One of which was ours. So the very ingredients that exries life are traceable to stars. They gave their lives billions of years before we arrived. Rose so we are stars . So we are not only figuratively but quite literally star disus. Rose an encor prengsz of neil degrases tyson next. Funding for charlie rose is provided by the following and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. From our studios in new york city, this is charlie captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose Neil Degrasse tyson is here, many know him as the most powerful nerd in the university, he calls himself a servant of science. He is the host of a new talk show in the National Geographic channel called star talk it combines sciencek culture and comedy to help bring the universe down to earth. Im pleased to have Neil Degrasse tyson back at this table. Welcome. Thank you, charlie. We go way back. My first time was in the 90s. Rose we did a show in 1991. I am in the family, thank you. Uhhuh. Rose so congratulations on star talk on television. Yeah, jump species, we were all very happy about that. Were pretty sure, we think its the First Time Ever there being a science talk show on television. We think it is without press dense. We didnt do it for that purpose, but just turned out that way. Rose what i like about it in reading about it, they came to you and wanted you to do a television show. You said why dont you just bring the little cameras into my radio show and that will be just fine. I, when i say keep it simple, i dont want to do anything more. But there was some budget to do some set dressing. And part of that is we film in the hall of the universe of the American Museum of national science. Rose cant do better than that. I get to announce that, from the hall of the universe, who knows where this is, from the room of dark curtains. Rose thats right. This is the deep hole right here. You have come to the deep hole and im here in the deep hole. You are down, you are so but its still structured the same. And we have a comedian. I have a guest. Rose that would be you. I happen to think the universe is completely hilarious. But i have someone who thinks that way professionally. And the there is a main guest who is typically humanned from pop culture. That is the real difference here from what you might otherwise expect from a science talk show. My guests are many of the same guests you would see tuning into late night talk show circuits. But im asking them different questions. Im asking them about their nerdhood. Asking them their science teachers in their life, that they liked and hatedded. Find out how science an technology has impacted their livelihood. Rose youre not looking for people, pop culture who happen to like science. Just simply for people who are interesting to have on the program. Well, it matters that you have heard of them. Because then you will take an interest in them from the beginning. And then you learn these extra things about them. Do they have a nerd underbelly that wouldnt reveal itself in anybody elses interview. Rose how do we define a nerd underbelly. Oh, its if they want to break into a fight about which captain they preferred in star trek. Or did, you know, hans solo shoot first. Or did, you know, there are these nerd questions drawn from the nerdivers, from the geekivers. And so i think there are many people who have hidden interests. Or maybe there is an ember that just needs to be fanned and then it will ignite and then you will see and feel and hear all of their interests that they express about scientists. Rose is it the fact that people are curious about things they dont know about and curious about the future . We were once every one of us to a person was deeply curious about our environment as children. Scientists tend to not ever lose that, and they stay curious their whole lives. I think other people get it d so im in search of that. Soul of curiosity that i think continues to lurk in all adults. Rose so what happens . Do we tamp it down . Do we, in a sense. What happens, if you are in a class and you say what is that, let me go to the window. No, sit down, its not time. Do your lesson. Rose and listen to me talk rather than engage. Exactly. And our School System tends to be reward people who obey. People who do exactly what theyre told. People who hand things in on time. Those are the honors, the best students as we have come to define them. Yet the student who is distracted by the butterfly could be the next great naturalist. But that doesnt get rewarded in school. Because you should be studying for this curriculum that we have established for you. So i think we should do it all but dont suppress. Yes, you need a curriculum. Yes, you need exams. But if you see nrlg in a student being expressed by energy in a institute being expressed by questioning their environment, that should be nurtured rather than declaring it ws out of line. Rose was that you as a kid . It was so me as a kid. I think teachers i had energy in the classroom that, there was a sixth grade teacher who noticed that i had all this energy, social energy, bordering on disruptive. And i had an interest in the universe. All my book reports were on what the moon was like and mars and the Space Program. Rose even then. Yeah. Starting at age nine. But it didnt really gel until age 11, fifth or sixth grade. And then the teacher noted for me that the hayden planetarium, the local plan tair yum in new york had classes on the universe. And i started taking these classes after hours, that can get you tired, right. After school you go to do another thing. And that kind of tamped me down in the class but now i had a whole new universe, literal and figurative universe to devote my energies to. Rose when did you know that what you wanted to do was be an astrophysicist. At age nine a first visit to the hayden planetarium. Rose did it for you . That put something in my veins. I dont know, to this day i still think it was the universe who called me and not i who called it. Rose really . And so i said wow, this is and of course growing up in the bronx, there arent many stars visible anywhere in new york, especially not the bronx at the time. And so the