Neil deGrasse Tyson: Bring Out The Aliens!

1. 0:00 – 2:39

   Intro

   1. SBSteven Bartlett0:00

      You had Obama make those comments about the subject of aliens

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:03

      They're real, but I haven't seen them, and they're not being kept in-

   3. SBSteven Bartlett0:06

      Uh-huh

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:06

      ... Area 51 unless they hid it from the President of the United States.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett0:09

      I think he was joking when he said there are aliens, he's just never-

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:11

      No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Obama is scientifically literate. But if you have the aliens and you don't want the president to know, the president's not gonna know.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett0:17

      So do you believe there's intelligent life in the universe?

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:20

      Well, we have whistleblowers saying we have actual aliens. People have testified we have aliens, that we have alien crash parts, so I don't see why there wouldn't be, given the size of the universe.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett0:28

      And Neil deGrasse Tyson, what is the most pressing question that people are asking right now about the universe? And the first thing I wanted to ask is why are people so interested in going to the moon?

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:37

       It's geopolitical. China says they're going to the moon 50 years after we go to the moon, and we all of a sudden decide we want to go to the moon.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett0:43

       Is there an economical upside to it?

   12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:45

       No.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett0:45

       Talking about debt to Santos.

   14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:46

       No, no. No, no. I already answered you. I said we don't want them to go to the moon without us going to the moon.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett0:51

       And there's no laws up there, is there?

   16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:53

       Space law is a, is a Wild West at this point. It's like, who owns the moon?

   17. SBSteven Bartlett0:57

       No, but-

   18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson0:58

       Well, they're trying to figure that out, but don't delude yourself into thinking we ever went to the moon for science, then or now.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett1:03

       Okay, next, do you believe that we're in a simulation?

   20. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:05

       I'm naive about that, and I'll tell you why.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett1:07

       And then can you explain what a black hole is, like if you get sucked in?

   22. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:11

       Okay. So you will see the entire future history of the universe unfold, and then the difference in gravity between your feet and then your head gets greater and greater and greater. Eventually, you'll snap into two pieces, likely separated at the base of your spine. And that's not even the worst part, and we'll get to that.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett1:28

       And then just how small are we? Is there a most compelling UFO sighting that you can recall? Has your view of religion changed through all that you've learned about the universe? And what is the point of life?

   24. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:39

       Wow. You ask good questions. So let's get into this.

   25. SBSteven Bartlett1:45

       This is super interesting to me. My team give me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe, and some of you have told us, according to this, that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So favor to ask all of you, please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button if you are a regular viewer of this show and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here, to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double-check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll ever ask of you. Do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you wanna hear. I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of The Diary of a CEO, and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the show. [upbeat music]

2. 2:39 – 7:50

   Why Are Humans So Fascinated by the Universe?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett2:40

      Neil deGrasse Tyson, people come to you to try and understand the universe.

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson2:44

      Yes.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett2:45

      What is the most pressing question people are asking you right now about the universe?

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson2:50

      Are we alone in the universe? And that's influenced by pop culture. Is- I'll give you an example. When the movie Ghost came out, polls showed that more people believed in ghosts after that movie than before the movie. So pop culture has a huge, is a huge force of influence on our thoughts and feelings and attitudes and what we believe is or is not true. So when you say what is the most pressing question, are we alone in the universe? Then they say, "Have we been visited?" And, uh, how will it all end? That's another one. Usually God shows up in there. Is there God?

   5. SBSteven Bartlett3:26

      Hmm.

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson3:27

      Uh, there's an assumption, I think it's a naive assumption, but an interesting one nonetheless, that people who study the universe might stumble upon God because we're told, or at least in our artwork, uh, gods live in the sky, so people then study the sky. When the Apollo astronauts came back, people said, "Did you see God? Did you see heaven?"

   7. SBSteven Bartlett3:48

      What is the essence of why people are so curious about these subjects?

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson3:51

      My best speculation, and this is a wild speculation, and I, you know, my ego is not based on whether this is true-

   9. SBSteven Bartlett3:57

      Mm-hmm

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson3:58

       ... but it's fascinating for me to think about the fact we are completely comfortable sleeping on our backs. Ask yourself how many other animals do that-

   11. SBSteven Bartlett4:09

       Hmm

   12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson4:09

       ... at all. Does a beetle say, "I'm gonna turn over and go on my back and go to sleep"? [laughs] Do spiders just go on their back? Think about it. That's quite vulnerable. You're asleep and your belly is exposed, right? We sleep at night typically. Okay. If you're outdoors asleep on your back at night and you wake up, what's the first thing you see? The universe, the sky. You'll see, you know, comets and meteors and the moon and, and brighter stars, which we call planets eventually. And from night to night, wait a minute, the moon had one shape, and now it's a different shape, and it's a different part of the sky, and these lights are moving, and how could we not be curious when in the middle of the night you wake up and the universe presents itself to you? So I think that's sort of in our DNA, the curiosity about the night sky. I didn't make people interested in the universe. In fact, when I was a kid, my first encounter with the night sky was a planetarium, the Hayden Planetarium here in New York City. I said, "Wow, I wanna study the universe." But the universe is so interesting, everybody's gonna wanna study the universe, and there'll be no room for me. And then as I, as I got older, I realized there are other things people are interested in. Not everybody wants to study the universe professionally. However, whatever you choose as a profession, it doesn't change the fact that somewhere in you, you're gonna look up and say, "What is that place in the universe?"

   13. SBSteven Bartlett5:52

       I thought you were gonna say when you talked about sleeping on their backs, that we are now so comfortable being the sort of apex predator that we're able to sleep on our backs and actually if... But we're, we want-- we're so interested in aliens because it's the only thing that would threaten our place as being able to sleep on our backs as the apex predator.

   14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson6:09

       Oh yeah, I'm, I don't know that ancient people were dreaming up aliens. [laughs]

   15. SBSteven Bartlett6:15

       Mm-hmm.

   16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson6:15

       It's just, just the night sky itself. Well, okay, uh, let's not use the term alien. Let's just use the term gods.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett6:21

       Mm-hmm.

   18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson6:21

       Where are most people's gods? They're in the sky.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett6:24

       Yeah.

   20. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson6:24

       Uh, even in ancient Greece, they're Mount Olympus, not in the sky, but they're in high places. If you look at posters with religious sayings on them, typically it's a sun beams coming through clouds and a beautiful landscape. You're looking at the sky. And by the way, what are our images of deity? Many of them could pass for aliens.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett6:50

       Mm-hmm.

   22. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson6:51

       Like the Gorgons, for example. Look at, look at Medusa, snakes for hair Medusa. That's as alien as anything you would ever conjure. What else? Images of Jesus. He's floating, he's got beams coming out of him. If he's not floating, he's walking on water. These are, these are things that go beyond anything that's earthly. So now people imagine aliens with all these same powers and weirdnesses. So I don't know that alien is something specific that's in our DNA to think about, but to imagine things beyond ourselves-

   23. SBSteven Bartlett7:24

       Mm-hmm

   24. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson7:25

       ... is, and, and so I would lump them together in that respect.

   25. SBSteven Bartlett7:29

       One of the things that made me, I guess, more curious about aliens and meaning and purpose and gods and all these things, was watching Cosmos, which was your series around the universe, and specifically it was-

   26. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson7:39

       And Carl Sagan did it first.

   27. SBSteven Bartlett7:40

       Carl Sagan. I watched both.

   28. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson7:41

       It was my series. [laughs]

   29. SBSteven Bartlett7:42

       Well, I watched both.

   30. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson7:43

       A series I happened to host, yes.
3. 7:50 – 16:39

   How Small Are We in the Universe?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett7:50

      insignificant in the grand scheme of the cosmos. I think when you realize how insignificant we are, or small we are, should I say, in this grand scheme of even this Milky Way galaxy that's on the table in front of us, the delta in the size of me and my world versus all of this is mystery. And I, and I, I almost feel called to fill it with something. There's, is it Parkinson's law? You, like, you, you, you fill the space provided. Uh, it's, it's the same thing with the universe. Just how small are we, Neil, in the grand scheme of the universe?

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson8:25

      Well, if you don't think in terms of metric size, how big are you? Are you this big, this big, this big? If you think in terms of powers of 10.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett8:36

      Okay.

