Cosmic Queries – Pure Spacetime

0:00Our listeners love puzzles, paradoxes and hidden patterns almost as much as we do. On TikTok, those fascinations come to life. People are breaking down physics, exploring geology and explaining why the world works the way it does. You'll see impressive experiments, explanations that finally make sense and connections you didn't expect. It's like having a lab, a lecture hall and science museum in your pocket. TikTok is where wonder is shared, where curiosity turns into discovery, and where millions learn something new every day.

0:58That's why I love it, because I can secretly sit at the table and listen to my mother-in-law talk about me in Spanish, and she doesn't even know that I know what she's saying. Go ahead, be a stealth bilingual spy like me. Visit rosettastone.com slash startalk to get 20 % off your Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when you sign up today. You'll get unlimited access to all 25 Rosetta Stone languages plus all new Sapphire learning tools. Just la hora, amigos. They are Rosetta Stone hoy mismo. Paul, that was a good set of questions. Oh, my gosh. It's amazing. We learned a lot about sponges and webs and all sorts of things.

1:41Coming up, another installment of Cosmic Queries Grab Bag Edition. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

2:04This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries edition. This time I got Paul Mercurio. Paul, welcome back, dude. Hi, good to see you again. Neil, how are you, buddy? All right. Paul, at some point, somebody christened you Baron Paul Mercurio. That is true. And we had a ceremony, which was quite lovely in your office, if you remember you did we use my my my excalibre yes we did the whole thing yeah i still for some reason there's no red carpet here but you know and are you you still have your traveling show permission to speak i do yeah this is a theater show right it's a it's a it's a wagon and i sell medicines i'm a medicine man now because i'm going to be out of a job at the late show so yes touring with that i've got my podcast inside out with paul mercurio because it's the law and everyone's supposed to have a podcast now and um you've been in the biz a while yeah i go back to i go back to the daily show and uh we one of the original guys on that and well even pre-dating john stewart john stewart that tiny little man yes he's uh he's he's he's only this big a lot of people don't know the cameras are amazing that we would have yes with craig kilbourne and then uh And Louis Black was on and we would have all this crazy fun and nobody knew what they were doing.

3:28But they were letting us we were like, you know, you would appreciate this. We were like in the lab just they just said, just go make it and blow things up. And then we'd get yelled at by the president of the network every once in a while because we went too far. He would literally yell at you like your father would yell at you like that. They couldn't get. Why did you think that could be OK on TV? And he's like screaming at you. We got a grab bag this session. So that means. Some great questions, by the way. Some really good questions. Whatever subjects just sort of landed in your lap. And these are questions asked by our Patreon members.

4:02And whenever I do these, I'm always, and this isn't false praise, like you're the fans of our show, just how smart they are about this stuff. Like they did really great questions. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh, my gosh, we should be handing out degrees. Except for this first guy. This first guy is an idiot. No, I'm just kidding. No. Okay, so what you got for me? This is Farouk from Uzbekistan, writing from Norwich, UK. It's my favorite movie, Interstellar. After I've seen your interview with Kip Thorne, there's something that bothers me now. When they were on Miller's planet with giant water waves next to the black hole being immensely time dilated relative to one of their crew that remained behind on the ship and aged faster.

4:48What if they had telescopes and looked through the windows of the ship at their crewmate aging years for their minutes? Wouldn't they be able to see the faster passage of time or what would it have looked like? Or is light itself affected and won't allow this to happen? So if you had a telescope and looked down at them near the surface of the black hole everything would be going in slow motion i understand but it's also kind of insensitive listening to look into the telescope hey guys look at this look at he's he's aging so fast he just he just took out a reverse mortgage on his house like what he's turning gray while we watch it yeah i i just had a sandwich and during that time he's been divorced three times and he doesn't have any visitation rights like what they would look down and see them moving slowly and when you're near a black hole, you see the rest of the universe unfold in rapid speed.

5:48And so, yeah, there's nothing special about the light that happens. It arrives to you at a different pace, depending on how deep into a gravitational well you are. And the reason why that orbit was chosen to be very close to the black hole, it was to maximize the time dilation. It's called time dilation, when you create this difference in the rate of time. By the way, that exists for our GPS satellites. We are closer to the center of the Earth than the GPS satellites are. So we experience slower time than they do, yet we get our precise time from them. So when they send down their time from orbit, they pre-correct it for Einstein's general theory of relativity so that our time works at our location on earth's surface yeah so it but in you and saying you're looking through the telescope you're seeing things in slow motion essentially is that right if you're looking at at their behavior on the planet yeah oh yeah because it because even if the guy because light itself gets stretched and so it looks like he's buffering basically is that what we're saying that's an interesting word to bring into relativity i have to think about that uh so no just the timeline so here's the thing you are a prisoner of the present for forever transitioning between your inaccessible past and your unknowable future that's all you know about your own timeline there are other timelines that are proceeding at different paces than your timeline depending on how fast they're moving in space relative to you and depending on how much gravity they're subjected to so time is not absolute that's that this was the big discovery of einstein isaac newton is turning in his grave upon hearing this if he could hear who's present are we it's basically like who's present are we talking about right Does this relativity, does this mean there's no shared now?

