Journey to the Stars with Bill Nye

0:00Space exploration is not guaranteed. That's why we have the Planetary Society. We're the world's largest, most effective space advocacy nonprofit. Check us out at planetary.org slash StarTalk and become a member today. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. this is star talk neil degrasse tyson here you're a personal astrophysicist and today i've got an exclusive one-on-one conversation reserved for only those people who are not only important but are also a friend of mine we got with me in studio bill nye greetings doctor how you doing man got a bow tie on and everything you're just completely that guy i am that guy the science guy What you see is what you get.

0:57And did you tie your own bow tie today? Yeah. Can you imagine? Bill Nye wears clip-on tie. That would be a funny skit. Bill Nye decided to end his career and lose respect from all his fans. Just, I want you to know, if I ever see anybody with a bow tie, I ask them if it's real. And if they say not, which is about two-thirds of people. Not? See what he did there? I say, I'm going to tell Bill Nye on you. And then they shudder because they. They can wear clip-on bow ties. That's fine. I mean, I just think it's not in the, as we say, the spirit of the game. I flew my ass out here to Los Angeles. We are now in your office of the Planetary Society, Pasadena, California.

1:40The same town where this society was birthed. A true fact, not a false fact. So give me a fast birther story on this. So Carl Sagan had been very influential in getting Voyager, the Viking landing on Mars and the two Voyager spacecraft launched. And just for historical completeness, there were two missions of Viking lander and a Viking orbiter. Yes. And so it could photograph the surface. Yes. Amazing. Yeah. Really amazing visionary ideas. And so he noticed that public interest in space exploration, especially planetary exploration, was very high, but government support of it was waning. And he had this big idea for a solar sail spacecraft.

2:26It's the 1970s now. 1976. Yeah. Yeah, and the disco era, and that was set aside for more human missions, including the famous handshake in space, so that the Soviet Union and the United States would have no more conflict, and that worked out great. It was an Apollo capsule in orbit around Earth, a Soyuz capsule, and they were configured so that their collars could join. And they'd open the hatch, and they're all weightless, so they're just floating through, and they would shake hands. And I was told that the Americans were trained to only speak Russian, and the Russians were trained to only speak English.

3:07And U.S. astronauts still speak Russian. It's still a thing they do. and we flew on Soyuz rockets for a zillion years. All that inclusive. Bruce Murray, who was head of the Jet Propulsion Lab during these famous missions, Viking and Voyager. Jet Propulsion Lab right here in Pasadena. Yes, right at the fiber up the street. And then Lou Friedman, who was an orbital mechanics guy. Engineer. Yes, but with a PhD, which you like. They decided that there was enough interest in space exploration that they could start the Planetary Society. And of grassroots interest. Grassroots. Yeah. So we had, the Planetary Society had tens of thousands of members by the end of, pick a number, 1982.

3:52It was started in the winter of 79, 1980. I'm a charter member. Now, I remember getting the letter. And I was not, to be frank with you, I was not moved by the letter. Because if I remember correctly, it says, dear citizen of planet earth and i said that's not very special to me what did you want citizen of new york i don't know something a little more personal than your citizen of planet earth was the state of the art anyway uh the planetary side has been around now that we'll have our 45th anniversary this spring and what we do is promote planetary exploration and just notably just uh Last week, as we're recording this, the Europa Clipper mission left for the moon of Jupiter with twice as much ocean water as Earth.

4:42And that is in part, let's say entirely, because of the Planetary Society, where our members, 40 ,000 people around the world, think space exploration of planets is very important. Wrote letters and emails to U.S. Congress especially. Got this mission funded 11 years ago, and now it's flying. And it was delayed because of Hurricane Milton. Hurricane Milton. You know what I wanted? I have a little sort of romantic nostalgia for the 1969 film Marooned. Do you remember that? Yeah, with O.J. Simpson. No, that's a different, no. Oh, that's, what's that one? Oh, you're getting your movies mixed up. That was Capricorn 5.

5:24Capricorn 5. Okay. Capricorn 5 or Capricorn 1? Oh, maybe Capricorn 1. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, Marooned, where they. Marooned. Retro rockets don't fire and they keep clicking the button. So they can't get out of orbit. Yeah. All right. But they have a rescue ship to go rescue them, but they can't launch because a hurricane is coming through Cape Canaveral. Those were the days. Okay. And I remember as a kid, it was like, hurricane, that's pretty artificial. Storytelling. Yeah. It's Florida. Yeah. This was not a weird fact to put into your story. And so then some clever meteorologist said, hey. Neil.

