Cosmic Queries - Flat Universe

0:00Chuck, that might be a world record how many questions I answered. in the time allotted. Exactly. And you only got two of them right.

0:11All right, coming up, StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

0:33This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. This is going to be a Cosmic Queries grab bag. And whenever you hear that, you know who's sitting next to me. Chuck Nice. Hey, that's right. What's up, Neil? All right. Grab bag, baby. Grab bag, baby. That's right. Used to be, I liked it when we were galactic gumbo. Okay. You know? I don't know why we, you know, because you know that's what I'm doing, you know. I never know what the hell you're saying. That's what it is you mean. I love it. Plus, gumbo kind of left menus. You don't see it much anymore. You don't see gumbo a lot.

1:12I'm going to Nolan's next week. Well, give me a full report. Yeah. Because the first time I had it, it's like, why are there 100 things in my soup? That's gumbo. In a nutshell. All right. So, what you got? This is Jordan Senerth. Greetings, Dr. Tyson and unnamed co-host, hopefully Lord Nice. All right. All right. Jordan from Boston here. I understand an object's mass to be the sum of its invariant mass, rest energy, and its momentum. Yes. A photon, because it has no mass, must then be pure movement, momentum, or energy. Mm-hmm. Okay. Here's my question. Okay, good. You have one. He says, I thought he was just showing off.

2:00Yeah, that's a little bit of that too, but that's fine. Nothing wrong with showing off if you got it. He says. If you got it, flaunt it. Yeah. He says, are the gluon and the graviton then pure something else energy? Well, so the graviton is the particle version of a gravitational wave. Right. It's not been detected. It's presumed to exist if you look at it from a quantum gravity worldview. Okay. Okay? And the gluon is the mediating force of baryons and quarks within the nucleus of the atom. So gluons hold the quarks together. Right. And... Glue. It's how you can get two protons that close to each other.

2:53Think about it. They have the same charge. Right. Like charges, what? They should be popping off. Exactly. Electro-rances repel, and so that is repelling from the electromagnetic force. Right. But if you get them close enough, the strong nuclear force, which is brought to you by the gluon, the strong nuclear force is stronger than their urge to separate. Okay. And it keeps them together. So what we're asking here is, Can we think about the graviton and the gluon in the way we think of as a photon? So you think of the photon as pure energy, whereas the graviton is not. Right. That would be a particle.

3:35It would be a particle. Yeah, and same with the gluon. So we're stuck with the O-N suffix to the word, making you think that they would be the same thing. But regardless, there's a mass equivalent of the graviton and the gluon. You can always, even if it's just energy, you can figure out how much mass equivalent that is using what equation? E equals mc squared. Thank you. Other than the gluon and the graviton being particles and the photon being energy, I don't know what other distinctions to make there. What else you got? All right, this is Chuck Betlatch or Betlock. He says, hello, StarTalk team.

4:18I understand that anything with a mass also has gravity. Can a small mass, such as a CO2 molecule, orbit a larger mass, such as a person? So he has localized gravity down to, like, objects. Yeah. The answer is yes. Okay. However, many particles have their own, when they're in a gas, they have their own motion commensurate with the temperature of that gas. Right. All right? So for many gases, their motion is so high that they would just escape the system. That's why the moon has no gas to speak of. Right. Okay? I mean, except on Taco Tuesday. Sorry. I had to do it. I am so sorry. I know that was terrible.

5:14That was so bad. Terrible. I know. Terrible. Terrible. But if you don't want to just isolate a molecule, then the answer is yes, it could orbit you. Right. You just give it the right speed at the right distance in the right direction, and there you have it. Then you have that one molecule just— That's it. By the way, all the CO2 molecules in the air, they're not quite orbiting the Earth, but they're attached to Earth. So Earth drags them with it as it turns. And then it's not escaping because there's gravity. Gravity is strong enough to hold the atmosphere. So that's not orbiting the Earth, but it's carrying it with us.

5:59If you like your molecules and you want to keep them, that's another way to do it. Right. Okay. There you go, Chuck. Way to go. Great name. This is Larry Infante. And Larry says, Hello, Dr. Tyson and all. One thing that has bugged me about some sci-fi movies is their use of Earth's time. For example, they may use minutes, hours, and days saying, We'll be back to claim your planet in 24 hours. These apparently are some very hostile aliens. As they all are. That have come. As aliens want to be. And they have given us an ultimatum for some reason, even though they have traveled across this galaxy and they are able to - They could totally kick our ass that instant.