7:55So the idea of watching someone age across frames is already kind of the wrong question in a way. Yeah, some of those questions, you're right. Some of those questions just kind of lose meaning. Like what is the now for everybody if your timeline is unfolding more slowly than mine? Right? Right, because you can't watch them age and fast forward because the universe won't let you skip ahead to the consequences. It won't let you skip ahead, but you can watch a timeline unfold faster than yours. And if time is that dilated, does that mean you couldn't actually watch him aging and fast forward because the light carrying that information is stretched and delayed as well?

8:34So the universe would put... Yeah, I think if you're tracking time, the stretching of the... So rather than think of stretching of the light, think of light pulses, right? Got it. And so what's the interval between pulses? And that's a nice way to sort of tick out the time. The pulses you would see down on the planet, I guess it was called Miller's Planet. I didn't remember the name of it. Yes, Miller's. If you all agreed, let's pulse every second. And then you see their pulses down there and their pulses happen every two or three seconds, even though according to their watches, it's every one second.

9:10So it's not that the light stretches so much as the pace at which time unfolds shifts. and so yeah and and they did it right we did it right mark phillips of fluorescent missouri hi dr tyson this is mark phillips that's a town fluorescent f-o-f-l-o-r-i-s-s-a-n or fluorescent okay if we are living in a in a simulation would you want to know and would you choose to embrace your place or attempt to break the cycle and communicate to the overlords, knowing you, Neil, you'll need to communicate because it's got a lot of that. I love that question. And third part of the question, what would you wish to gain from contact with them?

9:55Or have you already and you are just controlling us? I'm not authorized to comment. That's a great question. I love it. I embrace all objective truths, no matter what. I mean, it's not that long ago in the era of our grandparents, perhaps, where it was perfectly acceptable for the doctor to lie to you, to tell you you don't have terminal cancer and know you're not going to be dead in six months. That was somehow accepted. That's right. You're right. in fact i think there was such a scene in was it a streetcar named desire what's the story that has big daddy in it um oh that's mendacity that's a cat on a hot tin roof well cat on the hot tin the cat on the i don't know why i confused those two so cat on a hot tin roof big daddy or whatever his name was he he was told everyone else knew he was going to die and the doctor told him he was like just fine right that's right to me that is today completely unacceptable at least for me I want to know all truth so that I can reckon with that truth in whatever way I see fit.

11:11To live a lie is to not fully be in touch with all that controls your life, all that matters. So, yeah, maybe that's because I'm a scientist. Some people just say, lie to me. lie to me that happens a lot of politics right lie to me tell me there is no global warming tell me when i tell me just lie to me and i know everything will be better and and that's okay temporarily and then it catches up with you and by then it's too late yes so yeah i i would want to know if i was in a simulation i i agree i would want to know b i totally want to talk to the overlords absolutely i want to talk to the manager i have questions you want to be Karen first of all I want to speak to who's in charge who's in charge first of all who picked my avatar why don't I have a better body that would be one uh you had infinite rendering power and you chose to make me a guy who pulls a hamstring tying his shoe that would be number two why did you give me mild acid reflux I have a lot of issues with this overlord person and with our luck it's a 14 year old kid who gets like a triple a plus it's an alien kid in his parents basement yeah listen if we're in a simulation i just want the patch notes that's all i want okay the programmer of this simulation in which we live gave you freedom to join a fitness center which you haven't done it is obvious to me you've never stepped into a fitness Wow.

12:50Okay. This is why I don't want to know all truths. There are some things I don't want to know. So what would you change? no no questions what would i ask and i would i would ask is every bit of this universe knowable through laws of physics or is there something you just got lazy programming and it will never make sense to anybody and no one can ever create a law for it because you just pulled it out of your ass that's what i'd want to know because if they didn't then i would still continue to explore with the laws well it's funny because in my mind when i read this question before uh we came on the air it was like it's sort of maybe the the other side of the coin of what you just said which is is there only a simulation or is there some being or power ephemeral ethereal that has some hand in how we exist does that i don't know that we would ever be able to deduce the difference well but could you that's the point right so the simulation maybe only exists because of this greater power of being right we don't you'll never know the answer or is the greater powerful being yeah but that's but that's yeah but but we don't know what the sim is a simulator a human being is it a is it an alien of some kind like what is who is the simulator doesn't matter i mean i'm saying it's someone vastly smarter than us that's whoa it's like an ant for us speak for yourself buddy mr insecure low iq guy i can catch first of all in this one question you told me i have arms like limp spaghetti noodles in terms of my body's hype and i'm dumb as a stump is this how we're going to do the whole show or is it only talking about arms i didn't talk about your brain you have a brilliant brain and spaghetti noodle arms

14:52no no so that's what i would do i would say shall i continue as a scientist exploring the knowability of the universe or is there some point where you just gave up and it's all random that's what i want to know but here's here it has good precedent there was a day before newton you'd look up and the planets would move against the background stars and the moon and the sun And no one really understood it. We can sort of trace it. But an understanding eluded us. But that was okay because the sky was the realm of God. And how could you possibly understand the mind of God? And then Isaac Newton says, here it is.

