Why Do We Exist with Hakeem Oluseyi

0:00Fall flavors are waiting for you at Whole Foods Market. Cozy picks all through the store, like maple leaf cookies from 365 brand. Swing by the bakery for pumpkin cheesecake, here for a limited time, and pumpkin turmeric bread freshly baked every single day. Sip the season with 365 brand Cinnamon Spice Coffee and Pumpkin Spice Creamer. While you still can, spice up fall at Whole Foods Market. This is a new era of wealth. A UBS financial advisor can help you with personalized advice and long term planning. To move forward with confidence, find out what's possible. At UBS.com slash new era, UBS Financial Services Inc. Member Finra, SIPC. Start-up radio is presented by ChatGPT. ChatGPT work, a new way to work in ChatGPT, helps you move from goals to real outcomes. ChatGPT work can use info from your apps, files and plugins, like Slack, calendars and meeting notes, to help produce finished materials.

1:04Plus, it can stay with bigger projects for hours while you still remain in control. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at chatgpt.com by selecting Work Mode, available on plus and pro plans. Chuck, yeah, I don't think we can find a container to hold a full Akim Oli Shaeu. No, I don't even think a magnetic field would do it. Yeah, it's coming up. Boundless energy coming your way. Delivered from the universe. Welcome to Star Talk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. Star Talk begins right now. This is Star Talk. The other grass Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Chuck, nice, right next to me. What's up, Neil? All right, man. How are you, buddy? Doing good? Doing great. We got to cause my queries today. Yes, we do, when choir and mines want to know.

2:05Indeed, and in fact, it's on cosmology. Ooh. That's a topic. Ooh. It is the expertise of our guest. Third time on Star Talk? Yeah. I think so. That's right. Hakim Ulushay. Thank you so much. And it is the fourth time. Oh, this is the fourth time. That's right. Because this, yeah, no, wait, fourth time. Memoir. Cosmic queries. Both remote. And then five. You know, remote. That's my brain. Yeah, kind of messed me up. Yeah. Well, we got an astrophysicist cosmologist, which is a subdivision of all astrophysicists who thinks about the origin, evolution, and fate of the universe. Ooh. Ooh. Plus, he's been practicing my open through this show. And I don't know if I should be happy about it or kick his ass later. Let me hear it. Let's see. This is Star Talk. You know, that's pretty good. Not bad.

3:06That's, you know. I'll tell you. You know? Yeah. Right now with the three black eyes up here, I don't know who's who. Wait a minute, wait a minute. I want you back to this kick your ass, comedy. What? That's hilarious. Yeah. So your host of the podcast, Particles of Thought, a nice love that title. And it's a Nova podcast. It's a Nova podcast. PBS Nova, G-B-H, and we got a Boston. Very good. Very nice. And CEO. I mean, people get to say they CEO. Because you're CEO, you demand. That's right. CEO of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Very nice. And I'm going to ask you about that in a minute. And you've also associated with Ness' I-Map Satellite. Yes. Reminding what I-Map stands for. Interstellar, mapping, and acceleration probe. Oh, nice. Who's accelerating? The sun, magnetic fields, both at the surface of the sun, and interactions with the sun, solar wind, and Particles trap in the heliosphere. Uh-huh.

4:06And those generate neutral atoms that come back into the solar system and get measured by I-Map. Wow. Yeah. OK. And may I ask, why? And-and. If you were about to sun, serious. That doesn't sound very cosmological. How do you stitch that together? Because I started out doing instrumentation, and calculations, computational, and understanding plasma is really well. So it's kind of like I have this toolbox that I can travel from field to field with. Right? So I'm going to propose plasma. It's everywhere in the freaking universe. Absolutely. Oh, my gosh. I tell people we're not talking about blood plasma. No. We're kind of plasma. I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah. There's a whole other kind of- That's right. It's a different plasma. So this is when you take a gas heated even more, you break more bonds, right? And you break the solid to liquid bond, liquid to gas. Now, once you're a gas, you're just molecules or atoms. You start breaking those apart. So once you break apart electrons from atoms, you now have a plasma. Yeah. It's an electron soup basically. Nice. Yeah.

5:07And so this gas will respond to magnetic fields. Right. And then you have to put in a little thing with it, right? Including feed a fusion reactor for the future of energy. That's really nice. That's really good thing. Yeah. And that'd be the only way you would be able to hold the energy as in a magnetic field bottle, right? Not necessarily. No, really. You can also put it in a little pellet and close it in a metal and blast it generating x-rays that create fusion. Oh, but that's not a- I'm sorry. I was thinking fusion. That's not a plasma. You're starting with a little seed, right? Right. But yeah, so if you're going to confine a plasma, you're going to do that with magnetic fields. Okay. You were right. Okay. Totally on the back. Yeah, you totally shook my confidence. Last, last. You were here. Yeah. You've been busy and a book. I got it. You wrote a book. A book with the audacious title, the bowdacious title, the out of this world title, why do we exist? Wow. The nine realms of universe that make you possible.