6:46That instant. Why do they have to give us 24 hours? I don't know. But clearly they're just like, you have 24 hours to surrender and we'll be back. And he says, if you had to create a system of time with no reference to a planet orbiting a star, how would you do that? Lorenzo Infante from Santonio, Texas. Great question. So keep in mind, we evolved on a planet that has a 24-hour day night cycle. Right. Since that is our biorhythms, who cares if you're on Earth or near the sun if you want to respect your biorhythms? So go on a journey to another star. Keep the 24-hour day. That's what we all have internal cellular clocks that are our circadian rhythm.

7:30so whether or not you're around the time or not you're going to your body's going to know 24 hours your body's going to know and we and because we evolved in that state right now from studies that i've seen a few decades ago i haven't seen them duplicated but i was intrigued they took people put them underground okay living underground chuds you can't see day night they took all the clocks away so they're just living there wow and so i think they call that a casino

8:03No windows. No clocks. No clocks. Underground. So, again, this is a study from many decades ago. But they found that people naturally fell into a rhythm that was 25 or 26 hours long. Makes sense. Not 24. Not 24. And then I thought about that and I said, that's why everybody's groggy when they wake up. Right. We need an extra hour. An extra two hours. We're forcing ourselves into 24 hours when maybe the body is saying, give me a— I need a 26-hour day. So they didn't have to touch their snooze bar. Got me working 26-7. That doesn't sound— It doesn't sound good at all. 26-7. So I'd be perfectly happy keeping my 60-second minute, 60-minute hour, 24-hour day.

8:57Right. I don't care about weeks or months or years because I'm counting days. Okay. Because we sleep on day cycles. So that's what matters to me, no matter how long my voyage is. Well, what about the aliens knowing the fact that we're on a 24-hour clock? Oh, because if they said, we'll be back in 47 gloops, that's not helpful. They would have done a little research. They'd have done a little research. Use a time unit that we know and care about. And by the way, we don't think about time in tenths of a second or hundredths of a second or billionths of a second. Unless you run track. And you're Usain Bolt.

9:39Right. But generally, that's not a thing. Right. So a second is, by the way, your heart beats about once a second. That's right. Yeah. I mean, if you're really healthy. Yeah, if you're healthy. If you're healthy, you get about 62 beats. 62 beats, 64 beats a minute. Right. So these feel kind of natural to me. And if the alien wants to communicate with us, it better damn straight use my units. Yeah, exactly. And by the way, if they land in America, they better know inches and feet and miles too. Let me tell you something. Whenever something, they come here and they're just like, we'll be back and we're going to make sure that in 50 kilometers, you're going to, and we'd be like, what is this guy talking about?

10:28Dude, where are you from?

10:46Hey, this is Kevin the Sommelier, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. You're listening to StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

11:03Mike says, hello, Neil. Hello, Lord Nice. Long time listener. New to Patreon. Thanks a lot, Mike. Well, let me say it right. Welcome to the universe. Nice. I'll say that right. He says, my question is about the likelihood of 2001 a space odyssey, in particular the new form of life observed in the dual star system as well as the fabricated central hub for the wormholes. He mentioned 2001? Yes. But I think he's referring to scenes in 2010, which was Arthur C. Clarke's sequel to 2001. Gotcha. If my memory serves. I saw that long ago on first run when it came out, but that's my memory of it. Yeah.

11:45By the way, I'm cool with, if you're alien, and you're more advanced, I'm cool with all that. Yeah. What would we look like to our own species from 100 years ago? Exactly. What would we look like today? Oh my gosh. I mean, if we are that amazing in the future compared to our own species and our own planet, imagine aliens. So I'm not going to second guess their double star system and their wormhole factory. Fine. I mean, there are binary star systems. Yes. Right. Yes, that's not a weird thing. What about planets around binary stars? They're a little unstable because their gravitational allegiance is challenged every time they try to make an orbit.

12:24Who am I closest to? Who am I far away from? Maybe you this time. Maybe you this time. So you need a really big orbit so that the two stars are seen as one field of gravity. Gotcha. Right? Because only when you get really close do you do it. Would you have the perturbations? Exactly. Right. Exactly. If I remember in 2010, 2010, Europa was where the intelligent aliens lived. One of Jupiter's moons. That's a little too, I'm sorry. First, we're going to put the intelligence on the white planet. On Europe?

13:06Yeah, so they're asking the plausibility of it, yeah. I mean, double star system, sure. Aliens that have control over that, give it to them. Why not? Why not, yeah. All right, this is Alex Romillion. He says, hey, what's up, lads? Alex from Northeast England here. Simple question for you all. Just for fun, do you agree with pineapple on pizza? Inquiring minds would like to know I love your show and have fun. I'm a big no, but guess what? I've never had it, so I can't say I'm a no. Generally, if you do it, it's kind of Hawaiian style, and it would be pineapple with a ham thing because we know pineapple goes with ham.

