Artificial Intelligence and Human Evolution

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O, peoplee got juicy. Juicy about time and space and dimensions. And just things that don't exist and maybe never will or or will they. All that and more are coming up on Star Talks's Cosmic queries. a grab bag. Wh? Welcome Dark talk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide Start talk begin R now. This is Star Talk. We're gonna do a CosmicQueries grab bag edition. And today I've got with me as my co host, Nagim Fade, Nagim. Hello! back. Oh my God, so excited to be here. So excited to launch myself into space. Yes, yes, and you've got all the questions from our Our Patreon supporters. Oh, by the way, just reading through these questions, I have to say, I feel so much better about humanity. There are some extraordinarily smart people out there. You don't get this set. You don't know that in your regular life. you're saying I'm biased into thinking the world is smarter than it actually is. No fan. Be these are not the kinds of things I get from my fans.ust so we' clear. Okay. Maybe there'll be some spillage. So what your podcast is? My podcast is called Fake the Nation. You can also hear me on Wightwight Don't tellell me. Yes, we all love Weightwight, Don't tell me. I feel like there's probably a big crossover. I've only ever heard that the radio but it sounds like it's live. Is that That's right. We tape in Chicago usually and other cities around the country.ual auditum. like a huge auditorium with like eight hundred people and it's a really good time. Yeah. I highly recommend a live taping if you haven't been to. Yeah, I I think I've been on them once or twice. Yeah. It's very hard. They asked me hard questions. I couldn't Because the questions were so dumb you couldn't believe that they were happening I do Thank you for stroking my ego there.ight right. So I haven't seen the quest. Well, let's get into itag, so I don't know what it is. Well, I'm gonna start with a question from Nathan Sprout, Nathan writes, doctor Tyson, couldould we launch micros satellites as relay points between larger spaces spacecraft on long distance missions effectively creating a network like a cosmic hyperlink, would the main spacecraft release these micros satellites directly? or would we need a separate deployment system to keep them spaced out over the journey? And what would be the biggest challenges like keeping them aligned or dealing with the signal delay That's a great thought. Yeah. This is a person imagining a future where the Solar system is our backyard or or it's an extension of civilization into the solar system or beyond And what I would ask is What is the point of having a relay station If Instead, I could just beam my signal straight to Earth. Why do I have to go off of your relay station Well, Iess your relay station boosts the signal That could happen. That like it gives us better pathways of communication strength to something super far away. Yeah, but I'm saying that there's the straightway, which is just my own beam of radio waves Yeah. But if it goes to you and you want to boost it, you need a source of energy to do that What if there's like a planet in between you, your signal, your being if I'm blocked. Yeah. Space is so empty. This is not It's like not happening. Okay. And even if a planet is there It's in motion. Right. Okay. Right. L so imagine you say, Ohh, I want to go sunbathing. Oh, Darn, there's a total solar eclipse. What am I gonna do? Wait four minutes okay because the moon orbits Earth and it's not going to be blocking the sun the whole time. So blockage does not tend to be a problem in the in the vastness of space. But here is what we do need such a place has work. Okay. If you're going on a very long distance and You need fuel. Like long distance like Mars or something. No, no even farther. Okay. Okay. Or let's take a simple case. I don't want to get to Mars in nine months I want to get to Mars in a week There's a way to do that Okay We always say, how far away is nine months away? Yeah. Do you know what they mean by that? They mean you load up your rocket with fuel, You burn it all until you have just the right speed and you coast to where Mars is gravity then grabs you and then you go land on Mars. And since you're coasting the whole way, that takes time. It takes extra time. So you'd want to accelerate at one G because on Earth we live in a one G environment. If you put it to two G That's just, you'll feel that beyond what you're comfortable. Like what your body Yeah, your body in hand does not evolve in two G. Yeah. So I don't wantan to travel to the planets in two G. It's just like if you eat a bunch of taco bell and then go speed racing, you don't w to do that. That's like going two G. Multiply that by ten and you get it. Got it. Got it. digestive track And all your circulation is It does not. Now two G is what you'll feel on roller coasters and things, sometimes even three G. But you don't want to live on a roller coaster and dine and socialize on a roller coaster. So one G is an interesting nice forced to put on your Rocket. And at one G, you will accelerate through space and get faster and faster and faster and faster and faster And then you turn the ship around fire the rockets in the opposite direction to slow you down because