6:09That's right. That's right. You're speaking to the reader. That's right. Is that mean you have a different point of origin? Because otherwise that word really should be a we. Just say it. I think it is a we. Why do we exist? Absolutely. The nine realms of the universe that make you possible. That's right. That's kind of like, you know, when you talk to your spouse and you say, let me tell you something, your son. Okay. Got you. Okay. Okay. Wait a minute. That's your new one right there. That's your dish. Okay. I've said those words many times. Sometimes you're about here. You mean our son? Yeah. So what is a realm? So in this case, what I do is I listen to what the universe told me and I report on it. Essentially, what I realize as a physicist is that when you study the universe, you study the universe. We typically do it in this disjointed way, right?

7:10But there is a cohesive story, but what the average person doesn't understand is how the rules that our intuition gives us just doesn't scale. And the universe, as it scales, the rules change fundamentally. So you have to really start looking at the universe completely differently. So here we're in the middle realm. I call it the middle realm bigger than an atom or molecule smaller than a galactic arm. Right? It's middle earth. Yeah. Exactly. What about second breakfast? Are you going to the chat? What happened? So anyway, the cosmological realm. Right? So now the dynamics of space time dominate in the middle realm, the, you know, and what dominates is based on the flow of energy through that realm. So what you see, the trend is is energy is constantly leaving matter going from an Israeli story of quantum fields going from the matter to fermionic quantum fields into the electromagnetic quantum fields. So every day there's more full times than there were the day before.

8:12There's less energy in matter, right? Ultimately, you lean to this heat death, right? The long time in the future. Now we go, if you study the cosmological realm, you realize something ain't right. That leads you to the dark realm. These are energy realms. And essentially. Well, no, there, there are realms of emergence as well, right? So when you go to, for example, the temporal realm, the story of how time unfolds. But listen, in other realms, there are still unfoldings in the middle realm. I discuss how stars and planets come into existence in the realm of life. We talk about a biogenesis and how that leads ultimately through, you know, through this energy ladder from chemosynthesis to, you know, anoxic photosynthesis to oxygenic photosynthesis, to oxygenic respiration, right? This energy ladder that leads to a brain like yours. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, exactly. And then you have the realms beyond horizons, beyond our cosmic event horizons within the black hole event horizons. Okay. Yeah. That's unknowable. Yeah.

9:12They have the multiverse. So now when you look at the cosmic microwave background radiations, a super horizon signature, that seems to indicate that it plays the curve. Is that just the edge of the observable universe? What's the super horizon? I don't know. So if you look at the TT spectrum of the cosmic microwave background radiations, which you get from looking at the sizes of these blocks, right? You'll see, beyond the biggest lump, there's a dip, right? And that's known as a super horizon fluctuation. Okay. So when you look at the inflationary epic of the universe, right? You have a situation now where our boundary, the cosmic event horizon is moving outwards, right? At early times during inflation, right? It could have been moving inwards. And so areas that were separated, that were within your, you know, outside your horizon, now would have been inside your horizon. So you can get these bigger fluctuation, you know, I screwed up when I described the Andromeda paradox here slightly, even though the world now knows it. And I'm screwing this up to. Yeah.

10:12But the super horizon fluctuation signal is in the data at a high precision. Okay. And that suggests, you know, that signal is predicted by the inflationary model. And so then when you look at the inflationary model, what you find is that if you say, how did this happen, you come upon this idea of the inflaton field, right? And so if there is this field that's popped out our universes, our universe wasn't the first time. And it would not be the last time. And in fact, it should be happening all the time, right? And just to be clear, inflaton is a hypothetical, right? Particle. It has a field that is responsible for the inflationary epics. Exactly. That means all these universes are popping out all the time. So that means that we do live in a multiverse. Not the, you know, my cosmic event horizon doesn't overlap with your event, right? So it's different from the bubble version of the multiverse, but it is the bubble version. It is the bubble version. But there's two ways people think of the bubble version.

11:13Yes. And so far away that you're not within my cosmic event horizon, right? Not within my observable universe, right? That's one type of bubble universe, but you're still in the same universe, right? The other bubble you're talking about is that inflaton field inflates so rapidly, even if you pop off one universe side by side next to another, but a nanosecond later, that is between them and so great, they'll never overlap, right? Just because of the rapid expansion of the inflaton field. So you're isolated forever. The distinction is there's a space time that has expanding bubbles within it versus multiple space times with each its own independently expanding bubble. Right. Exactly. That's why. That's why. It's the loaf of bread with the pockets of air, the bubble air bubbles in it. You know, the loaf of bread has its own black and white leaves. And by love, you don't mean what we buy in the story, you mean like I beg get with a lot of little bubbles inside. That's right. Yes. So I want people to take away from your book. Well, first thing is the title is a provocation.