6:05The eye of the hurricane is going to go over the launch pad. Have you ever been in the eye of a hurricane? I'm told it's really eerie. It's weird. Yeah. I was at Hurricane Agnes in the early 1970s. Came over and all of a sudden it's a clear sky for a little while. And I'm told there are birds that get trapped inside of the eye of the hurricane, like tropical birds that end up thousands of miles away from you. It would have been cool had they launched Europa Clipper in the eye. That would have been a risky set of businesses because the - The window is big enough so they just delayed it a week. Well, not just that.

6:42Just keep in mind, everybody, humans have to be there to launch the thing. People go home, they have to secure, they've got to screw plywood to the windows of their house, and then they have to come back to the Cape to be ready to push the button and look at all the fuel lines and liquid oxygen connections and all that, that there's a lot more to it. When we talk about spacecraft, we remind everybody there are a tremendous number of assets and investments in the infrastructure on the ground. Back to you. Has the mission statement changed over the decades? Very little, but it's succinct now. Okay.

7:22We are the world's largest independent space interest organization, advancing space science and exploration so that citizens of Earth will be empowered to know the cosmos and our place within it. That's really catchy. Well, here's what it is. It's succinct. We empower citizens. I agree. I'm just saying it doesn't roll off the tongue. Well, it does if you're the CEO, yeah, before the elevator doors close. You are CEO and president. No, no. What are you? No, there's a bylaw rule. I'm not president. What are you? We have a separate, I'm CEO. The CEO? Yeah. I thought you were important. Exactly. So the president is an unpaid position.

8:01Did not know that. Yeah, that's a great tradition here at a nonprofit in California. You used to be president. I used to be vice president. Vice president, okay. I was equally unpaid as vice president. Okay. And so the board of directors is committed. And just notice everybody, our board is the real deal bunch of people. Our president's Bethy Elman. Dr. Elman is a professor at Caltech. She has a couple missions that she's a principal investigator, a PI on. And our vice president, Heidi Hamel, is one of the 20 most influential women astronomers in history. Brittany Schmidt is driving around submarines under the ice in Antarctica to prepare to go under the ice on Europa and Titan, or Enceladus, I mean.

8:46I was joking. Enceladus. One of the moons of Saturn. Another icy moon. Icy moon. Yeah, yeah. And so everybody, if you have ocean water for four and a half billion years, is there something alive? It happened here on Earth. Yeah. One of the defining missions of the 1970s was the Voyager. Oh, it still defines people. Here's the Voyager. I don't know if it's wide enough to see, but there's a replica of the record. Uh-huh. So this defined a generation of hope for our future space exploration. And Carl Sagan was particularly visible and known over that time. Yes. Yeah. Has it changed over that, over the decades?

9:25And I ask that because if I remember correctly, because I used to serve on the board of the Planetary Society and I cherish that, those years because it's where I met you. And it's where I met Andrewian, Carl Sagan's widow. Yes. I did not know either. I might have met her once or something, but we didn't know each other until we were both on the board. So these are important connections to be made. Yes, this is what we do. We connect people with the passion, beauty, and joy, the PB &J. PB &J, loving it. That's a Bill Nye-ism, PB &J. Yeah. It is. Yeah, but it's really caught on in the science education.

10:13But now, all that aside, peanut butter and jelly used to be a very common lunch treat. I remember there was a resistance to people in space relative to robots. And some of that might have just been the sphere of influence of Carl, Carl Sagan, where he just, who's a robot guy. From an engineering or scientific or science fiction critic of astrophysical observer. Which I count myself among the ranks of. Yes. Premier astrophysical observer. Note well, you can't get people to Europa. It's too flippin' far away and too cold and there's nowhere to walk and everybody's going to die. In that order. We built the spacecraft to go there as our proxies that we designed the instruments to be as human, to give us both a scientific perspective and a human perspective.

11:17But in the day, robots were nothing compared to today. In the day, I mean, 50 years ago. 50 years ago. Compared to robots then to today. Today, I'm walking down the street in LA. There's a car with no driver. Yes. No driver. Making left turns. It's turning, going straight. You may see the bumper sticker here in California on the Tesla that says, I'm probably not driving. It's pretty charming. Okay, so these are robots. It's a car robot in that sense, right? Yes, that's what I'm saying. What do you got here? So this is the Spirit Rover, a picture of the Spirit Rover, and the cameras— And it's solar panels.

