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     Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) Lecture Series: The Cosmic Perspective with Dr. Neil
    DeGrasse Tyson
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Neil deGrasse Tyson is a renowned physicist and recipient of nine honorary doctorate and NASA distinguished service now is research interesting. Star formation they slowly start working galaxies and the structure is the first person to hold Frederick rose. I hate hearing the American Music Museum of Natural History here is also busy research scientist and lecturer at Princeton University. Please join me and you your welcome. Dr. Neil grasp. How the Universe us is good and universe is good. Your Honor allow me to clarify my statement about mayors of towns. What I told her during our little cocktail reception was that the elected office that I have the highest regard for is Mayor
because it is the highest elected official that has any direct impact on your quality of life at levels above that they really don't. The senators don't. They don't care or they don't even know whether your garbage got collected all right or whether there's a noise problem or whether the police are responding as they should. And so then I also say that but the position is not so high a rank that people want to kill you. You say so. So it's the perfect combination of power and it's so. So it's an honor to be share the floor with you here. Thank you all for this invitation. I'm further honored to be the first speaker in the series not only for this year but ever so that's putting pressure on me. I just want you to understand. Furthermore I am not unmindful of the pitch of
these seats upon which you sit. I also happen to know that as you get along in years and you pass like 35 or 40 if you're 40 years old and up and someone places you in a reclining chair and dims the lights. It's bed time. That's that's it. All right. Now if you're 25 you don't understand this fact. You have no clue what that fact is above 40. You know you're old when the prospect of getting sent to bed early is really attractive. And below a certain age. Now I want to stay awake. All right. I came to talk about astronomy didn't I. So let me let me do that obvious from my hotel room I looked out the balcony and there was a 10 foot alligator sunning himself this afternoon outside my balcony. I don't know if this is normal or not.
You just have alligators sunning themselves. OK. OK. Because I was worried. I was like ready to call 911. But the alligator was just there. You know it's like he wasn't even worried. He was not like he didn't think he belongs there. So that's why I said I should check on that first. Also I have a. We're going to dim the lights so we can see the screen a little better than that are. OK. OK. Now you all go to sleep you see that's how that works. If if you don't understand this symbol. There is no way I can explain it to you. So. Just just ignore it if you don't if you don't if you know now my laser kind of really bright. Does anyone have a dimmer laser than this. This is just kind of bright. Was it OK with you guys you're good. OK good good good. You know talk such as these are often
particularly in lecture series. They're often just sort of loosely veiled like commercials for someone's next book that comes out and this talk is no exception to that. No actually. No I don't like book talks because because you can just read the book right. Why do I have to tell you about the book when you could read the book. So what I'd rather do when invited to give a talk is to speak about things that you can't really find anywhere. And such is what will happen today. Now there's stuff I could talk about if asked I'd like to have a vibrant question and answer session at the end and I could talk about the subject but I won't unless asked about the fate of NASA's space program. The demotion of Pluto to the dirty ice ball that it always was. Don't shoot the messenger on that one. Plus there's like a special coming on next Tuesday on Pluto. We'll talk if you're interested. We'll tell you about it Big Bang dark matter
dark energy big profound areas of ignorance in our understanding of the universe. Search for Life we found water on the moon the multiverse. And of course the world is going to end on December 21st 2012. So that's if you believe 50 million Internet pages that tell you that. So we can talk about that later or not. But what I want to do is offer you a cosmic perspective a cosmic perspective. No I only see just the heads of you guys here and you just see my head right. You see more because sometimes my legs do things and I want to make sure that we can like we can do that. All right. The cosmic perspective like what is that cosmic perspective is a way of looking at the world that is deeply informed by our place in the universe by how we have come to understand our place in the universe. That's a cosmic perspective and sometimes how you invest in coming to understand the universe influences. For example the
naming of things. Let's let's do this by Higgs by example this is something called naming rights and we'll will highlight this. Let's put this up on the board. I know some of you are having flashbacks. You know right now that mysterious chart of boxes that was in the front of your chemistry class that you swore you would never see again. Well here it is the periodic table of the elements. Well I can represent these elements in different ways. I have a really cool periodic table of the elements program. If you get that from Geek Central. All right. Special Web site for geek things all things geek I could color code these by for example melting point. So let's see all the elements noted by melting point. So here we are. This is kind of cool. So the redder you are the higher is your melting point. So the high melting point group of elements are right here. If Thomas Edison had access to
this software he would have gone straight to this element as having one of the highest melting points on the entire table. And that element W is what Tungsten W for tungsten of course. Of course that's tungsten. So a lot of Edison's challenges were trying to find that filament that wouldn't melt under the high currents that he passed through them. And so he experimenting with all manner of filaments and landed on tungsten by trial and error. If he had this table he wouldn't be trial and error is actually a higher melting point object element appear that's carbon the highest melting point on the entire table kind of anomalously sitting there as the dark is redder. So this is if this is a fun table if you can arrange this way there are other elements down here we'll get to them in a few minutes. So here's something interesting. Let's look at elements Codie like when they were discovered. OK. So
these are the elements in blue that were known to the ancients. They didn't know jack about anything else on this table. OK. As far as they like Earth Air Fire and water and then these seven elements. That's it. All right. So there you go. And so no elements were discovered from ancient times until 16 69. OK so let's move forward in time. Now what year are we here. So this is now 1776. So the year the founding of America and we've added the colonies so we've added six more elements. All right. So when Thomas Jefferson is pinning the Declaration of Independence these are the only known elements in the universe right here right. Yeah. These are the yellow ones there and there's some familiar ones. Oh is oxygen and nitrogen chlorine zinc nickel cobalt manganese platinum. And of course hydrogen.
Now if we move a little further. 1869. So the civil war is over and a lot of investment in element discovery has been going on and we can now take the the table starts taking shape as the table. That's kind of interesting. And the Russian chemist Mendeleev is organizing these elements in a way that takes us into the modern error of chemistry. So. A couple of other things here to you. What element is that uranium of course uranium is named after the planet Uranus which only a couple of years earlier had just been discovered. So as you discover elements chemist knew that these are important things in the universe. So they wanted to give them lofty names be sitting there loftiness in the universe. So if you had a object named Uranus in the universe then you'd come.
And your next element discovered would be named uranium X and that's what Neptunia am. So we have Uranus Neptune plutonium named after Pluto Pluto had just been discovered in 1930. Plutonium is discovered and element is discovered 10 years later they say let's name it after Pluto. So Pluto ends up with a chemical element named after it on false pretense. Each of these are like hundreds of times bigger than Pluto. There are seven moons in the solar system bigger than Pluto. Are they on this table. No Pluto when it was discovered we thought it was big. And so even with all excited and it turned out to be really puny and icy and and weird and with a messed up orbit that crossed the orbit of Neptune and it just got no business on this table at all.
