WEBVTT 00:00:02.040 --> 00:00:09.040 Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. 00:00:10.320 --> 00:00:12.740 StarTalk begins right now. 00:00:15.420 --> 00:00:19.320 This is StarTalk, Cosmic Queries edition. 00:00:19.460 --> 00:00:21.860 It's becoming quite the fan favorite. 00:00:22.480 --> 00:00:24.040 And you know I don't do this alone. 00:00:25.720 --> 00:00:26.580 Help me, Chuck. 00:00:29.440 --> 00:00:32.020 Well, yes, I'm here, but you don't need help. 00:00:32.140 --> 00:00:33.500 But I'm always here. 00:00:33.520 --> 00:00:36.280 Okay, you give me spiritual help. 00:00:36.440 --> 00:00:37.120 Exactly. 00:00:37.280 --> 00:00:38.140 There you go. 00:00:38.160 --> 00:00:40.720 Right, because I'm certainly not helping to answer the questions. 00:00:40.740 --> 00:00:41.460 That's for sure. 00:00:42.600 --> 00:00:46.360 So this one is a sort of a fan appreciation episode. 00:00:46.500 --> 00:00:46.980 Yeah. 00:00:47.180 --> 00:00:50.520 Where I think it's primarily Patreon questions. 00:00:50.760 --> 00:00:51.740 All Patreon. 00:00:51.760 --> 00:00:52.720 These are our supporters. 00:00:52.760 --> 00:00:55.040 I think, you know, you're not just a patron. 00:00:55.060 --> 00:00:56.820 I think that's why the word is different. 00:00:56.840 --> 00:01:00.020 You know, when you're a patron, you just hand money and charity. 00:01:00.040 --> 00:01:04.080 But Patreon, there's actually sort of a, what do you call it? 00:01:04.100 --> 00:01:07.820 A contract between the money you give and what happens next. 00:01:08.420 --> 00:01:12.900 And there's a scale with higher and higher rewards for it. 00:01:12.920 --> 00:01:16.900 So we're trying to just encourage that. 00:01:17.240 --> 00:01:20.320 Because it allows us to experiment those funds. 00:01:21.040 --> 00:01:23.940 And do things that are not yet tested in the marketplace. 00:01:25.440 --> 00:01:26.580 But we think it will work. 00:01:26.640 --> 00:01:31.240 And then we get to test it and then it works, then we go on to something else. 00:01:32.080 --> 00:01:36.400 They're giving us the opportunity to fail with our consequence. 00:01:36.600 --> 00:01:38.300 That's basically. 00:01:38.420 --> 00:01:39.680 I hadn't thought about it that way. 00:01:39.800 --> 00:01:41.000 That's what they're doing. 00:01:41.020 --> 00:01:43.920 It's like, thank you for giving us the opportunity to fail. 00:01:43.940 --> 00:01:45.920 And we don't have to worry about it. 00:01:45.940 --> 00:01:49.960 We can, you know, but, you know, that's a good thing, right? 00:01:50.540 --> 00:01:58.700 Yeah, those who are the only people who no longer make mistakes are those who are no longer on the frontier of inquiry. 00:01:59.100 --> 00:02:01.340 Ooh, did you just think that up? 00:02:01.360 --> 00:02:02.140 That's really good. 00:02:02.160 --> 00:02:03.860 Oh, no, you're going to write it down? 00:02:03.900 --> 00:02:06.700 I am writing this down. 00:02:06.720 --> 00:02:07.800 Like, that's good. 00:02:10.320 --> 00:02:12.940 Yeah, mistakes are evidence that you're exploring. 00:02:13.120 --> 00:02:14.540 They're not evidence of your failure. 00:02:14.560 --> 00:02:15.460 So, I have to agree with you. 00:02:15.720 --> 00:02:16.480 Yeah, cool, man. 00:02:16.500 --> 00:02:17.800 We have to change our attitude. 00:02:17.820 --> 00:02:20.600 By the way, if you make the same mistake twice, no excuse. 00:02:20.620 --> 00:02:21.880 That's a different story. 00:02:21.900 --> 00:02:23.440 That's a whole new ball game now. 00:02:23.720 --> 00:02:24.900 That's a different show. 00:02:25.180 --> 00:02:27.440 Right. 00:02:27.460 --> 00:02:28.660 So, you collected all the questions. 00:02:28.680 --> 00:02:29.440 So, what do you have for me? 00:02:29.520 --> 00:02:31.940 Yeah, but first we're going to try something different. 00:02:32.420 --> 00:02:40.360 Because speaking of Patreon, we have some patrons that do a yeoman's job of supporting us. 00:02:42.680 --> 00:02:45.260 By that, I mean they drop some coin. 00:02:45.560 --> 00:02:46.400 Drop some coin. 00:02:46.420 --> 00:02:47.400 They drop some coin. 00:02:47.420 --> 00:02:50.980 And so, you know, we like to reward them especially. 