Cosmic Queries – Dimensional Waterfall

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Chuck, another installment of Cosmic Queries. Yes, and in this one we figured out what dark matter really is.

Tune in and find out.

Welcome to Star Talk,

your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

Star Talk begins right now.

This is Star Talk. Yilda Grass Tyson, your personal astrophysicist.
We're doing cosmic queries today. And that means Chuck is sitting right next to me.
Yes. How are you doing, Chuck?

Hey, what's happening? Is this a topic or is it gravity? I don't know what it is. Oh.
It's galactic gumbo. That dad that bright, that, that, black.
Gary don't think we're going to give no in here.

I'm going to give him a soon. Put him down there.
I'm going to put it in the pot. But let's go with some guy on pepper.
Didn't he die like 20 years ago? I don't. Paul Prudhomme? Is that his name?

I don't know his name. Have you seen him lately? No.
No, I have not. And my boy was packing some weight.
I haven't seen him in 20 years.

Okay.

Well, we thank him for granting you that accent. Damn that.
That's that. Don't go and see his name.

So this is random, but they're all Patreon members. Whatever they want.
But it's only Patreon members. Correct.
Okay, I haven't seen any of these questions. No, you do not get to see them.

And I'm supposed to see them, but I'm lazy. So I don't see them either.

Okay. All right, here we go.

This is Writer's Eye, who says, hello, everyone. I hope your day is filled with protons from only friendly stars.

Ooh.

Oh, maybe he meant photons. Photons, yeah.
Did he say protons or did you misread it? No, it says protons. You didn't misread it.
I didn't miss it. Sometimes you, you know, you and the reading thing.

I thought maybe. Reading is fundamental.
It is fundamental.

No, I thought maybe he was, you know, talking about like a pulsar or something. And so he send the particles out.
He's sending particles out. Okay.
But no,

he probably didn't mean photons. All right.
From friendly stars, he says, how far are we away from being able to track gravity waves? I know we can detect them.

So tracking them would be the next obvious step, in my humble opinion, that is. If we could track them, eventually we could map the universe edge to edge.
Am I correct in thinking that?

So a couple of things. First, a technicality.
Right. The kind of waves made by gravity waves.
By two colliding black holes. Those are called gravitational waves.
Gravitational waves, right?

Okay, gravity waves is something else that acoustical people, it's a term people use when they refer to a medium that's rising and falling in response to

a pressure impulse that goes through it. So those are gravity waves that they call it.
So we have to make sure that the kingdom is separated there.

The lexicographic...

Nice.

The lexicographic reference is

distinct. So gravitational waves.
So

we detect them when they wash over us. Right.
That's what LIGO did. That's what earned the Nobel Prize.
Right. And you know who earned the Nobel Prize?

Kip Thorne, who was one of the executive producers on.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. Wait, it's the String Theory movie with Matthew McConaughey.
It's called

Interstellar. Yes, good.
So in fact, we took our crew out to Pasadena, where he lives, went to his home office and interviewed Kip Thorne. Very cool.
Yeah, yeah. You can find it on our archives.

And he showed us his Nobel Prize. Oh, wow.
That was cool. You just keep that thing, huh? I know, right? What are they ringing? What do you wear on your neck? What do you do?

What am I going to do with it? I would take it everywhere.

You know what I mean?

Excuse me, do you know what time it is? I'm like, oh, excuse me, let me move my Nobel Prize out of the way so I can see my watch.

How did that get there?

When did that come from there? Oh, my goodness. Is that my Nobel Prize? And where my watch should be?

Oh, my goodness. goodness.

So here's what I learned recently, that, yes, we can detect certain energy levels of gravitational waves that wash over Earth. Right.

And there's certain other phenomena in the universe that do make gravitational waves that those detectors cannot see. Okay.
Okay. Now.

There's something I only know a little bit about here, so I just want to put it on the table. Okay.
All right.

That there's a research program that's going to be put into play that wants to detect the effect of gravitational waves moving across your field of view.

So if you have a pulsar, which has very,

very precise spinning rates,

the most accurate

set of clock by it. You can set a clock by it, okay?

If a gravitational wave passes by it,

there's a change in the rate. Right.
You'll see the rhythm change. The rhythm change just briefly.
Yes. And so the idea is you monitor all the pulsars, you get their rhythms known.
Right.

