How Big Bang Theory Works, with Neil deGrasse Tyson

There are a number of theories for how the universe evolved but none are more widely accepted than the Big Bang theory. Learn about the mind-boggling details of the early universe and hear Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson talk about what it will take for us to know its origins.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know Frundhouse stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Chipper. Josh Clark's Chipper,
Charles Pryant. Oh, that's your new nickname, Chipper Charles. Yeah.
And then there's that Jerry. She's not Chipper, she is

(00:23):
actually Chipper. I'm not chipperun crumpy because this man, oh man,
my head is already melted. You guys should see the
vein and Chuck's forehead. It is protruding. It's our best,
of course Stu astrophysicists. But we do have an astrophysicist
coming on as a guest at the end of the episode,
don't we Yes, my friend, you interviewed Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson,

(00:48):
or as I like to call him in d T. Sure,
that's what I call him to uh indeed, Dino My yeah,
but I was unable to be on the interview for
various tooth related reads, so you took it upon yourself,
and I think an interview like that it's probably just
better for one person. Anyway. It gets a little clumsy
if two people that I don't know anything about astrophysics

(01:10):
are trying to glean information here's my question. Yeah, right,
would you eat for breakfast? Doctor Um? But yeah, it
was very kind of him to come on, and we
want to thank um our friends at the Fox Theater
where he's going to be on April twentie here in Atlanta,
UM for hooking that up. So thanks to everybody who
made that happen, because it's a great interview, as you

(01:32):
guys will hear at the end of this episode. Yeah,
I loved listening to it. And I'm gonna go ahead
and say my two favorite parts are probably one that
won't make it in when you said that you're happy
to plug the Fox Theater show and he was like,
don't bother, it's going to be sold out. And then
at the end when you thanked him for advancing our
our understanding of this light years and he was like,
that's not nearly enough. He's like a light Year, it's

(01:54):
not very far. Thanks. Yeah, so I changed the par sex.
He's like, you're getting close. I know it was. It
was very funny. Actually, I hope you leave that part
in there. I I hope so. And later on I
immediately were good at not saying, well you you advanced
our show billions and billions of light years. You would
have appreciated that, Yeah, you would have, and I didn't
do it. Didn't It wasn't sharp enough. It was a

(02:14):
good interview though, Uh, feel free to skip right ahead
of that, but a little here and go to sleep. Um,
so we're talking about the Big Bang theory and not
the TV show, So settled down, nerds. I think he
was on that show. THO wouldn't I'm sure sure, Yeah,
he made an appearance. Um, I think all you have
to do is say, like, you will further science if

(02:37):
you appear on this. He's like, I'll do it. Yeah.
I've never seen one episode of that show. I guess
that may be seen some here and there. It's it's
I think, literally the most popular show in the world,
or it was like last season or the season before.
Like it's just taking off like a rocket. And hats
off to them too, because they like mix actual science

(02:58):
and science jokes and that stuff. It's it's like smartening
up the world. Well, I'll tell you one quote I
got from Mr Tyson, uh Dr Tyson from the Internet
and it was actually heard him say it, so I
know it was a real quote. Uh. He said that
you know people ask do you believe in the Big
Bang theory? And uh, and only the way that he can.

(03:20):
He was like, well, it's not a matter of believing,
he said, I only believe in things that are evidence based.
And he said the question should be that you posit
to people, of all the data and evidence out there,
what theory is best supported uh, And he said it's
the Big Bang theory, right And UM our colleague Jonathan
Strickland who wrote the article that this is based on,

(03:40):
and kudos to that cat because he took some really
really difficult concepts and explained it really well. He explained
it in a way that I came close to understand
a time. But he makes that same point too, that
that UM not only is the Big Bang theory of theory,
which obviously cannot be proved and can only be disproven UM,

(04:02):
but that there are other competing theories out there too,
which we'll talk about later UM, but that for the
most part, it has the most UM observational evidence backing
it up, including the recent UM confirmation of gravitational waves
which made a huge stir UM, and that as a result,
it's the most widely subscribe to theory among scientists as

(04:23):
describing the early universe, and that's a big thing. There's
a big distinction about that. A lot of people think
that the Big Bang describes the formation of the universe. No,
the Big Bang describes the time starting very soon after
the universe formed. But it does not go back into

(04:44):
where the origin of the universe came from what came
before it. And it actually doesn't even go all the
way back to that point where everything started. It just
can't because science falls apart, as we'll see the further
you try to go back in time because you know,
time ceases to exist at that point. Yeah, if the
universe were a human being, it's the big Bang theory

(05:05):
sort of describes the point where the sperm and the
egg meet up. Uh, it describes the time a trillionth
of a trillionth of a second after they met up.
What about that? Yeah, which is you know, it's close.
It's a pretty great time it. So another misconception, Chuck,
is that, um, the Big Bang was an explosion, and

(05:28):
that's not that's not correct. No. In fact, a man
named Sir Fred Hoyle is the one who gave it
a name almost, well not almost. He gave it to
it in jest as sort of an insult because he
was a believer. I don't know if he always was,
but he was a believer at the time in the
steady state theory. Um, And it was like, yeah, the explosion,

(05:50):
this big bang, but it's not an explosion at all,
so chuck, um, it's a it's a rapid expansion. It
wasn't the best way to think of it is like this,
So like an explosion. Right, Let's say you have a
planet and that planet is actually the universe, and it's
just floating there in space, and Darth Vader shoots it
with the Death Start and goes right, and it goes everywhere,
starts scattering everywhere, but it's scattering within the boundaries that

(06:13):
confines of space as we understand it. That would be
the popular conception of what the Big Bang represents, not
at all what the Big Bang actually, he says, is
that space itself inflated, it expanded, and that all the
stuff that was in it was in this very tightly wound, dense,

(06:36):
incredibly hot core that was a singularity basically that expanded
into the universe. That's as big as we understand it now. Yeah,
something that was so tiny and hot, it had an
infinite amount of density because everything we know was crammed in.
You know what It's like, It's like, uh, if Neil

(06:57):
de grass Tyson listens to this, he's going to love this. Okay.
You know the little pellets that you would get with
your fireworks, a little black pellet and then you light
it a smoke snake and then it snakes out to like,
you know, several feet Right. That's that's like it, except
if that pellet were like thousands and thousands and thousands
of fraction of the size of ahead of a pin.

