Bug Splat Galaxies with Mordecai-Mark Mac Low

23:28Neil deGrasse Tyson:It's mostly gas. You're saying you can make a Jupiter-sized planet that's rocky. Out of silicates. Ooh. Ouch. Ooh. So. Yeah. Does that mean also that its gravity is like extra annoying? Yes. Got it. Extra annoying being like strong. Yes. We followed that music. I understood that. We totally understood you again. Totally. You're so confused. I just need to like translate for this. No, in fact, you are absolutely right. Because the gravity at the cloud tops of Jupiter, we won't call it the surface, but at the cloud tops of Jupiter is quite reasonable. It's not far off from Earth's gravity. It's like 10 times gravity.

24:01Neil deGrasse Tyson:No, no, no, no. Not even? Not even. It's close to Earth's gravity because Jupiter is so big in low density. But the gravity at the surface of one of these monsters would perhaps be 10 times Earth's gravity. I don't know. I haven't done the calculation. It's an easy calculation. But you're the same density and, you know, 10 times the radius. We don't expect to find life on any of these because there's no home star to give nourishing energy to plant life. No, it's rather worse. there's a home center of the accretion disk glowing in X-rays and gamma rays, it will provide plenty of energy, but it might not be in a form conducive to life as we know it.

24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson:It's hostile to biology. That would be my suspicion. Is there a biology that we don't know of that could maybe handle it? That is an excellent question that we don't know the answer to. We don't know the answer is the Hulk biology. That's right, the gamma ray biology. Can you add the Hulk into your simulator? and see what happens. How does he do? We're going to have to get his specifications. Yeah, yeah. I want to see this. So if all you need is dust, which are the larger molecules, a larger gathering of atoms. Minerals. Okay. These are silicates. These are dust-like, kind of like we find on the Earth, except it formed in space.

25:22Even though space is, as noted, very large, the rocky atoms of silicon and oxygen and magnesium tend to find each other, and once they find each other, they stick together. And so they form little tiny dust grains, like a nanometer in size and deep space. But when you collect all of them together, whether it be in a protostellar disk or a supermassive black hole disk, they can find each other and stick together. And actually, that's something else I've been working on recently, is showing that they might be a lot stickier than people have thought.

25:55Neil deGrasse Tyson:So when they stick together, they stay? They appear to stay. Well, until they get big enough, then they break apart when they slam into each other. And that's actually a big question. That's a whole other process. That's a big question in planet formation theory is how do you get them to stop beating each other up and fragmenting? Yeah, because is it also, I mean, partially what you're describing almost sounds like a sandcastle. Like they're sort of sticking together like a sandcastle. That is an excellent description of an asteroid. We call them rubble piles, but it's really a sandcastle. So they're pretty vulnerable.

26:28They're totally fragile. How did we learn this? Back, oh, 30 years ago, a comet swung too close to Jupiter, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. You're supposed to not just make faces. Comet Shoemaker-Levy.

26:44Neil deGrasse Tyson:This is the first ever observation of a comet slamming into one of our own planets. Yes. Yes. Or do you memorize all of the comets? No. Just the famous ones. ones okay got you just the popular ones because i was very impressed if you had them all down no no no there are thousands of thousands being impressed i am no longer impressed go ahead very good back to as you were and i have to just put in here that duo by the way the shoemaker levy nine okay it's really shoemaker shoemaker levy eight others that they're they're active bunch. Oh, yeah. And that collaboration had a leftover asteroid that they named in my honor.

27:27Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yes! Okay, I knew you had an asteroid. I didn't know it was a Shoemaker-Levy asteroid. It was a Shoemaker-Levy, and the plaque is right up there on the... Sorry, quick question. Who decides these things? Is it you? The discoverer. But it has to be approved. Okay, yeah, yeah. You can't be rude. So it was that That duo. That's how... Trio. That's how fertile a discovery group that... Gene Shoemaker, Carolyn Shoemaker, and... David Levy. And David Levy. Yeah. They've discovered comets and asteroids and all kinds of things. And Gene Shoemaker also pretty much was the originator of the theory of craters.

28:06Like, what happens when something, a big rock slams into a planet? It makes a crater. He described how. And so that's... It sounds obvious. I know. I was just going to say, like, I can also ask my seven-year-old daughter about the theory of craters. I think she'd come up with the same thing. Because that's how fundamental his work was. Because before Gene Shoemaker, people looked at the moon and saw volcano craters. Right. Not okay.