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson8:36

      Okay? So the thing's 10 times bigger than us, 10 times bigger than that, 10 times bigger than that. You just keep doing that.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett8:42

      Mm-hmm.

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson8:44

      We're small compared with the universe, but we're huge compared with atoms-

   7. SBSteven Bartlett8:50

      Mm-hmm

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson8:50

      ... and molecules. Now, instead of going 10 times bigger, go 10 times smaller, one tenth to be precise. What's one tenth our size? Well, that's this big. One tenth that is that big, one tenth that. You keep going down, you enter the realm of molecules, and then atoms, and then particles. So there are things much smaller than we are. In fact, I addressed some of that in, I, I wrote an alien book recently, uh, Take Me To Your Leader. There's a lot in there about changing your perspective on what you might expect life forms to be like out there. So you can ask the question, are the life forms the size of a galaxy or are the life forms the size of atoms? Are we just biased by what our senses can drink in from our own size scale?

   9. SBSteven Bartlett9:40

      Hmm.

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson9:40

       And that's an interesting fact. And so you know who'd feel small? If you were a life form the size of molecules, [laughs] okay? That, then you're feeling small. There's not much smaller than you if you're molecular size life. Now, we don't know how you would make that, because life by our own understandings and definitions, it has a metabolism. There's things that happen. You ask a biologist what is life, they'll give you a list of criteria which are hard, if not impossible, to be fulfilled by life that's extremely small. And they still debate whether viruses are alive, right? Based on some criteria. But some had speculated that life could be the size of nucleons. So a nucleon is the size of the particles in the nucleus of an atom.

   11. SBSteven Bartlett10:27

       Hmm.

   12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson10:28

       Things happen very quickly on that scale, so they might wonder, how is it that we live so slowly? [laughs]

   13. SBSteven Bartlett10:35

       Hmm.

   14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson10:36

       So, so inverting your expectations is a time-honored exercise in keeping you honest, keeping your ego in check.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett10:44

       You can go the other way, right? We, this whole universe could be something in a, uh, in another life form's gut microbiome.

   16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson10:51

       Yeah. Okay. So that was briefly addressed in the, in the film, um, Men in Black. Okay? Uh, what I can say is the laws of physics manifest differently on different scales, so you can't just scale everything up, which is why you don't have human sized insects. Their legs would break under their own weight. It's why heavy animals have thick, chunky legs.

   17. SBSteven Bartlett11:22

       Hmm.

   18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson11:23

       It's why if you fell off the roof, you're dead, but an ant can just land and keep walking. Okay? Forces don't interact in the same way depending on your scale. One of my favorite scenes in the film A Bug's Life, which I think that was a Pixar film. Pixar, they must have a room full of scientists working for them. There's a mosquito at a bar. So the mosquito orders a drink. So what drink does he order?

   19. SBSteven Bartlett11:50

       Uh, a mojito? I don't know. [laughs]

   20. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson11:54

       [laughs] A Bloody Mary, of course. [laughs] Okay? Uh, how big is a mosquito? It's this big, and it's a bar. It's like an insect bar, and so the bartender brings over the Bloody Mary and just puts a blob of the liquid in front of him. It's not in a glass, not in a jug. It's just there it is. Because surface tension is something that manifests in ways that insects care about greatly, and we don't, unless you're waxing your car and then this water gets on it and it beads up.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett12:30

       Hmm.

   22. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson12:31

       Okay? Surface tension is a property of fluid, liquids, where the outer surface, the molecules are a little more tightly gathered because they don't have forces above them to pull them into the solution that is the liquid. So transitioning from the liquid itself into air creates a kind of a film, all right? And it holds the liquid in place.

   23. SBSteven Bartlett12:56

       Mm-hmm.

   24. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson12:57

       Unless there's too much liquid, and then gravity becomes stronger than the surface tension.

   25. SBSteven Bartlett13:02

       Then it, it just-

   26. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson13:03

       And it, it just flies out. Exactly. But below a certain amount, the surface tension is greater than the gravity.

   27. SBSteven Bartlett13:08

       Hmm.

   28. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson13:09

       And it beads up. So they knew this in that movie.

   29. SBSteven Bartlett13:12

       Mm-hmm.

   30. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson13:13

       And I thought that was brilliant. My only point of this is to communicate that you can't just scale things up and expect everything to be happening in exactly the same way. But I wanna get back to your point when you said you felt small after you saw Cosmos. You only felt small because you went in there with an ego that was unjustifiably too large to begin with.
4. 16:39 – 21:13

   How Understanding the Universe Can Change Your View of Religion

   1. SBSteven Bartlett16:39

      It's strange, isn't it? This idea of, like, significance as a concept. Like, trying to understand one's significance, and I think religion often gives us a sense of significance.

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson16:47

      Well, it does, yes, of course, uh, hence its, its value to people and its persistence-

   3. SBSteven Bartlett16:52

      Mm-hmm

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson16:53

      ... uh, throughout time and across cultures.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett16:56

      Has your view of religion not changed through all that you've learned about the universe in any way since you were this... I've got this, photos of you as a young man.

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson17:03

      What's that? Oh, you did some homework there? What'd you do?

   7. SBSteven Bartlett17:05

      I've got so, I mean, I've got so many photos. I mean, I've got this one here of you and your... I mean, this one's a fascinating-- I love that one. That one-

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson17:09

      Oh. Oh, okay.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett17:10

      My hair was like this when I was that age.

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson17:11

       Oh. [laughs]

   11. SBSteven Bartlett17:12

       So.

   12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson17:13

       Uh, oh yeah, so this one was my first telescope, and that's my father helping me put it together.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett17:20

       I- if I think about this young man here-

   14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson17:22

       Yeah

   15. SBSteven Bartlett17:23

       ... and, and what he thought about religion-

   16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson17:25

       Um-

   17. SBSteven Bartlett17:25

       ... are, are you more religious, less religious? If so, why?

   18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson17:29

       So, you know, by the time I was eight, it was, nothing was making sense that people were telling me about religion. What I didn't know is that belief systems don't have to make sense. That's why they're belief systems. If they were, made complete sense, it would just be objectively true. If it's a belief system, then it, it's beyond critical analysis. It's just a belief system. Okay? So when I say beyond critical analysis, what I mean is if something in your belief system lends itself to be tested, we can test it, and if what we test shows that what you believe is false, are you gonna stop believing? Generally not, because it's a belief system.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett18:15

       Hmm.

   20. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson18:15

       Okay? Most people want to engage you- Ultimately with some kind of spiritual religious conversation, I have found, especially given my access to the universe. And in the early days, there were easy answers. It was like, "This is, this is religion. You know, go ahead. I'm doing science here." Then I thought, I owe people who are religious a more informed and nuanced engagement because of the power and force that religion has exercised on the history of the world. It's not just cultural, it's political, it's, uh, economic, it's... So I started reading religious tracts, and now when I'm engaged in a conversation, I have a full-up conversation with people on their beliefs, whatever intersection, if any, with the objective universe, and what those beliefs do for the person who holds them. And there are many places on the internet that claim me as an atheist, and it's like, I've never embraced that title.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett19:32

       So you're not an atheist?

   22. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson19:33

       The only ism I am is a scientist, okay? Let's start there. Now, titles are lazy. I'll tell you why. Once you hand a title to someone, that gives you license to not have to think anymore about who and what that person is regarding that subject, and that has never ended well in my experience. So first, it's odd that such a word as atheist exists at all. Think about it. It's a word that says what you're not. Is there a word for non-golfers? Is, is there a word for not... H- how... Ask yourself, how many things do we have words for, for which you're not? Very few. And so this exercise of saying, "You're either with us or you're against us, and if you're against us, I have this word for you that says you're not this," like I said, that never ends well. It ends in war and bloodshed, typically. Leading atheists today who write books on this, okay, Richard Dawkins is among them, uh, he wrote a book called The God Delusion. That's fighting words if there ever was one. These are people who reject God, reject its influence on politics and society and lives, and, uh, and would just as soon see a world without it. I'm not that guy. I have behavior that would be rejected by any modern atheist thinker. So what am I? That, if we pick the next word, would be agnostic, okay?

   23. SBSteven Bartlett21:07

       Okay, so let's pick that next word, which I also relate to. I would consider myself to be agnostic as well.

   24. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson21:11

       Agnostic. Sure.

5. 21:13 – 23:58

   How Did the Big Bang Actually Happen?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett21:13

      Um, I, I kind of, I just don't know. What's your leading view of where all of this stuff c- came from?