00:02:51.420 --> 00:03:01.180 And so, Joel Cherico is going to lead us off with a video question. 00:03:01.260 --> 00:03:02.640 Well, this is like in Jeopardy! 00:03:02.660 --> 00:03:04.020 You have the video daily double. 00:03:04.040 --> 00:03:05.780 Yeah, you know I forgot about that. 00:03:07.360 --> 00:03:09.800 Just a little moment of silence for Alex Trebek. 00:03:09.800 --> 00:03:10.400 Oh, God. 00:03:10.400 --> 00:03:11.960 Yeah, host of Jeopardy! 00:03:11.980 --> 00:03:13.260 for what, 36 years. 00:03:13.400 --> 00:03:15.460 What an incredible career he had. 00:03:15.700 --> 00:03:23.440 Yeah, and I was never a contestant, but I was multiple times on the board either delivering clues or my name was like a clue. 00:03:23.780 --> 00:03:27.040 So, I feel genetically connected in my own little way. 00:03:27.200 --> 00:03:35.400 Well, you know, and of course there's a big buzz in the Twitterverse intern webs that you should be the host. 00:03:35.860 --> 00:03:37.740 Oh, yeah, but I'm flattered. 00:03:38.020 --> 00:03:41.560 I'm flattered, but I got a day job. 00:03:41.560 --> 00:03:42.800 I got a job, yeah. 00:03:42.820 --> 00:03:43.940 I got a day job. 00:03:44.340 --> 00:03:44.900 Amen. 00:03:45.060 --> 00:03:49.180 I'm indeed flattered, but by the way, I think I could do a good job. 00:03:49.560 --> 00:03:52.840 But it's not my life's goal. 00:03:53.040 --> 00:03:57.580 Here's my impression of you as the host of Jeopardy, okay? 00:03:57.600 --> 00:03:58.080 What's that? 00:03:58.600 --> 00:04:10.420 And so, they give the answer, and then the person chimes in, and then you go, I'm sorry, the question we have there isn't quite right. 00:04:16.840 --> 00:04:19.840 Yeah, judges, yeah, you need judges for the judges, right? 00:04:19.860 --> 00:04:21.080 Do we need a judge for the does? 00:04:21.100 --> 00:04:24.880 Because I'm pretty sure that that question isn't exactly right. 00:04:24.900 --> 00:04:26.400 Yeah, they messed that one up. 00:04:26.420 --> 00:04:26.580 Right. 00:04:26.600 --> 00:04:29.000 Technically maybe, but no. 00:04:29.020 --> 00:04:30.720 Yeah, so anyway. 00:04:32.040 --> 00:04:35.040 All right, so let's kick things off with our video question. 00:04:35.060 --> 00:04:36.240 Oh, by the way, just another quick thing. 00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:49.260 There are people, when I went to college, there was someone who had like a very high IQ within my dorm, and his IQ was so high that it couldn't be measured by normal tests, so they had to create a special test for him. 00:04:49.440 --> 00:04:49.720 Wow. 00:04:49.740 --> 00:04:55.960 And then he was a consultant to people who write IQ tests for how to test people at very, this is while he was in college. 00:04:56.220 --> 00:05:00.820 He was a consultant to test writers to test people at very high IQ. 00:05:01.280 --> 00:05:03.060 And so it's weird, it's its own thing. 00:05:03.160 --> 00:05:06.260 It's its own universe, this IQ thing. 00:05:06.400 --> 00:05:07.100 That's insane. 00:05:07.440 --> 00:05:07.820 Yeah, yeah. 00:05:08.020 --> 00:05:16.280 And so what he was wondering was whether IQ correlated with your performance in school only to a certain point. 00:05:17.240 --> 00:05:19.780 That a higher IQ would get you lower grades. 00:05:20.680 --> 00:05:22.620 And so I asked, well, what's going on there? 00:05:22.640 --> 00:05:28.180 He said, oh, because beyond a certain IQ, you are smarter than anyone asking the question. 00:05:29.280 --> 00:05:34.320 And so you will see answers that they do not yet see, and then you'll be marked wrong. 00:05:35.500 --> 00:05:36.100 Makes sense. 00:05:36.460 --> 00:05:39.880 So I thought that was an interesting fact. 00:05:40.800 --> 00:05:44.040 I'm not claiming a very high IQ, but this happened to me a couple of times in school. 00:05:44.060 --> 00:05:48.060 When I was in kindergarten, I made a crayon drawing of the night time. 00:05:51.860 --> 00:05:53.540 It's like earth and then the sky. 00:05:53.560 --> 00:05:57.160 And I used my black crayon and totally wore it out, put in some stars in it. 00:05:57.380 --> 00:06:01.360 And the teacher said, no, no, the night sky is dark blue. 00:06:01.980 --> 00:06:04.680 And I'm thinking, no, this is like, why would it? 00:06:04.820 --> 00:06:05.940 No, it's like, no. 00:06:06.960 --> 00:06:09.600 But I'm like six or five or something. 