(07:18):
I think that's a great analogy. And I'm just gonna
leave the room right and I'll come back in forty minutes.
But but even still, Chuck, take that analogy, right, when
you imagine that, you imagine that snake growing that you
on a sidewalk and maybe there's kind of grass in
your view and it's at night and there's a car
park there because you're outside, right, Well, sure, that's where

(07:39):
our brain wants to take us. We want to confine
what we know within the boundaries of our universe. What
we're talking about is the universe itself growing, Yeah, expanding
in nothingness. Yeah, and he points out in the interview,
I don't want to spoil it, but he kind of
blows my mind when he starts talking about like this

(07:59):
goes yawned, what our human senses can understand night and
sound like forget about it. Yeah, and that's how nobody's
gonna be able to pin anything on us, because we'll
be like, well, we just can't comprehend that, So how
could you blame us for getting it wrong? So um, chuck,
Now I'm going to leave the room, okay, and you
need what half an hour? It may take a little

(08:21):
longer than that. Now I get parts of it, so
I'll just chime in when I feel confident. There's a
there's a line right, um that that Strickland had in here.
It was, um, he says, at the earliest moments of
the Big Bang, all of the matter, energy, and space
we could observe was compressed to an area of zero
volume and infinite density. Doesn't that sound like the line

(08:41):
from a religious text or something like that? Isn't it
just like right there on that border between like science
and religion basically, yeah, Like and and now take this drug,
and everyone take their clothes off and follow me and
we'll understand what I'm talking about. Uh yeah, And you
know what when Strickland and and and scientists and cosmologists

(09:01):
talk about that, that is what is known as a singularity,
that that thing with a zero volume and infinite density. Right, So, um,
I think it bears repeating at least one more time.
What we're talking about is all of the matter, all
of the energy, all of the heat, all the radiation,
everything in the universe that is here or ever was

(09:22):
here over the last thirteen point roughly seven and nine
billion years, was in an a point that was twenty
three orders of magnitude smaller than the diameter of an atom.
You almost you just call it yourself, wanting to say
it's like a little ball. But there's not even circularism. Yeah,

(09:46):
is that a word? There was nothing circular. And so
at this time, at this point, um, we know that
it was very very hot, makes sense, mind bogglingly hot,
Like you can't even think of all the zeros associated
with the degree is of kelvin or fahrenheit or celsius. Right,
and it was incredibly dense. And then something happened. We

(10:07):
don't know what that was. A science simply isn't equipped
to explain it or understand it or detect it. Something
happened to make this incredibly dense ball or whatever it was.
There was expand Yes, and it was not like the
smoke snake. It wasn't a child with a lighter. You

(10:28):
don't know that, neither grass Tyson doesn't know that. Nobody
knows that. So this uh expanding happened really really really fast.
And we'll talk later about just those first few seconds afterwards,
like that's how fast we're talking, Well, a few like
trillions of a second is how they break it down,

(10:49):
Like there this so much happened in that first literally
the first second of the origin of the universe. That
um that there are different ages and epochs that happened
in like trillions of a second. Yeah, it's really mind blowing.
So as things expanded though in those first few seconds,
and today things are still expanding. Things are expanding and

(11:11):
things are cooling down even as we speak. Literally every
second that we're on the Earth, we're expanding and well
not us, but the universe is expanding and cooling right exactly.
And as a matter of fact, from what I understand,
um our our region of the universe, which is um
something like ninety billion light years across is is no

(11:33):
longer expanding, but other parts of the universe are expanding.
And there's this really great article about cosmology and where
it stands right now. It's in a on not cosmetology,
no cosmology, um and it was written by a guy
named Ross Anderson, and I think it's called in the Beginning,
and it's incredibly well written. But he makes a really

(11:53):
great analogy. He says that that ninety billion light year
across portion of the universe that we inhabit, that we
consider our own, is but a small section of one
tiny bubble that floats along on a frothy sea whose
proportions defy comprehension, and that neat And that's just our

(12:16):
section of the universe, right, that's our little neighborhood. So
the universe is unknowably large. We sound like HP Lovecraft
here describing this stuff. Um, and still some parts of
it are expanding. And apparently in the early universe, when
it was a singularity, the four forces, the four fundamental forces,

(12:37):
the dark side. Oh I thought you were going. I
thought you met the Star Wars universe. Uh. Yeah, So
the force, the dark Side, mindy Glorians and Mark Hamil's
hair prequels. The four basic forces as everyone knows, electromagnetism,
strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, and gravity, right, and

(12:59):
that that's singularity. Before the universe expanded began to expand, um,
all of them were coupled together into a single unified force,
which we don't understand how we know we don't And
as a matter of fact, trying to get them back
together is one of the great pursuits of physics because
if we can figure out how they were all unified, um,
we can start to understand the science we need, the paradigm,

(13:22):
we need to understand the origins of the universe, but
we just can't figure out how to do it, right. Yeah.
One thing that kind of blows my mind with this
is when you know, we get to this stuff later on,
about does it defy other laws of physics and stuff?
Like Basically every answer is like the further you travel
back towards that singularity, the less all these rules that

(13:42):
we think we understand apply, right falls apart. Yeah, so
just you know, we will probably never understand this stuff,
you know, at that very singular moment. Yeah, I don't know.
I disagree. I think I disagree. Yeah, I think that
we are maybe a century or two away from understanding it. Well,
you just clearly pull that out of your hat. Well,

(14:04):
I totally did. But we've made some another hundred and
twenty six years. Well, no, we've made some incredibly huge
strides in the last like hundred and fifty two hundred
years in our understanding thus far. Right, So I think
that's not a bad guest, right it be a be
a string theorist right to marry all these Uh, I
don't know. Probably I don't know. And that's what n

(14:24):
d T said. That's what we call him, now, that's
what he said. He was like, who knows. It could
be string theory. Um, maybe someone will be able to
come up with a unified theory or what's called the
theory of everything that unifies the four fundamental forces back
into their their single um version of a force. Or
maybe we just don't understand quantum physics enough quite yet. Um,

(14:45):
And when we figure that out a little more, that
will unlock some keys for us. So chock before we
get into um the how we started to come to
understand the Big Bang and the origin of the universe Um,
let's take a break real quick. Al, I'm gonna go
wipe my brow. You're doing great, all right. I sort

(15:30):
of get this part, So the history part, I'm gonna
talk a little bit about it. Uh. And this makes
a lot of sense to me. You go back in time.
Let's get in the way back machine. Oh yes, let's
boys feel so safe and comfortable in here. Um, it does. Weirdly,

(15:51):
it's eighteen hundreds and astronomers started using something called a spectroscope,
which is pretty nifty. And we've talked about light waves
in year before. A spectroscope is something that divides that
light spectrum up into the wavelengths. Uh, blue on the left,
right on the right, and as you go further towards
the red, the wavelengths grow longer. So that's part one, right,

