Cosmic Queries – Multiverse Nesting Dolls

0:00Paul, people love themselves some black hole. Yeah, and I think it's because it's sort of the unknown, right? Because it can eat you. Yes. And that gives you, that forces you to respect them. Yeah, exactly. There it is. It's like a street thing. Coming up on StarTalk, Cosmic Queries. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

0:31This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. We're doing a Cosmic Queries grab bag today with Paul Mercurio. Paul. Hi. First, nice to see you. Welcome back. Thank you. We have to correct. I am Baron Paul Mercurio. Did that happen? United me. Oh, okay. Thanks for reminding me. Where are the trumpets? I just forgot. Baron. no barren paul mercurial thank you for that reminder and the nice thing is you created problems at my house because now my wife and son have to call me that all the time i think i use my excalibur to do that you did it was a big thing and a lot of people responded online on the wall there one person said maybe you should whatever but you didn't thank god no it's great to see you great to be back all right and uh you got a podcast yeah what's the name of that inside out with paul mercurial you've been on it yes i have fun one-on-one on interviews with folks.

1:28Yeah. Paul McCartney and Colbert and I perform on that show. Yeah, no, it's all good. Yeah, yeah. And you perform on Colbert. Do you also write for him as well? No. But you used to write for The Daily Show. I wrote for The Daily Show, yeah, for a long time. Yep. And then touring with my stand-up and my off-Broadway show directed by Frank Oz, Permission to Speak. I love Frank Oz. Yeah, he's the best. Nobody doesn't love Frank Oz. He's like such a mensch, as they say. Yeah, he's so sweet. And he's Yoda, so it's very intimidating to work with the original Yoda because... Does he give stage directions and Yoda speak?

1:59I so want him to go backwards. When he orders, though, he orders backwards. I think I will have. I'm like, all right. We get it, Frank. You're Yoda. Stop. We're in a diner, okay? No, he's the sweetest human being and so talented. Really good. Yeah. We've actually had him on StarTalk. If you dig him up, he'll be in our archives somewhere. Oh, I didn't know you had him on. Long ago. Yeah, we had everybody. Yeah, man. Oh, yeah. He doesn't live far from here. We should go to his house. Here is my office. Show up. Show up with the puppet. At the Hayden Planetarium. Yeah. Yeah, I went to reach for Minnie Neal.

2:32There you go. How's this going? The hand goes up the butt or something. Oh, you can move the, oh, look at you. My mustache is coming off. Yeah, you look, you look like a bandit of some kind that's going to, and he has 19th century that's holding up a train. Who are you talking to?

2:55So, Cosmic Queries. Yeah. Grab bags. We got some fun ones. You got them all right in front of you. Got them all in front of me. All right. Jump in. I haven't seen these. I might not know some of them. I mean, I don't know. So we good? Yeah, go for it. All right, man. All right. If I don't know an answer, I'll just say I don't know and we move on. You know. No, stop. You know. Okay. Adam Schmidt. Hello, Dr. Tyson. Greetings from Adam in Atlanta. I loved your video on the possibility our universe is inside a black hole. So did a lot of people. Yeah. That's weird. I was like that. In our universe, we have detected dozens of black hole mergers.

3:29If we're inside a black hole, what would that event look like if our black hole merged with another black hole on our parent universe? That's very cool. Okay. There's more to the question. You want to stop there? No, no. Go on. Go on. Go on. Okay. What would evidence of something like that in our past look like? Could our parent black holes continue to creation of matter? Explain why we're continuing to expand. I can't answer with precision all of those points, but I can say a couple of things. A black hole is black from the outside. If you're on the inside, you see light coming in. You see what's going on outside.

4:10It's all coming down to you. It's funneled to a very narrow field of view, but you see it coming in. To the point of singularity. So you would see the other black hole collide with you. you should be able to see that would you see it or feel is it it's like it's like nesting dolls right in a way like in in the sense that like a black hole once they're together they they become one right all right and you don't you lose track that there were once two of them so you'll see it come in the the event horizons will merge into one larger event horizon and all of its matter will join you in your black hole and they would say the same thing about them because you're it's relative right you'll join each other have a common envelope a common event horizon and you'll see the matter collapsing down if there's a singularity there everybody's headed towards the singularity but now there's a theory in that singularities go to each other right yeah but there's a theory within the back hole that the singularity doesn't necessarily it could mean that another universe is created yes yes from that so it's not from it just the black hole mathematics gives you an entire other space-time inside of it.