00:06:09.620 --> 00:06:13.580 And so later on, the teacher went home, did research, and came back and said, no, you're right. 00:06:14.220 --> 00:06:15.620 The nighttime sky is black. 00:06:15.840 --> 00:06:16.240 Right. 00:06:16.300 --> 00:06:17.420 And so that's what happened there. 00:06:18.380 --> 00:06:22.380 And so when she said it's dark blue was your answer. 00:06:22.740 --> 00:06:25.100 So, do you have eyes? 00:06:27.800 --> 00:06:29.080 No, I'm five, okay? 00:06:29.100 --> 00:06:31.240 Just like a full grown up teacher. 00:06:31.260 --> 00:06:33.040 And it happened again. 00:06:33.060 --> 00:06:39.860 There was a question on the physics regions, I think it was, where in New York state we take the regions. 00:06:39.980 --> 00:06:40.280 Right. 00:06:40.300 --> 00:06:41.400 So there's a question. 00:06:41.940 --> 00:06:50.560 If you have a projectile, this is basic physics, what shape best represents that path? 00:06:51.560 --> 00:06:57.640 And so you have like parabola, you know, a circle, ellipse, whatever. 00:06:58.860 --> 00:07:00.440 And the answer they're looking for is parabola. 00:07:00.680 --> 00:07:01.200 Right. 00:07:01.220 --> 00:07:02.720 If you do the math, it's a parabola. 00:07:02.740 --> 00:07:23.580 However, however, if it's not actually a parabola, it's close to a parabola, but if you removed earth or scrunched earth down to only its center, right, that path would continue and orbit the earth and come back into that segment. 00:07:24.880 --> 00:07:27.280 So in fact, it's a segment of an ellipse. 00:07:28.040 --> 00:07:37.240 More than it's a segment of a parabola, but it's taught parabola because a parabola equation is way easier to calculate with than an ellipse. 00:07:39.860 --> 00:07:47.700 So, again, just because you wrote the question and you're testing other people's knowledge doesn't mean you know enough knowledge to test people who know more than you do. 00:07:48.020 --> 00:07:48.680 That's all I'm saying. 00:07:48.900 --> 00:07:49.400 Alright. 00:07:49.720 --> 00:07:50.640 Hey, listen, that's good. 00:07:50.660 --> 00:07:56.000 Well, now we're going to test your knowledge because we got a bunch of questions that have been written. 00:07:56.020 --> 00:07:56.400 Bring it on. 00:07:56.600 --> 00:07:57.920 The video daily double. 00:07:57.940 --> 00:07:59.300 Chuck, what's behind? 00:08:01.320 --> 00:08:02.460 Universe for 1,000. 00:08:04.580 --> 00:08:05.300 Hey, StarTalk. 00:08:06.800 --> 00:08:08.340 Thanks for the chance to ask some questions. 00:08:08.860 --> 00:08:09.660 So I'm an artist. 00:08:09.780 --> 00:08:13.440 I make pottery, some of it inspired by the cosmos. 00:08:13.940 --> 00:08:20.000 And most of the pots have a spiral in them somewhere because I just I think they look really cool. 00:08:20.360 --> 00:08:21.760 So my question is very simple. 00:08:22.220 --> 00:08:24.220 Why are there so many spirals in nature? 00:08:27.200 --> 00:08:27.940 Interesting. 00:08:28.100 --> 00:08:28.820 Oh, cool. 00:08:29.020 --> 00:08:31.880 And not just the universe in nature, period. 00:08:32.260 --> 00:08:34.000 Oh, yeah, yeah. 00:08:34.020 --> 00:08:34.940 This is Joel, right? 00:08:35.120 --> 00:08:37.080 Okay, so I recognize him. 00:08:37.540 --> 00:08:39.780 I don't know who this guy is, okay? 00:08:40.140 --> 00:08:43.640 Because I got right here one of his creations, okay? 00:08:44.360 --> 00:08:46.980 This is a moon coffee mug. 00:08:47.220 --> 00:08:48.280 What are you thinking at? 00:08:48.460 --> 00:08:52.120 And the problem is every time I taste it, I taste a bit of basalt. 00:08:55.420 --> 00:08:57.500 Why is this coffee so gritty? 00:09:00.940 --> 00:09:01.700 Interesting. 00:09:02.020 --> 00:09:06.440 No, no, each one is unique and I'm very impressed with just the artisanry of it. 00:09:07.460 --> 00:09:09.360 But yeah, he gave me a set of these. 00:09:10.220 --> 00:09:12.060 And they're all around my office. 