Stars Ask Neil To Save The Universe

24:17Oh.

24:18Neil deGrasse Tyson:So I think fatback is the between state of existence of bacon and lard. Yeah, basically. What do you think of that? Yeah. That's a pretty accurate. Okay. Yeah. All right. Not to be confused with the pork belly. Yes. Which is just the opposite of the fatback. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But go ahead. So there's salt in so many places on earth because you just need a lake that has been around long enough to become salty. and then the lake evaporates and leaves a salt residue and then it gets buried. And we have on another episode, we learn that the crystalline state of atoms or molecules is the lowest energy state that it can acquire so that once it hits that state, it's that way basically forever.

25:04Neil deGrasse Tyson:Basically. All right? So that's why you can dig up salt. That's why salt is in mines where the salt's been there for a million years. A million years, yeah. There it is. Why is it pink then? Oh. says the man who today is wearing a pink polo shirt. My favorite color. You look good in it. I like it. Yeah, I don't agree. You don't like it? No. What's wrong? You don't have to wear it. So it comes from impurities in the pure crystal lattice of the salt molecule, which is sodium chloride. Okay. And in this case, the impurity is an iron oxide. Rust. So it's infusion. Oh, okay. What do we call that? Okay.

25:44Hassan Minaj, it's rust. It's rust. You're eating. You're eating rusty salt. Oh, rusty-ass salt. That's what you're eating. So you're telling me. Would you pay for that salt? Yeah. How much would you pay for that rusty-ass salt? All right. That's making me feel slightly better. It's centuries of crushed flamingos. Oh, I like flamingos. I like that. Yeah, but they have to get pink first. Well, they've got to eat. They've got to eat. They've got to eat the fish. The little shrimp and krill. Krill gives them the keratin. So they've got to eat that first. And they become pink. Then they become pink.

26:12Then they get crushed. And then you get your pink sisal. Thank you for that new hypothesis.

26:16Neil deGrasse Tyson:First they have to hike to the Himalayas. Which they, unless the flamingos ain't going to the Himalayas. I promise you. Hilarious. These are trace amounts of this iron oxide that's in there. And you can ask, well, how much is in there? Right. Is it a good source of iron? Yes, it is a source of iron. But so many other foods you eat in a day, especially fresh vegetables. Absolutely. are excellent sources of iron far beyond what you're getting in the salt. So while it might look pretty in a transparent salt shaker, salt grinder, which I have. Of course. Of course. I wouldn't be so gushy to put my salt in it.

27:01Neil deGrasse Tyson:To buy it on the premise that you are somehow healthier for it is an overstatement of its nutritional value. You're ripping yourself off. To you. Yeah. So salt is overly processed, and pink Himalayan salt is just lazy salt. So, correct. So other salts might have some tinge to them, but they refine it to remove the other minerals. Exactly. And you're left with pure salt, sodium chloride. Yeah, because everybody wants, you know, for table salt, it's supposedly, you know, white is better. You know, because, like, all right, let's be real, right? Anyway. But if you went back in the day and you got salt, it was gray.

27:48Yeah, I have gray salt as well. Yeah, your salt was gray. And that's like the most natural salt you're going to get.

27:53Neil deGrasse Tyson:So, yeah, and Hasan Minhaj, we love him. And I was on his podcast. Okay. And I just thought I can't exit his podcast. He was on your live show. Yes, he was. Yes. He was on StarTalk Live. Yeah. Really smart guy. And I first saw him through his appearances on The Daily Show. Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, Hassan, something else about your pink salt from the Himalayas? Other salt that is white or otherwise colorless, if you look at it. Colonized that Himalayan salt and went in there and took that Himalayan salt and said, listen, y 'all pink salt, y 'all going to understand something.

28:34Neil deGrasse Tyson:Chuck is still in therapy. I know, but he seems quite happy. He is completely happy. Anytime I can get a chance, that's all I'm saying. Next up. Hey, my name's Josh Sher, and I'm the host of Last Meals on Mythical Kitchen, and I have a question for Neil. Since the beginning of time, humans have been manipulating plants via crossbreeding and later GMOs. What of the plants that we eat do you think is most currently lacking and needs an update? Oh, I love that. I love that. There's hardly any food in the grocery store that has not been genetically modified from its original form. There's almost no food on earth that has not been genetically modified.