And then you see one change. And then you look to see if it

if it coincides with the gravitational wave.

Well, that would be the evidence of one of them. Now you see if it moves to the next one and then the next one.
Oh, right. And now you would see the consistency across each pulsar.
Correct.

And you'd be watching a gravitational wave

move across the medium of space. Yes.
That's amazing. Yes.
Yes. And we're not there yet, but that's what we're doing.
Unfortunately, we had to cut that.

The funding for it's been cut already. We've saved so much money by not even thinking about it.

You know it. I know it.

On that subject, let me remind you. How much money NASA gets from the government.
What?

This is the space station, space shuttle, Hubble, JWST, James Webb. Everything that NASA does.
Everything NASA does. We're going back to the moon.

Including looking back at Earth and weather and everything? No, the weather would be Noah. That's Noah.
Okay. Okay.
But there's a strong collaboration between them. Yeah, the two right.

Right. You know, it was like 10 years after Noah was founded that I caught on that it's like pronounced like Noah, like Noah's Ark.
Like Noah's Ark, yeah. Because he was the first weatherman.

When you think about it. Oh my God.

All right. So I didn't, I'm just catching up.
You just caught that now. Just now, you had to actually spell it out.
Yeah. He was the first weatherman.
Hey, hey, it's going to rain.

God says it's going to rain, man. People are like, what are you talking about, Noah? You talking about it.
It hasn't rained. It has never rained here.
Never.

I'm telling you, man, I'm building a boat.

It's going to rain.

Oh, crazy Noah, there he goes again. You know, so.

Well, he did grow grapes, is my understanding. He And might have made some wine.
He did drink. Maybe made a little grape.
The Bible references that he did drink. Yeah.
Yeah. But go ahead.
So the Noah.

By the way, if he did drink, I'm just saying, that's rough. Just like...
I'm telling you right now.

It's going to rain. The Lord is prompting me.

Oh,

yeah, who's going to believe that, right? You told me to get three of every animal. I think it was two.
Oh, my God. Anyway, go ahead.
Let's move on.

So, of course, they spelled N-O-A-H and then N-O-A-H-H. National

Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. So, yeah, no one makes those.
So, just to remind people

of your tax dollar,

it is four-tenths of one cent. So, it's not even a full penny.
Yeah, so you can say, I want to save money there. Right.

But then what total impact is that going to have given all the rest of the spending that's going on? Right. It's not a very efficient means of cost cutting.
Yeah.

So if you have a department of efficiency, it could be more efficient about where it's being efficient. Right.

I think we need to be efficient with the department of efficiency. Exactly.
Right. Okay.
All right, next one. Here we go.
Let's move on to Maurice van der Linden.

This is Maurice van der Linden. He says, hey, Neil.

Hey, Chuck, I've been wondering about something Janet Levin said once in your episodes that it might be possible that if you look far enough into the cosmos, your line of sight can loop around and the universe can end up at your position just along the timeline.

Doesn't this imply that if true, the universe is a perfect 4D sphere?

You would see your past location, in your case, a young solar system, from every angle so it would appear smeared out across the cosmic horizon.

Love the show, kind regards Maurice from Harlem in the Netherlands. Oh, Harlem.
Yes. Yes, Harlem.
It's where we got our name, Harlem. Harlem here.
Here in York. New York.

Yeah, back when the Dutch were running.

They owned it all. They owned it all.
They put in all the canals because we have Canal Street. Yes.
You know, and that's what they do. Absolutely.
Even back then. Nothing but canals.

So I don't know if I can answer it in the precision that's

talking about, but I can tell you that we do live in an open universe, which means we're expanding out forever. Right.
So there is no sight line that will come back to where we are. It just goes out.

Because the sight line is continually moving. Correct.
And out away from us. And out away from us.
So there's no way that you could look back. Okay, so

in a closed universe,

the universe will re-collapse so that a sight line, in principle, will ultimately come back. And the way to think about that is just the surface of a sphere.
Right.