00:09:12.140 --> 00:09:15.240 And the funny thing is that he sent me one, as you can see. 00:09:15.260 --> 00:09:15.720 We got one too? 00:09:16.260 --> 00:09:16.520 Yes. 00:09:16.680 --> 00:09:21.140 And he told me in the note that he sent me that he had made several for you. 00:09:22.100 --> 00:09:26.040 And I realized that he sent me one without a handle. 00:09:29.720 --> 00:09:30.040 Right. 00:09:30.200 --> 00:09:30.620 Okay. 00:09:30.640 --> 00:09:34.900 So, yours has a handle and clearly, you know, mine is meant to... 00:09:34.920 --> 00:09:36.820 You know, Chuck is just so ungrateful. 00:09:36.880 --> 00:09:38.540 Joel, I apologize for Chuck. 00:09:39.980 --> 00:09:41.980 And Joel, I apologize for you. 00:09:42.000 --> 00:09:44.880 Sending me a handle-less mug. 00:09:45.340 --> 00:09:46.080 Thank you. 00:09:47.300 --> 00:09:48.580 Which I didn't even realize. 00:09:48.600 --> 00:09:50.700 I was like, well, maybe all of his mugs have no handle. 00:09:52.940 --> 00:09:55.100 Maybe this is the way he meant. 00:09:55.120 --> 00:09:57.180 In fact, mine has a little place where your thumb goes. 00:09:57.360 --> 00:10:00.840 Right on the top of the handle, there's a place where the thumb goes. 00:10:00.860 --> 00:10:04.580 And not only do you have a handle, but it's ergonomic on top of that. 00:10:07.520 --> 00:10:10.040 And mine is just like, well, Chuck, I hope you don't burn your hands. 00:10:10.220 --> 00:10:12.620 All right, so here's what's going on. 00:10:12.720 --> 00:10:13.480 Spirals. 00:10:13.760 --> 00:10:16.280 I'll do my best to give an answer to this. 00:10:16.360 --> 00:10:19.080 So here's what happens. 00:10:19.580 --> 00:10:24.200 If anything goes around in circles, okay, you get a circle. 00:10:24.760 --> 00:10:26.060 All right, fine. 00:10:26.900 --> 00:10:38.480 If, however, while you were going around in circles, you move in any direction perpendicular to the circle, it's no longer a circle. 00:10:39.400 --> 00:10:40.160 It's a spiral. 00:10:42.660 --> 00:10:53.220 So the circle gets distorted to move through time in such a way that you get a spiral, like a spiral staircase or a spiral anything. 00:10:54.060 --> 00:11:01.440 So I was in one of the Redwood Forests when we were filming Cosmos, and I was intrigued. 00:11:01.600 --> 00:11:04.500 But first, in the city, New York, we don't have big trees like that. 00:11:04.520 --> 00:11:07.960 So everything about this forest is completely alien to me. 00:11:08.240 --> 00:11:13.560 So I'm examining it like I'm on an alien planet because I've never seen anything like this. 00:11:13.820 --> 00:11:24.780 So I noticed that the tree bark on many of the trees is striated in this sort of very, very sort of high-pitched spiral going up the tree. 00:11:25.100 --> 00:11:26.620 And every tree did this. 00:11:27.000 --> 00:11:28.740 And they all did it in the same direction. 00:11:29.580 --> 00:11:34.380 And I thought, what is asymmetric in the physiology? 00:11:34.400 --> 00:11:36.200 Can I use that word as applied to plants? 00:11:37.160 --> 00:11:41.740 In the physiology of a tree, that there's this spiraling going on. 00:11:41.760 --> 00:11:45.700 I don't know about the rest of the plant, but it's certainly happening in the bark. 00:11:45.720 --> 00:11:46.920 So I was just intrigued by that. 00:11:46.940 --> 00:11:48.980 But of course, the tree grows upwards. 00:11:49.320 --> 00:12:03.700 So whatever is otherwise happening in the tree, if there's any kind of sap movement or whatever else is going on, and I don't know, I have no expertise in plants, I'm just saying, combine something that wants to go in a circle and have it move upwards, you get a spiral. 00:12:03.980 --> 00:12:05.080 Wow. 00:12:05.300 --> 00:12:07.660 Now, that's a three-dimensional spiral. 00:12:07.740 --> 00:12:09.780 Now we have spiral galaxies, which is flat. 00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:12.540 That's a spiral in a flat shape. 00:12:13.580 --> 00:12:23.780 And you get that because the inner parts of the galaxy finish a loop faster than the outer parts of the galaxy. 00:12:23.940 --> 00:12:29.980 So if you have some system like stars forming in gas cloud, that will get stretched, okay? 00:12:30.800 --> 00:12:44.780 And our current understanding of galaxies is that there's a wave of pressure inside that galaxy, called a density wave, that is moving through the galaxy through the gas cloud. 