sky in the plan tair yum was magical to me. I didnt even think it was real. I thought it was a hoax. Ive seen the sky from the bronx. And this is not it. Therefore it must be a hoax, not knowing that, of course, it is portraying the real sky. By age eleven, then i had the answer that, i had the answer to that annoying question that adults ask children, what do you want to be when you grow up. Rose and your answer was. Astrophysicist and that kind of ended the conversations pretty quickly. You about i have been on a mission ever since. Rose you have said before that when you go outside, you always look up. Oh yeah, yeah. Rose and too many of us dont do that. I have been doing that. I did that even back when it was kind of dangerous to do that. Because prepooper scooper law, you have to really look down every five seconds. So i would risk, i would risk the incident just for looking up. And any time, especially at night but also in the daytime, i will look up to know what the moon is doing. Moon is up in the daytime as much as it is at night contrary to many people. Rose can we see it. Yeah, it is just harder to see it, the sun is so dominant that the moon does not call attention to itself as well in the daytime as it does at night. But look for the moon, what phase is it. At night i check for what planets are coming out. And the most beautiful time of night, you know, photographically speaking is twilight. There is the twilight, the curtain of twilight colors. The sun just set. The moon becomes more apparent. The first stars you see generally arent stars, theyre planets because theyre brighter. And i always joke with people, if you ever do star light star bright, make a wish on the star, and your wishes dont come true because you have been wishing on planets. Rose you were off course from the beginning. So right now in the season, venus is quite striking over in the Western Skies after sunset. And when viewed from new york city, its kind of over new jersey, and you would confuse it with planes coming in and out of newark airport. So if your western horizon is near an airport you have surely seen venus and thought it was an airplane. That is how bright its light is reflected. Rose have you ever wanted to write a Science Fiction novel. Yes. However i dont have talent at writing. I wish i did. Rose would you have a story. Ive got a story. Its ready to go. Rose it just needs a good writer. Ive got a good story and i could advise on such a story. But in terms of Character Development and emotions and i dont have the experience writing, certainly not writing it. And probably also not. Rose but you would know a story that would be compelling. I have one in mind right now. I am happy to tell it. Rose okay, tell me. Okay, so the world is at war. Okay. Rose you mean the world that we know is at war. The world that we know is at war. And in some very disruptive way. Not with large weapons but regional battles everywhere. And people are choosing sides. And then an asteroid is discovered. Rose tell us what be an asteroid is. An asteroid, craggy chunk of rock in var yant sizes. There are countless tens of thousands of them, probably hundreds of thousands of them. And they orbit between mars and jeup ter, most of them. Some of them have wayward orbit that cross the orbit of the earth. Some like in thousands of them. You do the math, you learn that earth and these asteroids will collide with one another guaranteed eventually. So what we want to do is keep track of all the earthcrossing objects and moniter them. Ideally you want to put lojack on them or something. Where are you now at this time. Its 10 p. M. , do you know where your killer asteroid is. So once you do that, we learn that there is an asteroid that could render us all extinct. So at that moment anyone who sees other humans as their enemy then come together and see their asteroid as their common enemy. And the Technology Bits that have been developed all around these countries in the world. There is a bit in the future that formerly developing countries are now technologically able, and they have been developing their technology to fight wars. We find that we have to assemble pieces of all of these technologies. Rose we develop a common front against the asteroid. Not only common front but we need different pieces of technology for the defleks device that we put together. And so then we all sing ku mba wa. Rose but you could make this so real that. Then the heads of state come into play. The conflicts not only within countries but between countries, run with that. Rose but wait a minute, go back to the science. You could make the science, so this is real. You could make this as a real possibility. Yeah, so the science would be not only in the threat of the asteroid and finding it and searching it. The Space Mission to deflect it the tools you would use to engage that defleks. If something doesnt exist you can go into the laboratories. You can see the pressure to invent something that will work. You find out that i have a piece of it. But now i have to go to my enemy that enventded some other piece that comes together to make the whole thing work. It can be quite dramatic. Maybe we can have a little piece of the asteroid still hit earth. Because you have to flood a city or something otherwise hollywood doesnt buy it. I remember in the movie armageddon. The asteroid managed to save earth, but pieces hit earth. And those bits had good aim. One decap taited the chrysler building. They were like aiming for major human monuments around the world. Most of our surface is ocean. They will probably hit the ocean. And you can still get to destroy a city with a tsunami. Rose when was the last big one that came to earth. Two years ago, in russia. Two years ago, one the size of this studio, traveling 40,000 miles an hour, collided with earths atmosphere above a town in the euro mountains of. Rose what would have happened if it hit the center of manhattan island. Well, so that that happened to explode about 20 miles up, 20, 25 miles up. And thats high enough so that that energy gets deposited into the atmosphere and die lawsuits before it reaches earths surface, but even sew that was enough of a shock wave to