Stars Ask Neil To Save The Universe

0:00I love Celebrities Ask Neil. Yeah. Okay. It's just a reminder that, you know, they're people too, and they have a geek soft underbelly. They have cosmic curiosity, just like the rest of us. And they got really personal, those people. I got to tell you, I was offended by some of those questions. Steven Spielberg's question, that offended you? Yes. What a nut he is. Stop.

0:23Coming right up, Celebrities Ask Neil, StarTalk Special Edition.

0:30Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

0:42This is StarTalk Special Edition, which means I got Gary O'Reilly. Hello. Hey, Gary. Okay, so today we have one of our occasional installments of Celebrities Ask Neil. Oh. Those are fun. Yeah. And generally, you know, if I find myself around town on a movie set. As you do. As you do. As can happen on occasion. I'll just pull out my smartphone and see if they have a question for me. Cool.

1:13If one of the celebs have a question for me. Because everybody's got a question about the universe. Right. And so we gather enough of them on the shelf and bring them out as an entire episode. You know, I do the same thing when I'm on set, and the answer always comes back, how did you get past security? Tell me that.

1:34So it's kind of like Cosmic Queries for celebs. Oh, that's cool. That's a way to think about it. All right. Do we charge them like Patreon? No. Yeah. Give me my $5. By the way, $5 is top tier. Forget the $5. These are stars we're talking about. All right. So first up, let's see who we've got on the docket. Okay. Neil, Steven Spielberg here to ask you a question. I'm not a physicist, and I don't have any real knowledge of quantum mechanics or any of this,

2:05but I am curious about what is the gap between, you know, an electron? What is that gap when the nucleus, you know, is separated and you've got this gap? And is that gap a way to travel, to be able to defy having to go the speed of light to get somewhere? Wow. Where did you get to talk to Steven Spielberg? I mean, that was kind of wild. Like, hey, Neil, Steven Spielberg here.

2:39Yeah, who, who, where does that happen? Well, so I had access. Yeah, we just saw that.

2:48So two things. As a StarTalk entity, we were invited to the early press encounters with the actors and producers and writers for Disclosure Day. Nice. And not only that, I also got a red carpet invite. Oh, cool. Yeah, that was fun. Yours is in the mail. Yeah. Well, no, I got the blue carpet invite. I got the cease and desist. You have exclusions alone.

3:20Yeah. So here we caught up with him when we were chatting with him about the film, putting together a whole episode on what the film was about. Cool. And aliens. Cool, cool, cool. Yeah. So he asks a perceptive question that most people don't even think about. Okay. All right. So in an atom, there's empty space between the nucleus and the electron. Right. What's the charge on the nucleus? It's a positive charge. It's a positive charge. That's where all the protons are.

3:51All right. Okay. What's the charge on an electron? It's negative. It's the opposite charge. Right. All right. They attract. Of course. Why doesn't the electron slam into the nucleus? Well, they want to, but it's kind of a Montague and Capulet type thing. So they're being kept apart from one another, even though they love each other dearly. Oh, thank you, Shakespeare, for that. Romeo and Juliet. So the distance, is that the Max Planck sort of scenario? Oh, Planck is much smaller. Much smaller than him. Okay. Okay. But if you want to get a sense of how big that gap is.

4:21Right. If you have a few kernels of, what's that popcorn they eat in stadiums? Of popcorn? No, Cracker Jack. Cracker Jack. If you have a few Cracker Jack kernels in the middle of the field, the volume of the stadium is approximately, is where the electron is. It represents where the electron. Yeah. That's amazing. It's that much space. That much space. That's incredible. Okay. And the first guy who discovered there was that much space, his name is Ernst Rutherford. He loved baseball. He's a New Zealander.

4:56New Zealander. Yes. Ernst Rutherford. Kiwi. A Kiwi. One of your colonies. Thank you for reminding me of our colonial past again.