But it's there now. Let us now arrange the table by. Let's put the flag of the country who discovered each element that be kind of interesting right. There will be a bit of history let's check that out. Oh there you go. All right. Let's see what happened here was. So America is going like gangbusters in the upper part of the periodic table of elements. That means we get to name them. Are you ready. Amery see we are California. Berkeley. You just get to name it you know. Name it after your dog if you want to if you're that good at it. This is investments in particle physics undertaken by the American government recognizing that if you understand the energy contained within the atom then you can make a bomb out of that. The bomb that was tested in in Trinity
point New Mexico. Was not a uranium bomb. People were pretty sure that would fit what would undergo fission without experiment. Plus it was very hard to obtain the uranium decisional uranium plutonium had just been discovered in 1940. Five years later it was in a bomb that was tested at Trinity point and it was tested successfully and a few weeks later was dropped. And Nagasaki. And so this effort here. We'd like to say oh we're Americans and we're discoverers and we like to explore new ideas in the world. This is driven by a principally a military investment in the frontier of physics. Let's keep looking. Who else is heavily represented here. Great Britain OK great Britain or the United Kingdom. There they go 24 elements on the periodic table 24 elements. Great Britain let me remember. You know they were world superpower. Whoa. Forgot about that.
Hill Britannia Britannia rules the world. They've got 24 elements that they've discovered. But this seems to be a correspondent who else was like really powerful not Sweden. We'll get back to Sweden in a minute. Germany France. OK these are world economic and military superpowers and they're the ones discovering the frontier of the world. Here's something interesting over here. Helium neon argon and CRETON Xenon radon. These are what kinds of elements. The noble gases do you know why the cold noble gases so much because they don't do anything. Ok allow me to clarify. These elements have completely closed outer electronic shells so that they can't bind and make molecules with anybody else. So. So why should why should. What does that make you noble. Well I'll tell you why the cold noble gases. Because the Brits discovered these.
And if you're British and you're the noble class you don't interact with the underclass. So they call the they call these the noble elements. And it reminds me of why we fought a war to get away from these folks. There was a British accent in our provost wasn't there. Sir where are you from. He is from the United Kingdom. I will atone for my comments. Tomorrow I fly to London to Gatwick and I will be traveling to Cambridge University of Cambridge to give an award to Stephen Hawking. So. It will be the cosmos award for his efforts to bring science to the public beyond just his brilliance that he exhibits in physics. You got out of that one. All right.
So this just kind of fun here to see the history of the world unfolding in front of you. Now let's figure out what happened in Sweden because that's what's going on there. So Sweden is a suite in the audience. OK it was fine. I'll only be saying nice things about Sweden. All right. So what happened in Sweden. Why did they have so many elements. Well there's a town called YouTube. OK. And I think the region is called Yewtree. I'm not sure where you can correct me on that. The point is in that town there's a cave that has had these rare earth elements in that cave and out of that cave they discovered elements a bunch of elements that no one had ever known about before new to the periodic table. So the first one you want to name it. Of the town where they found it. Out of respect for the municipality. So they called it Yttrium. OK for after Easterby Yttrium. But then they found another element. All right. Now what are you going to do. OK I have a call that
terbium. OK. So now they use these four letters. OK. All right. That was you know 50 years later. Now they found another element. What are you going to do there. OK so now we're like down here Serbia. All right. What's it now what's the fourth element. What are you going to do now. What this does not the no letters left. OK. Turby and they forgot to go back and get the whole thing with the whole thing go in there OK. Then they found a fifth elements. And there's no other way to slice this so they just gave up. And where is Sweden. What part of the world is it. Scandinavia. We have scandium right there. And so this is part of that effort which boosted the element count for Sweden without Sweden having to be a world dominating power. But this bit about international investments in science I remain intrigued by it. Before the euro was introduced
as the unit of currency in Europe each country would of course print their own currency. And they put who they want to on their money. That's kind of cool to see what a country values among its people. And so I made a call I create I have my own collection of currency from around the world. And here's some of it. But I want to point out a few things. This is a Polish note here and this is Nicholai Copernicus. All right. Right up here we have. This is Croatia and this is Nikolai Tesla a famous physicist. This guy I can't pronounce his name this is Bulgaria but he was a great compiler of scientific discoveries and an educator. This is author and aviator Anton seena shrubbery. And he wrote what did he write the little prince isn't that cute here and I forgot who this dude is. I forgot. But he's I just forgot. I'm Italian. Oh sorry. He's this is. I was on Travolta
after whom we named the what the vote. Yeah if you're if you're good you've got stuff named after you. All right. Shocking. Yes. Any time someone goes about your job that means they're admitting that it is a really good joke. We've got this in Switzerland we have oilor brilliant mathematician Galileo. There he goes. Galileo. We have Michael Faraday Here he is performing electric electricity experiments in the United Kingdom. Brilliant. There's probably a trillion dollars worth of economic electrical inventions derived from his discoveries. Michael Faraday he's the one who first passed a wire through a magnetic field and showed that a current was induced in the wire. And he showed this to his friends. Here's just a little meter with tick as he did that. And they thought it was kind of cool so he took it to Parliament showed
parliament and they look you know why should we care about this. And he says OK you don't have to care about it now. But I'm pretty sure one day you will tax it. All right. So. So this is actually how all electricity is generated today. You have a wire that's moving through a magnetic field induces a current and all electricity today in the world is made by his invention. This is past due and I don't know what to do to this dog here but it doesn't look comfortable. This is in the forms. This is my man right here. Isaac Newton got a little telescope has got his orbits his comments. Isaac Newton is the smartest guy there ever was in the history of the world and do it and don't argue with me on that because you'll just lose. All right. Do you have some other favorite person who you'd like to believe is the smartest person there ever was. Feinman Darwin anybody else.
Tyson. I was going to say which Tyson. But no that doesn't work. Really. That's right. That. That wouldn't play as a sentence. Isaac Newton discovered the laws of the universal law of gravitation the laws of gravity. I mean the laws of motion the laws of optics showed how it is that planets don't orbit in perfect circles but ellipses. He had a friend who came up to him said Ike. Why that shape and not some other shape because that shape comes out of his one over R-squared gravity long it comes out of it. But why that shape. And he said you know I don't know. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you. So he goes back home. This is his country home in Lincolnshire far away from London where the plague was killing people. All right. See when you smart you leave the town where the plague is killing people first. Evidence of the fact that he's smart.