29:17That's basically true.

29:19Neil deGrasse Tyson:There are a few things like wild-caught tuna that's not been genetically modified. But almost everything else, we have modified it. Right. And even if we haven't modified it, nature genetically modifies itself. All the time. Just think of corn. Just think of the original corn. Original corn's this big. Yeah. And now we're - Now they're this big. And people say, oh, I want natural corn. Yeah. I don't want GMO corn. Oh, you want natural corn? You want some malnutrition. I don't know what you want. Some corn that you could eat 18 of them and you'd still be hungry. Right, exactly. So the only difference is GMOs, what we think of as GMOs, are accomplishing the same thing that we did in artificial selection.

30:01Neil deGrasse Tyson:Correct. But we just do it in a laboratory. We just do it in a lab. And both of those are what nature does all by itself. How else are you going to get from single-celled organisms to elephants? Absolutely. Somebody's doing some serious genetic modification. But sometimes you can just leave plants and they will do it themselves. Yeah. They'll actually crossbreed. Flowers will. Do it. Yeah. Do it. It's crazy. do it till you're satisfied. I say, well, do it. That's a 70s disco. Oh, man, that's hilarious. Yeah, they'll crush me with whatever they might. In a limiting case, I'm told by experts in the field that there are apple trees where different trunks of the tree are differently grafted so that the same tree can give you multiple kinds of apples.

30:47Oh, that makes sense. Yeah.

30:49Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, that's like - I love that. It's like nature. I'm going to make my own cornucopia. Right, exactly. I want a Fuji Gala Granny Smith tree. So I have to pick a plant that I think is in dire need of some more genetic modification. Right? Okay. Let me think about that. Do you have a, are you thinking one? I'm trying. I'm just racking my brains. Mainly it's vegetables to give them a flavor that allow kids to want to eat them. Oh. Ooh, that's good. Chocolate flavored broccoli. Chocolate broccoli. Oh, we'll call it Choc-o-ly. Yeah. We're in. There you go. It's chocolate broccoli.

31:38It's chocolate broccoli.

31:40Neil deGrasse Tyson:Chocolate broccoli. It's a reference from 1980's Saturday Night Live. All right. True. Very true. Very true. I wasn't aware of that. That's right. I am now. So, let's agree on that. That broccoli, the famous food to be hated by children, we need to get them to like that food, and we need to infuse it with something we know they will like. That they will like. So, let's get the chocolate gene. Right. Either that or we work on the jelly belly, multiple flavors, and then you can choose which one you can. In the broccoli? Yeah. Okay. Oh, interesting. Infusing that into the broccoli. Different florets.

32:18Neil deGrasse Tyson:Right. Oh. How do you like my vocabulary? I'm good with that. Different florets would have different flavors. Yeah. So you'd have multicolored broccoli. Nice. With different flavors. Now you go. The kids would be eating that up. Okay, there it is. We can't have kids eating rainbow broccoli. Yeah, on a serious note, a whole other reason for GMO plants, which is more broadly called genetic engineering, is you can genetically engineer plants, for example, to have two crops in one season. If it's early maturing, and then that doubles your yield. Your yield. Okay? Right. Or you can have one that can survive colder temperatures.

32:59Neil deGrasse Tyson:Right. Or drought. Or drought resistant. Exactly. So they don't evaporate as much water out of their surfaces. So there are many reasons why one would do this. Yeah. And by the way, that's going to become far more necessary as the planet... Oh, they're already working on taking native species of plants and trees from heat, very hot areas that are drought resistant. And taking them over. And growing them and developing them. So yeah, they're way ahead of the story. Yeah, it has to be because crop yields are already suffering because of climate crisis and it's only going to get worse. There was a controversial GMO where they got some gene from a fish that thrives in sub-zero temperatures of salt water, so like 30 degrees, 31 degrees.