28:35Neil deGrasse Tyson:They assumed that every crater was a volcanic caldera. Yeah. Like Crater Lake. They're not completely crazy to think so. Well, Crater Lake is a volcanic caldera. Right. They're not crazy to think so. They were just wrong. It's possible to be, that makes complete sense. You're just wrong. Okay? That happens in science all the time. It's very frustrating. But the reason is, the argument against them being asteroids was every crater is a perfect circle on the moon. And no one is thinking asteroids are coming straight in. Surely some are coming at an angle. If you're coming on an angle, you'd expect an oval.

29:17Neil deGrasse Tyson:Most of them should be ovals, but everyone was a perfect circle. And so that's the tension between the two arguments and the two camps. And it wasn't until we had, like, we can model. Well, until Gene Shoemaker came along and said, no, they should be circles. No, no, someone had to demonstrate with a computer simulation that a high-speed impact, when it hits, it explodes. It vaporizes. Yeah, and that explosion makes a perfect circle, even if it comes in at an angle. Okay, but we're off the topic. Yes. Which is that when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 passed close to Jupiter, it felt gravitational forces from Jupiter.

29:56But it was coming by at a fair distance, and those gravitational forces were not strong, massive planet gravitational forces. They were forces equivalent to one-eighth of an inch of water in Earth's gravity. How much pressure does that put on your plate? Not much. That's all the force that tore that comet apart into 21 pieces. That's how weakly bound it was. And that's why I say it was your sandcastle is exactly right. Oh, I feel so smart right now. It's so validated. Yes, I love this moment. You're welcome.

30:34Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah, and so just to show there's still a huge frontier for us to understand these objects. Yeah. And you got people, good people working on it. Including the guy that said, when a thing hits another thing, it forms a crater. Yes. Yes. Which, like, I can't believe somebody had to do it first. Bless that guy. Yeah. Yeah. So we got questions from our audience who have been specifically clued to your research profile. Okay. And the questions will emanate from that. So what do you have here for us, Nagin? I haven't seen the question. You haven't seen them either. I have not seen them. I've seen them.

31:08I think they're great. Here we go. Tatiana here. From Ottawa, Ontario, I'm 15 years old and finally asking my first StarTalk question. Congratulations. My question is, what are and how do supersonic turbulent flows and magnetic fields regulate star formation inside molecular clouds? How many hours do I get? She's not done. Do they work together to stabilize the process or does their interaction create chaos? Yes, yes and yes.

31:41Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah, naively it feels like that would just mess up the whole thing. Absolutely. You're getting coherent planets out of this, aren't you? Stars. Stars. Stars. Okay. Okay. Yes, the turbulence stirs things up, and it also squeezes some of the gas. And so the squeezed gas, gravity can take hold and start the collapse process, but the stirring prevents more gas from getting grabbed by gravity and collapsed down to form stars. So it's both, both and. The stirring actually wins. So the more turbulence you have, the less star formation you have. Okay, but when you have a little pocket that's slightly more dense, that attracts more material that makes it even more dense.

32:27Neil deGrasse Tyson:And so it's a runaway. It's a runaway. Once you get started properly. Once you get out of the starting gates. Yes. Okay. Now, then what happens is that as you start forming stars, the biggest, most massive of them, pump huge amounts of energy back into the gas, whether it be through jets or ionizing radiation or stellar winds or ultimately supernova explosions, and that chases the gas away, and then you don't get any more star formation. Okay, now how do you know all this? Because I've done simulations of it, and then I compared those simulations to what observers saw, and they weren't so bad.

33:09Neil deGrasse Tyson:So if you didn't have observations to compare it to, you're just kind of presuming your results are real. I'm playing in the sandbox without any constraints. And then I can make... More sandbox analogy here. I mean, we can't stop with the stand. So how much, like what level of confidence percentage-wise is it? Okay, so the point about constraints is important because otherwise someone else can come along and say, no, no, no, no, no, no. The magnetic fields are going to hold everything up and you're going to have to wait for the neutral atoms to drift through the ions to ever, ever make a star.

33:49Without observations, we can't tell who's right because he can say, of course it works like this. I've written 20 papers on it. And I can say, but my programs don't show that. But, well, you know, so I wrote my programs wrong.