We'll call it a balloon, a perfect spherical balloon. We're all crawling around on the surface of that balloon.
And

if you send out a beam of light it will go away from you but then come around come back and hitch in the back of the head right right but that would be later right okay

and as the balloon begins to shrink back because it's well

wouldn't have to shrink it just has to be closed but if it's closed it will shrink hmm

Don't look at me. I'm not the astrophysicist.

So the cosmic microwave background. Right.
We have done some experiments to test for this. Oh.
So the microwave background is in every direction. Right.
So if you look this way and you get an exact,

I know exactly the patterning that's happening there.

And then you just

look that way. Turn around.

Right.

Is that exact pattern? Pattern pattern? Because if that's the thing, then that means they are the same place. Right.

That means that was a line that went around and met on the other side. Right.
Okay. We haven't found found that.
We haven't? No.

But we've looked. That's my point.
Gotcha. We've looked very carefully for statistically significant repeated patterns

all throughout the cosmic microwave. Gotcha.
Okay. Yeah.
Okay. So that's the best I can answer that.
No, that's a great answer. Jana might have come in with some more teeth in that answer.

Well, yeah, well, leave it to Jana.

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All right, this is Igor

Vihanek. Vihanek.
Igor, this is not Young Frankenstein. Okay, Igor.

I think in Young Frankenstein, he's Igor. He's Igor.
But he's also Marty Feldman, who has big, giant bug eyes. So I think they were.

He says, hello, gentlemen. And is he Dr.
Frankenstein? Dr. Frankenstein.
But I thought I E is an E and EI is an I.

Yeah, Einstein. Oh, Einstein.

And IE is an E.

You didn't know that? You never heard that? Listen, I can barely get I before E except after C. And except in Neil.
Right.

And except in science. And except in Keith.

Yeah. So I think they got rid of that rule.
And I spell all those words wrong. I think they got rid of it.
I'm not even lying.

Yeah. I'm an exception to that rule, and so is a whole lot of

other words. All right, here we go.
He says, Hey, gentlemen, my name is Igor from Zagreb, Croatia. I'm a first-time caller.

I like what he did there. That's good.
Excellent. He says, I've always wondered if there are higher dimensions.

Could the expansion of the universe be caused by space-time falling into another dimension?

Like if our 3D space was a waterfall falling into a higher dimension and we simply perceive it as expanding in all directions, what would it mean for dark energy? Thank you. Man.
Interesting.

First of all, let me just tell you, Igor, I do not know what kind of weed you are smoking in Croatia.

Stop.

But that is, please. Send some here.
Yes, send us some of that Croatian weed over here.

Go ahead.

What a weird concept of

our space-time

falling into another dimension. Right.
There's no evidence that one dimension is susceptible to another dimension in that way. Correct.
So, for example,

let's take the surface of a table. Right.
How many dimensions is that? That's two. Two.
It just has a length and a width. No depth.
No depth. And then I have another surface of a table.

So I can make that table infinite, right? Correct. Now I can have another table that's separated from it that's also infinite.
And they're just running parallel with the table.

They're just running parallel. And they're not, there's no one.

And it's in a third dimension. And there's no...
I can embed a two-dimensional surface in three dimensions, and it'll just sit there as two-dimensional. It's two dimensions.

Inside of a three-dimensional

medium.

It's not calling to you. Right.
Okay.

But here is something that's related. Okay.
Again, it's not exactly answering the question, but it addresses the question. All right, that's good.
Right.

In our world, we have quantum physics where a lot of mysterious things happen. It's not mathematically mysterious, it's just intellectually mysterious.

Particles pop in and out of existence, matter and energy are equivalent. Particles behave in the same way over large things.
They're entangled.

There's weirdness that's going on.

We can describe it mathematically, though.

Is that weirdness completely normal in a higher dimension? Let's just ask for that. So what would be an example? Let's go back to our 2D world.

Okay.

And we're there, we're walking around or slithering around. 2D people get around.
We're line drawing.

Yeah, we are only our perimeters to each other. Right, right.

Suppose we're looking around and we see a dot. Right.
It just came out of nowhere. Yes.
It's like particles popping in.

It's a dot. Where'd that come from? I don't know.
Right. And then we keep watching.
We study it. We're scientists.
We study it. And the dot becomes a circle.
And the circle grows.

And we say, and we're studying it. We're making measurements.
Then it grows to like a maximum point.