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson21:16

      It's consistent with observations and experiment. The Big Bang, for sure.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett21:21

      The Big Bang.

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson21:21

      Oh, it is so thoroughly supported, as fantastical as it is.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett21:25

      Explain the Big Bang to me like I'm f- 15.

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson21:29

      I'll explain to you like you're 12.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett21:30

      Okay, please.

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson21:31

      Okay. [laughs]

   9. SBSteven Bartlett21:31

      Even better. [laughs]

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson21:33

       So approximately 13.8 billion years ago, everything that you see and interact with in this universe began in an infinitesimal point. That is the birth of the space and time of our universe. We have been expanding ever since. Now, how does something that big ever become that small? Well, it's not matter trying to occupy the same space as itself. Energy can be essentially any size compacted, and then you can measure what's there by what the temperature is, and so it's very hot fireball, basically. And as it expands, it cools, and the cooling energy makes matter. It's E equals MC squared. Energy on one side, mass on the other side. This C squared is just the speed of light, just a constant. But Einstein came up with this in 1905, and it m- made so much of the universe make sense at that point. And so, uh, and it would take a while. Do we expand? The... We cool enough to make stars and galaxies, and we're still expanding to this day. There are mysterious forces operating that we don't yet understand, what we call dark energy. That's a pressure in the vacuum of space making us expand faster than what would be allowed by the collective gravity of all the galaxies. That's a frontier question that is not yet resolved. Then there's sources of gravity that we don't know what's causing it. We call that dark matter. If you add up dark matter and dark energy, it's 95% of what's driving the universe. So everything you and I know and love about the biology, chemistry, physics, astrophysics, forces, food, calories, molecules, at solids, liquids, gas, it's 5% of what's going on in the universe. That's amazing. And this is why when I began, I said to you, "Sometimes I wonder whether we are smart enough to figure out the entirety of the universe, or do we just figure out our little, our little fraction of it and, and live happily ever after within it?" Now, that scenario,

6. 23:58 – 24:59

   What Existed Before the Big Bang?

   1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson23:59

      you have full rights to ask, what was around before that? So ask me that.

   2. SBSteven Bartlett24:04

      What was around before the Big Bang?

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson24:05

      We have no idea. [laughs]

   4. SBSteven Bartlett24:07

      Okay.

   5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson24:07

      Well, we, we have suspicions. There might have been a, a multiverse which has come out of latter day mathematics related to quantum physics and Einstein's relativity. What comes out of those equations is a multiverse.

   6. SBSteven Bartlett24:21

      And what's a multiverse?

   7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson24:22

      Of just, it's, it's this medium that is pumping out universes. We are just one of them.

   8. SBSteven Bartlett24:27

      What caused the multiverse?

   9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson24:29

      We don't know

   10. SBSteven Bartlett24:31

       Eventually-

   11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson24:31

       It's a, it's a frontier. There's no crime in asking the question at the frontier of our knowledge. There are people who have to have answers. They don't make good scientists. The urge to have an answer can be influenced by their bias, by their culture, by their... Uh, just take a look at all around the world, the origin stories. The origin stories flow out of the cultures from which they emanated.

7. 24:59 – 27:09

   The Craziest Theories About How the Universe Began

   1. SBSteven Bartlett24:59

      What are your untested, unverified, untestable ideas about where all of this universe stuff might have come- 'cause I know you must sit at home sometimes and just mull. You do a lot of mulling about the origins of the, the Big Bang and those things.

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson25:14

      Well, we all do. I just... So when you, when you confront the unknown, you write the recipe for more data. That's all it is.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett25:24

      And what are those recipes that you've wr- written?

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson25:25

      Recipes. We need a teles- we have telescope- I haven't written them, I mean, my field has written them. We have telescopes specifically designed right now to get a better understanding of dark energy and its manifestation throughout time in the history of the universe.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett25:39

      Explain dark energy to me like I'm 12.

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson25:40

      No, it's just, it's a, it's something in the vacuum of space that's making the universe accelerate in its expansion.

   7. SBSteven Bartlett25:49

      Okay.

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson25:50

      From that original explosion, we have all the galaxies, all the matter, all the gravity. You expect the expansion to be slowing down at some rate based on the gravity.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett26:00

      Oh, but it's speeding up.

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson26:01

       It's like tossing something in the air. Gravity verse slows it down and actually makes it reverse. So we expect that. We went to make that measurement, and we got the opposite answer. The universe is accelerating. That won a Nobel Prize, 1998 Nobel Prize. It's a term in Einstein's equation that he rejected. Said there can't be a negative gravity. What the, m- its value in his equation must equal zero, and so let's move on. Then we discover it. We, we come up with a term for it. I think it's a bad term. Bad 'cause it's, it leaves the witness. We don't know what it is at all, so don't call it dark and don't call it energy. Call it Fred, [laughs] okay?

   11. SBSteven Bartlett26:42

       [laughs]

   12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson26:42

       Something. And dark matter, we don't know what that is either, okay? Let's call that Wilma. We got Fred and Wilma. We don't know what it is.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett26:52

       There should be a button just down below here, and if it says subscribed, you're already subscribed. If it says subscribe, that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know, and according to the algorithm, you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button. Thank you so much.

8. 27:09 – 29:23

   Did Obama Reveal Something About Aliens?

   1. SBSteven Bartlett27:09

      So the, the key question I think that people are talking about at this moment in time because you had Obama make those comments in that interview saying that he, he was joking. I think he was joking when he said there are aliens he's just never seen.

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson27:20

      No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. No. No. First, A, Obama is scientifically literate. It's A. B, he said because he's scientifically literate, he said what is scientifically defensible, that there are probably aliens in the universe. Anyone who studied that problem will arrive at that conclusion.

   3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson27:40

      They're real, but I haven't seen them, and, and, and, uh, they're not being kept in, uh, what is it? Area 51. Area 51. Uh, there, there's no underground, uh, facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy and they, they hid it from the President of the United States.

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson27:57

      That's what he said. But as former president of the United States, and we have sort of alien-adjacent culture, it was, oh, that must mean there are aliens in the basement of the White House or somewhere in, in, in government custody. They took his statement that, sure, there are aliens out there, and turned it onto the US government, and when I heard his comments, I said that's, that's exactly what any scientifically literate person would say. What people did with that information, he, he then had to come back and explain. I didn't even think that was necessary, but apparently it was.

   5. SBSteven Bartlett28:35

      And then Trump responded-

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson28:36

      Trump responded. Okay. Mm-hmm

   7. SBSteven Bartlett28:38

      ... on Air Force One in an interview and said-

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson28:41

      Well, he gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that, you know? So aliens are real? Well, I don't know if they're real or not. I can tell you he gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that. Well, what's the- He made a, he made a big mistake. He took it out of classified information.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett28:56

      Trump seemed to stoke the idea that there is aliens, and then from that, shortly after, we had the UFO files announcement-

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson29:06

       Sure. Great. Bring 'em out. I love it

   11. SBSteven Bartlett29:08

       ... that they were gonna release the UFO files, and now we find ourselves at a place where the general public is again really, really curious about the subject of aliens. And you see it on the Google trend data, of which I've got in front of me here. You see the up, the down, the up, the down based on what people are talking about. So my question to you is about, is the central question, which

9. 29:23 – 33:41

   Why Intelligent Alien Life Could Exist

   1. SBSteven Bartlett29:23

      is do you believe there's intelligent life in the universe?

   2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson29:25

      So that one of those peaks in May, in part, was because there were files released that week by the Pentagon, and dare I suggest, my book was released in May, on May 12th.

   3. SBSteven Bartlett29:37

      Good timing.

   4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson29:37

      Uh, yeah, it just turned out that way. I decided to jump into the ring. Not jump in, put a foot into the ring more accurately. When I saw these, these high-ranking whistleblowers come forward in C- in Congress, sworn testimony. Uh, whistleblowers, former intelligence officers, former, uh, military folk. And I said, "All right, I have to, it's time to jump in," because no longer can you discount the testimony the way you might have done so before with the farmer in the back 40, you know, who saw something and is talking about it but didn't take a picture of it. All right? All these testimonies that have existed in the past and accounts of UFOs, now when official government people are doing it, then all right, it's time to Take it up a notch. And what is it, what do I mean by that? Bring out the alien. If you're saying you got an alien in the shed, in the back 40, you know, just bring it out. And the moment you do that, no one will ever have to ask again, "Do you believe in aliens?" That's the question I've been asked, do I believe in alien- No one has ever asked me do I believe in elephants. Why? Because we've shown elephants. Okay? We have elephants. We've seen elephants. So the, the-

   5. SBSteven Bartlett31:11

      But do you think there's intelligent life in the universe?

