Cosmic Queries – Quantumly Stupid

0:00Chuck, every time we do a grab bag cosmic queries, the level of the questions getting higher and higher. I know. I might have to go back to school.

0:12I'll have to bring in some big guns next time. Yeah. Man. I'm loving it, though. Yeah, it's good stuff. Yeah, yeah. All right. Coming up next. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Cosmic Queries. I got with me Chuck Nice. Hey, what's happening, Neil? All right, this is a grab bag. Yes, it is. What's the verdict on how long it takes me to answer a question? Believe it or not, because they put out this to the audience, they like the longer answers. The producers got data on this. Well, the producers want us to go as quickly as possible because they want to get more answers in.

1:01Yeah, but... But they asked the people, and the people like the long answers. And people spoke. Yes, people have spoken. They've risen up. That's right. Oh, right. I won't do it on purpose. It's just, it's organic when it happens. It's the passion. The passion of the universe flowing through me. This is Alex K. who says, hello, Dr. Tyson Lord. And I's Alex from Bucharest, Romania here. Bucharest. Bucharest. What keeps me up at night is Flatlanders and 4D space. I often hear. Ah, I love. That's some geeky stuff right there. That's that. We give him a geek award for that. I often hear that dark matter or dark energy could be the 4D leaking into our 3D space.

1:46But living in 3D space, can we ever actually observe a truly 2D space? And if not, wouldn't that mean 4D beings couldn't interfere with our world either? just as we don't notice any real 2D beings? I see where he's coming from. Yeah. I think. What he's saying is, if there were 2D creatures in our world, how would we ever know? Right. All right. So holding aside the fact that if you're 2D, you have no thickness. Right. If you have zero thickness, how does any light or matter even interact with you? Because light and matter - Reflect. Yeah, okay. Okay, but so let's just ignore that very real complication, but let's ignore it for the moment.

2:36Okay. Okay? There was a cartoon back when the internet was a fun place to just explore humor and cat videos. Oh, yeah. There was a - Those were the days. There were two illustrated creatures, and one of them was 2D. I forgot their names. It's like, hey, Joey, I just became 2D. and is looking at him. He looks a little flat, but he wasn't sure. And all he did was turn sideways and he disappears. Disappears. He turns sideways towards your sight line. Right. And then they laughed and they were just having a good time. Those were the days on the internet. Man. Yeah. Man. Now it's nothing but Nazis.

3:19Exactly. It's Nazi-yati. Okay. Stop.

3:28So it implies that even if you're invisible edge on, that the light is somehow still reflecting off of you face on. Right. Okay? So a 2D world in front of us would be completely visible. You would see light reflecting off of their substance. Right. Their 2D substance, whatever that is. Right. Only when they go sideways do they disappear. Okay. From your view. Right. Because they have no thickness. so we three-dimensional creatures what would would four-dimensional spatial dimensional creatures be able to see us it means there must be some orientation we can take where we disappear to them right just following this this sequence i don't i can't picture what that would be uh yeah well yeah you know i i can't either because i'm 3d so i'm looking around everything's 3D.

4:25So how, what, you know, what do I look like to a 4D guy? I don't know. You know? I don't know how a 3D person would hide from a 4D person, which way to orient ourselves, the way a 2D person can do that to us. I don't know how you do that. I have to think about it some more. What I do know is, and we've said this before, if you're looking at a 2D creature, you can see inside their organs, their inner organs. 2D people can't see because they have skin, this line, which is their 2D skin. They can't see through the line, but we can see directly into their bodies. So I look really ugly to a 4D person.

5:034D person, they'll see all your guts. They just see guts. And I think the first thing we do when we have four-dimensional beings is to make them medical doctors and have them perform surgery. Right. It's a game of operation for them. There's nothing to it. Take out, wrench, ankle. I'm good to go. I forgot about that game, Operation. I wonder how many people can get doctors out of that. You know, that's a problem. If they did, they're probably pretty bad doctors. I'm just saying. Like, if the game operation was your inspiration, you know, they're standing over the operating table with a pair of tweezers.

5:46I don't know what to do. Or they're trying to settle malpractice suits. Right. So that's what I know. And for me, that's the most intriguing thing. Yeah. That you can see inside of somebody who's otherwise completely enclosed in skin. In the same way the 2D person is completely enclosed by a line. Right. And you can see what's inside that line. Inside that line. Right. So that's the best I can give him on that question. Yeah. Well, that's cool, man. Otherwise, yeah, I don't know where to take it. Yeah. Mm-hmm. All right. Well, this is Jeff Drumsites. and Jeff Drumsites says, greetings, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice.

