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Speaker 1

00:00

I just love that the neutrino is like Tom Cruise in the Mission Impossible. It leaves the sun and then it gets to Earth and it's just like... Pulls his face off like, it was me all along!

Speaker 2

00:14

You can't detect me, I don't... Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

Speaker 2

00:26

StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. Today we're gonna do a Cosmic Queries Grab Bag Edition.

Speaker 2

00:41

So Chuck, what does that even mean?

Speaker 1

00:43

Well you know what it means. It means that anything that people want to know, we just throw it in a bag and they get a chance to do it. We used to call it galactic gumbo.

Speaker 1

00:53

That don't do it.

Speaker 2

00:54

That don't do it. Gumbo. I haven't had gumbo in a while, but last I had it, yeah, it did kind of have pretty much everything in it.

Speaker 1

01:01

Yeah,

Speaker 2

01:02

man. Whatever might've been left in the fridge overnight. But okay, well, let's do it. You got them.

Speaker 2

01:07

Chuck, nice, my co-host. Yes.

Speaker 1

01:09

Thank you. So let's jump right into it. Let's go to Chris Hampton, who says, easy name here, Chuck.

Speaker 1

01:15

Hey, thanks, Chris. What the hell? I should really read these before the show thanks Chris anyway do you think future scientists Neil will look back at our particle colliders and think that they were somewhat barbaric, i.e. Smash, smash, smash, which would also imply that they found a better way to observe particles and parts of atoms while they're still intact.

Speaker 1

01:45

Wow. What do you think is better?

Speaker 2

01:46

I like that question.

Speaker 1

01:47

Yeah, it's

Speaker 2

01:48

really nice. That's a very, you know, peace-loving question. It is.

Speaker 2

01:55

Yeah, because atom smashers and particle accelerators, they're entirely designed to smash particles. I don't think particles have feelings, so to be worried about them, and to think that we're committing violence upon them? So here's how to think about it.

Speaker 1

02:14

Rest easy you little

Speaker 2

02:16

Particle pacifist. If you smashed a particle and then it was destroyed, right, and it would never, then okay. But when you smash a particle, what you're doing is you're putting energy into the system empowering it to make other particles.

Speaker 2

02:34

So atom smashers, particle accelerators, they're means of infusing a system with high levels of energy to see what pops out the other side, because some particles exist only under those conditions. So what you have to say is, is there a way to observe those conditions without being barbaric to arrive at them? Yes, there is. You know what that would be?

Speaker 2

02:59

Go back to the Big Bang. Ah. Okay? There you go, with your microscope or with your telescope, go back to the Big Bang because those are the conditions we are trying to duplicate in the laboratory.

Speaker 2

03:11

The conditions of density and temperature and pressure. These are the conditions of the Big Bang, and this is what started the field of astroparticle physics. Astroparticle physics deals with what happened in the early universe when the universe was small and very hot, and you couldn't have matter as we know it, you know, physical objects. Everything was a particle soup, seething back and forth between energy and matter, and this is what we're trying to create in the laboratory.

Speaker 2

03:43

So these laboratories are actually Portals back to the origin of time itself. Look at

Speaker 1

03:51

that So basically they're giant replicators is what they're doing.

Speaker 2

03:55

Exactly. Exactly and really he shouldn't have to be We're not gonna 1 day find out the particles have feelings. I'm pretty sure about that.

Speaker 1

04:02

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No need to have a protest for particles.

Speaker 1

04:07

No justice, no peace. We don't, it's gonna be alright. Alright, keep it coming. Alright, let's keep going here.

Speaker 1

04:16

Uh-oh. Wow. Walk we're a walk we're a fun tennis. There you go.

Speaker 1

04:25

That's, I think that's it.

Speaker 2

04:28

That's it, no matter what. That's it.

Speaker 1

04:30

It is what it is now. That's what it is now.

Speaker 2

04:33

Whatever it should be, that's what it is.

Speaker 1

04:35

That's what it is. Okay, okay. So Walkera says, hello, my people.

Speaker 1

04:42

This is Walkera from Georgia, originally from the Bronx, Neil. Bronx in the house. There you go. If gravity pulls everything down, then how do clouds defy gravity?

Speaker 1

04:53

And how do clouds stay up? Oh, I

Speaker 2

04:57

love that.