   6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson31:14

      I don't see why there wouldn't be, given the size of the universe and the age of the universe, and the ingredients of the universe. I mean, think about it. In the early Earth, life got underway within 100 million years of as early as it possibly could have. That sounds like a long time, and it is, but that's small compared with the timeline of Earth itself, of life on Earth. It's like 5% of the timeline of the Earth. Almost as fast as it could possibly happen, the basic ingredients on Earth, which match the basic ingredients of the universe, went from organic molecules to self-replicating life. Whatever our challenges in the lab, Earth didn't seem to have a problem accomplishing it. And so look how quickly that happened. Yes, it would take a long time, much longer, to generate what we're calling intelligent life, but given how many planets are likely in the galaxy, our catalogs now have 6,000 exoplanets in them, and that's just in a tiny little area. That'd be in a little cir- that'd be in a little, you know, if, if the sun is here, draw a little bitty circle around it where we've searched for exoplanets, and we got 6,000 just in that little a-

   7. SBSteven Bartlett32:31

      What's an exoplanet?

   8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson32:33

      Exoplanet, planet orbiting another star.

   9. SBSteven Bartlett32:35

      Oh, there's 6,000 in a little-

   10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson32:36

       Uh, it- we've cataloged 6,000. Uh, in, in 1995, what year were you born?

   11. SBSteven Bartlett32:41

       '92.

   12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson32:42

       '92. So you were three years old when we discovered our first exoplanet.

   13. SBSteven Bartlett32:49

       Really?

   14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson32:49

       Yeah.

   15. SBSteven Bartlett32:50

       Wow.

   16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson32:50

       And now we're-

   17. SBSteven Bartlett32:51

       Blimey

   18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson32:51

       ... we're rising through 6,000. It was banner headlines back then, not today. But if life happened on Earth as swiftly as it did, no one of u- among us who've studied the problem are given reason to doubt that it couldn't happen frequently elsewhere in our galaxy or in the trillion other galaxies in the universe.

   19. SBSteven Bartlett33:14

       This is just the Milky Way galaxy.

   20. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson33:16

       This is a version. Yeah, we, this is... If you could step out of our Milky Way, it would resemble this greatly.

   21. SBSteven Bartlett33:22

       And this is one galaxy, right?

   22. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson33:24

       One galaxy containing hundreds of billions of stars. This cloudy thing, you cannot resolve the cloud into the individual stars. Galileo did this. He said, "I wonder what that Milky Way is. Is that just a cloud?" Took his telescope, put it on the Milky Way. He saw individual stars.

10. 33:41 – 35:39

    What Might We Never Know About the Universe?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett33:41

       And how many galaxies are there in the universe?

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson33:43

       100 billion stars in a galaxy, at least 100 billion galaxies in the universe.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett33:47

       Is the answer that we just don't know how many there are?

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson33:50

       Let's quantify what it is to not know. In the universe, uh, things range over such a huge scale that if you're off by a factor of two, which sounds significant in most everyday life, but if things range over factors of trillions, then if you can get an answer within a factor of two, you're doing really well. You have a basic understanding of structure, space, and time. And so our galaxy has several hundred billion stars in it. Now, we don't have an exact count, but that's a very good estimate because we know the total mass of the galaxy, and we know how much mass a star occupies. We know how much dark matter there is, so we can calculate the likely number of stars there are in the galaxy.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett34:43

       Planets?

    6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson34:44

       So now, given our data on planets that we've obtained, we have many star systems with multiple planets, and that's just in our neighborhood. So if that's representative, then you just scale that up. So if you looked in that little zone everywhere and just up the number, you end up with millions of planets, possibly billions, across the galaxy. That's how you would estimate that. So it's not knowing the exact answer is not the same thing as having no clue.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett35:14

       And there might be hundreds of billions of galaxies.

    8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson35:18

       Yes. Yes. N- not just might be. There's at least that many in the observable universe.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett35:24

       In the observable.

    10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson35:25

        The actual universe goes beyond our horizon in the same way for a ship at sea, you have a horizon.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett35:31

        Mm-hmm.

    12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson35:32

        Are you saying to yourself, "Oh, that's the edge of the Earth," or, "That's the edge of the ocean"? No. You keep sailing and more ocean comes in view.

11. 35:39 – 37:23

    Is Infinity Actually Possible?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett35:39

       Is it infinite?

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson35:40

       It might be. We don't know. You're asking all good questions, and you're going right to the edge of what we don't know.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett35:47

       I- is it possible for something to be infinite?

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson35:52

       I'm not gonna put a prerequisite on the universe that it's not. Just because infinity is kind of hard for the human brain to wrap your head around doesn't mean the universe can't or shouldn't be it. We've made assumptions about the universe just to be consistent with our own philosophies that just turn out to be flat wrong. Copernicus, a religious man, comes up with an idea that maybe the Sun is in the center of the known universe and not Earth. So we go from geocentric to heliocentric. All right? Well, if you do that, then we don't have epicycles. All right? Then we just have orbits, simple orbits around the Sun. Well, he did that. You know? It didn't match the observations as well as the epicycles did. So do you throw out the whole idea? No. We would learn later, 50 years later, the orbits are not perfect circles. He made them perfect circles 'cause it's the universe, God created the universe, God is perfect, the circle is a perfect geometric shape. Clearly anything moving in the universe is gonna be in a perfect circle. That was an assumption placed on the universe derived from our own philosophical proclivities. In that case, a religiously philosophical proclivity.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett37:11

       Mm-hmm.

    6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson37:12

       So given this exercise, this failed exercise in the history of science, of which there are many examples one can give, I will not say that the universe can't be infinite.

12. 37:23 – 46:20

    How Do Black Holes Actually Work?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett37:23

       What's in the middle of the galaxy? 'Cause it looks like a, a light.

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson37:26

       There's a, there's a black hole. Well, there's... In this picture, the density of stars is way higher in the middle of the galaxy than out here.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett37:33

       Why?

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson37:35

       We're figuring that out. We think in the formation scenario of the galaxy that most of the mass is near the center, and it gets thinner as it comes out. And so where you're gonna have the most stars, where the most mass is that you start with. So it's not, it's not a surprise that the middles of these things have the most stars because they have the most mass. And in the exact middle, in the center, is a super massive black hole, which we've measured to be there. In fact, a Nobel Prize was given for that measurement.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett38:06

       Can you explain what a black hole is, like on 12?

    6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson38:09

       Oh, yeah. You know, at first you gotta respect black holes. Give them... Don't ever diss a black hole 'cause you will lose. [laughs] So we, we're here on Earth, and, uh, the old adage, what goes up must come down, you've heard that. I would learn by the time I was nine that that's just false. No, by the time I was 10, because I was 10 years old, 'cause that's how old I am, we walked on the Moon, and then we left part- you know, rocket parts on the Moon.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett38:40

       Mm-hmm.

    8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson38:40

       Those are never coming back to Earth. So there are things that went up that never came back. Okay? All right. Well, what started the adage, though? Well, if you take something and toss it, it actually slows down, comes to a stop, and then s- speeds up and comes down again. It's captured by Earth's gravity. Turns out there is a speed with which I can throw this so that it never comes back. Let's get there. If I throw this a little faster with more energy, it goes higher before it comes back, right? How about even faster? Even faster. Gets higher and higher and higher and higher and higher. You can calculate using physics and gravity equations, there's a speed with which this will go so high up it'll reach infinity. If it reaches infinity, it's not coming back. That's called the escape velocity for Earth. How fast is that? It's really fast. Really fast. Uh, seven miles per second.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett39:45

       Hmm.

    10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson39:46

        If I throw this at seven miles a second, it'll reach the edge of the universe and never come back to Earth. Suppose Earth had more gravity than it currently does. Does it make sense that that escape velocity would be greater than seven miles per second?

    11. SBSteven Bartlett40:01

        Mm-hmm.

