February 28, 2025 • 49 mins
On this encore episode of The Middle we've got Neil deGrasse Tyson with us as our personal astrophysicist for the hour - discussing all things space exploration, the cosmos and more. The Middle's house DJ Tolliver joins as well, plus callers from around the country. #space #elclipse #spacetravel #blackhole #wormhole #mars #neildegrassetyson
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Middle.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Jeremy Hobson, and we've been focusing on some pretty
heavy topics on the middle lately, trying to keep up
with all the news. So this hour we're going to
take a little break from the politics and turn our
gaze to outer space the cosmos. We're dipping into our
archives to bring you one of our favorite shows with
one of our favorite guests. That would be astrophysicist Neil
(00:26):
deGrasse Tyson. We talked to him last year or on
the time of the eclipse, but turns out not that
much has changed in space in the last year, so
this show still holds. So before we get to our conversation.
Last week on the show, we dove into the remote
work versus in person work question that employers and employees
around the country are wrestling with. We got a lot
(00:46):
of great calls on that, and here are some of
the ones that came in after the show.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Hi, it's Jane from Conquered mass There are significant impacts
on climate if we reduce commuting, we reduce traffic. We've
reduced people sitting in traffic, so anything we can do
to reduce commuting and reduce pollution helps with climate change.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I hear me.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
I'm calling from Windsor, Ontario, Canada. My name's Mark, and
I just was wondering, you know, whether or not this
remote work has really reduced the opportunity for people to
organize and you know, co miserate about their work and
actually you know, collaborate on you know, making demands from
(01:30):
their employer.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
Hi, I'm Asia. I'm calling from Illinois. I work remotely
in another state. I think it really depends on what
you do. My work is entirely on a computer. So
if that's the case, I think it does make sense
we're able to attract talent from all across the country.
I think it's opened up a lot of doors.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Well, thanks to everyone who called in. And you can
listen to that entire show anytime because The Middle is
also available as a podcast in partnership with iHeart Podcasts
on the iHeart app or wherever you listen to podcasts.
We're also available anytime on YouTube. By the way, subscribe
to our channel. So let's get right to our conversation
with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. He's the author of a
number of books, including Merlin's Tour of the Universe and
(02:14):
Starry Messenger. He's also the director of the Hayden Planetarium
at the American Museum of Natural History. Turns out he's
also a fan of the concepts of this show The Middle.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, well, just in the sense that, let me take
a more cosmic view. You walk around and there are
people who have hold very strongly held perspectives or opinions
or views so strong that they'll dig in their heels
and you can't even really have a conversation with them
now unless I'm just an old man on the porch
(02:45):
on a rocking chair saying, oh, back in my day.
But let me say, back in my day, if you
had an opinion that differed from someone else, they wouldn't
attack you for that. Ye they would say, oh, what
is that opinion? And then you, oh, that's different. How
about what do you think of this? And then there'd
be an exchange of ideas, and then you went out
and had a beer. Right now, the climate is very
(03:07):
different for that. If social media is a platform of expression,
let's take it as an example, and I post any
opinion at all, it gets attacked by people whose opinion differs.
And I find that odd because it means they want
everyone else's opinion to be exactly aligned with theirs. And
there's a word for those systems of nations and God,
(03:29):
they called dictatorships where everybody's opinion is exactly aligned. So so,
so what I cherish is not so much the middle.
I cherish points of view that render both extremes obsolete.
So that's is that really the middle or is it
another dimension that you ascend to and then look at
(03:50):
what people are saying, thinking and doing and say, have
you considered it this other way? Well, and that's why
we like that. Isn't the all compromise involves another outlook
another That's why.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
That's where we also like to say, say that the
show is about meeting in the middle, which is the
other way to use that word. You write in your
Bookstory Messenger that Bill Clinton kept a moon rock on
a coffee table in his office. In case a political
argument broke out, he would remind people that the rock
came from the moon. Why do you think that being
reminded of our place in the universe puts things into
(04:22):
perspective like that?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
It works every time. I mean the subtitle of the book,
it's a starry Messenger cosmic perspectives on civilization. So this
story was communicated to me directly by Bill Clinton, and
I was able to have an extended conversation with him
about that. He would be in the Oval Office and
they have a little table often used their photographs of
people seated around this little coffee table thing in the middle,
(04:47):
and if there was a tense moment, he would point
to and say, do you know this rock is from
the moon, And everyone just really stopped and then they
would say the moon. Oh, nineteen sixty ninety, Apollo, we
went to the moon. We brought it back. And it
resets the conversation and allows you to say, is there
another way to look at what's going on from above?
(05:08):
And by the way, are you really meeting in the middle. No,
you're meeting on another platform in another vista that is
neither where you are or the other person are, nor
anywhere in between. You've ascended to look back at what
all of these ideas are, to reassess what you think
is important and what is not. A cosmic perspective has
(05:30):
that power over you.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Why do you think that it's so difficult right now
to have that conversation with somebody who you disagree with
when as you say, back in your day, and by
the way, back in my day too, and I grew
up in the eighties it was different than it is now.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Yeah, I hate saying back in my day or or
the one the kids of today. I don't want to
be that guy. Let me just say, I don't want
to be that guy. But I don't know that I
have a good answer for that. What I do is
in the age of search engines, no matter what your
idea is, you see, you might have been just the
(06:07):
lone person thinking something in a community, and maybe it
was weird, but it was pretty harmless. Now you type
in your crazy idea and you will find every other
person in the world who has that crazy idea, which
can give you a false sense of authenticity, a false
sense of what is objectively true or false in the world.
(06:29):
And why would there be so many people who think
Earth is flat? They found each other and they think
they're onto something, whereas when they were isolated among other
rational thinkers, that the idea maybe didn't last so long.
It wasn't magnified by the knowledge that other people shared it.
So this could be the reason.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Let's get to the phones, because We've got a lot
of calls coming in Olivia. Is with us from North
Las Vegas, Nevada, Olivia. Welcome to the middle. Go ahead
with Neil de grasse Tyson.
Speaker 6 (06:59):
Hi, I mean Olivia, I'm told, and I'm from North
ast Vegas. Before I get into the question, I just
wanted to say, I am a big science nerd, and
I'm a really big fan of viewers. But what specific
struggles and frustration do you frequently have when trying to
communicate the importance of science and critical thinking? Because it
(07:19):
seems that there are just some people that don't get it.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Thank you Olivia for that, Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I got into trouble with fellow educators when I once
tweeted that the teacher, the occasional teacher who complains quote
the kids just don't want to learn. Maybe instead should
be declaring maybe I suck at my job. So if
(07:46):
you have a challenge communicating with someone, it's all too
easy to blame them for not wanting to listen, rather
than to ask yourself, is there a new way to
approach this topic? So what I try to do is
I try to pose questions back to the person. How
about Bigfoot. If you type Bigfoot into the search engines,
up will come this was it nineteen seventy two, seventy one,
(08:09):
a Super eight film of this creature walking behind you know,
the in the distance, behind the tree. That's the first
thing that comes up. So consider that everyone today has
a high resolution camera, yet we do not have better
images than that. So all manner of life experience could
(08:29):
only be communicated through what you would say is your
eyewitness testimony, which the world has a very false sense
of its truth.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Let's go to Hannah, who's in ann Arbor, Michigan. Hannah,
welcome to the middle.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Go ahead.
Speaker 7 (08:42):
Hi, I'm a big fan, and I know you've had
a really great career in academia and research, but also
as a public figure. So I was wondering if you
think that scientists can or should also kind of spread
awareness about their fields through public awareness, kind of like
you have.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah, it's so I can tell you there's a lot
of nuances here, and let me sort of compress it
so we can get even more questions in the short
time that we have together. That in when you're formally
trained as a scientist, nowhere in there is there any
training to communicate, not verbally writing. Yes, you have to
(09:21):
be able to write, but that's most people can do that.
Not only that, there's some percent of my colleagues who
we now now that we have neurodiverse vocabulary, some percentage
are on the autism spectrum. And we might have said
asperger is in a day, but I think that's been
merged to the to the autism umbrella. And if that's
(09:44):
what you are, you're perfectly happy in the lab and
you don't want to talk to anybody, so you shouldn't
be forced to. So there there's enough of us who
have energy to do so that do do. So. I'm
visible because I have like big platforms, but if you dig.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
It, well, you're also visible because you you are we.
I mean, I am the stepchild of two physicists and
both of them have talked about you as a as
a communicator. That is very unusual in the scientific community.
They scientists have scientists brains and you have both.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah. So, and I'm saying it's not there's no force
to nurture it on the route to the PhD, which
is the entry gate to to research science. So not
only is it not nurtured, you can be a great
scientist and have no social skills at all, right, right,
So so that means that this task it would be
(10:41):
unrealistic to require it of everyone. But I can tell
you if you go, if you search for science popularizers
on YouTube, the list is growing. And I'm very happy
to see that, because one day I'm going to like
step out the back door when there's enough of everyone
else on the landscape, and then you won't even miss me.
Everybody else is doing that, and it'll be the natural
(11:04):
course of what you'd expect in all the professions, if
not by all the scientists, many of them.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Stand by right there in the old Grass ties it
because Tolliver, we are actually in space already right now
on the satellite getting out to the stations for distribution.
Speaker 8 (11:17):
Absolutely well, if anyone is listening out there. This is
part of what was enclosed in the nineteen seventy seven
launch of the Voyager two spacecraft on the so called
Golden Record, which had examples of human music and language,
as well as a message from then UN Secretary General
Kurt Waldheim.
Speaker 9 (11:31):
I sent greetings on behalf of the people of our planet.
We step out of our Solar system into the universe.
