured that out yet.

Right. Granted, Earth took a couple hundred million years. All right. Yeah. >> And we're trying to do it in the lab overnight, right? But still, that's a mystery.

And new, who knows how many failures over that couple hundred million years Earth had. >> Good point. You know, >> cuz they they ain't left there. >> They're not there. They didn't survive. So, if you lean religious, you will see these mysteries as where God might reside.

Yes. >> God is operating there. >> Right. And there's a long tradition of this actually, but philosophers got wise to it and they came up with the term for it. We'd mentioned it on a couple of other absolutely of our explainers. God of the gaps.

God of the gaps. >> The god of the gaps. >> It's a very powerful concept >> and it's got the alliteration. So, it kind of stuck with people. So, it's the urge to declare that if there's something you don't understand about the universe that God must be there with the with with the the puppet strings or with the forcing of what's going on, >> right?

And my favorite God of the Gaps moment, can I tell you that? >> It was Tommy. >> Okay. >> Claudius Tommy AD 150 in the in the margin of his greatest work, the Alma Majest.

Right. >> Okay. Actually, just alma Majest, right? which is Arabic for >> math. >> Hi, I wrote a book called Math. Guess what's in it? Math. >> Alma is is the greatest. It's it's an Arabic translation of the greatest.

That's so cool. >> And he masterfully codified the epicycles that he was sure planets traced in the sky really >> with Earth in the middle of the known universe.

There's no other way to account for planets going backwards with retrograde. We have words for it. Even goes backwards. Retrograde. They think the planet's actually doing that.

That's why your washing machine's not working cuz Mercury's in retrograde. >> Your phone stopped working. It's not gremlins. It's Mercury in retrograde. >> I don't think Mercury cares about inanimate objects. >> I think he only cares about people. >> He speaks so highly of you. How could you say that?

So, he does this, but it's still kind of a mystery. Why would all that happen? He's just doing it. I can account for it with my little epicycles. And he wrote in his margins, "As I trace the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself. Take my fill of ambrosia."

Damn, he was just wrong on many accounts. He He didn't even get the right god. >> He went with Zeus. >> He's Greek. He's Greek. Okay. >> Yeah. No, give the man his religion. Don't take away his religion, >> right?

And so that for me was the crowning moment of God of the gaps, >> right? >> All right. So there are people who to this day, >> which by the way, I mean before we go for that's another iteration of how we experience God. He understood something was going on, but it inspired awe within him. And whenever somebody feels that sense of awe, they often want to attribute that to God.

Correct. because it's beyond their their grasp, >> right? >> So, this is it's it's been going on forever, right? >> This this urge.

Okay. >> My caution there is >> if that's how you define God where science has yet to tread, >> right? >> Then God to you is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance.

Oh, that's sad. That I mean that's >> if you define God that way, it's an if statement, right? So, round two. Ding, ding, ding. Round two.

All right. There are people who they're not falling for the god of the gaps, >> right? >> To them, God is everything. >> Yeah. >> Gaps and no gaps, >> right?

Okay. >> So, that God, that's a different God. >> Okay. >> That's not just a God who's lurks, >> right? >> Where because science is an ever moving frontier, right? One day we'll figure out dark matter, dark energy, and and what happens to your god if that's what it was. All right? Okay.

So the people who say God is everything that resembles greatly Spinosa's God. He suggested >> that the very order of the universe the operations of nature everything we see feel and experience is God.

Okay. And and now I know a lot of people who feel that. >> Exactly. Exactly. So that would be Spinosa's God. And when Einstein was asked does he believe in God? He said, "If there's a God I believe in at all, it's I'm paraphrasing, it's Spinosa's God." Okay?

Right? That's a different God from a God that is paying attention to your behavior. So, as you come from that posture to gods that are more engaged with you and your existence, >> personally involved, >> personally involved, then the these would be gods you pray to.