5:22So it's like this cosmic family tree where we have - Oh, you mean it's nest - That's what you mean by the nesting dolls. Yeah. Right, right, because the universe inside the universe inside the universe, and the universe is all the way down. And it's like one, we have just one unmarried single parent. It's like we're an illegitimate child, and nobody remembers anybody's birthday. Like, that's pretty much how the family functions, right? I hadn't thought of that. There's the one starter universe, and the black holes within are universes within are universes within. So, yeah, that's a curious consideration.

6:00The point of there being another space-time in front of you is that as you pass into the black hole, time slows down for you relative to the rest of the universe. Which means, to you, the rest of the universe speeds up. looking out to the rest of the universe you will see the entire future history of the universe unfold before your eyes my understanding is also if I'm looking at you as you approach the event horizon it's looking like it's slowing down but I'm looking at you and you're speeding up but there's spaghettification happening as well that only happens down near the singularity I mean it's funner to think that crossing the event horizon is where you get all torn up No, no.

6:45It's just this region of space. You'll pass right through it like you didn't know or care that it was there. You'll realize once you're in, you can't get out. And depending on whether the black hole is spinning and how big it is, your path could go straight to the singularity. And that's all she wrote. But it's chaos within it because it's consuming. It's light and stars and gases. It's inescapable. It's like every family Thanksgiving dinner in my house. You cannot get out and it's complete chaos and you have an annoying brother-in-law. There, and you know who I'm talking about. No, they're not brother-in-law.

7:19They're uncles and aunts. Those are the crazy ones are the uncles and aunts. Yeah. So, I mean, sure, there'd be a lot of different things there. A cacophony of cosmic objects. Let's go to Alex M. Zabetta from Houston. What is Beyond the Black Holes? Explain. What is Beyond the Black Hole? Dunkin' Donut franchise. everywhere. They're everywhere. Well, like we just discussed, there's a singularity down in the middle, but to the extent that you can avoid the singularity, which is not clear if you can, let's say I have rotating black holes where what's going on inside is a little different, but like I said, there's an entire universe opening up inside of it.

8:04Right. There's a colleague of mine who considered the natural selection of universes. And he said that we are most likely to live in a universe where the laws of physics favor the creation of black holes. Through massive stars. By whatever mechanism. Right. Because that universe that has black holes, each of those black holes is a universe within. And if those laws of physics make universes within that, so which universe are we most likely to be in? the universe where there's a lot of black holes because we would be in one of those black holes. Right. If there's a universe that doesn't make any black holes, we'd have to be in that universe native, right?

8:50Right. Because it's not making any other universes with its black holes. It's sort of like a pregnant cosmic pinata where you break it and then many universes come from that. That's obscure, but okay. How about, I got a better one. How about cosmic tribbles? Oh, there you go. You know tribbles? Oh yeah, Star Trek. Yeah, do you remember what the secret was about them? I don't. They're born pregnant. Wow. Yes. I got a Tribble right here. Oh, look at that. Look at that. And the Tribble is pregnant when it's born. Yeah, it is so fertile, they're born pregnant. Right. So a universe that natively makes black holes, it's going to make other universes easy.

9:38Right. easy. But is there anything that can sort of, where is science in terms of being able to confirm any of that at this point? Are you speaking to me right now? Because I'm just. You're really loving that. I've just seen the episode. Everyone just stand there and squeeze them. I know. And there's a lot of them. There's a lot of them. And they make a little sound. Was it water that killed them or something? Oh, no. What happened was they were eating the grain of the ship. and that they were delivering food to some location and then they were dying. And it turned out the grain was poisoned by some evil...

10:15No, it just proves that carbs are bad for them. That's what it is. You don't want to eat too much bread, people. That's the theory behind the truth. That's if I remember the storyline. I think that was it.

10:39I'm Nicholas Costella, and I'm a proud supporter of StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

10:57all right so we're going to move on to our next question which is a really terrific question from hennick tedesi uh and uh he is from uh ethiopia thanks for truly making the sublime and fascinating part of everyday discussions here's my question how is stephen hawking's theory about the accretion disk around black holes proven how does one go about proving theories about something so far away and not directly observable and what current theory or study of black holes excites you i love it okay so first i think he's referring to hawking radiation because otherwise the accretion disk that's a whole other thing it's a whole black holes can have accretion disk but stephen hawking wasn't there.

