Deconstructing the Science in Popular Films with Neil deGrasse Tyson | Podcast Highlights

and this is a cosmic queries Edition on

science in pop fiction

what does that mean

I got my resident geek in Chief with me

Charles Lou Charles welcome back to

start talk what up you're like such a

regular on this show I live to serve

thank you for having me there he goes

and Chuck nice that's right as always

dude that's right always a pleasure to

be here man all right so you got we

solicited questions in pop fiction so

Chuck what do you have on shows like the

Oroville and many others they often

communicate with people light years away

they never explain how they do it maybe

there's a wire that passes through a

tiny Wormhole to connect Earth uh what

I'm wondering though is if they were

able to reliably share the same sense of

time for the duration of their

conversation with one of them sound like

a chipmunk and the other sound like

they're in slow motion what other weird

effects might occur that's a great a

really great question because you know

we're so distracted by oh that wouldn't

make noise in the vacuum of space right

this person's thinking deep yes see it

about conversations we have this issue

with communicating with the Mars rover

right the Mars rover what's the delay on

the Mars on average about 20 minutes so

is it so yeah hello watch out for the

cliff and it's too late so you got to

make sure for myself for the cliff

that's why the Rovers all have some kind

of AI on them to know where they're

headed and and how dangerous it might be

right regardless of what command we give

them it's like having a lousy parent at

the playground you know what I mean

so say so clearly they're communicating

with people much farther away than just

Earth to Mars right so I'm thinking it's

got to be some Wormhole uh channel uh

Charles you got an opinion about that in

Star Trek specifically there is this

construct called Subspace yeah which

transcends a regular space and time and

basically anything that happens in

Subspace you can just assume works just

as if you and I were next door to each

other or in the same room in real time

yes but that completely doesn't affect

the entire rest of space and time it's

really uh it's very false entertaining

convenient construct it'd be cool if

that were the thing right right it would

so Verizon FiOS eat your heart out right

okay so the comments about whether or

not you sound like a chipmunk or you

talk really slowly

so that kind of uh effect is what we

call the Doppler effect right especially

the Doppler effect for sound and kneel

you and I understand that very well uh

just when we're out on the streets in

New York and the ambulance goes by or

something like that well they go back

too slowly to have any Doppler effect at

all yeah well in New York they do yeah

in Russia every time I see an ambulance

in New York I'm like that guy's dead

I'm just saying

it's like sitting at a light for 20

minutes

have you ever watched a superhero sci-fi

movie that hadn't made you cringe and if

so what was it I think that let's frame

that positively is there a superhero or

sci-fi movie that you have watched and

appreciated the amount of science that

was built in and the uh the level of

science accuracy let's trade off you're

okay give me a movie and I'll give you a

movie and we'll just and we'll go down

the list maybe we can do like how long

did it take before I started to cringe

or something like that okay the movie

that made me cringe least it was

interesting the 1966 Batman movie

where they all became

head back

and they're identical to each other

except they're speaking each other's

languages that's right which by the way

is almost as believable as the Tower of

Babel so the reason it wasn't

cringe-worthy for me is because I knew

that it was totally chemistry to begin

with so in that vein right my movie

where I just said okay I am leaving all

reality reality no matter what we're

spending all this Attack of the Killer

Tomatoes yes

all right okay okay so the tomatoes just

jumping and smothering people and I said

okay

but my only regret is I still don't know

if you're a fruit or a vegetable

for current Universe superhero things

the thing the least cringe-worthy

superhero movie that I've actually seen

is

Doctor Strange doctor strange and the

reason that doesn't cringe me the

premise of the movie is that none of

this is science anyway or as say right

as Reed Richards would say on his you

know that Fantastic Four comic series he

he regularly would say I acknowledge

that science uh that magic is a science

I do not yet understand he did say that

that's right yes and so as a result so

did Princess Bubblegum by the way I

don't mean to boast okay you can line up

for autographs later okay but I have a

cameo in Sharknado 6. out of their way

there's a Sharknado coming the plot line

takes you back to Medieval Times uh I

play Merlin there's a Time Warp that

opens in the vortex of course there is

okay I mean when the Sharks as they go

through the vortex they end up cross

breeding in this Vortex with dragons and

so you have shark Dragon tornadoes back

then okay Shark Dragon NATO's and I play

Merlin performing actual science that

everyone thinks is Magic because because

you're still a scientist because I'm a

scientist and that was I was true to my

my roots now you do realize that you can

say no to these projects

hey Chuck will it one day be possible

for entire societies to disguise

themselves in plain sight as wakanda did