00:12:45.420 --> 00:12:50.980 And that density wave is being stretched by the rotation of the galaxy itself. 00:12:51.220 --> 00:12:55.560 And where that density wave is hitting the gas, you get the formation of stars. 00:12:56.240 --> 00:13:06.240 So, again, you have an action happening combined with a rotation, and that rotation is not as a solid object, and there you have it. 00:13:06.580 --> 00:13:09.880 So, by the way, plenty of stuff is not spiral. 00:13:10.640 --> 00:13:13.860 We have elliptical galaxies, there's no spiral things in them at all. 00:13:14.780 --> 00:13:17.380 But if you're going to spin, watch for some spiral action. 00:13:18.200 --> 00:13:18.820 There you go. 00:13:19.100 --> 00:13:19.920 That makes sense. 00:13:20.820 --> 00:13:21.460 Yeah, very cool. 00:13:21.480 --> 00:13:25.320 Well, thanks, Joel, and thank you for, once again, the handless cup. 00:13:27.560 --> 00:13:29.220 I tried to get the basalt out of it. 00:13:29.260 --> 00:13:31.380 Yeah, exactly. 00:13:31.600 --> 00:13:33.680 Thank you for my gritty morning coffee. 00:13:33.700 --> 00:13:34.460 My volcanic. 00:13:34.480 --> 00:13:35.680 That burns my hand. 00:13:39.740 --> 00:13:40.220 All right. 00:13:40.700 --> 00:13:41.340 All right, cool. 00:13:42.200 --> 00:13:44.380 Let's move on to... 00:13:44.440 --> 00:13:47.540 I'm going to combine two questions together now. 00:13:48.060 --> 00:13:52.620 This is Rudd Vanderlinden, or Rude, as one or the other. 00:13:52.820 --> 00:13:54.180 Say the Rudd or Rude. 00:13:54.200 --> 00:13:56.460 I'm imagining his parents didn't name him Rude. 00:13:56.720 --> 00:13:57.520 I'm just thinking. 00:13:58.900 --> 00:13:59.700 That could, you know... 00:13:59.940 --> 00:14:01.600 How do you spell the first name? 00:14:01.880 --> 00:14:02.720 R-U-U-D. 00:14:03.640 --> 00:14:04.060 Rude. 00:14:04.440 --> 00:14:04.860 Rude. 00:14:04.980 --> 00:14:05.420 Rude. 00:14:05.600 --> 00:14:06.980 Rude Vanderlinden. 00:14:07.000 --> 00:14:08.260 All right, sounds like rude to me. 00:14:08.280 --> 00:14:10.340 Yeah, well, rude, by the way, is kind of cool. 00:14:10.720 --> 00:14:11.480 That is kind of cool. 00:14:11.500 --> 00:14:11.880 Rude. 00:14:11.880 --> 00:14:12.940 I'm rude. 00:14:13.420 --> 00:14:14.020 I'm rude. 00:14:14.060 --> 00:14:15.180 No, you're very polite. 00:14:15.200 --> 00:14:15.980 No, I am rude. 00:14:19.600 --> 00:14:20.520 What's his question? 00:14:20.540 --> 00:14:21.220 Rude says this. 00:14:21.220 --> 00:14:26.120 Hey, guys, sad news about the Arecibo Radio Telescope collapsing on itself. 00:14:26.520 --> 00:14:30.600 I'm so glad I was able to visit it before the collapse and before Katrina. 00:14:31.180 --> 00:14:41.180 I was wondering, does Neil have any personal stories about the observatory and what was, according to Neil, the most important discovery that was made with the telescope itself? 00:14:41.200 --> 00:14:41.980 Thanks, Rude. 00:14:42.180 --> 00:14:46.520 Now, let me follow that up with Christine Hale, who says, Hi, Dr. 00:14:46.540 --> 00:14:55.660 Neil, just wondering how the loss of the Arecibo Telescope will affect our scouring of the heavens for possible alien communication or life. 00:14:56.020 --> 00:14:57.520 So I figured I'd just combine the two. 00:14:57.540 --> 00:15:01.120 Because one is, you know, what's your personal connection to it? 00:15:01.960 --> 00:15:05.500 Plus, we don't normally do current events in Q&A, so this is good. 00:15:05.520 --> 00:15:07.600 We'll get to that after this break. 00:15:07.960 --> 00:15:08.180 Oh! 00:15:08.260 --> 00:15:09.040 See what I did there? 00:15:09.060 --> 00:15:11.300 You got me! 00:15:11.540 --> 00:15:12.980 We're doing Cosmic Queries. 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:16.520 This is a fan appreciation edition. 00:15:16.680 --> 00:15:18.540 I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice with me. 00:15:18.560 --> 00:15:19.520 We'll see you in a couple of minutes. 00:15:36.002 --> 00:15:40.762 Hi, I'm Chris Cohen from Hallworth, New Jersey, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. 