12:14It is not a book that provides the answer. And so what I'm doing is an authentic question. It's an authentic question. It's a question and I want you to put your mind to it and what that book does. I'm not buying a book where I got to put my mind. I'm buying your expertise. Well, listen, you're right. That's like a Broadway play and they want me to sing with them. Here's the participant. I pay good money for you to act your ass off. I don't want to do a damn thing while I'm sitting here except listening to you. Wait a minute. Why do we exist? You open it up and it's just blank pages. Have at it. Come on. Come on. Tell me your thoughts. She told me you want me to work and bring my own interpretive powers while I'm reading your book. After you finish my book, while you're reading it, this is going to be so mind blown at every moment that she's going to be like, wow, damn. Oh, I never knew that. Oh, my God. But then at the end, you now have a full picture. You now have a full cognitive map of reality across scale, across emergence, across time,

13:16and across realms. So now you are in a place where you can now, because I feel like Einstein felt, right? Imagination. We've not, since dark energy, what have we discovered new about the universe as fundamental? Right? Everything we've found is, oh yeah, we're right about our predictions for the most part. So I think we need to just put that on. Just a quick thing on this. So dark energy got the Nobel Prize in 1998. Was it? It was discovered in 1998. I think it was a prize in 2010. Exactly. Okay. So what you're referring to is a 28 year gap in a discovery or something truly fundamental. Exactly. But we can make a discovery new kind of galaxy, new formation, a new this. Right. Yeah. Right. Right. Probably life, right? But I'll say that about our universe. Yeah. Oh, and then there I do give the Oloucher equation. I never called it that before today, but the Oloucher equation. Well, my equation predicts the number of stellar systems that should host a planet with multi-sailor

14:19life, which I think is where it's at, right? Looking for civilizations. I think that's... What's that different from the Drake equation, but truncated? Essentially, it is. But the difference is, is that the way it's constructed is different. But that's what it has to do with Drake equation. No, it doesn't. Because Drake wrote his, how many years ago? So there were things we know from the 16th. No, right? Yeah, exactly. So he's like, what fraction of stars have plans? Now we know, yeah, all of them. Oh, yeah. And so mine is very simple, right? It's just like the just right stars, just right planets. And then whether or not life actually... All right. You're right. Fair enough, fair enough. But I get a number. I get a number. Interesting. I just want to make it clear, using a truncated version of the Drake equation. It ain't an ad- It's a truncated version. It's a very differently motivated equation. Okay. Very differently motivated. When you read it, you'll be like... You're saying the information that was unavailable to him, you took and used that as the basis for your equation. Not exactly. Okay. Here's what I did. I started my equation. He started his, his equation is written in many ways in terms of outcomes. Life is formed, a civilization forms, technology forms.

15:23Mine is around the drivers for life, right? So if you look at the just right stars, what defines a just right star? It has to have... That's it. Right. What defines a just right star? No, that's... That's valid. What you're saying is very valid. Okay. So it's the only shade equation inspired by the Drake equation. And the C-Gur equation, I don't have to add, right? Because Sarah Seager from MIT also came out with an equation. I'm not familiar with the equation. I'm not familiar with the equation. I know, but Sarah Seager's a big... What's a serious secret? A big planet person. Yeah. Okay. And now astrobiology. Yeah, yes, yes. Very cool. Well, that's excellent. Yeah, man. So they're going to come away with a cognitive map of reality that will allow them to be able to... Okay, so I think I spoke wrong about it. What you're saying is we'll read the book and then come away reflecting. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Read the reviews. That's what... You know, it's like, wow, this is something different to think about. And then when the physicist, here's the thing you're going to... So you're different from the average person.

16:25Because you've heard it all. And you're probably at a point now where you've probably heard it all. So you have a new perspective. See, that's what I love about you. Man, when I first met you, you didn't meet me. When I first met you, I was like, man, like the thing you did that went super viral. Where were you talking about the stars? What somebody asked you? Yeah, that's me. What's the most mind-blowing fact about the universe? Exactly. Yeah. As an astronomer, you were still going viral. I heard that. I had heard this, you know, we all hear that young, right? Yeah. But I never heard it like that. I never heard... Nobody made me feel it, right? You know what I'm saying? Uh-huh. And so I think this particular provocation is going to hit... hits in a different way for physicists like that. Got it. You've seen it all, and now somebody comes at it from this other angle and you're like, oh. I see what you're saying. So you're taking information that we already thought about in bits, you put it together in a new way. And there's new material. Yeah. And there's a lot of new, original things. So that bit you think it was called the most astonishing fact. I was asked by Time Magazine, sitting in this chair. Really? It had a long interview, he said, what's the most astonishing fact?

17:25And then I had to think about it for a moment. Then I delivered an answer, which then other people plucked and then put B-roll visuals behind it. And that's what really took off, which is me sitting here delivering the answer. Okay. Yeah, that's what... Okay, so that's a noble goal. It is, it is. It is. Yeah, okay. Pop quiz. How many miles above the Earth's surface does the International Space Station typically orbit? That's right. It's about 250, which also happens to be the number of reasons to choose T-Mobile. Here's an excellent reason. They have the fastest 5G home internet according to U-Class speed test, which you can test for yourself, worry free with their money back guarantee. Sounds like a no-brainer. Another great reason? It's fast and easy to set up too. Plug it in and your online in virtually no time with no appointment, no technician needed.

