Explosive Queries with Terry Crews

0:29I gotta do this. Oh my God. is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. And today is a special edition of Cosmic Queries, coming to you from the hearth of Terry Crews. Terry Crews. Wait, let's get the hearth going. What are you talking about? Let's get this going. Here we go. There we go. Oh, now it's real hearth. Now we got a hearth going. Fireside chat with Terry Crews. So Terry, you're my co-host for this episode. I love this, man. And we go back, so this should be fun. This is good, man. This makes my pectorals percolate. Oh, I don't even know how to react. It's so good.

1:05Watching your brain. It's so good. I love, love learning about science. I love having my mind blown. And you just always, every time I talk to you, you expand my brain. Well, you're living in the right part of the country. You took up residence in Pasadena, like near Caltech. That's right. JPL. California Institute of Technology. Caltech. JPL, a branch of NASA. so if there's any you get it osmotically as it comes through here. Yeah, exactly. I just feel smarter being here. No, this is good and we'll get to the questions in a minute but I can't channel surf without seeing you on NBC talking about America's Got Talent.

1:45America's Got Talent. You hosting that. I'm hosting it 19 seasons. And every week you got some kind of new flashy suit. Oh yeah, well that's part of the whole thing. Maybe. Let me tell you, The suit is its own character right now. You know, people are, they would be disappointed if I just came out in a gray suit. I'm ready for the suit to just walk off of your body and do its own dance. That's right. That's right. Listen, I love this show. We just wrapped our 19th season. That's crazy. I've been hosting six of them. Okay. But I'm looking at it and I say, who are these people? What species are they?

2:18Are they human? Yeah. The stuff they do. It's amazing. First of all, last season we had a dog that was the most incredible dog I've ever seen in my life. The dog's name was Rhythm. That's a cool name. I love it. But the dog danced. Unbeat. Without looking at the owner. Ronnie C. Not even prompted. It was unreal. I was like, I thought it was a man in a suit for a while. I was like, you gotta be. You're lying. It's the best dog act I've ever seen. I always have my brain just blown. every time because I think I've seen it all. You know what I mean? You're like, I've done a lot. Until you realize you haven't.

2:54You have not seen it all. Right. No. There's no limit to human capability. And then I realized we got 8 billion people in the world. That's a lot of people with a lot of talent. That's it. Some of which is waiting to be discovered. And I wonder, do I have a talent that could work on AGT? You know, first of all. You can say no. No, no, no. First of all, you don't know until you try. Okay. I did not know that I could act until I was 30 years old. Oh. 30. I never attempted acting before I was 30. And I did not know it was my destiny. So you might get on there and try something and go, wait a minute.

3:30So we collected questions. Yes. We went to our fan base and we said, Neil's hanging out with Terry. Do you have questions for them? Oh, they came. They came in. Lots of questions. You got them. Okay. Which is really good. But we picked the best of the best. Let's come right off the top. All right. Let's start with, here's Julia Lind. And she didn't list where she's from. Oh, witness protection. That's what it is. We don't want it. Okay. Julia Lind from somewhere on Earth, we presume. Okay. Okay. She's come with the questions here. It's, hello, Dr. Tyson et al. Is there a possible way to generate an artificial magnetic field on Mars so that it can have a thicker atmosphere and protect colonists on the surface from radiation?

4:14It's a two-part question. This is deep. It's a two-part question. People thinking all about it. Right. So... And do you want me to go on? Go on. Go on. Is there a technology that we could theoretically develop, or would we be better off trying to build underground colonies on Mars? Yeah. So what she knows is that here on Earth, we have a magnetic field. Not very strong, but we have one. That's why compass... Anybody remember what a compass is? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Old school. Old school. Old school. We have a magnetic field and when dangerous charged particles come from the sun, we call it the solar wind, they see Earth's magnetic field and then they channel themselves away and funnel in at the poles.

5:00And they collide with our atmosphere and render it a glow, causing the aurora. So when we see the aurora, that's the atmosphere and our magnetic field shielding us from harmful radiation. Wow. Okay. So if we lose our magnetic field, the radiation just comes straight in wherever it hits. Mars, we may have once had a magnetic field. It does not any longer. So if you pitch tent, you're susceptible to this flux of high energy particles. So she was correct to wonder, will we just have underground colonies? Yeah. All right. And then I wonder, well, then, what the hell is the point of being on Mars? We'll live underground here.