He left London goes to Lincolnshire. He's trying to figure out why you have ellipses a flattened circle. Comes back two months later tells his friend OK here's why. Actually there are sections of a cone cut in different angles and you and this is inevitable from inverse square law. And if so how did you figure that out. He says well the math available was didn't work so I to invent integral and differential calculus. Isaac Newton. And who did you say it was. You wanted to be this one. Oh excuse me after you did all that. Then he turned 26. I left that out I'm sorry. Then he turned 26. And by the way he died a virgin. Just in case you were trying to compare your life to
what you can accomplish. I'm just saying he was pretty sure of that fact. So are there any scientist on American currency. We've got Ben Franklin. OK. Is that why he's on the currency. Is there a lightning bolt. Is there a k only. Is there a key was a glowing key. Do we know that he was one of the most brilliant minds regarding electricity of the eighteenth century. Do we know this at all. No. So yes he was one of the most brilliant scientists of his day. That is cleansed from our monetary memory of him. He's on our money because he's a founding father. Oh there's a there's a there's a. This guy is Gauss.
OK gouts guess and Gauss is German. By the way if you think of like the best engineers in the world. What do you think in German right. Of course in America we think of German engineers right. We think of their cars. They know that if something is engineered in Germany chances are it's going to be pretty good right. When we are together on that. OK OK so let's look a little closer at this 10 deutschmarks from Germany. Let's zoom in. Wow. A mathematical distribution function on the money. Or. Of course they have the best engineers. They got equations on their money. This is called a. This is the normal function the Gaussian distribution function. One of the most fundamental representations of things in the world there ever
was named after Gauss. So I think it's pretty important that you recognize your scientists among you could recognize that they shape the world if you don't you'll be misled into thinking that other people shape your world and they can in certain fundamental ways. Sure. But if you do it to the exclusion of scientists you will lose an understanding of what actually shapes the past present and future. Well let's keep going. And we all know this date of course very solemn date. I was particularly hit hard by that because I live four blocks from Ground Zero. These images are taken from from outside my window of my apartment building so I'm closer to the base of the towers than they are tall. And this is the instant the south tower was hit. So the
fuel is not yet ignited. The north tower had already been hit obviously so 20 30 minutes later the South Tower gets hit. I don't see the plane come in because this building is blocking my view. And just to put this in context this building is a 50 story hotel. And from this angle of view it comes up to about the 60 or 70 story of the South Tower. So this is a split second after contact. The fuel has not yet ignited and you get that here. So now the fuel begins to ignite creates a definite aggression wave and then engulfs the entire upper. So the reason why I'm going through this is not to like just morbid you out or anything. This is where the towers used to be standing an hour and two minutes earlier. So there's so there's a big gap there. This is the Woolworth Building which curiously and ironically spent more time with the tenure of being the tallest building in the world than did the world trade center. So
it's adjacent to it. And after the towers fell this is my apartment building right here. And so this is the dust from the pulverized concrete. So I I say just to make a larger point not to just dredge up bad memories. Shortly after this within a week President Bush addresses the public and I forgot where he might have in the Rose Garden or the Senate or the Capitol somewhere. He gave a speech regarding September 11th and he said in an attempt to in an attempt to distinguish we from they he says our God let's hold aside the fact that it's the same God he didn't know this apparently. OK. The God of Islam is the same God of the God of the Judeo-Christian Bible. Great peril. He didn't notice. OK. She's our God. Loosely quoting biblical Genesis he says our God is the God who named the star.
Try to distinguish we from day now. This is before I was on his Rolodex. OK. Because I could help them out there. What he did not know is that two thirds of all stars that have names have Arabic names. I don't think that's the point he was trying to make. Arabic names Arabic names. Here they go. OK. Can you read those. You know Arabic names. All of these. One of my favorite of these Arabic names is the one of the brightest stars in the constellation Orion Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. You've heard of it. You might see the movie Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is an actual name of a star that stands for armpit of the great one by the way.
So these names just go on and on and on and on and on. OK. So you can ask the question how is it how how was that. How does that happen. Well we just being egalitarian is that it is your turn will name stuff after you. What happened. You go back a thousand years to Islam in this 300 year period. If you buy any book on the scientific achievements of Islam they will be talking about stuff that happened in that 300 year period. What happened in that 300 year period Baghdad was the central crossroads of intellectual curiosity. It was open to everybody to Muslims to Jews to Christians to doubters which the word atheist didn't exist back then. But doubters OK. Everybody was welcome. Ideas got exchanged something we often take for granted today in a university setting for example. But back then that was kind of a new concept and
what came out of that period. Algebra was invented. The word algebra and algorithm are Arabic words are numerals are called Arabic numerals. They didn't invent the numerals but they were the first ones to do interesting things with them. In the invention of algebra they did didn't stop in mathematics agriculture engineering medicine Astro Lane. From that period are some of the most collected and coveted pieces of scientific art there ever was. The navigation that that took place at that time not seagoing navigation but navigation through the deserts. We always had a clear sky huge advances took place over that period. Then came the end of the eleventh century if you read history books they'll say oh well Baghdad got sacked by marauders and they'll give you some traditional militaristic historical account and they will leave out the fact that this guy.
Al-Ghazali they'll leave him out because they think that history only happens because people have wars. But this history that takes place for other reasons that sometimes are more subtle al-Ghazali was a scholar of the Quran. And before he came around everyone was just reading the Koran according to their own interpretations. Islam was not yet a coherent organized set of rules of conduct and behavior for the entire community. So he comes along. He's an academic scholar and interpreter of the Quran and he gains social power and then ultimately political power and religious power with his interpretation of the Koran. And he reads the Quran and judges that according to Allah to manipulate numbers is the work of the devil.
And given the influence he had at the time that was the end of it. Here is a culture that invented algebra that gave meaning to the numerals zero which didn't exist before then in any meaningful way. He does all these advanced mathematics is the language of nature the language of the universe. If you're going to say that's the work of the devil that's the end of your capacity to contribute. On the frontier of scientific discovery and Islam has not recovered since. Yes the cultures has risen. There's the the. In Spain you have the Lomberg gorgeous architecture. So culture has risen. There has not been a shred of science to match what happened in that 300 year period since what's the consequence of this. Let's find out. Let's look at 100 years of the Nobel Prize. 110 years of the Nobel Prize.
OK let's look around cultures. We happen to know the Jews. Modern Jews value education immensely value education. Let's find out how many Jews have won the Nobel Prize in the sciences. Let's see. Of the 600 people who have won the Nobel Prize in these four categories we will include economics in this list just to be kind. OK so Jews have won 49 out of the twenty eight forty four hundred forty eight out of 600. You ratio that out. You get 25 percent one fourth of all the Nobel prizes ever won in science are won by Jews including atheist Jews. By the way which means they're culturally Jewish so that the culture of learning remains with them.