Speaker 1

04:58

Yeah, there you

Speaker 2

04:58

go. I love that. So let me ask a different question that's exactly the same. If gravity pulls everything down, why do helium balloons go up?

Speaker 2

05:06

Oh, there you go. So you can ask the question, what does a helium balloon weigh? What does a cloud weigh? Right.

Speaker 2

05:14

It does have negative weight. You have to take the scale and put it upside down above it and have it press upwards. Does it have negative weight? Okay, that's the question.

Speaker 2

05:23

It's the same question,

Speaker 1

05:24

all right? Things that- And it's weight relative to something, right? Exactly, exactly.

Speaker 2

05:31

So, so we, as physical objects called humans, are so much denser than air. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

05:40

Yeah, and you mean that as in a physical sense. Yeah. Because, you know, the other part is true, too.

Speaker 2

05:46

The other kind of dense.

Speaker 1

05:47

The other kind of dense is also true.

Speaker 2

05:49

When did dense become like you can't learn anything? Dense to me means you have a lot of information in there. It's a density of enlightenment.

Speaker 1

05:57

See, and that it lets you know who you are. Okay, because you look at dense as a good thing as in a great deal of information compacted. Pack it

Speaker 2

06:09

in. Pack it in.

Speaker 1

06:11

Right. Whereas dense as in thick-headed, it's about getting it in there. Oh, the barrier. The density is the barrier.

Speaker 1

06:18

The density of the barrier. You're a

Speaker 2

06:20

thick-headed dolt. Okay, so

Speaker 1

06:21

it's a thick-skulled. It's a thick skull.

Speaker 2

06:24

Don't talk, don't implicate the whole head here. Just, it's, okay, I didn't, I swear to you, I did not know that. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2

06:33

The density of the barrier of entry of information into your mind,

Speaker 1

06:37

all right. There you go. So, so

Speaker 2

06:39

you can ask what, so we are so much denser, physically denser than air. We don't think about how much less we weigh in air. Right.

Speaker 2

06:51

Air has a buoyant force that makes you weigh a little bit less. But we don't care about it. We don't even think about it. How about water?

Speaker 2

07:02

OK, we are almost the same density as water. So, some people float, and those who sink, they don't sink very fast. So, How much do you weigh in water? Well, if you're floating, do you weigh 0?

Speaker 2

07:20

So what's happening here is everything has weight unless you're floating in something, okay? So the helium Balloon is lighter than air. If you started evacuating all the air of the earth, then all the helium balloons, however many are still up there, the Chinese balloon, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever balloon is up there, it will come to earth. And then you can stick a scale under it and figure out how much it actually weighs with no buoyant force assisting it.

Speaker 1

07:54

There you go.

Speaker 2

07:55

Now you fill, now you pour air back into our atmosphere and things lighter than air will float above it, but that doesn't mean they're weightless.

Speaker 1

08:04

Look at that.

Speaker 2

08:05

Yeah.

Speaker 1

08:06

That's awesome. And by the way, there's a lot of videos on social media right now circulating that speak to this questioning gravity because of things that float. And the fact that there are things that are on parts of the earth that they say are upside down so it's keeping you upside down but yet at the same time the same so-called supposed force is allowing these other things to float around, so.

Speaker 1

08:35

Okay, so this

Speaker 2

08:36

is a case of a person who thinks they know enough about a subject to believe they're right, but they don't know enough about the subject to know that they're wrong. There you

Speaker 1

08:48

go, look at that. Damn.

Speaker 2

08:52

No, so here's the, in all the lands down under, you know, that's because like civilization and to the dominant forces of cultures have all been like in the Northern Hemisphere, right?

Speaker 1

09:02

Right.

Speaker 2

09:03

So we have Northern Hemisphere bias on Southern Hemisphere residents, and we say that they're upside down. And any of us, if we saw a map with South up, we'd say that's upside down. And look how deep that bias is.

Speaker 2

09:19

Because space don't give a shit.

Speaker 1

09:20

And that's what I was about to say. In the blackness of space, when you're floating in a void, right? Is there really any up or down?

Speaker 2

09:29

No, there's no up or down, correct. Correct. And so, well, you can point to places that locally will have an up or down where they are.

Speaker 1

09:38

Okay.

Speaker 2

09:38

But where you are, no. So up or down is relative. There you go.