11:53Yes, the cameras were set up to be—this is the expression—as high as a 10-year-old's eye. so that these cameras were put there so that humankind could imagine ourselves walking around, driving around on Mars. And talking about the planetary side, the lore that we promote, and I think you alluded to this earlier, is that Bruce Murray was a young guy in the 1960s, co-founder, working on the Mariner program. Mariner to Mars. Mars, which was the Ranger spacecraft repurposed to go. Ranger went to the moon to map the moon for Apollo. And as a kid, I would be in class, and we watched the moon come up.

12:36Yeah. Except in space, no sound. Yeah, some of the Rangers crash landed. Yeah, on purpose, purposefully. And to see what the lunar surface was like up close. So I forgot all about Mariner, because Mariner, I think, took the first pictures of Mars that revealed there were no canals. Yeah, sure. And so this Bruce Murray gets credit when you're talking to us at the Planetary Society for being the guy who insisted that spacecraft have cameras. Because people think scientists love pictures, but we don't give a rat's ass about a picture. Well, it depends on the picture. No, what I mean is there's much less science in a photo than the public is led to believe.

13:16We get chart recorders. We get magnetic, magnetometers. Geiger counters. Geiger counters. Magnetometers. Magnetometers. a spectra we got a lot of optical give me spectra over a photo any day but but if people get doe-eyed about how beautiful the universe is it changed the world pictures from space change the world we all at some point must confess to ourselves that that is the fact confess your brains out

13:56Greetings, StarTalkians, StarTalksters, StarTalklings. You know, space exploration is not guaranteed. It needs your support. That's why we have the Planetary Society. We are the world's largest nonprofit space advocacy organization connecting you with the grand adventure of exploring the cosmos. Become a member today. Check out planetary.org slash StarTalk.

14:31If we want to credit back to some of these founding fathers, I think Carl Sagan was the first scientist in his writings and in his, you know, in his appearances on television and to put you, just a regular person. A regular person, citizen of earth. You became a participant on that frontier. It was no longer let them go do anything and they'll report back later. No. Or spend some tax dollars on this. It probably doesn't have anything to do with you. Right, right, right. It all has something to do with you. Everything, you are part of this great process of discovery, this adventure. And Bruce Murray used to talk about the unknown horizon.

15:15Why are you guys sending spacecraft out to these extraordinary distant places? What are you going to find? We don't know what we're going to find. That's why we're sending the spacecraft. I think it's Einstein that's famously said, research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. That sounds good. Yeah, yeah, that's completely it. And Isaac Asimov, science doesn't begin with a hypothesis. It begins with, oh, that's funny. Oh, no, you got that wrong. Oh, help me out. Yeah, he said, very few scientific discoveries, if any, ever begin with Eureka. It's, that's funny. That's funny. Yeah.

15:48What is that? so we explore the planets so i another thing i credit the planetary society for and its philosophies and its outlook is turning objects in space into worlds worlds is a great word when you use the word world it's no longer a detached object from your imagination it really gets you here you got it man you hit the no neil that's absolutely right i don't know anyone else who any other organization or worldview that made that such an important point right on man so you guys you should join the planetary society another thing that i credit the enthusiasm of the planetary society for is when i was growing up the moons of planets like why would anyone give a rat's ass it's the moon look at the planet not the moons and then voyager goes out there gets pictures of the moons, and the moons are more interesting than the planets.

16:47There's a lot going on. A lot. They're all different. Io, Europa, Ganymede. Our moon is like the least interesting moon in the solar system. What's interesting about the moon is it's got a far side and a near side. That to me is amazing. And I asked Carl Sagan, why is the near side relatively smooth? I asked him this, as we say in middle school, to his face. and he said uh it's the earth's gravity enabled these impacts to get impact get accelerated yeah and so lava flowed more recently on the near surface than the far surface did that turn out to be true you tell me astrophysics gravity guy i've seen your gravity books man i dabbled in the three body i dabbled in the uh in the hamiltonian i think there's an argument that any asteroid that's headed in our direction would feel Earth's gravity, and you'd have a focusing effect towards - So Sagan back then said gravitational lens, which that's not how the term is used, but we'll all get through it.