Let's find out how many Muslims have won the Nobel Prize by the way how many Jews are in the world. There's like 15 million tops out of nearly 7 billion people 15 million Jews. How many Muslims are in the world. It's about 1.3 billion billion. How many Muslims have won the Nobel Prize. I know you're the number one and a half. OK. We'll give this a full one there too. All right. Point three three percent. This is a travesty. A travesty that that many people in the world have delivered to Nobel laureates in the 20th century. A travesty
wise. And we can compare these numbers. Ratio of them Jews have 80 times the number of Nobel Prizes and the one 80th of the population. So the impact is 60 400 times. And I lay awake at night losing sleep asking how many secrets of the universe lay undiscovered because 1.3 billion people are not part of that enterprise. Had that creativity a thousand years ago continued. They have every Nobel Prize at the rate that was going it's gone. My point is just because you're going gangbusters at one point in time and history doesn't mean you always will. It's a fragile thing. It's not always there it's there at some point in time because you have enlightened people enlightened leaders enlightened institutions that understand the value and meaning of free thought. So they know not going to come. So you can't think that you can't do that. The moment
people start doing that that's the end of discovery and creativity. America in the 20th century. 21st century. Just checking to see if you're awake. Anyone here over 50 raise your hand over 50. Good. Got my whole front row here over 50 right here. All right. Do you remember when we all dreamt about tomorrow we would draw things like this tomorrow. OK. With like floating cars and you know this is how we thought about the future when we were around back in mid 20th century. Whether or not this is the future we built. It's the future we dream about and dreams carry ambitions.
There are no ambitions without dreams. Does anybody think this way today. Not that I know of. Not that I've seen anyone who hears 30 and under raise your hand. Have you ever had this thought in your entire life. No. If you said yes you're lying because I. Tell me no. Be honest anyway. Give me a 30 year old regime in the back row have you. Do you think this way. OK a Hollywood movie OK. It's like movies. All right. But sure we in our day at your age we're like making this happen in world affairs and we were thinking about the future as something that we would want to invent and make happen.
There's an old comic running around the Internet now where there is a grandparents and a grand kid. The grandkid is like spunky 17. Right. Saying Grandpa you know you guys had nothing when you were a kid. Look I got my iPod and my this and I got my computer. I got you had nothing. I got everything. How do you feel about that. The kid was a little cocky. Right. And the grandfather said Son it's true we didn't grow up with any of these marvelous things that you now enjoy. You know why. Because we were busy inventing them for you to use. Fast forward 21st century. That's kind of where we are and I got the correct. I should put in Andy here. Right. 21st century. Let's see what's going on in the 21st century. This is a map of the world where the
countries are drawn in correct size relative to their surface area which means it's a regular map. OK so. Now. Let us now distort the area of each country according to how much how much peer reviewed science gets published in that country. OK. So America remains a high producer of science content. So I'd expect tomorrow to get nice and fat and what's this over here. What's that over there. Japan is quite an active place. Not much is going on in Africa. A lot happens in Europe. Let's see. Let us now look at countries proportioned to area in proportion to peer reviewed science research publications. OK. So we're sitting fat and happy. Look at that. All right. That feels
pretty good here. Recognize order. Is so fat. Look at that. OK. Japan. Whoa. Oh. OK. All right. China is a little thinner than you might have thought. India is hanging in there. Another great travesty. One of the great continents of the world is essentially not a participant in this enterprise. Africa is extremely poor and no science goes on in Africa. That's not some accidental coincidence we've known since the Industrial Revolution that the extent to which you embrace and invest in science and technology correlates directly with your economic strength. Innovations in science and technology are the foundations of tomorrow's economy. So this map of science is also a map of economies. All right that's fine. So we're feeling good about this. But now let's do something
slightly different. Let's apportion the area not by how much science gets done but by the change in how much science gets done between 2000 and 2010. Got that to change. So now this is a trend line. We're about to see a trend line. Ladies and Gentlemen this is the future. If that trend line continues America will fade to insignificance on the world stage. Notice how much bigger China got. When you plot trendlines Argentina got pretty big. OK not Argentina Brazil got pretty big here. OK Brazil. When I mentioned Brazil to you what's the first thing to come to your head.
Ray for good Rio what about Rio sir. Cartwell your line you're thinking of something else in Rio aren't you. See here in a delay it was like a real carnival. Yeah you're thinking beaches aren't you. Yeah. Oh radio towers go he trying to get in good with the professors here. Yeah. In Rio. Isn't that where they invented that tongue bathing suit or something like that. Does anyone think that's comfortable. I just don't know. When you think of Brazil. Except the one guy who you're trying to impress is professor by saying his radio telescopes there you're not thinking science. This is a science map. So how did this get big Did you know that Brazil has one of the largest aerospace industries in the world. Do you know that when you fly between two regional marketplaces in America there's a
near 100 percent chance you're flying on a plane that was designed built and and sold from a Brazilian aerospace company. Did you know that in Brazil they invented the first jet that can fly on alcohol. It's a it's a community that employs 80000 people that Embraer the company has four billion dollars back ordered in airplanes right now Brazil. We know nothing of that do we. It's not the image we carry with us about South America is it. This is part of the blinders that we carry with us riding on the investments of a previous generation. Mexico is growing there. Mexico has huge resources. Just a matter of managing that properly. Europe is just this is the European Union basically right there. I think they just threw in Antarctica down here. I mean just ignore
ignore Antarctica. I don't think there's any. Well there's science that goes on out there but it's attributed to the countries that are doing the research. So what is the cause you say who cares. There's a cost to society. There's a cost. For example in modern American society you can walk into a hotel and see into the elevator and see this panel. Let's try this. Seven a nine 10 11 12 14. We live in a country where people among us are afraid of a number. This is America. And then you get down to the lobby level and then the floors below it. It is like B S B B B. I'm thinking. Are you afraid of negative numbers. I can. Can I buy a vowel please. What does SBB B but the baseman said
can you good just go put a zero and then go negative. I'm OK with that. Maybe my teach them mathematics to people while standing in the elevator doing nothing else in their life. Wait a minute. Here's a museum of music and art music art art history museum. What floor is that. Negative One. What what word is that touches translates from German to mean what. Germany thank you for this. This museum is in Germany. Germany Germany. Are. They cool with their negative numbers. Because they have equations on their money. Come back to America. I can buy this book.
I bought this book. I read this book. I have not been abducted by aliens so it works. It's got advice like avoid dark roads at night in your car. I think there are other good reasons to avoid that regardless of whether an alien is interested in you for having done so. But this is going on in our country let's do a little more here. This is the Daily News a few years ago in her that Mars would be closer than it had ever been in 60000 years to earth and that's a new story that's now I called the Mars virus because it shows up every year without a year associated with it. But there's a Mars. This is a true statement. All right. But if you're not scientifically literate then you don't understand how to interpret that. I will now tell you how to interpret Mars being nearer to earth than it's been in 60000 years. OK. What
direction is this. Does anybody know that South. South. Is South East. OK. Let's pretend it's East. OK for the moment. OK. East. I've never been this close to Spain before. That's. The problem is the American brain when they hear that a record is being said. They don't even ask what kind of a record is it. Is it one inch closer or is it a zillion miles closer. They know that the brain doesn't get a scientifically literate mind. That is the proper cosmic perspective. We'll know how to respond to that question.