13:47Absolutely. But I, as a native New Yorker, you know where this is. This is not going to end well here. Where are you going? What are you doing here with the pineapple on the pizza? What's your problem? I'm eating over here. I'm eating over here. I ought to slap you one. Yeah, yeah. Mook, what's your... I'm crossing the street here. I'm eating here, over here. So for me, pineapple belongs in a pina colada and not in a pizza. There you go. Of all the things I would do with a pineapple, pizza is not on that list. Pizza is not on the list. Okay. I got you. Okay. I love it. That's my opinion. Yeah.

14:29You know what? I'm going to have to try it now because I'm cringed by the whole thought of it, But I've actually never put slice to mouth to say that sucks. Plus, it's also hot fruit at that point. I know. That's so nice. That's what I'm saying. Except for blueberry pie or peach cotton. That's different. That's a whole other hot fruit thing, but that's okay. All right, here we go. This is Hugh Cayley. Hugh says, hello, Dr. Tyson Lord and Ice. Hugh Cayley here from Richmond, California. During the most of my life, if you read a layman's book on cosmology, It would confidently state that if you somehow moved in a straight line long enough, you end up where you started.

15:12Is this still the case now that the universe is thought to be flat? Thanks. So that, what he's remembering, was not that statement given confidently. It was that statement given as one of the alternatives of what the shape of the universe would do for you. Okay. So I don't believe that that was stated confidently. We didn't know. But we had the formulas to tell us what the universe would look like depending on if it was saddle-shaped, spherical, or flat. It turns out the universe is flat. Okay. So no, you don't come back to where you are. You don't come back. You don't come back. It's forever.

15:52You just keep going. Oh, by the way, and if it weren't flat and if it was positively curved, then the coming back happens because the universe would re-collapse on itself. Right. And everything's back in the same place at the same time. So that's how you end up back where you are. It's that future space-time trajectory that brings you back. time would be in a loop in the case of with the universe re-collapsing. Right. All right. But how about just we are here if we're in a spherical universe you walk straight eventually you come right back to where you started and it's no different from walking on Earth.

16:34Right. Same difference here. Same difference. That's the way And when people say where's the edge of the universe in that scenario I'd say it has no edge. It's gotta have an edge. It has no edge. Okay let me where's the edge of Earth's surface? It has no edge. Okay. Right. Because it has, well, you can think of the edge as going up. That's a different story. As Carl Sagan said. Right. Earth's surface is the shoreline of the cosmic ocean. It's a three-dimensional shoreline. Here you go. Wait for the tsunami. It's going to be something else. Oof. Okay. This is Joe Boone. And Joe says, Kia Ora, Dr.

17:16Tyson. Oh. I am from New Zealand, and I have a question related to your explanation of time dilation. Specifically, that time does not exist at the speed of light. In science fiction, there are often cryopods for interstellar travel. But often those spacecraft, like the Nostromo from Alien, travel faster than light. Therefore, shouldn't there be no travel time from the point of view of the crew? The cryopod is only necessary for Ripley in the shuttle at the end of the film because it was just drifting in space. In reality, wouldn't the people of Earth need cryopods if they ever wanted to see a crew again in their lifetime?

17:58I'd love to have your take. Apologies if I've misunderstood time dilation. What's the person's name again? This is Joe Boone. Joe, you understand it perfectly. Yes. And everything you said is 100 % accurate. Correct. If you were traveling the speed of light, you don't need cryopods. Because there is no time. Well, there is time, just not from your frame of reference. You get there as soon as you left. As soon as you left. Right. As a matter of fact, you wouldn't know what happened. You don't need the cryopods. Right. So it's a correct. Just like a photon is born and dies the moment that it hits whatever it's hitting.

18:33Correct. And ideally my detector at my telescope. Right. And not the buttocks of someone. And not the black behind or something nice laying on the beach. like, ooh, look at these photons. There's a photon trap. You go through 30 ,000 years from the beginning of the galaxy. And then you just hear it coming straight for my butt, like, ah, no! Now where's the telescope? Where's Neo?

19:00Why doesn't this guy shave? Anyway. Shave your butt? What? I don't even want to, no, stop there. Okay, I'll set up. Yeah, he's completely correct. I have nothing to add or subtract from that entire account. He did a great job. He did a great job. By the way, the reason you need a cryopod is because for storytelling purposes. Yeah. One, something always goes wrong with somebody's cryopod. That is how science fiction stories work. You go into space and something goes wrong. Something goes wrong. So you need the cryopod as a mechanism for storytelling. To kill people. Right, exactly. To kill innocent people.