Okay? >> You wouldn't pray to Spinosa's God. I just want to make it clear to people that when they say God, >> God has very different meanings to different people.

There's a tiered >> even throughout history >> of God. >> Even throughout history. >> Wow, that's great. Correct. Okay, I like it. So far, this is great.

So, a common god manifesting today in people's beliefs is a God that cares about them and their health, wealth, and well-being, and their prayers uh and and the like.

Okay. So there is a point of view that says this universe is so amazing there had to be a god and intelligence behind it. >> The intelligent design people. >> So in that case they're not looking at a rock and saying there's intelligence behind it. >> They're looking at something more complicated than they can understand.

Right. >> And saying there's the intelligence, >> right? >> All right. They look at the operations of a cell. >> Yes. all that going on and something that's microscopic. They're just amazed by it. They're in awe >> of it. And so surely God is at work >> right >> around here >> now. So one of them that went around for a while and I I found it very unconvincing. It was the laws of physics are exactly the way they need to be for us to be alive.

Really? Okay. >> Okay. If they were slightly different then we wouldn't be here. like if the charge on the electron or the value of the gravitational constant or the speed of light, you know, things like that and they all configure >> to make matter and energy come together such that we can be alive in that universe, >> right? I mean, there are some people that even on a macro level, they're like, we live in the Goldilock zone of these planets and the other planets are dead as far as we're concerned. as far as we know. That's right. So with all of these parameters in just the right way, in just the right place, people who are >> uh lean religious refer to it as the fine-tuning argument.

Interesting. Okay. >> Everything's fine-tuned to produce life, human life. So >> there's a god of precision that have that has placed things in this perfect synchronicity. All the gears mesh and everything works so that we get life >> and we pop out.

And we pop out. >> Exactly. I don't argue the fact that we have constants of nature >> that if they were slightly different, we wouldn't be here. I I don't have an argument against that. I mean, that's >> But my argument, however, is if whoever created the universe, if there's such an entity that did, >> why make a universe where we didn't show up >> for 13 years billion years, >> right?

Not only that, Earth >> was not born until the universe was already 8 n billion years old, >> right? And then life begins. Single-cellled organisms. Is this the god of that life? Okay. But that that was 3.8 billion years ago. Humans in our current form last, you know, 100,000 years or so. Go to a million million years, which is a drop in the bucket relative to the billions.

Four billion billion, >> right? >> Millions to billions. Okay. It seems like if you really wanted to make a universe that favored us, we would have shown up much earlier.

Much earlier. I'm just thinking >> just if you the argument against that would be that there is no because God exists outside of time and space >> that what we see is 13.8 billion years is is not measured by God. >> Yeah. However, my issue there is not how long that is, but how long that is relative to us. That's all >> that could be short to God, >> right? >> But that means we're even shorter. Okay. So, it doesn't it does not look it does not look like the universe >> cared much about us for most of its existence.

Right? >> That's that's my only point there. I got you. Okay.

So, the multiverse, >> each universe would have slightly different laws of physics. Quantum physics tells us this, >> right?

Okay. And would you exist in a universe where life could not exist? >> I'm waiting for your answer. >> Well, I'm going to go with no. >> No, you're going to go with no. >> I'm going to go with no.

Okay. So, we are alive in a universe among the infinitude created in a multiverse. We're alive in a universe for which life can happen as we have come to know it. Life as we know it, >> right?

So, we should not be surprised that we're having this conversation in that universe and not any of the other infinity universes. And this multiverse wasn't invented in response to a religious argument. It comes out of the math. comes out of quantum physics.

When what comes out of quantum physics, you're trying to shotgun marry it to to general relativity and the early universe and you see what comes out of it and a multiverse comes out of it. What makes that less appealing if you're going to do put God in the equation >> is generally those gods have certain uh powers ascribed to them. >> Well, they have to. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> All right. They're all powerful, all knowing, right? All good, right?