00:15:41.402 --> 00:15:49.842 Please enjoy this episode of StarTalk Radio with your and my favorite personal astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson. 00:16:01.207 --> 00:16:04.947 We're back, the special Cosmic Queries fan appreciation edition. 00:16:05.387 --> 00:16:10.987 Now Chuck, I don't quite know what's different between this Cosmic Queries and others for us to call this fan appreciation. 00:16:11.207 --> 00:16:12.787 Well, everybody's from Patreon, so they're- 00:16:12.807 --> 00:16:13.567 Everyone's from Patreon? 00:16:13.587 --> 00:16:14.527 Oh, okay, for sure. 00:16:14.547 --> 00:16:19.247 And there are even some video questions we're taking in, so that works. 00:16:19.527 --> 00:16:22.207 So you left off, give me the two names of those who asked about- 00:16:22.227 --> 00:16:33.127 Okay, so it's Rude Vanderlinden and Charlene Hale, and Rude wants to know your personal stories or connections to the Arecibo radio telescope, because, of course, it collapsed recently. 00:16:33.587 --> 00:16:44.567 And Charlene would like to know, will it have an effect on how we scour the heavens for possible alien communication or life? 00:16:44.907 --> 00:16:51.567 Yeah, so the Arecibo telescope was the largest telescope in the world for decades, okay? 00:16:51.627 --> 00:16:55.087 Ever since it was built until back in the 50s or 60s. 00:16:55.907 --> 00:16:56.707 No, no, when was it built? 00:16:56.727 --> 00:17:03.587 I think 1960s until just a few years ago, it was the largest telescope in the world. 00:17:04.327 --> 00:17:08.207 And in telescopes, in astronomy in general, bigger equals better. 00:17:08.967 --> 00:17:14.787 Because if you're trying to collect rain outside that's coming down, imagine the rain, or is it photons from, okay? 00:17:15.007 --> 00:17:18.687 And you wanna collect it, you can use a thimble, you can use a bucket, you can use a cauldron. 00:17:18.727 --> 00:17:19.567 Or a swimming pool. 00:17:19.567 --> 00:17:23.087 Or a swimming pool, you use the swimming pool, you'll get the most amount of raindrops. 00:17:23.127 --> 00:17:24.627 So it's that simple. 00:17:24.687 --> 00:17:26.107 It's not more complicated than that. 00:17:26.287 --> 00:17:28.147 So bigger equals better. 00:17:28.687 --> 00:17:33.667 So since it's a radio telescope, it listens, it observes radio waves. 00:17:34.147 --> 00:17:38.687 And pulsars gives off radio, rapidly rotating neutron stars gives off radio waves. 00:17:39.327 --> 00:17:43.527 It can also detect things happening in our ionosphere. 00:17:43.667 --> 00:17:48.167 This is a part in the upper atmosphere that's electrically charged. 00:17:48.247 --> 00:17:56.527 Old timers will know that you could get AM radio from very distant cities late at night. 00:17:57.267 --> 00:18:13.127 And the reason why you could do that is AM radio waves, once they were broadcast by the antenna, would reflect off the bottom of the ionosphere and be able to cover more than the curvature of the Earth that you could see from where your radio was. 00:18:13.547 --> 00:18:16.407 Whereas FM goes straight out into space. 00:18:17.187 --> 00:18:26.247 So if you want FM across multiple cities, you need repeaters and all sorts of other, that you need all manner of ways to get that signal into other places. 00:18:26.347 --> 00:18:29.127 Now, of course, everything's cable driven and satellite driven. 00:18:29.267 --> 00:18:30.267 I'm just talking about it in the day. 00:18:30.707 --> 00:18:34.147 So it could observe phenomenon going on in the ionosphere. 00:18:34.307 --> 00:18:52.247 In fact, the funding originally for Arecibo was enabled by the US military to detect the signature of decoy intercontinental ballistic missiles as they re-enter the atmosphere through the ionosphere as launched by Russia. 00:18:52.887 --> 00:18:53.447 What? 00:18:53.867 --> 00:18:56.607 This is how, okay, so don't get me started. 00:18:57.687 --> 00:19:10.467 Listen, this is, don't get me started on, well, you can, but not in this moment, on the two-way street between astrophysics, my field and my people, and the military. 