in the Marvel Universe how close are we

to developing invisibility technology so

let's get the top presentations of that

so you have the cloaking device on Stark

Trek yeah and also one of the James Bond

movies I forgot which one it was called

but it has something called adaptive

camouflage so you could park it and

whatever it was in front of it would

bring that pattern to the car and you'd

walk by it and you just thought you were

looking at a normal scene right so

there's that there was also cloaking in

chicken little

okay excuse me is my cinematic

repertoire too large for you that

probably sucks anytime you're reference

okay the sky is falling was not a real

Sky they were hexagonal tiles that the

aliens had put over the earth and the

tile is an exact image of what is behind

it right and when a tile fell down it

fell to the ground

and Chicken Little looked at it and

touched it and it immediately became the

floorboards and he put it on a table it

became the table and so this five

minutes of this movie doing experiments

with the hexagonal tile so basically

it's cloaking by not becoming invisible

but by becoming what is behind flaws but

camouflage the cloak and Harry the cloak

and Harry Potter you have the Invisible

Woman uh Fantastic Four character right

right you can turn invisible right and

then you have the entire city being

closed right yes so can we cloak an

entire city well in wakanda yeah they

did that um the answer at the moment is

no

at the moment the answer is that we can

seem to be able to bend light around

objects in such a way that the object

would not be visible to someone looking

at it because all they'd see is the

background and you don't even know the

light is bending you just see the

direction the light comes from at the

last point of contact so the light can

do a full

three six four three six hundred eighty

doesn't matter right and you look at if

all the light

coherently comes around the object right

again you've rendered it um invisible

that is at this moment only doable in

the laboratory under very extreme

conditions and sort of at the subatomic

level okay however Charles but I thought

I thought I thought DARPA was working on

a cloak like that's the kind is that it

is that what okay I'm not authorized to

speak any program so but but here's a

problem the city is sitting on the

ground yes you can't bring light from

behind the city around it

right so it so that technology wouldn't

work to hide a city right it would only

hide objects in front of other things

well in this wakanda they had it was a

dome that covered the city as well right

there was some kind of like forced Dome

that then cloaked the city right the

dome in that case was really just almost

a mirror in a sense it projected upon

itself oh pastoral images of goat

herders okay so it didn't disappear it's

just it's just it's projection screen

it's just a projection screen and then

you had to get through it and then you

saw all the marvelous Technologies

that's right cool that that we can do

where are we projecting movies onto

skyscrapers aren't we you don't got me

about wakanda how is it that down in the

town this is with all this technology

and all this I all this stuff they're

still selling woven baskets

in the street what's up with that I

believe it's very simple what because

they realize they essentially have

infinite wealth and infinite technology

yeah what makes them happy it's not the

toy baskets that's baskets what

superpower would you like to have that

could be theoretically enabled by Gene

editing oh Charles you go first

I would say and I know this might seem a

little goofy but with Gene editing the

best thing that I could hope for for

myself is that my genes make it so that

I will stay as mentally and physically

in perfect health as long as I want

Charles no one is making a movie about

that maybe not all right Niels what was

yours be so Charles is going to live

forever I've thought about this actually

so what I would do is I'd say give me

genes that a snake has where I can open

my mouth five times bigger than my head

so I can finally eat suck the sandwich

at the deli

pastrami sandwich at the deli okay but

that's not a superpower that's just that

I want to throw that in there okay okay

um snakes can detect in in infrared okay

okay insects can see deeply in the

ultraviolet right which is why bug

zappers work because they're ultraviolet

and they said I gotta go to the

ultraviolet and then they die so I want

to be able to see infrared see

ultraviolet also

I want to be able to Gene edit other

people

so that

I can help regenerate the limbs

of veterans who lost limbs defending

this country cool and newts can

regenerate exactly humans can't it is in

the Genome of the Tree of Life to

regenerate Limbs and so I want to be

able to have that to then impart that in

fellow humans and so that everybody gets

their limbs back that's the kind of

thing well I'm going with super strength

and sproutling wings like a beetle so

that I don't have wings all the time

because you know that probably get on my

nerves when I'm trying to sleep well so

you want wings that tuck in under an

extra scale under an exoskeleton pop out

when I want to fly and then super

strength and by the way I'm not helping

anybody I'm going on a life of crime uh

so you'll be a super villain I'd be a

super villain without a doubt and then

you guys could figure out a way to stop

me

thank you

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