All right. These are common terms invoked. >> All I can say is that when I look at the universe and asteroid strikes rendering, you know, you know, 66 million years ago, 75% of the species of life on Earth went extinct. >> That's cuz they were atheists. >> Atheist dinosaurs. >> Exactly.

So, what am I saying? I'm just saying the universe doesn't look like anyone is in charge of anything. >> The randomness of the universe. >> The randomness of the 100 years ago 100 years ago before our telescopes were good enough to reveal asteroid strikes and stellar collisions and galactic collisions and all this. It was oh the beauty and the majesty of this ordered universe. I have books that talk about the ordered universe. And then you look closer and it it does not look like what people wanted it to be to match their expectations of the god they're ascribing the its handiwork to be.

So it starts out as looking up like look at this beautiful ordered universe and then you look closer and you're like THEY SHOOTING AT US. >> IT'S A shooting gallery. >> It's trying to kill us. >> Earth plows through several hundred tons of meteors a day in the leftovers of the solar system.

Yes. Okay. Plus on Earth, if I drop you butt naked in a random spot on Earth, >> you're probably going to die. >> You're going to die within a half hour. Drop you in the ocean, >> you're going to die. 2/3 of Earth and 3/4 is is ocean. Shark is going to take a bite out of you. You dead. Okay. If I drop you in in the Arctic, there's not even land there. You're just you just or derves for polar bears. So we say well earth is a haven for life after you've built cities and heat and air conditioning and clothing and this we say oh look how beautiful earth is >> right >> so we did a lot of work to make earth comfortable for us >> right >> and so I remain agnostic on this I'm happy to listen to and look at information evidence data that might support an almighty all powerful being right but the the distinction is if you want to say there's a being responsible for the universe is that the same being who tells you how to pray, who to pray to, what day to pray on, what food to eat, what food to not eat, and who to sleep with.

And why why can't it get it right? The fact that there's no uniformity in it is is kind of a problem. >> Well, it's not a problem for the people who are certain that their god is the one true God.

Well, that's the the problem. That is the problem. >> Everybody sure that their god is the not everybody, but many people who are deeply religious in their tradition, right?

Are listen, >> I used to be one of them. And I'm not I mean I don't I don't I have a great deal of compassion for people who are devout and because >> Oh, so do I. I got >> I know you do. I had this conversation off a thing. I just want to openly have a conversation.

First of all, let me just say this and I'm going to say this in your defense in front of everybody. >> This is a conversation you and I have had offline. People don't think that you have compassion for those who believe. They think that you're hostile to it. And what they don't know is that nothing could be further from the truth. And I've asked you point blank, is it possible that you could ever believe in God? And your answer was yes. And then you gave me the criteria FOR DOING SO. IT WASN'T ALL THAT DEEP. IT REALLY WASN'T ALL THAT DEEP. I WAS LIKE, AND GUESS WHAT? AND ALL I COULD SAY WAS oh no, I gave one example like, okay, uh there's a elevation above which all plane crashes have ended in 100% dead people, right?

Okay. the distance that the plane falls out of the sky. Okay, there's a an elevation above which no one has ever survived. Okay, imagine a plane where it crashes above that level and only the Christians survive and everybody else is dead. That that things that make you go, h only the Muslims survive, only the you know the Zoroastrians survive. >> Exactly. >> So I could easily come up with a a set of that you want to test it several times. Once would not be sufficient. no in any scientific experiment but I can come up with it's not hard to do that and so I so my only point is an emergent sense >> of spirituality in people because religions have been losing their adherence their >> yeah people are not following religion as much >> but they'll still say that they're spiritual and these are people who are feel that there's some force out there >> something greater than themselves >> greater greater than themselves and but it doesn't come with all the all of the rules and regulations and and baggage if dare I call it that that comes with so many religions right >> so I'm I'm simply saying >> that >> the universe if you want to say there's a god involved ask yourself is it because there's something you don't yet know how to explain >> right >> right >> like the person writhing on the floor proing at the mouth so you go to your priest in a town where church is in walking distance >> and they come and they just enough time to get the holy order, perform the exorcism, and the person comes out of it.