there's no other way to break in space. If you were to drive across the country or around the world And you needed to carry all the fuel you were gonna to use with you You'd have a tanker behind you Right something something huge But we don't, we just have, you know, fifteen, twenty gallon gas tanks You were not a guas, What do you do ge you go to a charging station or a refillry. It's twenty twenty six, Neil. I'm driving an electric car in this imaginary scenario because I don't have a car at all. Okay, so you either have a power station behind you. Yeah. or youll run out of batteries and you have to recharge So in space We either carry all our fuel with us or you recharge at one of these nodes that person is referencing, but they're not communication nodes. they would be filling stations. And look at, for example, Artemis just went around the moon and back You know where the astronauts were? They went it up little bit way they were and the whole rest the big thing. The whole rest of that is fuel. Fuel And by the time they come back, that's all that's left because they spent all the fuel. Yeah, ye ye. So space travel ideally in the future, would be you would refill that nodes. that is that just like regular unletded or like in the Yeah, I mean, it depends on what kind of rocket technology you use Yeah, give me high octane. give me I don. So so the real challenge will be as we have on Earth If that's a filling station You would have to continually supply the filling station But you can do that on your own time. Yeah. rightight? You can send slow ships to refill. They're not trying to get somewhere on, you know on a timed trip. And so there would be this continuous source of fuel brought to them by Tankers, space tankers, if I call them then. So there's an occasion for such things. All right. Okay, so no, so not really to micro satellites, but yes, really, to fueling stations. I love that. That's right. Okay, well, our next question comes from Leo B. Hello or Leo? There's an accent on the E. I feel like it's Leo. That's a very val thing to do. Hello, doctor T. I know put an accent on. You know, right. I feel like the E is meant to really be observed. So this is a question for all of you. Once upon a time, I was a child in junior high school back in the mid eighties When talking about the periodic table, teachers in school used to say that no element slash metals would ever be discovered, that it was without any doubt at all impossible. Yet here we are today with a bunch of new elements on the table. In another category of science and tech, humans used to say that we would never fly slash travel in the air. Now we have all kinds of flying transportation available planes, jets, even hot air balloons If you could choose a thing that science says can't be done yet without a doubt, which would you most want to see become possible in your lifetime Thanks and this is Leo from the Canadian Atlantic provroinces. He didn't want to get specific about which province? Yeah he's in witness protection program. Just a vague region H name really is Leo, but he's hiding under Leo. So it's a great question. I love this. I have to put it in proper context Yeah Okaykay U in science If something violates well tested known laws of physics, it's not going to be possible later It's just not because That's what testing the idea means So the people who said We will never go we willll never break the sound barrier. Let's look at those folks Excuse me, we had rifle bullets that moveved faster than sound. Did you ever do a towel like that Whipping buttocks. Yeah. Okay, you ever did that? Yeah. Was that just a guy thing that we did? I mean it's mostly a guy. Yeah. I mean I can't say that me and my gal pals have ever done that. whipping each other with towels. But yes, I'm familiar with the act. Epeci mostly damp towel. Yeah. No, it just sounds rather unpleasant. so. The tip of the towel makes a snapping sound even if it doesn't hit something The tip of the towel in that instant went faster than sound It was amazing Sonic. Yes. That is equivalent to what happens at the end of a whip That's why it makes a cracking sound. It's not just because it hits something. The tip that's why whatever the material is tyically leather, it's moving this way and rapidly snaps back And in that rapid change of direction, it's briefly moving faster than sound, and it's a minionic boom. We've had things that move faster than sound. So don't tell me we'll never go faster than sound. You just haven't figured it out yet. Don't tell me we will never fly. Birds fly. So just say I'm too stupid to figure out how to fly, but don't tell me that laws of physics are preventing us from flying There's a difference between stuff we haven't figured out how to do yet. and things that are Forbidden by the laws of physics Tw completely different things. That's all. So so is there something that is forbidden by laws of physics that one day R right, like what if the laws of physics? Oh Wong My God, are you gonna like explode right now Are you sweating Oh no, I broke Neil deegrras Tyson. Here's the worst that can happen to a law of physics. Yeah We learn that it. It doesn't apply in as many cases as we thought that their situations whereere those laws of physics fail And we need a deeper understanding of how the universe works. in order to