5:07Plus, I think they still have your Union Jack on their flag. Yeah, that's... Yeah, so you went there and peed on all their flags, and it's still there. Okay. I don't think we actually did that. But, don't let it get away, I have a good story. All right, try it. All right. So, he was the first to discover all this empty space, and it's rumored, just rumored, that the next morning, he was afraid to step out of his bed out of fear that he would fall through the floor. Nice. That was one hell of a dream he had in his house.

5:38I was going to say, the night before, he got high, I don't know what. Yeah. Realizing that most of matter was just simply empty space. All right. So, that's one factor. That alone has nothing to do with faster than light travel, but it is an intriguing fact that the electron does not collapse into the nucleus. Right. So, what Spielberg is doing there, is he foreseeing a movie that he wants to make to explore? Could be. Through the gap, I want to call it space, but not in the classic terms. It wouldn't be the first time that happened with me.

6:09Yeah. Okay. I got a phone call from Seth MacFarlane. He said, Neil, I'm going to be in town. Can we do lunch? And I definitely made lunch for Seth. Mm-hmm. And we had lunch, and he asked me all these questions about the Big Bang, the age of the universe and everything. And then, six months later, there's an entire Family Guy episode where Stewie's time machine takes him back to the Big Bang. To the Big Bang. Yeah. And at the end, it says, science consultant Neil deGrasse Tyson. Nice. All right. It should have said, lunch conversation with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

6:39So, there's that gap. So, here's why the electron can't just fall in. All right. Because the space occupied by the electron is set by its wavelength because it's also a wave. Right. The wave-particle duality. If the wave can't fit in a smaller space, it's not going there. It's going to occupy the bigger volume. Cool. Okay. All right. So, just something to keep in mind. You can't just stick it anywhere. Right. Okay. So, now, what he might have also been hinting to was quantum tunneling.

7:11Right. Right. Okay? And quantum tunneling, when you have entangled particles. Right. They're entangled and they know about each other. And when you observe one of them, the other one manifests at faster than the speed of light. Right. So, I think he was... He was kind of conflating the two there. A little bit, but I think his heart's in the right place. Yeah. Because he was thinking this. Right. What happens if you change the frequency on the wavelength? Of the what? Of the electron is what he's saying. You can adjust the energy levels of the electron with a magnetic field.

7:45You can excite them or de-excite them. You can do things, but the structure of the nucleus is really what's responsible for all of what the electrons will do outside of it. Right. Right. So, and so badly did we want atoms to resemble solar systems. Right. So badly, because we wanted... It's easy to think that... To think. You have a center like the sun, and then other things... It's just that all the way down. Right. Yeah. It's just all the way up and all the way down. It's mother nature replicating. Replicates so badly, did we want that, that we call the electron positions orbitals.

8:23Yeah. Instead of orbits. Right. Orbitals. So, they're statistically configured places where you would find the electron around the nucleus. The point is, when anything tunnels in quantum physics, it goes across a barrier instantaneously. Right. And when you have two quantum entangled particles, they manifest instantaneously. Okay? As far as any of our measurements and calculations go. In different positions. Okay? One is here and one is here. Yeah. Right. So, how close are we to harnessing that?

8:53We got top people working on doing... Trying to do just that. For how long? They've been working for like at least 10 years. It's slacking.

9:03Quantum physics is hard stuff. Step it up. I am candy. Quantum physicists. Step it up. So, the electron has a field. Yeah. Yes. So does the proton. So does the proton. So, is it the fields that are interfering that keeps them apart? No, no. It's the fact that you cannot physically... You just cannot physically put... An electron. An electron in that space. Right, right. Okay. All right. So... It's so different from why a microwave can't get out of a microwave oven. Right. Because the holes in the door... Because the holes in the door...

9:34It's smaller than the wave itself. So, the wave came, doesn't even know the hole's there. Right. Right. So, anyhow, I think you're right. He might be thinking of a movie or something. Yeah, maybe. It wouldn't be a surprise. That'd be kind of cool. It'd be kind of cool. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Nothing wrong with that. See how he wants to take that forward. All right. Do we three get an assist if the film gets made? Oh, get a mention? Honorable mention? Really? And the first time I ever met him, it was in this office. Oh, really? He came by. Spielberg? VIP services. Apparently, he made a request.