(16:14):
that was spectroscopes. Yes, that's that's light waves, right and
thew Around the same time, Um, a guy named Christian
Doppler was tinkering with the frequency of sound waves. Right.
He was studying those because he's a smart guy, and
he said, you know what, it's weird that when I
sit by a train it sounds different as it goes

(16:35):
by me. Approaches then goes by me and goes further
away from me. Right, it sounds different than that doesn't
really make any sense. Yeah, And whereas most people would
just seat their figgy pudding and go about their day,
he wanted to try and explain it. He was like
anybody else who had been like this new Charles Dickens
book is top notch. Uh. So he said, you know what,
as as this noise approaches you, the sound waves that

(16:57):
generates compress is going to change that frequency, or at
least how you perceive it, in a different pitch. So
as it moves away from you, those waves are gonna
stretch that pitch goes down. And I'm gonna name this
effect after myself. Well, let my wife do it so
I don't look like a jerk. Right. So basically you
marry these two things, light wavelengths in the Doppler effect,

(17:19):
and it's sort of let us down this path to
where we could understand the Big Bang theory. Right. It
would indicate that um, something it's something that was emitting
light out there in the universe whose light moved towards
the red end of the spectrum would be emitting longer wavelengths,
which would suggest based on Christian Doppler's findings that it

(17:42):
was moving away, right yeah, and they they found that.
They said, look at these stars, some of the light
is falling into this this right hand side, and does
that mean it's it's moving away and it's getting faster
and that just wants to get away from us. That's
that's where Edwin Hubble came in. He based He said, yeah,
this is really weird, guys, because some of these stars

(18:04):
appear to have a velocity that's proportional to its distance
from the Earth. Like there seems to be some sort
of rhyme or reason here to it. And it suggested
to Hubble and later on to everybody else, including Einstein,
as we'll see, that the universe itself was expanding. And
this is where we came to the genuine origin of

(18:25):
the Big Bang theory, the idea that the universe was
expanding and constant right, yes, is that the the idea
is that the constant no no no um. The the
Hubble constant is the the proportion between or the relationship
between how fast something is moving away from us to

(18:47):
its distance from us. We constant rate, I mean and
actually no, the universe appears to be expanding more quickly
than it was before. Yeah, so it's increasing, which is
that's what makes a lot of really in relationship. Yeah. Yeah,
the hubble constant has to do not necessarily with the
inflation of universe itself and the expension universe itself, but

(19:08):
that how far or how fast uh say, a star
is moving away from us, and the further away from
us it is, it appears to be moving faster than
others that are closer. Yeah, and we should point out
you said inflation, uh, and or expansion. And apparently if
you're an insider, if you're a scientists, you probably say inflation. Sure.

(19:29):
So expansion is the basis of the Big Bang theory.
It's the idea that the the universe has expanded over time.
So that by logic, since time is one of the
four dimensions that we live in, right, you've got the
three dimensions plus time, So therefore space time describes the
fabric of the universe and the reality we live in. Right.

(19:49):
So by logic of that, if you went backward in time,
the universe would be smaller and smaller and smaller. And
the more they started looking into it, the more their
minds started pop being as they realized like, wow, this
thing was really really small ones and that's the basis
of it. Inflation theory comes in and suggests how that happened,
how that expansion happened, and it fills in a lot

(20:12):
of blanks that well, we'll also talk about Yes, you
mentioned Einstein earlier. Uh, he's a noted smart guy. Um.
And he actually had some issues because it conflicted somewhat
with his general relativity theories because he subscribed to his
own theory that the universal static it's not expanding, right,
And I don't I think like he was like a

(20:34):
member of the there's a way of viewing the universe
that like it was always this way, it was always
spread out this way. It wasn't getting bigger. That's nuts.
And so he figured that his general theory of relativity
would prove this, and actually he was extremely surprised to
find that his own general theory of relativity actually said no,
the universe is either expanding or contracting. It's certainly not steady.

(20:56):
And then Edwin Hubble came along and he had his
findings and I'm Stein said, you know what I was wrong? Yeah,
that's that's big enough of a man to admit it. Yeah,
that's the kind of guy I am. Uh. And one
day people are gonna keep my brain in a jar
in a barn and slice it up. It's gonna go
on a car trip. That was a good episode we
did too. Yeah, do we do one on that on
its own? Einstein's Brain? Oh yeah, that's right, boy. Those

(21:18):
were the good old days Einstein's Brain episodes. Alright, so, uh,
let's talk about some of the predictions that rose from
the uh the theory that the universe is expanding. Uh.
One is uh And Strickland says the universe is homogeneous
and isotropic, which is a fancy way of saying it's

(21:39):
it's made up of the same materials in completely uniform. Yeah.
Here is one of the first times we run into
something where you're like, what are you talking about. It's
funny if you read Strickland's article, and I sent him
an email saying as much that I was like, this
is really well written, but if you just read the
words you're saying, it sounds like it was written by
someone who is totally insane, you know. And he makes

(22:02):
the point too, He's like, well, yeah, all you have
to do is look out into the Milky Way or
anything like that. Anything we can see easily and see
that it looks different, Like there's not a star that
looks just like our son with the same number of
planets looking around. The point is is that you look,
if you go out of several orders of magnification and
look at the universe outside of any given galaxy, you're

(22:23):
gonna see that Actually, yeah, everything's distributed pretty evenly throughout
the universe, and so that makes it homogeneous. And then secondly,
it's isotropic, meaning that there is no center to the universe.
There's no central point. Yeah, which some people positive that
the Earth is the center of the universe. Uh well,
we'll talk a little bit about that later. But that's wrong, right,

(22:45):
I Mean, it hasn't been disproven, but it's just extremely unlikely.
I think. Yeah, I think it's very human centric thing
to say. But the reason why some people say that
is that they are if you look around, that expansion
that we're seeing is everything's going away from us, which
is like, why is that happening? Like we should be

(23:06):
going along at least with with something else. But the
idea is that we're not because we're the center of
the universe. But the the implications of that are so
mind boggling that it's just not possible almost that we're
actually at the center of the universe. When we're just
the small segment of a tiny bubble in a frothy
sea that defies proportions. There's no way that's the center

(23:29):
of the universe. Uh. So another prediction was UM and uh.
We talked a little bit about the intense heat uh
at the very first moments of the Big Bang. Uh.
And if that were true, then you would feel and
see this radiation I guess, not see it, but you
would have this radiation expanded over the entire galaxy in