account for those failures. Well, if these laws of physics failed Why don't we just discard them? We don't discard them because they still work in all the places where they were tested And the best example of this is Newton's L laws of Motion and Gravity. We went to the moon. The Apollo missions went to the moon on Newton's laws of gravity. Einstein has his own laws of motion and gravity. It's called theories of relelativity. When do you use that? If speeds are really high whereere gravity is really strong, Newton's laws begin to teeter and then they fail miserably. Whereas Einstein's laws prerecisely predict what's going on But you know what happens? if you put low speeds orr low gravity into Einstein's equations They become Newton's equations Right. So it still fundamentally works. It's still fundament ways. So So Einstein's equations enclosed Newton's equations And Newton, we didn't know at the time, was a special case of Einstein's equations, But it's not discarded In the way that you, I think implied when you said, maybe you're with the attitude, maybe your laws of physics are wrong. And so it's a matter of technology. And today, when I say we're not going to Mars for a hundred years, it's not 'cause we don't know how to get to Mars. No one is denying ourility We have an SUV sized rover on Mars where we plumped down and it and we took a helicopter with it It's not about whether we know how to get to Mars, it's whether we have sufficient geopolitical ational motivation to send people to Mar. That's a whole other thing than in the ninet but we do have the scientific capacity to do it, the technological capacity to do it. and okay. Oh my gosh. And that's different from in the nineteen forties and fifties, I collected comomments from people, people from writers sayaying we will never get to the moon for another two hundred years, that they couldn't imagine the pace of technology going exponentially right past their capacity to imagine. And there are people who are alien adjacent, let's say. They're the ones who would have thought in the nineteen fifties we weren't going anywhere. and then fifteen years later we're on the moon. Wh did you get that technology from? R Okay must you must have been chilling with the aliens. and these are people who who are in denial of a true exponential growth of science and technology, which is the period in which we live right now. In the era of having gone to the moon No one is imagining that anything is impossible.. That became a thing. We can land a man on the moon, but we can't feed the hungry or whatever. That was the constant refrain Yeah. It was this is the reference point for what we're capable of Right. And after that, people say, Ohh, we can go to the mooon by nineteen sixty nine, We'll be on Mars by nineteen eighty five And there were these The people were over predicting where we'd end up landing. Right now, it's not a matter of what can or cannot happen When it's a subject of debate or conversation, it's We're pretty sure it's going to happen, but how soon So it's a time reference thing, not But it The laws of physics allow it Well, you and Leo both mentioned forms of transportation and I have one that I don't think is possible right now, but I would like to see a helmed. It is a hovering subway Like a subway that doesn't have like hit tracks Okay. It hovers above tracks. Yeah so that it doesn't make like a screeching noise. Okay. And that it's like a little faster And just a little more agile exists in the world. Like a hovering subway? Already. Yes. Okay, well then theyre called Maglev trains. You ever heard of these Oh in China? Well, China has them We're up to China No, we're not.al.. So they hover literally like how much do they have? genetically Levitate right over a track Okay left.. I just want this thing that already exists. What would you do alien actually showed up? Would you shake its hand or run? Does it even have a hand to shake? In my latest book, Take Me too Your Leader? I explore not only how they might have gotten here, but what they might want and how you should respond. Because the real question is not are we alone? Are we ready By the way, I also narrated Take Me to Your Leader. And I'm duly informed that you can get a copy of that book or the audio book now, wherever books are sold. You should probably get the book sooner rather than later. 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And do we know that do we know that we're directing all the red shifted light or is our current equipment not good enough to detect light from for example, fifty to one hundred billion light years away. Okay. so that's a very common question that confabulates two is that the right word? Cfabulates Yeah conflates conflates that's the word. that conflates two different things going on The Rdhift Only a speed thing Okay. Forget distance for the moment for the moment If you are approaching someone and you are emitting light, And light you can think of as waves. Let's think of it as a wave. So I begin to emit a wave of light of a certain wavelength But As I'm emitting the light, I'm getting closer to you while I'm emitting that light So the wavelvelength that finally comes out of me is shorter than the wavelength would be if I just were stationary So if something coming towards you, all the light shifts to smaller