So you go and read this article. Mars will be so close it'll be as big as the full moon and you need sunglasses to drive at night. Here's another one a little more subtle. You might have seen this as just a few weeks ago. This is holiday in advertising that you could work in and a long hard day and you come back to your nicely meticulously made up hotel room and you step into the bed and the bed is what cold. So there are employees who will get in the bed ahead of you to warm your bed for you. And so this was their official holiday and photo that shows a man and a woman warming the bed for you. Of course they can't touch you because that be just that that's that's a different service. All right. So so my point is here because they can't touch you because they're wrapped in cuddly warm clothing it
means their body heat does not escape this. OK. Clothing is warm because your heat does not escape. That's why it's warm. So you put this on and get in the bed. The bed is just as cold as before they went in. That's simple physics 101. But they build a whole ad campaign around this. Here's an ad from Bayer and is there any Bayer plants nearby. Good. Thank you. OK. So bear they had a campaign where their scientists and engineers go into the schools and and. And that would be showing off the fact that they have a lot of scientists engineers and that's great. Go into the schools. Help out you think this is an ad an actual ad and so they go help out sort of problem kids in school. Now hold aside the point that their definition of problem children is a black kid and a woman.
OK. Let's you know. How about like the white guy with the tattoos or just go off the motorcycle. Where is he. All right. Put him in here too. All right. But so let's see what they say. You're on try to get them interested and white lighter things fall faster than heavier things. There is no universe in which that happens. So someone compose the sentence you've got typeset it got put into an ad it got reviewed and no one caught that error. That's what happens when you don't you don't read the scientific literacy that you take for granted that a previous generation had put in. They finally did fix this. Here's the fix and try to get them interested in why lighter things fall as fast as everything that's the Galilean experiment. So they finally did fix it. But there's more. How about math. It's not just science here it's math.
Let's see if we can try that. There we go. Chave my oh thank. You. You. 360 degrees. If that member of Congress had been a snowboarder he would understand his angles there. What other half the schools in the district are below average complained the newspaper. That's kind of what the average. Is isn't it. Last I checked about half is going to end up below the average. So that's not what he meant. The journalists the journalists meant half are below standards or below grade level. But this isn't mathematically illiterate journalist not knowing that this sentence makes no sense. What else we have here is a good 80 percent of
airplane crash survivors that study the locations of the exit doors on takeoff. That's a pretty good you know you don't say I'm going to study where the exit doors were. Next time I get on the airplane because I want to be in that 80 percent. Here's the problem. Suppose just suppose that 100 percent of the dead people had studied the locations of the exit doors on takeoff. You wouldn't know because they're dead. So this is a one sided statistic that is meaningless to you. And you cannot make a rational judgment of behavior based on this information. Here's another one does Florida have a state lottery. Yeah of course embodies that state lottery. It's often said that it's a tax on the poor. The lottery you put bet money and it's like a zillion to one chance you're going to. It's not a tax on the poor. Now they say that because if you have lower income that same dollar is a bigger percentage of your
of your budget than it would be for a rich person. It's not a tax on them. It's a tax on all those people who never did well in mathematics. That's what that is. Now physicists know better. All right. I want everybody to have brain wiring that exists within a physicist. The American Physical Society once had their annual meeting in Las Vegas Las Vegas. So. So what do we have. So we've never been back since then. We're in like Tougaloo. You know we're somewhere else. We're not in Vegas. So what else is going on today. What's the consequence of this that we've got here in America where we rode high on our science and technology discovering aliments discovering
computing was a 20th century discovery. What about today. What's going on today in America. What happens today in America. Our levees break this this tragedy this American tragedy is often recounted as Katrina. No. No. Do you realize that when Katrina hit landfall it dropped to Category 3. It passed over the city went out the other side there and people were just sweeping up the streets picking up some downed branches. Then the levees broke. This was not a Katrina problem. This is fault the engineering problem put the blame where it belongs. Otherwise you won't know how to solve the problem. It's an engineering problem. Blame that on nature. Keep going. This is New York City a steam pipe blows up. What we can't lose steam in a pipe. I thought we figured that one out didn't Fulton figure that one out 250
years ago. We had a bridge collapse. This is not even a big river. What what would it. This is a story this is this is a this is a what is this. And you know what this is good like rowboats and this is nothing. You've got a bridge collapsed. These aren't just idle spectacles. People die in these things. We've got Roman aqueducts still standing that were built in to 2000 years ago throughout Europe. It looks just like that. And we got on our bridges can't we. What is this. Trains collide. Train. OK. A train goes this way on a track another this way and they collide. WHAT YEAR IS IT 2008. I thought they figured that out 200 years ago. A crane collapsed in New York another one people died. A crane collapsed into a building.
Someone in the top floor that died will Cheviot hurricanes. OK. Hurricane. Now this is one of my favorite pictures because everyone is like high it out of town. Hurricane forming in the Gulf. I think we figured that one out. Do don't you. This one is the one that took out the dinosaurs right here. I would show this and someone in the audience said is that an actual photograph. And I said. So at that point I was done. I was like OK. I said yep the tared tackle had a digital camera snap the picture. We got the fossilise chip out of the camera and it's still. We got an asteroid headed our way. It's called the Puffy's name for the Egyptian god of darkness and evil. We didn't name that before we discovered it was going to hit earth. We named it that way afterwards.
Had it not had it not if it didn't have an orbit that was going to intersect earth we would call it named it something else like Bambi or something you know something not threatening. If we have time out I don't want to spend too much time on a profit but it's headed our way and it could bring the end to the west coast the United States. But if we have time we'll go over some more details on that if you like. So what I want to do. I'm going to leave you. I have like 10 more slides but they'll go quickly and you are going to say sit back in your chair because like you I want you to sort of feel what I'm about to tell you because I want to leave your brain in a new quantum state by the time you're done. This is the number one written three ways. All right as a word in exponential scientific notation and just as a numeral So this zero here 10 to the zero power tells you how many zeros follow the new world one when writing it.
So there are no zeros here. So a of the zeroth power is one right. This is a number that requires no introduction go up by a factor of 1000. You get a thousand tend to the third power three zeros metric prefixes. By the way drug dealers were metric long before the rest of us were. Something to learn from drug dealers. Thousands. Thousands. Many towns have populations in the thousands go up by another factor of a thousand you get to a million. Remember when computer power was measured in mega long ago at least eight years ago when I was 10 to 60 power is a million. My home town has eight of these running around in it. That's a million. Quite familiar go up I know. A fact of a thousand to get to what number billion. Now we all should say this next words together say pull your chin out and then N3 will say billions to get it ready went to three billion.