And then it starts shrinking back.

And it gets smaller and smaller. Then it's a dot.
Then it disappears. Wow.
We'd be coming up with all kinds of theories, right? Aliens. Aliens.
Because we live in rural America.

The rural part of the paper. City people see it.

We're in the rural part of the paper. The two dimensions.
Where the two-dimensional, where the dot.

Okay, I was out in the middle of the night.

Dot showed up. Got bigger and bigger.

Okay, go ahead. So we can't explain that, right? We don't understand it.
Right.

And is it like

studying the elephant but you don't see the whole elephant yeah okay you get seven different descriptions the the the trunk the tusk right the leg the toenails right the tail right the the side none of those comport until you take a step back and say you're all describing the same creature okay and that's the full understanding that no one gets at first do you know what i just described

a hole no

I described a sphere passing through

the paper

because at one point it's just a dot because it's a single point of the sphere that's touching the two-dimensional plane. Exactly.

But as you continue to move the sphere through, then what you have is more points in the 360-degree sphere that keep fanning out, but only in two dimensions.

So they make a hole that keeps getting bigger. They make a big circle.
And then

how big does the circle get?

Whatever the size of the dot. The diameter.
And then you come back and then you down one point. And here we are mysteriously inventing forces and phenomenon.
And it's just a normal,

it's just a normal sphere. Wow.
In the higher dimension of this example, which is three dimensions. But to us, it's

in rural paper stand. Three paper stands.
In rural paper stand.

That was a serious phenomenon. That was a serious phenomenon.
And they're reporting that to the government. Right.
And people are trying to capture the next one. Oh, wow.
That's great.

So if higher dimensions pass through or otherwise interact, it can be very mysterious. It could be right.
Wow. Dude, what a great question.
Yeah, that's right.

So he was trying to account for the dark energy. I don't know what could be happening in a higher dimension to manifest in our dimensionality as dark energy.

That could be a thing. Right, it could be.
Yeah. All right.
This is Matt Woods who says, G'day, Professor Tyson and Lord Nice. Adelaide here from Australia.

That was the best I could do, guys. That's pretty good.
I tried. That's good.
Not as good as your French accent. No, but I tried.

Or your gumbo accent.

Yeah. He said, I was wondering

if we can't ever truly touch anything, could the space between particles be dark matter pulling the particles together or dark energy repulsing the particles?

Well, there's another thing that pulls particles together. But anyway, I enjoy every podcast.
I'm not editorializing the man's question. I was thinking out loud.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

And I'm sorry, Nat. I enjoy every podcast, and I remain inspired by you guys every day.
Please keep up the good work. Anyway, excellent.
Go ahead. You answered.

Are you choosing those because people say nice things about you in each one? I have no idea. Well, I've never seen you.
Okay. I should not say that.
No, I would never do that.

He's paid to read them in advance. No, I can't.
Let the record show. Exactly.

Okay. So now.
Go ahead. I forgot the question.

So he's basically saying, like, if we can never touch anything, truly, then could it be dark matter in between the touching that's pushing or pulling all right so it turns out dark matter

does not interact with itself

as potently as regular matter does interesting okay so when regular matter gets together right its molecules grab on yeah you make solid objects

like liquid gas it would it'll call it

okay you so we have regular matter planets right we have rocks because that's what regular matter matter does using the electromagnetic force, which in case you were wondering. All right.

Dark matter, what we call dark matter, which is really dark gravity, does not respond to the electromagnetic force. At all.
At all. Doesn't interact.
Doesn't interact. Okay.

So it doesn't interact with us that way. Okay.
Nor does it interact with itself that way. It does interact gravitationally, though.

So you can have pockets of dark matter out there, but nowhere is it so dense that you have solid solid objects. Wow.
As far as we can tell, there's no solid dark matter out there. Okay.

By the way, if it was, if it did, it would just pass through you because it doesn't interact. It doesn't interact anyway.
With any forces holding you together, it's got another instruction set.

Let it slip right through my hands.

So particles, we already have accounted for their behavior with the forces that are known. Right.
There's nothing mysterious there.

Now, he might have known that we don't actually touch things because there was an episode of Cosmos where we did that.