10:05Brought one of his sons in. All right. Who was just at that age, maybe 14, 13. Oh, very nice. Yeah, yeah. And we chatted. And that's when I learned, because I asked... Go ahead. ...that E.T. was a vegetable, not an animal. That makes sense. E.T. was plant-based. I believe that. That's why E.T. had that magic finger that could make plants come back to life. Right, because it could make all the plants come back to life. Oh, the biolumines. Yeah, that finger, it could touch a plant, and the plant rejuvenated. I basically remember it. So, there it is.

10:36That's very cool. All right. Okay. All right. Hi, I'm Ernie Carducci from Columbus, Ohio. I'm here with my son, Ernie, because we listen to StarTalk every night and support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

11:04All right. Next up. Hi, I'm Bill Prady, co-creator of the new HBO Max series, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. And I have a really critical question for you, Neil. And this is, everything depends on it. Are multiverses real? Or should that be, is the multiverse real? Or should it be, are there multiple universes? One of those three questions is critical.

11:37Ooh. Okay, so you know what Bill Prady is? Other than, so he's got this new show. Hmm. Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. Yes. The premise of that is, this character is Stuart. Right. Is, he breaks the space-time continuum and is accidentally wandering into multiple universes. Yes. Okay? Now, what did he break? A device made by Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory. Big Bang Theory. So Bill Prady co-created the Big Bang Theory with Chuck Lorre.

12:09Chuck Lorre. Who also created Two and a Half Men. And every other thing that you've seen on TV. Every other thing. Yeah, pretty much Chuck Lorre. So, and so I'm known to them, perhaps through StarTalk, but even in the day, I was invited to give two cameos on the Big Bang Theory. Oh, very nice. All right. One in season three and one in season seven or eight, the last season. Last season. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. That's very cool. Well, first cameo, I argue with Sheldon about Pluto's planet status.

12:43Okay. Okay. Then, the second one, I'm settling scores by phone. Okay? I'm calling people up in sequence. And one of the lines that was written on the spot was not in the script. On the spot is, all right, who else needs a DeGrasse whooping? Oh, that's funny. That was good. That's a good one. That's a good line. All right. So, anyway, that's who he is. And so, apparently, Stuart, who's a character from the Big Bang Theory, perhaps the most

13:13awkward, geekiest character among the geeky characters is Stuart. He owns the comic book store. Yes. The comic book store. He needs to know if there's a real multiverse. Otherwise, the premise of the whole show fails. Pretty much. Okay. When you do the math, merging quantum physics and general relativity, the physics of the small and the physics of the large, there was a point in the past when the large was small. Mm-hmm. That was the Big Bang. There's the shotgun marriage.

13:44Yeah. When you do that at a math level beyond my reach, that's what we need Brian Green for, multiple universes pop out of the equations. Right. It wasn't like we'd try to pull it up. You didn't try to make it happen. Make it happen. It just, you got it. You got it for free. You got it for free. And you have quantum fluctuations. And every time you have a quantum fluctuation, things happen. Right. And if you're having quantum fluctuations, when the whole universe is the size of a fluctuation, the whole universe becomes one of those fluctuations.

14:15Okay? And there are variations on the multiverse. Yeah. In fact, I invite the listener reader to see the StarTalk book, Cosmic Queries. There's a whole section on there on how the universe will end. Mm-hmm. And it talks about multiverses. Nice. There's a whole discussion in there on that. So, Bill Prady. Bill Prady. All theoretical evidence points to the existence of a multiverse. Whether we will ever one day be able to interact with it by some backdoor method remains to

14:50be seen. But if it's a fluctuation, other things would have fluctuated as well, such as the laws of physics. Mm. Very dangerous. Which means we don't want to go there. Correct. Yeah. Very dangerous. So, Bill, take it and run with it. May your show- And send a check here. You send a StarTalk care of Chuck Nice.