18:31Those are just a few reasons. Find yours at t-mobile.com-home-internet where you can check availability and try it for yourself. The so-sure you'll love it, you can get your money back if you don't. Fastest according to U-Class speed test intelligence data, second half of 2025 all rights reserved. Redeem money back guarantee within 30 days of cancellation. Fall flavors are waiting for you at Whole Foods Market. Cozy pigs all through the store, like Maple Leaf Cookies from 365 brand. Swing by the bakery for pumpkin cheesecake, here for a limited time, and pumpkin turmeric bread freshly baked every single day. Sip the season with 365 brand Cinnamon Spice Coffee and pumpkin spice creamer while you still can. Spice up fall at Whole Foods Market. This is a new era of wealth. A UBS financial advisor can help you with personalized advice and long term planning. To move forward with confidence, find out what's possible.

19:33At UBS.com-slaj-new-era UBS financial services-ing member Finder SIPC. Space Fact. If you took all the mass of all the asteroids in the solar system and balled it up into one object, it would have barely 3% the mass of our moon. If you like that fact, you can find 4999 more in Lost in Space. 5,000 facts to help navigate the universe. Latest collaboration between StarTalk and National Geographic Books. Lost in Space is now available for pre-order wherever books are sold. So there's an acronym associated with it.

20:40Quark. Quark. Quark. Quark. Quark. Quark. Quark. What is that? How do you get those letters? That's a scientific wild-ass guess. Wild-ass guess. I like it. What a science. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. So tell me. What's that? Well, everything I've been telling you, I tell you right in the book, the whole book is my swag. This is a scientific wild-ass guess, but it's highly informed. I've been thinking about this. Okay. Normally, you write a paper, get a published, that's right. That's right. And then a book comes after that. That's right. Well, this is not that kind of work. This is not for them. But I've been in the world of the pros forever. And this is for everybody else. Okay. But for the pros too. So this is not a quantitative study. Only one tiny part of the book has a couple of equations in it.

21:43So there's no data. So there's no data. It's an exploration of ideas. It's deeper than that, man. It's an exploration of deep ideas. Deep ideas, right? But it's also a, man, it is just so dope. So, but if we unpack this idea, it's, anyone could come up with a wild-ass guess. That's right. But not all of them would be scientifically tracked. Exactly. So help me understand that distinction. Well, the distinction is, if I were going to submit a paper, I would have a hypothesis. Okay. And typically, you're going to study some very narrow question, right? This is very broad. And what I'm doing is something that a professional in my position doesn't really normally do. So when a physicist interviewed me, he said, I can't, what I don't understand about you, bro, is how are you so courageous? How are you so brave? You just throw out your ideas and you don't care what people think. And that's what I've done in this case. I've, you know, we talk about crazy ideas privately, right?

22:44But hey, I'm putting it out there for the world. Once I snitched on myself in my memoir, I might as well take my crazy thoughts about the universe too. What they're well grounded. Okay. So these are well formed, scientifically based, imaginings. Isn't everything in imagining in many respects? Yes. But no, it's not that. I'm a serious empiricist. So I have to stay within the boundary of what we have observed to be true. I'm saying that's exactly important. That's exactly important. That's exactly important. Exactly. And what can be within the boundaries of scientific soundness? That's what I'm talking about. Exactly. For example, one of the things that you often hear people say is we have to become an interstellar species because we must leave Earth, right? One day the Sun's going to go red giant. That's true. Yeah, well, or, you know, but look at it like this. Here's another one of my scientific wild ass guesses. If you have the ability to be an interstellar species, you don't need to leave your solar

23:47system. Okay. Right? You can just go right out there to tighten, build your own sons, IE fusion reactors, and keep on harvesting energy. You don't need the Sun anymore. Better yet, move Earth. That sounds more monumental. Then packin' up a billion people and shipin' them to a moon of Jupiter and pitch intent and rebuilding civilization. I think it'll be way easier to move Earth. In fact, they do that. Why, who said a billion people? There's a film series. It was made in China called Wandering Earth, which is exactly that. I'm lookin' that up. That sounds good. Wandering Earth. You got to look at the second episode, was where they actually, the first one is, I don't know what it is, but second one, they put rockets at strategically placed on Earth. And Earth goes, it doesn't go to a bigger orbit, it goes to another star system. Where Earth becomes this spaceship. Interesting. Yeah.

24:48Very interesting. I like to see how they did that. Okay. All right, well, we gotta get to some questions. Let's make it to this for the rest of the day. I'll be Patreon members. So cool. All right. And of course, as always, thank you to the Patreon members for your financial support that allows you to submit these questions, which also allows us to do many other things with Start Talk. Let's go to Patrick. IHUK came Dr. Tyson, Patrick, just another science nerd from Southeast Texas here again. And why do we exist? You trace the chain of events that made our existence possible. Do you think that chain points towards increasingly deeper layers of emergent organization, or do you believe physics will eventually reach a truly fundamental level, beyond which there is no deeper explanation? Ooh. I like that. So when you go turtles all the way down, is there a point where it's just, hey, man, we don't even know. You know, it seems like that question went in both directions at the same time. It kind of did. It sounds like it is like where it's going and what it is at this deepest, most fundamental

25:53level. Because in a book, I describe the deepest, most fundamental level. It seems to me that evidence points to the same thing that allegedly Albert Einstein said or believed at one point, which is that the only thing that exists, or these fundamental quantum fields and energy. And so again, I also say, and this is one of the things I say in the book, why differ and diverge from the community. Like a lot of people think that space and time are emergent. And if energy and fields are required to be fundamental, which in this infalleton model of the universe, they are a field requires a geometry and energy requires time. That makes change, which requires a before and an after. So if you have those two fundamental quantities, you also have space and time existing as fundamental within our universe. Okay. That's the answer to the question. Yeah. Did you all wait to the bottle? Yes. Which you got space and time energy and fields. So you don't think there's anything remaining to be discovered or gleaned?