slatter essentially every window in the city, while people were looking out their window to bonder what the light was that they had just seen. Light travels faster than sound. So they see this bright light, the light of the explosion. They look out the window, the shock wave comes. Lacerated faces, hands and skin. 1600 people were injured. That was a shot across our bow. The universe telling us, asking us, how is your Space Program coming. So if that happened over manhattan, it would have shattered in manhattan you have a different problem when you shatter windows, because then the windows fall and they become these saibers, sharp saibers descending to the street. Possibly hurting or killing people, pedestrians. Rose so has the United States or any other country done a lot because they learned the lisson lessons that happened with that asteroid two years ago. More people are talking about it, but that asteroid we didnt know was coming until it was two late. You might have three minutes of evacuation time of your city. That was not large enough to catch it far enough away. Plus its not large enough to render anyone extinct. Rose if we catch it far enough away, we shoot it down . No, that is the macho. Are you a macho man. Shoot, blow the sucker out of the sky. Rose i think there was a movie like that. The kinder, gentler way is to deflect it. Rose how do you deflect it . So there are some interesting plans that are out there. They are all on paper. Nothing has been built. Nothing has been funded to make this happen. So one way to do it is you take your spaceship. Let me borrow your outliner. If that is the asteroid, you can bring your spaceship nearby and park it there. And they will feel one another and they will want to draft towards one another because of their mutual graift but you dont let that happen. You fire little retro rockets to preventd that and the act of doing so slowly tugs the asteroid out of harm away. You are dont have to destroy it, just make sure on its route it doesnt hit earth any more. And it is there to hurt you another day, but if you get good at this, its just like shooting pool cues, you just knock them out of your way so that it doesnt. Rose so thats one of the theories. Thats one way to do it and you can moniter your progress. If we just go and blot thing out of the sky, here in america, were really good at blowing stuff up. And less good at knowing where the pieces will go when youre done. So its very messy to try to explode the asteroid. You dont know will it break into two pieces. Now you have to evacuate two coasts, its a challenge. By the way, this works on paper. The engineers have worked this out. But there is no plan in place. There is no International Collaboration in place to fund this. Suppose it is headed for the indian ocean. Do you tell all the indian ocean countries you have to fend for yourself. If we have the most advanced, if we have the most advanced Space Program at the time, so then should we pay for it. Did you tax everyone as part of their gdp the way the membership at the u. N. Is taxed . And do you hand that money to the most able country who can deflect it . And here is another one. Lets say it is headed for the United States and we defleks it and the defleks fails and now it is going to hit europe. Now what do you do . So all of these problems. Rose we could put this in the movie, couldnt we . Exactly. Youre still thinking hollywood. Rose no. What are the most important questions unanswered for you . Thats a great question and i have an unorthodox answer for you, okay. For me the greatest question and it will sound like a copout but its not. I really feel this and think this. For me the greatest Unanswered Questions are those questions we dont even yet know to ask. Because they only manifest upon reaching some next frontier of ignorance. And so yeah, i want to know what dark matter is. Its 85 of the gravity of the universe. We have no idea what is causing it. We shouldnt even we dont even have the right to call it dark matter because that implies its matter. Were working on it. We have top people working on this with top equipment. I get that. But at this moment, we dont know what it is. And it doesnt interact. Rose what is the most likely answer . I dont i have a preferred answer. Rose what is the preferred answer. That is my preferred answer. But particle physicists want to say it is particle. Because they are particle physicists. Rose. The higs boson is very poker withful particle. If you were going to be a particle, that is the one you want to be. You grant mass to other particles. I grant thee the mass that you will measure for it. So theres dark energy. The universe is accelerating in its expansion against the wishes of graferrity. We dont know what is causing that. We dont know how you went from organic molecules in early earth to animated life. That is a transition that is on the frontier. Rose say that again. How do you go from lifeless organic molecules. Rose which is chemistry. Chemistry, organic to selfreplicating life based on those organic molecules. We are not there yet. Rose we dont know that either. We dont know that either. We dont know what was around before the big bang. These are great questions. Rose are we working on this . We have top people working on it and i will put you on my speed dial if you want to know the latest. Rose so what is dark matter. We dont know. We should call it dark gravity is really. Rose that is one of the big questions. Yes, it is. Rose and the other one. Dark energy, we dont know what that is. What was around before the big bang. How did life get here from nonlife. Rose what was the big bang. The beginning of the universe. Rose i know that but what. Du h if you turn the clock back, what you will notice about the universe is that it was smaller and hotter. For every day you turn the clock back. Rose smaller and hotter. So you run the clock all the way back and you learn that the entire universe was in the same place at the same time. And at extremely high temperatures in the trillions. Trillion is the highest number anyone has any comfort with. But temperatures much hotter than that. So when you have these temperatures, you, the thing is u