15:18So, there it is. That's cool, man. Bill, keep up the good, fun work. Yeah. You finally gave the Geekiverse a Hollywood voice. Yeah, man. I don't know how else to say that. No, that's a good way to say it. You gotta, I think he's part of the reason from, I'll say, a pop culture and general culture framing that people are far more open to scientific information because of his show.

15:54And as long as it's been on the air. That show's created a comfort zone for geeks to exist in. Yes. That's the better way to say it than the way I said it. Yeah. It's a comfort zone. It's a comfort zone for geeks. And while still celebrating their brilliance, you know, you can still make fun, but no one at the end of the day, you don't get the sense that anyone's feelings are getting hurt or they're getting exploited for their lack of social skills. It's kind of a celebration of this who I am, deal with it. Yeah. And I'll make a mistake here, but that's, I'm self-aware and I'm shy when others are

16:28not, but that's just what I am. He's being crafted. And he doesn't, he doesn't talk down to make the jokes. Good point. You know, he actually makes, he leaves the science, the science, and then writes a sitcom around that. Ooh. You know? Good thinking about that. Which is really cool. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Next up. Hey, Neil, it's comedian Hassan Minhaj. Look, I got a question for you. Why is pink Himalayan salt pink? Like, are the Himalayas pink or is the rock pink or am I eating a piece of the Himalayas?

17:02What's going on?

17:04So, first of all, I was duly informed by who I don't remember that if you have more than one kind of salt in your cabinet, you're rich. That is not true. I can vouch for that for certain. Okay. Because I have coarse sea salt. I have pink Himalayan salt. I have black salt. Okay. And then, of course, Morton's. Evidence of how much we're paying you.

17:36No. That's what I'm saying. No. No. I'm just saying. What they don't, what the people don't know is they pay me in salt. No.

17:52Like it's 200 BC. Yeah. Back in the day. Back in the day. Back in the day. That's where the word salary comes from. Salt. Oh, cool. Yes. That's very cool. When the Romans paid their soldiers in salt. In salt. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I'm just saying, if you go up in the hood, nobody's got more than one kind of salt in the cabinet. Now, that's true. I'm just saying. That's true. That's because, you know, black people know how to flavor their food. They don't need five kinds of salt. We got other things. We got stuff like fat back.

18:23All right? You don't need no damn Himalayan salt when you got fat back. Okay?

18:31Wait, do you know what fat back is? No. That's what I was wondering. No, I was just thinking. I don't want to ask. I don't want to ask. I'll tell you. A fat back. It's a slab of a pig that doesn't have enough meat to even slice it into bacon. Right. All right. Which is itself half fat. Right. Right? Right. This has less meat than a fatty bacon does. Yeah. And you pop that in your- But used correctly, it will flavor the hell out of anything.

19:05Especially collard greens. Collard greens. You just throw it in there. Yeah. All right. Yeah. And the vegetarians be damned. Yeah. You don't let them know that it's in there. They just go, oh my God, I've never had greens this good. Oh my God, what's your secret? I'm just, oh, it's just wonderful. I've just never had greens so flavorful. Oh. So I think fat back is the between state of existence of bacon and lard. Yeah, basically. What do you think of that?

19:36Yeah. That's a pretty accurate. Okay. Yeah. All right. Not to be confused with the pork belly. Yes. Which is just the opposite of the fat back. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But go ahead. So there's salt in so many places on earth. Because you just need a lake that has been around long enough to become salty, and then the lake evaporates and leaves a salt residue, and then it gets buried. And we have on another episode, we learn that the crystalline state of atoms or molecules is the lowest energy state that it can acquire, so that once it hits that state, it's that way basically forever.