Seeking only peace and friendship, to teach if we are
called upon to be taught, if we are fortunate. We
know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants
(11:52):
are about a small part of this immense universe that
surrounds us, and it is with humility and hope or
dead we take this step.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
We'll be right back with more of the middle. This
is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson. If you're just tuning,
in the Middle is a national call in show. We
are focused on elevating voices from the middle politically, geographically, philosophically,
or maybe you just want to meet in the middle.
This hour, we're bringing you an encore edition of our
conversation with renowned astrophysicist Neil de grass Tyson about all
(12:24):
things space related. Our conversation continued with a caller, David
from Columbia, South Carolina, who had an interesting question for
Neil about the evolution of dogs.
Speaker 10 (12:34):
Yeah, I've just recently seen some reals of his talking
about dogs and how affectionate they are and how just
all their characters and where did they come from in
the evolutionary chain.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Neils, He's a good question. Okay, So we devoted almost
an entire episode of Cosmos to that very question back
when I hosted the series, and the name of the
episode it's called and the Wolf Shall Become the Shepherd,
and we chronicle the sequence of basically the domestication of wolves. Basically,
(13:11):
we take wolves and say no, you're too violent, or
you're too mean, or you're too and you look at
the litter that any wolf gives and you see which
are the tamer ones among them. And what they did
back then was simply kill the rest, and you raise
the tame ones, and you keep doing this through multiple
generations until they are what you want them to be.
(13:32):
So basically dogs were the first GMOs. We genetically modified
wolves to become dogs. We did it with cats as well.
We've been modifying the genes of food and other animals
ever since we've had the power to do so.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
By the way, Cosmos was a fantastic show. And I
remember another episode that you did that was sort of
talked about the discovery of infrared light. Looking out of
the infrared light, how we can see into space and
see different things that we can't see with the naked eye.
And I wonder, as you think about all the ways
that we look out into space. The light we can see,
(14:06):
the infrared light, now gravitational waves that we can detect.
What do you think has been the most effective way
to determine what's out there in space so far, Well.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
It's been light light, because anything that's hot will glow.
Of course, there are things in the universe that are
not hot, like black holes and dark gas clouds and things,
but where all the action is tend to be things
that are hot enough to glow. So if you have
a device that can detect glowing objects then, which we
call telescopes, right, then it gives you access not only
(14:40):
to nearby objects, but objects clear across the universe, and
you learn that they glow in bands of light that
are outside of the human eyes. It was hard for
some people to recognize that there are things going on
in the world that you just biologically cannot know without
the help of scientific instruments. In fact, when Herschel discovered
(15:04):
infrared light, he called it light unfit for vision, and
that was the only way he could describe that. It
was light beneath the red, so we call it infrared
less than red, and beyond that we found X rays,
gamma rays, radio waves, and so the entire electromagnetic spectrum
(15:25):
is our primary means of decoding the universe. And as
you correctly noted, we can now detect gravitational waves. These
are when things go bump in the night, very massive
things go bump in the night, like black holes. We're
working on a nutrino telescope. It's another kind of particle
that's not light, but it's a particle that hails from
the earliest formation of stars in the universe. And so
(15:49):
these are windows figurative, but I think of them as
almost as literal windows that we open up and say, oh, now,
this is another aspect of the universe coming to us.
When we prefer acted ultraviolet telescopes black holes, it turns
out the material spiraling in gives off copious amounts of ultraviolet.
You turn on an ultra violet telescope, bam, there are
(16:11):
all your black holes in the galaxy. In the galaxy.
So it's it's literally and figuratively opening windows. So it's
by far our most potent tool that we've had access
to since Galileo.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Let's go to Christian, who's calling from Fort Myers, Florida. Christian,
Welcome to the middle, go ahead with Neil the Grass Tyson.
Speaker 11 (16:30):
When are we going to be able to habit the
exo planet? It's like the Red Earth, like an exo
planet that goes by that name where red.
Speaker 12 (16:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 11 (16:43):
What's exactly the name of it, but it's slogan is
Everything's vetter.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
On the other side, Christian, can I just ask you
before we go to Nail the Grass Tyson for the answer,
how old you are?
Speaker 5 (16:53):
Twelve?
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Awesome? Thank you for calling in. Okay, Neil the Grass
Tyson your answer.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
I'm not sure what it means to be read on
the other side, but I can tell you that the
catalog of exoplanets that we now have is rising through
six thousand and in twenty years ago, nineteen ninety five,
that number was zero. So we've been going like gangbusters.
It's been a cottage industry within my field. And we're
(17:19):
finding planets of all stripes, planets close to their host star,
far away planets around hot stars, around cooler stars. They're
still hot, they're just cooler than the hot stars. We're
finding planets in the Goldilocks zone, which is where we
might more likely find liquid water, and we know that
liquid water on Earth is crucial for life as we
(17:41):
know it, because every place we find liquid water on Earth,
there's life. Even the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea it's
clearly named by people who didn't have access to a microscope.
It doesn't have macroscopic bony fishes in it, but it's
got other life forms in it. So the catalogs are growing.
So I don't know specifically what the reference would be
(18:04):
to read on the other side, but I can tell
you that there's enough planet exo planets out there that
if there's any variation we might care to think about,
it's surely represented in that set.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
So so if we you know, we've discovered these these
planets that are way out there, are we going to
need something like what we see in all these science
fiction movies, like a wormhole to get there quickly and
within a human lifetime? And do you think that those exist?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
So, yes, we'll need a wormhole. That's the simplest question
the simplest answer, or it's equivalent, which would be warp drives.
We need some way to transcend the speed of light legally,
and a wormhole and a warp drive would do that.
Without it, there's there's it's hopeless it's hopeless because take
the fastest rocket we have ever launched. That's the one
(18:53):
that went to Pluto. All right, And why was that
the fastest because we have a rule in science that
whatever is your experiment, you want it to be completed
before you die. Okay, that's an entry level of environment.
And so Pluto is so far away that the principal
investigator said, we want to have this happen quickly. That
(19:14):
is the fastest thing we've ever launched outside the Solar system,
and it escaped the Solar system. If you aimed that
to the nearest start to the Sun, you strapped a
ride on it, hitched a ride on it, you arrive
at Alpha century seventy thousand years from now.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
So if it's just not commensurate with human physiology.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Let's go to Taylor, who's calling from San Diego. Taylor,
welcome to the middle Go ahead, hu Hi.
Speaker 13 (19:42):
So this is a great question that you guys were
leading into my question, which is how far out do
you think or if ever in our life time will
we confirm or meet alien life forms to trusts.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Thanks for that question. So to me, an extraterrestial life
could be bacteria on another planet that would transform biology
as we know it. If you have a whole other
genesis of life, where does it use DNA to encode
its identity? If not, what does it do? Does it evolve?
There's all manner of questions you could ask if you
(20:25):
found life on a planet other than Earth, because all
of biology is anchored on what happened here on Earth.
So we revel in the biodiversity of life, but really,
behind closed doors, the biologists confess to one another that
they have a sample of one and that sample is
life on Earth. That all has a common ancestor going
(20:46):
back far enough, so I'd be content with just slime molds.
But generally people who are searching for life want to
see something more interesting than that, something that we might
call intelligent. And there's an analogy made by Jill Tarter
and her colleagues at the SETI Institute the Search for
(21:08):
Extraterrestrial Intelligence, because if they're trying to communicate with us
and they're sending a radio signal, let's say, so there
are a lot of variables here. Are you listening at
the moment they sent it? The first second? Did it
come to us or did it miss us? And go
in another direction headed somewhere else in space. Also, suppose
(21:30):
they sent that signal and it was two thousand years
ago Rome right, No one is in a reply that
they don't have the technology, but that doesn't mean there
isn't intelligence and civilization at work on Earth. So you
have to be at the right time, with the right
equipment pointing our telescopes in the right direction to receive
(21:51):
a signal that might have been sent at the right
time to arrive for you to then decode it. So
the analogy that they give at SETI is you go
to the ocean shore and you take a cup, an
empty cup, you scoop up some ocean water and look
at it and say, the ocean has no whales in it.
So that's how much of the universe we've sampled right
(22:13):
in life, and how much of the parameter space that's
what we call it, that we've sampled. So we haven't
found any. But you can't say therefore there isn't because
there's so many other ways to search that we haven't
done yet.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Let's go to Isaac, who's in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Isaac,
welcome to the middle. Go ahead with Neil de grass Tyson.
Speaker 14 (22:32):
Hi, thank you for having me kind of have an
interesting question for you. So, if you could solve one
cosmic mystery with the snap of your fingers, which mystery
would it be? And why would you choose it so basically?
And also how would this resolution basically impact the understanding
of the universe.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
I love when people ask if you could solve one
thing with the snap of your fingers. So yes, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Okay, so I have a cop out answer. I don't
know if the caller will be happy with this answer,
but it's the answer I'm giving you. You ready, Yeah,
I remembered questions growing up, not growing up in graduate school.
If I only had the answer to this question, then
everything would be solved. Then I realized when the answer
to that question arrived, it led to other questions. It
(23:22):
put me on a new vista where I could see
farther than I could see before, and new questions than
became important to me. So, because of this life experience,
no longer do I say I just need the answer
to this, that's all. I don't think that way because
for me, it is the eternal arrival of questions after
(23:48):
every new question, that's answered that is the lifeblood of science.
