Why Do We Exist with Hakeem Oluseyi

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:00)

Chuck, I don't think we can find a container to hold a full Hakeem Oluseyi.

Chuck Nice (0:05)

No, I don't even think a magnetic field would do it, yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:09)

It's coming up.

Chuck Nice (0:10)

Boundless energy coming your way.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:11)

Delivered from the universe. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

This is StarTalk, Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Chuck Nice, right next to me.

Chuck Nice (0:34)

What's up, Neil?

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:35)

All right, man.

Chuck Nice (0:36)

How are you, buddy?

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:36)

Doing good, doing good.

Chuck Nice (0:37)

Doing great.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:37)

We've got Cosmic Queries today.

Chuck Nice (0:39)

Yes, we do. Inquiring Mind's one to know.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:41)

Indeed, and in fact, it's on cosmology as a topic.

It is the expertise of our guest. Third time on StarTalk?

Chuck Nice (0:52)

Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:52)

I think so.

Chuck Nice (0:53)

That's right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (0:55)

Hakeem Oluseyi.

Hakeem Oluseyi (0:57)

Thank you so much. And it is the fourth time.

Chuck Nice (0:59)

Fourth time. Oh, that's right. Cause this, yeah, no, wait, fourth time?

Hakeem Oluseyi (1:04)

Memoir, Cosmic Queries, both remote. And then finally-

Chuck Nice (1:09)

You know, remote though. That's right. The remote, but yeah, it kind of messed me up. You get the remote thing.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1:13)

Well, we got an astrophysicist cosmologist, which is a subdivision of all astrophysicists, who thinks about the origin, evolution, and fate of the universe.

Right. Plus, he's been practicing my open for this show. And I don't know if I should be happy about it or kick his ass later. Let me hear, go.

Chuck Nice (1:37)

Let's see.

Hakeem Oluseyi (1:38)

This is StarTalk.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1:40)

You know, that's pretty good.

Chuck Nice (1:41)

Not bad.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1:42)

That's, you know-

Chuck Nice (1:42)

I tell ya.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1:43)

You know?

Chuck Nice (1:44)

Yeah, right now with the three black guys up here, I don't know who's who.

Hakeem Oluseyi (1:47)

Wait a minute, wait a minute. I wanna get back to this kick your ass comedy.

Chuck Nice (1:52)

That's hilarious.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1:54)

So, you're a host of the podcast Particles of Thought.

I love that title. And it's a Nova podcast.

Hakeem Oluseyi (2:01)

It's a Nova podcast.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (2:02)

PBS Nova, GBH from out of Boston.

Chuck Nice (2:04)

Very good. Very nice.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (2:06)

And CEO.

How many people get to say they're CEO? Because you're CEO, you're the man.

Chuck Nice (2:12)

That's right.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (2:13)

CEO of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

Chuck Nice (2:17)

Very nice.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (2:17)

And I'm gonna ask you about that in a minute. And you've also associated with NASA's IMAP satellite. Remind me what IMAP stands for.

Hakeem Oluseyi (2:25)

Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (2:29)

Nice. Who's accelerating?

Hakeem Oluseyi (2:32)

The sun's magnetic fields, both at the surface of the sun and interactions with the sun, solar wind and particles trapped in the heliosphere, right? And those generate neutral atoms that come back into the solar system. So I get measured by IMAP.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (2:47)

Wow.

Chuck Nice (2:48)

Wow. Okay.

And may I ask, why?

Neil deGrasse Tyson (2:53)

And if you worry about the sun, that doesn't sound very cosmological. So how do you stitch that together?

Hakeem Oluseyi (2:59)

Because I started out doing instrumentation and calculations, computational, and understanding plasmas really well. So it's kind of like I have this toolbox that I can travel from field to field with, right? So I've been on propulsion for a long time.

Chuck Nice (3:13)

Because plasma is everywhere in the freaking universe. Yes, it is.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (3:16)

Oh my gosh.

Chuck Nice (3:16)

Yeah.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (3:17)

And tell people we're not talking about blood plasma.

Chuck Nice (3:19)

No. What kind of blood plasma? I forgot about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a whole other kind of, there's a different plasma.

Hakeem Oluseyi (3:23)

So this is when you take a gas, heat it even more, you break more bonds, right? And you break the solid to liquid bond, liquid to gas. Now, once you're a gas, you're just molecules or atoms, you start breaking those apart. So once you break apart electrons from atoms, you now have a plasma.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (3:39)

Yeah, it's an electron soup, basically.

Yeah, and so this gas will respond to magnetic fields. You can do really cool things with it, including feed a fusion reactor for the future of energy.