As you bring two things together, you feel like you're touching, but what's happening is the electromagnetic forces are repelling each other and you're responding to the forces, thinking that it's a solid thing, but it's not.

And that is why you have four-year-olds all over the world in the backup cards going, I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you.
I'm not touching you.

Okay. I'm not touching you.
All right. Here we go.
Next up. This is Stetson.
And Stetson says, hello.

There's like Madonna.

This is just Stetson.

Stetson. He's fine.
He's just Stetson. He says, hello, Dr.
Tyson and Lord Nice. Stetson here from the U.S., but currently living in Japan.

Oh, well, yes. Konichiwa.
He says, the study of planets, including ours, is quite fascinating.

The internal structure of our planet is generally agreed upon, but how would we be able to understand the internal structure of other planets, even those nearby? Great question.

Great question.

So we

make educated guesses and then we test the guess. Oh, we making this up.
No, that's not what I said. We just making it up as we go along.
Oh, my God.

That is breaking news.

Breaking news.

Go ahead. Let's take Mercury.
Okay, Mercury. For example, okay.
Mercury is tiny. Right.
Very small. Small.
And it's closest to the Sun, right? Oh, yeah. It's the closest planet.

Okay. In fact, our moon might even be bigger than Mercury.
What? Yeah. Okay.

I have to check that, but it's.

It's small. It's small.
Okay. Okay.
But it's a full-up legit planet. Okay.
Well, what's going on? Well, we can measure its mass.

Its mass is way higher than it could possibly be if Mercury was composed only of rock, like the moon. The moon is made of rock through and through.

Mercury

has much more mass. So we go to the periodic table of elements and we say, here's the birth ingredients of the solar system.
Wow. We know that because that's what the sun is made of.

That's what Jupiter is. Jupiter didn't give up any mass that it was born with.
So you look at the composition on Jupiter, it matches that of the sun.

Okay, anybody else who's different, you've been horse trading your ingredients along the way. All right.

Jupiter was trying to be the sun. It's true.
That's what Jupiter was trying. Jupiter was just like, I'm going to get one day.

In fact, Jupiter is the only planet that radiates more energy than it receives from the sun. Oh, I didn't know that.

That's how wannabe it was. That's how wannabe sun it was.
Yeah. It still does.
It's still radio. All right.
That's a great factoid. Go ahead.

So I go to the periodic table and I say, of all these elements, some are very rare. Some are not basically not really in the solar system.
So I'm going to ignore those. And which are common?

And so nickel, iron, these are pretty common in the universe. So maybe

I get the mass of mercury fitting into that volume by throwing in something heavier than rock. Because we know it's rock on the surface because we see the cratering.

It looks just like the surface of the moon. Okay.
So, but deep inside, what could be there? Now, we know when it formed, heavy stuff goes to the middle because it's the fluid thing. It's molten.

Right. If you're molten and you're heavy, you're going to sink.

You're going to sink. Okay.
So, we ask ourselves how much iron has to be there to give us that

to get that mass at that size, which is basically the density. Right.
So the average density, we construct the average density of the object.

pulling from the periodic table of elements we know are in the universe. So we find out it has a huge core of iron.
That's dope. It's dope.

That is dope. Okay.

God damn it. That is science right there, buddy.
Oh, it works the other way too. Really? We've discovered asteroids, okay?

And we know they're rocky, but we look at the density and it's like, these are way less dense than rock. Rock, right.

Less dense. Right.

What's going on? Oh, that's so cool. What's going on? Because you see the volume of it.
And it's a fuzzy image. You know, we're not looking.
These are not missions to go there.

It's not like we got binoculars.

Harold! Harold!

Look at this asteroid!

We just get Harold's. I don't.
Anyway, go ahead. I know, Harold and the purple crayon.

Harold went into the sky with his purple crayon. There you go.
So, I like Harold. It's a great kid.
Yeah, everyone does. So, how do you have rock that has less mass than rock? It ain't rock.
What?

Well, it's got to be made out of stuff that we know about. Right.

So, that was the first idea that maybe some asteroids are piles of rubble. Nice.

So that there's... So they're coalesced, but they're not stuck together.
They're not stuck together. Wow.
So when we look at the total mass and the total size,

the volume, some of that volume is taken up by nothing. Right.