Speaker 2

09:41

It's relative to where the center of gravity is of your closest object. So anyhow, all I'm saying is if you're floating it's because there's a buoyant force, that's all. Right. And I did, I once did this calculation for

Speaker 1

09:53

150

Speaker 2

09:53

pound person, what would that be in kilos? That would be you know something like 70, 75 kilos. Okay.

Speaker 2

10:01

Okay. 2.2 pounds per kilo. So that person you know there's a few, I mean it's a measurable amount, but no 1 cares. You know, is it a hundred grams less because of the buoyant force of air?

Speaker 2

10:15

Like I said, we don't typically think about that because it doesn't really matter to us. That's all. Okay.

Speaker 1

10:21

All right. There you go.

Speaker 2

10:22

Next 1.

Speaker 1

10:23

Fantastic. Let's move on to Michael Ranger. Cool name, Michael Ranger. Is particle a placeholder word for things that are so small we don't know what they are yet?

Speaker 1

10:38

Oh, is particle a placeholder?

Speaker 2

10:40

Yes, but only for 1 particle.

Speaker 1

10:43

Aha. The electron. Aha. Every other particle,

Speaker 2

10:49

well every other particle we play with in the laboratory, every other particle that we control and play with has a measured size.

Speaker 1

10:58

Interesting. We

Speaker 2

10:58

can give the dimensions of it. An electron, we have never measured how big an electron is. And as far as we know, it's infinitesimally small.

Speaker 2

11:06

This is a profound point of mystery in particle physics. We don't dwell on it because we can still invoke it. We still make current and electricity. We can still do all manner of things with an electron, this thing we call an electron.

Speaker 2

11:22

But it is a spot in space-time that we have never measured. We measure its charge, that's it. And its mass. We can measure its mass, but what the, have we ever seen it?

Speaker 1

11:36

Mass is not size.

Speaker 2

11:37

It's not size, we've never

Speaker 1

11:38

seen it. Mass is not size. Wow!

Speaker 2

11:40

Yeah.

Speaker 1

11:41

I just learned something, I did not know this.

Speaker 2

11:43

You didn't know that about electrons.

Speaker 1

11:44

I did not know this about electrons.

Speaker 2

11:46

I have an entire video course with the great courses. So I gave a series of lectures. What I do in each lecture is I take you to the frontier of our ignorance, and then I just drop you there.

Speaker 2

11:57

And I say,

Speaker 1

11:58

here it is.

Speaker 2

12:00

Nice. Peer out, and your guess is as good as mine,

Speaker 1

12:03

okay? I like it.

Speaker 2

12:04

What's going on out there? I like it. So I take the viewer to the edge of the unknown in astronomy and physics.

Speaker 2

12:12

Wow. It's in the Great Courses series. Check it out if you're interested. In there I talk about the fact that we have no idea how big an electron is.

Speaker 1

12:20

That is fascinating. I mean, wow.

Speaker 2

12:23

Neutrinos are pretty elusive as well, and we do manipulate them. And I don't know the latest on those and what size we have ascribed them. Maybe they're equally as intractable in our ability to measure their dimensions.

Speaker 2

12:35

But we do know the size of protons and they're composed of quarks, 3 quarks, protons and neutrons. And how big is a quark? I don't know what our latest thinking is on that. But the fun 1 is electrons, because we've all heard of electrons.

Speaker 1

12:50

Right, we all know what they are. They're the satellites of the nucleus. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2

12:56

Well, yeah, they quote orbit the nucleus. Right. But we didn't want to use the word orbit because that applies to planets.

Speaker 2

13:04

And so we invented a new word, orbital. So they have orbitals, right? Just to put a little distance between it and astronomy.

Speaker 1

13:13

And yeah. Wow. Look at that.

Speaker 1

13:15

Dude, what a great little question you had there, Michael Ranger. Thanks for that, man. Yeah. All right, here we go.

Speaker 1

13:23

This is Michelle Stargirl. Watch out. Watch out now. Michelle Stargirl.

Speaker 2

13:30

Stargirl, that's her name? That's what she wrote.

Speaker 1

13:33

That's what she wrote. That's what she wrote. Now I'm not gonna judge her because okay, she wrote She goes greetings.