33:46Neil deGrasse Tyson:Right. And they put that in a tomato, which prevents tomatoes from freezing in the first frost. Right, the frost. They're frost resistant. Frost resistant. Yeah. Correct. And people freak us out, I don't want my fish in a tomato. And rather than say, oh my gosh, all life is connected. Exactly. Wait, we, that's what. No Franken-mato. Not only are fish our ancestors, there's an earlier ancestor that's the ancestor of both animals and plants. Correct. And green plants. Yes. So what a celebration of life that actually is. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

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36:09Next up. Hi, I'm Rikki Lindholm. I play Ramona on Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. And here is my question. What is the most misunderstood concept in the universe and why do people keep getting it wrong?

36:23Neil deGrasse Tyson:Ooh, love that. So, Rikki Lindholm was an intermittently recurring character in The Big Bang Theory. Okay. And now she's a regular in Stewart Fails to Save the Universe. So she plays a most excellent geek in the series. Once again, a celebration of a culture, really. The geek is geekiverse. Yeah. Yeah, completely. So, that's an excellent question. and I would say what people persistently get wrong is that they put sound in space. I'm going to say, yeah, that's a good one. And then not giving it up. Right. I go up and slap them and they'll do it again the next time. Yeah. Okay. There's an explosion and you hear the explosion when you see it.

37:10Which makes it doubly wrong.

37:14Neil deGrasse Tyson:You don't even hear lightning when you see thunder on Earth. That's correct. And now there's an explosion out in space and the star blows up and you hear the explosion at the same time? Yeah. With everything that's going on in the world, that's what annoys you? No. In a movie where they're trying to get their science right. Yeah. Okay. That's right. All right. So Chuck, I remember you saying that the TIE fighter, I just happened to have a TIE fighter. Of course. Here in my office, that these make sounds in the vacuum of space. Yes.

37:53Neil deGrasse Tyson:And it's exactly the same sound they made in Earth's, in a planetary atmosphere. In a planetary atmosphere, yes. Same with their cannons, you know. And yeah, out in the vacuum of space. So Ricky, that's my biggest issue. Yeah. And I've just given up. People just get it wrong. People just get it wrong. What else? There's got to be something else. You want another one? Okay. You've got more than one itch that you want to scratch. Okay, here's a more subtle one. Okay. People think that any time you are in space, you are weightless. That is not true. Right. It's not true. If your engines are firing, you have weight inside the craft.

38:32Neil deGrasse Tyson:And if you want to go anywhere, you're going to fire your engines. So if you turn off your engines, then you're coasting, falling into wherever you're going. and since you're in free fall, only then are you weightless. Right. And the movie Ad Astra to getting back and forth to the moon in a matter of hours rather than three days, three days is the coasting time that it takes to get there. Three days. In other words, you fire your engines, shut them off, you coast until the moon's gravity does the rest. Does the rest. Yeah. Okay, and you're coasting the whole time. You're weightless the whole time.

39:10Neil deGrasse Tyson:But if you're in a hurry and you don't want to wait three days, you want to get there in three hours, you're burning your rockets the whole time. You're burning your rockets, you are not weightless. And in that movie, they showed the burning rockets, and inside they're all just floating around. It's like, no, no. So what's the prohibitor on burning engines all the way to the moon? Is it the weight? How big is your fuel tank? Exactly, yeah. Yeah, that's the weight. Entirely. So a real future would be filling stations in space. Then you could burn all the way to the filling station and then burn again.

39:41Neil deGrasse Tyson:Solar powered? Sure, but the farther away from the sun you go, the less intense the sunlight is by the inverse square law of light that we talked about on a prior episode. That's correct. With my butter gun. That's correct. Google it. Butter gun. Star talk. So, and the show that gets it correct all the time is The Expanse. Yes. They get all the accelerations correct. They do. Two thumbs up. Yep. All right, next up. Hi, Neil. Mel, I've always had this question for you. Have you yourself had an alien encounter? Oh. Oh, we know who that is. She did not identify herself. Yes, but you can tell by her voice.