Now there are questions I do have and I don't
know their answer. For example, are we smarter enough to
answer the questions that we've posed? Or deeper still, are
we smart enough to even know what questions to ask?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
I'm guing.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
I lay awake wondering whether the human mind, as proud
of it as we are, is sufficient to completely understand
the universe itself. So so are the questions are we
smart enough to understand the universe? If I get that
answer and the answer and the answer is yes, then
(24:34):
I'll go back like Gangbusters and be fearless of the frontier,
which I sort of already am. But I carry this
suspicion that maybe something could be too hard for the
limited brain wiring contained within humans. It might need some alien,
which is who's one hundred times smarter than us.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Let's go to Jackson, who's in Tallahassee, Florida. Jackson, Welcome
to the middle. Go ahead with Neil de grass Tyson.
Speaker 15 (24:58):
Hey, it's a huge on to be talking to you.
My question was what's your opinion on the naming of
things like telescopes or reactions or different phenomenon in terms
of how those names are tied to their namesakes, like
political or cultural beliefs, and how that like progresses with
(25:21):
as culture and society changes.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Are you talking about telescopes specifically, or more broadly things
in our society more more broadly? Okay? So there's an
entire section of my book Starry Messenger, Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization.
There's an entire section in there on the naming of things.
It's in particular statues. Right after the George Floyd murder
(25:44):
there was a removal of many statues that at one
time were revered and then not right. So, my daughter
has offered her opinion on this, and I kind of agree.
I just don't know how you would invoke it in practice.
She said, don't name anything after anybody. Why would you
ever have to do that. Come up with some other
(26:06):
clever name, especially in modern times where we know everything
about everybody? Okay. And so the concept of a hero,
which is only the most perfect, ethereal elements of a
human being in an era before the Internet that was
possible host in an Internet world where all your all
(26:30):
your pictures, all your your pictures when you were drunk
at the party, that's online and now you're running for office.
Not that that would be discounting today, but there was
a day when that would have been damning. Not anymore so.
Social cultural mora ra shift, yes, but our access to
information about a person is so thorough that no longer
(26:51):
I don't think can we just revere people the way
we once did and build statues to them?
Speaker 2 (26:57):
What about planets, because don't they name like these far
off planets after people too?
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Okay, planet, so let's get astronomical. So the planets are
named after Roman gods, and their moons are named after
Greek characters in the life of the Greek counterpart to
that Roman god. So that's the Greek and Roman sort
of tracking of our philosophies and our science. Two thirds
of all stars in the night sky that have names
(27:25):
have Arabic names, and these come from the Arabic culture
from a thousand years ago, the Golden Age of Islam.
So now we have the Islamic cultures, the Arabic culture.
What was not represented there is Asian cultures, so India, China,
nor Aboriginal Australia, nor First peoples in the Americas. Those
(27:45):
are not represented in the official naming of things and
then that's to do with influence over who had the
power to name things.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
But by the way you're talking about different ethnicities, different
places around the world, different kinds of people and things
getting named after them. You bring up something really interesting
in your book that I hadn't thought very much about.
But it's that you know when you go up to
somebody and you say where are you from? And they say, well,
I'm from Brooklyn, and it's like, well where are your
parents from? And they're from Italy? And and you say,
(28:13):
you know, we like to pick the place that that
that makes the most sense for us, that we like
the most to say where we're from.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Arbitrary, right place. Let me just resay what you just said,
because you mixed two of them. I did a bad job.
Just say so only in America. You say what are you? Right?
So you say what are you? I'm Italian? They said, well,
where were you born at Brooklyn? Where are your parents
born Brooklyn? Where were their parents born Italy? So I'm Italian? Right?
(28:42):
That's kind of what Why doesn't he just say American?
But he doesn't. He goes back to a point where
he wants to establish in the flag plant and establish
a bit of pride. Another person I did the same exercise.
They said, we're Swedish. They said, where were you born
in New York City? Well, where are your parents born
in Minnesota? Where are their parents born Minnesota? Where are
(29:03):
their parents born? Sweden? So I'm Swedish. Okay. So they
went to the point where they wanted to display this
for the person asking the question, and I say, well,
why stop there? Why don't you just keep going back?
Speaker 16 (29:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (29:16):
And by the way, if you did that, you know
where you land. Africa. So on that level, we're all African.
And who you're declaring is your family is an arbitrary
cutoff point in your ancestral tree to the point where
you have a sense of comfort and pride in where
(29:39):
you have planted your flag, you should be self aware
that it's arbitrary.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Well, speaking of planting flags, Tolliver, every president since John F.
Kennedy has talked about space exploration, but I'd venture to
say that no one did it as inspiringly as Kennedy himself.
Speaker 17 (29:54):
Well.
Speaker 8 (29:54):
Yeah, back in nineteen sixty two, JFK proudly declared that
the US would put a man on the moon, and
he was right.
Speaker 18 (30:01):
We choose to go to the Moon and disccate and
do the other thing. Not because they are easy, but
because they are hard, Because that goal well serve to
organize and measure the best of our energies and skills,
because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept,
one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend
(30:25):
to win.
Speaker 8 (30:26):
That man can speak the first The first crude landing
of the Moon happened just seven years later in nineteen
sixty nine, and the last time a human set foot
on the Moon was nineteen seventy two. More than the
uldergrass Tyson coming up on the middle.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
This is the middle on Jeremy Hobson. This hour, we're
talking with astrophysicist Neil de grass Tyson about all things
related to the Cosmos, space stars, everything in between. And
while this conversation happened about a year ago, and the
things in space we talked about didn't change, one thing
did Here on Earth, you're gonna hear a reference to
Elon Mush remember him. We referred to him as a
(31:02):
private citizen in the original broadcast, and now as you know,
he's not that. He's maybe the most powerful man in
Washington and also a special government employee. Our conversation with
Neil de grasse Tyson continued with a caller named Tim
from Bradenton, Florida, with a question about what our universe
actually looks like.
Speaker 17 (31:21):
Hi, er, I'm so excited to speak to Neil degrass Tyson.
Huge fan. I considered an honor and a privilege, so
thank you. My question is what would the observable universe
look like from the perspective of a galaxy formed on
the outer edge, you know, very early on in the universe.
Speaker 15 (31:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Sure, So we formed early on in the universe and
we're here today. So any galaxy that formed back then
is alive today, but we don't see it other than
nearby galaxies that sort of aged with us together. But
as you go farther and farther away, looking farther back
in time. So if we go to a galaxy born
(32:05):
shortly after the beginning of the universe, and we see
it that light has been traveling for fourteen billion years
over that time, it's become a full red, bloody galaxy,
and in somewhere beyond our horizon, we know we can't
see it what it looks like today. We can only
see what it looked like back then. If we go
to that, if we could somehow magically go to that galaxy,
(32:26):
the universe from that perspective would see us being born,
because our light from being born would only just now
be reaching them. And that's the weird, wacky cool fact
about a universe that has this sort of expansion. So yeah,
the universe won't look different than will look just the
(32:48):
way ours looks. It will be the baby galaxy and
not them.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Does it bother you by the way that NASA now
has to rely on private space companies to get astronauts
out into outer space or is that just? Is that
a good thing?
Speaker 1 (33:03):
What do you think that it should have been happening
decades ago? First of all, and by the way, the
Apollo program, it was all tax based money that paid
for it. But NASA was already in deep relationships with
the space industry. But then it was sort of the
aerospace industry at the time. I live in New York
(33:25):
City on Long Island in Bethpage. Long Island was grumming aerospace.
They built the Lunar Excursion Module, the lemb People today
still walk proudly down the street because that an aunt
or an uncle or someone who worked as part of
that project. So the private enterprise has always been with us.
It's a matter of whether private enterprise took an initiative
(33:49):
and then the rocket has their name on it instead
of NASA. So and I think that should have been
happening decades ago, to have turned space from a program
into a space industry. Then it becomes an everyday part
of life, and why not. It's the universe?
Speaker 15 (34:08):
Right.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Let me ask you one more thing about that though,
because there's private industry assisting NASA or doing it on
its own with you know, in conjunction with NASA. But
there's also things like Elon Musk's starlink where he now
as a as a private citizen, has a lot of
power over the communications in places like Ukraine that rely
on his satellites and he could sort of just buy
(34:31):
himself change the course of a ward. What do you
think about that, a private citizen having satellites and that
kind of power.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah, So, historically I don't think it's ever boded well
when a private citizen meddled in geopolitics outside of the
boundaries of what would normally happen either at the United
Nations or in peace talks or any kind of other
diplomatic encounters. So it seems to me those kinds of
(35:01):
things should be vetted by the State Department. That's why
we have a state department. So you can't have individuals
running around. They might not be fully informed about the
consequences of their actions, whereas the State Department would be.
Some information is secret, some is sensitive, some is protecting troops.
So so I don't mind people having power, i'd mind
(35:25):
if that power is not checked by people who have
access to the bigger story that needs to be known
and interpreted and understood.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Let's go to Emily, who's in Compton, Illinois. Emily, Welcome
to the middle Go ahead, thank you.
Speaker 12 (35:45):
This is Emily, and my son Brad is going to
ask a question.
Speaker 11 (35:49):
What would it look like on the inside of a
black hole?
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Cool? Do you want to find out? So as you
fall into a black hole, if you look behind you,
you will see the entire future history of the universe
unfold because your time clock will slow down relative and
(36:18):
you won't know this. You'll just be living your life.
But everything outside behind you will look like it's speeding up,
and trillions of years will go by as the whole
future history of the universe unfold, and as you go forward.
There there's a description that I'm only retelling it to
(36:39):
you because I didn't fully follow the argument, But it's
based on Einstein's general theory of relativity. That's, as you
go through the black hole, an entire other space time
and you're not crushed and dead. If you survive this,
there's an entire other space time that opens up in
front of you, So you leave your previous universe behind
(37:01):
and enter another one. This is why, not only in
science but in science fiction, black holes are commonly thought
of as portals to other places. So so yeah, but
you can test all this by traveling into one yourself.