Speaker 1

13:40

This is Michelle from NYC Now that the James Webb Space Telescope has seen mature galaxies not long after the Big Bang that under current knowledge shouldn't exist could these galaxies possibly be a window into another universe? I like that

Speaker 2

14:02

lovely like sure thank you Stargirl. So you know when I was a kid 1 of my favorite cartoons was Astro Boy.

Speaker 1

14:11

Oh, God. You know they brought Astro Boy back, man? They did.

Speaker 1

14:14

I didn't know that. Astro boy bombs away on a mission today. Rock it high to the sky

Speaker 2

14:24

So let's back up so after the Big Bang right where there was this particles matter soup everything was too hot to make stars. And so, but then there's a point where things cooled so that the universe became, because the universe was glowing back then. It cooled and became transparent, but it still was not ready to make stars.

Speaker 2

14:47

So it would have to wait, I forgot how long, but long enough so that we have a word for this era, and it's called the Dark Ages, where there's no stars, no galaxies. James Webb Space Telescope is exquisitely tuned to observe the birth of galaxies. So we turn on the telescope, look back to this era, and we find red-blooded galaxies doing the backstroke in the Dark Ages.

Speaker 1

15:14

Wow.

Speaker 2

15:15

So that freaks us all out, because it's like, okay, who ordered that? Right. And nobody ordered that, okay?

Speaker 2

15:20

So, either our entire understanding of the Big Bang and expansion and cooling of the universe is wrong, or these are varieties of galaxies that we haven't seen before. And we're mistakenly putting them in a place where an ordinary galaxy would have been with those same properties. But could there be a different kind of galaxy with those same properties that is otherwise unfamiliar to us. This happens all the time, by the way.

Speaker 2

15:52

So you say, oh, I know who you are because you're standing there and you're doing XYZ, because I'm using information that I think should describe fully who you are. Turns out you're not that, you're something completely different. So all my understanding of you being there is wrong, is completely wrong.

Speaker 1

16:11

Right.

Speaker 2

16:14

So If you're a betting person, I would not bet against the Big Bang on this 1.

Speaker 1

16:19

I see what you're saying. So it's kind of basically like when you're looking back, because you're looking back in time, but you're looking back in time through different wavelengths, is what you're saying. Correct,

Speaker 2

16:29

yeah, correct. And we have our catalogs of everything that we understand. Right.

Speaker 2

16:35

And we're looking to a place we've never looked before in wavelengths that we never received from that part of the universe. And we see objects, hey, these look like our galaxies that don't belong there.

Speaker 1

16:45

Right. Maybe they're not our galaxies. Maybe they're not our galaxies.

Speaker 2

16:48

Maybe there's nothing in this catalog that we have created of everything nearby to us. Maybe there's a whole new early universe catalog that

Speaker 1

16:56

we have to form. It's completely different. It's like looking at an ultrasound and You see a baby, but the baby is like watching TV and smoking a cigar, right?

Speaker 1

17:07

You're like, hey, something's wrong with this. Something's up, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's not a baby in there, you know? It's- Right,

Speaker 2

17:14

yes, I don't know what the hell that would be, but if you...

Speaker 1

17:19

Dude, that's so great. All right.

Speaker 2

17:21

All right. Let's close this out, this first segment, and when we come back, more Cosmic Queries grab bag. We'll be right back.

Speaker 2

17:28

StarTalk returns.

Speaker 3

17:39

Whether you're surfing out west or sunning yourself down south, catching a wave or simply catching up on some Z's. No matter where your summer adventures lead to, a click and collect location is never too far away, where we'll make sure your shopping is picked, packed and ready when you are.

Speaker 4

18:07

Hey, I'm Roy Hill Percival, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. Bringing the universe down to Earth, this is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Speaker 2

18:23

We're back. Cosmic Queries. Grab bag.

Speaker 2

18:26

These are fun. I like grab bags. Chuck? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2

18:29

I got Chuck nice with me. Oh, Chuck, I have something to add to that question, how much does a cloud weigh?

Speaker 1

18:34

I

Speaker 2

18:34

want to add something to that. So generally, if you look up whales in a book or on a Wiki page, it'll say how much they weigh. And there's a lot, they're the heaviest animals that ever existed.

Speaker 2

18:49

Mm-hmm. But is it really fair to say how much they weigh? Because you know what you're doing? You're taking them out of the water.