5:43We'll be basically the ants of Mars. The worms, whatever. What's the point of that? Just consider that almost anything will protect you from those particles, like the roof of a house. The shielding doesn't have to be elaborate. It just has to have some kind of shielding. And there's a whole branch of NASA. Well, there's a branch that studies the sun and a subdivision of it that specializes in space weather. We call it space weather, which is when is the solar wind coming? Because it correlates with explosions on the sun. It's not just at any time. So as the sun goes through cycles, it goes through intense periods, and then it quiescent.

6:26It's an 11-year cycle. So as it pumps up, we get more warnings about explosions on the sun. And as it drifts off, there's fewer. And we know when a pulse of these particles is going to hit us because it takes time to get from the sun to Earth. to Mars. So we just have a warning sign. Is that any different from saying thunderstorms this afternoon? Yeah, like tornado warning. Tornado warning, bring an umbrella, but this would be a special solar wind umbrella. Right, right. And so I don't see it as an impossible thing to overcome. That is cool. And maybe you create some local magnetic field and direct the particles off to the north and south of you, your little city in a bubble, whatever.

7:08I mean, engineers figure this stuff out. I love this. I'm not worried about it. I mean, you know, that is a wonderful thing to say about the magnetic field. It's protecting us. It's protecting us. It's so beautiful. Oh, yeah. But this is another thing I gotta add on to this question. I heard... That's allowed. I want to because it's so fascinating. I heard that the magnetic field was actually reversed at one time in the Earth's history. Oh, yeah. That's exciting. North was south and south was north. Okay, now I don't want to blow your mind. Okay, hit me. Okay. Really? I love this. I love this stuff.

7:41Mine should be blown at least once a day. That's a quote of mine. Yes. I'm just saying. Okay, you ready? Hit me. Okay. We're about the same. I'm a little older than you, but we're approximately the same age. When we were growing up, the North Magnetic Pole was in Northern Canada. It was never where Santa is. Whoa. Okay. So, Earth's magnetic pole is shifted from our rotation poles. I don't know if you didn't know that. I did not know this. And it's not stationary. It moves. It's moving. Hang on. Hang on. So when we were growing up, it was kind of meandering in the Canadian, that whole northern area of Canada where there were just islands and lakes and things.

8:17That's where it was, which meant that if you were up in Canada, you couldn't use a compass to find north because it could be south of you. That's right. Okay? So it's no good way up in Canada, way farther down did you get a kind of right. Good Boy Scout books would have a correction table, depending on where you were in longitude. Relative good Boy Scout books. Now watch. You check it lately. That North Pole has been moving, and it is now passing the North Pole on its way to Siberia. What? Wait. Yes. Yes. And pretty soon, it'll be Putin's North Pole. You're kidding. Okay. All right. The boy controls enough.

8:58Yeah. That's a tilt. Okay. The tilt meter just went. Okay. I can't believe it's moving. on top of all that, the magnetic field is getting weaker. And we think it's going to get weaker and weaker until it goes away. And then when it comes back again, it'll be in reverse because it flips every time. Oh my God. Now, check this out. You know how magnets work, right? The plus attract to the minus. Yes. Okay. So opposites attract. That's right. You've heard that. Okay. If you have a compass with a little needle and it's a north side of the compass, that would point to our north magnetic pole. However, that is a north needle on the compass.

9:45Why should north point to north? It's not supposed to. I know. Which means Earth's south magnetic pole is in our north. Wow. Because all north magnets point to it. That's right. That's right. We're going to point it to the opposite. Oh my goodness. So you've always been told that's where our north magnetic pole is, our south magnetic pole is in our north. Okay, so now, so we're going to lose the field and then it will come back in reverse. Then all your compasses will point the other way. We worry that when the magnet field goes away to flip again, this is called a dynamo effect, when it goes away and flips, that while it's not there, will it put all of us at risk?