6:25I recently began watching Apple TV's version of Eyes McAzema's Foundation. It is awesome. Oh, yes, yes. That's the one where they have the hereditary rulers who are clones of each other. That's the limit of heredity. That's it. That's it. All the lineage is just a cloned line that you have dawn, day, and dusk. And day is the ruler. Day is the ruler. Dusk is the wisdom. And dawn is learning. And dawn is learning. Okay. And they are in that constant cyclical state of replacing one another. Right. And at a certain time, they have to be destroyed and move on. It's pretty wild. But anyway, he says this.

7:09When I was a child in the 50s, my dad's popular science magazine depicted the idea of a space elevator, which they have in Foundation. Trantor is the planet on which the rulers live, and the way you get to Trantor is from a space elevator. So anyway, my question is, oh, he says, is the Trantor Starbridge or any type of space elevator technically conceivable? Jeff Seitz in Galatin, Tennessee. Okay. Or Galatin, Tennessee. The answer is yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So some things to take note of. Okay. The motivation for a space elevator is you can get to an orbit without ever firing a rocket. Yeah, there you go.

7:57You just, all right. Just get on the elevator. Get on the elevator. Third floor women's lingerie. And where are you going, sir? Oh, okay. And is that still a joke? Lingerie? That was the big. I got it from Bugs Bunny. Okay. The real question is, what is an entire floor doing of just lingerie? Yeah, exactly. Nobody's asking that question. Right. So I have a friend who composes space music, and she created an album called Space Elevator Music. That's funny. Right. Right? On Earth, a space elevator would take you to the geosynchronous orbit. Because that's the only orbit that hovers, appears to hover over Earth.

8:42Right. It's a corresponding spot on Earth. Any orbit that's closer, it will speed up ahead of the orbit of the Earth. Right. Okay? So to have an elevator go from a position on Earth's surface to a position in orbit, it has to go to geosynchronous. And on Earth, that's 23 ,000 miles. So you'd be sitting in an elevator going 23 ,000 miles. Wow. If your elevator were going 1 ,000 miles an hour, how long would it take you to get? 23 ,000 hours. No, no. I mean, 1 ,000 miles an hour, 23 hours. That's a full day. It's still a full day. It takes you one day to get it. And we already get to space quicker than that.

9:19I know. Okay, so the idea was getting to space must be so hard with all these rocket engines and things that we need another way. But access to space now is routine, and the price continues to drop, especially because of innovations in SpaceX. Elon Musk, and it was a big mission statement of his with regard to SpaceX. You hardly hear talk of a space elevator today. Right, anymore. Right. It was a solution to a non-problem. And you know what fuel we're using? Hydrogen and oxygen. Right. There's some solid record boosters, but the main tank is hydrogen, twice as big as the oxygen tank. And it's liquefied.

10:04You put them together, they will combine in H2 and O. Okay. So the exhaust is what? Drinkable. Yeah, the exhaust is just water, but it's highly exothermic. So Space Elevator is a cool technological achievement, but I don't see it. Highly impractical. I don't see it happening. All right. Well, there you go. But also, though, that series, it starts off boring as hell, but then it really gets great.

10:51Hello, I'm Finky Marock-Allen, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

11:10All right, this is Raphael who says, Hello, Raphael Vigod in Toronto, Ontario. If a super intelligent extraterrestrial offered to grant you the answer to one specific question, what would you ask? Now, don't think too long because you have to give your immediate response. and we're only here for a few more minutes before their next interstellar train leaves. Okay. There's a question I have every night. Go ahead. Is the human brain sufficiently smart to figure out the entire universe? Wow. That's a question I want to answer. Because if it's not, then I'll buffer my expectations. But if it is, then onward we march.

12:03We can go from there. right the whole the universe is your oyster right at that point that's a really interesting question because basically are we too stupid yeah that's i ask that every night like we might just be like the whole quantum thing we're like quantum quantum like maybe we're just dumb and it wouldn't be mysterious if we weren't so dumb right but yeah it's obvious yeah for these reasons, but we can't even understand the reasons. So, yeah. So, I want to know. Inquiring minds want to know. That's a good question. I mean, I like it. Me? I would like to know, are there cheaper eggs somewhere in the universe than where I buy mine right now?

