Host dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson did your new book astrophysics for people in a hurry you open by saying the universe is under no obligation to make sense what does that mean . I think up until the year 1600 when we had no particular tools to investigate the Natural World the five senses were the primary means we gave all information about the universe and not even knowing that our five senses had live and said everything you know, the thinking of letting tries to give you but it is not better run at 1500 it would go one direction than the telescope it was a decade within one another now it becomes available to us to transcend our senses to look inside a drop of pond water to see microorganisms doing the backstroke that the sensory system could not have detected with not for the microscope so the welcome to the universe tire living creatures living in a drop of water but today we know that from childhood but that made no sense at all without Royal Society in london when they make a discovery they that he was drinking too much gin. [laughter] write another letter when you have recovered from the drunken stupor if we can continue so then they sent someone to verify one eyewitness testimony is not a scientific discovery issue need to confirm that it is real especially 20thcentury and onward to discover quantum physics with the rules of how matter we caves that falls completely not only outside of their senses but the expectation how anything should work that matter turns into energy and backandforth so with that expanding universe how could that be expanding at all . If you keep the invoking that does not make sense you will miss out on a lot of what we have learned where have discovered to be true. What is significant . The dutch were very good optics and lenses you could make a magnifying glass but if you start combining you get parts of the optical system to get a microscope than once you did that it opens the floodgates of and then galileo made of very good version and then this guy is the limit. Host was galileo treated famous the in a sense . There was a cleansing it depends on the account of his life and times determines how much Background Information you get. The simple story is he makes stories that conflict with the Catholic Church they put him on trial and find him guilty to save the earth goes around the sun. Then they put him under house arrest. If you read along biography they would tell you he actually made fun of the pope. He wrote a book it italian, not latin which was the academic language of the day but italian which means the local people could read it and has a conversation between a simpleton and someone who was wise of the ways of the universe theyre all statements that have come from official decree from the Catholic Church so really he is a pompous ahole. [laughter] so socially he does not get the respect that he should have for those who had more power than him he could have published in latin and im betting he would not have gone to trial. It is the renaissance after all. New thought and fresh thought he had it coming because he did not know how to appease other. Back to your book astrophysics for people in a hurry 15 billion years ago you said how do we know . The way knowledge is acquired is you have an idea and propose an experiment that is affected you probably dont have the money to do that so now you try to get funding from sources if it is Pure Research and will be a government source in the war in other fields like biology your physiology maybe the National Institutes of health. You have an idea to build an experiment and of the results match your expectations and the foundation of your idea of the currency at workshops or in the journals now you are a competitor to say i never liked you. We are people to. I think youre wrong and years of experiment to show they were wrong. Then you get the results that matches because you had no intent to match me. But if somebody else does that you have the al meyer the out wire with the uncertainties that exist but when there is a general been to the emerging truth to say all these experiments approximately get the same result with a few outlier so we come to recognize this is the new objectively established truth that is what science does the most effective way we have survived as a species to decode what is and what is not true with the Natural World. So once we have done this, this is how the world works this is celebrated in regattas relativity and quantum physics and empower the entire Industrial Revolution what is a machine . That converts energy from one form that is useful to us in another. A car takes Chemical Energy and gas and then it takes the Kinetic Energy of your car. All of this comes out of the Industrial Revolution there were no machines such as this. Those dont require technology with the inclined plane it is simple so watch how this works i have alleged but i am not Strong Enough to do that. If i have always am i can lift up little bits at a time but it takes in this heighth spread out over time so makes it easier for me to complete the task the same total amount of energy is exerted at that rate that is what simple machines have always done for us in modern machines our civilization. Im sorry i did not focus on your question about how do we know. So we look up to the universe to say we see galaxies that hubble discovered these fuzzy things in the sky such as the milky way a major discovery in the 1929 the things that we discovered as a whole galaxy are hurtling away from one another this is the first evidence the universe is expanding. People dont make this up. It was an observation with the general theory of relativity that is the modern understanding of gravity anything in the universe will involve gravity. So that means we did not have to reinvent the theory of the universe so then we say if universes getting bigger that means it was bigger yesterday them the day before. So what happens if we turn the clock back . When you do this because you see how fast we are expanding