Speaker 1

18:55

Right.

Speaker 2

18:55

And putting them on land and measuring them on dry land immersed in air.

Speaker 1

19:01

You big blubbery fat butt. Stop. Stop.

Speaker 1

19:08

Tell that to his face. Exactly.

Speaker 2

19:12

So the point is, the whale doesn't live on land. Right. It lives in the water.

Speaker 2

19:17

So, what matters here is not the air buoyancy it gets, which would be irrelevant as it is for us. What matters is the water buoyancy.

Speaker 1

19:26

Right.

Speaker 2

19:27

So, in water, a whale weighs 0. Okay? It can move up and down freely the way a perfectly neutrally buoyant balloon could move up and down freely in our air.

Speaker 2

19:39

So to a whale, a whale weighs nothing. Wow. That's kind of cool. Yeah, because in the medium, it weighs nothing.

Speaker 1

19:47

Right. There you go.

Speaker 2

19:48

It is.

Speaker 1

19:49

That's very cool. Okay. All right.

Speaker 1

19:52

Here we go. Let's keep moving on.

Speaker 2

19:53

Keep on moving.

Speaker 1

19:54

We're going to keep moving with, this is Rebecca, I'm going to say Fuchs.

Speaker 2

20:02

Okay.

Speaker 1

20:02

Yeah. Spelled could be a bunch of different things but I'm gonna go with fukes.

Speaker 2

20:07

Fine. All

Speaker 1

20:07

right. She says, hello Dr. Tyson, Lord and I, it's Rebecca from Connecticut here, Could you please explain in the simplest terms possible, please? Why do we think that space and time are emergent and not fundamental?

Speaker 1

20:26

I don't know what that means, Neil. 000I don't even know what she means by that. Oh.

Speaker 2

20:34

Um, so there's been some murmurs about it being the consequence. Well, so I tell you the little bit that I know, okay?

Speaker 1

20:44

Okay.

Speaker 2

20:44

Actually, I think that question might have come in when we had Stefan Alexander here, who was a sort of cosmologist, particle physicist dude. And maybe he would have been better equipped to answer that. But let me tell you what I just learned in a conversation with Brian Green, who's right up the street from us in

Speaker 1

21:04

Columbia University. Our buddy Brian.

Speaker 2

21:06

Our buddy Brian, author of the best-selling book, The Elegant Universe, and he followed it up with The Fabric of the Cosmos. Here's what he told me, and it just blew my mind, all right? So you by hang with me for this.

Speaker 1

21:19

Okay,

Speaker 2

21:19

so quantum physics tells us That there's no such thing as empty space Okay that in empty space where you would classically say there's 0 energy because there's nothing there, quantum physics says,

Speaker 1

21:38

uh-uh-uh,

Speaker 2

21:39

there's always a chance of there being some energy everywhere. Okay? And this is called the vacuum energy of the universe.

Speaker 2

21:49

This is what the source is called. Okay. So, how is this manifested? So if you run through the quantum physics equations, you get particles out of that energy, popping into existence, matter-antimatter particle pairs that then rejoin and make energy again.

Speaker 2

22:09

Okay, so energy is coming and going with particles, and it's a seething soup within the vacuum of space. Okay, These are called virtual particles. So no 1 denies that they're there, even though we've never measured them. There's a very natural prediction of quantum physics and what quantum physics, everything else quantum physics had predicted has turned out to be correct.

Speaker 2

22:29

So We're sticking with this explanation. Now, it turns out, these particle pairs, since they were created together, know about each other.

Speaker 1

22:41

Ah.

Speaker 2

22:42

They know about each other in a quantum entanglement sort of way. Okay. Okay?

Speaker 2

22:49

Well, if they know about each other because they're quantum entangled, and quantum entanglement means if something happens to 1 particle over here, the other 1 knows about it instantly.

Speaker 1

22:59

Instantly. And the

Speaker 2

23:00

only way we can think about that is if there's some kind of wormhole between the 2 of them where it doesn't have to then travel through the physicality of space. Some kind of wormhole, because then you can get to 2 places instantly without, quote, violating the speed of light rule. So here's what he told me, that there's some emergent thinking that suggests that the very fabric of space-time is the network of these wormholes created by the seething soup of virtual particles.