(23:50):
roughly equal proportions. Yeah, because again, remember the universe is
homogeneous and isotropics, so if there was radiation, it should
be evenly distributed toether be like they call it an echo.
I've seen described in some right. Okay, So apparently back
in the forties they detected this stuff and didn't know
what they were looking at, and in the sixties they
figured out, holy cow, this is the cosmic microwave background,

(24:14):
which is basically UM. I think of it as more
like a fingerprint, the fingerprints of the universe, right, and
it's evenly distributed. It's this trace radiation that's still around
from the Big Bang, which is pretty amazing. So when
you put that in the discovery that the universe does
seem to be homogeneous and isotropic, along with the fact

(24:35):
that we discovered this cosmic radiation background that's evenly distributed
throughout the universe, it really gives a lot of credence
to the Big Bang theory. And so too does this
UM gravitational wave. The gravitational wave discovery. They apparently found
um curls in the cosmic microwave background that were are
remnants of gravitational wave from the Big Bang too. So

(24:58):
it's just getting supported all for the place, and everybody's
super happier. Yeah, there's like real observational data there, all right,
we tease those those first nano seconds nano moments after
the Big Bang. Um, so let's let's talk about them
right now. The earliest thing that scientists can even talk
about like with a straight face, like later on when

(25:21):
they're having drinks at the bar, that they talk about
but before this, but if they're like on a podium
in front of an audience, they can go back as
far as uh I'll just say the equation, even though
it will make no sense to anyone. Uh T equals
one times ten to the negative forty three seconds. Yeah, yes, okay,

(25:44):
so T equals the time after the creation of the universe,
and as far back as they've gone is point zero
zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero
zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero
zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero

(26:08):
zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero
zero one second after the creation of the universe. That's
how far back they've been able to trace the Big Bang,
and that amazing. That fraction of one second is how
far back they've been able to figure it out. And

(26:30):
so much happened in that first second. Chuck, that just
fractions of that fraction are, like I said before, like
different epochs in the era or the age of the Universe,
like entire epochs happened in trillions of a trillion of
a second. It's just so mind boggling. I love it, though,

(26:51):
Like I've really given myself over this. I was fighting
at first, like, well it just makes sense. I don't
want to how how does that make sense? And I
did look plenty of stuff up. I also just kind
of was like, I'm just taking it to submit on faith,
despite what Andy T says, like you do kind of
have to take this on faith, especially if you're not
an astrophysicist. And I just kind of gave myself over

(27:11):
to and I love it. You know what happens when
my mind gets bent like that too far? I just
have some pie. Oh that's good stuff. What's kind of
stare at the wall and have some pie. What do
you recommend? It does matter? Okay, so something super sweet,
not fruity. Uh, what's a fruity pie? Like a cherry
pie or apple pie? M m. I like a good
apple crumble pie. Oh yeah, I do too, but but

(27:34):
not like the one with the crisscross pastry on top.
I don't. I don't really discriminate against pie. I tend
more towards the fruity section of the pie spectrum, and
I tend to think of pecan like right in the middle.
But then on the other end you have like your
creamy and chocolate moose pies and stuff like that. I
tend to be on the other side, a little good

(27:55):
lemon pie, lemon stuff. What I don't get is the
cheddar on the apple pie. I've never gotten that. I've
never tried it. Maybe I should. Those people are obviously crazy.
I like sweet and savory together, so maybe I should
give it a whirling again. French and a frosty and
a day. Alright, So at that point that you described that,

(28:16):
you know, don't say all the zeros again, but that
at that point the universe was tiny, tiny, tiny and
small and dense and hot, and the area of the
universe spanned a region of about three point nine by
ten to thirty in everything, and that that area, right,

(28:36):
tend to the negative thirty three centimeters. Again, the average
diameter of an atom or roughly something like that is
tend to the negative ten. This is that much smaller
than an atom. And everything that's in the universe now
was encapsulated in that tiny little thing, whatever it was.
That's right. And again, like surely astrophysicist and cosmologists when

(29:01):
they were coming up with these calculations are like, I
just can't be right, and I guess over time they
were like, it seems to be right either. We're all
just totally off our rockers. And really, somebody forgot to
carry one and everybody forgot to carry one or this
is really how things started, and it's just mind boggling
to think. All right, So in that very first first, first,

(29:24):
first moment um, theorists think that, uh, those four primary
forces that we mentioned are still hanging together, They're still united,
and that matter and energy were inseparable at this point,
which is another don't feel bad if like you're sitting
there going like, how is that possible? No one knows.
They just see, like the calculations bear that out is

(29:45):
another way to put it. You know, that's right, But
that's how it was. Matter and energy were one and
the same. Uh. And as things expanded, we'll go into
these in detail. Um. We go through something called bario genesis,
particle cosmology, and then standard cosmology. And as this time passes,
things become a little more easy to understand. And when

(30:05):
I say easy to understand, I mean extremely difficult, but
at least at least your mind can wrap around it
start to at least right. So remember we started at tea,
which is the time after the creation of the university
equals one times tend to the negative forty three seconds. Uh.
The next the next big part where things start and actually, um,
in between the two gravity separated from the from the

(30:28):
four fundamental forces, just a little thing like that. Um.
But the next big one that came along was that
tend to the negative thirty six seconds and um, this
is where Barrio genesis happened. And around this time also,
this is where the electro week, which is electro magnetic
and weak force combined together, separated from the strong magnetic force.

(30:50):
And apparently here at that tend to the negative thirty
six power seconds. Um, that was where inflation happened. That's
that's where the expansion began, right, And that's where we
actually could begin to observe some kind of matter. Yeah,
and they think that what happened was a tremendous amount
of matter and anti matter were created. But that and

(31:12):
we did it. We we don't remember a lot of
about the details. But remember we did a a podcast
on anti matter spacecraft. How amazing those were. But ani
matter and matter like to just destroy each other and
effectively cancel one another out. Um. But apparently at the
beginning of the universe, that the origin of the universe.