10:22So we go back in the fossil record because it's flipped before. and if you go to the points where it has flipped, there's no periods of mass extinction. So if it wreaked havoc, it was not global catastrophe. So I'm not so worried about it. That's deep. Yeah. Will our electronics still work? Yeah, because the magnetic field is not that strong. So it's no Y2K event. Not even was that an event. Yeah, right. I wasn't worried. So the threat is not good. Okay, thank you. Okay. Thank you. Oh, by the way, everyone thought like Y2K, everything would break. Yeah. But keep in mind the way we celebrate time, it's midnight in 24 different hours in sequence.

11:09True. It doesn't all happen at once. That's right. That's right. Okay. So it's not like the whole world blows up at once. Yeah. Even if that were going to happen, it would blow up time zone by time zone. It would be one at a time. So people get confused when they say, oh, the magnetic axis is going to flip. They think it's our rotation axis, and then they freak out. I love this. So I got to tell them, no, chill. It's just a magnetic. It has happened before. It's going to happen again. Man, Neil, you blew my mind on the first question with the first answer.

11:48I'm Kais from Bangladesh and I support StarTalk on Patreon This is StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson

12:02So Terry, I don't know if you realize the people who ask us these questions they're part of our Patreon patrons. So they get to ask questions in our Cosmic Queries. So all of them are patrons. I love that. So check it out. What's next? All right. Next is Sandra Pink. Sandra here from Singapore. Singapore. I can't wait to visit Singapore. I was here a couple of years ago. I love it. I heard nothing but great things. Thank you for doing what you do, inspiring and making everyone's lives just a little bit better every day. Nice. Question. Mr. Cruz has so many muscles. Yes. Thank you. Sandra, you're the best.

12:39Stop jiggling your pets. I'm sorry. There's more law against that. Back to science. I bet that's illegal in three states. And muscles are so hard to build and maintain. In the cosmic sense, how important are muscles? And why do we need to work so hard for them if they are so important to our survival? Is this entropy? Ooh. Oh. Ooh. I like it. Well, okay. So there's a lot of speculation about the strong man in the tribe. Because what does that person do? Goes out and gets the food. Okay. They walk back with an elk. Yeah, exactly. I'm the man. I'm the man. And I brought back the food. Okay. And there's further speculation that that person has almost mythical significance in the tribe.

13:31And everybody wants to mate with that person. because if you don't want to mate with that person, then you don't have offspring that could possibly do that in the future and you'll just die. You'll be a dead end in the gym. And very hungry. Okay, so people have speculated that this accounts for the fascination we have with famous people because whatever was that urge to want to make babies with who brought back the food, today you don't need to do that because there's a grocery store down there. So what became of that urge, it's still there within us. Right, deep, deep. And there's the person on the silver screen.

14:10Yeah. That's the person who I want to mate with or I want that to be my friend. Yeah. There's an urge. Connection. Even though they're a total stranger. Yeah. And they could be a total asshole. Yeah. Doesn't matter. Yeah. Okay? So muscles have that role. But there are other roles that muscles don't really serve. Okay? So I don't know if everybody had muscles. You know, does that work? You know, so maybe some people out of a group need the muscles for the tribe. And, you know, others need to be able to climb trees nimbly maybe to get the fruit. Somebody needs to swim. You surely know how to swim.

14:47But if you have less fat, as you surely do, you're less buoyant. Yeah. Okay. People who have very sinewed muscles are less buoyant in the water. Now, Olympic swimmers, of course, are very sort of lanky. They don't look like you. Yeah, no, not at all. Not at all. I've seen that. Yeah, you've seen that. But long distance swimmers typically have a little more fat on their bodies, which gives some buoyancy so that the energy you're putting into swim is not only to keep you afloat, it's to actually push you forward. Because if you're going to sink, some of your energy has to go into not sinking. I love what you're saying because it shows that the muscle is skill oriented to what you need.

15:25Yes, it doesn't have to be big. Just skill. Right. It's not about big. That's correct. Yes, I love that. And are you quick? Can you catch the rabbit? Yes. And some big muscular person is not catching the rabbit. Oh, listen. First of all, being big, I've seen for years big guys in the gym who can't do anything. They can just lift weights. They're just big. Big lift weights. I have a perfect example. I thought I was strong and I had a mover one time. Little guy. I mean, he's just like a normal guy. And there was a box I couldn't move. I was literally like, hey, man, you're going to need to bring some other views.