Now I have, It's not quite in my will, but
I've expressed this to people. If I'm dying from something,
(37:23):
send me into a black hole. Let me die there, right.
I'd rather do that than get hit by a bus
or die in a hospital bed. And then I'll give
all the reporting that I can and I'll get to
experience nature at its most extreme. And I think that
would be a cool way to die.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Brat you want to does it make you want to
travel into a Brett black hole?
Speaker 5 (37:42):
Now?
Speaker 16 (37:42):
Hearing that.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Huh no, Well, thank you, thanks for calling very much,
and let's go to Sammy, who's in Park City, Utah. Sammy,
Welcome to the middle Go ahead.
Speaker 16 (37:57):
Hi, thank you. I was just wondering. I had heard
something on Science Friday from a physicist last week, and
she was talking about all the possible ways that the
universe will and could die eventually, and I was just
wondering what Neil's thoughts on were, what comes after that,
(38:20):
or if there's a multiverse or there's just nothing.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yeah, okay, so there are multiple ways the universe could
end based on the physics that we now understand. For me,
the most terrifying is if the dark energy continues unabated.
This is that mysterious pressure in the universe that's forcing
us to expand and accelerate in that expansion against the
(38:51):
wishes of gravity. That if that goes unchecked, the universe
will expand so severely that in twenty two billion years,
it will expand faster we think, than the fabric of
the universe can stretch, and we'd end up ripping the
fabric of the universe. It's called the Big Rip. I'd
(39:12):
lay awake at night wondering about that. If that does
not happen, we will nonetheless expand forever as the temperature
of the universe descends to absolute zero. So the universe
will not end in fire, but in ice, and not
with a bang, but with a whimper. Now, we may
(39:35):
be part of a multiverse, but that doesn't concern you
because you're in this universe. Yeah, so, because it could
be plenty of other universes two and just fine. But
our universe, all of our data point that it's on
a one way trip to oblivion.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Let's go to Douglas, who's in New Orleans, Louisiana. Douglas,
welcome to the middle.
Speaker 15 (39:54):
Go ahead, Thank you so much.
Speaker 17 (39:57):
I just had a question on your thoughts on light
pollution and impact on humans connection with the night sky.
We get to see the eclipse during the day, but
there's so much lost at night now, and I want
to see what your thoughts are with that.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yeah, it's tragic. Thanks for that question. It's tragedy. Let
me not there. I don't want to cheapen the word
tragic by saying, oh, there's light in the night sky,
so that's the world has tragedies. Let's save the word
tragedy for that. In this case, it's it was unfortunate
that there's entire generations of people who will grow up
(40:28):
having never experienced the majesty of a perfectly dark night sky.
And I don't know that it's getting worse, but it's
just simple that most people live near cities, and if
you live near a city, it's bad. But if you
live out in a farm, you can see the Milky
Way and other subtle elements of the night sky. So
(40:50):
you just have to make sure you take a trip
away from a city sometime and to appreciate what our
ancestors saw every single night of their lives, that every
night that wasn't cloudy. So the reason why I don't
think the light pollution is getting worse is we've gotten
a little more clever about the orientation of lamps in
(41:13):
the streets. In the old days, the light would just
illuminate everything. If you flew over a town in an
airplane and saw a street light, that meant someone was
paying for electricity to generate light that went up into
the atmosphere and through the window of your airplane to
your retin. That's a complete waste of money. So we
(41:35):
got clever about this, and so lamps now have shades
on top. When you do that, you don't need as
much vaultage much wattage. So there are ways we get
around this. So it's too bad. And we know what's
worse than the light pollution is satellite pollution. You talk
about Elon's Stark satellites that you're looking at the Oh
(41:57):
that's a beautiful star, or no, that's a satellite moving through.
Initially it's kind of fun. Or you can see a
satellite and then you realize, no, no, I want to
see the pristine night sky without our technology to contaminate it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
I have to say I the best night sky I've
ever seen in my life was on an island called
Vinyl Haven off the coast of Maine, which was so
dark that you could see so much. And I don't
want to overuse the word magical, but it was magical
and I wish I could see that more often. Where
where's the best night sky you've ever seen? Neil Degrest Tyson.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
On mountaintops you know where we put observatories. Oh, by
the way, did you know the that Maine? If you
look on a map, Maine is just out there. I
mean because the east coast of the United States curves, and
so Maine is like sticking out there. It's damn it's
(42:49):
halfway to London, you know, England or Greenland right in Iceland.
So yes, you get a night sky there. And there
are people duped into, if I may use that word,
duped into thinking that the southern skies are uniquely beautiful.
So have you ever been to Australian and saying, oh,
the sky you could just touch it? And I'm saying,
do you realize how many people don't live in Australia.
(43:09):
So it's not that the sky is inherently better, it's
that there's no light pollution. And if the north had
as low light pollution as the south, you wouldn't be
uniquely complementing the southern hemisphere as the way. And I'm
delighted to learn that your best night sky was off
the coast of Maine.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
I mean it was a long time ago. Maybe the
lights of you know, Boston, weren't as bright back then.
Let me go to Let me go to Nancy, who's
in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Nancy, welcome to the middle, Go ahead, Hi.
Speaker 12 (43:42):
Lovely talking to Neil degrass. This is exciting, but sure.
I recently read about an SBR fast but no fast
radio birth FRB, and I have too many people in
my area that are like, oh, those are aliens, And
I'm like, well, it's just.
Speaker 15 (43:58):
So far a radio wave.
Speaker 12 (43:59):
But we're what are becoming?
Speaker 16 (44:00):
Sovid?
Speaker 11 (44:00):
What are you?
Speaker 12 (44:01):
What can you tell me? Educate me about what they
really are?
Speaker 15 (44:04):
These bursts?
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Yeah, So, anytime we find something mysterious in the universe
or that is something that didn't previously exist in our catalogs,
if your first explanation is it's aliens, then you're not
really doing science, all right. You have to say, well,
can I measure a little better, a little differently? Does
what does it resemble that I know? And what is different?
(44:28):
Can I isolate this? Can I bring a different telescope
to bear on this? So the very first radio pulses,
which became the prototype for what we call pulsars, people
thought they were aliens, all right. In fact, there was
tongue in cheek in the first chart reading of it
of the pulsar it ad LGM someone or a little
(44:50):
green man, because who could possibly be sending signals with
such regularity in a chaotic universe. And then we learned
that they're rapidly rotating objects very predictably, and circumstances in
their environment can promote the the release of radio waves
instead of visible light. And we have radio telescopes and
(45:12):
you see these pulses, okay, and some are really fast,
like a thousand times per second, and you're saying, well,
only aliens could produce that. Okay, maybe, but that's not
my first thought. Maybe there's some physical phenomenon I have
yet to learn about that's causing this. And even after
(45:32):
I've run out of all such explanations, I'm still not
jumping on the alien. But because look at all the
things we didn't previously understand that we could have just
explained away with aliens and walked onto and and and
went on to other projects, but we didn't. We kept
probing it. So as tempting as it is to say
(45:53):
aliens did it, it's not my first thought.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
So that brings me back to something we were talking
about a bit earlier. And you've used evidence as you've
talked through a lot of these questions that people have
had for you. You call in your Bookstarry Messenger for us
to focus more on evidence as we resolve political disputes
and do all kinds of things, do you think that
will happen? Do you think that that we'll get more
(46:18):
evidence based, fact based in terms of how we communicate
with each other, especially in this country.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
If arguments were evidence based, there wouldn't be so many arguments.
So when two scientists have an argument, which we have arguments,
there's an implicit contract that we have signed. It's implicit.
It's either I'm right and you're wrong, or you're right
and I'm wrong, or we're both wrong. And if at
(46:45):
any point we still can't agree, the solution is always
we need more data or better data, we're different kinds
of data to resolve this. Then we go out for
a beer. That kind of doesn't happen. And so talk
about the middle of One of the examples in the book,
in the chapter on conflict and resolution, there's a there's
(47:07):
a liberal community that's like heaping upon the conservatives, accusing
them of being anti science and that they'll cite the
climate change denial and this sort of thing. But it's
as though the liberals want to take the science high road.
But then you look at, well, who is into you know,
feather energy and crystal healing, and astrology and homeopathic medicine.
(47:31):
Those are deeply embedded in the liberal community as voters right,
and you can to embrace these ideas requires that you
you are in denial of some are all the mainstream
science associated with it. So one side can lob complaints
to the other, claiming their high road, but if you
(47:51):
look at what's actually happening, they don't have the hiro.
They just don't. And and so it's this kind of
self reflection that doesn't happen often enough because everybody thinks
they're in the right.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
Our guest Neil de Grasse Tyson, who's director of the
Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. His
book is called Starry Messenger. He's got a podcast at
a TV show called Star Talk. Neil de Grasse Tyson,
it has been so wonderful having you on the middle.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
Well, that was fun. And next week we're going to
be taking your calls live on the topic of trans
rights and the entire conversation surrounding trans identity following President
Trump's order that there are only two genders in this country.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
As always, you.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Can call in at eight four four four Middle that's
eight four four four six four three three five three,
or you can reach out at Listen to the Middle
dot com, where you can also sign up for our
free weekly newsletter, and you can sign up for our
video podcast on YouTube so you can watch us as
well as hear us. The Middle is brought to you
by Longnook Media, distributed by Illinois Public Media in Urbana, Illinois,
and produced by Harrison Vittino, Danny Alexander, Sam Burmistas, John Barth, Anikadeshler,
(48:58):
and Brandon Condritz. Our technical director is Jason Kroft. Thanks
to our satellite radio listeners, our podcast audience, and the
more than four hundred and twenty public radio stations making
it possible for people across the country to listen to
the Middle, I'm Jeremy Hobson and I'll talk to you
next week.