00:19:10.827 --> 00:19:13.067 Oh man, we gotta do an explainer on that then. 00:19:13.087 --> 00:19:18.867 We are all, my people, we're all generally sort of liberal anti-war, this sort of thing. 00:19:19.147 --> 00:19:26.007 But at the end of the day, the stuff that we care about, the military cares about, stuff the military cares about, we care about. 00:19:26.027 --> 00:19:32.747 So we have strongly overlapping Venn diagrams in what we do and what we invent and what we innovate. 00:19:33.107 --> 00:19:42.567 So anyhow, so the money for that telescope was driven by the US military, and we knew all along we could piggyback that fact and make all manner of other discoveries. 00:19:43.387 --> 00:19:48.067 So it also gets us, it does radio echo, echoing. 00:19:48.667 --> 00:19:55.687 So what the telescope could also do, better than any other telescope, was send a signal back out to space. 00:19:56.467 --> 00:20:09.947 Okay, because you think of telescopes as just receiving, but what you can do is take a signal, send it from where the location of the receiver, bounce it back off the telescope, and send it somewhere in space that you designate. 00:20:10.327 --> 00:20:19.787 Okay, so there are asteroids, which are too small to really carefully track using optical regular telescopes. 00:20:19.887 --> 00:20:32.707 So what you can do is take a radio signal, send it out, beam it back out to space to an asteroid, and then the reflected signal comes back to you, you time it, you get the distance to that asteroid. 00:20:32.967 --> 00:20:35.867 And when you get the distance and you know which way it's going, you get its orbit. 00:20:36.087 --> 00:20:47.107 And you need, you want to know what those orbits are for asteroids that cross Earth's orbit, because they will eventually 100% hit Earth. 00:20:47.327 --> 00:20:49.307 So it's like an echolocator for- 00:20:49.327 --> 00:20:52.567 Echolocator, not with sound, of course, just echolocator sound. 00:20:52.587 --> 00:20:53.707 Not with sound, but still. 00:20:53.927 --> 00:20:57.447 But with radio waves bouncing off and coming back. 00:20:57.827 --> 00:20:58.987 And so this is- 00:20:59.907 --> 00:21:02.847 So it's a highly useful telescope in that regard. 00:21:03.047 --> 00:21:12.907 Now, all right, several years ago, okay, China says we're gonna have the biggest telescope in the world, and so they went up and built a bigger telescope. 00:21:13.267 --> 00:21:17.447 Twice the collecting area of the Arecibo Telescope. 00:21:17.687 --> 00:21:18.247 Twice. 00:21:18.367 --> 00:21:18.767 Twice. 00:21:19.247 --> 00:21:19.607 Twice. 00:21:20.107 --> 00:21:20.727 Around twice. 00:21:20.787 --> 00:21:22.847 I forgot the exact math, but it's about twice. 00:21:23.447 --> 00:21:23.747 And- 00:21:24.067 --> 00:21:25.547 That's the deal with China. 00:21:26.027 --> 00:21:26.947 China, China. 00:21:28.287 --> 00:21:30.787 This is what I'm trying to tell you about China. 00:21:33.067 --> 00:21:33.367 So- 00:21:34.727 --> 00:21:35.647 They're killing us. 00:21:36.587 --> 00:21:37.327 They're killing us. 00:21:37.347 --> 00:21:38.287 They're killing us. 00:21:39.027 --> 00:21:48.867 So, they too found a natural crater in the Earth, as we found for the Arecibo Telescope, and built the largest radio dish in the world. 00:21:49.087 --> 00:21:49.907 And it has an acronym. 00:21:49.927 --> 00:21:56.367 It's called FAST, the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope. 00:21:56.387 --> 00:21:59.907 So its shape is a spherical, it's the geometry of it. 00:21:59.907 --> 00:22:01.447 No, good for them. 00:22:01.747 --> 00:22:02.707 So I visited that. 00:22:02.727 --> 00:22:06.627 We shot some scenes there for Cosmos, for a whole episode. 00:22:06.647 --> 00:22:08.887 Neil deGrasse Tyson, communist. 00:22:15.147 --> 00:22:16.227 Wow, that's so cool. 00:22:16.247 --> 00:22:17.347 So you got to see it? 00:22:17.527 --> 00:22:18.567 Okay, yes, I was there. 00:22:18.607 --> 00:22:20.487 So it's a mile in circumference. 00:22:20.647 --> 00:22:21.127 Wow. 00:22:21.147 --> 00:22:22.767 All right, if you walked around the upper. 00:22:23.247 --> 00:22:24.347 Anyhow, here's my point. 00:22:25.227 --> 00:22:26.547 The question was, do I have any relation? 