15:56No, I got it. And he picked it up and walked out the door. And I was like, oh my. I like the fact that you benchmarked other people's abilities to your own ability. What? This is the thing. You said, I can't do this. He must need help. I totally told him. I was like, you better get your friend. Yeah. And he was like, no, no, I got it. And he picked it up and walked out the door. And I realized something. I said, this is what he does. That's what he does. All his muscles are configured for that. Everything is configured for moving. Yes. I'm not. I'm a celebrity. Yeah. I don't move anything. You got a celebrity body.

16:33I love it. You pop your pecs. That's it. That's it. That's it. Thank you, Sandra. Oh, this is great. Yeah. So entropy is disorder. And generally, we like living in what is ordered. And we put energy into a system to order it so that we can function within it. But we have to get that energy from somewhere else. Yeah. Things don't get ordered for free. Wow. Okay. So we get our energy from the food. And the food gets us energy. If it's an animal, it ate plants. The plant got its energy from the sun. So ultimately, we are all solar powered. I love that. That's hot. That is really, that is beautiful, man.

17:11It's beautiful. You know, I tend to lay out in the sun and I do feel better after I do that. Not too crazy, but you know. But I think that's right. Communing with the cosmos in that way. It's a way to keep me grounded. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, give me some more. All right, here we go. We have Will Mansell Brown. Hello, Dr. Tyson, Mr. Cruz, new patron here. Nice. Another patron. My name is Will Mansell Brown, and I'm from North Hampshire in the UK. Northamshire. Northamshire. Northamshire. Yeah, I got to say it right. They staple it all together. Yeah, they do. They do. I'm not from there. I'm not from the UK.

17:48Let's see. My question is, photons are massless, however, are given a mass equivalent based on their energies. Yes, they do. Does this mean that gamma rays are affected more by the curvature of space than radio waves due to there being a higher mass equivalence? Many thanks, and I love the show. Wow. Okay. So there's a lot going on there. Yes, it is. So the mass equivalent, you have the energy of the photon. You plug it into E equals MC squared. You plug it in. The E is for energy. You put in the energy, and on the other side is M, mass, times C squared. That's the speed of light squared. That's just a constant.

18:28You'd look that up, plug it in. So energy and mass are related in this way. So what he's wondering is, if it has no mass, would it still respond to gravity? And if it does respond to gravity, do the higher mass equivalent photons respond more? That's the question. Okay? Now, that's very Aristotelian, and Aristotle got a lot of physics wrong. Okay. Okay? You know what Aristotle said? I'm a little bit paraphrasing. He said, heavy things fall to earth faster than lighter things in proportion with their mass. He didn't use the word mass, but in terms of their weight. Yeah. That's not true. Like a rock and a feather.

19:08Well, a feather's different. Fine. That's true with a feather because a feather is doing this. But get a heavy rock and a light rock. Right. They fall down at exactly the same rate. That's right. Exactly the same rate. Yep. That is way more profound than most people appreciate. Okay, the gravity is pulling more strongly on the heavier object But it takes more force to accelerate the heavier object at the same rate as the lighter object So they fall at the same rate because Earth is pulling more strongly on the heavier object Okay, so let's back up so I have a something light everything's on wheels and something massive and something not massive.

19:55Put the same force on each thing. On the low mass object, it's going to scoot along real fast. And the heavy one is not going to go very fast. So if the force of gravity were the same on every object, you're putting the same force, then the lighter things would go faster. The force of gravity is stronger on the heavier object. Because if the heavier object and the lighter object are both accelerating at the same rate, something's pushing that harder. So they all show up more. Okay, so even though gamma ray photons have higher equivalent mass than radio wave photons, because the whole electromagnetic spectrum can be thought of as photon, even though they have more mass, they're each attracted to gravity at exactly the same rate.

20:39Wow. Wow. Wow. By the way, that's called the equivalence principle, advanced by Albert Einstein in 1915 and it's one of the most profound advances in human understanding of the universe that there ever was because everyone thought something's heavier right it would go in fact the dudes went to the moon they brought a hammer and a feather on the moon there's no air so the feather is not doing this yeah had the hammer the feather let go they fell in exactly the same way yes yes that's the moon pulling on them but it's just how gravity works that's right yeah so everything will respond the same. I love this.