20:12Forever. Basically. Mm-hmm. All right? So that's why you can dig up salt. That's why salt is in mines, where the salt's been there for a million years. A million years, yeah. There it is. Or however long. Why is it pink then? Oh. Says the man who today is wearing a pink polar shirt. My favorite color. Sure, sure. You look good in it. I like it. Yeah, I don't agree. You don't like it? No. What's wrong? You don't have to wear it.

20:35So it comes from impurities in the pure crystal lattice of the salt molecule, which is sodium chloride. Mm-hmm. Okay? And in this case, the impurity is an iron oxide. Rust. So it's infusion. Oh, okay. What do we call that? Okay. Hasan Minhaj, it's rust. It's rust. You're eating rusty salt. Oh, rusty-ass salt. That's what you're eating. So you're telling me- Would you pay for that salt? Yeah. How much would you pay for that rusty-ass salt? That's making it feel slightly better.

21:06It's centuries of crushed flamingos. Oh, I like flamingos. I like that. Yeah, but they have to get pink first. Well, they've got to eat. They've got to eat. They've got to eat the fist. The little shrimp and krill. The krill. Yeah, the krill and it gives them the keratinum. So they've got to eat that first. Then they become pink. Then they become pink. Then they get crushed. Then they get crushed. And then you get your pink sizzle. Thank you for that new hypothesis. First they have to hike to the Himalayas. Which ain't, unless the flamingos ain't going to the Himalayas. I promise you. Oh, hilarious. These are trace amounts of this iron oxide that's in there.

21:37And you can ask, well, how much is in there? Right. Is it a good source of iron? Yes, it is a source of iron. But so many other foods you eat in a day, especially fresh vegetables, are excellent sources of iron. Yeah. Far beyond what you're getting in the salt. Right. So while it might look pretty in a transparent salt shaker, salt grinder, which I have. All right. Of course.

22:05But of course. It wouldn't be so gushy to put my salt in it. To buy it. Opaque? To buy it on the premise that you are somehow healthier for it is an overstatement of its nutritional value. You're ripping yourself off. To you. Yeah. So salt is overly processed, and pink Himalayan salt is just lazy salt. So, correct. So other salts might have some tinge to them, but they refine it to remove the other minerals.

22:36Exactly. And you're left with pure salt. Yeah. Sodium chloride. Yeah. Because everybody wants, you know, for table salt, it's supposedly, you know, white is better. You know, because, like, all right, let's be real, right? Anyway. But if you went back in a day and you got salt, it was gray. Yeah, I have gray salt as well. Yeah, your salt was gray, and that's, like, the most natural salt you're going to get. So, yeah, and Asam Minaj, we love him. And I was on his podcast. Okay. And I just thought, I can't exit his podcast.

23:08He was on your live show. Yes, he was. Yes. He was on StarTalk Live. Yeah. Really smart guy. And I first saw him through his appearances on The Daily Show. Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, Hasan, something else about your pink salt from the Himalayas? Other salt that is white or otherwise colorless, if you look at it. Colonized that Himalayan salt and went in there and took that Himalayan salt and said, listen, y'all pink salt, y'all going to understand something. Chuck is still in therapy.

23:46I know, but he seems quite happy. He is completely happy. Anytime I can get a chance, that's all I'm saying. Next up. Hey, my name's Josh Sher, and I'm the host of Last Meals on Mythical Kitchen, and I have a question for Neil. Since the beginning of time, humans have been manipulating plants via crossbreeding and later GMOs. What of the plants that we eat do you think is most currently lacking and needs an update? Oh, I love that. Hmm. I love that. There's hardly any food in the grocery store that has not been genetically modified from

24:19its original form. There's almost no food on earth that has not been genetically modified. That's basically true. Yeah. There are a few things like wild-caught tuna, okay, that's not been genetically modified. But almost everything else, we have modified it. Right. And even if we haven't modified it, nature genetically modifies itself. All the time. Just think of corn. Just think of the original corn. Original corn is this big. Yeah. And now we're- Now they're this big.