11:44He cares about black holes evaporating by creating particles out of the gravitational field that surrounds the black hole. So my black hole, and I have this gravitational field, it's an intense gravitational field, and occasionally, my field will create a particle-antiparticle pair. It'll fly apart, and one typically falls back in to the black hole, and the other escapes. Well, if this keeps up, what's the future of this? You run the math and the particles inside the black hole are what are escaping by this mechanism out of the gravitational field. The gravitational field has a built-in inventory of what particles were absorbed by the black hole to begin with, had fallen into the black hole.

12:37The question was, do you lose all the information of particles falling in? No, it's retained, apparently. The Hawking radiation recovers all that fell into the black hole. It recovers it. And so the black hole gets smaller and smaller and smaller without ever having to reach in through the event horizon. That's what's amazing here. Stuff is coming out of the black hole because it's birthed outside of the black hole. Right? So now watch. So, how do we know this is happening? We don't. Quantum physics is the most successful theory of physics there has ever been. We have yet to see any edges where it begins to fail us.

13:26Newton's laws fail us at high speeds and high gravity. We needed Einstein to come in to cut that some slack. Okay, well how about, that was a limit of Newton's theories. How about Einstein's? There's a limit to Einstein's. What happens in the center of a black hole? What happens at the singularity of the Big Bang? Einstein's equations fail there. It's sometimes described, it's where God is dividing by zero. Remember you're not supposed to divide by zero? Right. In your math class? You try doing that on your calculator. It just, it doesn't like you. No. It's like you idiot, go back and take some math.

14:05This is fire in your hand. So the thing with quantum physics is it is so effective and so potent that if you discover an effect in quantum physics just by manipulating the tenets of quantum physics and the equations, that prediction, we take that as gospel. Because quantum physics has yet to fail us. Correct. That's why we all believe. But that doesn't mean it's infallible. Correct. But that's why we all are on board with Hawking radiation. We're all on board with it. And the part of his question. All of us. About, well, I'm, you know, speak for yourself, buddy. Except for you. Yeah, Mr. Tribble.

14:48How do you prove theories about something so far away goes to the way that, you know, sort of that, the photo from 2019 of the black hole. They look at stars orbiting invisible masses. They caught heat and x-rays from matter falling in. That's how you know the black hole is there and how big it is and what it does to its environment. LIGO and gravitational waves, all of that. So these are observations. You don't have to be there. You just need a telescope. That's what makes telescopes useful. How do I know you were home? Because I looked in your window with my telescope. Okay. Right. But it's sort of like you know there's a, you speculate there's a black hole out there, but you can't see it, but you see all of sort of the chaos around it.

15:28It's like that coworker you never see leaves a mess everywhere. They do. And you got to clean up after the coworker. There's always somebody needs cleaning up after. You know what I'm saying? Right, right. They break it after they touch it. The stars are orbiting something you can't even see. It's like a dog chasing an emotional tennis ball, right? Just in a circle. Oh, I hadn't thought of that. Yeah. Well, that's why I'm here. An emotional tennis ball. Yeah. Okay. You're going to be thinking about that later. I don't want to think about it. So the environment of a black hole, we understand pretty well.

15:59enough to look for what it predicts. Right. In fact, the first X-ray telescopes were targeting objects that we thought, could there be a black hole here? Is this signature of a black hole? You do the math, a black hole with an accretion disk, as was mentioned here, would radiate X-rays. Let's look for X-rays. And those X-rays showed, because you got something back from black holes through X-rays, right? And it wasn't the black hole that admitted it, it was the material around it. but it told you because that x-ray basically said that's like the black hole chewing with its mouth open right look i'm eating right you can yeah in a way i think that's a correct that's accurate you know i mean that's that's the scientist that's talking right now all right we're gonna move on elite all right uh greetings dr tyson my name is caleb ferguson from lebanon virginia in the movie the martian there is a maneuver called slingshot which is the gravity assistance of Earth to help accelerate a ship back towards Mars.