00:22:26.547 --> 00:22:27.267 Yes, I do. 00:22:28.167 --> 00:22:36.087 My mother, my mother, while she's born in New York City, her parents are from Puerto Rico. 00:22:36.947 --> 00:22:41.127 And in fact, her grandparents are from Arecibo, Puerto Rico. 00:22:42.327 --> 00:22:47.427 So we have genetic connection back to the town that's the nearest town to that telescope. 00:22:48.267 --> 00:22:49.447 On the island of Puerto Rico. 00:22:50.207 --> 00:22:51.607 And so that's the first connection. 00:22:51.607 --> 00:22:54.747 Second, we would go visit relatives every Christmas. 00:22:55.387 --> 00:22:57.487 Christmas in Puerto Rico, that's a whole thing. 00:22:58.147 --> 00:23:02.027 That's a whole, by the way, at midnight, they're usually through New Year's. 00:23:02.447 --> 00:23:08.647 At midnight, there's a tradition, when you eat grapes, one per, 12 grapes, one per a tone of the clock. 00:23:09.427 --> 00:23:12.467 Okay, and one year they got grapes, but the grapes had seeds in them. 00:23:16.387 --> 00:23:18.547 And I was like, eight or something, I was like, what do I do with the seeds? 00:23:18.567 --> 00:23:19.687 I'll eat another grape, quick! 00:23:19.927 --> 00:23:22.547 You gotta do one per, one per stroke of them. 00:23:22.987 --> 00:23:23.547 Per chime. 00:23:23.847 --> 00:23:31.407 Anyhow, so my point is, oh, so the telescope will be missed in that regard. 00:23:31.547 --> 00:23:33.967 But it was falling out of disrepair. 00:23:34.427 --> 00:23:35.947 We've known this for about a decade. 00:23:36.627 --> 00:23:44.027 The National Science Foundation started with drawing money for support for it, so that means your maintenance doesn't work out. 00:23:44.427 --> 00:23:47.767 No one writes the article about the drop in those funds. 00:23:48.447 --> 00:23:53.547 They wait until the damn detector falls out of the sky, and then they talk about it as a tragedy. 00:23:53.827 --> 00:23:58.707 It was a tragedy that had tap roots that goes back a decade, okay? 00:23:59.327 --> 00:24:06.027 So, for me, this plight of the Arecibo Telescope is metaphor for science in America. 00:24:08.707 --> 00:24:25.147 First, the funding drops, it goes out of disrepair, and then a few things break, putting the rest of the structure at stress points, because an engineering design system, if you start taking out support struts, then the rest of it can't, it's designed to be complete. 00:24:25.727 --> 00:24:31.547 If you start yanking out pieces of it because it broke, and you don't repair it, then that's the beginning of the end. 00:24:31.947 --> 00:24:32.307 Yeah. 00:24:32.607 --> 00:24:33.627 Which in fact it was. 00:24:33.967 --> 00:24:40.707 The beginning of the end, and now the detector falls down out of the sky, and it's the end of an era. 00:24:41.367 --> 00:24:45.107 And so now if aliens gonna talk to humans by sending radio signals. 00:24:46.347 --> 00:24:49.027 They're gonna be speaking Chinese. 00:24:50.887 --> 00:24:54.387 The Chinese will be the first to have that conversation with aliens. 00:24:54.567 --> 00:25:02.607 Now, so as an American, I'm upset that we can't lead that effort. 00:25:03.167 --> 00:25:12.147 But as a scientist, I know that if your country becomes short-sighted in terms of their investments, the science can and will still get done. 00:25:12.907 --> 00:25:23.727 It happened with the superconducting supercollider that we were gonna build in Texas, funding began, then it all got cut to zero, but Europe said we'll build one. 00:25:24.087 --> 00:25:28.627 So Europe built it at the European Center for Nuclear Research, CERN. 00:25:29.407 --> 00:25:35.307 They have the Large Hadron Collider, and they discovered the Higgs boson, the god particle. 00:25:35.427 --> 00:25:41.047 They discovered new frontiers in particle physics at CERN, and we didn't, okay? 00:25:41.827 --> 00:25:44.607 Science doesn't care what your nationality is. 00:25:45.347 --> 00:25:53.227 All that matters is who is offering you enlightened leadership and enlightened governance if you wanna be on that frontier. 00:25:53.587 --> 00:26:00.747 Otherwise, you will dance to the tune played by others who have made those investments in the future of this civilization. 00:26:01.327 --> 00:26:02.007