24:50And people say, oh, I want natural corn. Yeah. I don't want GMO corn. Oh, you want natural corn? You want some, like, malnutrition, some corn that you could eat 18 of them and you'd still be hungry. Right, exactly. So the only difference is GMOs, what we think of as GMOs, are accomplishing the same thing that we did in artificial selection. Correct. But we just do it in a laboratory. We just do it in a lab. And both of those are what nature does all by itself. All by itself. How else are you going to get from single-celled organisms to elephants? Absolutely. Somebody's doing some serious genetic modification.

25:22But sometimes you can just leave plants and they will do it themselves. Yeah. They'll actually crossbreed. Flowers will- Do it. Yeah. Do it. It's crazy. Do it until you're satisfied. I say, well, do it. That's a 70s disco. Oh, man. That's hilarious. Yeah. They'll crossbreed with whatever they might. In a limiting case, I'm told by experts in the field that there are apple trees where different trunks of the tree are differently grafted so that the same tree can give you

25:55multiple kinds of apples. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. That's, yeah. That's like- I love that. It's like nature. I'm going to make my own cornucopia. Right. Exactly. I want a Fuji Gala Granny Smith tree. So, I have to pick a plant that I think is in dire need of some more genetic modification. Right? Okay. Let me think about that. Do you have a- Are you thinking one?

26:26Yeah, I'm trying. I'm just racking my brains. Mainly, it's vegetables to give them a flavor that allow kids to want to eat them. Oh.

26:36Oh, that's good. Chocolate flavored broccoli. Chocolate broccoli. Oh! We'll call it choc-o-ly. Oh! Ow! We're in. There you go. It's chocolate broccoli. It's chocolate broccoli. Chocolate broccoli.

26:52It's a reference from 1980s Saturday Night Live. All right. True. Very true. Very true. I wasn't aware of that. That's right. I know. So, let's agree on that. That broccoli, the famous food to be hated by children, we need to get them to like that food, and we need to infuse it with something we know they will like. That they will like. Yeah. So, let's get the chocolate gene. Right. Either that, or we work on the Jelly Belly, multiple flavors. And then you can choose which one you can tell.

27:22In the broccoli? Yeah. Okay. Oh, oh, interesting. So, different florets would have different flavors. Yeah. So, you'd have multicolored broccoli with different flavors. Now you go ahead. The kids would be eating that up. Yeah. Okay. There it is. We can't have kids eating rainbow broccoli. Yeah, on a serious note, a whole other reason for GMO plants, which is more broadly called genetic engineering, is you can genetically engineer plants, for example, to have two

27:58crops in one season. If it's early maturing, and then that doubles your yield. Your yield. Okay? Right. Or you can have one that can survive colder temperatures. Right. Or drought. Or drought resistant. Exactly. So, they don't evaporate as much water out of their surfaces. So, there are many reasons why one would do this. Yeah. And by the way, that's going to become far more necessary as the planet evolves. Oh, they're already working on taking native species of plants and trees from heat, very

28:29hot areas that are drought resistant. And taking them over here. And taking them, growing them, and developing them. So, yeah, they're way ahead of the story. Yeah, it has to be, because crop yields are already suffering because of climate crisis. And it's only going to get worse. There was a controversial GMO where they got some gene from a fish that thrives in sub-zero temperatures of salt water. So, like 30 degrees, 31 degrees. Right. And they put that in a tomato, which prevents tomatoes from freezing in the first frost.

29:01Right. The frost. They're frost resistant. Frost resistant. Yeah. Correct. And people freak us out. I don't want my fish in a tomato. And rather than say, oh my gosh, all life is connected. Exactly. Wait, we, this, that's what. No Franken-made-o. Hum. Hum. Not only are fish our ancestors, there's an earlier ancestor that's the ancestor of both animals and plants. Correct. And green plants. Yes. So, what a celebration of life that actually is. Yeah. Yep. All right. Next up.

