#2506 - Michelle Thaller

**Michelle Thaller** (0:03)
The Joe Rogan Experience.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:06)
Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
I like them. Absolutely.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:15)
It's also, there's some things that are so awesome. It's like, that's fucking awesome.

**Michelle Thaller** (0:20)
I was trying to talk about black holes to some high school students just seriously earlier this week. And I was, I kept saying, you know, what the?
So I got nothing to pitch, but I, the Shorewood Men's Club, I was giving a talk there. The Shorewood, Wisconsin is where I live. The Men's Club invited me to give a talk about astronomy last week. And when I mentioned I was coming to the show, they just freaked out. And so the only thing I have is my Shorewood Men's Club.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:46)
Well, shout out to the Shorewood Men's Club. That's awesome.
That's so cool that you give those speeches. I love your YouTube talks. They're fantastic.

**Michelle Thaller** (0:55)
Well, thank you. Wow.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:56)
I have watched probably every one you've ever done. I've watched at least, I mean, how have you done? I've watched at least like 10 of them.

**Michelle Thaller** (1:05)
Yeah. I mean, pretty much what I did at NASA, I did a lot of sort of the science spokesperson stuff. And so most of that was, I'm more on the NASA videos. I hosted launch events. I haven't done much privately on YouTube. I'm thinking about starting some stuff.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:23)
Oh, you should.

**Joe Rogan** (1:24)
Yeah, I'll look at that.

**Michelle Thaller** (1:25)
Please.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:25)
100%.

**Michelle Thaller** (1:26)
Thank you.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:27)
100%. You've said so many things that made me just go, what?
Like, here's a big one that you said. You were talking about if the size of Earth, if the Earth was the dot of an I in a book, in regular print, that the Milky Way galaxy would be as large as the Earth itself.

**Michelle Thaller** (1:47)
Actually a little bigger. Yeah. So, I mean, the thing is, this is an interesting thing about science communication.
You say that if the sun were the size of a dot of an I, and you got to remember, you can fit a million Earths inside the sun. This is a huge thing. So if that's the size of a dot of an I on text, then the galaxy would be the size of the Earth. That's when people's eyes get big and people respond to it.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:08)
So it's not just the Earth, it's the sun. So if the sun was the dot of an I.

**Michelle Thaller** (2:11)
Yes, that's right. Let's make this clear. So if the sun were the size of the dot of an I on a page of text, so you could fit a million Earths inside that dot of an I, then the Milky Way galaxy would be bigger than the Earth.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:25)
So if the Earth was the dot of an I, then how big is the Milky Way galaxy? Because the sun is how many millions Earths?

**Michelle Thaller** (2:32)
Volume-wise, you could fit over a million Earths inside the sun.
Yeah. The sun is about 800,000 miles across. You could fit about 110 Earths across it, the diameter.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:42)
We do those things where you show the differences between our sun and different stars and immense stars, and you go bigger and bigger and bigger, and you get to the point where you're like, I can't, this is not working. I can't process this. It's too kooky.

**Michelle Thaller** (2:57)
There's nobody that can process it.
The thing about demystifying scientists is the idea that our brains somehow work any differently, and we can visualize what a light year is. Right? You know, light year is about 6 trillion miles, the distance light travels in a year. No, we're human beings. We get used to using the terms. We get used to using the numbers. But we've got the same brain as everybody else. Nobody can visualize what a galaxy really is. And you can take pictures of them. You can say the word galaxy. But people have no idea what monsters these are. And then, like with the James Webb Space Telescope, all of a sudden, you're taking pictures of billions of them. And they're right in front of your eyes. This is not something that you can argue about. It's an image.
And you see these foggy hazes of stars, basically so many stars, you can't see them individually. And that's real. And it still gives me goosebumps.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:59)
That's awesome. It gives me goosebumps, too. But it's so cool that it gives it to you. You actually study it your whole life.