34:03Neil deGrasse Tyson:One possible—you just went too quickly past that. I'm sorry. What you just said was that your naysayer could be right, and maybe your software had bugs in it. No, approximations. Approximations. Okay. We always—every model has approximations. We don't know until— Until you compare to the observations. There you go. Okay. Sorry. And then you get a reasonable level of confidence. Then you build up your confidence. And, of course, then you argue about what the observations mean and whether there was noise in the telescope and, you know, what assumptions went into the interpretation of the observations.

34:44But ultimately, this is how science progresses. You come up with an idea and then you have to – then other people come up with different ideas. You argue about it and you settle it by reference to the real world. Oh, not a duel. Okay, sorry. Yeah.

35:00Neil deGrasse Tyson:We try to avoid that, and most of the time we succeed. Somebody shot him in a butt. But it's evidence that arriving at what is objectively true in the actual universe is messy. Totally. So messy. So messy. And the strength with which you argue your point ultimately is not the arbiter. No, unfortunately. It might be easier that way. And it doesn't matter how articulate you are or how charismatic you are. We have the ultimate. Facts still have to win. Judge, jury, and executioner is nature. That is the agreement that people doing science have made with each other. It's an implicit agreement. One hopes it's explicit, but is that we will settle our arguments ultimately by reference to reproducible experiments and observations.

35:53Neil deGrasse Tyson:So either I'm right and you're wrong. you're right and I'm wrong, or we're both wrong, it'll be decided by more data or better data. That's right. Yeah, okay. And that is the central tenet of science. Where does the magnetic field come from? The magnetic field comes from a dynamo. So dynamos happen when you get some sort of stirring of charged gas or charged things. Oh, okay. So like a dynamo in a power station, that charge is running through wires. And it's spinning. And it's spinning. Yes, yes. And in the universe, or in the Earth, the dynamo is turbulent, swirling magma deep down in the Earth that is kept molten by the pressure and radioactivity of the Earth.

36:43And it swirls around and makes the Earth's magnetic field, and that's a dynamo. Well, same in the sun, except there it's plasma. In galaxies, the charged gas between the stars forms a dynamo stirred by supernova explosions and by gravity.

37:02Neil deGrasse Tyson:So if you didn't have the turbulence, you wouldn't have a magnetic field. You would not have a magnetic field. So they go hand in hand. One generates the other. Okay. It's like they're in heat and then they give birth to this. Sure, maybe. Maybe I think you're stretching the field here. But if you stretch the field and twist it and rotate, you will get a dynamo. Great. Thank you. Okay. So the first dynamos happened when the very, very first stars formed. And ever since then, we've had significant magnetic fields running around, getting stretched and twisted and folded to make more magnetic fields.

37:45There we are. There we are. Should we move on to the next question?

37:47Neil deGrasse Tyson:Thank you for that. All right. Ismael Velda is here asking my first question from Viña del Mar, Chile. Okay. Okay. In regards to stars and gas giants, if Jupiter were sufficiently massive, would the pressure ignite, would its pressure ignite its lighter components? Yes. Furthermore, do the sun or stars in general share elements with gas giants like a rocky core, or is it fused gas all the way through, which sounds like a tough meal at Taco Bell? I don't know. Go ahead. Let me modify that just a little bit. If we had the capacity to dump mass onto Jupiter, could we ignite it one day? Yes. He had two questions.

38:31First question is, if you increase Jupiter's mass, does it ignite? And the answer is yes. If you increase Jupiter's mass enough, like, well, if you get it up to about, I want to say, 10 times the mass of Jupiter, you get the deuterium burning, the heavy hydrogen with extra neutrons. And that lasts for a little while, but there's not a whole lot of deuterium in the universe. It's like, I don't know, a few parts in 100 ,000. So you get a little flash of light for a couple hundred thousand years, and then it's gone. And that's a brown dwarf. And they exist, and we've got one of the world's premier research groups on the topic right upstairs here.

39:21In this department. Run by Jackie Faraday.

39:24Neil deGrasse Tyson:Because we just went down the hall to get Mordecai. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I traveled a long way. I want my per diem. in the Department of Astrophysics of the American Museum of Natural History. That's the brown dwarf. Now, if you keep piling mass on and get up to in Jupiter masses, like 80 times... Oh, that meant that much. Yeah, 80 times the mass of Jupiter. That's a lot. Which is a little under a tenth of the mass of the sun. You could just drop Saturn onto it. No, not enough. That would be amazing to watch. But not nearly enough. That still wouldn't ignite it. No, no, no. Not even close. Not even close.