29:48Hi, I'm Rikki Lindholm. I play Ramona on Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. And here is my question. What is the most misunderstood concept in the universe, and why do people keep getting it wrong? Ooh, love that. So, Rikki Lindholm was an intermittently recurring character in The Big Bang Theory. Okay. And now she's a regular in Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. So, she plays a most excellent geek in the series. Once again, a celebration of a culture, really.

30:20The geek is geekiverse. Yeah. Yeah, completely. So, that's an excellent question.

30:28And I would say what people persistently get wrong is that they put sound in space. I'm going to say, yeah, that's a good one. And then not giving it up. Right. I go up and slap them, and they'll do it again the next time. Yeah. Okay. There's an explosion, and you hear the explosion when you see it. Which makes it doubly wrong. You don't even hear lightning when you see thunder on Earth.

30:59That's correct. And now there's an explosion out in space, and the star blows up, and you hear the explosion at the same time? Yeah. With everything that's going on in the world, that's what annoys you? In a movie where they're trying to get their science right. Yeah. Okay. That's right. All right. So, Chuck, I remember you saying that the TIE fighter, I just happened to have a TIE fighter here in my office, that these make sounds in the vacuum of space. Yes. And it's exactly the same sound they made in Earth's, in a planetary atmosphere.

31:36In a planetary atmosphere. Yes. Same with their cannons. You know.

31:42And, yeah. Out in the vacuum of space. So, Ricky, that's my biggest issue. Yeah. All right. And I've just given up. People just get it wrong. Just get it wrong. All right. What else? There's got to be something else. Oh, you want another one? Okay. People think. You've got more than one itch that you want to scratch. Okay. Here's a more subtle one. Okay. People think that any time you are in space, you are weightless. That is not true. Mm-hmm. All right. It's not true. If your engines are firing, you have weight inside the craft. And if you want to go anywhere, you're going to fire your engines.

32:14So, if you turn off your engines, then you're coasting, falling into wherever you're going. And since you're in free fall, only then are you weightless. Right. And the movie, Ad Astra. Yes. To getting back and forth to the moon in a matter of hours, rather than three days. Three days is the coasting time that it takes to get there. Three days. In other words, you fire your engines, shut them off. You coast until the moon's gravity- Does the rest. Does the rest.

32:44Yeah. Okay? And you're coasting the whole time. You're weightless the whole time. But, you know, if you're in a hurry and you don't want to wait three days, you want to get there in three hours, you're burning your rockets the whole time. You're burning your rockets. You are not weightless. Right. And in that movie, they showed the burning rockets, and inside, they're all just floating around. Floating around. It's like, no. No. So, what's the prohibitor on burning your engines all the way to the moon? Is it the weight? How big is your fuel tank? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's the weight. Entirely. So, a real future would be filling stations in space.

33:17Then you could burn all the way to the filling station, and then burn again. Right. Solar-powered? Sure. But the farther away from the sun you go, the less intense the sunlight is, by the inverse square law of light that we talked about on a prior episode. That's correct. With my butter gun. So, I guess it's three days. Butter gun. Star talk. So, and the show that gets it correct all the time is The Expanse. Yes. They get all the accelerations correct. They do. Two thumbs up. Yep. All right. Next up.

33:48Hi, Neil. I've always had this question for you. Have you yourself had an alien encounter? Oh. Oh, we know who that is. She did not identify herself. Yes, but you can tell by her voice. Maybe she didn't need to. Yes, that's how big she is. Mm-hmm. And she had a little bit of accent there? Oh. No, she doesn't have an accent. Okay. Fine. You have an accent. Very good. She does not. You got a number here. We can kick your ass. Very good. Watch what you say. This is America, Jack.

34:14Bash a Brit day. Another Bash a Brit day. So, I'm delighted to answer that question. And? I'm not authorized to comment further. There you go. I don't know who this guy is. So, do we end up with a, is it the Fermi paradox, where the aliens are probably here anyway, or why would they go this far just to? I know. So, it's a whole, so the question was, have I encountered an alien? Mm-hmm. The answer is no. But it's not for want of trying. But have you done so not knowing that you had? But that doesn't count, because that means that maybe all of us have done so not knowing.