Welcome to the Middle.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Jeremy Hobson, and we've been focusing on some pretty
heavy topics on the middle lately, trying to keep up
with all the news. So this hour we're going to
take a little break from the politics and turn our
gaze to outer space the cosmos. We're dipping into our
archives to bring you one of our favorite shows with
one of our favorite guests. That would be astrophysicist Neil
(00:26):
deGrasse Tyson. We talked to him last year or on
the time of the eclipse, but turns out not that
much has changed in space in the last year, so
this show still holds. So before we get to our conversation.
Last week on the show, we dove into the remote
work versus in person work question that employers and employees
around the country are wrestling with. We got a lot
(00:46):
of great calls on that, and here are some of
the ones that came in after the show.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Hi, it's Jane from Conquered mass There are significant impacts
on climate if we reduce commuting, we reduce traffic. We've
reduced people sitting in traffic, so anything we can do
to reduce commuting and reduce pollution helps with climate change.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I hear me.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
I'm calling from Windsor, Ontario, Canada. My name's Mark, and
I just was wondering, you know, whether or not this
remote work has really reduced the opportunity for people to
organize and you know, co miserate about their work and
actually you know, collaborate on you know, making demands from
(01:30):
their employer.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
Hi, I'm Asia. I'm calling from Illinois. I work remotely
in another state. I think it really depends on what
you do. My work is entirely on a computer. So
if that's the case, I think it does make sense
we're able to attract talent from all across the country.
I think it's opened up a lot of doors.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Well, thanks to everyone who called in. And you can
listen to that entire show anytime because The Middle is
also available as a podcast in partnership with iHeart Podcasts
on the iHeart app or wherever you listen to podcasts.
We're also available anytime on YouTube. By the way, subscribe
to our channel. So let's get right to our conversation
with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. He's the author of a
number of books, including Merlin's Tour of the Universe and
(02:14):
Starry Messenger. He's also the director of the Hayden Planetarium
at the American Museum of Natural History. Turns out he's
also a fan of the concepts of this show The Middle.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, well, just in the sense that, let me take
a more cosmic view. You walk around and there are
people who have hold very strongly held perspectives or opinions
or views so strong that they'll dig in their heels
and you can't even really have a conversation with them
now unless I'm just an old man on the porch
(02:45):
on a rocking chair saying, oh, back in my day.
But let me say, back in my day, if you
had an opinion that differed from someone else, they wouldn't
attack you for that. Ye they would say, oh, what
is that opinion? And then you, oh, that's different. How
about what do you think of this? And then there'd
be an exchange of ideas, and then you went out
and had a beer. Right now, the climate is very
(03:07):
different for that. If social media is a platform of expression,
let's take it as an example, and I post any
opinion at all, it gets attacked by people whose opinion differs.
And I find that odd because it means they want
everyone else's opinion to be exactly aligned with theirs. And
there's a word for those systems of nations and God,
(03:29):
they called dictatorships where everybody's opinion is exactly aligned. So so,
so what I cherish is not so much the middle.
I cherish points of view that render both extremes obsolete.
So that's is that really the middle or is it
another dimension that you ascend to and then look at
(03:50):
what people are saying, thinking and doing and say, have
you considered it this other way? Well, and that's why
we like that. Isn't the all compromise involves another outlook
another That's why.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
That's where we also like to say, say that the
show is about meeting in the middle, which is the
other way to use that word. You write in your
Bookstory Messenger that Bill Clinton kept a moon rock on
a coffee table in his office. In case a political
argument broke out, he would remind people that the rock
came from the moon. Why do you think that being
reminded of our place in the universe puts things into
(04:22):
perspective like that?
Speaker 1 (04:23):
It works every time. I mean the subtitle of the book,
it's a starry Messenger cosmic perspectives on civilization. So this
story was communicated to me directly by Bill Clinton, and
I was able to have an extended conversation with him
about that. He would be in the Oval Office and
they have a little table often used their photographs of
people seated around this little coffee table thing in the middle,
(04:47):
and if there was a tense moment, he would point
to and say, do you know this rock is from
the moon, And everyone just really stopped and then they
would say the moon. Oh, nineteen sixty ninety, Apollo, we
went to the moon. We brought it back. And it
resets the conversation and allows you to say, is there
another way to look at what's going on from above?
(05:08):
And by the way, are you really meeting in the middle. No,
you're meeting on another platform in another vista that is
neither where you are or the other person are, nor
anywhere in between. You've ascended to look back at what
all of these ideas are, to reassess what you think
is important and what is not. A cosmic perspective has
(05:30):
that power over you.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Why do you think that it's so difficult right now
to have that conversation with somebody who you disagree with
when as you say, back in your day, and by
the way, back in my day too, and I grew
up in the eighties it was different than it is now.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Yeah, I hate saying back in my day or or
the one the kids of today. I don't want to
be that guy. Let me just say, I don't want
to be that guy. But I don't know that I
have a good answer for that. What I do is
in the age of search engines, no matter what your
idea is, you see, you might have been just the
(06:07):
lone person thinking something in a community, and maybe it
was weird, but it was pretty harmless. Now you type
in your crazy idea and you will find every other
person in the world who has that crazy idea, which
can give you a false sense of authenticity, a false
sense of what is objectively true or false in the world.
(06:29):
And why would there be so many people who think
Earth is flat? They found each other and they think
they're onto something, whereas when they were isolated among other
rational thinkers, that the idea maybe didn't last so long.
It wasn't magnified by the knowledge that other people shared it.
So this could be the reason.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Let's get to the phones, because We've got a lot
of calls coming in Olivia. Is with us from North
Las Vegas, Nevada, Olivia. Welcome to the middle. Go ahead
with Neil de grasse Tyson.
Speaker 6 (06:59):
Hi, I mean Olivia, I'm told, and I'm from North
ast Vegas. Before I get into the question, I just
wanted to say, I am a big science nerd, and
I'm a really big fan of viewers. But what specific
struggles and frustration do you frequently have when trying to
communicate the importance of science and critical thinking? Because it
(07:19):
seems that there are just some people that don't get it.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Thank you Olivia for that, Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
I got into trouble with fellow educators when I once
tweeted that the teacher, the occasional teacher who complains quote
the kids just don't want to learn. Maybe instead should
be declaring maybe I suck at my job. So if
(07:46):
you have a challenge communicating with someone, it's all too
easy to blame them for not wanting to listen, rather
than to ask yourself, is there a new way to
approach this topic? So what I try to do is
I try to pose questions back to the person. How
about Bigfoot. If you type Bigfoot into the search engines,
up will come this was it nineteen seventy two, seventy one,
(08:09):
a Super eight film of this creature walking behind you know,
the in the distance, behind the tree. That's the first
thing that comes up. So consider that everyone today has
a high resolution camera, yet we do not have better
images than that. So all manner of life experience could
(08:29):
only be communicated through what you would say is your
eyewitness testimony, which the world has a very false sense
of its truth.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Let's go to Hannah, who's in ann Arbor, Michigan. Hannah,
welcome to the middle.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Go ahead.
Speaker 7 (08:42):
Hi, I'm a big fan, and I know you've had
a really great career in academia and research, but also
as a public figure. So I was wondering if you
think that scientists can or should also kind of spread
awareness about their fields through public awareness, kind of like
you have.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah, it's so I can tell you there's a lot
of nuances here, and let me sort of compress it
so we can get even more questions in the short
time that we have together. That in when you're formally
trained as a scientist, nowhere in there is there any
training to communicate, not verbally writing. Yes, you have to
(09:21):
be able to write, but that's most people can do that.
Not only that, there's some percent of my colleagues who
we now now that we have neurodiverse vocabulary, some percentage
are on the autism spectrum. And we might have said
asperger is in a day, but I think that's been
merged to the to the autism umbrella. And if that's
(09:44):
what you are, you're perfectly happy in the lab and
you don't want to talk to anybody, so you shouldn't
be forced to. So there there's enough of us who
have energy to do so that do do. So. I'm
visible because I have like big platforms, but if you dig.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
It, well, you're also visible because you you are we.
I mean, I am the stepchild of two physicists and
both of them have talked about you as a as
a communicator. That is very unusual in the scientific community.
They scientists have scientists brains and you have both.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah. So, and I'm saying it's not there's no force
to nurture it on the route to the PhD, which
is the entry gate to to research science. So not
only is it not nurtured, you can be a great
scientist and have no social skills at all, right, right,
So so that means that this task it would be
(10:41):
unrealistic to require it of everyone. But I can tell
you if you go, if you search for science popularizers
on YouTube, the list is growing. And I'm very happy
to see that, because one day I'm going to like
step out the back door when there's enough of everyone
else on the landscape, and then you won't even miss me.
Everybody else is doing that, and it'll be the natural
(11:04):
course of what you'd expect in all the professions, if
not by all the scientists, many of them.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Stand by right there in the old Grass ties it
because Tolliver, we are actually in space already right now
on the satellite getting out to the stations for distribution.
Speaker 8 (11:17):
Absolutely well, if anyone is listening out there. This is
part of what was enclosed in the nineteen seventy seven
launch of the Voyager two spacecraft on the so called
Golden Record, which had examples of human music and language,
as well as a message from then UN Secretary General
Kurt Waldheim.
Speaker 9 (11:31):
I sent greetings on behalf of the people of our planet.
We step out of our Solar system into the universe.
Seeking only peace and friendship, to teach if we are
called upon to be taught, if we are fortunate. We
know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants
(11:52):
are about a small part of this immense universe that
surrounds us, and it is with humility and hope or
dead we take this step.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
We'll be right back with more of the middle. This
is the Middle. I'm Jeremy Hobson. If you're just tuning,
in the Middle is a national call in show. We
are focused on elevating voices from the middle politically, geographically, philosophically,
or maybe you just want to meet in the middle.