Speaker 2

23:37

So that those wormholes are themselves the fabric of the universe. They are weaving together the fabric of the universe. And that blew my mind. Because we speak of the fabric as distorting, and it's sort of metaphor, right?

Speaker 2

23:53

But is it literal?

Speaker 1

23:55

Is it a literal thing

Speaker 2

23:57

that could be true? So there's that. OK.

Speaker 2

24:03

So now about time, what I do know is that we measure time by things that repeat. Okay? Right. Cycles.

Speaker 2

24:12

Cycle, right. If nothing repeats, you can maybe know what happened before something or after something, but you wouldn't be able to measure the time between it. So I don't know about time as being emergent relative to what I just learned from Brian Greene that the very fabric of space-time might itself be emergent and a property of the vacuum. So, I lost a few nights of sleep on that 1.

Speaker 1

24:36

Yeah, I don't blame you. Jeez, I'm losing, like, just brain cells listening to it. That is freaking...

Speaker 2

24:43

Okay, that's the best I could do in this situation. Yo! Hey, Rebecca.

Speaker 2

24:47

And so, Chuck, this word emergence,

Speaker 1

24:49

of

Speaker 2

24:49

course, has its own meaning in biological circles, in evolution. Absolutely. Because you could look at a bird, like pecking away on the ground, and you can study every atom and molecule of that bird, and you probably would not know that a group of birds will flock together by analyzing a single bird.

Speaker 2

25:10

So that flocking is sort of an emergent feature of a group of birds that you would never learn by studying 1 bird. As far as we can tell, you wouldn't learn it. So emergent property, maybe consciousness is emergent. Which I wouldn't think, they were worried about AI.

Speaker 2

25:26

You keep programming up AI, bada bing.

Speaker 1

25:28

If you get enough data points coming together with enough computing power, then all of a sudden, it's not that you made it intelligent enough to become sentient, it just becomes that because of those things.

Speaker 2

25:43

And I just saw the preview again for that movie, Megan.

Speaker 1

25:48

Oh my God, I love that movie.

Speaker 2

25:50

Oh no, I can't see the movie after that preview. That's the little freaky scoop

Speaker 1

25:53

movie forever. Oh god I love that movie

Speaker 2

25:55

so much. So that's an emergence but here in the universe The emergent would be something that was not there from the beginning, right? It would show up later because something else happened.

Speaker 2

26:08

So this is how we're using the term in physics, which is a bit different from how it's been commonly used in biology, that's all. Cool, Cool, man.

Speaker 1

26:17

Yeah, all right. Well, Rebecca, what a great question. Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1

26:20

That was very cool. All right, let's go on to Catherine B. Here. And Catherine B.

Speaker 1

26:25

Says, good day, all. My name is Catherine, and I'm from a small, insignificant town near Ottawa, Canada. Don't sell yourself short. I know, right?

Speaker 1

26:36

Let us be the judge of whether she's significant. We can tell you you don't matter. You don't have to lead with that. Let other people tell you.

Speaker 1

26:44

Yeah, Let other people put you down. That's how you know you're Canada and not American. Right? Yeah, because other people around the world got to put us down.

Speaker 1

26:55

We're like, we're number 1. All right. She says, I have a question that I have not been able to find the answer to and I know you can answer it Neil, or at least you'll have a theory about it. If time speeds as we leave Earth's gravity and slows with velocity, How will astronauts traveling to Mars be affected once they leave Earth's gravity?

Speaker 1

27:21

Does it no longer slow so they will only be impacted by the speeding up of time because of their velocity? If that's so, how long will a three-year Earth journey be for them? I hope I'm making sense right now.

Speaker 2

27:39

Completely, completely. So, this is a combination of a bunch of things. We know that the closer you get to a source of gravity, the slower time ticks for you.

Speaker 2

27:48

And the farther away, the faster it ticks. The faster you move, the slower time ticks for you. And this, okay, sorry. So if you were not only moving farther away from Earth's gravity, Which would speed up time, but now you are traveling fast, that would slow down time.

Speaker 2

28:06

You got to run the equations and see which equations win. Right. Which is greater. Which is a greater pull.

Speaker 2

28:12

Which is a greater, and I can't do that in my head. I can do that on paper, I can do it. But here's 1 I did do already, and that's for GPS satellites. So GPS satellites orbit the Earth at very high speeds.