40:00Neil deGrasse Tyson:Not even close. Well, so you, as you said earlier, like something like that is just like a couple hundred thousand years. It's like dumb. That's what, that's the brown dwarf. Don't call brown dwarfs dumb around here. Okay, no, I'm just trying to understand because you made that sound like not nothing. It's not nothing. It's fusion, but it's not a lot of fusion. Okay. But if you get up to, wait, wait, wait, wait. That's a flash in the pan. Gotcha. Okay, but if you get up to 80 times, then you can ignite hydrogen. And there's a lot more hydrogen. That's what Jupiter's mostly made of. Then you've got a very low mass star.

40:35And very low mass stars sit there and simmer for longer than the current lifetime of the universe. So that will keep going and going and going. So that's way more than 200 ,000. It's way more than the life of the universe. It's like 10 times the life of the universe.

40:51Neil deGrasse Tyson:No, 100 times the current life of the universe. Yeah. But question. Right now, Jupiter has a rocky core. Yes. What happens to that rocky core? Because it's kind of related to this question. Yes, absolutely. Yes, yes. Deep down in there. Let's go. Let's go. Bring it on. Okay. So what happens is it gets completely overwhelmed by all the hydrogen and just gets mixed in because the hydrogen is sitting there fusing. So you have a little tiny rocky core. Now the sun, of course. Why doesn't it just vaporize the rocky core? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Okay, it's not rocky anymore. The elements of the core formerly known as rocky are now part of the fusing vaporized hydrogen in the center of the object because it's now far hotter than anything any rock has any right to withstand.

41:39So it's vaporized all the rock. That's right. Now, remember, the sun also has silicon and magnesium and aluminum and oxygen in it. It's just all mixed in with the hydrogen.

41:50Neil deGrasse Tyson:Right. So, you know, the sun, you might think it would have a rocky core the way Jupiter did, but for that same reason, it's all— It's too hot. It can't be anything other than loose atoms. Loose ions and electrons, even. It can't even be atoms, except on the very, very surface. An atom is a nucleus plus electrons. Yes. All the electrons are gone. Yes. In the center, they're all gone. They're just roaming freely away from their parent atoms. Got it. Here's your cue. Yeah. Like they're having a rebellious phase. Oh, they are long gone. Never to return. Never to return. They're not just like TPing their geometry teacher's house or something.

42:28No, no, no. They have gone.

42:30Neil deGrasse Tyson:TPing, that's a threat. Toilet papering. Yes. Have you done that? I have. No, no, no. I TPed once in my life. Oh, in your day. This is stories you tell your offspring. I'm afraid we didn't do that in the center of New York City because a six-story apartment building is hard to keep it. You're just doing toilet paper on someone's door, and it's a lot less, you know. Satisfying. Yeah. Can't imagine.

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45:26Neil deGrasse Tyson:Time for a few more questions. What do you have? Okay, let's see. Hello. How is dark matter incorporated into your simulations? random distribution or what? Okay. Who told us that? I'm sorry, and this question is from Ben Grund. Great question, and the answer is any which way I can. So sometimes we actually put in particles in the simulation and watch them roam around under the force of gravity, and, well, they're very massive particles, but they still behave like dark matter because they don't interact with the gas except by gravity. Other times we— She just said, since we don't actually know what dark matter is.

46:06Neil deGrasse Tyson:Oh, no, no, no. We're not even going there. No, but you know it has gravity. Yes. Your simulation has to get it somehow. So you sprinkle in, you invent a particle that interacts only by gravity. Yep. And has enough. Mass. Enough gravity to match. The observed dark matter. The observed dark matter. Okay. Yes. So this is by, as they say, by fiat you do this. Is that the right word? Did I use the word right? I mean, you could say— If I understood what any of these things were, I could weigh in on if you used fiat correctly. I wouldn't say it's by fiat in the sense that the whole simulation by that definition is by fiat.

46:47Okay. Right? I've added in a field of gas. I've added in star particles. Okay. So it's just one element with the simulation.