12:49Because they are hugely expensive.

12:54That's really?

12:59My son, you can ask any question in the universe. Right. I need some cheaper eggs. Yeah, no. What would I ask if I really wanted to know anything? Mine would be, what happened before the Big Bang? Really? Yeah. Okay. And I don't mean what happened. I mean, because we know what happened before the Big Bang. The Big Bang happened. So what caused it to happen? What was there before? Give me the lay of land before the Big Bang. Okay. That'd be kind of cool to know. Uh-huh. It's an origins problem. An origins. Yeah, and origins questions are always the most challenging in science because you don't have other examples to compare it with.

13:42And until you do, you're kind of making stuff up. Exactly. Right. I mean, what's the origin of the Earth? No one knew until we saw planetary systems getting formed. Right. Then we'd say, oh, it takes this long with that time frame at this distance from the host star. you can formulate questions that have value. Yeah. But it'd be kind of cool if the aliens or the extraterrestrials were just like, yeah, your universe is just one of 15 million that we've been to thus far. And this is what happened. Two other universes got together after a night of drinking and bang, your universe was born. So anyway.

14:24I can't believe you included alcohol reference to that. This is Marcus Munzlinger. And Marcus Munzlinger says, hello from Germany. Or should I say, no, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. Did you ever think, and my accent pronounced sink, about the alien in alien not needing any digestive organs? since its blood is acid. So all human flesh it eats is directly dissolved into molecules so the alien doesn't need to produce poop since it can use 100 % of its food. Or did you ever see the alien take a poop? Love yourself. Who knows about digestive tracts? I mean, we played with Superman's digestive tract, and he was an alien.

15:24Yes. Right. That's right. We solved that one, I think. Yes, we did.

15:30He has a super digestive tract. He has a super digestive tract. That means it's - And everything about it is super. Including the gaseous effluences. That's right. Right. A plant-based alien, however, wouldn't have any such waste products. Where its waste product would be oxygen. That's pretty good. Right. Right. Right. Right, right. So I don't, you know, I'm cool with it. Yeah. Yeah. it doesn't make a difference. Right, right. A poopless alien is totally fine. That's right. You know, I mean, there's nothing wrong with a poopless alien. But then they have to rewrite that book, that kid's book.

16:04Which one? Everybody Poops. Everybody Poops. That was originally in Italian. Did you know that? I did not. Yeah, yeah.

16:14That's funny. Speaking of Italian, this is an old bad dad joke. Go ahead. What Italians call suppositories? No, I don't know. Innuendo. Oh, no. No, please. No. You know that's good. You know it's good. Oh, man.

16:39All right. Here we go. This is Matthew Landreth who says, Greetings, StarTalk. My name is Matt, a Globetracking teacher who has lived and taught around the world. Teacher in the house. There you go. Through these experiences, I have seen how much learning depends on human connection. Dr. Tyson is a fellow teacher and science communicator. You know how ideas ignite in others. Science fiction imagines AI tutors or digital replicas guiding future generations. If an AI could replicate a teacher's knowledge, style, and personality, Would that truly be teaching or is the human connection scientifically essential for learning?

17:23I love that. So a couple of things. If you are teaching today with methods, tools, and tactics, and then I clone that, I'm not given any reason to think that your clone would not be as effective as you are in those situations. Right. However, you have a life experience, a training, where if someone whose profile doesn't fit that of other students, you will readjust and repackage what you know works so that you have a new pathway to reach the intellectual curiosity of that student. I don't know that AI can do that just now. Right. AI can ape your style. It can dig up some content. But it can't intuit something different that might be happening in a student and then make an adjustment.

18:21And make an adjustment, especially if students change. Do they mature? Or do they regress? Right. Right. So I think that frontier, at least from my foreseeable future, that is the future that I can foresee, remains in the realm of the inventive creative teacher. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, very cool, very cool. The human condition is still a very important part of teaching. No, no, it's the ever-changing human condition. Or the ever-changing, yes. Yeah, because otherwise I can memorize everything in that moment. Right. And then that's watching it go forward in time and be nimble enough to navigate that.