26:54Yes. Beneath that level. Yes. What? Context. Okay. Above that level and the other. Here's what I mean by that. Suppose you, here's one of the mind. Now, before you go into experiments, I came. Yeah. I have to ask you this because sometimes I get this impression. You're, yes, yes, I am. Do you smoke weed? No. I want it. Every, like. Like. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Yeah. Man. Are you asking me that I just fake that like wardian? Is that what you're asking? That's hilarious. No. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Let's get back to the fundamentals. Seriously. Let's get back to context. Space and time would be fundamental. Space and time is fundamental. Not emergent. Not emergent. If quantum fields, which require a geometry, choose your dimensionality. You must have a geometry. That makes sense. The quantum field thing, that totally makes sense for fundamental.

27:57Yeah. And if you have energy, you have to have time. And quantum mechanics shows you the fundamental nature, marriage of energy and time. So you, so therefore, therefore, what was the question? Back to that weed. I can't wait. Fundamental. So, the energy makes time to mental. So, here's the thing. I get it. If you're separating them off, if you accept that energy is fundamental, you must therefore accept that time is fundamental. Time is fundamental. Because of change. All right. Because energy is a change state. Now, let's move that to what's beneath that and above it, which is context, how and what's that mean? Well, here's, suppose you were to study, when we talk, we teach observational astronomy to students, you know, people don't walk in having a cosmological perspective. So we try to give them my way of analogy of perspective. So one of the things I used to say is that just like the cell is the fundamental building

28:58block of the body, the galaxy is the fundamental building block of the universe. Then one day I said, well, what if I take that seriously? What if I shrink myself down so small that the size of a cell to me is the same ratio, 20 orders of magnitude as a ratio of me to the size of my galaxy? And then I studied my universe from that perspective. What would I do? I would do what Hubble did. You looked around and say, oh, there are these things called galaxies. They come in different types, spiral, elliptical, dwarfs, right? I look around. There's different cells, blood, muscle, bone, right? Then I'd say, hey, you know, they have internal structure, a bulge, or arms, right? I'm like, oh, they got, you know, what the hell is in a cell? A Golgi body, a nucleus, a riboflavin. No, that's not it. Ribosome. Ribosome. Ribosome. Ribosome. Ribosome. Ribosome. Ribosome. Ribosome. Ribosome. You got the tailbone in my cereal box. Nice. You're good. I'm serious. You're good. I'm serious. But then you can zoom out.

29:59And you see we discovered the large scale structure, right? There is the cosmic web. And you would do the same thing. But after doing all that, would you have any idea if you're in a whale, if you're in a horse, if you're in a tree? Right? Man, if you see it, muscle bones, you definitely don't have to treat. But, the point is you can't get the context of our existence from the inside of the damn animal. other looks like. Ooh. Well, if you ask any Christian, yes. Yeah. Oh, my God. I've been in line of charges. I don't know where that comes from. Yeah, I don't know where that comes from. I don't know what it is. No, no, no, I'm joking. But, okay, that is really by context. That's the context. We don't know, we understand the, it is definitely not a bobble on a cat's necklace. How do you mean I gotta give it to you, man? That's profound. You mean, you mean the galaxy on the belt of Orion? Right. Is that the name of Orion? Right. Yes. Oh, yeah. That's a really good example. Yeah. That's a great example.

31:00And the belt was a necklace. Right. The little pendant on the collar. Correct. That was the belt of Orion. Wow, so cool, man. All right, here we go. Let's go to some guy, two, three, three, four. Yeah. This is name. Well, that's what he put. Okay. Hey, Neil Lorde Nice and Dr. Olisha. Lord. He's Lorde. Oh, you don't know? No, no. Yeah. He says, I'm Graham from Marina Del Rey, California. A long time listener and a first time caller. I recently learned about a millisecond pulsar, whose equator moves at nearly a quarter of the speed of light. Imagine two indestructible astronauts, one standing at or near the pole and one on the equator. What would each see when they look towards each other? Rotational speeds would be much faster at the equator. So how would relatively show up for these probably quite dizzy observers? A fun analogy if Earth were somehow rotated that fast. Could familiar landmarks appear in places

32:00that seem impossible because of relativistic effects? That's the second question. Thanks so much. And you make astrophysics fun and accessible. The first question is blowing my mind right now. Your mind's pulled and equator, but a pulsar relativistically, what would they see? This reminds me of that old joke. What's the last thing to go through an insect's mind when it hits your windshield? What? It's ass. That's not bad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Place you on a neutron star, bro. And you're going to be a puddle. She gave us a very good qualifier, which was to indestructible astrophysics. Yes. OK. So they are able to maintain their perspective and their physical integrity while one is at the pole. OK. And one is at the equator of the pulsar. All right. So one is definitely spinning faster