    12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson40:02

        If Earth's gravity were stronger, it might be 10 miles per second, 100 miles per second. Keep up this exercise, you'll reach a point where your object has an escape velocity that equals the speed of light. The moment it achieves that, light cannot escape. It's not moving fast enough. And if light can't get out, it's black. If you fall in, you are never coming out because you can't ever reach the speed of light. There's no greater definition of a hole than that, hence black hole. By the way, Einstein could have predicted them, but he was... it was too weird for him to go there with, with his equations. We would learn about black holes mathematically in the 1960s, make our first discovery of one in the 1970s, a famous, uh, source of X-ray energy called Cygnus X-1. And, and then now there's, they're common, and we've even discovered them in the centers of galaxies that have super, like a million times the mass of the Sun. Monstrous black holes dining on anything that comes close.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett41:22

        Just things that come close?

    14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson41:24

        Yeah. It's not gonna reach out. So if the Sun were to become a black hole now, it won't reach out and grab us and suck us in.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett41:32

        Oh, you-

    16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson41:33

        It'll, it'll have the same gravity as a black hole as it does as a s- as a star.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett41:37

        But it's if you go close?

    18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson41:39

        Yeah, if you get... Now you can get really close to it, and then you're not coming out.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett41:42

        How j- Is there a certain distance where-

    20. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson41:43

        It turns out there is. There's a distance around every black hole, I th- I think it's called the ergosphere. I think it's got a, it's got a, a, a name, where there are no stable orbits around it. If you get closer than that, you're, you will fall in no matter what. Whereas beyond it, you can maintain a stable orbit and w- look at black holes from a distance.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett42:06

        And where'd you go if you get sucked in?

    22. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson42:09

        Well-

    23. SBSteven Bartlett42:09

        Are you crushed or you-

    24. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson42:11

        Well, depends how big the black hole is. Small black holes, just that's all she wrote. Okay?

    25. SBSteven Bartlett42:17

        This one.

    26. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson42:18

        Oh, that one you just, you'll, you'll fall in.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett42:20

        And then where do I go? I'm just collapsed.

    28. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson42:22

        Well, well, there are books, I have one on my shelf, and I've even read it. Uh, it's a graduate textbook that describes the mathematics of space and time on the other side of a black hole, and it shows that a whole new space time opens up in front of you-

    29. SBSteven Bartlett42:42

        What?

    30. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson42:42

        ... inside the black hole.
13. 46:20 – 48:39

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    1. SBSteven Bartlett46:21

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14. 48:39 – 52:27

    Why Aliens Might Communicate With Other Earth Creatures First

    1. SBSteven Bartlett48:39

       So aliens, um, in our galaxy, is that possible that there's intelligent life in our galaxy do you think?

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson48:46

       I, I don't see wh- I have no reason to doubt it.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett48:48

       Really? You think it's, on a balance of probability, you think it's It's more probable than not

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson48:52

       Oh, yeah. Just given the si- like I said, given the age, the size, the ingredients, the, uh, how quickly life got underway. By the way, when you say intelligent, um, there's intelligent life on Earth. Like, do you know where we are in brain size?

    5. SBSteven Bartlett49:13

       Relative to other-

    6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson49:14

       In ranking

    7. SBSteven Bartlett49:14

       ... o- other animals?

    8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson49:14

       Yeah.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett49:15

       Uh, we're not the top.

    10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson49:16

        Yeah, we're definitely not the top.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett49:17

        I have no idea.

    12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson49:18

        Yeah, we're like fourth.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett49:19

        Okay.

    14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson49:19

        There's the whale-

    15. SBSteven Bartlett49:21

        Mm-hmm

    16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson49:21

        ... and then the dolphin, and then the, or the porpoise, the, and then the, the elephant-

    17. SBSteven Bartlett49:27

        Mm-hmm

    18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson49:28

        ... and then us. So if aliens came to Earth and they knew that brains are important, we'd be like fourth on their list for who they wanna talk to. Just chew on that for a moment. Second, what we were told in school was, "Oh, but if you take the ratio of the size of your brain to your body weight, we're at the top." Well, that's our ego speaking there. We, we, we didn't have the biggest brain, but we wanna believe that we're smart, and so we, is there some math magic we can perform on brain size to put us back at the top of that list? Yes. Ratio the size of your brain to the, to the, the mass of your brain to the mass of your body, then we're at the top. However, what they didn't say is that, no, we're not at the top of that list. We're only at the top of that list among mammals. There are mid-sized birds, like the magpie and the parrots, where the ratio of their brain size to their body weight is greater than that of humans. So look at the efforts we put in to just distinguish ourselves from all these other animals, and it's quite the exercise in ego stoking. You, you wanna think you're special in the tree of life. There, there are birds that fly, and we can't fly. Newts can regenerate their limbs, and we can't do that. And so badly do we want to, especially with, with military veterans, right?

    19. SBSteven Bartlett51:05

        Mm-hmm.

    20. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson51:06

        Uh, with missing limbs and things. You wanna regenerate that. We can't do- newts can do that. Crustaceans can do that. We can't do that. So might an alien consider whales to be intelligent? Probably. But we add n- extra elements to this. Do you have technology? The whale is not building telescopes, but we are. A whale doesn't, you know, have art, but we do, all right? So we are a thing. We have what we call civilization. So if you wanna ask are there intelligent aliens that have civilization, that's yet another layer of that question, is there intelligent life in the universe? Then you can ask, is there intelligent life that has civilization that has technology? Because the Roman Empire, they didn't know anything about electricity or computers or AI or anything, and if aliens were sending them radio signals, they're not sending radio signals back. So the operational definition of intelligence might include your ability to communicate across space or your ability to build a spaceship to move. The Romans were not building spaceships, so would they count as intelligent if that was an alien species somewhere else in the

15. 52:27 – 54:14

    How Far Could Humans Travel Across the Universe?

    1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson52:27

       galaxy?

    2. SBSteven Bartlett52:27

       But is it plausible that there is intelligent life in this universe that hasn't got the capability of visiting Earth?

    3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson52:33

       Yeah, sure. Why not? Sure. That's probably the standard.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett52:38

       How far can we have we gone?

    5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson52:40

       That's a great question. The fastest spaceship ever launched was the New Horizons mission to Pluto, and one thing in space exploration, there's an unwritten rule. However you design the spacecraft, make sure it gets to your destination before you get old and die.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett53:00

       Mm-hmm.

    7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson53:00

       [laughs] So this spacecraft that went to Pluto was on the most powerful rockets available, and they made the payload as light as possible so it ha- could accelerate, and so it got to Pluto quickly. If you instead took that and directed it to the nearest star, the Alpha Centauri system, instead of going to Pluto, at those speeds, direct the nearest star, take you 50,000 years to get there.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett53:28

       50,000 years.

    9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson53:28

       The nearest star.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett53:29

        To Earth?

    11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson53:30

        Yes, to the sun.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett53:31

        And how many stars did you say that was again?

    13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson53:33

        Well, 100 billion. Hundreds of billions.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett53:35

        And the nearest one took, would take 50,000 years.

    15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson53:37

        50,000 years to reach.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett53:38

        Gosh.

    17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson53:38

        Because space is empty. Right. So maybe there are intelligent aliens out there, but space travel's too hard, so they haven't come to visit us. This is one of the, uh, hypotheses, 'cause if aliens are everywhere, well, then where are they? I think they came to Earth, and they saw all of our debris orbiting the Earth. There's a lot of space debris. And they said, "I'm not coming down. [laughs] I'm not gonna risk my life" and just passed us by looking for another planet.

    18. SBSteven Bartlett54:08

        I've wondered about this space debris thing because it seems that every nation-

    19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson54:12

        It's bad. It's worse than you think

    20. SBSteven Bartlett54:13

        ... but, uh,

16. 54:14 – 1:00:18

    What Happens as Nations Add More Satellites to Orbit?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett54:14

       uh, what I was gonna say is every nation now seems to be racing to throw tens of thousands of pieces of metal-

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson54:20

       Yes

    3. SBSteven Bartlett54:20

       ... satellites-

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson54:21

       Yes

    5. SBSteven Bartlett54:21

       ... into our orbit. Is it a problem?

    6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson54:24

       Well-

    7. SBSteven Bartlett54:25

       There's no laws, is there?