Speaker 2

28:25

So relative to us, their time is slowing down, okay? If you only factor in their high speeds but they're also much farther away from Earth's surface than we are right so the time is speeding up and the speed up time is about twice what the slowdown time is So the speeding up wins against the, the speeding up of the time wins against the slowing down of the time for its orbital speed, which means the GPS satellites do not keep the same time we do, and they have to be pre-corrected before you get the time signal from your phone company.

Speaker 1

29:09

Wow. Yeah. So these factors are all in, we're working in either conjunction or against 1 another at all times.

Speaker 2

29:19

At all times. At

Speaker 1

29:20

all times.

Speaker 2

29:21

And it's cumulative. It's cumulative. So if you're on a mission for 3, by the way, it's very tiny.

Speaker 2

29:28

It's cumulative but tiny. So you wanna know how much younger or older is your twin astronaut sibling who went to Mars? It would be fractions of a second.

Speaker 1

29:39

Gotcha. Yeah.

Speaker 2

29:41

There you go. Just off the top of my head.

Speaker 1

29:43

Wow. It's still fascinating because it's not a perception of time that is speeding up or slowing down. It is

Speaker 2

29:50

actual time itself. Yes, timekeeping devices, your heartbeat, your brain thoughts, everything.

Speaker 1

29:56

Everything. So crazy. All right. Hey, Catherine B., Thanks for that.

Speaker 1

30:03

That's very cool. Look forward to some more Information for coming about your trip to Mars Catherine because I know that's why you act.

Speaker 2

30:10

You got a plan

Speaker 1

30:11

I know you like plan. I from nowhere, Ottawa, but I'm going to Mars How about that?

Speaker 2

30:20

Okay,

Speaker 1

30:21

all right, here we go let's move on to okay, man, you just messing with me. This is Keti Kukunasvili. Kukunasvili.

Speaker 2

30:31

Don't pretend like you knew what happened.

Speaker 1

30:38

That's a good act there. Yeah. Kati Kukonasvili.

Speaker 1

30:43

Yeah.

Speaker 2

30:44

That sounds like it could be it.

Speaker 1

30:45

Kukonasvili. All right.

Speaker 2

30:47

Go ahead.

Speaker 1

30:47

Hey, Neil. Hey, Chuck. I'm new to Patreon, but a longstanding fan of StarTalk.

Speaker 1

30:54

I have a very basic question. Why is string theory so unprovable? And if so, why are we still trying to prove it?

Speaker 2

31:03

You know, every time I see Brian Green, I slap him upside the head and say, Brian, why haven't you string theorists solved this problem yet? And his answer is, well, it's a very hard problem. Well, so was general relativity and Einstein did it all by himself, and he took 10 years, which was a long time, for an Einstein brain, but he solved it.

Speaker 2

31:25

And here all y'all, that's the plural of y'all. Right. It's all y'all. All y'all.

Speaker 2

31:30

Okay, here's all y'all strength theorists. There's dozens of them, probably not much more than that, but I would say dozens of them in the world. They're working on it for 40 years. And so, why don't y'all, so I said, why don't you just confess to yourselves, you are collectively too stupid to figure it out.

Speaker 1

31:46

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2

31:47

Or I said this to his face. Or that the, or, or that it's not the problem that you should be solving. And the actual solution is something else that nobody's thought of yet.

Speaker 2

32:00

Ooh. Yeah, I was in his face.

Speaker 1

32:02

Oh my goodness. You know, that's that's hardcore, bro

Speaker 2

32:06

It was now I'm bigger than him. So I knew I could

Speaker 1

32:10

You kind of called him to question that you know the veracity of his entire life's work That's a little rough man,

Speaker 2

32:19

it's a little rough it's a little rough Yeah, I did it to be of course purposefully antagonistic.

Speaker 1

32:24

Of course you're joking.

Speaker 2

32:25

But it was how long are you gonna say the problem is just hard rather than we are barking up the wrong tree. So that's kind of how I think about it. Plus, it assumes that there can be 1 coherent

Speaker 5

32:43

theoretical understanding of all phenomena in the universe.

Speaker 2

32:46

It assumes that. And you're putting your philosophical mission statement on the universe that you're investigating. And the history of that exercise has never proven to be successful.