21:17Because it doesn't matter how much it weighs. It's cool. This is another thing I want to follow up on. I love this stuff. I heard we all have our own gravity. Yes! That's incredible. That is amazing. I thought it was just people because people liked me. You know what I mean? So, if I put you out in space and I had like a marble and I gave it just the right speed in just the right direction, then it would go orbit around you. Whoa. No, no, a marble. Probably like a poppy seed. Yeah, yeah, maybe something like that. Yeah, yeah. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so we can make at least some of the universe orbit you.

21:56Your ego needs it. I know, I know. Listen, my wife believes I have my own brain. It's called narcissism is what it's called. So the real way to say it is you and the earth attract each other. Yes, that's great. That's what's going on. That's it, that is so beautiful. Robert, so if you jump off a cliff and you fall to earth, What's actually happening is you and Earth are falling towards each other, except you're doing most of the moving. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Earth will come up just a little bit. I love that. Yeah, yeah. Dude, oh, good. Okay, keep going. Here we go. Samuel Tomka. Excuse me, Samuel Tomka.

22:31Hello, Neil and Terry. Samuel here from Slovakia. Nice. All right. I'm embarrassed as an American, just a geographically ignorant American. I was asking someone from Slovakia, like, what was Slovakia before it was Slovakia? Because growing up, I don't remember hearing that. Right? And she said, oh, it was part of Czechoslovakia. You know what? Duh. Yeah, yeah. She's like, duh. Well, then I asked another stupid question. I said, well, Sam, what was the rest of Czechoslovakia? Oh, that became the Czech Republic. Okay? Yeah. Makes all the sense in the world. It's like, okay, duh. Connect the dots here.

23:08But yeah, believe me, I would have asked the same question. Okay. Believe me. I have a question. If humans settled on a low gravity planet, would skipping leg day have an entirely different meaning? Or would we have to invent new exercises just to keep our legs from shrinking? Keep the fun and education going. Love you guys. I love it. I've been accused of skipping leg day a lot. I can give two answers to that. Okay. One of them is if you want to maintain the physique that you would have had on earth, yeah, you're going to have to exercise way more. And you have to use exercises where you can add resistance beyond just lifting things off the ground.

23:48You need like pulleys and things. So that's if you wanted to do that. But if you will forever be living on that low-gravity planet, you don't need the big muscles anymore. No, you don't. And I heard you get taller. Yes. In fact, you get tallest if – do you know that astronauts that do spacewalks, which NASA calls extravehicular activities. I'm trying to get them. Dude, just call it spacewalk. Yeah, yeah. Extravehicular. EVAs, they call them. Okay. So astronauts have spacesuits, depending on how tall they are when they're launched, two to three inches taller for their spacewalk than they do for when they launch.

24:29Oh, my goodness. Because in zero-G, they grow. They just grow into it. If you're six feet, you can grow two inches. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah. I want to go to space. I'm going to look amazing when I come back. Terry, you're six, seven. No, it's not. So it doesn't keep going. So your vertebrae expand because you don't have gravity compressing them. Yeah. And you get a couple of extra inches. So they can't spacewalk in the same suit that they launch in. Oh, my goodness. I bet you zero gravity is good for my skin, too. It's good for everything. Everything. Everything. I love it. Yeah, everything just kind of floats there.

25:03Yeah. So like I said, if you don't need your muscles, they will atrophy. If you never need your muscles, should we care that they atrophy? That's right. I don't know. That's right. But if you ever want to come back to Earth, you better be ready for that. And the astronauts come back to Earth, and they got all kinds of machines up there so that they lose their muscle mass. Yeah, because you can get really hurt. And you can still lose bone mass. There's still an unsolved problem, the bone part. But you can be a blob in space. That'll be great. You can be a blob in space, and your heart won't even know the difference.

25:31That's amazing. Because it's not pumping against gravity. That's good. Yeah. You don't want to clog your arteries. But you can be chubby. But if your arteries were still clear, your heart won't even know. This is a great question. That was a great question. Okay.