Confounding our deduction for what its density is. Like a floating ball of pebbles.
Pebbles. There's no doubt.
There's so much space in between each pebble that that floating ball.

Overall density is lower than rock. So that matters because we want to to deflect an asteroid.
You can't just go up to it and push on it if it's a rubber pop.

Now you got a bunch of little rocks coming your way.

Bruce Willis, you messed up bad.

So you get to push off a chunk of it, and the rest doesn't, it's not attached. Exactly.
If it's not attached, you didn't have any effect on it. Right.

So this density estimates, these density estimates are a major part of what folks in the solar system do. Super cool, man.
So Mercury's small. It's the smallest planet.
Right. A title formerly held by

Pluto.

Poor Pluto. What about a sigh like that?

You in my office. There's no sympathy for Pluto in my office.
I know, but you're like, you know, you're like Kendrick and Drake. I mean, you won.
You won.

Why you got to beat the guy up?

Okay. But go ahead.
Okay. So Mercury and the Moon are...
About the same size. Mercury might be a little bigger.
However, Mercury has four times the mass of our Moon. Wow.

Same size, four times the mass.

And we know it's rocky on the surface because they both have equal looking features on the surface. So what's going on?

We know the moon has hardly any iron. Right.
Because it was side-swiped off of Earth's crust from the...

It's crusty, baby. It's crusty.
That's the moon. The moon is crusty.

So we think iron

rests... deeply with and largely within the center of Mercury,

boosting its total mass relative to other normal objects. So that's how we roll when we make the calculations.
Very cool.

All right. Let's see.
It's time for a few more, I think. Yeah, yeah, we got some time.
Let's rock and roll here. This is Western.
Are we getting through these quite? We are getting through this.

We are actually getting this. Just like the most we've done.
And I hope people are recognizing that we're getting to you as quickly as we can. Hello, Dr.
Tyson Lord Nice. I'm Wes from Davenport, Iowa.

And I, for one, want to say I appreciate your programming and expertise. It requires more than you know.

No, it requires exactly what we know. We're doing it.

Anyway, it's an expression. More than you know.
It really is an expression. I know, and we appreciate it.
My question is: by the way, I used to wrestle. Go ahead.
Iowa knows wrestlers. Iowa? Iowa.

Yeah, that's because, you know, when you grow up wrestling cows, is that what that is? Yeah, getting the colours. Is that where they kick my ass every day?

Every time I'm in a circle, don't mean nothing.

I will do it. They're hauling calves.
You holding hauling calves. Paul, Paul, where did I put the calves? Put it over there.
Where did I put this?

Shooting over there, dummy. Yeah.

Anyway.

Iowa wrestling. Long tradition.
Long, proud tradition. Of wrestling.

Yeah, very cool. He says, my question is regarding black holes and what happens when they collide.

With recent theory enhancements from great minds, is there now mathematical equations that work to model this expected action and reaction?

Can we mathematically reproduce the collision of black holes with absolute consistency? Yes. And because we have the mathematics of it, it's the math that predicted the black hole to begin with.

Right. So we already had the math.
Yeah. It's not like here's this object.
Oh my gosh. How do I describe it?

Einstein's general theory of relativity predicted black holes, even though he was anti-black hole. Did you know this? Yeah, well, he was a racist.

They all were back then. No, he actually wasn't.
No, he wasn't. No, if you read his ideas and opinions, it's a book.
Right. It was Hubble who was the racist.

Hubble had issues. Yeah, he had some.

Hubble had issues.

When Marion Anderson, after she was denied singing opportunity, she's an opera singer in

Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C., D.C. Because that was run by the daughters of the

Confederacy.

That's when Roosevelt said, you can sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Wow.

Einstein is active around then. This is like the 1930s.
And I think it was the 30s. But Roosevelt was president, regardless.
So yeah, it would have been the 30s. We weren't at war yet.
And

she visited Princeton and visited Einstein on the Princeton campus. Wow.
He was receiving of people who were otherwise well-known, but had issues with dealing with, you know, society.

Yeah. Societal issues.
Yeah. So he was a very forward-thinking person.
Very cool. Well, I mean, it's great to see that being how he was so brilliant.
Yeah.