just on the back of an envelope calculate the rate of expansion and will hold the universe is in the same place at the same time 15 billion years ago. That is the origin of the idea of the big bang. Everything we know about matter that is under pressure tells us the temperature will rise. The simplest example is if you ride a bicycle like a hand pump palms the air and then you fill the golf york impressing air through that. That is just an example it is not exactly the same thing but it is related to have energy from one medium to another. a would have been hotter in the past than it is in the present now the universe has a temperature you can measure that if you look at every direction you can see the heat signature that is left over after the 14 billion years so then you go back in time that universe was hotter and hotter how much water would it have been 15 billion years ago . You get a stupendously high temperature. So now you ask what is the behavior of matter and energy in those temperatures . So now you turn into the particle a accelerator highpressure hightemperature so you start approximating the conditions is that what a nucleus does . Is that what happens . Scenario take knowledge from modern atomic physics and applied that to the universe when it was hot and small. That gives a pathway of insight into what was going on. Sebacic foundational particles of life in the photons that make up the protons and neutrons in disbars we know electrons are fundamental they all have antimatter counterparts even positron that Science Fiction people have not picked up on. We are the entire matter and have discovered that the that works great with Science Fiction story telling but it happened in the real world first. So now to say what must have happened given what we know . It will tell you that the rate we were expanding it would be the predominant saddam in the universe with a one proton of the nucleus you can make this much helium youll have a trace amount of lithium never these elements from chemistry class we will be a universe boren and that you say is that so . That means the very oldest cars we confined for the closest to the big bang would still be alive today would be comprised of only hydrogen and helium and that is exactly what they measure the very oldest doors have the least amount of heavier elements which we have known for the mid 20th century and those calculations to enable research and with the atomic bomb because we are calculating we know after the time stars are born they manufacture heavy elements some of them explode for those that have yet to form stars they form the next generation of stars and they will make even more enrichment and explode in kerry that to the next generation in this continues through. We have a 4. 5 sollars system the solar system was born 4. 5 billion years ago as we have the benefit of multiple generations so now with the. Cloud we have all these other said used rocks are not made of hydrogen or helium silicon and oxygen and aluminum and arsenic kobold or nickel all that manufactured later is an abundance late generation stars that were formed so however weird it is to assert 14 billion years ago it was literally this big you say you were not there how do you know, . You a right guy was not but everything that happens to matter and accurately predicts that gives us the confidence to describe like we were there. To we know what the big bang was . What we can tell you the big bank account is a description of what matter and energy was doing. Harrison there is a point of time one of the fathers of quantum physics that limits the ability to understand when nature is doing we pick that up after playtime one chileans of 1 billion of a second 1 sextillion of the second the end of the six that we now measure in the lab applies to talk about what is going on. Host in your book welcome to the universe from 2016 your right and 5 million years the earth will be charged . Cry to meet that every couple years and the blows peoples mind. Item no fat is good or bad. Echoes Something Like this and 5 billion years the sun will expand so large that it will involve the entire orbit of our planet google in gulf earth, and earth will be a charge ember as it descends into the star and vaporizes. Have a nice day. [laughter] it is a reality it is remarkable feat can no our fate that way but how . Will we be there . Probably not. There is no shortage of stars in the universe you can see them being born we see them in the act of dying sea put this confirmation together to put a coherent story we dont live long enough and that takes millions or billions are trillions of years we are only around for a few decades but howd we know this . Because there are so many stars that with any snapshot of the universe we can see stars that are born born, middleaged, dying it is the same arc of a star it is just different stars it would impi any different if he took a snapshot of civilization you would see some humans in a box on the ground to say what are they doing there . Little thing scrawling you will see other humans who dont have any hair better older it is just a snapshot you are an alien and only live 90 seconds how do i make sense out of that . Are people born in a box in the ground and they come out then they get littler and disappear inside of another person . Or is it the opposite . So you keep studying all the photos to piece together a coherent story of what is going on for the stars in the universe we didnt just look at one snapshot. No. This took effort major telescopes brought to bear or Human Capital or intellectual capital invested trying to understand how the stars work. Even the College Observatory in cambridge massachusetts and harvard there was room full of human calculators, computers, that was judged to be menial work because the men stayed in their office doing highlevel thinking and in this room was the foundation of our a understanding of evolution. The glass universe was just written on this yes you covered it as an old wash to the Glass Ceiling that little do the high and mighty men know when you calculate from all the worlds telescopes there is a source of how the stars are born. Host booktv on cspan to the monthly Index Program this month we have author and astrophysicist neil Degrasse Tyson as our guest if you watch this program we spend three hours with one author talking about his or her body of work this month is dr. Tyson beginning 1989 he has written several books. Universe down to earth 1994. Just visiting 1998. This guy is not the limit. 