This hour, we're bringing you an encore edition of our
conversation with renowned astrophysicist Neil de grass Tyson about all
(12:24):
things space related. Our conversation continued with a caller, David
from Columbia, South Carolina, who had an interesting question for
Neil about the evolution of dogs.
Speaker 10 (12:34):
Yeah, I've just recently seen some reals of his talking
about dogs and how affectionate they are and how just
all their characters and where did they come from in
the evolutionary chain.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Neils, He's a good question. Okay, So we devoted almost
an entire episode of Cosmos to that very question back
when I hosted the series, and the name of the
episode it's called and the Wolf Shall Become the Shepherd,
and we chronicle the sequence of basically the domestication of wolves. Basically,
(13:11):
we take wolves and say no, you're too violent, or
you're too mean, or you're too and you look at
the litter that any wolf gives and you see which
are the tamer ones among them. And what they did
back then was simply kill the rest, and you raise
the tame ones, and you keep doing this through multiple
generations until they are what you want them to be.
(13:32):
So basically dogs were the first GMOs. We genetically modified
wolves to become dogs. We did it with cats as well.
We've been modifying the genes of food and other animals
ever since we've had the power to do so.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
By the way, Cosmos was a fantastic show. And I
remember another episode that you did that was sort of
talked about the discovery of infrared light. Looking out of
the infrared light, how we can see into space and
see different things that we can't see with the naked eye.
And I wonder, as you think about all the ways
that we look out into space. The light we can see,
(14:06):
the infrared light, now gravitational waves that we can detect.
What do you think has been the most effective way
to determine what's out there in space so far, Well.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
It's been light light, because anything that's hot will glow.
Of course, there are things in the universe that are
not hot, like black holes and dark gas clouds and things,
but where all the action is tend to be things
that are hot enough to glow. So if you have
a device that can detect glowing objects then, which we
call telescopes, right, then it gives you access not only
(14:40):
to nearby objects, but objects clear across the universe, and
you learn that they glow in bands of light that
are outside of the human eyes. It was hard for
some people to recognize that there are things going on
in the world that you just biologically cannot know without
the help of scientific instruments. In fact, when Herschel discovered
(15:04):
infrared light, he called it light unfit for vision, and
that was the only way he could describe that. It
was light beneath the red, so we call it infrared
less than red, and beyond that we found X rays,
gamma rays, radio waves, and so the entire electromagnetic spectrum
(15:25):
is our primary means of decoding the universe. And as
you correctly noted, we can now detect gravitational waves. These
are when things go bump in the night, very massive
things go bump in the night, like black holes. We're
working on a nutrino telescope. It's another kind of particle
that's not light, but it's a particle that hails from
the earliest formation of stars in the universe. And so
(15:49):
these are windows figurative, but I think of them as
almost as literal windows that we open up and say, oh, now,
this is another aspect of the universe coming to us.
When we prefer acted ultraviolet telescopes black holes, it turns
out the material spiraling in gives off copious amounts of ultraviolet.
You turn on an ultra violet telescope, bam, there are
(16:11):
all your black holes in the galaxy. In the galaxy.
So it's it's literally and figuratively opening windows. So it's
by far our most potent tool that we've had access
to since Galileo.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Let's go to Christian, who's calling from Fort Myers, Florida. Christian,
Welcome to the middle, go ahead with Neil the Grass Tyson.
Speaker 11 (16:30):
When are we going to be able to habit the
exo planet? It's like the Red Earth, like an exo
planet that goes by that name where red.
Speaker 12 (16:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 11 (16:43):
What's exactly the name of it, but it's slogan is
Everything's vetter.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
On the other side, Christian, can I just ask you
before we go to Nail the Grass Tyson for the answer,
how old you are?
Speaker 5 (16:53):
Twelve?
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Awesome? Thank you for calling in. Okay, Neil the Grass
Tyson your answer.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
I'm not sure what it means to be read on
the other side, but I can tell you that the
catalog of exoplanets that we now have is rising through
six thousand and in twenty years ago, nineteen ninety five,
that number was zero. So we've been going like gangbusters.
It's been a cottage industry within my field. And we're
(17:19):
finding planets of all stripes, planets close to their host star,
far away planets around hot stars, around cooler stars. They're
still hot, they're just cooler than the hot stars. We're
finding planets in the Goldilocks zone, which is where we
might more likely find liquid water, and we know that
liquid water on Earth is crucial for life as we
(17:41):
know it, because every place we find liquid water on Earth,
there's life. Even the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea it's
clearly named by people who didn't have access to a microscope.
It doesn't have macroscopic bony fishes in it, but it's
got other life forms in it. So the catalogs are growing.
So I don't know specifically what the reference would be
(18:04):
to read on the other side, but I can tell
you that there's enough planet exo planets out there that
if there's any variation we might care to think about,
it's surely represented in that set.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
So so if we you know, we've discovered these these
planets that are way out there, are we going to
need something like what we see in all these science
fiction movies, like a wormhole to get there quickly and
within a human lifetime? And do you think that those exist?
Speaker 1 (18:32):
So, yes, we'll need a wormhole. That's the simplest question
the simplest answer, or it's equivalent, which would be warp drives.
We need some way to transcend the speed of light legally,
and a wormhole and a warp drive would do that.
Without it, there's there's it's hopeless it's hopeless because take
the fastest rocket we have ever launched. That's the one
(18:53):
that went to Pluto. All right, And why was that
the fastest because we have a rule in science that
whatever is your experiment, you want it to be completed
before you die. Okay, that's an entry level of environment.
And so Pluto is so far away that the principal
investigator said, we want to have this happen quickly. That
(19:14):
is the fastest thing we've ever launched outside the Solar system,
and it escaped the Solar system. If you aimed that
to the nearest start to the Sun, you strapped a
ride on it, hitched a ride on it, you arrive
at Alpha century seventy thousand years from now.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
So if it's just not commensurate with human physiology.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Let's go to Taylor, who's calling from San Diego. Taylor,
welcome to the middle Go ahead, hu Hi.
Speaker 13 (19:42):
So this is a great question that you guys were
leading into my question, which is how far out do
you think or if ever in our life time will
we confirm or meet alien life forms to trusts.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Thanks for that question. So to me, an extraterrestial life
could be bacteria on another planet that would transform biology
as we know it. If you have a whole other
genesis of life, where does it use DNA to encode
its identity? If not, what does it do? Does it evolve?
There's all manner of questions you could ask if you
(20:25):
found life on a planet other than Earth, because all
of biology is anchored on what happened here on Earth.
So we revel in the biodiversity of life, but really,
behind closed doors, the biologists confess to one another that
they have a sample of one and that sample is
life on Earth. That all has a common ancestor going
(20:46):
back far enough, so I'd be content with just slime molds.
But generally people who are searching for life want to
see something more interesting than that, something that we might
call intelligent. And there's an analogy made by Jill Tarter
and her colleagues at the SETI Institute the Search for
(21:08):
Extraterrestrial Intelligence, because if they're trying to communicate with us
and they're sending a radio signal, let's say, so there
are a lot of variables here. Are you listening at
the moment they sent it? The first second? Did it
come to us or did it miss us? And go
in another direction headed somewhere else in space. Also, suppose
(21:30):
they sent that signal and it was two thousand years
ago Rome right, No one is in a reply that
they don't have the technology, but that doesn't mean there
isn't intelligence and civilization at work on Earth. So you
have to be at the right time, with the right
equipment pointing our telescopes in the right direction to receive
(21:51):
a signal that might have been sent at the right
time to arrive for you to then decode it. So
the analogy that they give at SETI is you go
to the ocean shore and you take a cup, an
empty cup, you scoop up some ocean water and look
at it and say, the ocean has no whales in it.
So that's how much of the universe we've sampled right
(22:13):
in life, and how much of the parameter space that's
what we call it, that we've sampled. So we haven't
found any. But you can't say therefore there isn't because
there's so many other ways to search that we haven't
done yet.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Let's go to Isaac, who's in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Isaac,
welcome to the middle. Go ahead with Neil de grass Tyson.
Speaker 14 (22:32):
Hi, thank you for having me kind of have an
interesting question for you. So, if you could solve one
cosmic mystery with the snap of your fingers, which mystery
would it be? And why would you choose it so basically?
And also how would this resolution basically impact the understanding
of the universe.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
I love when people ask if you could solve one
thing with the snap of your fingers. So yes, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Okay, so I have a cop out answer. I don't
know if the caller will be happy with this answer,
but it's the answer I'm giving you. You ready, Yeah,
I remembered questions growing up, not growing up in graduate school.
If I only had the answer to this question, then
everything would be solved. Then I realized when the answer
to that question arrived, it led to other questions. It
(23:22):
put me on a new vista where I could see
farther than I could see before, and new questions than
became important to me. So, because of this life experience,
no longer do I say I just need the answer
to this, that's all. I don't think that way because
for me, it is the eternal arrival of questions after
(23:48):
every new question, that's answered that is the lifeblood of science.
Now there are questions I do have and I don't
know their answer. For example, are we smarter enough to
answer the questions that we've posed? Or deeper still, are
we smart enough to even know what questions to ask?
Speaker 2 (24:12):
I'm guing.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
I lay awake wondering whether the human mind, as proud
of it as we are, is sufficient to completely understand
the universe itself. So so are the questions are we
smart enough to understand the universe? If I get that
answer and the answer and the answer is yes, then
(24:34):
I'll go back like Gangbusters and be fearless of the frontier,
which I sort of already am. But I carry this
suspicion that maybe something could be too hard for the
limited brain wiring contained within humans. It might need some alien,
which is who's one hundred times smarter than us.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Let's go to Jackson, who's in Tallahassee, Florida. Jackson, Welcome
to the middle. Go ahead with Neil de grass Tyson.