19:37So anyway. But one other thing. there's, as far as we know, you cannot travel the speed of light if you have mass. Right. So that would put a kibosh on that whole idea. But otherwise, yeah. In all fairness to that, you can go 99.9999 % the speed of light and it's essentially not age, but you still wouldn't need the cryopods. Right. So instead of getting there instantly, you get there just like, oh man, I didn't even get a chance to get an in-flight meal. Correct. That's right. All right. Alain Berdu says this. Hello, my name is Alain Berdu from Montreal. Just a quick question. If a spoonful of neutron star material can weigh as much as Mount Everest.

20:25Easily, yeah. Would Mount Everest come rushing out of the spoon if we brought it to Earth very quickly? Come on, lady. This ain't Jumanji. Jumanji. This ain't Jumanji.

20:44It's densely packed. It's not a sea monkey. It's not a freaking sea monkey. It's not a chia pet. Nah, I'm joking. Let me go to Neutron Star City to open out the spoon. That's so funny. So here's the way to think about that. The answer is no, as described. But here's the way to think about it. The energy it would take to scale a mountain on Earth is the same as the energy it would take to step up onto a sheet of paper on a neutron star. Wow. That is rough. That's rough. Yeah. That's rough. And so a neutron star flattens everything. So we think neutron stars might be the best spheres in the universe.

21:35Right. Because whatever's there just got flattened. Got flattened out. And she wants the thing to pop back up as a mountain when it comes here. But once you're flat, you don't go back. That's it. Look at that. Once you go flat, you never come back, baby. Emery says this. Dr. Tyson and Lord Nice. Emery from Florida here. I remember in high school, we would take 1.5-volt dry cell battery and hook the wires up to two inverted test tubes in boiling water, connecting hydrogen and oxygen. Using the collection principle, wouldn't it be much more efficient collecting the hydrogen and oxygen off the cavitation of a propeller almost free on ocean cargo ships?

22:19Oh, two things. Go ahead. First. Right. I did not know. Is that true? I'm not denying it. I just never heard that you could, the word is dissociate. So hydrogen and oxygen are very tightly bound. That's why water just go anywhere. It's coming out of the sky and the ground. Water is water. To break that molecule apart requires a huge investment of energy. A lot of energy. Do you know the evidence that it requires a lot of energy? My stove? No. No. You bring them back together. Oh, and they create a lot of energy. They create a lot of energy. Yes. That's all the energy it took you to pull them apart.

23:06Right. That's why when we go to the moon and find water, we don't say, oh, that's just rocket fuel, which it is, but you have to put the energy in it to separate them to get that energy out as rocket fuel. Wow. It's not just like oil sitting in the ground for you. Right. Okay. So I did not know if that's the case, that it would be at the tip of the fastest moving part of the propeller blade that there's high enough energy there to break apart the oxygen and hydrogen. If there is, that's kind of cool. It is. And yeah, why not put a collection mechanism there? Right. But you're really after the hydrogen because oxygen, you get that for free anywhere in the atmosphere.

23:48Right. So if it does that, I'm intrigued by that. And you're right. There's propellers going across the ocean all the time. All the time. Yeah. Yeah. So I can't comment on whether that's a real thing, but if it is a real thing, yes, do it for sure. But keep in mind it requires energy to make that happen. Right. But the propeller's already expending that energy. That is the energy that they're expending. Right. It's a great thought experiment. But right now, shipping companies are reinvesting in sales to help reduce the amount of fuel. that they use. And there's a company, I believe it's called Cargill or something like that.

24:31They're making these giant sails that are controlled by computers and it cuts like the fuel consumption of a tanker like by 50%. So what's it getting its energy from? It's a sail. No, people don't think about it. But it's sails getting its energy from wind. From the wind. Wind gets its energy from the unequal heating of Earth's surface. Right. So air moves to where it's hot or not hot and where the pressure is. So it's really solar power. It's solar power. Yeah. That's what I'm getting at here. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, yeah. Everything is solar power. Almost everything. Almost everything is solar. But here's the kicker.

25:12What? Can't use that for energy. How are we going to have a solar power? Like, no, you got to burn something. Come on. Anyway. Anyway, just so infuriating. Drill, baby, drill. I know you did. All right. Drill, baby, drill. Yeah, that's it. Anyway, that's what I told somebody. I said this last week to somebody when I was, oh, Florida. I was down in Florida. And I said, so that big thing up there, it's 93 million miles away. It takes eight minutes at the speed of light for the light to actually get here. and yet you can lay on that beach and it will burn your ass. But yeah, you're saying that it's not effective.

25:59Because they were saying like solar power doesn't work. It's too expensive and it's not effective. It's called brainwashing. You know what? There you go. It's really that simple. I really didn't think of it until you just said that. And now I'm like, why did you argue with that idiot? Like why would you argue with that dude, dude? If an argument lasts more than five minutes, then both sides are wrong. And so clearly I was right because you know what? I said that to him and he was like, no, it doesn't work when he said that. And I was like, okay. That was the end of the argument. I was like, okay.