33:00because it's at the equator. If you're rapidly spinning, does rapidly spinning create? Well, here's the question. So this is a calculation one, right? Because relativistic effects show up at extremes of speed and gravitational energy. So on a neutron star, you have both, a rapidly rotating neutron star. So then the question becomes, what are they looking at? Or are they looking at the distant universe? Are they looking at each other? What are they looking at each other? They're looking at each other. So that means that this body is typically like, we're talking like 10 miles or something across. So you're not going to look at each other unless you're super tall. Yeah. OK. They're beyond each other's horizon. Yeah. OK. And if you're super tall, you're not, well, you're indestructible, but doesn't pay to be super tall. Because that's the thing, right? If you're on a super, the body, the brain is right. If you're going to be super tall, right? Yeah.

34:00So, but I guess the question they're getting at is, you know, it's one of those, like, how much is spacetime curved? And what would be the effect of your light is traveling to me, you're no longer there. And then the next bit of light is coming. And the next bit of light is coming. The next bit of light is coming, right? And their past are kind of something weird, right? So you're going to be distorted and smeared. Yep. It's my guess. There you go. Because the light rays are not coming as one correct image. They're bringing the smearing out. Yeah. And then you get a whole work of it. Yeah. When they're coming from a weird angle, too, right? It's going to be a mess. So then it's basically just, it's going to be a mess. It's what you're going to see. You're going to see a little mess. And by the way, you have to do that on the pulsar because anything else, its gravity isn't strong enough to hold it together as one object while spinning that fast. Exactly. Which spin itself apart. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So pulsars can do that. Yeah, that was a great question, man. That was really cool. So who again? Some guy, 234.

35:01That's it. Didn't even take you. Hey, some guy. This is Charles Coel, who says, Aloha from Honolulu, hi, Dr. Tyson Lorde Nice, and Dr. Olesje. Could Schroenders cat and the Chescher cat have a kitten? Although the lightest primordial black holes have been ruled out as dark matter or dark gravity as Dr. Tyson prefers, because they evaporate too quickly. Could they still have leave something behind like a Chescher cat smile? When Harkin radiation separates the very last virtual particle pair at the event horizon and the black hole winks out of existence, could the breaking of the final entanglement leave a topological scar, not mass, not energy, just a knot in space time that was never there before? I think these people smoke a more weed than either one of us. This is insane. Is that last sentence about,

36:02could we not last sentence again? He said, not mass, not energy, just a knot in space time that was never there before. This sounds a lot like the so-called topological defects from the early universe, but the scenario in which they're generated is, so basically what they're saying is, is do a GR calculation, right? Model the evaporation of the black hole, and then from that, can you derive the metric that's left over, right? The space time configuration that's left over. And if it has fully evaporated, by definition, a space time metric only exists in the presence of a mass energy density or pressure, right? So it sounds like the answer will be a no, but at the same time, this is gonna be a little bit controversial maybe, but there's a lot of stuff we predict,

37:02and then we see it, we're so good at that, right? But not everything that pops out of equations comes to fruition, right? Sometimes people play with equations in such a way and they find something interesting and it turns out we did a little explainer on that. Yes, we did. Oh, actually, yeah, there's equations that have solutions. That don't have any correspondents too. Exactly, yeah, it means nothing to the person who might needed that for, right? So with that being said, you know, we've not actually observed black hole evaporation, right? And you know, makes sense, everything, you know, all the GR stuff is being found exactly as predicted to high precision. So I have no reason to say GR is crap, but for physical phenomenon that has never been observed and to then speculate what would happen, right? That's a lot of the conversation in physics these days. And I think that, you know, black holes get more attention than they deserve in that type of discussion, right? I think there was a practical universe discussion

38:04on black holes, Keshen Shea and Black. He really is. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I didn't think they could get any black hair. But damn, you didn't. Well, they no longer swim, that helps. Right. So, okay. So we want to speculate on speculation and the speculate, you know, there's too many layered speculations for me. I got you. Yeah. All right. Well, yeah. Okay, well, thanks a lot for that one, Charles. This is Marion who said, hello, Dr. Olisha, Dr. Tyson, Lorde Nice. Marion from Prince of Bainia. My question is since Dr. Olisha was first on start talk, I believe five years ago, well, she's keeping track. What's the most interesting discovery about the universe you have learned since then? Also, what do you think of the recent proposal that the ancient Little Red Dots are now globules where massive stars are born. Thanks. It's all good. So, yeah.

39:05So, the first part of that intrigues me. So, how do you take that? So since then, I've studied a lot of biology and a lot of geology. Here is, I wish I could channel you, man. And what we started out talking about that, about the stars making star dust, I want to describe in such the same way, the origin of the vertebrae. Because I went around telling everybody, because one day I had a realization, I was like, wait a minute, because I have a medical condition that brought me to this realization. There's a tube that goes from my mouth to my exit. Okay. I'm a worm. We're just some appendages, right? Some locomotives, some defense. Right? We're all worms, right? That was going around telling all my friends and family and saying, hey, we're all worms. Right? And then one day I thought, you know what, what is the real origin of vertebrae? Do you know the origin of vertebrae? No.