(31:33):
It's suggested by this that there was a slight imbalance
in whatever makes matter and whatever makes anti matter, so
that there was slightly more matter that um was created
than anti matter. That good thing. So that right, so
that that stuff survived. Had the balance been the other direction,
there would be slightly more anti matter than matter now,
and who knows what kind of loopy bizarro universe that

(31:55):
would have created, seriously, or if there would have been
anything at all. So all that matter matter that survived
is the matter that we see in the universe now,
and that's a lot of matter. So imagine, since this
is just a tiny fraction of the matter that was
created and destroyed by the antimatter that was also created,
how much matter in any matter was created at ten

(32:17):
to the negative thirty six seconds through Barrio genesis. Again,
it's just mind boggling. And that was the result chock
of energy and matter uncoupling as well. Right, that's right, okay,
all right, And this is the point where we can
actually start to you know, we we did one on
the Large Hadron Collider. It's a particle accelerator, the biggest
and best that we have on the Earth. And this

(32:39):
is where you can actually use a particle accelerator to
recreate and look at this stuff. So we can actually
observe this at this point. Yeah, we can smash things
together and be like ka boom, look at that early universe.
That's what they do, sir. Yeah, all right, well people

(33:00):
should listen to that one too, by the way, that
would be a good like primer. That was one where
we wondered whether it was going to end the universe
or not. Right it did not not yet. So at
this point there is still no light. Things are too dense,
and it is still just a dark, dense area, right exactly. Um,
and about I think during the particle cosmology epoch, um,

(33:23):
the electromagnetic force and the weak force breakoff into separate forces.
That's right, and we still can't at this point. These
sub atomic particles still can't bond there there. They can form,
but they can't hook up in party, right exactly. That
actually didn't start to take place until we reached the
standard cosmology age, which is the age that I believe

(33:47):
we're in now, right, Yeah, which started point oh one
seconds after the initial bang, right a second. So we've
gone through that many ages and we haven't even mentioned
them all in those that within that first second. Yeah,
it's crazy, it is crazy. So um that standard cosmology
this is about where the the astrophysicists and cosmologists say,

(34:08):
we understand it from about here on out right. Everything
else it's a little shaky, but we've got some observational
data that backs it up. But here is where neutrons
and protons were formed, and um, a little after that
they started to be able to form nuclei through nucleosynthesis, right,
and they would ultimately be the building box of atoms. Right.

(34:31):
And so at this point, uh, things are still expanding
and cooling at a rapid rate, and we can actually, uh,
there are no atoms yet. But like you said, it's
it's too hot at this point for electrons to complete
that process. Still too hot in the hot tub. Yeah,
I mean after a hundred seconds, the universe had cooled

(34:52):
to a temperature cooled after a hundred seconds to one
point eight billion degrees fahrenheight or a billion degrees since
Celsius was how how hot it was still after a
hundred seconds. Should we take another break here? All right,
let's do that, and we'll come back in uh and
explain the rest of it in great easy to understand detail.

(35:26):
All Right, buddy, When we left off, things were expanding
and cooling and they still are actually the end. Ye Nope,
good night everyone and everyone. Here's Neil de grass Tyson

(35:48):
to take us home. So, uh, fifty six thousand years
after the creation of the universe, or after the Big Bang, UM,
we were at the temperature of fifteen thousand, seven hundred
forty degrees fahrent height and cool seven twenty six degrees celsius.
Right after another three hundred and twenty four thousand years.

(36:10):
So at three hundred and eighty thousand years after, it
had cooled down to four thousand, just under five thousand
degrees fahreent height and just under three thousand degrees celsius.
And finally here adams started to form because protons and
electrons could combine um. And the other thing that happened
to was the density had expanded out enough the volume

(36:34):
head increases a better way to put it, and the
temperature had cooled so that suddenly the universe was now transparent.
We could see through it. Up to this point three
hundred and seventy nine thousand years, you still couldn't see
through it was too dense and too hot. And at
about three hundred and eighty thousand years it hits that
point and you can see it like we do now. Yeah,
we finally have light at that point. Those cosmic microwave

(36:57):
background radiation was that we talked about earlier. It's locked
in UM. I don't think we mentioned earlier where we're
at now temperature wise, just to kind of put it
in perspective, we currently are at roughly negative four hundred
and fifty four point eight degrees fahrenheit negative to seventy
point four degrees celsius. Yeah, that's the temperature of space

(37:18):
right now. Right, Yeah, so it's definitely cool. Apparently it's
still cooling, like it's still not at absolute zero yet,
which is the the lowest temperature um or the lowest
activity that atoms will move at ever. So it's it's
still cooling and still expanding. Alright, So here's when things
really heat up. Alright, guess really cool down. Sorry bad

(37:40):
one um Strickling points out for the next hundred million
years or so. Uh, this is when the universe is
really cooling. It's expanding. Uh, and then you have matter
clusters together, yeah, eventually forms gas and this is the
quick view we'll dive into it. Uh, those gases form stars,
So stars cluster into galaxies, those galaxies cluster together into

(38:03):
solar systems. That's the overview. And so what they think
happened was because this really doesn't make any sense as
a matter of fact. One of the criticisms of big
bang theories that it violates the law of entropy, that
organizations become more disordered and chaotic over time, and the
idea that planets and galaxies and things formed seem like
it became more the opposite, right exactly UM, And so

(38:26):
they've really kind of looked into how anything would have
formed at all. And what they think happened was that
back in say the ten to the negative forty three
um second era UM, there were quantic quantum fluctuations, little
vacuum energy fluctuations within this universe, this tiny little universe,

(38:47):
and that as the universe expanded very quickly, those fluctuations
grew tremendously in size, and the vacuum energy in the
cosmic microwave background, those little fluctuations that are on the
um we're just different enough from the other spots in
the universe that they had slightly more density and thus

(39:09):
exerted slightly more gravitational poll than other areas. And so
more matters started to attract around them, and they started
to form stars, and the stars started to form galaxies,
and planets started to form around him, and all of
a sudden, what had just started out as little vacuum
energy became ultimately universal hot spots where you could find

(39:30):
matter clustered together, which explains why so much of it
is deep of deep spaces just void, and why some
of it has stuff. Apparently it all began with these little,
tiny quantum fluctuations way back trillions of the trillions of
a second after the universe was created. So like a
really cool dude at a at a party the size

(39:52):
of all human kind, and he's so cool that people
start hanging out with him, and then his party grows
a little bigger. Is that a good way to describe it?
I think that's that's better than anybody could ever hope too.
So it's so it's an attraction basically that drew things
together ever so slightly enough to form larger bodies and
then larger bodies. Yeah, And the reason why they think

(40:12):
this happen is because these tiny little fluctuations, little little
details in these little this little universe um grow bigger
over time, right, especially if you look at this inflation
growing as a process of time rather than just like
volume expansion, it's also time is is a dimension to it, right,

(40:34):
So it makes total sense, um in that just these
little things would get bigger as the universe itself got
bigger too. Well, does that mean that the universe being
coy here? Does that mean the universe will ever expand
for all of time infinitely? So I mean you're talking
about like that debate, right, Yeah. Yeah, there's a whole
debate over whether or not it's ever going to stop,

(40:56):
and all of it comes down to how much matters
in the universe, which we don't quite know yet. When
they calculate the matter we do know about, um, they
realize that there's actually something that you can't account for,
and that's dark matter. Because we know that there's something
that's making stars behave differently here, there's clearly some matter
that we can't detect that's out there, So we can't

(41:18):
account for all the matter in the universe. So we
don't know how much matters in the universe. But the
idea is if there is enough, then that gravity will
reverse and things will start to contract again, right, right,
Because gravity is this force that attracts matter to other matter.
And yeah, eventually, if there's enough matter, it'll it'll it'll
counteract that expansive force that came out of it. And

(41:40):
then yeah, probably will either stop, is one school of thought,
or the universe will contract and form what's called the
Big Crunch. And some people say that's what our universe is.
It's just the cycle of expansion and contraction that takes
place over many billions of years. But we're just one
part of a cycle that UM is ongoing, perhaps forever.