15:30It's three equations.

15:34And some accused Newton of heresy. for stepping where previously only God had tread. And so in this case, is God a deity as known through religious texts or is God a programmer in an alien basement? In either case, whatever is going on is created by them and is vastly more complex than we are. and we're just inside of it just poking well but is it i mean if if it's so sophisticated that it can create all of this one question i would have in all seriousness is why have you created so many imperfections when you have this amazing ability to create this simulation okay so i have an answer to that i have an answer okay okay just when everything is going fine just when everything is going fine.

16:33The programmer gets bored. They'd say, let's throw in COVID. Stir the pot. I know. Let's throw in the feature where Paul has to get up three times a night to pee. How about that? Let's throw that in there just to make it like, you know. That's TMI, Paul. I don't need to know about your bladder condition. so then we finally get through covid okay and we have the vaccine then a billionaire new york real estate developer becomes the most powerful person in the world stare in the box some more if there were ever evidence that an alien programmer were in charge just for their entertainment

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21:26Hi, I'm Ernie Carducci from Columbus, Ohio. I'm here with my son Ernie because we listen to StarTalk every night and support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

21:50so paul here's an interesting fact if we reach the point where in our exploration of the universe where it's all random because the programmer got lazy right that's that's interesting at that point science loses all utility science exists only because something i figure out here applies over there and i can predict its behavior and understand it and manipulate it and use it in the service of my own survival and and if if it were all random there would be no such thing as science well but no but you couldn't you but couldn't you use science to help explore and try to explain the randomness and the chaos seriously so so you want you want a scientist to say okay paul today your whole day will be chaotic i predict that go forth what what are you expecting no no no no but you can't can't you make the argument that you could use science to sort of explain chaos i mean isn't it truly random i mean chaos is a very specific thing and in mathematical mathematically and the interesting thing about chaos is you can predict with precision how uncertain certain quantities will become over time and you can watch the chaotic regime unfold this is what makes weather predicting so challenging because there's so many variables the heat from the sun the absorption of the earth the reflectivity of the earth, the oceans, which are a different temperature from the land, how much moisture is in the air.

23:33All of these factors come together. And the more they come together and the more in the future you try to understand it, the more chaotic it becomes. So we try to get handles on it. That's why they say the models, we have this model and we have that model, and here's where they agree. So you go where they agree to try to boost your chances of understanding the objective reality of the system. But I'm just saying, if no laws discovered here apply over there, and it doesn't matter where here is and it doesn't matter where there is, then that undermines the entire profession of science. Right. And makes it unnecessary.

24:12The fact that I tell you that on Earth as it is in the heavens, laws of physics on Earth applied to the moons, planets, stars, and galaxies, not only across space, but through time. That is not an assumption. that is a measurement we have made and that's extraordinary there's any reason is there a tablet in the sky that says that must be so i i don't know i'm delighted we live in a universe that it is so absolutely all right let's move on to the next question this is uh mikhail from canada since it's around three kelvin in space could an asteroid be a superconductor and if so would it get stuck if it went too close to a huge magnetic field like the sun's or ours?

25:01There you go. I love that question. Very clever. What's the person's name? This is Mikhail. Mikhail. So thank you for that question. Mikhail knows that metals, certain metals and other materials, when you reduce the temperature in which they're immersed, the behavior electron changes so that they no longer act separately from one another as the temperature drops as they get cooler the wavelength of each electron grows bigger and bigger and bigger until it reaches i'm simplifying this but it's it's basically what's happening until the temperature is so low by the way this is a quantum it's a quantum phenomenon Was that absolute zero?

25:48It's three degrees above absolute zero, right? Right, so no more heat can be taken out. When it gets to zero, right? So as you drop the temperature, the wavelength of the electrons gets bigger and bigger. Quantum mechanics dictates this to a point where the wavelength is so large, all the electrons behave as one electron because their waves overlap and synchronize. And when that happens, electrical current passes through without any resistance at all. And so it's called superconductivity. At three degrees ought to get some superconductivity in some metals. I haven't checked the chart lately at who goes superconducting at what temperature.