17:50Yeah, yeah. No, your words include more than they leave out. So planets become more interesting. Moons become places to go and revisit. it but there was a whole other a whole other goal and that was the search for intelligent life still is in the universe oh man and i'm remembering how big a part of that was in my couple of years when i served on the board but then when i came off the board it you know it's less tangible right because we don't know if the aliens are out there and and are they hearing they're listening to us so where is tps the planetary society relative to the search for intelligence well we've let that go to this seti institute seti institute of course intelligence uh institute and they're based up in northern california yeah yeah right and they're very well endowed and they chip away at this problem they just got a boatload of money just well i went with well endowed you can go boatload of money spacecraft full of money yeah and so they will carry on a barge full of money a barge full of money they will carry on that research in their enabled best way possible and they have a whole suite of telescopes yeah uh originally funded by paul allen paul allen array yeah so these are telescopes that are sensitive to radio waves yeah on the assumption that if anyone is going to talk to us so they're going to use radio because radios penetrate clouds carl sagan was very well spoken about this about this logical place where water molecules would not absorb radio waves, logical place, logical frequency, where radio waves would not be absorbed by water vapor.

19:31And so if an alien civilization - Because there's water vapor across the universe as well. There's hydrogens everywhere. You could aim your intergalactic or interplanetary interstellar, interstellar message to go through the water hole, as he called it. Nice. Very cool term. Right. But all that aside, it is very reasonable that maybe in my lifetime, but in your kids' lifetime, somebody's going to find evidence of life on another world. And the logical places are going to be under the sands of Mars. Okay, but this would be microbial life. This is not— Well, yeah, but still, it would change the world.

20:14Then you would say to Mr. Microbe, Ms. Microbe, they, Microbe, do you have DNA? Are you a whole nother different— I get that, but that wasn't what SETI was about. No, no, it's still not. Right. SETI finding microbes, that's not their thing. That's fine. Knock yourselves out. That's not their thing. Because if we found such a signal, it would, dare I say it, change the world. And so SETI Institute keeps listening. We had an exhibit at the Hayden Planetarium before we rebuilt that was narrated by William Shatner. And it was about the search for life. And I remembered the quote because I thought it was a brilliant sentence.

20:49and he said it in his sort of pause acting way um the day we discover life will signal a change in the human condition that we cannot foresee or imagine that's pretty good no everybody i say all the time everybody will feel differently about being a living thing yes whether or not it's what we call intelligent oh yeah it would transform biology the logical question from the sands of mars there's another hypothesis that once life starts you can't stop it so if life started on mars away there's yes there's salty slush near the equator of mars we've kept almost warm by sun are there microbes living under the sand and if we found them do they have dna to wit was mars hit with an impactor, which happens all the time.

21:43Largo. Knocked a living thing on a rock off into space. It fell, exception space, no sound. These would be microbes stowing away in the nooks and crannies. Stowing away, trapped, stowing away. Land on Earth, and you and I are descendants of Martians. That is an extraordinary hypothesis. I think you more so than me. Yeah, well, it's an extraordinary hypothesis, but if it proved to be true, it would change the world. And so it is worth - That would be panspermia. Panspermia. It's worth investigating. And I just discourage all of you out there who want to go to Mars by yourselves on your own giant rocket.

22:26Just don't go to the same places. The same places that are interesting to you maybe are very likely the same places that are interesting to people studying astrobiology. That's just for anybody who happened to - Just anybody who happened to, used to be on the board of the Planetary Slayer before he or she was being sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission and is trying some political tactic to try to get a pardon someday. If you're that person, consider doing it a different way. Could be any one of a number of people for sure. Yes. There's nothing specific there. In the Viking missions, famously, the rocks came back, those pictures, depicted the Martian sky as blue, and the rocks were too pink.

23:11And it took them, I was at the 30th anniversary of this thing, and these guys were talking about it. It took them about a day and a half to realize that the cameras had been calibrated on Earth, and the pictures needed to be recalibrated. so they found intuitively that if you look at the shadow you can infer the color of the sky so those of you out there haven't sat through this go outside on a sunny day if you're in ithaca new york where i went to college there is no there's no sunny day scheduled in the next 10 years yes yeah then you make a shadow on something white like my shirt would be good and you'll see the shadow is gray to be sure but it's also ever so slightly light blue and that's because the sun is not the only source of light here on earth's surface the sky is the source of light looking at me nothing but orange skies on the other planet yeah so on mars the sky is orange or salmon colored or what have you and so they found that by looking at the shadow they could infer the color of the sky and then how much the colors of the rocks had been influenced on the camera on the images uh by the color of the sky that's very clever so what you're saying is to summarize whatever's going on in the shadow is not directly influenced by the sun it's directly influenced but it's not the only influence no no sorry you get you get an authentic background lighting from the rest of the sky yeah yeah so let's send a shadow caster to mars i was in a meeting a strato caster that's a that's the blues guitar and you i don't know if you are a strato cast of master but there is uh the idea was to send this post the stick to mars to cast a shadow and i was in the meeting and i said aren't there many many things to cast a shadow no we need it to fall in something precisely calibrated or well-known colors or grayscale.