2000. Then cosmic horizon death by a black hole, a space chronicles three years later including welcome to the universe most recently astrophysics for people in a hurry if youd like to participate here is how you can do so. Barnums. Host dr. Tyson your most recent book, astrophysics for people in a hurry 30 billion earthlight planet so what is the milky way and how big of a real talking about . 40 billion . It was hard earned to learn what the milky way was rolm when they built streets they did not call the mistreat they called them a way. So now they call that the milky way meaning a street. In china were milk is less popular they dont call it the milky way but the silver river. So this is a wellknown feature in the night sky as the cloud of light and it wouldnt be until galileo and other large telescopes brought to bear you learn if you put the telescope on the milky band of light reveal sources. But then the light poles together so to say is this all there is . It would take until 1920 before be resolved that debate were other galaxies suffered from the milky way. How far out have we gotten to the earth with satellites or anything. Much further. But humans we have gone to the far side of the moon when the moon was orbiting around the earth. So sometimes its further. So apollo eight, or apollo 13 it went to the moon when the moon was near his for this point from the earth. They went around the moon before they never landed but they didnt have the oxygen tank it got destroyed. So on the backside of the moon, and that trajectory there were the furthest the humans have ever been to earth. So how far is that . About 240,000 miles away. So in terms of space craft the voyager space craft a few years ago launched in 1977, given some gravity boost, slingshot in around jupiter, saturn, and i forgot the exact, it. Multi cushion shot to exploit the Orbital Energy of these various planets. We could not launch it with enough energy to escape the solar system. It had to steal energy from planets to make this happen. We did this on purpose. We do this, voyager one has now basically left all traces of the solar system. Instead of going just passed neptune, the less planet in the solar system, their comments be a matter of which pluto is a happy member. When you go beyond the reach a point where the suns influence on the electronics of your spacecraft are now confused with the influence of Everything Else in the galaxy. That is a functional place to say that you have left the solar system and voyager has done that. Host and how far away . Guest i forget the number. Several times the earth sun distance. I have to look it up. It is out there. Host is Still Producing . Guest yes but i was still learning anything, it is cost money to keep something online and keep talking to it. By the way, we go through these funding episodes often. Give something kind of working but it has exhausted its useful life but is still taking money so do you shut it off and get a fresh project and have new questions youre answering. You might discover something. You had one are called senior reviews each year were some of the most respected among us get together and decide which switch gets turned off and which gets turned on. That is why its important its our most respected scientist among us because we judge that it is being fair. By the way, at the rate at which its traveling, if you aim it to the nearest star it would take 70000 years to get to. So, give up all expectations that we would be visiting other planets outside of the solar system anytime soon. Host 1973. How did you end up in the Mojave Desert . Guest seventythree. I attended a camp, a special astronomy camp for geeky schoolkids. I was in ninth grade. That was my first year in high school because back then i was transitioning from ninthgrade to tenth grade. Ninthgrade was the oldest grade in the junior high school, today the call middle school. That was transitioning between the two. I was a geeky kid, we lived in the Mojave Desert far away from any human life. That means theres no confirmation, very few clouds and we all live nocturnal he. You wake up at night and there is a slew of telescopes we had Research Projects and computers are very early at the time. Your hovered around this computer. One programmed to. Host prime numbers which is a calculation on this is like computation bc. So those are some formative years of my life. Ninth grade, tenth grade transitioning out of middle school to high school i attended the High School Science the borough that i grew up in an a telescope and a camera that was a happy summer as a summer kid that was the first time in the desert with all the creatures that night. With tarantulas and black widows and scorpions. Dont put your foot in the boot unless you can until you shake out your boot because otherwise you could have been him or something in it. At least i could talk to the mugger. It was fun. And so my mother saw an ad for this camp. She knew that i have been interested in the universe for the previous five years of my life and then by what i know that it had as an ambition. So my parents were particularly sensitive to what the interests to up my brother and sister, they did not impart interest upon us. They carefully observed the where our interests word and then carefully fetter interest whatever best served our curiosity. I just lost my father this past december. He was 89. I still miss him. He was a wise man. In modern times we forget what was to miss. There are people who know a lot and talk a lot and wise people dont talk a