46:53Neil deGrasse Tyson:So it's a way to get a source of gravity without having to worry about it after that. It behaves like dark matter. Great. The simpler way to do this, which I also sometimes do if I can get away with it, is to simply put in a gravitational field that reproduces the dark matter distribution and then let that handle it without having to actually do— Track particles. Without having to track particles and pay attention and do accounting and get bugs and all the rest. All right. So is it smoothly— It's a smooth field. Well, it's smooth if you're on a subgalactic scale, but if you're on a, you know, galaxy forming scale, it's very, very clumpy because the clumps are the galaxies.

47:40So in that sense, you know, when I'm simulating the formation of the first galaxies, then we're seeing big clumps of dark matter that the gas falls into and then you've got a galaxy.

47:53Neil deGrasse Tyson:So I've heard this. I think it's right that dark matter, whatever it is, is so prevalent that when we look at and describe stars and galaxies, this is the froth on an ocean. Well, one-sixth of the mass of the galaxy is in anything visible. Stars, planets, gas, comets, all of that. One-sixth of the mass. So 85 % of the gravity is from dark matter. You don't even know what it is. But we know it exerts gravity, and we know it doesn't move at light speed. That's why it's cold dark matter. But is there like an area like that doesn't have any, like how Wyoming doesn't have people? Like is there an area of the galaxy where like there's no dark matter?

48:39Dark Wyoming doesn't have people. Voids don't have dark matter, while clusters have lots of dark matter. Okay. And filaments have, well, intermediate amounts of dark matter. They're like interstates. Okay. So it's not so evenly distributed. It's absolutely not evenly distributed. Not in the universe. That's why we call it the cosmic web, because it looks like spider webs, like with thin filaments and then big spaces in between. Right.

49:06Neil deGrasse Tyson:So we say web now, but I remember a cross-section of a sponge. Does a sponge still work? A sponge still works, yeah. And sort of areas around it and places where you intersect? These days we usually talk about webs. Webs, okay. That's fine. Ditch the sponge. I was kind of into sponges, though. I mean, I know. You really got into it. Well, that was an analogy for the interstellar medium, too. Yeah. You know, Chris McKee and Don Cox arguing about is it a sponge or is it little round clouds? I had a cameo in SpongeBob. I was Neil deBass Tyson. Oh. Astrophysicist. So I just thought, I'm sticking to sponge.

49:46Neil deGrasse Tyson:You got it. Okay, thank you. You can have the dark. Thank you for granting me. The cosmological spunt. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Time for a couple more. Let's keep going. Okay, let's see. We're on a roll here. Yes, we are. So, Gavin Bamber from North Vancouver. Please visit, they add. How long does it take to form a star or a planet? Is it the same process? We're both in the same stuff. Ooh. Okay. I love it. I believe the answer is yes and yes. And so how long does it take to form a star? the main formation phase when most of the stuff comes down is maybe 100 ,000 years but it trickles along 100 ,000 years that's like the main accretion phase but it's going to trickle along with a disk and accreting more mass and forming planets for a couple of million years so you'll form a star before you form the planets well that's an ongoing controversy That was the idea.

50:49That used to be the idea.

50:50Neil deGrasse Tyson:Wouldn't that be the case, right? You would think. But nowadays, the more we examine the question, the faster the planets seem to form. And so now I would actually say that the first planets formed during that main accretion phase very, very fast. But then you continue to form planets and planetary-like things for several million years. And once again, you're forming planets in a disk. In a disk. It's all dust and gas in a disc. I have an accretion disc right here. Yeah, yeah. If you want to get brighter, eat more. Okay. Like the quasar. That takes so long. It's just like everyone has to be really committed to that planet for it to form.

51:31You know what I mean? Because it takes a few million years. Oh, my gosh. On the other hand, where are you going to go? You're stuck in this disc going round and round and round. No, you might as well keep doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's get it going. Eventually, we'll have an Arby's here or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Well, the development of Arby's takes a lot longer. That's billions of years.

51:52Neil deGrasse Tyson:Observably. As Carl Sagan said, how do you make an apple pie? You start with a Big Bang. Right. Yep. Go find the chicken. Okay. Time for another question? Yeah, let's do it. After all the model runs, how often do planets form with a satellite as large by percentage of mass of the planet as our moon? Good one. That's a very good one. And the answer is that the computer simulations aren't high enough resolution to really get a good answer to that yet. And so that is a current research question. But you can't see the moon? We don't know. But we have all these planets with wimpy moons. Yes. Right?