Speaker 15 (24:58):
Hey, it's a huge on to be talking to you.
My question was what's your opinion on the naming of
things like telescopes or reactions or different phenomenon in terms
of how those names are tied to their namesakes, like
political or cultural beliefs, and how that like progresses with
(25:21):
as culture and society changes.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
Are you talking about telescopes specifically, or more broadly things
in our society more more broadly? Okay? So there's an
entire section of my book Starry Messenger, Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization.
There's an entire section in there on the naming of things.
It's in particular statues. Right after the George Floyd murder
(25:44):
there was a removal of many statues that at one
time were revered and then not right. So, my daughter
has offered her opinion on this, and I kind of agree.
I just don't know how you would invoke it in practice.
She said, don't name anything after anybody. Why would you
ever have to do that. Come up with some other
(26:06):
clever name, especially in modern times where we know everything
about everybody? Okay. And so the concept of a hero,
which is only the most perfect, ethereal elements of a
human being in an era before the Internet that was
possible host in an Internet world where all your all
(26:30):
your pictures, all your your pictures when you were drunk
at the party, that's online and now you're running for office.
Not that that would be discounting today, but there was
a day when that would have been damning. Not anymore so.
Social cultural mora ra shift, yes, but our access to
information about a person is so thorough that no longer
(26:51):
I don't think can we just revere people the way
we once did and build statues to them?
Speaker 2 (26:57):
What about planets, because don't they name like these far
off planets after people too?
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Okay, planet, so let's get astronomical. So the planets are
named after Roman gods, and their moons are named after
Greek characters in the life of the Greek counterpart to
that Roman god. So that's the Greek and Roman sort
of tracking of our philosophies and our science. Two thirds
of all stars in the night sky that have names
(27:25):
have Arabic names, and these come from the Arabic culture
from a thousand years ago, the Golden Age of Islam.
So now we have the Islamic cultures, the Arabic culture.
What was not represented there is Asian cultures, so India, China,
nor Aboriginal Australia, nor First peoples in the Americas. Those
(27:45):
are not represented in the official naming of things and
then that's to do with influence over who had the
power to name things.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
But by the way you're talking about different ethnicities, different
places around the world, different kinds of people and things
getting named after them. You bring up something really interesting
in your book that I hadn't thought very much about.
But it's that you know when you go up to
somebody and you say where are you from? And they say, well,
I'm from Brooklyn, and it's like, well where are your
parents from? And they're from Italy? And and you say,
(28:13):
you know, we like to pick the place that that
that makes the most sense for us, that we like
the most to say where we're from.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Arbitrary, right place. Let me just resay what you just said,
because you mixed two of them. I did a bad job.
Just say so only in America. You say what are you? Right?
So you say what are you? I'm Italian? They said, well,
where were you born at Brooklyn? Where are your parents
born Brooklyn? Where were their parents born Italy? So I'm Italian? Right?
(28:42):
That's kind of what Why doesn't he just say American?
But he doesn't. He goes back to a point where
he wants to establish in the flag plant and establish
a bit of pride. Another person I did the same exercise.
They said, we're Swedish. They said, where were you born
in New York City? Well, where are your parents born
in Minnesota? Where are their parents born Minnesota? Where are
(29:03):
their parents born? Sweden? So I'm Swedish. Okay. So they
went to the point where they wanted to display this
for the person asking the question, and I say, well,
why stop there? Why don't you just keep going back?
Speaker 16 (29:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (29:16):
And by the way, if you did that, you know
where you land. Africa. So on that level, we're all African.
And who you're declaring is your family is an arbitrary
cutoff point in your ancestral tree to the point where
you have a sense of comfort and pride in where
(29:39):
you have planted your flag, you should be self aware
that it's arbitrary.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Well, speaking of planting flags, Tolliver, every president since John F.
Kennedy has talked about space exploration, but I'd venture to
say that no one did it as inspiringly as Kennedy himself.
Speaker 17 (29:54):
Well.
Speaker 8 (29:54):
Yeah, back in nineteen sixty two, JFK proudly declared that
the US would put a man on the moon, and
he was right.
Speaker 18 (30:01):
We choose to go to the Moon and disccate and
do the other thing. Not because they are easy, but
because they are hard, Because that goal well serve to
organize and measure the best of our energies and skills,
because that challenge is one that we're willing to accept,
one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend
(30:25):
to win.
Speaker 8 (30:26):
That man can speak the first The first crude landing
of the Moon happened just seven years later in nineteen
sixty nine, and the last time a human set foot
on the Moon was nineteen seventy two. More than the
uldergrass Tyson coming up on the middle.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
This is the middle on Jeremy Hobson. This hour, we're
talking with astrophysicist Neil de grass Tyson about all things
related to the Cosmos, space stars, everything in between. And
while this conversation happened about a year ago, and the
things in space we talked about didn't change, one thing
did Here on Earth, you're gonna hear a reference to
Elon Mush remember him. We referred to him as a
(31:02):
private citizen in the original broadcast, and now as you know,
he's not that. He's maybe the most powerful man in
Washington and also a special government employee. Our conversation with
Neil de grasse Tyson continued with a caller named Tim
from Bradenton, Florida, with a question about what our universe
actually looks like.
Speaker 17 (31:21):
Hi, er, I'm so excited to speak to Neil degrass Tyson.
Huge fan. I considered an honor and a privilege, so
thank you. My question is what would the observable universe
look like from the perspective of a galaxy formed on
the outer edge, you know, very early on in the universe.
Speaker 15 (31:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Sure, So we formed early on in the universe and
we're here today. So any galaxy that formed back then
is alive today, but we don't see it other than
nearby galaxies that sort of aged with us together. But
as you go farther and farther away, looking farther back
in time. So if we go to a galaxy born
(32:05):
shortly after the beginning of the universe, and we see
it that light has been traveling for fourteen billion years
over that time, it's become a full red, bloody galaxy,
and in somewhere beyond our horizon, we know we can't
see it what it looks like today. We can only
see what it looked like back then. If we go
to that, if we could somehow magically go to that galaxy,
(32:26):
the universe from that perspective would see us being born,
because our light from being born would only just now
be reaching them. And that's the weird, wacky cool fact
about a universe that has this sort of expansion. So yeah,
the universe won't look different than will look just the
(32:48):
way ours looks. It will be the baby galaxy and
not them.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Does it bother you by the way that NASA now
has to rely on private space companies to get astronauts
out into outer space or is that just? Is that
a good thing?
Speaker 1 (33:03):
What do you think that it should have been happening
decades ago? First of all, and by the way, the
Apollo program, it was all tax based money that paid
for it. But NASA was already in deep relationships with
the space industry. But then it was sort of the
aerospace industry at the time. I live in New York
(33:25):
City on Long Island in Bethpage. Long Island was grumming aerospace.
They built the Lunar Excursion Module, the lemb People today
still walk proudly down the street because that an aunt
or an uncle or someone who worked as part of
that project. So the private enterprise has always been with us.
It's a matter of whether private enterprise took an initiative
(33:49):
and then the rocket has their name on it instead
of NASA. So and I think that should have been
happening decades ago, to have turned space from a program
into a space industry. Then it becomes an everyday part
of life, and why not. It's the universe?
Speaker 15 (34:08):
Right.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Let me ask you one more thing about that though,
because there's private industry assisting NASA or doing it on
its own with you know, in conjunction with NASA. But
there's also things like Elon Musk's starlink where he now
as a as a private citizen, has a lot of
power over the communications in places like Ukraine that rely
on his satellites and he could sort of just buy
(34:31):
himself change the course of a ward. What do you
think about that, a private citizen having satellites and that
kind of power.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah, So, historically I don't think it's ever boded well
when a private citizen meddled in geopolitics outside of the
boundaries of what would normally happen either at the United
Nations or in peace talks or any kind of other
diplomatic encounters. So it seems to me those kinds of
(35:01):
things should be vetted by the State Department. That's why
we have a state department. So you can't have individuals
running around. They might not be fully informed about the
consequences of their actions, whereas the State Department would be.
Some information is secret, some is sensitive, some is protecting troops.
So so I don't mind people having power, i'd mind
(35:25):
if that power is not checked by people who have
access to the bigger story that needs to be known
and interpreted and understood.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Let's go to Emily, who's in Compton, Illinois. Emily, Welcome
to the middle Go ahead, thank you.
Speaker 12 (35:45):
This is Emily, and my son Brad is going to
ask a question.
Speaker 11 (35:49):
What would it look like on the inside of a
black hole?
Speaker 1 (35:56):
Cool? Do you want to find out? So as you
fall into a black hole, if you look behind you,
you will see the entire future history of the universe
unfold because your time clock will slow down relative and
(36:18):
you won't know this. You'll just be living your life.
But everything outside behind you will look like it's speeding up,
and trillions of years will go by as the whole
future history of the universe unfold, and as you go forward.
There there's a description that I'm only retelling it to
(36:39):
you because I didn't fully follow the argument, But it's
based on Einstein's general theory of relativity. That's, as you
go through the black hole, an entire other space time
and you're not crushed and dead. If you survive this,
there's an entire other space time that opens up in
front of you, So you leave your previous universe behind
(37:01):
and enter another one. This is why, not only in
science but in science fiction, black holes are commonly thought
of as portals to other places. So so yeah, but
you can test all this by traveling into one yourself.
Now I have, It's not quite in my will, but
I've expressed this to people. If I'm dying from something,
(37:23):
send me into a black hole. Let me die there, right.