    8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson54:26

       No, you have, you have to ask, who is it a problem for? Is it a problem? Yes. Who's it a problem for? Not the people who want high-speed internet in the middle of the ocean or in the Arctic or in the middle of the desert because these satellites, these SpaceX Starlink satellites, are providing that in these remote places of the world. So it's not a problem for them. It's a blessing. It's a problem if you're just trying to observe the night sky the way we've done as astronomers since time immemorial, and I'm trying to get images of the night sky and I see satellites crossing back and forth. This amounts to visual noise in my data. And if I'm trying to track an asteroid that might be headed our way and have thousands of other streaks of light in my image, there's a chance I might miss the asteroid. Also, uh, if there's some object of interest and a satellite passes right in front of it, that will contaminate the data that I seek. I don't know if this is reversible, but what it tells me is that the future of telescopes are gonna have to be spaceborne telescopes, which they- we, we've already made that transition, and/or the Moon. Telescopes on the Moon.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett55:46

       Hmm. They've launched five- roughly 5,000 satellites, objects into orbit in 2025. We're on track to launch even more than that this year.

    10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson55:55

        That's correct. We've probably already launched that by now. We're, we're this-- We're being recorded mid-year 2026. I, I-- We're already high up there. I-- So, so the last number I saw, SpaceX had 10,510 satellites.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett56:14

        There'll be 100,000 active at- satellites in orbit by 2040.

    12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson56:19

        Pro- uh, probably more. This is the utility of space, not only for reconnaissance, for surveillance, basically military security, but also commerce. There is no Uber without GPS. So it's not the value of the satellites themselves that matters here, it's the value of the economy, the economies that they enable.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett56:44

        These-

    14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson56:44

        And that's why we have a Space Force now. A Space Force which had been percolating for decades. Uh, Trump in Trump 1 decided, "Let's make this official," and so he did. So now we have a Space Force, and people say, "Oh, does that mean there's gonna be, like, Star Wars and everything?" There already was a Space Force. They didn't call it that. It was called the Air Force Space Command. It was a sector within the Air Force. And so you pull that out, now the, the mission is a little more pure about what its goals are and what it needs to accomplish.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett57:15

        Have you heard about Kessler Syndrome?

    16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson57:17

        Oh, yeah, of course.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett57:18

        Could you explain Kessler Syndrome?

    18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson57:20

        Oh, yeah. Uh, so 1978, uh, I don't remember if he was a physicist or a mathematician named Kessler, who saw the increase in satellite launches that had been going on, and he did a calculation, and he said, "Hmm, there must be some threshold of satellites orbiting the Earth where if one of them gets destroyed by any means," maybe two collide with each other, or one is intentionally taken out by a missile, which has been happened three times now, three or four times. Uh, China's done it, India's done it, Russia's done it, and we've done it four times. We've done it to our own satellites, which means what? Think about it. If you can do it to your own satellite, you can do it to anybody else's satellite.

    19. SBSteven Bartlett58:11

        Mm-hmm.

    20. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson58:11

        It's a demonstration of your sovereignty in a way, of your powers over what you might perceive as an aggressor. Anyhow, if you destroy a satellite, let's say it breaks into 10 pieces, each going orbital speed. Orbital speed is, is 17,000 miles an hour. That's way faster than a rifle bullet. So little pieces of satellite can be far more devastating than a high-powered rifle bullet shot into another satellite. All right. So these pieces scatter. If any one of them hits another satellite, breaking it into 10 pieces, you go from one to 10 to 100 to 1,000 within just a few orbits. 100% of the satellites can be taken out if you have enough satellites for that thresholding to take place. So in other words, if space is most-- if low Earth orbit space is mostly empty and you destroy a satellite, the particles are not gonna take out another satellite. They'll, they'll orbit harmlessly or fall to Earth harmlessly. But if you have another satellite in that path, then that destruction is gonna take out other satellites. So he warned us of these thresholds. I don't think we're there yet, but we need to keep it on our radar. And the movie Gravity, it portrays exactly that scenario.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett59:43

        Objects in orbit travel at blistering speeds, 17,500 miles per, per hour.

    22. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson59:47

        Per hour, correct.

    23. SBSteven Bartlett59:48

        And at that speed-

    24. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson59:48

        That's five miles per second

    25. SBSteven Bartlett59:50

        ... at that speed, even a fleck of paint carries the destructive power of a bullet or-

    26. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson59:54

        Yes, a rifle bullet

    27. SBSteven Bartlett59:55

        ... or a exploding grenade.

    28. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson59:57

        Correct. Correct.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett59:59

        A f- a fleck of paint?

    30. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:00

        Yes. Yes.
17. 1:00:18 – 1:00:51

    Who Makes the Laws in Space?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:18

       And there's no laws up there, is there?

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:20

       Well, they're trying to... You know, space law is a, is a Wild West at this point. Forget orbit. It's like you go to the Moon. Who owns the Moon? Who owns a plot of land on Mars?

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:32

       Nobody.

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:32

       Who o- o- Well, they're trying to figure that out.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:35

       Really?

    6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:35

       If I go to an asteroid and I wanna mine it for its minerals, who owns those minerals?

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:40

       So they're trying to figure out who owns the Moon?

    8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:42

       N- Well, owns anything in space. Anything in space.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:45

       Isn't it just who gets there first?

    10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:46

        Yes, mate, that's, [laughs] that's what I mean by the Wild West.

18. 1:00:51 – 1:03:14

    Why Is Everyone Racing Back to the Moon?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:51

       At the moment, it seems like there's a race to go to the Moon. A lot of companies are interested in that. We've got this Artemis program happening.

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:00:56

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:00:57

       The US seem interested. Why are people so interested in going to the Moon, and is there merit in their motivations?

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:02

       Well, we could have stayed on the Moon in 1972, but we didn't. Could have gone in 1980, but we didn't. 1990, we didn't. 2000, no. 2010, no. Well, what happened in the 20-teens? Oh, I know what happened. We learned that China wants to put astronauts on the Moon. Taikonauts, they call them. We then say, "Hey, wouldn't it be good if we went back to the Moon? That's an interesting idea. Let's do that." Happened under the first Trump administration. So the Artemis mission gets birthed. Artemis. Do you remember who Artemis was in, in Greek mythology? Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo. That's good, that they're gonna name a program. That's good. Twin sister of Apollo. So we say, "We're gonna go back to the Moon." My read of that landscape is that China put a flame under our ass.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:01:57

       Mm-hmm.

    6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:01:58

       No different really from when Russia first launched the satellite Sputnik, put a flame under our ass. Within a year, we created NASA. By the way, it may take just such a thing to bring Congress together for a unified, uh, project. Do you remember when we had the testimonies in Congress of the whistleblowers? We had Republicans sitting right next to Democrats asking questions about aliens, and I-- So there's everyone paying attention to the aliens. I, I said, "Wow, Republicans and Democrats are agreed on some process in Washington." I thought that was, that was a beautiful fact.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:02:42

       So what, what, what are our motivations now to go to the Moon? Is there an economic upside to it?

    8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:02:46

       No. It's geopolitical. China says they're going to the Moon 50 years after we go to the Moon, and we all of a sudden decide we wanna go to the Moon. Let's be real about that. And while that came out under Trump, Biden comes in, we keep the program. Biden could have said, "Oh, this is a Trumpist thing. I don't wanna do." You know, he could have done that, and what would have anyone said, but he didn't, because NASA has-- is a geopolitically responsive organization.

19. 1:03:14 – 1:03:47

    What Happens If China Gets to the Moon First?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:14

       So what if China get there first? Why does that matter?

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:03:18

       They're geopolitical egos.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:22

       Just ego.

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:03:23

       Yeah. I mean, did, did you see the, the hearings in Congress with the head of NASA when they're asking, "Why did China land on the far side of the Moon? What do they know that's there that we don't?" Okay, this is the competitive urges that we have. And don't delude yourself into thinking we ever went to the Moon for science, then or now.

20. 1:03:47 – 1:05:04

    What Valuable Resources Are Hidden on the Moon?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:03:47

       What about resources? Is there resources on the Moon?

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:03:50

       We're looking for them. NASA has an entire branch of itself called In Situ Resource Utilization, ISRU. You go there. We think there's water at the South Pole. So you go get the water. Maybe if you get a 3D printer, you can take, you know, the silicates from the Mar- from the Moon's surface, dump it in on top, and make tools, whatever. That would be interesting. Um, there's a whole piece of space exploration that concerns itself with that, 'cause you can't take everything with you.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:19

       Is it cold on the Moon or hot?