wavelengths And if something's moving away from you, you're stretching out the wave Yeah. I started emitting the wave and I finished emitting the wave, it got stretched because now I'm increased my distance. So it's a speed and the faster I'm moving The longer is that shift. in its wavelength ither towards you or away from you. Okay We call it a redshift because we're kind of stuck with just a visible part of the spectrum in the history of this exercise. and whatever features in the spectrum you saw If the object was moving away from you, those features shifted to the red side of the spectrum. So we called it a red shhift and these are like The fingerprints of elements that are in the light You know, hydrogen and carbon and nitrogen They're called spectral lines. They're the fingerprints of these oes. They're all shifted, every single one of them by the same amount We call that a red shift. If it's moving towards you, they allll shift the other way Call it a blue shift. Now another little confusing fact, all the colors of the rainbow, red, orange, yellow green blue Indigo, Violet So really it's a violent shift All right, because we're going to the other end. Okay. there there's indigo and violet beyond the blue Right So technically, if you're going to say one side is a Rds shift, we should call the other side a violt shift but we don't say bllue shift. You famously demoted Pluto. Maybe you can can't br Pluto right now. Maybe you can change blue shift to violet shift. Oh you're respecting the power respecting the power that you wield. you're trying to pick up. No, no, no.. So as an educator, I want to minimize confusion. so ideally It would be a violet shift But so now What's interesting There's these features can shift so much They go beyond the red and come out at the other side And then they're like, Infrared or microwaves or even radio waves. And if they keep shifting, they're shifting away from the red It's a matter of semantics to say it's a redshift It's not like a line like that. Yeah, it's just the red was where it when we first discovered it, it happened to be headed. Right. But we know of other branches of the spectrum beyond that. and we can say that it's infrared shifted or microwave shifted or radio shifted, but we don't We still say red shifted. Okay Turns out in the expanding universe The farther away you are, the faster galaxies are receding from us The farther away you are, the faster get. Okaykay. It just it's the signature of an explosion. Yep. That's why we didn't pull Big bang out of our ass. We we That is what an explosion looks like. Although it is something I can picture scientist saying after like particularly good poop, you know what I mean? Like he called it a Big Bang. and then someone heard that it's like, that's a good name. We dont know exactly where the word Big Bang came from though. There wass a physicist, astrophysicist named Fred Hoyle. He hated the idea of a Big Bang. It was on a radio show, I think it was And he pejoratively says, these people believe in the big bang say, hey, that's a good idea. That look little stick. He imagined the universe was eternally static Right. Well, e' static, but was always the same it didn't have a beginning. So he was in the other camp. But the point is The universe is expanding. so when we look at the spectrra of galaxies They're all reds shifted becausecause they're moving away from us. Right,, right. And cause the amount of the Redshift correlates with how far away the galaxy is because you've been farther away, you're red shifted even faster It's why we get to say the higher your redshift is, the farther away you are And then also then that's just a fact. You sort of like then never see a blue shift As a result So If a gallanty is close enough, we might be falling into each other as we currently are with Andromeda That has a blue shift But on a large enough scale where the expansion of the universe dominates Every galaxy is redshifted. All right, every galaxy is redshifted.. So what else you got? So from William Warren in Abbington, Maryland, we have I have abht. It's very British. Yeah. Abington. I've never heard of it. Okay now we know. So they write, I have epilepsy and a neuropaceed device implanted in my brain to help control seizures. Nice. I've heard claims even from medical professionals that seizures can be more common during full moons. You might see where this is going Scientifically, is there any plausible mechanism by which cosmic events like the Mon could influence neurological activity in the human brain? More broadly, what do you think about the idea that the universe can influence human experiences in ways that feel meaningful but may not have a measurable physical cause? How do you personally separate scientific reality from perceived Cosmic connection. Yeah. Wow. Okaykay. so In some municipalities, I'll get to the epilepsy in a minute, but let's start simple In some municipalities, there's slightly more babies born during full moon than other phases Really And so people say, Oh, is it the extra gravity or is it the? is it this? and people want to J just put meaning in it all onto the cosmos. And right, they want the cosmos to deliver meaning into their lives It turns out the gestation period of the human female is almost exactly equal T cycles of the Mon If you gave birth during