Neil deGrasse Tyson solves all of Page Six Radio’s mysteries of the universe
The single most as asked question about science and movies is when Superman flew backwards around the Earth. Oh yeah. Would it really turn time backwards? Okay. So that movie came out around when the original Alien movie came out. So I don’t know if either of you have seen this. Okay. I have not. Lois Lane dies. He dies and Superman gets He’s so mad and distraught and some people can’t get a text back. He flies in the He flies in the reverse direction of Earth’s rotation and it slows down Earth go backwards and he makes time go backwards by by and does Lois come back to life? She does. Well, he catches up with her before she dies. So romantic. So here’s what would have happened. Uh anything not nailed down to Earth’s solid surface would keep going do east cuz that’s the direction Earth was spinning. If you stop the earth, the oceans keep moving and they would flood. The Pacific Ocean would flood North and South America. The Atlantic Ocean would flood Europe and Africa and he would have killed a billion people just for Lois to save Lois. Now here now here’s what I’m saying. If you type this in the chat GPT, they’ll say, “No, that wouldn’t happen. You can’t turn time backwards.” But you’re not going to get the part that he would have killed a billion. You’re not going to think of share. If I can turn back time like there’s so much more turn back time. Here’s another. What do you know about Sher either? We love we love the answer cuz she was big in the 70s. Different type of Merlin. We know our history in the 60s. You have a very selective history. I did not study for some people would say Sher defies physics. She does. Anyways, I wouldn’t say that but that’s okay. I mean, speaking of celebrities though, what are your thoughts about because this year everyone has been thinking about space a lot lately because Katy Perry and some other celebrities went into space. What are your ish Yeah. What are your thoughts on people like kind of like setting my go for a minute? A couple of things. As you may know, Katy Perry has a song called ET. Yes. Oh, that’s right. And in it, it’s like I want to ride your laser and I want to I want to match your wavelength. Like either it’s all metaphor or she wants to bone an alien. Okay, let’s just And she is single this year now. So, yeah. Okay. So, so let’s start with that. Uh, so I actually had her on my podcast. I I have podcast Star Talk because I want to get to the bottom of like what’s going on in your head if you’re going to write in all this about aliens. And so, so I met her. Not that we’re like friends, but we’ve met. Okay. And I I know Gail. Gail was one of the the the crew. There’s all female crew, remember? Okay. Everyone cached on that on that trip. Do you remember the social media? Yeah, it was very ugly. I would even call in I had to jump in. I I had to get I had to I said, okay, and you could find this. It’s online. Okay, I put the picture of them all posing and I said, “The dawn of aviation had rich people and famous people ride the airplanes first, attracting media attention, thereby public attention, helping to birth an entire industry of of aviation.” Oh, okay. So, we should not be surprised that the same thing is happening now. William Shatner wrote on the thing, you know, people, famous and rich people ride this and we’re all and and you’re reporting on it. You’re reporting on it. Even if you didn’t like it, you’re reporting on it, aren’t you? Right. So, I said, while everyone is casting shade, let us remember that we could be witnessing the birth of a new industry going forward. Welcome back to Earth, Katie, Gail, and crew. Okay. All right. Well, that’s what I think about you must not interesting take. I did not think about that because even like celebrities were chiming in. There was like a succession of people criticizing them for such a good point. Putting money towards this when you could put money towards I guess what they would deem to be more meaningful space exploration. Well, someone on Earth is saying that something say this is you in the cave saying don’t look outside the cave. Everyone who’s ever been in space and looked down on Earth has gotten a little piece of what we call the overview effect where in space you can’t see national borders. You can’t. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, we’re all in this together. That’s Earth down there.” That’s even further magnified when you go to the moon and all of Earth is in view floating there in this darkness of space and you see Earth not as this not as your classroom, the schoolroom globe had intended with colorcoded countries. No, you see Earth as nature had intended with oceans and land and clouds that will change you. That’s beautiful. And Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, he a moon walker in 1971 interviewed by Time magazine. He came back and he said, “From out there on the moon, you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. from out there on the moon. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter million miles out and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch.” Wow. He was feeling it. That’s what I’m saying. Don’t tell me. Oh, wait. One other thing. I’m sorry. I’m just We love this. You started this. I came here calm. I was calm. You’re fired up, Neil. I was calm. Okay. All right. You must know. Okay. Okay, cuz you weren’t born yet. Clearly, I will tell you that the modern environmental movement went into high gear after Apollo 8 went to the moon and took a picture of Earthrise over the lunar landscape. You know that picture, even though you weren’t born yet when it was taken, that picture, oh my gosh, that’s Earth. Only then did all manner of conservation efforts get put into place. The Environmental Protection Agency was 1970. The Noah, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Commission, 1970. Do you remember? They might have read it in a history book, but do you remember the crying Indian VSA with the one tier coming down? That was 1970. We would ban leaded gas in 1972. Doctors without borders. Why would they call themselves without borders? They were founded in 1971. Why would they say without borders? Where do you even get that way to think about the world? And so you add all this up and you say, how much is exploring the universe worth to you? If at the end of it, we start caring about Earth. That’s what made us care about Earth. There you go. Okay. All right. Well, thank you, Katie. And thank you, Gail. Yeah. Thank you. And it’s a hard thing too where I feel like because that was all those things where people are caring and exploring it and now it almost gets to the point where everyone is going from exploring to exploiting it. And how do you feel about kind of like how so much like environmental issues and everything like that people are like there almost seems like a tide has shifted or maybe not a tide shift there’s a little bit of exploitation but I’m saying if you get a rich andor important rich and or famous person to gain that perspective on the earth and they have influence on other people rich people have influence famous people have influence if they come down and then now speak of the earth differently than they once did that’s worth every penny Now eventually it’ll become routinized, right? And maybe they’ll like be like a uh like a a vacation resort on the moon. I’d go I’d go for the lunar the bad bad joke here. Ready? So it’s like uh so if there’s a like a resort and there’s a hotel, there’s a restaurant. Clearly the food would have to be a little different because it’s mood food. But that restaurant, it would have no atmosphere. And I swear your dad joke is not why we’re going to break, but we do have to go to break. The question I have for you, Neil, is obviously you love astronomy. Yeah. Yeah. Astrophysics is full up. Yeah. How do you feel about astrology? Astrology. Do you believe in it? Great question. You are a Libra. Happy belated birthday. October 5th, right? Okay. Do you Okay. What do you think about astrology? So, there’s a whole Merlin tackles this in the book. Okay. Yeah. So Merlin has a lot of very short answers to questions, very tight and clean and and and others required a little more conversation about it. And the one on astrology is it and I I we only have a couple minutes left. I’m not going to blow that on answering your question. I will say that I can quote Shakespeare. Okay, go for it. Down spot. Yeah. Um, uh, your fate, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars, but within ourselves. Oh, okay. So, don’t rely on the stars. Such a Libra thing to say. Libra. Yeah. Yeah. Prove it. Here’s what I’ve done. Rather than you go straight to your own horoscope and read it and say, “Wow, I should pay attention to that.” Do do the opposite experiment. And I do this. I’m in front of a thousand people. I pick one of the 12 horoscopes at random and I read it and I I ask people whose horoscope did I just read and three4ers of the hands go up. Yeah, there it is. And do you need any further evidence that it’s all just Okay, there we go. So, here’s the thing. So, uh we mentioned Katy Perry and Gail King going into space. with the privatization of of space travel with Jeff now billion you know Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos um is this is this a good thing because then we don’t have to worry about NASA if NASA doesn’t have the proper funding we can rely on these billionaires to orion funding or what do you think I’m I I don’t value judge a free society people do what they want they vote for who they want and so I don’t value judge What I will do is tell you the causes and effects of decision you might make and then you decide whether that’s the future you want. Okay. So with billionaires doing I by the way NASA has been in bed with space industry since the beginning. The difference was NASA spec what they wanted. We need this to go to the moon build it. And so they build it. And so that’s why the rockets that went up didn’t say Lockheed. They didn’t say Martin Marinetta. They didn’t say Grumman. They just said USA and NASA. Nowadays with private space industry, they got they’re making stuff and it’s on the shelf. Yeah. And NASA says, “I want to send a rocket to wherever. Can show me your catalog.” And then they pick three three boosters, two this one that, and then there it is. And so I don’t have a problem with that. Fine. We have a space industrial complex. Here’s the difference. industry is not going to go into space unless there is a return on that investment to them. So they won’t. They’re just not. All right. And wait, there’s people are going to have to come watch you talk because we are out of time. We’ll do it on the Patriots after show. [Music]
Neil deGrasse Tyson joins Danny Murphy, Evan Real and Ian Mohr on Page Six Radio to talk about aliens, superheros, and all kinds of stars, as well as the release of the updated and revised edition of his book “Just Visiting This Planet: Further Scientific Adventures of Merlin From Omniscia.”
#neildegrassetyson #space #startalk
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