16:55My question is, is this technique used in real life? And if so, do you think it would be possible to attempt this maneuver using a black hole? So first of all, a slingshot is used in 100 % of our missions to the outer planets. Right. Voyager 1 and 2, Cassini, Juno. 100 % of them. Right. Cassini, Voyager 1 and 2, Pioneer 1 and 2, sorry, Pioneer 10 and 11. There's no other way we want to get to the outer solar system. the value is you get extra bang for your buck i don't need to have rocket fuel get me that speed i can come up behind a planet fall towards the planet while it's in orbit and come out the other side and having gained energy is the gravity of that planet is pulling it in and shooting it it's no if it's just pure gravity it's symmetric it's a subtle point that most people don't get so if you just have the planet there you'll fall in and it'll accelerate you and how about on the other side you try to get out but it'll pull back on you that entire scenario is precisely symmetric you don't gain anything if it's just you're just falling into the planet and trying to climb back out of the planet okay it's symmetric it accelerates you at just the rate that it slows you down on the other side the reason why a slingshot works is the planet is in orbit around the sun and as you approach the planet, yes, the gravity will pull you in, but the gravity is pulling you into a moving planet.

18:23So that's pulling you. Yes. So it's like sort of like having two horses pulling your character. Exactly. So one is just the pure gravity, but that's going to cancel out on the other side. Right. But that's bringing you into the reference frame of the planet itself and that extra energy gets boosted to you and now you can get farther, faster in the solar system without having a rocket that was big enough to have to do that. So slingshots are, everyone uses a slingshot. So part of his question is about black hole using a, that to me is like trying to get, you know, energy for a bike by riding behind the jet engine.

18:58Like, it seems like you're going to be. Actually, I tried, let me, remind me to tell you something about when I was drafting off a truck, which I don't recommend anyone do. Were you on a skateboard? No, I was in a car, but I'll tell you about it in a minute. So it has nothing to do with the gravity of the object. So a black hole would only be useful to you as if the black hole is moving in the direction that you want to be moving when you come out the other side. Because again, just like the planet, it's just not enough to just have the gravity pull you. Because the gravity is symmetrical. It'll eat you on the other side.

19:30So when we're slingshotting, it's like you're sort of borrowing energy from a planet. You're not borrowing because you ain't giving it back. And you're not reimbursing through Venmo. You're just screwing the planet. It would be cool if you could. You just stolen orbital energy from the planet. And we proceed on the assumption that the planet doesn't mind. Yeah. They're like teenagers, these rockets. They never have enough energy. They're always asking their parents for a boost. They're a mess. And we've got to help them out wherever we find them. And they flirt with the planets. They go up to the planet.

20:00They get cute with the planet. Get close to it. Right, right. They get close to it. And then next thing you know, gone. Never see them again. On to the outer solar system. I'm sorry. I'm personalizing a lot of this. I've had a lot of bad things. Yeah, I don't know. Have you been in therapy about this? Tell me about this car drafting. Oh, no, no. So I forgot which car ago of mine this was, but it was the first time I was able to tell me what my miles per gallon was. Oh, it had just a little. It was an active miles per gallon. Probably one of the first computerized cars. Maybe. It was in there. Yeah.

20:31And so I noticed that when I floored the accelerator, miles per gallon dropped to like three miles a gallon or something. then when i was cruising it went back back up gently pressing the you know so it was pretty much consistent with the sticker information about the miles per gallon that i was getting all right so i said i wonder what would happen if i drafted behind a truck all right we go 18 wheeler truck so i'm on a high on the freeway and i start pulling up behind the truck and i start seeing the mileage go up the gas mileage the the miles per gallon go up i thought you're gonna say you got mesmerized by the mud flaps with the cute girl on them so it's so it went from 20 miles per gallon to 30 to 40 then i got within maybe 15 feet very dangerous i don't recommend anybody 50 feet of a truck going 60 miles an hour yeah and a guy who does this for living it's like why this and why is this annoying guy behind me you're lucky you didn't hit on the break i got within about 20 feet and it went to 99 miles per gallon and didn't go higher than that so basically went to infinity on the so i was completely enclosed and i just want to say drafting the draft air of the of the truck just for the star talk fans out there whenever i go on a car trip with neil it's really annoying because he'll only draft behind trucks because he's too cheap for gas so it's really frightening we're holding on it's brutal and it take yeah yeah and then and then he saved money he saved money still not buying you a hamburger at the mcdonald's when you stop you're on your own all right the guy's working it both ways that's what i'm saying okay this was a very good question these are great questions one thing that most people i think i'm We're done.

22:20You can't talk about drafting. I am Creating a more laminar flow of air Behind the truck than it otherwise would well because you're there's a vacuum there correct and I am you don't have anything pushing against Correct, but I am making the air behind the truck come off the truck more smoothly which means When I'm drafting off the truck the trucks gas mileage is improving as well But why would what's happening in the back of the truck affect the gas? Because is it pushing down and then pushing it that way? Because there's no longer a partial vacuum behind the truck because I'm inside that pocket.