52:36Neil deGrasse Tyson:So we already know. Well, observationally, we know in one planetary system with one set of initial conditions that moons like the Earth are pretty rare. And that's all we know. How many planetary systems do we know of? Well, it's growing now. 6 ,000 and counting. It's growing. It's growing fast and it's going to keep growing. And we don't know if any of those planets have moons because observationally, we haven't been able to see them because it's really hard to see a moon around a planet. It's already really, really hard to see a planet, much less a moon. And David Kipping up at Columbia thinks he's found a moon, but everybody else is staying on the fence and saying maybe it's a moon.

53:20Neil deGrasse Tyson:David Kipping, we've had him on Star Trek. I'm sure you have. He's got a lab, all the cool worlds lab. Yes. Which is kind of cool. And he's got a podcast. Yes. which funds that lab. Cool world. So wait, your simulations will sometimes see like a hint of a moon? Well, I don't do those simulations. Okay. But our simulations, the fields, you can make moons. And we know, I mean, we certainly know how to make the Earth's moon. Slam a Mars-sized planet into a proto-Earth. And that works shockingly well, as evidenced by the Apollo astronauts bringing back rocks that had the same composition as the Earth because they formed from that super collision.

54:04Neil deGrasse Tyson:Because they never went to the moon to begin with. They left from the Earth to the moon. We'll cut that out in the edit. Thank you. But that meant that the moon didn't form organically with the Earth. It formed afterwards. Afterwards. But now what the Earth is made of, of course, is also a mixture of proto-Earth and I think they call it Aries, the Mars-sized object. No, no, no. It's… Thea? Thea. Thea. Isn't Thea the proto-Earth and Aries the proto-moon? Oh. I mean, the proto-moon. I think Thea is the proto-slammer. Confirming now via NASA that the ancient proto-planet that we collided with was Thea.

54:50Neil deGrasse Tyson:Okay. So shockingly successful is this model that we even named the object that doesn't exist anymore. That's right. The impact object. Object, which is obliterated and became part of it. We gave it a name. That's kind of evo-nation. A cool name. We can do those sorts of calculations for planets elsewhere, but to get the frequencies, that means a lot of calculation. We don't have enough computers to do that currently. Well, I love me my moon because our moon is the same size on the sky as the sun. So we get beautiful eclipses. Oh, I love it. Nobody else has eclipses like that. At Jupiter, it's got moons, but the sun is far.

55:29Neil deGrasse Tyson:The moons are small. Nothing matches up the way our moon and our sun. So what is it? The moon is 400 times closer and 1 400th the size. Yep. So everything ratios exactly. Exactly to the, yeah. Yeah, it works out. And that's how you get eclipse chasers. Yeah. It's the greatest spectacle of nature. A total solar eclipse. Secondly to Manhattanhenge, which is also something because I love a Manhattanhenge. Oh my gosh. Thank you. That's because of you. Yeah, I followed your dates. Oh, okay. So Mordecai, time for one more question. Okay. We've been going. It better be a good one. And you're a good question answerer.

56:11Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yes, that's great. You've been succinct and efficient. Okay, I will ramble. No, no. I know, don't challenge him. Here we go. From Emile Rougeau, who describes himself as a man who has forgotten what curiosity is. As once said before by you, Dr. McClough, eight to ten years ago, quote, we live in a time where we have understood that the universe is far stranger than we would have thought. Have these thoughts changed over the years, or have they made more problems for you? I would have to say that if anything, these thoughts have intensified. The universe is far stranger than we once thought and far stranger possibly than we can imagine.

56:57Why do I say that? Because we live in a universe that is expanding, that is accelerating, that is forming stars, planets, black holes. And it all came from a almost perfectly smooth, homogenous, hot, very, very hot beginning. That's not a story that someone 100 years ago would have told. None of it.

57:28Neil deGrasse Tyson:In fact, I have books, old books, that describe the universe as an ordered, majestic place. Everything in the right spot, everything in stately orbits around you. And then we found out that things slam into each other, they blow up. It's full of turbulence and chaos. Yeah, I mean, it's just a mess. Yes. thank you for that cogent description of the modern understanding of the universe wait so can I ask you both a question then now you're both in the field of trying to understand the universe better solving mysteries are we all at some level trying to understand the universe better I guess if like doing a tight 10 at the chuckle hut in Sheboygan solves the universe in any way I might be in that business but does it make either of you feel, I don't know, bad that like the more you study, the like more you find it chaotic?