I'd rather do that than get hit by a bus
or die in a hospital bed. And then I'll give
all the reporting that I can and I'll get to
experience nature at its most extreme. And I think that
would be a cool way to die.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Brat you want to does it make you want to
travel into a Brett black hole?
Speaker 5 (37:42):
Now?
Speaker 16 (37:42):
Hearing that.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Huh no, Well, thank you, thanks for calling very much,
and let's go to Sammy, who's in Park City, Utah. Sammy,
Welcome to the middle Go ahead.
Speaker 16 (37:57):
Hi, thank you. I was just wondering. I had heard
something on Science Friday from a physicist last week, and
she was talking about all the possible ways that the
universe will and could die eventually, and I was just
wondering what Neil's thoughts on were, what comes after that,
(38:20):
or if there's a multiverse or there's just nothing.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yeah, okay, so there are multiple ways the universe could
end based on the physics that we now understand. For me,
the most terrifying is if the dark energy continues unabated.
This is that mysterious pressure in the universe that's forcing
us to expand and accelerate in that expansion against the
(38:51):
wishes of gravity. That if that goes unchecked, the universe
will expand so severely that in twenty two billion years,
it will expand faster we think, than the fabric of
the universe can stretch, and we'd end up ripping the
fabric of the universe. It's called the Big Rip. I'd
(39:12):
lay awake at night wondering about that. If that does
not happen, we will nonetheless expand forever as the temperature
of the universe descends to absolute zero. So the universe
will not end in fire, but in ice, and not
with a bang, but with a whimper. Now, we may
(39:35):
be part of a multiverse, but that doesn't concern you
because you're in this universe. Yeah, so, because it could
be plenty of other universes two and just fine. But
our universe, all of our data point that it's on
a one way trip to oblivion.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Let's go to Douglas, who's in New Orleans, Louisiana. Douglas,
welcome to the middle.
Speaker 15 (39:54):
Go ahead, Thank you so much.
Speaker 17 (39:57):
I just had a question on your thoughts on light
pollution and impact on humans connection with the night sky.
We get to see the eclipse during the day, but
there's so much lost at night now, and I want
to see what your thoughts are with that.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yeah, it's tragic. Thanks for that question. It's tragedy. Let
me not there. I don't want to cheapen the word
tragic by saying, oh, there's light in the night sky,
so that's the world has tragedies. Let's save the word
tragedy for that. In this case, it's it was unfortunate
that there's entire generations of people who will grow up
(40:28):
having never experienced the majesty of a perfectly dark night sky.
And I don't know that it's getting worse, but it's
just simple that most people live near cities, and if
you live near a city, it's bad. But if you
live out in a farm, you can see the Milky
Way and other subtle elements of the night sky. So
(40:50):
you just have to make sure you take a trip
away from a city sometime and to appreciate what our
ancestors saw every single night of their lives, that every
night that wasn't cloudy. So the reason why I don't
think the light pollution is getting worse is we've gotten
a little more clever about the orientation of lamps in
(41:13):
the streets. In the old days, the light would just
illuminate everything. If you flew over a town in an
airplane and saw a street light, that meant someone was
paying for electricity to generate light that went up into
the atmosphere and through the window of your airplane to
your retin. That's a complete waste of money. So we
(41:35):
got clever about this, and so lamps now have shades
on top. When you do that, you don't need as
much vaultage much wattage. So there are ways we get
around this. So it's too bad. And we know what's
worse than the light pollution is satellite pollution. You talk
about Elon's Stark satellites that you're looking at the Oh
(41:57):
that's a beautiful star, or no, that's a satellite moving through.
Initially it's kind of fun. Or you can see a
satellite and then you realize, no, no, I want to
see the pristine night sky without our technology to contaminate it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
I have to say I the best night sky I've
ever seen in my life was on an island called
Vinyl Haven off the coast of Maine, which was so
dark that you could see so much. And I don't
want to overuse the word magical, but it was magical
and I wish I could see that more often. Where
where's the best night sky you've ever seen? Neil Degrest Tyson.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
On mountaintops you know where we put observatories. Oh, by
the way, did you know the that Maine? If you
look on a map, Maine is just out there. I
mean because the east coast of the United States curves, and
so Maine is like sticking out there. It's damn it's
(42:49):
halfway to London, you know, England or Greenland right in Iceland.
So yes, you get a night sky there. And there
are people duped into, if I may use that word,
duped into thinking that the southern skies are uniquely beautiful.
So have you ever been to Australian and saying, oh,
the sky you could just touch it? And I'm saying,
do you realize how many people don't live in Australia.
(43:09):
So it's not that the sky is inherently better, it's
that there's no light pollution. And if the north had
as low light pollution as the south, you wouldn't be
uniquely complementing the southern hemisphere as the way. And I'm
delighted to learn that your best night sky was off
the coast of Maine.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
I mean it was a long time ago. Maybe the
lights of you know, Boston, weren't as bright back then.
Let me go to Let me go to Nancy, who's
in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Nancy, welcome to the middle, Go ahead, Hi.
Speaker 12 (43:42):
Lovely talking to Neil degrass. This is exciting, but sure.
I recently read about an SBR fast but no fast
radio birth FRB, and I have too many people in
my area that are like, oh, those are aliens, And
I'm like, well, it's just.
Speaker 15 (43:58):
So far a radio wave.
Speaker 12 (43:59):
But we're what are becoming?
Speaker 16 (44:00):
Sovid?
Speaker 11 (44:00):
What are you?
Speaker 12 (44:01):
What can you tell me? Educate me about what they
really are?
Speaker 15 (44:04):
These bursts?
Speaker 1 (44:06):
Yeah, So, anytime we find something mysterious in the universe
or that is something that didn't previously exist in our catalogs,
if your first explanation is it's aliens, then you're not
really doing science, all right. You have to say, well,
can I measure a little better, a little differently? Does
what does it resemble that I know? And what is different?
(44:28):
Can I isolate this? Can I bring a different telescope
to bear on this? So the very first radio pulses,
which became the prototype for what we call pulsars, people
thought they were aliens, all right. In fact, there was
tongue in cheek in the first chart reading of it
of the pulsar it ad LGM someone or a little
(44:50):
green man, because who could possibly be sending signals with
such regularity in a chaotic universe. And then we learned
that they're rapidly rotating objects very predictably, and circumstances in
their environment can promote the the release of radio waves
instead of visible light. And we have radio telescopes and
(45:12):
you see these pulses, okay, and some are really fast,
like a thousand times per second, and you're saying, well,
only aliens could produce that. Okay, maybe, but that's not
my first thought. Maybe there's some physical phenomenon I have
yet to learn about that's causing this. And even after
(45:32):
I've run out of all such explanations, I'm still not
jumping on the alien. But because look at all the
things we didn't previously understand that we could have just
explained away with aliens and walked onto and and and
went on to other projects, but we didn't. We kept
probing it. So as tempting as it is to say
(45:53):
aliens did it, it's not my first thought.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
So that brings me back to something we were talking
about a bit earlier. And you've used evidence as you've
talked through a lot of these questions that people have
had for you. You call in your Bookstarry Messenger for us
to focus more on evidence as we resolve political disputes
and do all kinds of things, do you think that
will happen? Do you think that that we'll get more
(46:18):
evidence based, fact based in terms of how we communicate
with each other, especially in this country.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
If arguments were evidence based, there wouldn't be so many arguments.
So when two scientists have an argument, which we have arguments,
there's an implicit contract that we have signed. It's implicit.
It's either I'm right and you're wrong, or you're right
and I'm wrong, or we're both wrong. And if at
(46:45):
any point we still can't agree, the solution is always
we need more data or better data, we're different kinds
of data to resolve this. Then we go out for
a beer. That kind of doesn't happen. And so talk
about the middle of One of the examples in the book,
in the chapter on conflict and resolution, there's a there's
(47:07):
a liberal community that's like heaping upon the conservatives, accusing
them of being anti science and that they'll cite the
climate change denial and this sort of thing. But it's
as though the liberals want to take the science high road.
But then you look at, well, who is into you know,
feather energy and crystal healing, and astrology and homeopathic medicine.
(47:31):
Those are deeply embedded in the liberal community as voters right,
and you can to embrace these ideas requires that you
you are in denial of some are all the mainstream
science associated with it. So one side can lob complaints
to the other, claiming their high road, but if you
(47:51):
look at what's actually happening, they don't have the hiro.
They just don't. And and so it's this kind of
self reflection that doesn't happen often enough because everybody thinks
they're in the right.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
Our guest Neil de Grasse Tyson, who's director of the
Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. His
book is called Starry Messenger. He's got a podcast at
a TV show called Star Talk. Neil de Grasse Tyson,
it has been so wonderful having you on the middle.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
Well, that was fun. And next week we're going to
be taking your calls live on the topic of trans
rights and the entire conversation surrounding trans identity following President
Trump's order that there are only two genders in this country.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
As always, you.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Can call in at eight four four four Middle that's
eight four four four six four three three five three,
or you can reach out at Listen to the Middle
dot com, where you can also sign up for our
free weekly newsletter, and you can sign up for our
video podcast on YouTube so you can watch us as
well as hear us. The Middle is brought to you
by Longnook Media, distributed by Illinois Public Media in Urbana, Illinois,
and produced by Harrison Vittino, Danny Alexander, Sam Burmistas, John Barth, Anikadeshler,
(48:58):
and Brandon Condritz. Our technical director is Jason Kroft. Thanks
to our satellite radio listeners, our podcast audience, and the
more than four hundred and twenty public radio stations making
it possible for people across the country to listen to
the Middle, I'm Jeremy Hobson and I'll talk to you
next week.
Host
Jeremy Hobson
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