But also, I mean, as a Jew escaping the rise of Nazi Germany. He had some some motivation.
Yeah, he had, and some empathetic

postures.

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.
Yeah. And he predicted gravity waves.
I mean, gravitational waves, which means that the math was already there. Math is already there.
Right, right.

And so math was in place. And then we say that it must be...
But he did not believe that matter would do. would be so

He didn't think the universe would be that mean to matter. Really? Yeah.
Interesting. Yeah.
The matter is closing in on itself. Right.
And it collapses with nothing to stop it. Exactly.

Down to a singularity. Yes.
It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense.
So he said it must, but it can't be. Right.
It can't be. And then we have up there and finding black holes.

Look at that.

That's

so. So, yes, it can be completely described.
And what's interesting about it is the two black holes enter each other's event horizon. That's where it gets fun.
Oh, really? Yeah.

What if there isn't a dominant black hole? What if they are both mirror identities? What happens then?

Oh, you, because you,

you're, you're imagining in most scenarios, one black hole is like

dominant. Yeah, one black hole is just like, you know, you're in my part of space now, and I'm hungry.
Right.

So

I got news for you. We're going to be one black hole, but it's going to be me.

Did you one time imitate a black hole eating? No, you had some voice. What was that? No, what did I do? It was something.

Oh, no.

Because I was saying black holes are just like. Hey, hey, hey.

That is exactly what they would sound like. Oh, my goodness.

If they spoke English, but if sound could move through space, that's what they'd be saying. Another black hole, a tasty snack.

Okay.

So, yeah, but that's my point. My concept is that one of them would be dominant always.
But the math doesn't

care. Math doesn't.
What is bigger, smaller, equal? It doesn't make a difference.

Here's the thing: when they merge, you have a new black hole that is exactly the mass of the two of them summed together. Oh, and that's all that counts.
That's all that counts.

And then you have a bigger black hole. There you go.
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You know Donald, I just want to scream out into this canyon and tell the whole world T-Mobile's Got Home Internet. Do it, Zach.
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This is Jared Higbee, who says, greeting, Dr. Tyson and Lord Chucky Baby.

This is Jared Higbee from Alamo, Nevada.

Is the north and south sides of a magnet actually different in any way outside of the attraction and repelling effects. How would you determine which side of a magnet is which?

Interesting.

So, you don't have anything to go on because you can't turn them and attract, or turn them and repel. You have to determine which one is north and which one is south.
It is

completely arbitrary.

Really? Yes.

Do tell. Okay.

I will.

What I mean by arbitrary, it's that we all decide what to agree on, and then that's the answer.

It's not a fundamental thing in the universe that tells, this is North.

I got you. There's no whispering secret force operating on this.
So, by definition,

now think this, remember, like poles will do what? They repel. Repel.
And opposite poles attract. Okay.
Okay. So by definition, if you have, let's say, a bar magnet, because it'll work better.

It's easier. And you hold it with a string in the middle and it'll turn.

The part that points north on Earth is the north pole of the magnet. And that's it.
You just have to do that once, and that'll set all the other magnets straight.

And every other magnet is just like, that's it. That's it.

It's been decided, guys.

That's right. There's no need to make a choice.

It's been decided for you. It's been decided for you.
By that one. Okay, so now what that means is: if the north pole of your magnet is pointing to the north pole of the earth,

where is the earth's south magnetic pole?

Wait a minute. If the wait, the north pole of a magnet

is pointed towards the north pole of the earth. What attracted it? The south magnetic.

That's insane. This North Pole is the South Pole.
Yes. Unearthed.
Oh, my God. That is answering ridiculous.
Yeah.

Oh, geez. You didn't know that? No, man.
That's crazy. Have you thought about that? No.

How do we have? We call it at our North Pole and North magnets point to it. Now you point a North Pole to a North Pole and it repels.
Exactly. Something's going,

something's going on there. Wow.
That's crazy. Yes.
Earth's South Magnetic Pole. is the North Pole.
Yes. That's insane.

I don't know what to believe anymore. I can't believe anything anymore.

Okay, so now, so now, why? We had someone ask from down under, you can ask, what makes that the North Pole of the Earth at all? Right. Was that arbitrary? Is that arbitrary as well?