And that's called a coincidence cuz that's when the Caesar was over. >> The seizure. That's correct. So that's an example of something that we didn't have an explanation for, right? Quote, a natural explanation, but we had a supernatural explanation. You're inhabited by the devil. Right? So every example of that throughout history where science has given attention to that phenomenon, >> it has yielded to scientific discovery. That's all I'm doing.

Well, including the spread of disease, everything. >> You cannot argue with that statement. I'm just >> Right. And and so today, if there's something that amazes you or is mysterious to you, I just take my cue from the history of this exercise and say, I'm going to stick with the science, >> right? >> Because I'm not compelled to throw my hands up and say >> this is God. >> God must be in charge. Be it Spinoza's God, right?

Or or or Pocahontas is God or anybody's God. Well, I'll tell you. For me, what I don't appreciate is sports stars who thank God when they win, don't blame God when they lose. >> I tweeted that. >> Did you? >> And people got angry with me. >> Oh, get out. >> Yeah, >> I was just joking. >> And by the way, just to offer some street cred here. >> Okay. >> At home, I I own multiple shelves >> this wide of religious books, publications. everything that Jehovah's Witness has ever left at my door. There's a shelf of that, right? I have uh there's the Quran multiple times. I have a Quran and I have I have the Bible. I have the Torah. I have >> I don't have the Torah. >> Yeah. You don't have the Torah. Yeah. Okay. It's mostly the Old Testament in the Old Testament. The Levitical >> law. So So I it's there. And I have large uh King James Bibles that from the the 18th century.

I have several Bibles. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, so I think about this often and I think about what passages have affected people in civilization and the like. In most conversations I get into with religious people, fact remains, >> I own more religious books than they than they own science books. >> And you probably know more about their religion than they do. >> No, I wouldn't assert that, but I'm just saying I know >> you don't I would I own more religious books than they own science books. M >> that's true in essentially every case. >> And so so I'm not coming from nowhere. I think about it and I care about it.

What most people know about their religion and I don't care if you come at me or not. Okay. What most people know about their religion is what somebody told them. >> That's true. >> That's what most people know about their religion. It's filtered. Got filtered. >> It's filtered. And so that's why I say you probably know more because you went straight to the source. I was read the text. Correct. Most people do not read the text. >> I read the text. >> Okay. That's what I did. >> That's all I'm saying. Be mad at me if you want. Okay. >> Used to be one of you. >> That's how I know, >> right? >> That Jonah Arc, >> who's one of my heroes for for standing up for what she believes, trying to get England out of France. She was trying to defend France and they caught up with her, handed her over to the Burgundians. The region was under control by the Brits, and then the Brits tried her and burned her at the stake. But like, for what? It can't be because she wasn't religious cuz she was. Anyhow, go read the transcript of the trial. There's like, was it a third of it, a fourth? There's some large fraction of the conversation about how and why they should burn her that cites the fact that she was a crossdresser.

Wow. >> And where's that in the Bible? I got the quote. It's a man should not dawn the clothes of a woman, nor the woman a woman the clothes of a man, lest it be an abomination unto the Lord thy God. So people say, oh, they get their moral code. Generally, it's a cherrypicked set of course codes. And you're you're you're using rational, really secular thought to say that's messed up. >> I'm not going to do that. Right. >> But this is pretty good. Let me do some of that. Yeah. >> And then you bring that forward and then that becomes your >> your your code. >> Yeah. And I don't mind your code. I think it's great uh for the most part. Just uh you know, don't make me have to live by your code. That's all I'm >> If if it's the weird parts. I mean, some code is feels universal in it. Yeah, some of it does. Here's an interesting fact. In Christianity, generally, there's a the ethos that you're kind to your neighbor. You know, you're reflecting a lot of the teachings of Jesus, of course. Turn the other cheek. Absolutely. This sort of thing. This this fueled Martin Luther King.