40:05It goes fish. No. No, no, pre-fish. The origin, the pre-but, so it's coordinates, right? It's the node accord. Before there is a bone wrapped around, it is just the cord. So where did it come from? Where a frickin' filter feeder, bro? So these little filter feeders, like corals and these little immanes, when they're in their larval stage, they go around and taste little spots to figure out what they want to set down. And so they look like a little sperm cell. They're a little globular tadpole with little tail, right? So to power that tail, they had a little nerve going down it to power those muscles. And then eventually they decided, you know what? I'm gonna skip my adult face. And eventually it becomes the first node accord. And then the corn apes, and then you get a, from that back bone. And then there is the new DNA data on race, which is now all over YouTube, right? So we all had the story, oh, ultraviolet light. That's what makes skin color this or that. And the old story was, right? That the evolution of light skin, deep pigmentation happened from 40,000 years to 20,000 years ago.

41:07No, it started 8,000 years ago, due to agriculture, right? Agriculture created deep pigmentation and 5,000 years ago, Europe was only 50% deep pigmented. That's 3,000 years ago. So we talk like 1,000 BCE, man. At this point, the freaking pyramid is already 1,500 years old. So when you look at these ancient, you know, Europeans 40,000 years ago, you find the oldest math in Germany in Europe 40,000 years ago. And you think, oh, it's the ancient Germans, bro, they're not, they're brown. Yeah, you know, there's going to be a lot of Germans who are upset with you right now. I was just hanging out with Germans. Big change. Big change. So I've been told. I'll get it. Yeah. Yeah. Cozy up at Whole Foods Market with sales on fall flavors.

42:11Find yellow sales signs on bone and beef short ribs, organic honey, crisp apples, and more. Prime members get your first delivery free, terms apply. Shop Whole Foods Market. This episode is brought to you by Woop, the wearable health and fitness coach that gives you personalized insights into your sleep, recovery, strain, stress, and overall health. So you can finish summer feeling more aware of what you're capable of. With Woop, you can better understand how your body is responding to travel, training, late nights, warmer weather, and packed weekends. It helps you see what's supporting your energy and recovery and what might be holding you back. Visit join.woop.com slash serious XM. We're living through one of the greatest shifts of wealth in history. Whether you're building wealth, exiting a business, or preparing to pass on your wealth, the decisions you make today can shape generations. A UBS financial advisor can help you with personalized advice, global capabilities, and long-term planning to help you move forward with confidence. This is a new era of wealth.

43:12Find out what's possible at ubs.com slash new era. UBS financial services team member Finra SIPC. I'm Lanylum and I support Star Talk on Patreon. This is Star Talk with Neil deGrasse Tyson. All right, so that's the sobiology is your big fascination now. So the second question. And geology because enough to think about geology that is little appreciated is the fact that our fricking outer core is liquid bro, liquid metal, right? So from like 19% radius out to like 55%, the earth's interior is liquid metal. Yes, liquid metal. That's the core. We're on a fricking, was that cake? You cut it into lava cake? Oh, it's a lava cake. Yeah, art does a lava cake. Yeah, that's cool. Like a nut in the middle. Right, bro. Yeah, well, that's cool. And can we take the ground beneath our feet of solid? You know, well, and guess what? The great thing about that is if it wasn't, we wouldn't be here.

44:13Exactly. Because that is what gives us the magnetic field that protects us all. Yes, when I'm at this. Yeah, very cool. All right, so here's the second thing she said. Also, what do you think about the recent proposal that the ancient little red dots are now globules where massive stars were born? OK. My understanding is based on the latest paper, they see that the sources of the light from those globules is reprocessed light from an accretion disc. So it looks like it's a baby supermassive light hole with an accretion disc in there. And so there's what is it called? Where you see scattered light and you see what is the word? Foss for recid? What the hell is it called? It's polarized. It's polarized. So it's absorbed and remitted by the gas. So you essentially had. Oh, OK. Yeah, I didn't understand it. Yeah, if we were to say, OK, I didn't understand you at first. So supermassive light hole accretion disc. Accretion disc, the many high-reson radiation. There'd be a mission, maybe, where the atoms are charged up.

45:14And then they, D-charges and they re-emitting. Exactly. Because of mission. OK, that's plus scattered light coming down right from the disc. They just get. Gotcha. All right. So this is, for my people, what are these red things? So it looks like it is a baby supermassive light hole being born in the very, very, very early universe. So for early universe. Right. Yeah. In the dark age. In the dark age. So the question that we've been having is which came first, the supermassive light hole or the galaxy? That's the eternal question. The eternal question is looking like it's the hole. Wow. Dude. So that's super cool, man. The hole perceives the dirt. Right? No. And the reason why it's not entirely obvious is a supermassive light hole might have a billion times the mass of the sun. Yeah. But the galaxy would have 100 billion times the mass of the sun. So the black hole is less than 1%. 1%. So how are you going to get everybody to join this? So it was not a completely obvious pathway. OK. To know who came first in this.