Okay. Yeah, because from where we're sitting.

Well, the folks in the South Pole, they might have another

opinion on the matter. Exactly.
Okay. Exactly.
That's another one. Troiki.

That's another one that's decided by decree.

Arbitrary consensus.

Okay.

And you know how we get it. You ask, which way is the Earth spinning? Okay.
Okay. Curl your hand.
Take your right hand, curl your fingers in the direction Earth is spinning. Now point your thumb up.

That's the North Pole. Yeah, look at that.
So that's it. That's it.
But suppose most people were left-handed, then there's no left-hand rule, it's only a right-hand rule.

Okay, so yeah, and now there's your point. Plus, most people are not left-handed.
That's my point. We're discriminating against left-handed people.

Oh, I think you see, if left people dominatedly left-handed, we would have probably done it the other way. Oh, so then the North Pole would have been in the south, right?

Yeah, if they did the left-hand rule, yeah, okay, yeah, you do that for any rotating object, right? That's how you can say that the planet Uranus is tipped 98 degrees from the vertical.

Okay, How's that possible if you just have another axis that's up there? Right. Because the right-hand rule

takes it down

below. That's so cool, man.
Yeah. That's very cool.

You can have a planet that's 180 degrees flipped. Right.
Why don't you just say, well, just call that north? No, because the rotation is rotation. Yeah.
Okay. Ooh, that's so cool.
All right.

All right. Here we go.

I think we got time for one more question. One more.
Or two if I answer each in half the time. I did the math.
Okay,

go.

Here we go. This is Hugo Dart.
He says, hello, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice.
This is Hugo Dart from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Blasil.

He says, with my seven-year-old daughter, Olivia, who is a big fan of your show, here's my question. If you had to bet on one breakthrough in astrophysics happening in the next 50 years,

what would that one breakthrough be?

We would know for sure whether there was life elsewhere in the solar system, not on Earth. Cool.
Either in the oceans of Europa or in the soils of Mars. Right.
With where we think water has gone.

Water has gone. We will know for sure whether there is or there is not.
Right. And if there is not, that's important information.
Very much so. And if there is, that's even more important.

I think we'll know that probably in the next 30 years based on missions that are scheduled. Another question.
So, okay, here we go. This is Logan Sinette, who says, hello, Dr.
Tyson. Lord Nice.

This is a good one.

Logan is a cool name. That is badass.
He says, this is Logan from Phoenix, Arizona here. Have you mentioned that the best telescope discoveries are unexpected discoveries?

So I was wondering if the JWST has made any interesting unexpected discoveries thus far. And if so, which one interests you most?

When I was coming up,

there was the record for what's the farthest object in the universe. Okay.
And it's measured by redshift. So

with the letter Z. And there's a mathematical form for that.

But the bigger is the Z, is the the farther away the object is okay in my day the farthest objects were Z of five okay okay when I was growing up coming up in ranks right we might have hit six when we built the row center 25 years ago okay the farther away it is the closer back in time it's getting to the beginning of the universe

correct right but not only that Start from the beginning of the universe, you couldn't make anything until the universe cooled down. Right.
All right. To the point where matter forms.
Like atoms form.

Now we have atoms. Now the atoms can coalesce and make stars.
Before they make stars, the universe is still expanding. We call that the dark ages.
Hasn't made stars yet. Oh, wow.
Okay.

We called it the dark ages. Interesting.
All right. JWST looks around,

found galaxies in the dark ages. Redshift 14.

Oh, my gosh. 14.
That's crazy. My head is exploding.
Yeah. So first, what? A galaxy at Redshift 14?

Holy shit. Okay.
A. B, that's in the dark ages when it ain't supposed to be.
When it's not supposed to be there. So now we have an incongruency time-wise.
Yes. Or we don't understand how galaxies are.

We just don't understand how galaxies form. Correct.
Or we had a totally cool dark galaxy.

Hey, baby.

This is me, your dark galaxy.

You can call me. The chocolate galaxy if you want.

That's all the time we have. Yes.
That was great. We got a lot in there.
Man, we got so many questions in. Okay.

Shut up. No, okay.

This has been Star Talk Cosmic Queries Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist.
As always, keep looking up.

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