(42:04):
It makes it sound when we talk about like that.
It makes it sound like the universe is just breathing.
It does, doesn't it in a creepy way? And Chuck.
That has to do also the reason why they don't
know UM if it's going to keep expanding or contracting.
They don't know if it's UM what's called the closed
universe with positive curvature or one with negative curvature, right,

(42:26):
And it also has to do with the the shape
of space to a certain degree. And Strickland also wrote
a really top notch article called does space have a shape?
It really is? Um? And something from studying this that
they figured out is that really it doesn't seem like
it has a positive or a negative curvature. It seems flat,

(42:49):
seems like it has a zero curvature. And this is
what's called the flat problem of the Big Bang theory.
Why should it be flat? That doesn't make any sense
because if you look at the spectrum between positive curvature
and negative curvature, there's a lot of places on that
spectrum where the universe could fall one way or the other.
But it's so close to the middle that astrophysicists and

(43:12):
cosmologists have no idea if it's positive or negative in
its curvature, and they've started to wonder like, why should
we be almost exactly in the middle. It doesn't make
any sense. It would suggest that the early universe was
so finely tuned that we're only slightly off of center.

(43:33):
So it would have had to have started almost completely
at center. Because remember, small fluctuations grow bigger and bigger
over time and on a larger scale. So since we're
still so close to center right now, with the universe
as big as it is, it would have had to
have been basically on top of exactly in the middle
between a closed and or a negative and a positive

(43:54):
curvature at the very beginning of it, which is kind
of puzzling in and of itself. That that's like, well,
that indicates some sort of weird fine tuning. So does
that mean that the astrophysicists are off a little bit
and their their own fine tuning of the Big Bang
theory and inflation or what? Who knows? Or is there
a little kid with the lighter who set the snake

(44:14):
off and the snake was very well manufactured. Uh, well,
that's just one thing that we can't quite explain. Um.
We talked earlier about the fact that at the very
beginning that the Big Bang theory wasn't meant to address
a lot of questions. Um. One of which is that
we touched on was what happened before the Big Bang?

(44:36):
And we just don't know. It doesn't even try, it doesn't.
It can't write. Yeah, that like trying to explain time
before timing existed is a futile right because you get
into stuff that I just suggested, which is basically amounts
to intelligent design or whatever, And there's that's that's beyond science.
Like science isn't equipped to say, oh, well, what about

(44:58):
this or what about that, and I tried really hard
to get Neil the grass Tyson to say something and
he was not going to bite. Well, no, and smartly.
You know, I think a scientist looks at the observational
data and extrapolates from there and not And I'm sure,
like I said, I'm sure, And I think he even
said in the interview that sure, people like to talk
about these things, but um, it's not like you know,

(45:18):
hard science. And and also to answer that flat problem
that I brought up, apparently inflation theory does answer it
does satisfy it by saying the universe appears flat to
us because we're looking at it strictly on a very
local level, even though we're looking at ninety nine billion
light years or something like that. Um, the it it's

(45:43):
really just a very small segment of something. So if
you take a balloon and you blow it up, it's
still curved. But um, the if you're just looking at
just a pinpoint segment of it, it's gonna appear flat
to everybody looking at it from just that tiny perspective.
So it's basically a perspective that we're looking at the
universe right now, makes it seem like it's flat, but

(46:03):
it's really actually curved one way or the other. Right,
that's the answer to that. Uh, Well, should we talk
about some of the problems with the Big Bang theory.
There are criticisms and there will continue to be. One
was that, uh, is that it violates the first law
of thermodynamics, that you can't create or destroy matter or energy.
And UH proponents will say that that's unwarranted for a

(46:25):
couple of reasons. One is it, like we already said,
it doesn't address the creation of the universe that was
never meant to but just how it evolved or inflated
over the years, over the years, over the sixty or
seventy years. Uh. And another reason is kind of like
we said earlier, is that the further back you go,
the rules don't apply. So maybe the law of thermodynamics

(46:48):
is just completely moot when you go back that far,
like it didn't come into being until later. Yeah, if
matter and energy or like one and the same, I
can imagine that some of our current laws don't thoroughly apply. Yeah, well,
probably a lot of them. Right. And then one of
the other things too, is that, um, that inflation that

(47:08):
supposedly happened when um, the strong nuclear force decoupled from
the electro weak force, and the universe suddenly expanded, you know,
within that one second, it just kept growing and growing
and growing way faster than the speed of light. And
a lot of people are like, wrong, nothing can go
faster than the speed of light. Well there was no light,

(47:31):
Well nothing you could see. Yeah, they're definitely photons, but
they they had that. The proponents of Big Bang have
the same answer. They say, well, again, dude, you're talking
general relativity. This this that wouldn't have applied at all. Yeah,
the answer is kind of consistently. Don't even come at
me with that, right your laws? Yeah, uh, should we

(47:51):
talk about should we finish with a few other alternative explanations. Yeah,
Like we said, there are alternative models, right, One of
is that same one that Einstein was a proponent of,
the steady state model. That it is not actually expanding
um and the apparently this this is hard for me

(48:12):
to wrap my mind around. The people who say that
it's not expanding explain away expansion by saying that matters
created as um in proportion to the original density of
the universe. So maybe the universe is expanding some and
more more matter has to be created to keep the

(48:35):
same density. So I think what they're saying is that
the universe has been at the same density all the time,
and sure it's expanding, but it's also creating more matter,
so which holds it static? Yeah, I guess so. Uh
the eck pi rodic echirotic pyrochic I know this two
letters should not be epirotic pyrotic model. Yeah. I think