34:47Exactly. Then my answer would not be, if I don't know, then you don't know. No, I agree. I'm just saying, do you think the possibility is that we, you, Jack, everybody watching and listening has had an alien encounter, but has no knowledge of the fact that it happened? Okay. So, if that's true for everyone, then it's true for no one. Yeah. And by the way, if aliens are here unannounced and they're observing us, it is because from

35:20wherever they came, there are more of them coming. And that is why they don't want to let us know that they are here, which means we are totally screwed. So, I don't know these people who are just like, well, they got to be here. They have to. Well, you're a dumbass, because quite frankly, if they are, that is the end of us. Because anybody who can reach us is so much more advanced than we could ever hope to be, that when they come here, they're like, yeah, this is ours now.

35:51I hope y'all don't know. Only if they behave as we have. Well, my point is this. The only reason they would conceal the fact that they are here is because they do behave the way we do. So, we've got grabby aliens. Right. What about if they're not grabby aliens, but they've got a real twisted sense of humor? That could happen. Now, that'd be awesome. How about that? Well, then I'd be heartbroken that I didn't meet them, to be honest. And I got one for you. I got one for you. Think about us and our sense of humor and how it can go in different levels. Just imagine an alien like that.

36:22I spent a few pages on this in my book. All right. Take me to your leader. A couple of pages. I'm about halfway through that. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. The book is not very long. I'm a slow leader. Are you a slow leader? Okay. The book is like this. The book is this thing. Okay. Anything you want to do to make me feel better? I have a beginner's version of that. So, I try to think about what we look like to the aliens. Because they would find it intriguing, I think, that we have these sounds we project forward,

36:56vibrating air molecules that reach another person, and that they know our thoughts for having done so. Right? If they don't otherwise interact with sound the way we do. Okay. That's kind of interesting. Then what might be more interesting is there are some sounds that come out of our mouths that are single syllables that could completely offend another person. They're called curse words. Okay. Okay. That's weird. That's weird. A single syllable comes out, and the other person is crying because of it.

37:29So, then, so we'd have to teach the alien that this is just cussing. And... Well, the first thing you do if you're in another country... Learn the curse words. Yeah. The first thing that happens is you learn the rude words. No. The first thing I do is learn their food, okay? I don't know what countries you go to, or what you are after. Okay. I'm taking eating for granted. Okay. But the first words you learn in another language, if you're there, are the swear words. I have done that. Yeah. Yeah, you got to learn both so that when you eat the food, you can go, damn, that's true.

37:59Both. So, all I'm saying is it would be kind of cool if the aliens also had single syllable curse words. We'd be visited by cussing aliens. That would just be funny. Gleep you. If you think about it, if they've got enough technology to transverse... Universal aliens speak. Yeah. Gleep. Gleep. I mean, I think the technology to transverse large tracts of galaxies, galaxies, universe, and arrive here, they're not going to need to learn a language.

38:33They just... If they press, if they don't, that's... They're going to have access to be able to interpret everything. Yeah. They either did learn the language quickly, and they'll just speak English. If they land in an English-speaking country. Or, they read our minds. You know, that can happen. That's right. Because urges and emotions and thoughts don't require words to know that they exist within us. That's interesting that they don't need the audible language. They can just go straight through. Right. Exactly. And know the feeling and know the attitude.

39:05So, I've burned some pages on this. My favorite one is you befriend the alien. Okay. And then, after a certain number of hours, you say, excuse me, I have to lay down horizontally and go semi-comatose for a third of the Earth's rotation. Right. And the alien says, what? And you say, don't you sleep, too? So, sleep, it's just what we do. Yeah. It's a weird thing. It's a weird... It's completely weird. Right. I know, but it has to be vital to us. Otherwise, we'll have evolved not to need it.

39:35Right. And you're so vulnerable.