58:32I don't mean, I don't.

58:33Neil deGrasse Tyson:Let's just say it keeps me in a job. I have a different way to answer that. Yeah. If the universe were more and more chaotic, requiring equally as complex laws of physics to understand it, then what are we doing? But the real majesty is that it's just a few laws of physics. That generate all that chaos in mass. That generate all that chaos. It's just a few laws of particle physics that account for all the particle zoo that we know and love. Except for dark matter. Except for dark matter. We're not there yet. But we're working on it. If to understand the universe required a complexity of theorizing that matched it, then all bets are off.

59:28Neil deGrasse Tyson:I'll just go home. You know, go to the Bahamas. Give up on it. But if foundational understanding. Like, Mordecai, you said all this without even mentioning that you're an expert in fluid dynamics. I implied it by discussing the turbulent dynamo. Yes. Which is absolutely an extreme fluid dynamics problem. Yes, but fluid dynamics. Magnetized fluid dynamics, even. Look, he made a face. He was like, I'm angry. Magnetize. So fluid dynamics is the study of fluids, which can be gaseous or liquid. And kitchen sink. There's a whole set of rules just for fluid dynamics that works in water flowing through pipes as it does with.

1:00:13Neil deGrasse Tyson:In stars. In stars. So that is the majesty of the universe. Right, because you're settled on the rules, and now you're just like watching to see how these rules play out on a universe basis, and it's fun. Yes. Yes. Yes. We'll go with that. I get that. We'll go with that. That's your type 10 at the Sheboygan Chuckle Hut. I, okay. He hasn't spent enough time in Sheboygan. Neither have I. In Chuckle Hut. But, Monica, how will quantum computing help what you're doing? We don't know yet. Is there a problem that is intractable now that you think will succumb to quantum computers? Well, certainly problems in atomic physics, like, say, the million different transitions in the molecule water that all produce different amounts of radiation of different colors, different spectral lines.

1:01:08those may well be better done by quantum computing than by the poor guy who came from banking into astrophysics and ended up having to do that for his thesis. But most of the problems we have, we don't yet know how to compute on a quantum computer. Okay. Give it 100 years. 100? Oh. Or 10. I mean, don't you say it? Yeah, I'm like, this is...

1:01:35Neil deGrasse Tyson:I mean, look... A hundred years ago, we were only inventing quantum physics. Yes, we had already invented quantum physics, and we're still figuring it out. Yes, we're still figuring it out, yeah. It took, when Newton wrote down his laws of gravity, it took a century before we could explain the orbit of the moon. Yeah, yeah, okay. That's all the time we have, Nagin. Thank you for asking those questions. And Mordecai, brilliant answers, right on brand. Well. And you have some groupies. Are you saying that I'm fusing here? I'm saying, plus you had at least one groupie there who was quoting you chapter and verse from 10 years ago.

1:02:11Neil deGrasse Tyson:I was impressed. Thank you. No, we, our people, our people go back. Yeah, no, they're like no things, the listeners. Yeah. Right audience to have. All right. This might be our first interview with you. This is my first time in this chair. In that chair, but not your first time in my office. Not the first time in this office. He works just down the hall. All right. Nagin, not your first rodeo here. Not my first time. And look forward to your next time joining us. Such a great time. Thanks for having me. And we'll find you on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. You'll find me on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.

1:02:44If you're in Chattanooga, Tennessee on June 24th, you can find me there too at the Comedy Catch.

1:02:49Neil deGrasse Tyson:Oh, Chattanooga, Tennessee. We'll look for you. And that's June 24th. June 24th, I'll be doing The Muslims Are Coming with Equally Threatening Friends, a night of stand-up comedy.

1:03:03Okay.

1:03:06Neil deGrasse Tyson:will that attract people or scare people away? If no one shows up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, he will know why. He will know why. I need Dr. McLo to do a simulation and see what happens. That's all the time we have. So again, Mordecai, thank you. You're very welcome. Thank you. Great fun to be here. This has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries on the formation of planets with my friend and colleague, Mordecai Mark McLo. Until next time, keep looking up.

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