(48:58):
that's just we're the worst. Uh that suggestion universe as
the result of a collision of Uh, well, that's when
you brought up earlier of two three dimensional worlds and
that there is some hidden fourth dimension out there. Well,
that's part of UM. The fourth dimension is part of
like standard astrophysics and cosmology. But this was like this,

(49:22):
this thing says our universe came out of two universes
colliding um in the fourth dimension, which that defies me
a little bit. But but the idea that there are
four dimensions in one of them is time is definitely
a part of like standard stuff. Still hard to think of.
And then plasma cosmology. I like that one a lot

(49:45):
because it's just totally different from the way we think
of the universe. It seeks to describe it based on
its um basically in it's it's electrical charge state, you know,
rather than like the temperature of it or the gent
ay or anything like that. It's more involved in like
the plasma aspects of a plasma's ionized gas um, and

(50:07):
it's like a fourth state of matter, and plasma cosmology
looks at it through that lens, which is basically totally
alien to everything we just talked about. From what I
can gather, did you just say there's a totally aliens
out there? There's aliens out there and the universe just
started by a little kid with a lighter. That's my stand. Well, Um,
if you like this, then stick around because right now, Chuck,

(50:31):
we have uh an interview with Neil Degrass Tyson. We
weren't joking. Great job on that one too, buddy, Thanks man,
we missed you. He was like, where's Chuck? That we did?
Did well? How are you guys doing good? How are
you doing? How stuff works? I have an inkling that
you may have a clue. Um, so I guess my

(50:51):
first question is then, how do you specifically, how do
you think of the universe. When you think of the universe,
as a whole, like do you think of it as
something like a speck of dust underneath the giant fingernail?
Or is it part of a branching multiverse or is
it a bubble that kind of pushes up against other bubbles? Like? What?
What is the universe when you think of it? I

(51:12):
don't think I think of the universe in a fundamentally
different way from that of my colleagues. What you want
to do is separate the things we have data and
observations to support and the things that live and thrive
on the frontier of theorizing about what the universe was
is or will one day be, or what larger system

(51:35):
it could be a part of. So if you live
in the realm of data, then we are in an
expanding universe, and it's been expanding for nearly fourteen billion years,
and it was smaller in the past and hot in
the past, and it's getting larger and cooler by the minute.
And we exist on this planet we call Earth born

(51:58):
four point six billion years go, with the rest of
the Solar System in some undis undistinguished part of an
undistinguished galaxy we call the Milky Way. And this this,
this scenario. This picture was very hard earned, and it's
it's no more than about eighty or ninety years old

(52:20):
in total. Edwin Hubble, the man in this particular usage
of the words, Edwin Hubble, in the nine twenties, ninety
years ago, discovered that there are other islands universes, if
you will, not the way we might think of that
term today, but back then there were the spiral fuzzy

(52:41):
things in the night sky, imagined to be just spiral
fuzzy things in the Milky Way. He would show that
those spiral fuzzy things are not in the Milky Way,
they are entire other milky ways, other galaxies. And that
was a profound expanding expansion of our worldview, if you would.
And then just three years after that, he would show

(53:02):
that these spiral fuzzy things are rapidly moving away from us.
Coupled with Einstein's general theory of relativity, we would learn
that it's not just galaxies spreading apart within a pre
existing space. It is the fabric of the space and
time itself that's expanding. All of this is supported by data.
So if you have discomfort thinking that the universe had

(53:26):
a beginning and that we will expand forever. Then too bad.
That's just what the universe says. And the universe, I've
said this before, the universe is under no obligation to
make sense to you, especially when what we learn of
the universe comes to us from methods and tools that
completely transcend our native, in born biological senses, which in

(53:49):
fact is the great ascent of science. What are all
the ways we can decode the operations of nature without
having to rely on the limits um that are sent
our biological senses forced us to occupy. So when science
is furthered um you know, decades down the road um,

(54:11):
and the vision we have or the view we have
of the universe we live in is um is magnified
by orders of magnitude from what we're looking at through
right now? What do what do you suspect? It's what
shape do you suspect it's going to take? Do you
have suspicions? And if I mean, if you don't, how
do you keep yourself from from making that leap? Like? Yes,

(54:31):
of course, this is what it's going to be, this
is what we're really living in. Well, we all have biases,
and let me not call them biases. Let's say, we
all have longings for how we think or want the
universe to be, and if you begin to believe your
longings too strongly, then you could you might miss some

(54:56):
realities that don't fit your expectations, and someone else will
catch them and make the discovery. So it's okay to
lean in one direction or another, but don't do so
while being blind to what else could be true in
spite of how you think it might be. So uh So,
now that the scenario I gave you is sort of

(55:17):
is very well established in terms of observations, data, uh data,
and um basically a century of thinking about and observing
the universe, imposing questions and answering them. So beyond that
we can ask, um, is there a multiverse? A right?
This seems to come naturally out of certain thinking about

(55:40):
the behavior of the universe. When you try to bring
together quantum physics and Einstein's general relativity, there are there
are good arguments to suggest that we could be in
a multiverse, and it's not obvious, at least to me,
how one would test that just yet. And so the

(56:01):
theories of the universe that point to a multiverse are
themselves well tested. So this is what gives you the
confidence that maybe maybe our multiverse folks are onto something.
And there are other frontiers, for example, the quantum physics,
which is the theory of the small, and general relativity,

(56:25):
the theory of the large. They work perfectly well in
their own regimes. General relativity describing the large scale universe,
quantum physics describing with very high precision atoms, molecules, nuclei, particles,
this sort of thing. But in the early universe, when

(56:46):
the entire universe was the size of an atom, then
we might suppose that quantum forces override whatever was going
on with general relativity, because now the entire universe is
of the size that quantum laws um significantly manifest and
so and right now we do not have a good

(57:08):
way to merge those two theories. And this we've got
top people working on it, either collectively to string theorists
and others in that realm who are thinking long and
hard about these are the like a third theory that
needs to be introduced that will enclose quantum physics and
general relativity into a deeper, broader understanding of what's going on,

(57:31):
or will quantum physics absorb general relativity uh I don't
know that people know just yet, and it involves very
high levels of math and higher dimensions and this sort
of thing. And some people have criticized string theory for
not really being a legitimate theory because you can't test
it in any traditional way. But it's the only game

(57:52):
in town. So and they're not very expensive, you know,
you give them a pencil and a pad throwing a
laptop of string theorists in business. So I let them
go as far as they can take it. So, UM,
it doesn't seem like there is either like you said, uh,
quantum quantum physics maybe the answer to all this. We
just don't fully understand uh that that field yet enough