One of my favorite numbers. Billion Billion. There's six and a half of these running around the world. We are more billionaires in the world now than ever before. There's giga Reptar terabytes now and teraflops and things. But Giga is kind of where we are now in computer strength and storage capacity billion bill gates his net worth is about $50 billion. Do you know how much that is. You don't know how much that I'm going to tell you. $50 billion. If you had $50 billion. So I thought about this. I walked down that you know I have a job. I own a home. OK. So that sets my interest level in money I might see on the street. OK. So I'm employed like a stable employee and I own a home. I'm walking down the street if I see a
penny I'm not picking up the pen if I see a nickel I'm not picking at them. If I see a dime and I'm not in a hurry I'm picking up the dime. If I'm in a hurry I'm going past the dime whether or not I'm in a hurry if I see a quarter I'm bending down to pick up the quarter. OK. Because it's good for parking meters and laundry and all kinds of things. So my my. Transition between when it's worthwhile to bend down and pick something up. Part of it has to do with age because you don't know if you'll make it back up but it's between a dime and a quarter. So like ratio that is sort of the value of everything I own and I said what would the corresponding amount of money on the street be to Bill Gates who's worth $50 billion. Forty five thousand dollars. OK. Forty five. So if he's walking down the street and there's a wad of cash fortified that it's not too busy. Let someone else get that.
That's how wealthy a 50 billionaire is. You want to count to a billion. Now. Good that's a good idea. No because it would take you 31 years 20 59 days one hour 46 minutes and 40 seconds. But you have to account for the leap days too. So you subtract the leap days and then have to subtract the leap seconds. So that's how long we take it accountably and if you counted one number per second this is kind of interesting because this means if you are 31 in your 30 first year you will live your billionth second when I lived my 30 that my billionth second. I celebrated with a really teeny bottle of champagne when that second passed by. Much more interesting to me than my 30th birthday. Have nothing to say about $10.
This was Bill Gates his wealth right there. OK so I threw Ben in there. There's been you know up one day I'm going to put an lightning bolt in here looking at other junk they stamp on it like OK. So what comes up what comes oh oh oh that's 100 billion 100 billion with a hundred times ten to the power. So I got nine plus these two zeros on it. There they go 100 billion. McDonald's has sold this many hamburgers. Actually it's way more than that. But they say they've lost count at $100 billion. And what do they say the ones that lost count billions and billions of course. So. So if you had 100. Well before we get to McDonald's did you know that in one linear centimeter of your lower colon lives and works 100 billion. Bacteria in one centimeter of your lower colon and this number
is greater than the total number of all people who have ever been born. Yet we tell ourselves that we're in charge of the world. When in fact we just host for bacteria which is nice dark warm anaerobic fecal matter for a bacteria. Hundred billion cells get McDonald's back in there. This was this was like kind of a Y2K problem for their side because they kept upping the number. Now there's no room to put 100 here. So this one just got I took this like a few weeks ago. So this was left they just left it at ninety nine said forget it. We're not changing this again. So 100 billion McDonough's. HEMMER You could if you go into end you can go around the earth with this many hamburgers. In fact you can do that 52 times and with what's left over after you've been around the Earth 52 times you can stack them because you're bored going around the earth. And then how high stack could you make after you've been around the Earth 52
times a stack that can reach the moon and back with your hundred billion McConnells him which is distressing news to cows. A trillion 12 zeros. This painting was done a trillion seconds ago. If it takes you 31 years to count to a billion and a trillion is a thousand times bigger. How long will it take you to count to a trillion. Louder please. Thirty one thousand years. So do not try that at home. You should have better things to do than counting to truly go up by another factor of a thousand. What do you get that. Billion trillion. Quadrillion quadrillion. This has nothing to do with the animal people. This is just a metric prefix
quadrillion. A quadrillion is a hundred quadrillion is. That's about the total number of sounds in words ever uttered by all humans who have ever lived. You might ask how do you know that. But you didn't. So I won't go there. Next. Tend to the 18th power. So we had a billion trillion quadrillion quintillion 18 zeros. That's about how many grains of sand there are on an average beach. Ten times as many grains of sand as sound in words ever uttered by all humans who have ever lived. Go up by a factor of a thousand again. One sextillion.
Ladies and Gentlemen this is the number of stars in the observable universe. That number is bigger than every thing we just talked about. Stars in the observable universe. Stars with multiple planets orbiting around them. That's the scale of the cosmos we're talking about here. That's just numbers. How about what the stuff is made of. The pull out for a minute and ask what is it made of what's the universe made of the number one ingredient in the universe is hydrogen. Number two is helium. Number three is oxygen. By rank order of number of atoms. Number four carbon. Number five nitrogen and number six. Perhaps the most important element of them all. Other.
OK so now. How about life on Earth. What are we made of. The biologist tell us what's the number one molecule in the body. Molecule in the body water Thank you. What's the chemicals symbol for water. H to oh the number one atom in the human body is hydrogen present in the water molecule within us. What's the next element. You know it's not helium. It's not so I have to put an X through this. How come it's not helium. It's a normal gas. Exactly. Your body couldn't interact with it even if you wanted to you could inhale it and then sound like Mickey Mouse. But and it's so it's harmless because it can't interact with you chemically unless that's all you breathe. At some point you need some oxygen in you so cross this out. So what's the next most abundant element in the human body
oxygen. Because it was attached to the hydrogen in the water molecule. So we got hydrogen right across Oxitec next most abundant element in life on Earth carbon we are carbon based life. Carbon is the most fertile chemical element there ever was. You can make more molecules out of carbon than all other atoms combined. If if there was an element upon which you wanted to base complex chemistry that's the element to the most complex chemistry we know we call life. What's next. Nitrogen and next class other. Thank you. We are one for one. The same ingredients in the universe. And only then you learn that we do the ingredients come from stars that manufactured them in their core exploded. We see these explosions every day across the universe and enriching the Galaxy with the fundamental ingredients of life itself. This plays out
every day across the galaxy. We are not only small in time in space we're made of the most common stuff there is. This is a message in one of our early space shows at the Hayden Planetarium. Shortly after we open we're on our 10th anniversary of our new planetarium. I got a letter from a professor of psychology University of Pennsylvania what he wanted. He wanted to come. He heard about the space show came and saw it. He's an assistant professor of psychology University. I'm writing because I want to conduct a research project in collaboration with my research focuses on the psychological experiences with feelings of insignificance. So I sent him a bummer of a job there. Why was that. All right. I recently saw the space show at the Planetary and leaflets us say it is the most dramatic A-lister of feelings of smallness and its significance that I have yet encountered. I be grateful we can conduct a simple questionnaire survey he's expecting people to
come into the show happy and then need therapy at the end of the show. For slides. So we're almost done. Thanks for your patience here. I submit to you that if that's how you feel upon learning our place in the universe then the problem is not that the universe made you feel small is that you started out with an ego too large. You started out thinking you were important thinking there was something special about you beyond anybody else I other humans beyond the lifeforms be on other planets. You went in there with a puft view of what you are in the universe and then alerted you of your place within it. Now if you go in there with the right kind of ego that's a value judgment I'm placing the right ego in this case with me. Yes I am small in this universe but we have a human mind that actually