25:14And so I was in the meeting. Now, my dad had the misfortune of being a prisoner of war in World War II for almost four years. And he told the story often of walking in Japan. In China at first and then Japan at the end of the war. They got, as Japanese influence shrunk, they got moved to the South Island of Japan for the last year of the war. but he would, by all accounts, stick a shovel handle in the soil and watch the shadow and reckon when it was lunchtime kind of thing. And so he came back. It's very sundial of him. That's right. So he wrote a book about sundials. He was the astronomy merit badge counselor.

25:54He made a sundial. That would be for the Boy Scouts. For the Boy Scouts. So I was in the meeting. They're going to send a metal stick to Mars to cast a shadow. So you have genetic proclivity. I'm just jumping out of my chair. You guys, we got to make that into a sundial. Okay, I'm glad you didn't put a shovel here for this. So they were all looking at me like, dude, it's the space program. Bill, I see you're wearing a watch. No, come on. It'll be like people who speak Klingon, except it'll be real. Mars 2004, two worlds, one sun. So Lou Friedman, one of our founders, came up with that. We were having dinner at a place that's now...

26:35It was Luis Trattoria. Now it's Cheesecake Factory. But he said, one sun, two worlds. In a few seconds, we all went, oh, no, no, two worlds, one sun. That's really inspirational. Light, shadows on Mars are cast by the same life-giving star as shadows on Earth. Now, wait, wait, there's more. On the edge, around the dial, is a message to the future. We built this instrument in 2003. It arrived here in 2004 to study the Martian environment, look for signs of water and life. And on the last of the four panels - I can't read this. What is it? Is it in Braille? What is it? It's in a younger person's font.

27:15Yeah. Okay. That's what it is. It says, on the last of the four, it says, to those who visit here, we wish a safe journey and the joy of discovery. And that's written in English, because, of course, aliens read English. Well, English, no, no. it's written for humans so other humans who yeah english is the language of aerospace even now and so and of aviation too yeah aviation yeah so it's it's optimistic people are going to be there and they're going to go up to that thing and look at it and think about the way we go up to the plymouth rock the way we go up to what have you yes right pyramid a uh michu picchu we go up and and go, wow, that's an extraordinary thing humans before us did.

27:59And it's optimistic, and it has the joy of discovery. And that has become PB &J, passion, beauty, and joy, J-O-D, joy of discovery. That's become a phrase with me and the staff.

28:28Hello, I'm Alexander Harvey, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson.

28:48tell me about literal political advocacy because it's one thing to just celebrate it and but at some point somebody's got to show up in washington this is what we do so uh we've been asked to testify oh heck yes uh-huh so what we have been able to do uh is hire two guys who are just really into this and are excellent at it so we have one guy who studies policy this sounds like you're talking about lobbyists no so lobby a lobbyist is a paid person and he has to have a license and this and that we are advocates so what we do is get our members 40 plus members around the world with 40 ,000 members around it.

29:33Well said. 40K. Yes. 40 plus K. Close to 50K people around the world. This is evidence I'm paying attention to what you're saying. Yes, thank you. I just want you to know that. That's why I interrupt you when I pay attention. And I appreciate it, Neil. It's very appreciated much. The 40 members of the Planetary Society. 40 ,000 members plus almost 50 ,000. Some weeks it is over 50. Yes. We have this nonprofit problem continually. Yes. People fall off. You have to re-engage them. All that aside, we send letters and emails to members of Congress and the Senate advocating for space missions that we believe are in the best interest of humankind and the best interest of making discoveries on these other worlds that will affect our world.

30:18And the one that we're all talking about this week is the Europa Clipper, a replica shown here. Because it launched, right. And I testified in front of Congress in 2013 about the importance of this mission where we're looking for signs of life on another world and or organic material from on another world to learn more about our own world. And we do it for inspirational, wonderful joy of discoveries reasons. But it's also if you want to be the world leader in technology, you invest in space exploration. I testified once, but I felt like it was going into a black hole. Well, that's a black hole.