Cosmic Queries – The Fractal Universe with Charles Liu

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:00)

We had our geek-in-chief join us for StarTalk Special Edition Cosmic Queries Grab Bag. We went everywhere, fractals in the universe, fractals in our brains.

Chuck Nice (0:11)

Yeah, and I made enemies on three continents.

Gary O'Reilly (0:15)

Again.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:17)

Coming up, StarTalk Special Edition. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

This is StarTalk Special Edition, which of course means I got right beside me here. Gary O'Reilly. How are you doing, Gary?

Gary O'Reilly (0:41)

I'm good, Neil. How's things?

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:43)

Very good. Very good. And of course, Chuck Nice.

Charles Liu (0:47)

What's happening?

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:49)

This is an uncommon installment of StarTalk Special Edition, where we are doing Cosmic Queries like we do over in StarTalk flagship. We're going to do Cosmic Queries that are so focused a little bit on the themes of the show, but also it's going to reach out into the quantum realm. Oh yeah.

And who could best serve that in the world than our geek in chief, Charles Liu. Hey, Charles.

Charles Liu (1:21)

Hey, Neil. Hi, guys. What a pleasure to be here.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1:24)

Thank you for having me.

The crowd cheers. Charles Liu, Charles Liu. Welcome back. I'm just to remind people that you recently published a book, the Handy Quantum Question Book. Give me the full title of that.

Charles Liu (1:38)

The Handy Quantum Physics Answer Book.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1:41)

Excellent.

Charles Liu (1:42)

Yes.

Chuck Nice (1:42)

Very good.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1:43)

And because we all need handy answers to quantum questions. And given that this is the state of mind you've been in answering people's queries, we thought we'd bring you on to a Cosmic Queries installment of Special Edition.

So, Chuck, Gary, you've got the questions?

Chuck Nice (2:02)

Yeah. Indeed.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (2:04)

And they're asked by our Patreon supporters. The entry level gets you this...

You don't even... Just the entry level gets you the access.

Chuck Nice (2:13)

Less than a cup of coffee per month.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (2:16)

Less than a Starbucks cup of coffee.

Charles Liu (2:18)

Yeah. Where do you get your coffee, Chuck?

Chuck Nice (2:20)

Well, I drink very good coffee.

Charles Liu (2:24)

Oh. All right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (2:28)

So, who's first up?

Gary O'Reilly (2:30)

This question from Marcus Rozzone. I believe that's how you pronounce it. If not, I apologize. Hey, Neil and team, when you look at the real bottlenecks of deep space travel from payload mass and transit times to life support and propulsion, is space exploration basically just a massive energy problem?

If we had something with the insane energy density of Iron Man's arc reactor, how dramatically would that rewrite the rules of interstellar travel? Thanks and cheers from Switzerland. So, this question is from Irregular Einstein.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (3:05)

Just to remind me, Iron Man's arc reactor, is that what's buried in his chest?

Chuck Nice (3:10)

Yes.

Charles Liu (3:11)

Supposedly, yeah. You know.

Chuck Nice (3:14)

He gets a ton of energy for free from a physics basics. Yeah. It's so unlikely it's ridiculous, but it's cool because it's Iron Man and it's the arc reactor.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (3:27)

And just to be clear, Chuck, Iron Man is the least unbelievable Marvel character of them all.

So to say, oh, that's ridiculous. If you're saying that about him, then none of the other characters mean anything to you.

Charles Liu (3:45)

No, no, no. Hawkeye, the Black Widow before she got her brain implant, retcon and things like that.

There are some pretty good superheroes without Iron Man's armor. But Iron Man's armor, yes indeed, it evolved. Originally, it was designed to keep his heart going because it had been damaged. But then it became more and more and more powerful until now he's like godlike because he has this armor. But the interesting question, Marcus, is indeed, if you had essentially infinite energy, would we be able to zip around the stars with no problem? And the answer, alas, is no.

And the reason is general theory of relativity. The special theory of relativity itself would suffice as well. In 1905, as you know, Albert Einstein, who was at that time doing his PhD work in Switzerland, had basically come up with an explanation that the faster you go, you can get more and more massive at the same time. And therefore, you will never reach the speed of light because you will reach infinite mass and it takes infinite energy in order to go there. So even if you could have some spacecraft that could have a nearly infinite amount of energy or an arbitrarily large amount of energy, that spacecraft still cannot exceed the speed of light. So it's still limited, and we are all still limited in space travel by the amount of time light takes to get from one star to the next, which is too bad, but. Yeah.