26:32Some go superconducting at even cooler than three degrees Kelvin. So let's start with that. So great question. I'd have to check my numbers to see who would be superconducting at those temperatures. A. B. It's not entirely three degrees if you're near a star. So the asteroids are orbiting the sun. Many of them are very dark. Sunlight gets absorbed, raising their temperature. So you're only going to hit three degrees like an intergalactic space. We are so far away from nearby stars that there's very little heat added to your rock temperature. Jason Ashton from Liverpool. Liverpool. The Beatles are from Liverpool.

27:16Yeah. Yes. Wait, wait. If he's from Liverpool, you have to read it with a Liverpool accent. Oh, please. All right.

27:27No, that's not Liverpool. That's like Irish or something. Yeah, Paul, Paul, the home of the Beatles. Yeah, I like Yono Yoko. You know, I had Paul McCartney on my podcast, you know, along with you. I do know that. You've been on? Okay, let's move on. I've been a Patreon member for over a year and finally have a question that is probably more basic than my and your expectations are. So I'm feeling a little bit dumb here. If the moon left Earth's orbit, would the oceans no longer have tides? They would still have tides caused by the sun. Yes. The sun's tides are about one third the strength of the moon's tides.

28:12Or to put more precisely, whatever is the height of the tide that you measure, a third of that height is attributable to the sun. Yeah, small or less dramatic. It's like what I like to call decaf gravity. It's like decaf gravity. That works. That works. And what's more important here, and by the way, it's a perfectly legitimate question. I love it. And so, in fact, there's a whole book written by a colleague of mine called What If There Were No Moon? And then the whole book just goes, talks about the consequences of that. And we probably wouldn't have moons because they're named after the moon.

28:52That's true. Yeah. Yeah. we have some other sort of reckoning of time so the moon has the dominant tidal bulge all right so there it is and the earth turns in and out of that bulge that bulge is always there however and it's always in the same place well it's a little bit ahead of the moon in the moon's orbit right but we rotate faster than moon's orbit around us so we rotate into and out of the tidal bulge. And because the moon still moves around us, high tide shifts each day by about 45 or 50 minutes because of this effect. It's all one synchrony of time and space. The effect of the tidal bulge being slightly ahead of us.

29:36It's slightly ahead of the moon, but the moon is orbiting the earth. So how far does the moon go in a day, it goes about, you know, one, you know, 45, 50 minutes worth of your clock time around the earth. So therefore the tidal bulge has shifted by that much. But that's not even my point. The bulge is always there. When we line up with the sun, the sun's high tide adds to the moon's high tide and you get full moon high tides. So when people think the full moon has some extra tidal forces on us, no. It's the sun lining up. It's the sun added to the moon's tide and the moon's tide is just always there.

30:24But the sun adds to it. And so it's a delusion. We think, oh, the rays of the sun, the moon. The sun. We have werewolves. We have all life canthropic stories that have been written. We've got all of this about moonlight. And plus the moon has only reflected sunlight. So if the werewolf turned into a werewolf under full moon, it should definitely do it under sunlight. And a lot faster and with a lot more hair, bigger teeth, bigger fangs. But what, so what is the, remind us the full moon high tide, which means sort of the sun and the moon have sort of aligned that happens every how often what is the frequency of that once a month well actually twice a month so so it'll work for full moon because earth moon and sun are lined up and it works for new moon where the moon is on the other side and you get the tidal bulge so you get the highest of the high tides during new moon and full moon so people aren't thinking that the new moon has special powers, even though it's making tides just as high as full moon, because you can't see the new moon.

31:32So people are very influenced by what they see and what they think is true, rather than all that they can't see and what we otherwise know is true. Yeah, that is, yeah, there's a lot there. It's sort of, hello from Flesherton, Ontario, not going to be a part of the 51st state Canada.

31:56But we need your health care. We need your health care, your pleasant qualities, your lovely manner with people, your maple syrup. We've only got a couple of states that really generate that. Come on. Vermont, New York. That's it. Some New Hampshire, yeah. Maybe some Maine, too. Maine, too, yeah. Neil, my 13-year-old son was so blown away by our experience at your show. He wanted me to pass on this question. Why are your T-shirts so expensive after the show? No, that's not the question. I don't sell T-shirts after the show. I have no merch. People say I should, but there's no merch. There's no merch.

32:36You sell those Neil deGrasse Tyson fake mustaches for$15 each. I know you do. All right. Neil, my 13-year-old son was so blown away with our experience at your show. He wanted me to pass on this question. Could you ask if he thinks your memories and consciousness are made from atoms? Love you guys and keep the laughs coming. Andrew Nisker. So there's my favorite joke that's safe for elementary school. Okay. Never trust atoms. They make up everything. That's safe for like third graders. We're good there. So, yeah, I mean, we so want to believe that there are forces and things going on that defy account or description or investigation by the laws of physics.