It's radical. I love it. >> Yeah. It was It's That was not in the Old Testament. >> No, it's not in the Old Testament. He's an angry old white dude in the Old Testament. Get off my lawn or I'll smite you. Guess what? your wife. She's now a pillar of salt. I told that broad not to turn around. Okay, you going to listen TO ME. I'M GOD AND YOU GOING TO LISTEN TO ME. NO, you better build a boat cuz I'mma drown all these [ __ ] You're all dying. Okay, I'm mad. I'm old and I'm white. Okay, I'M GOD. DAMN IT.

Chuck as God. If Chuck were God, that's how he would describe it. Yeah, but the New Testament is lovely. >> Oh, yeah. It's very gorgeous. It's just gorgeous. But all of Christianity, for those of you who think that it's political or it's stopping gay people or it's stopping this person or don't do this or don't do that, all of Christianity comes down to this. Love God with all your heart, soul, and might. Love your neighbor as yourself. How do you love yourself the way God loves you? Love God with all your whole your soul, heart, and might. That's how you love your neighbor. So, first he tells you what to do. Then he tells you how to do it. You love him with all your heart, soul, and might. Love your neighbor as yourself. How do you do that? The same way you love God. And that means up and across. It's all your heart, soul, and might wrapped up in love and given to another person. That is Christianity. Anything else is heresy, and you've been fooled. Chuck, sometimes you sound like a preacher. You know, I'm gonna come out of the closet, Neil. I'm gonna just come I'm gonna come on out of the closet.

Wait, you've been on this show for 14 years. Something's coming out of the closet. >> Believe it or not, I've never said this and I'm going to say it. >> Okay. >> I used to be a Pentecostal minister. >> What? >> I was on my way. I I was studying. I'm technically ordained. I have not um I did not fit go through with it. I didn't finish up. But um yes, if there was a time where I stood in a pull pit and I preached the gospel of Jesus Christ, I was the guy on the street with the bullhorn. I was the person handing you a trap. That was me. When I say I was one of you when I talked to the religious people, I I was beyond one of you. You were more than one of them. >> I was beyond one of you. I was a zealot. I was beyond. And so yeah. Uh okay. So you got I've never religious street >> cred, you know. I never talk about it. Um I don't >> It's a part of my life that >> in many respects bought me a lot of good. >> It's a part of my life that was also I think damaging >> in some respects. >> And uh I guess I don't know. I'm still conflicted about it. People ask me if I believe in God >> and I will not tell you the answer.