Speaker 2

32:59

I'll give an example. Copernicus says, you know, I think the sun is in the middle of the universe and not Earth. And so let me create a sun-centered universe. So he does it.

Speaker 2

33:13

And he puts the sun in the middle and the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the asteroid belt wasn't discovered yet. But on out, he does this, okay. Do you realize it was still wrong? Because he assumed that the universe is, God made the universe, the universe is perfect because God is perfect.

Speaker 2

33:33

So clearly God made orbits that are perfect circles because a circle is a

Speaker 1

33:38

perfect shape. Concentric circles, right.

Speaker 2

33:41

So that was a theoretical expectation placed upon his ideas about how the universe is put together. And it was just wrong. The orbits are squashed circles, and they're all squashed differently.

Speaker 2

33:59

And the most squashed circle among objects known as planets or formerly known as planets is Pluto. Pluto's orbit is so squashed it crosses the orbit of Neptune. This is hardly the handiwork of someone who really cares about perfect circles. So I just like to take a step back and stay open to the possibility that there's a whole other idea that could supplant everything they're doing that wouldn't take 30 people 40 years to try to figure it out.

Speaker 2

34:29

Because that's a lot of brain power going in there. In all fairness to them, they made certain progress with their string theory in interpreting, using it to interpret things that we now understand more deeply. Okay? So that works.

Speaker 2

34:45

And by the way, how close are we to proving it experimentally? Some predictions are forever in the future, we'll never know, okay? No matter what.

Speaker 1

34:55

But, some of it is interdimensional. Okay, okay. He, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he.

Speaker 2

35:01

Like, yeah, I'm gonna go there too. You're holding your chin like you're contemplating. Interdimensional, yeah, higher dimension.

Speaker 2

35:09

I got this 1. The point is, you can have a hypothesis that is untestable in its core, but if the hypothesis is true, some other things might be true that you can then test. All right. So you can test the edges of it,

Speaker 1

35:27

all right?

Speaker 2

35:29

And that can still make progress on the thing that you're waiting to test if he can't do it today.

Speaker 1

35:37

I got you. I mean, that makes perfect sense. And what you're saying is they're not even close to that.

Speaker 1

35:45

Damn.

Speaker 2

35:46

That's rough, man. So Einstein said, so here's what Einstein said. Einstein said, he has something called the equivalence principle, deep and profound statement, that the mass that gravity sees when it pulls on you is identically equal to the mass that a force sees when it accelerates it through space.

Speaker 2

36:16

Okay these are these 2 masses There's no reason in Heaven and earth why these 2 masses have to be the same, right? But they sort of seem to be the same and Einstein said let us declare them to be the same. And if they are the same, here's something that would be true. And what is that?

Speaker 2

36:40

If I'm in an elevator and you cut the cable, and I let go of a ball. Right. I will fall, the elevator's falling, the ball is falling, and it'll stay stationary in front of my face. Right.

Speaker 2

36:54

You'll be

Speaker 1

36:54

falling at the same rate, and then also Einstein will have to face murder charges at the end of that experiment.

Speaker 2

37:03

That's only if he cut the cable.

Speaker 1

37:04

Oh, that's true. He's probably too smart to cut the cable himself, to be honest, right?

Speaker 2

37:11

Okay, so the point there is, I am in free fall, Okay? Right. Fine.

Speaker 2

37:17

But if I had, so I'm 0 G, but if I'm standing on earth, watch this, I'm standing on earth and I let go of the ball, it falls. I'm in 1G. Okay, so now watch. Now I have rockets on the back of your ship and I accelerate you through the universe at 1G and you holding a ball you let go the ball it'll fall down to the ground you cannot distinguish whether you were in a rocket accelerating through empty space or standing on a planet under that same 1G force.

Speaker 2

37:51

That is such

Speaker 1

37:51

a like elegant little thought experiment.

Speaker 2

37:55

Elegant and profound. And you could do the experiment. It's a thought experiment.

Speaker 2

37:59

You could do the experiment.

Speaker 1

38:00

You can actually do

Speaker 2

38:01

it. Right. On the edges. On a

Speaker 1

38:02

train or I think that's what they did though, yeah. That's so cool!

Speaker 2

38:06

Okay, gotta take another break. When we come back, more Cosmic Queries, the Grab Bag Edition.