a full moon You got pregnant during a full moon. Right.. Okay. Yeah. I just want to put the mathk. the mas. Let's do the math here. Yeah. No one debates the beauty of a full moon on a romantic night. So that easily explains the slightly higher birth rate during a full moon That's it. I mean that's how That's kind of all I can give.ree. Okay. That's kind of all I can give you because because Now you're going to take keep a list Keep a mental list. You youre ready? Okay. The phase of the moon has nothing to do with its gravity The Mon's gravity on Earth is the same no matter what the phase of the moon is. A, B, the tidal forces exacted by the moon on Earth Itself is unrelated to the phase of the moon You might say, well, how about the famously high tides during Oh, the full moon.ull moon. Yeah. Okay. Those high tides are not because of the moon. There I thought it really Sun also raises tides on Eth. They're about a third the strength where its effect on the waters is about one third that of the moon. And so but on full moon The sun lines up with Earth and The moon So they're both act. They both act together. they can do it. And what you're seeing is the sun's tides added to what was otherwise be a constant moon tide throughout the month So it's the sn's fault that the full moon has higher tides. other phases of the moon. Now see, that needs a rebranding because I really of course no one knowsobody knows that. Nobody knows Nobody knows that. So you're not getting extra tidal force from the moon. You're not getting extra gravity. Gravity is just a matter of how close you are so is the strength of the title force as well. But it's a distance thing. It's not what phase you're in. Now The moon's orbit around the Earth is not a perfect circle Sometimes a little closer, sometometimes it's a little farther. When it's a little closer, the gravity will be a little higher. The tidal forces will be a little higher, but that has nothing to do with the phase That's all I'm saying It could be that with a half moon or a crescent moon, but nobody talks about that. So let me keep going Okay, so now People say I feel a little crazy under the full moon. Wh do you think we get the term lunatic? Oh yeah. ye. That's the lunat moon. okay. And werewolves, if you're going to turn it into a werewolf, you're gonna do it on a full moon. a full moon. You never see a human turning into a werewolf onn a night Wh is a full moon, but it's cloudy. No If it's overcast, anticlimactic' a story. Yeah, it's like show me the cloudy sky. It's not cinematic. It's not cinematic. It's not cinematic. Then so if they really need to see the moon, to turn into a werewolf because that's always how it is, right? They see it And then they turn into the werewolf. That means just the light from the moon that might be affecting them. Yeah However The life from the mooon, and I did this experiment in an eighth grade science fair project. Okay. I got a spectrum of the sun and a spectrum of the moon. and show that they're identical Why? Because the moon is reflected light from the sun If you turn into Wwolf under moonlight You should turn it to werewolf every waking moment of the daytime. Tlight. Right. Y So the light is just sunlight And also, if you live in any city The light of the street lamp you walked under is typically brighter than the light of the full moon that's in the sky, even if they're in the sky at the same time Of course, as you walk away from the street lamp, it gets much dimmer. But right around where the street lamp is, street lampps is brighter than the full moon. No one is talking about the effects of street lamps on your imagination werewolves or anything. Right. It comes down to how big is the human ego to suggest that the universe gives a rat ass about you, your social life, your mental health, your love life. Because rats are not blaming the cosmos for whatever they do, specifically. So if there are studies to show that they're more a neurology events. let's call it that. Nurological events in the world during a full moon then other phases, I don't know of them. I'd like to see them tell you that people are so primed to think of the full moon, as a force on us, that if someone has a seizure and it's not the full moon Are they going to report that? You had a seizure and it was a crescent moon. Oh my God. who gets told that? Right No right No. But if you happen to have a seizure and there's a full moon, everybody's gonna hear about it. Again it's cinematic You know? Yeah. Everybody's gonna hear about that. So I remain unconvinced by such claims, especially since to the untrained eye The moon will look full for about four days two days on each side of the To a trained astrophysicist's eye and an amateur astronomers's eye, we know if you're twelve hours out of full moon, we'll know. But untrained eye will give you two days Four days out of thirty. That psychologically, you think you're in a full moon. Correct.rect. Correct. So that's one out of call it three days. one out of ten days. That means ten percent of your seizures, if they're random, will occur under a full moon and that's when everybody talks about it. This talk about tidal forces and things, do you realize tides are equally as high during new Mon. as they are during full moon. Jurry New Moon The Earth wound and sun also line up, but you can't