22:57But why does a partial vacuum hurt the - Because it's sucking against - The truck is trying to pull against what would otherwise be a lower pressure air. But now you've got a vacuum behind your car. Well, it depends on how the air floats. Don't disagree with me. Just say you're right. No, it wouldn't have to be a vacuum if the air comes smoothly. Oh. Vacuum is when it's turbulent and again - Okay, so now watch. So on bike races where people draft off of others, people say, get off my back. I don't want to tow you. They're not towing him. You actually would ride faster if someone is drafting off you.

23:30But the person that's drafting off you is using even less energy than you. MX self-destruct. Aloha, Dr. Tyson. Samus from Los Angeles. Dr. Tyson, I've heard you describe the process of spaghettification before. And there are lots of theories about what one would see as they fall into a black hole. However, we know that as gravity increases, an observer's perception of time slows down. Since the gravity of an event horizon is infinite, wouldn't this mean that time would effectively stop for anything falling in, and so nothing ever actually crosses into the black hole itself? If you could maintain molecular cohesion, wouldn't you just see it evaporate away as you get closer until it's eventually gone?

24:16Back in the early 70s, when black holes were finally making their way into our mathematics and our ideas and understandings of the universe, the science writer for the New York Times wrote a book titled Frozen Star. And he was referring to black holes. His name was Walter Sullivan. And I read a lot of his work. I mean, I appreciated people writing for the public when I'm there as a middle schooler learning about science. and so he among others were early influences in my life. I would clip articles he wrote in the New York Times on the latest discoveries. Anyhow, Frozen Star referencing the fact that if you watch someone fall into a black hole, they move slower and slower and slower and right before the event horizon, everything stops.

25:02So it's frozen. That person is frozen. Anything is frozen, except it's not but that's what was considered at the time. I would learn from Jana, Jana Levin sitting in that chair, that as you come closer and closer to the black hole, what happens is the event horizon encloses you. There's some phenomena that happens where you're not actually passing through it. You are joining the event horizon as you get absorbed. So you actually do pass through. There were trampoline with a giant, and I'm being serious, ball that creates sort of the effect of a black hole. And you're approaching the edge of that trampoline.

25:44Why is it a trampoline? It's a rubber sheet that's curved. Listen, it's my analogy. I get to do what I want. The black hole's not bouncing back. No. And so when you have, so you're approaching that event horizon from the viewer, from the person looking from the outside. Outside observer. You're frozen. That person looks like. As was understood in the early 70s. Right, right, but that's not the case. You get absorbed into the event horizon itself, then you pass through without incident. But that's what isn't, where does spaghettification come in? On route to the singularity. So your feet are getting pulled and you're getting stretched.

26:18On route to the singularity. At big black holes, there's not much tidal forces crossing the event horizon. You just fall right through and you'll be fine. It's as you start approaching the singularity deep in the center of the black hole where these effects become significant. and there's there is this sort of chaos that's happening within the black hole at all times well it's it's eating things voraciously anything that comes near so i i don't know what the inside of a black hole looks like i think you should get on that less time drafting behind trucks more time doing some work you know what i'm saying buddy so the so in a sense the black hole is sort of this sort of like time slows down right in the vicinity of the black hole yes and and so as seen by an observer from outside a very famous scene in the movie interstellar where the people are on the black hole planet for 15 minutes and the guy ages 15 years or some some crazy ratio of time evolving for the two of them you come back he's got gray hair i wouldn't have waited that long so as gravity increases time slows down yes right yes Which is why I guess a lot of work meetings feel like they're right next to a black hole.

27:35It's brutal. But you don't know time is slowing down for you. Well, when you're on a plane, the clock is going a little faster than on Earth, right? Doesn't it speed up a little bit?

27:49Well, not significantly. It does it for the GPS satellites. Right. Yeah, GPS satellites, in fact, is not slowing down. It's speeding up. Because we are in a higher gravity field than the GPS satellites. So their time ticks faster than ours. Because the gravity is a little weaker. Weaker there than here. Right. So the GPS satellites pre-correct the time they give you by saying, we're ahead of you, I'm gonna subtract that, then we give all your cell phone towers the correct time. What's funny is we know and understand that phenomenon because of Einstein's general theory of relativity. If his theory of relativity did not exist, we would be measuring that phenomenon and not know why it was happening.