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:04:21

       It depends on if you're facing the Sun or not. Because we, we say, "Is it cold?" You're generally referring to the temperature of the air around you. That's what you mean. Oh, fix the thermostat. Change the air temperature. Where there is no air, your temperature comes from any source of or absence of a source of energy. So if you face the Sun-

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:43

       Mm

    6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:04:44

       ... this side of you will burn up, and the side of you on the other side will freeze. So what we really need are rotisseries [laughs] or a highly insulated spacesuit.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:04:54

       Do you think in my lifetime we'll t-- It, it's three days away, isn't it, the Moon?

    8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:04:58

       Yeah. Th- so you can get there quicker, but to the minimum energy to do so will take you

21. 1:05:04 – 1:05:35

    Could the Moon Become a Tourist Destination?

    1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:05:04

       three days.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:04

       Don't you think that'd be a great tourist destination?

    3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:05:06

       Of course. Completely.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:08

       Three days.

    5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:05:09

       I, I would save up multiple years of vacation money to go to the Moon. Yes.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:13

       Mm.

    7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:05:13

       Completely. If you can bring the price of that down, make the Moon our backyard. So, so w- what I, I wanted to be clear earlier when you said is there economic reason to go to the Moon, not initially, until you set up bases and hotels and restaurants and this sort of thing. And if you have restaurants, there'd be really weird food that they would serve, right? Like, in Moon

22. 1:05:35 – 1:06:37

    Ads

    1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:05:35

       gravity.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:05:36

       I travel all the time. So I made a rule in my life that I'll only travel with a cabin bag. The problem with this is there's not much space, and here's the solution. It is called an Ekster % Travel Pack, and I teamed up with Ekster to make this. Typically, I can only bring some of my black shirts, and it's a trade-off of which black shirt shall I bring. How many of these do you think I can get in here? So let's try one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Let's try 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. Okay, so that's 24 black T-shirts. Here's where the magic comes in. You zip it up, make sure it's nice and sealed, and then you use this little contraption. Stick it on there. I can now take more than 20 black shirts with me, which will last me three weeks. So if you travel frequently and you wanna get one of these so you can save more space and be away for longer, go to ekster.com and use code DOAC for 10% off our collection.

23. 1:06:37 – 1:08:26

    Is Any of the UFO Footage Actually Compelling?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:37

       The UFO files.

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:06:38

       Mm-hmm.

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:38

       I'm presuming you've seen all the footage that's been released. You've looked at it.

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:06:41

       Well, most of it. There was, there's a redundancy after a certain point.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:44

       I mean, it's, it's this kind of stuff where they're showing-

    6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:06:46

       Mm-hmm

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:46

       ... objects flying through space.

    8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:06:47

       Typically, it's monochromatic and very low resolution as this is. That's correct.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:06:52

       Was any of it compelling to you?

    10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:06:54

        No, it's something that we don't know what it is Uh, uh, it's... Let's back up. Even UFO enthusiasts of the most severe kind would agree that most sightings of what we call UFOs have natural explanations.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:09

        Mm-hmm.

    12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:07:10

        That you just didn't know what you were looking at, and then you figure it out later. Is it a, a cloud formation? Is it lightning? Is it twilight conditions? Sure. But then there's some that no one knows how to explain. I, I don't have a problem with that. There's some that are sort of interesting. I like the Tic Tac. Tic Tac is fun.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:31

        Oh, yeah, the Tic Tac. I know that one.

    14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:07:31

        The famous Tic Tac.

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:07:32

        What's interesting about that?

    16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:07:34

        Well, 'cause I don't know what it is. I'm a scientist. We are attracted to things with- that we don't know or understand, attracted to them. It's cool. Yeah, that's it. There it goes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And you can see it move in one of the frames, and you can see it, a sort of gimbal i- in one of the frames. So let's see, it's coming up in just a second. And that's... And of course, it's combined with the statements of the pilots, how shocked they are and how surprised. There it is. That's kind of fun. It looks like one of the alien spacecraft that Steven Spielberg showed in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But that's not what intrigues me. What intrigues me is we have whistleblowers saying we have actual aliens. So I'm... Gi- give me the actual

24. 1:08:26 – 1:10:49

    Would Humanity Be Ready to Meet Actual Aliens?

    1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:08:26

       alien.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:26

       Do you think if we did, we would tell the public?

    3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:08:28

       Uh, we- people have testified we have aliens, that we have alien crash parts, that we have reverse engineered alien technology, that we have no end of movies portraying aliens. Uh, and somebody says, "Oh, we're not ready to see an actual alien." Of course we're ready. Hollywood has prepped us for decades for this day. I think it'll be charming. What would surprise me most is if the alien were humanoid.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:08:57

       Hmm.

    5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:08:58

       Most Hollywood renderings of human, of, of aliens are humanoid, with a head, two eyes, a nose, mouth, ears. Oh, oh, they're bald. Okay. Or they have pointy ears, or they've got... But they're still walking, and they still got elbows and fingers and knees and-

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:13

       Like this or-

    7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:09:14

       And-

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:15

       I mean, we've got ones like this as well and-

    9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:09:16

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So we've got, there's a good ET. This looks like the Xenomorph, and this one looks like Predator. Okay. So notice, uh, they all have eyes. There's a mouth. There's a, you know, teeth, 'cause teeth are scary. And this is humanoid.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:35

        Hmm.

    11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:09:35

        These are humanoid. This is a little more reptilian, I would say. Uh, it's definitely vertebrate, but it has a tail. So these, these are humanoid characters. I would be most surprised if the alien was humanoid.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:09:48

        What would you expect that, them to be based on the atmosphere of the universe?

    13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:09:51

        I would expect it to not be humanoid. Most life on Earth is not humanoid, and we have DNA in common with all life on Earth, and most life is not human. Oak trees, worms, uh, uh, lobsters, none of those life forms are humanoid. And so here we are, we have, you know... Oh, by the way, the, the Xenomorph is not building spaceships. So if this comes to Earth, it's 'cause we brought it here, not because it flew. Okay? Uh, based on its conduct, it looks like it just wanna be parasitic. Uh, ET has fingers and, you know, it looks like ET can build a space- spaceship, and this is just a hunting, hunting mission with the alien. Notice that its eyes are even the same separation of our eyes, and no... So this is, there's an actor in this costume, and the actor is human. That's really what this comes down to. Yeah, that's good photos you got here. Oh, heh.

25. 1:10:49 – 1:12:34

    Why Do Alien Sightings Follow the Same Archetypes?

    1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:10:49

       So in the book, I stumbled on, I didn't come up with these, I stumbled on the fact that people who care about sightings, uh, alien si- not UFO sightings, alien sightings, people who've said they've seen aliens. By the way, like I said, that whole exercise didn't reach the fever pitch until you had whistleblowers saying they've met aliens under oath in Congress and not the drunkards coming out of the bar at 2:00 AM. Okay. So they divide into archetypes. So little green men, that's, you know, we had a lot of those back in the '50s and '60s. And, uh, of course, the fact that we would even use the adjective men meant they're humanoid. Okay? Little green men. So that's one variety. Another one, what do we have here? Uh, this one is much more common today. The grays. Okay? The gray alien color. These also tend to be bald. So these are the two most common. Uh, and then there are others. Arcturians, they're from the star Arcturus. Uh, Lyrians from the constellation Lyre, the harp in the sky.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:06

       We'll put these on the screen for anybody.

    3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:12:08

       Sirius is, uh, aliens from the star system, uh, Sirius. So yeah, in my book, there's a dozen of them. Oh, the tall whites. Oh, insectoids. This is a good one. I love this one because we hate insects. Not, I can't speak for everyone. Insects are ugly to most humans, right? So if you have a creature that resembles an insect, you don't wanna become friends with it.

26. 1:12:34 – 1:20:59

    Why Do People on DMT See Aliens?

    1. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:34

       If you listen to people that have done DMT, um, they often s-

    2. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:12:37

       Oh, DMT. Yeah

    3. SBSteven Bartlett1:12:38

       They often cite seeing or meeting these types of-

    4. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:12:42

       Yeah. And the commonality of that is intriguing. Rather than jump to a conclusion that they're all having some common interdimensional experience, it's easier for me to think that they all have human brains, and the chemical is exciting the same part of each one of their brains, and thereby sharing in some experience that... And plus, people, I don't know if they've done this across cultures. The English-speaking cultures have reported many more alien sightings than other cultures. Vastly more sightings, which is a little weird. So either aliens just like visiting English-speaking countries, or we just know better how to report what we see, which is probably what it is. But you go to other countries, they don't have this alien fixation.