Got to leave something on the table, right? >> Are we done here? >> You know what? I'M READY TO LET'S TAKE UP a collection. I need some money. We need to take a collection right now >> for this sermon. >> That's right. >> Yeah. Pastor Chuck needs a MercedesB. So, this was just an explainer just to catch you up on what might be the latest thinking along the lines of how the universe get here. or was it divine providence or some other way? Those are cool questions, some unanswered. Anyhow, uh until next time, as always, keep looking up. Evidence that our universe might exist inside a black hole. What's up with that? Well, let's back up for a moment, okay, and put some base information on the table. A black hole is a region of space and time where the strength of gravity is so high that light has no path to get out of the object. All paths through spaceime curve back in on itself. Normally we think of a hole as a hole in the floor and you fall through come out the other side. Except it's a three-dimensional hole. You can fall in in any direction. That edge beyond which there's no return we call the event horizon. It's a horizon. H the universe has a horizon too. It is a a distance beyond which no information can reach us because the universe isn't old enough for light from anything beyond that horizon to have gotten here yet. By the way, the more mass is in a black hole, the bigger the black hole becomes. In fact, if you run the math on it, it's it's linear. So, a black hole that's twice as massive as another one will be twice the diameter, 10 times as massive. The event horizon, which is our practical definition of the size of the black hole, will be 10 times as long. There's a cool exercise we do in graduate school. You can say given the mass of the universe, how big would the black hole be that contained this much mass? It's the size of our universe to our horizon. And it's like, wait a minute, could we be one giant black hole? The average density of matter contained within the size of our cosmic horizon matches right on with what you'd get for a black hole this size. That's intriguing. Maybe it's just a coincidence. What would it mean anyway for us to be inside a black hole? How How would that work? Well, it turns out if you run the mathematics of Einstein's general theory of relativity into a black hole, it turns out a whole new spaceime opens up on the other side and you look behind you and the entire future history of the universe unfolds relative to your time frame. And so the universe you came from basically ends and a whole new universe opens up in front of you. Are we that universe that opened up in front of us? Okay, these are mindbending questions. Well, there's recent research published that suggests that the contents of our universe has sort of a net rotation to it. Well, that'd be kind of weird. So, in this study, it observed several hundred galaxies from the best observing directions you can come up with, which is above and below the plane of our Milky Way. and it noticed a net rotation of spiral galaxies in one direction versus the other. So if you look at spiral galaxies, if half of them sort of rotate like that and the other half rotate the opposite way, then they kind of cancel. But if most of them are rotating in the same sense, in the same direction, then that could hint that there's a net angular momentum of the entire universe. So what did they find? that twothirds of the spiral galaxies measured rotated in the opposite direction as the Milky Way. So 2/3 is not 100% but it's certainly more than half. We expect this to just be random. Normally in in our lives we think of something that rotates because some other force set it into motion to do so. And we look in the universe and everything is rotating. And then you ask what force is making that happen? Turns out all of our evidence suggests that when you make a galaxy or a star system or a star or a planet, there's some gas cloud that started it. If the gas cloud has any motion at all, the tiniest amount as it collapses, its rotation will speed up. The gas cloud that was large, moving just a little, will move much faster as it gets smaller. And you know this already when you see ice skaters. When an ice skater spins and they want to spin faster, they start with their arms outstretched and they have a certain rotation speed by virtue of that. As they bring their arms in, this is a phenomenon of physics called the conservation of angular momentum. If you start out large, slowly rotating, and now you're half the size, you're going to be rotating twice as fast. If you want tenth the size, you're going to be rotating 10 times as fast. Is that right? MV^2 over R. Right? This is why everything in the universe has some kind of rotation because it's essentially impossible for any large gas cloud to not have motions within it to begin with. Often they're thermal motions. There's turbulence within the cloud before it sort of collapses to become something solid. Because of the turbulence within the clouds, there's no reason to think they would align with each other. They're each independent entities. So that when they collapse and the final product is spinning, there's no reason to think that the spin of this object is going to match up with the spin of an object over here. We have every reason to presume that there's no net spin direction of the universe or objects within it. So if we find and confirm that there is, we got to go back and ask how could you get that given our expectations of randomness? Well, that was linked to the idea that we might be in a black hole. Here's why. There's only two kinds of information you can obtain that are preserved inside that black hole. The mass, the total mass and the angular momentum. Because anything falling in, if it falls in with a swirl toilet bowl style, that angular momentum continues into the black hole itself. If there's a net angular momentum of the universe, where did it come from? It's not obvious that would come from a big bang, which is an explosion in all directions statistically evenly. What could it be? Could we be a black hole with a net angular momentum of stuff that spiraled into us? So that's where the black hole connects back to whether the universe is rotating. So I look forward to seeing whether this result is confirmed or falsified. It's an intriguing result and the number of galaxies was not very large, just a few hundred. And there are billions of galaxies out there. So I'll reserve judgment until I see what others publish on this subject. Anyhow, that was a what's up with that on whether or not we are living in a black hole. And if we were, what difference does it make? But it's fun to talk about. Until next time, keep looking up.