46:15Yeah. That's fascinating. That is really cool, man. I did not know that. OK. Chuck, we have time for one last question. One last question. Here we go. Hello, Neil Chuck Hakeem. I hope you're all doing swell. Coming from Jensen Beach, Florida here. I have what may be the most important unanswered question in astrophysics. Let's say I somehow acquire a completely indestructible 16-pound brung bowling ball. It's immune to heat pressure, radiation, basically everything. I gently place it on the equator of the fastest spinning pulsar. We know of, let it rotate with the star. And then through the power of plot armor, I magically turn off the pulsar's gravity. Just long enough for the bowling ball to escape. OK. Did I just throw the fastest strike in the history of the universe? And how fast is that bowling ball actually leaving? If that's not ridiculous enough, let's say I somehow recover the bowling ball, take it over to a supermassive black hole and launch it into one of its relativistic plasma jets.

47:16Once it's far enough away that it escapes the black hole's gravity and won't end up orbiting anything. How fast is it moving now? There's two different scenarios, but I like the first one better. You basically use a pulsar as a catapult with an indestructible bowling ball sitting at the equator. It's spinning, spinning, spinning when it gets to a terminal velocity, you stop it. Boom, it goes off. How fast is it going? Well, at first, it's going the speed of the spin, right? OK. But it has to climb out of that gravitational well and that neutron star. But she turns off the gravity. Oh, because she turns off the gravity. Turns off the gravity. Yeah. This is a powerful beam we're dealing with. I don't know. Oh, I love it. I think she said turn off the gravity. Yeah, you're right. You're not supposed to. Yeah. So you know what's really interesting is that I saw someone who actually modeled this, because you know the idea that we always have, you have something spinning and you let

48:17it go. It takes off on this tangent line. Yeah. And they found that actually it doesn't. At the very beginning, there's some little glitch thing that happens. I don't remember the details. And then it goes on a straight line. But conservation of momentum, that sucker's going to go. It's just going to go. Yeah. So typically fast spinning pulsar, the equator is moving at some appreciable fraction of the speed of light. Right. Like half the speed of light, maybe a quarter of the speed of light. I have no idea. Yeah. So the ball goes off at that speed. That's the, right? That's pretty good. That's how you do it. Yeah. Yeah. I think the big, giant eight way to just say what happens if the ball goes at half the speed of light, right? Right. Which order reminds me of that new launch company that spins the... Oh. Yeah. It's a, it's a... The centrifuge rocket thing. Yeah. Yeah. What do they call it? Yeah. I mean, I saw some old sci-fi movies where they had a mechanism like this. Before they figured out multi stage rockets. Deep in the 50s. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. We had that going. Right.

49:17Yeah. be connected, detached it and then shoot it through a tube and it goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It goes out. How are we, how are we kind of cool though? Yeah. They are, they're doing it. Yeah. It's fun to think about, you know, I mean, I like it. Yeah. All right. I came man, you are like, I'm tired. Oh, I mean, damn. It's so cool having you here, man. It's a, no, it is. No, it's not, that was full, full stop. It's so cool having you here. That's it. We're going to be doing a Protestant man. It's brilliant. People, people know it too. It feels like half, half of him is in this book. Why do we exist? Like, you open it up, he pops out. The nine realms of the universe that make you possible. Yeah. And one of them has to be Asgard, because that is a realm of the universe. I think you, you missed an opportunity. I got one thing I can't say. I'm not a Marvel fan. But I am, but I am. But I am. Okay, good. I'm going to say about the astronomical society to Pacific.

50:18And that is we have just launched a YouTube channel called Astrobeat. Why do explainer videos? It's about time it is. Because the mission is to spread the love of the universe. Absolutely. Far and wide. And even though it's called of the Pacific, it's just, it's just, it's incidental that it's on the West Coast outside of the Chisco. Our new DBA doing business ass is the Astro Society. But that's been our website forever, astrosociety.org. So the YouTube channel is the Astro Society. So in the future, all ASP things that don't have to do with the publications and the awards are going to be labeled as the Astro Society. And I'm a huge supporter of their work because it makes my job easier. And he is appreciated. That's awesome. All right, dude. Thanks for coming through town. Thank you for having me. I'm on it. I'm on it. I'm on it. And have we find you? Are you anywhere on the internet? I am not. But you can find me at the astrosociety.org. You can find us.

51:19We have all our socials. I'm on the socials of the Astro Society these days. Okay. And a cable you come through town and help out the history channel. Absolutely. I help out the history channel. I help out Nova. Okay. We work together. Yeah. All right. Now it's great. That's all the time we have. This has been start talking. Another cosmic queries. The Hakim Uli Shai edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson, four-star talk. As always, I bid you to keep looking up. All right. We got it, man. This episode is brought to you by Woop, the wearable health and fitness coach that gives you personalized insights into your sleep, recovery, strain, stress, and overall health. So you can finish summer feeling more aware of what you're capable of. With Woop, you can better understand how your body is responding to travel, training,

52:19late nights, warmer weather, and packed weekends. It helps you see with supporting your energy and recovery and what might be holding you back. Visit join.woop.com slash serious XM. This is a new era of wealth. A UBS financial advisor can help you with personalized advice and long-term planning. To move forward with confidence, find out what's possible at ubs.com slash new era. UBS Financial Services Inc. Member Finder, SIPC.