is working to figure this out so that when I look up at night I see the universe I see the universe. Can we dim the lights completely please. Thank you. I look up at night. We see the universe by the way. This is not the universe this is. This is a small patch of sky looking towards the center of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Is not even looking outside to the rest of the universe and there are countless stars just in this patch of the sky. We look out in the sky but let's step out of our galaxy. This is a twin of ours a near twin the Andromeda Galaxy. All these stars are on our nose within our own galaxy. We're looking through them out to this object itself an entire other galaxy containing 400 billion stars. A supernova goes off a star explodes. It enriches its regional area with the elements and the fundamental ingredients of life
this image we've now step farther back away. What's remarkable about this taken by the Hubble telescope is that in previous images most of the specs you saw were stars in this image practically every thing on this image is a galaxy. There are only four stars in this picture. Here's one here's one and there's one and there's probably one other somewhere. Will have spikes. If you say there's one right there. Everything else in this picture is a collection of hundreds of billions of stars scattered between us and the outermost reaches of the observable universe unfolding in every one of these galaxies. Stars are being born they live out their lives and die. The most massive among them are those that have the privilege of manufacturing the heavy elements and exploding them into space. So for me the deepest most cosmic message I can leave with you
upon basking in the sheer scale of this universe is that it's not that you should feel small looking up at this. I think in fact you should feel large. Because looking up at this image you know now from 20th Century astrophysics what we have discovered is that since the very fundamental ingredients that are manufactured in these galaxies are part of life itself. It's not simply that we are in this universe the universe is in us. And that's a connectivity to the cosmos that by my measure of ego is in fact enlightened enriching dare I say even spiritually rewarding feeling a part of this grand unfolding drama this epic quest to understand the cosmos brings
about a sense a journey a sense of participation a sense of wonderment. And it has those feelings and those thoughts that I leave you with tonight as I share with you our cosmic perspective. Thank you for your time. Thank you. I. Think I went a little long I'm sorry but like I did so I might have messed up your evening plans or something. I don't know.
But I think it's just a couple of questions if we could. Ten minute we'll do 10 minutes Q&A. Is that ok. Bring up the houselights. So you're more than just a voice in the dark. Be able to see you. Sure sir. Right here. Loud electricity's create fire. It's what you have to do is ask where did the battery get its power its from other machine where a wire got passed through a magnetic field. What's that. What do you have to the source of that energy. Unless you have solar panels somewhere or it or you figured out a way to use photosynthesis to recharge your battery the battery got its original charge. The chemicals were put into a higher energy state to then draw from it through some machine that had electrical current generated by wire passing through through a magnet. Unless you want to go get sort solar power there are other ways to do it. But when you get electricity out of the wall some wires go and go in through a through a magnetic
field. Yes right here. OK. Well wait. Churches and whatnot. We get a better sentence there please. Sure. Well. OK. Well from. A perspective on these spiritual leaders saying that if you believe in the Big Bang you don't have morality there or else. Oh I see because it removes a source of morality if you credit the beginning of the universe to the big bang instead of Biblical Genesis. OK. So morality that
would imply that people would turn to crime for example that would. Be gone. OK. All right so what they should do is look at European countries that lead the world in atheism and they have some of the lowest crime rate in the world. That's what they just have to. I mean that's just if you look at some of the Scandinavian countries there's just hardly any crime and nobody ever goes to church. So the presumption that if you don't believe in a spiritual Dady that you all of a son will turn to crime that doesn't bear that might. That's an interesting hypothesis. The test has already been done. You just look around the world and highly non-religious countries don't lead the world in crime America does. OK so that's kind of interesting so. So I would I see crime as not really correlated with religiosity at all. I mean I think we have to
think differently about that problem. Think about how you're raised as a child and being taught what's right from wrong regardless of the source of that principle that you're teaching. Yes. She is that future of manned spacecraft that's a sentence ma'am. Is there a question in there. What are my thoughts. There is no well I can it's these are not thoughts. This is just the news. We're not going back to the moon. We may be going back to the march to Mars some time in the unspecified future. Low-Earth orbit will be handed over to private enterprise which I think should have happened decades ago. So the problem here is somehow here in America we believe that NASA is just kind of some luxury agency that does some cool things when we feel like we can afford it without recognizing that NASA is one of the greatest forces of nature there ever was on the educational pipeline to stimulate interest in science technology
engineering and mathematics. The fact that we were going to the moon in the 1960s ignited a flame under the next generation of scientists and engineers. People were banging down the doors to get into physics classrooms. All right. That doesn't happen today. I think the smart people who were motivated and wanted to make a difference when NASA no longer had ambitious goals. There's no place for them to land. So they become lawyers or investment bankers or something. All right lawyers and that's fine. OK. I didn't say anything bad right. I just said so I'm just I'm just saying. So you have people who might have otherwise become scientists go into professions that that were more lucrative. OK. You don't really get rich becoming a scientist but those who are scientists are very committed to the act of discovery. And so I submit to you that what needs to happen if we want to jumpstart America is to get NASA to have an ambitious goal the kind of goal that we used to dream about what the future would bring that kind of goal and make that
big and grand. And when you're a kid now if I stand in front of eighth graders and I say. Who wants to be an aerospace engineer so that you can design an airplane 10 percent more fuel efficient than the one your parents flew. Who's going to sign up. But if I say who wants to be an aerospace engineer so you can design the next airplane that will fly in the rarefied atmosphere of the planet Mars. I'm I'm getting the smartest kids in that class as he wants to be biologist but wants to be biologist and dissect this frog or who wants to be a biologist and look for life beneath the sort of dusky soils of the Martian terrain. Getting the best biologist there ever was. And so you stimulate an entire generation to become interested in what we call the STEM subjects science technology engineering and mathematics. Without NASA as that force of nature we're all sitting there saying oh we just need better teachers or better schools and better this when at the end of the day the people who make a difference in the world are those who had ambition to make a
difference. And where do you get that ambition. You get it when there's a big bold dream standing in front of you and not enough of the American electorate understands that and not enough of Congress understands that. So. So. So I get asked what launch vehicle do I think NASA should build next. I'm not even about that. I'm saying triple NASA's budget. Let's get on with business. So that's how I feel. I try to keep that argument in the stratosphere and try to drag people up to it who are fighting in the trenches. Right there. Yes. In the striped sweater. Yes. What kind of role do I see for science fiction. I think good science fiction is good and bad science fiction is really really bad. All right. So but on balance I think the people who are fans of science fiction tend to be some of the most scientifically literate people among us and know when they're reading something bad or good. So.