(58:15):
to um get back to the moment of the Big
Bang or the what happened before the Big Bang? Um.
But it could also be, from what I've seen, the
unified field theory that gets us back to that point.
But either way, to get to a point where we
go further beyond our current understanding, further back in time

(58:35):
in the Big Bang, including before the Big Bang, of
what was before. Um, it seems like it's going to
take a vast leap forward. Um. Do you think that
leap is going to come from a genius that hasn't
been born yet, or has been born but hasn't been
educated and entered the field yet. Is that how it's
going to happen. Is it gonna happen from you know, uh,

(58:56):
this person combining this work with this work and that
work and this work and and suddenly the pieces are
going to fall together. In that sense, that's a great
question that also has a philosophical dimension to it, such
that if you in modern times great leaps and science,
do they happen by the lone genius burning the candle

(59:18):
at midnight coming up with a Eureka moment? Or do
they come about because you have huge, expensive, highly collaborative
scientific projects such as LIGO discovering gravitational waves, such as
UM the next generation space telescope it's called the James
Webb Space Telescope, not yet launched, but that will enable

(59:41):
us to see galaxies being born in the early universe,
as well as a host of other other front tier
observations that were not possible with previous telescopes. Well, that
telescope had to be designed by whole teams of people
with questions that they had in mind that they want
answered by the new data. So so I I'm not

(01:00:03):
convinced that we're just waiting for a new smart person
to come along and have it all makes sense. I
think we're waiting for someone to obtain new data that
we've never seen before that then forced us into new
ideas and understandings of the universe. Maybe there's some new

(01:00:24):
theory that something. Maybe I'm not discounting it, but I
can tell you is we're in an era. Look at
the Higgs boson for example, that required the large Hadron
collider and thousands of scientists and tens of thousands of
engineers who built the thing in the first place. So
we're kind of in a collaborative era right now. And

(01:00:48):
so if I would, if I were betting man, I
would say that the great discoveries to come will come
about from huge collaborations, possibly even international collaborations. Now that
that doesn't remove with the question as to whether there
is an Einstein walking among us who happened to have
been born into poverty in a developing country, and then

(01:01:08):
we will never know, Well, that would be one of
the great tragedies of modern civilization. So I, as an educator,
feel very strongly about what kind of access. People of
the world should have to knowledge, to learning, to health,
to uh, you know, a person should be able to
live a day and not have the entire day be

(01:01:31):
preoccupied about whether whether you have food or whether or
not you're going to die from a disease that your
neighbor just died of. So this is a So I
think we should be able to measure our state of
our civilization by the extent to which we are in
the position to discover another Einstein rising up from the

(01:01:54):
midst and and that's so that's one way to get
an Einstein another one. So's to wait around until one
is born into the right circumstances. I'd rather, you know,
we've got seven billion people on Earth, somebody and there's
got to be badass enough to help us out. So you,
I mean, you brought up your your your role as
an educator, and you're a world class science popularizer and explainer.

(01:02:16):
What what is it that got you into science as
a kid? I was I was nine years old and
it was a first visit to the Hayden Planetarium right
here in New York. But my local planetarium. I think
most big cities have planetariums, even medium sized cities, we'll
have a planetarium. And my family, my parents took my
brother and my sister and me too, all the cultural

(01:02:39):
institutions of the city every weekend. So one weekend it
was the Natural History Museum, another it was the zoo,
another it was the aquarium. We even went to other
things that sort of talented grown ups did, like we'd
go to a baseball game, or the opera or or
the theater. And that exposure enabled the three of us

(01:02:59):
to see what is possible beyond the traditional you want
to be a doctor, lawyer, indian chief, you know, the
three traditional options that you're given as a as a
as a six year old or a seven year old.
And so out of that arose my interest in the
universe that really got cemented by by the time I
was eleven, I knew that if I was so convinced

(01:03:22):
that I wanted to do astrophysics, that I began to
began to question whether whether or not it was in
fact the universe that chose me. That's really cool. Um, well,
thank you very much. Dr Tyson. We appreciate you joining us.
This is like you just took our big Big Bang
episode and moved along light years. So thank you. Okay,

(01:03:43):
thank you, And is not actually very far in the
scale of the union, so I feel bad if I
had taken it along billion. How about how about or something?
Part is only three point to six light years, so
that still won't even alright, you know, park is not
even far enough a way to get to the nearest
star to the Sun. Okay, so you're just in the

(01:04:05):
wrong zone there, Okay, Well then how about billions of parsecs? Nice?
Thank you very much. What a guy, huh, great job.
Yeah he was. Man, he's just such a cool customer.
That's why he is where he is now. Yeah, and
if you want to hang out with him, head on
over to the Hayden Planetarium. I'm sure he'd be happy
to see you. Um. You can see him on tour.

(01:04:27):
You can see him with Star Talk Live. He's got
a podcast for those of you who don't know, with
our pel Eugene Merman. He was on our TV show.
Even he was I didn't get a chance to ask
him if he remembered that he didn't. That's why I
didn't get a chance. Yeah, I just would have been embarrassing. Um. Well,
if you want to know more about the big bank
type those words into the search part how stuff works

(01:04:49):
dot Com and they'll bring up some great stuff. And
since I said search parts, time for listener mail, I'm
gonna call this is Russia European. Remember that debate, Well,
wouldn't so much a debate. We just kind of wondered
in the Continents episode, Hey guys, thanks for cracking me
up with the show. Astonishing how many film references you

(01:05:12):
can fit into a geography lesson. Yes, Russia is definitely
a European country exclamation point. Historically, it's always been considered
a part of Europe. For example, was named as one
of the six major European countries in World War One,
and the czar was closely related to other royalty in Europe. Uh,
this is very different from China or India, always much

(01:05:32):
more distant and mysterious to the east. Also, consider that
maps are very deceptive. Over of Russia's population is on
the European side, including every major city from Moscow to St. Petersburg,
from Milan to I knew you were gonna say that
very nice. I would have been so disappointed if you not. Uh,
most of the land you see to the east is

(01:05:54):
empty and largely uninhabitable, only there to look pretty on
a map. Well, I don't know about that, but that's
what that's what the little kid with the lighter put
it there for. So cheers. That is from Timothy and
that was one heckroposcience fil reference Timothy or timoth Ay?
Is he Russian? Yeah? Good point. Yeah it's timoth Ay,
Mosco wrote, using a pseudonym Timothy Milan to miss. If

(01:06:20):
you want to get in touch with me and Chuck
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com and as always, joined us at home on the
way Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on

(01:06:42):
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