40:20Neil deGrasse Tyson:Maybe she didn't need to. Yes, that's how big she is. Mm-hmm. And she had a little bit of accent there? Oh. No, she doesn't have an accent. Okay, fine. You have an accent. Very good. She does not. You got a number here. We can kick your ass. Very good, very good. Watch what you say. This is America, Jack. Bash a Brit day. Another Bash a Brit day. So I'm delighted to answer that question. And? I'm not authorized to comment further. There you go. I don't know who this guy is. So do we end up with, is it the Fermi paradox, where the aliens are probably here anyway, or why would they go this far just to?

40:53Neil deGrasse Tyson:I know. So the question was, have I encountered an alien? Mm-hmm. The answer is no. But it's not for want of trying. But have you done so not knowing that you had? But that doesn't count, because that means that maybe all of us have done so not knowing. Exactly. Then my answer would not be, if I don't know, then you don't know. No, I agree. I'm just saying, do you think the possibility is that we, you, Chuck, everybody watching and listening has had an alien encounter but has no knowledge of the fact that it happened? Okay. So if that's true for everyone, then it's true for no one. Yeah. And by the way, if aliens are here unannounced and they're observing us, it is because from wherever they came, there are more of them coming.

41:47And that is why they don't want to let us know that they are here, which means we are totally screwed. So I don't know these people who are just like, well, they got to be here. They have to. Well, you're a dumbass, because quite frankly, if they are, that is the end of us. because anybody who can reach us is so much more advanced than we could ever hope to be that when they come here, they're like, yeah, this is ours now. Hope y 'all don't know. Only if they behave as we have. Well, my point is this. The only reason they would conceal the fact that they are here is because they do behave the way we do.

42:24So we've got grabby aliens. What about if they're not grabby aliens, but they've got a real twisted sense of humor? That could happen. Now that'd be awesome. How about that? Well, then I'd be heartbroken that I didn't meet them, to be honest. And I got one for you. I got one for you. Think about us and our sense of humor and how it can go in different levels. Just imagine an alien like that.

42:44Neil deGrasse Tyson:I spent a few pages on this in my book. All right. Take me to your leader. A couple of pages. I'm about halfway through that. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. The book is not very long. I'm a slow reader. Okay. The book is like this. The book is this thing. Okay. Anything you want to do to make me feel better? I have a beginner's version. So I try to think about what we look like to the aliens. Because they would find it intriguing, I think, that we have these sounds we project forward, vibrating air molecules that reach another person, and that they know our thoughts for having done so. If they don't otherwise interact with sound, the way we do.

43:27Neil deGrasse Tyson:That's kind of interesting. Then what might be more interesting is there are some sounds that come out of our mouths that are single syllables that could completely offend another person. They're called curse words. Okay. That's weird. A single syllable comes out and the other person is crying because of it. So then, so we'd have to teach the alien that this is just cussing. The first thing you do if you're in another country is learn the curse words. Yeah. The first thing that happens is you learn the rude words. No. The first thing I do is learn their food, okay? I don't know what countries you go to or what you are after.

44:08Neil deGrasse Tyson:Okay. I'm taking eating for granted. Okay. But the first words you learn in another language if you're there are the swear words. I have done that. Yeah. You got to learn both so that when you eat the food, you can go, damn, that's true. Both. So, all I'm saying is, it would be kind of cool if the aliens also had single-syllable curse words. We'd be visited by cussing aliens. That would just be funny. Gleep you! If you think about it, if they've got enough technology to transverse... Universal alien speak? Gleep? Gleep. I mean, I think the technology to transverse large tracks of galaxies, galaxies, universe, and arrive here, they're not going to need to learn a language.

44:54They just bump. If they press, if they don't, they're going to have access to be able to interpret everything.

45:01Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah, they either did learn a language quickly, and they'll just speak English if they land in an English-speaking country, or they read our minds. You know, that could happen. That's it. because urges and emotions and thoughts don't require words to know that they exist within us. That's interesting that they don't need the audible language. They can just go straight through. Right, exactly, and know the feeling and know the attitude. So I burned some pages on this. My favorite one is you befriend the alien. Okay. Then after a certain number of hours, you say, excuse me, I have to lay down horizontally and go semi-comatose for a third of the Earth's rotation.