    5. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:35

       Have you ever done psychedelics?

    6. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:13:36

       Never.

    7. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:37

       Are you curious about it?

    8. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:13:39

       Not really.

    9. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:40

       Hmm.

    10. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:13:41

        Uh, because the human brain barely works as it is.

    11. SBSteven Bartlett1:13:49

        Hmm.

    12. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:13:50

        Barely. Just open up any, any book of optical illusions. Turn to any page. Oh, is it bigger? Is it smaller? Is the line in the page, out of the page? I can't figure it out. Simple drawings confound your perceptions of reality.

    13. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:08

        But doesn't that mean-

    14. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:14:09

        My head

    15. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:09

        ... that reality is fragile?

    16. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:14:11

        Yes. And so if I want to now stir chemicals into my brain, as a scientist who values what is objectively true, since my brain barely works as it is, to put in chemicals, it's not clear to me that that gets me closer to any reality at all, and it's reality that I value in this world.

    17. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:28

        Do you know what, what, what-

    18. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:14:29

        So that's why. That's why I haven't done psychedelics

    19. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:31

        ... what I think about is if, if I can inhale something and suddenly my subjective experience of reality is entirely d- it's 4K and I am somewhere else, does that not then mean that my current subjective experience of reality is as fragile as an inhale?

    20. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:14:47

        Sure.

    21. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:47

        And then-

    22. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:14:48

        Well, well, it's chemi- it's, it's chemicals, so-

    23. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:50

        Yeah

    24. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:14:50

        ... yeah, it, it's a reminder that your brain functions based on electrochemical signals.

    25. SBSteven Bartlett1:14:55

        But does that mean-

    26. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:14:55

        And, and to put some other chemicals in there to disrupt it, to rechannel it, the sky's the limit.

    27. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:01

        But does that mean that reality itself is just a bunch of chemicals?

    28. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:05

        There are philosophers who like thinking about that and debating it and arguing it. I tend to be way more practically minded in that conversation, okay? In that I can perform an experiment outside of your five senses, and it will get a result that everyone coming together to look at that result will agree on.

    29. SBSteven Bartlett1:15:27

        That's one of my senses, though, looking.

    30. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:15:29

        Sure, but you're, if you don't have that sense, then you can't participate in that exercise. I, I find some way for you to then be able to identify it. But I can create a measurement of ultraviolet light. You can't see ultraviolet light, but I have a detector that fires, and you can look at the detector firing, okay? And so there it is. I've measured ultraviolet light, and I didn't need your eyes, your retina, or your brain to make that measurement. So when Einstein said E equals MC squared, and that became the foundation of atomic weapons that we then drop in warfare, killing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, you can't tell me, "Oh, that's just our, our imagination," or, "That's just chemical things." That is a real phenomenon based on real physics drawn from an objective reality that we established while not doing drugs. And so that's why it took so long to develop science, to separate measurements of an objective reality from the neurochemical synapses of your brain.
27. 1:20:59 – 1:48:49

    Are We Living in a Simulation?

    1. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:20:59

       example.

    2. SBSteven Bartlett1:20:59

       If a couple of chemicals are responsible for this entire experience, like the things that I feel, touch, smell, hear, d- is it plausible then that actually-

    3. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:21:07

       It's more than a couple, but it's, y- your sentiment is accurate.

    4. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:10

       Yeah. Is it then plausible that we are just a bunch of chemicals in a Petri dish somewhere that are creating a subjective experience, and that subjective experience manifests as a universe that I can see, this iPad that I can touch, but actually we are just a chemical reaction in a Petri dish that some aliens are doing? Because if chemicals are my entire subjective experience-

    5. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:21:32

       It's way more likely that we are just a simulation.

    6. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:35

       Yeah, I think we probably are a simulation. I think I've concluded that.

    7. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:21:37

       That's, based on what you just said, it's, if we have to be in a Petri dish, we, it's more likely that we're simulated by some snot-nosed kid in, in its alien parent's basement.

    8. SBSteven Bartlett1:21:49

       That was a biological simulation I described.

    9. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:21:51

       Yes, it was. So, uh, like I said earlier, the laws of physics are different on different scales. You can't just put us in a Petri dish and have us behave the way chemicals and or- and microorganisms would behave, like bacteria, that sort of thing, would behave in a Petri dish. Petri dish is ideal sized for bacteria, not for us in some larger Petri dish. No. We function differently with our environment than microbes do in, in a Petri... You can't just scale it up. As much as people would want to. That would make everything easier. We're just nested dolls.

    10. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:28

        Do you believe that we're in a simulation? Do you think it's plausible?

    11. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:22:31

        I don't wanna believe it.

    12. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:33

        You don't wanna believe it?

    13. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:22:34

        I don't want, I don't want... I'm whiny about that.

    14. SBSteven Bartlett1:22:37

        Why?

    15. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:22:38

        [laughs] Uh, no, I, nobody wants to be a simulation. My best argument that we're not, or rather my best way to improve the odds that we're not, is just, just to remind you how the simulation argument works. You have some universe, and then they have computers that are very powerful, and they simulate a, a world within the computer, and the life forms in that world believe they have free will. So there they are. It's like a video game, right? And there they are, and then they say, "I'm bored. I'm gonna make computers." So they invent computers, and then they create a video game inside their computers, and then it's video games all the way down. Okay? Okay. So if I close my eyes and throw a dart, which universe am I most likely to hit? The one that started them all or the 999 bajillion that followed? Probably one of the ones that were manufactured, which argues strongly that we're in a simulation. However, the only universes that could create other worlds are the ones that have the capacity to create other worlds. Okay? So each one of these in this sequence had the computing power to create a whole other world. That's why it continued the sequence. We humans on Earth do not yet have the power to create an entire other universe with people in it who have what they believe is free will. We don't have that power yet. Because of that, we are not one of the ones in the sequence, 'cause everyone in the sequence has the power to create another universe, and they did. We don't have that power, which means we are either the very first universe in that sequence or the very last that has yet to achieve the power of simulation. So we go from, you know, 100 bajillion to one likelihood that we are, to maybe one in two, and I, I like those odds.

    16. SBSteven Bartlett1:24:54

        Does this not assume that the creators of the simulation modeled their universe as being a one-to-one copy of our own, and they wanted us to have that power?

    17. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:25:02

        No, why'd you... They can make any kind of universe they want. Who cares? Not a one-to-one copy. This universe happens to have, like, planets and stars and people in it. The other one could just be Mario characters. [laughs]

    18. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:15

        Probabilistically, I think I've heard Elon Musk say that he thinks probabilistically this is a simulation Which I thought was compelling. And he did reason that, you know, they've got these three potential options, either s- humanity just blows themselves up before they get to this technological advancement, either this is a simulation, or either this is base reality. Those are the three plausible outcomes. And one would say, "Hmm, it being base reality is highly improbable. Do we blow our-"

    19. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:25:39

        Why, why is that highly improbable?

    20. SBSteven Bartlett1:25:40

        The size and scale of the universe and the speed in which we've gone from being like, frankly, relative speed of cavemen to being able to do large language models of vast intelligence and VR simulations. This, that's, uh, that's like this in the... I mean, cosmos taught me this. It's like this.

    21. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:25:55

        Well, it's, it's actually not like that. It's not. Uh, uh, uh, can I explain why?

    22. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:02

        Sure.

    23. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:26:03

        Okay. So it's simply exponential growth.

    24. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:08

        Mm-hmm.

    25. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:26:09

        That's all it is. Expo- so if you plot Earth's population, very common encounter with an exponential curve, okay? So you have a plot, and you have time. Go back, I don't, I don't care how much time. You go back, and it's like almost flat line, and then it goes up. This is what you're talking about.

    26. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:29

        Yeah.

    27. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:26:29

        It happens like this. That is the plot of an exponential on linear graph, okay?

    28. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:34

        Mm-hmm.

    29. NTNeil deGrasse Tyson1:26:37

        Here's what all exponentials have in common. If you truncated it somewhere here, let's say, so go back twenty years, thirty years, fifty years, and then replotted it, it would do this.

    30. SBSteven Bartlett1:26:52

        Mm-hmm.

Episode duration: 1:48:49