see sliver, like a nothing. Yeah. can't or you can't even see. Yeah. in Islamic cultures they the term new moon refers to the especially during Ramadan, the first sighting of the new Crescent mooon They call that new moon. But astronomically, new Mon is not far enough to the side yet to even see a crescent. and it's there. no one sees that phase in the moon So yet, the tidal forces are just as high Plus If you didn't want to explain higher birth rates that way You'd have to say, okay, did you give birth? In Stps facing an open window where the full moon happened to be in the sky at the time So that the gravity Yop the baby out. And suppose you weren't, Suose the moon was behind you. Do you gonna keep the baby in? pulling Just think this through. Think it through. Right The baby also can't see the moon Ever notice that after thirty, a couple of drinks can hit harder the next day? That's because it's not just dehydration. Your brain and liver are doing extra work overnight. Cheers Restore is designed to support your body while you sleep. 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Chevrolet receiv the highest total number of awards among all trucks in the JD Power twenty five US vehicle dependability St study Awards based on twenty two models new models may be shown visit JDPpower dot com slash awwards for more dets Chevrolet. togetherether, let's drive Hi, I'm Ernie Carducci from Columbus, Ohio I'm here with my son, Ernie, because we listen to Star Talk every night and support Star Talk on Patreon. This is St T with de Gras Well we have another question from Gregory K in Ottawa, Canada. Okay, a lot of Canadian questions today. It's a question about LIGO. My dad used to talk and argue with other people about gravitational waves. and then they just have arguments about gravitation. I love it. I mean this is a man after your own heart. I love arguments over dinner Yeah. And then he celebrated when LIGO LIG, am I saying that right? Lgo LIGo detected the merging black holes. Now, what I don't understand and what makes me doubt is that they haven't confirmed the merger with a telescope detecting the same event. How do they even know it's not some gravity waves cult conspiracy? So there's a lot in there. Very good. So indeed We did the calculation and we said, how often might two black holes collide in the universe. There's a lot of galaxies in the universe. You can ask how often would that happen in our own galaxy? I don't know the number, let me make up a number that could might happen only once in a million years You wouldn't build an experiment on the hope that something will happen Now That happens only once in a million years. But suppose you have a billion galaxies That makes my head hurt. o. So something can happen once in a million years. Right. But if you have a billion galaxies, then it's the probability is higher. Somebody's doing it all the time. Right. Okay. Not everyone at the same. you're doing it and then you're doing it and then you're doing it. Swhere it's happening. Somewhere it's happening a rare event that then would to you frequently whichich is fun to say that Right? This event is rare except it's common Okay Armed with that calculation They turned on the telescope within days of that They made their first discovery. And we can characterize the masses of black holes and what they would look like. And so we knew these two black holes were around thirty times the mass of the sun. They collide sent out a ripple through the fabric of spaceetime, traveling at the speed of light. And it is a signal Coming From a galaxy far, far away Billions of years, it washed over spaceime. Until it arrived at Eth, until it arrived at that detector, and they measured it Now Black holes don't emit light Two black holes don't emit light They collide they don't emit light So you're not going to see this With any telescope that uses light But you will see it with a telescope that uses gravitational waves. So that person, what's the person's name? This was Gregory in Canada. So Gregory in Canada wanted Verification from a regular telescope But it can't happen. But we built a new telescope that verified itself The Laser interferometer gravitational wave Observatory. Acronymed as LIo. LIGo, than. Okay, so now using the same telescope, we've discovered two colliding pulsars Damnit like. They collide. They're they're not as massive as the black holes. So they're LIGO's signature is not as strong But Once we discovered what their masses were We told other telescopes Look for look for this in in this part of the sky We found and then they turned on the telescopes and they they okay? So colliding pulsars showed up in everybody's telescope And that's where we learned that pulsars might be the source of all the world's gold is it's very high level High massk nuclear fusion going on, Gld, platinum, iridium, silver This comes from these collisions. We think most of that in the universe comes from colliding pulsars Nothing's coming out of a colliding black hole They're just boring. I love me the wiggle that they send us, but yeah, no, otherwise Look elsewhere if you want to action. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I've been giving long answers. Should I try some short answers? Do you want to try that? Ruty? Yeah, well let's do it. I mean, I mean, they I find them good. I find them fascinating.. if I can follow them, I think that's a good sign. Let's try I'll try one that's short. Okay so you can then you can pass judgment over. Yeah. let me see. So James Hudson from Alabama asks We often talk about mysteries that may take centuries to unravel, but which cosmic questions feel close enough to touch the ones you believe we might actually answer within the next thirty years? Okay So I'm going to give a cop out answer and then I'll give a real answer. My cop out answer is I don't think about questions yet to be answered I think about questions asked. Okay. As our knowledge grows. Yeah. I say as the area of our knowledge grows, so too does the perimeter of our ignorance. So I want to know the question I have yet to think to ask because there's a new vista we have yet to arrive at that'll show us the universe in ways we don't yet know how to question So that's the real answer I want to give that question. Questions like, why are two colllliding black holes so boring? Why don't they make gold like colllliding You know I ask that question, it doesn't count in my list It has to be a question you don't know to ask yet. Right. gosh.., for example, before black holes were developed, you wouldn't even know to ask that question You asking questions about Other stuff black holes do, not even about the black hole. And and you feel like there's things always on the precipice of being discovered to put me in a new place to ask a new question I don't even know to ask right now. That's my that's the answer I want to give him Let's get back to like normal philosophy here. Yeah. I want to know if there was ever life on Mars Okay. or if there is ever life anywhere else in our backyard The moons of Jupiter, other planets, the solar systems, especially Mars. I want to learn that before I die And if I'd lead a healthy life and wear a seatbelt and don't smoke, I should live another thirty years. And I'm looking forward to that. You have a recent book on Aliens. Thanks for giving me a shout out. Yeah. I know, it's a good read. And I wonder like a personal question for you is, what if you find out that there's life on Mars and that life is like really Uninteresting No No, it would be interesting to a biologist no matter what. Okay. Microbial life, You're not having a conversation single cell. Yeah, yeah, you're not having a conversation with it.. That's not coming up to you and saying, takeake me to your leader.ight. Okay. But it's another way of being alive. Right. And that is immense. I Can I speak for biologists in this way? I'm pretty sure I got them covered here. That would be immensely fascinating. Does it have DNA is DNA as complex as that molecule is Is it inevitable in any imprint of life the universe sees. If it has DNA, is there any DNA in common with DNA on Earth. You wouldn't expect it to have any DNA in common at all because it's from another planet But if it does have DNA in common, could that mean life began on Mars and move to Eth That's called panspermia where an asteroid hits, it kicks life Stow away life on a rock On an asteroid, on a meteor that moves from planet to planet, it arrives on Earth, already homemade life on Mars, which would mean everyone on Earth would be a descendant of Martians That would be wild. alsoso someome people perhaps more so than others, perhaps. Also, that's called panspermia. A guy came up with that word. I'm gonna sure. I'm gonna not say anything further. Let that one go. We're gonna let that one go. We have other battles to fight here. but or suppose it was life and had no DNA at all. Yeah That's more interesting. Right. Like you look into the microscope and it's just squigglies and you don't it's like doesn't look like anything that we know. That would be transformative to biology Meeting aliens asking me to take them to their leader Would be transformative to our culture. Oh yeah, totally. It would be so fun. It would be so fun. I'm so not taking them to our leaders. We' I'm taking them to brunch. to brunch You know what I mean? Let's have some mosas to talk about how you guys live. Oh yeah. And okay, if you invite me to join you with Yeah, of course. Totally brunch first And then we go to the National Academy of Sciences.. Okay., Natural second place. All right. Okay. So one more. I think we have time to All right, hereere we go. Okay, so we have one from Donatis from Lithuania. Oh, Donatis, I love that. All right. Well, I love time travel movies. I suspect time travel is impossible. I lean toward loop quuantum gravity, where time is emergent, not a fundamental highway, common travel theories often ignore how gravity affects subatomic particles versus macro objects. In Bell's rocket paradox, it's argued the string breaks because the rocket rotates in the time dimension. But if a rocket is just a vast cloud of subatomic particles Can a macro object truly rotate into sorry, can a macro object truly rotate into time as a single unit or is our perception of time just the sum of quantum Interactions making the fourth dimension an illusion. Wow I mean that's You had that question too. You were thinking about this morning. I think this question comes up for me every day every day. I'm intrigued by emergent ideas on the landscape. cosmological landscape that time or our perception of time could be emergent