45:40Neil deGrasse Tyson:Right. and the alien says, what? And you say, don't you sleep too? So sleep, it's just what we do. Yeah, it's a weird thing. It's a weird, it's completely weird. I know, but it has to be vital to us, otherwise we'll have evolved not to need it. Right, and you're so vulnerable, like asleep. Yeah, you're not eating, procreating, and you're in danger. Right. So I think a lot about what this might be like. And as a result, I carry some scientific tools to present to an alien in the first encounter, because that would be language we have in common. Mathematics. Science and math, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But otherwise, yeah.

46:21Neil deGrasse Tyson:Pythagoras. Pythagorean theorem, most certainly, yeah. So, yeah, I'm sad that I've not met aliens, but it's not for want of trying. There's a book called - Where to find them? No, a book, How to Avoid Being Abducted by Aliens. Just be. How to Avoid an Alien Abduction. I read that book cover to cover and I disobeyed every instruction within it. And they still didn't want you. Don't put it that way, Chuck. Didn't want me. So, and that was, of course, Emily Blunt. Okay. Who was in Devil Wears Prada. Right. As Emily. Yeah. And she was also Mary Poppins, one of my favorite characters. Oh, okay. Big shoes to fill.

47:09Neil deGrasse Tyson:I know. I know. Big shoes to fill. No, she's great. And dare I say. Dare. Dare. Dare I say. Mm-hmm. And I'm not one to do this. I think she gave an Academy Award winning performance in Disclosure Day. Wow. Given the range of acting she needed to display. Wow. She's inhabited by the spirit of these aliens, and so her character is different. All right, now I got to see the movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very cool. Emily Blunt, thank you. Emily. Guys, we've got time for one more. All right. Here we go. Hi, I'm Kevin Sussman. I play Stuart on Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. Here's my question for you, Neil.

47:50If time travel were possible, could it be used to travel long distances using quantum physics? Okay.

48:03Neil deGrasse Tyson:So that's that is the Stuart character that was just lifted up from Big Bang Theory, and this next show pivots on him and his exploits, and he brings his friends. Well, not according to that question, it doesn't. It just sounds like he wants to save on air. So if you can time travel, then it doesn't matter how long it takes you to get somewhere. Nope. You just time travel back into your past. There you go. And you're back to where you started. to where you started, but in a different place. Right. Seems to me. It's kind of cool. It'd be kind of cool. Are we using kind of like a Stargate portal?

48:42Neil deGrasse Tyson:You could, but I'm just saying, even if you didn't, you just go back in time to when you didn't burn all those years. Yeah. That'd be great. Yeah, yeah. So what's the theory about traveling back and traveling forward in time? Yeah, so we know how to travel forward in time. We don't really know how to travel backwards in time. Although Richard Gott III wrote a book called Time Travel in Einstein's Universe. It's in our archives. You can dig it up. Okay. A conversation I had. He's a friend and colleague. We've co-written three books together back when I was at Princeton. And germinated from back when I was in Princeton.

49:23Neil deGrasse Tyson:So traveling backwards, you get the paradox problem. And hence, Stephen Hawking suggested one day we will stumble on or find on purpose the time travel protection conjecture, which prevents you from traveling back in time to kill your parents, which would then prevent you from having been born to go back in time, kill your parents. Right. That's a paradox that he wants to avoid. So either it's not possible at all or there's some way to do it but using other universes. No, that makes sense. That's kind of cool. Yeah, if only James Cameron, I'm glad nobody told James Cameron this or we would have never had the Terminator.

50:07Neil deGrasse Tyson:Plus, you don't have to kill the people. You just have to prevent them from having sex in the moment that would have produced you. True. Have sex 10 minutes later. Right, and guess what? You'd probably be another you. Yeah. Wow. So he's the geekiest one of the whole series. Yeah. Well, I might have to check out Stewart Fails to Save the Universe, the only show about failure that is good to watch. So, I think that's all the time we have. We have more, though. We have more. I'm sure we've got plenty of more stars that want to ask questions. All right. So. It's been fun. Always good to have you guys.

50:46Neil deGrasse Tyson:Likewise. This is Neil deGrasse Tyson StarTalk Special Edition. Right here. From my office. The Aiden Planetarium. Until next time. Keep looking up.

51:15We'll be right back.

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