So science fiction communities is hugely organized. They have conventions and things. What I was once invited I guess some award at a science fiction convict. I never been before. That's some scary stuff that goes on I'm there. You know I said well I wear a jacket and it's probably a casual thing. So I'm a button up shirt with no tie. I wear a jacket and like cling ons are walking by me. And I felt like you know like the government or something coming in to spy on them and I went into the display hall and and I was lesser known back then so they said Who are you. I said well I'm getting awards. Prove it. You know it was like really well Spock is walking in and out you know. Borgs are walking in and out and they stop me at the gate. So the point is that community is hugely informed. Hugely smart and they tend to be the people who fix everyone else's computers.
So. So science fiction is a great source of entertainment. I do less reading of it than I do watching movies of it. And I only just saw Avatar like four days ago. I probably like the last person in the world. And I tweeted about Avatar. One of my tweets I said because you have to fit it into 140 characters in case you didn't know. That's why they called tweet so. So I said I just saw Avatar. Now I can make an avatar cocktail. OK. Three parts. The Matrix. Two parts. Aliens and six parts Pocahontas. Shaken not stirred. Right so tough that what I try to comment on it. So I've had previous run ins with Jim Cameron regarding the movie Titanic because you've got the sky wrong and the ship sank the wrong sky. And so if you actually Google a YouTube video of me talking about this it's like I don't have time to do it now because it's a whole thing when I met him in Washington and I told him about it
and he liked me. And then one day he's getting an award back up in New York in my building by a third party rental of the facility. And I was invited to have dinner with him so the poor and the wine and that I come at him again so he had the wrong sky. But find it on YouTube you'll you'll see it. So science fiction is great. It's great. Let's go on the aisle here yes. How do I feel about the 2012 doomsday. Do you remember the first slide there didn't you. All right. So if you if you'd looked that up on the Internet ill say things like. On December 21st 2012. The black hole in the center of the galaxy the sun and the earth will come into perfect alignment. And that will be bad for Earth. The extra gravity will tip earth on its axis and it'll be end of the world as we know it. By the way I recently bought a book. I didn't I didn't have a chance to photograph it to do it again next to the
alien book and I said How do you survive 2012. OK I have that book. So. Like the Mars story if you're scientifically literate you don't say oh my gosh how do I protect myself from 2012. You should ask the person who tells you this you should say this alignment December 20 right. How often does that take place. Happens every year December 21st every year. So how scary Could it be in 2012 if you're not scared of it right now if you weren't scared of it. Seven weeks ago. What's your problem. So you can start probing questions about the minds of the Mayan calendar ends on 2012. Ooh. So here we are in the 21st century we going to pay attention to an extinct civilization about their calendar of worry about what they say about us. For starters let's OK. Second the Mayans put the beginning of the world on Aug. 11 31 13th B.C.
31 13 B.C.. They were off by 14 billion years. So if the beginning of the world was off by that much why should we think they have the end of the world correct. Not only that apparently they did not foresee the end of their civilization either. So so so. Just. Bring some rational thought to this. The world is going to be here before during and after what period. What I find curious is this urge for people to always want there to be an end of the world in their lifetime. This has been going on since Jesus. OK everybody is saying the world is going to end in their lifetime. The last four times was there was the Y2K end of the world remember that one. Which is fine now. Then there was like there was a planetary alignment back in the 1980s. We got through that one that was close. Oh my gosh. So everybody's talking about the end of the world. And it seems to me that there's some people there. I was at a cocktail party and a guy came up to me asking that same question and was all concerned and I told him this and then he walked
away dejected. It's as though he was only happy knowing that the world was going to end. It was disappointing finding out it wasn't. So I think there are people that are only happy when they're sad ok. But two more and I'll answer them in half the time. How about you on the corner there with you there with the maroon shirt. Yes. Is it past your bedtime or. Past my bedtime. I don't know what you're. OK. By the way if you if you're like you're late for school tomorrow I'll write you a pass. OK. You'd be good. Fifth grade student Garrison Jones is that good go for it. Now. Now be careful with your question because they'll make all the adults feel stupid. OK. Good that happens sometimes with fifth graders because you like you watch all the programs and you read all the books and the rest of us just feel really stupid when you ask your question. So be gentle on us. Go.
Oh OK. You get that. How do I plan to influence kids to become interested in science. You're spending time talking to old 40 year old people. OK. And how old do you. You. See the 40 year old. They're like decrepit at 40. You know. OK. In fact I'm going to end on this question if I may. OK here's the thing. You got it backwards. You got it back. Kids don't need help being scientists they're born curious about the world. They are born turning over rocks they're born jumping into puddles they're born catching snowflakes in their mouth. They're born testing
the braking points of things in the home. This is these are science experiments. My daughter when she was still in a high chair spilled the milk by accident and the milk rolled along the table and it went. It does it even the table and hit the ear. And it dripped down and she looked down under like that. And so we righted the cup put more milk in it and she accidently did it on purpose again and watched that happen. I did this. Now most parents would say don't spill the milk. I said to myself This is an experiment in fluid dynamics in progress. She's noticing that the fluid does not show up across the gap in the table. It drops through and drips onto the ground. A similar thing happened to my son who is playing with peas. And when you're young you've got to overcooked the peas. And so one pea dropped and it just stuck to the ground. And another one that
was less cooked. Hit the ground it bounced. This is an experiment in elastic and inelastic collisions. You'll hear about this in physics class. Now I submit to you that as adults what we do with kids is we spend the first two years teaching them how to walk and talk and the rest of their lives telling them to shut up and sit down. All right. So my point. Is. It's the
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Raw Footage Description
This lecture features astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Topics covered include the solar system, scientists and foreign currency, politics, religion, and education. Also included is a question-and-answer portion where Dr. Tyson answers audience questions.
Created Date
2010-02-25
Asset type
Raw Footage
Genres
Unedited
Event Coverage
Topics
Education
Religion
Science
Rights
No copyright statement in content.
Media type
Moving Image
Duration
01:33:26
Embed Code
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Credits
Speaker: Tyson, Neil deGrasse
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WUSF
Identifier: L-331 (WUSF)
Format: Betacam: SP
Generation: Master
Duration: 01:00:00
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Citations
Chicago: “ Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) Lecture Series: The Cosmic Perspective with Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson ,” 2010-02-25, WUSF, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-304-93ttfhng.
MLA: “ Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) Lecture Series: The Cosmic Perspective with Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson .” 2010-02-25. WUSF, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-304-93ttfhng>.
APA: Phi Beta Kappa (PBK) Lecture Series: The Cosmic Perspective with Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson . Boston, MA: WUSF, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-304-93ttfhng