19:00That's the real test. There you go. All right, this is DJ Sipe. He says, this is DJ from Maine. I've been curious about the properties of space-time and gravity. We know that gravity is the result of objects with mass bending space-time. To me, this implies that space-time is naturally flat, but doesn't explain why. Is there some force or property of space-time that acts to restore its natural flat state once an object and its gravitational field move away? Perhaps some form of gravitational entropy. Oh, I like that idea. The idea of gravitational entropy. Oh, yeah. So he's looking at this whole rubber sheet type.

19:52Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, all we can say is, by the way, it's not just matter that will bend space as energy as well, because matter and energy are equivalent through equals MC squared. Nice. So just be more complete addressing it that way. So since the curvature of space and time is the manifestation of matter and energy, if you remove it with the matter and energy, there's no reason for the space-time to be curved at all. I'm given no reason to think that space would have any shape other than flat after you remove the items that would curve it. Keep in mind, however, the expanding or contracting universe itself has a shape unrelated to the gravity of objects it contains.

20:38Right. And this is why we talked about is an open universe, a closed universe, or a flat universe. And those are large-scale properties that are not related to just one galaxy or another. There you go. Very cool, man. That's a great question, DJ. These people are thinking. I love it. This is Keith Johnson from NorCal. And Keith says, can we think of a universal now based on the point of view of an observer? In other words, my now. Can we analyze a particular star in the night sky and determine its probable lifespan and then say that this particular star does not in all probability exist anymore in my now?

21:26Its ghost is seen as a shadow of light arriving billions of light years after its demise. So what's the question in there? So I guess he's saying, is that the case? Like when we look up, are we seeing stuff that's not there? We see things not as they are, but as they once were. We're not worried if they're no longer there, because that's not a real thing we can interact with. We're interacting with a light that is currently reaching us. And when that light was emitted, it was alive, whatever it was. Right. So... So we're looking back in time, but we're looking at that time. At that time. So it doesn't make a difference.

22:05Because we're looking at that time. Correct, correct. It doesn't make a difference. Right. So might as well speak of it in the present. The star exploded last night. No, it was 1 ,700 years ago. But what do you gain by that, right? Other than like a nerdy kid saying, you got it wrong. It's not really in the now. So the fun part would be, find a galaxy 33 light years away. Sorry, find a galaxy 33 million light years away. Okay. And then if they all held up mirrors, And you look at those mirrors, you would see the dinosaurs going extinct. Oh, wow. Because it's 33 light years there. And 33 light years back.

22:5166 years into the past. Look at that. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's fun to think that way. Right. You know, our speeds are not high enough to generate significant relativistic phenomena. Gotcha. Yeah. All right. Well, there you have it. Still a fun question, though. Thanks for the fun question, buddy. All right. That was Keith, and this is Anthony Calamani. Calamani. Tony Calamani. Tony Calamani. Everyone with an Italian voice does not come from Brooklyn, okay? They do in my world.

23:32All right. This is Anthony, and he says, Greetings from Seattle, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice. My 11-year-old son and I were discussing the pitfalls of fictional time travel within the space-time continuing. Okay. Understanding that you have pointed out on many occasions that one would have to calculate not only the space-time location on the target on Earth as it rotates on its axis, revolves around the sun, and the trajectory of our solar system moving through space, but also as our galaxy moves through the universe. Well, he covered it all. Look at you, man. Well. This was the way to go. Our question is, would one have to know the center or origin point of the universe to guarantee an accurate space-time coordinate, or would relative distances be enough even if the universe isn't expanding in uniform fashion?

24:28So he's taking into account the expansion of the universe in the time travel equation as well. Yeah, but I'm trying to figure out what he's getting at. So he's saying, I'm going to go and come back. That's what he left out. So I got to go back, and then I got to come back to my time. Is he going into the past? Into the past. So my coordinate, okay, what am I going to need? Can I accurately predict with not only rotation of the Earth, but the solar system and the galaxy moving and also the expansion of the universe, can I accurately predict the point where I got to go back and be back in time? I traveled at the speed of light or faster than the speed of light, went back in time, and then come back to that same point where I left.

25:18Can I do that? Rich Gott, I think, would say you can. Okay. Using sort of mathematical trajectories in the vicinity of black holes. I have to trust him on that because I can't duplicate those calculations. Okay. He studied this stuff professionally. In fact, he wrote a book, Time Travel in Einstein's Universe. All right. So in principle, yes. But is there a no disruption conjecture where you're not allowed to prevent your parents from meeting, thereby preventing you from being born, thereby preventing you from coming back to try to rectify things? Hey, Marvin! What?