Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Talking Tech with Neil deGrasse Tyson!”.
Are we rolling on everything already test color? No, i want to do that. You got it go for it all right! What’S up guys mkbhd here and welcome to another uh, i guess a slightly unusual video, but so just to give a little context on what’s going on here, just shot a video with star talk and it went pretty well, you should go and check it out. I’Ll probably have a link in the description below, but i figured while i’m here with neil and chuck. I might as well get a little interview in since it’s only fair, since you did interview me about two years ago: uh, we should uh reverse roles a little bit i’ll talk to you for a little bit good, to see you again, yeah good, to see you Again too, by the way um, you were cheering nicely. You were like 14 or something i was. I was pretty young and i feel like that was definitely a big part of what we talked about.
But i’ve seen a lot since then, and it’s like you were 12 years old, basically an infant but yeah. So this is this is gon na be fun. I think the thing that was on my mind, just when i had the opportunity to ask you anything uh is just from a an astrophysicist perspective. I mean we look at the tech that we have on the palm of our hands every day and it’s it’s pretty sweet. You know new phones, new tablets, but a lot of that comes from the higher end, the the military technology, the space program technology.
A lot of things eventually trickle their way down into what we’re able to hold in our hands. Are there things that you guys have seen or heard of that? Maybe we don’t know about that’s on its way that might end up in our phones or tablets or handheld someday, i’m not authorized to. If i tell you uh, why don’t i? I have some ideas, but i’m not very good at predicting the future sure, and i have good evidence that i’m not good at predicting the future, and i’ve told this many times chuck when i’m old enough to remember star trek in first run. Okay, my parents did too, and so there’s the warp drives and the photon torpedoes and and this machine we put in a card and then hot food comes out instantly. This was an extraordinary view of the future and i said yeah yeah, that’s all going to happen and there was one thing about star trek that i could not imagine and it it took the realism of star trek out of it for me, and that was the Fact that they could just walk up to a door and the door would open.
I said: how does the door know? It can’t know that they’re there, okay they’re over here and now they’re there and it opens and for some reason the warp drives and the photon torpedoes and the transporters were all believable to me, but not the auto opening door. Automatic doors is where you drew. The line i had to that, i i was i also this – is all literally before any automatic doors.
Okay, so that’s why i wouldn’t trust my sense of the future here, but i do want to give you an acute appreciation for how the past became the future. All right, so, let’s go back a hundred years, the dawn of our understanding of the atom. Now, how does the atom work? I don’t know, let’s probe it, we start probing it in the 1920s through particle accelerators and experiments out of this comes quantum physics, the quantum. On top of that, albert einstein says using what we know about quantum physics and using what we know about this kind of physics i can put them together. Calculate i’ve come up with a new thing that would occur in atoms. It’S called the stimulated emission of radiation.
Okay, no one paid any attention to that paper. It was interesting, it advanced quantum physics, but if you had lawmakers and politicians and people saying why doesn’t that help me today? Why are you doing research that has nothing to do with anything put them around back then they would be criticizing quantum physics from beginning to end what a waste of resources you’re so smart! Why are you wasting it on atoms? It would take 40 years 50 years before quantum physics would become the very foundation of information technology. There is no creation, storage or retrieval of information without an understanding of the quantum, not only that this obscure research paper that einstein wrote on the stimulated emission of radiation.
It would that would take 40 years 40 years later. The laser would be invented. Based on that principle.
Oh, what do three of those letters stand for the light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation was einstein thinking bar codes? That’S why i got it laser cosmetic peel? No, no! So all i can tell you is, i don’t know what the future will bring, but if you stop investing in basic research today you won’t have a future, so it’s being worked on today. We should encourage it to be worked on today and don’t go up to a scientist and say how does that relate to me today and how is that? The only right answer is. I have no idea, but evidence of the history of this exercise tells us that one day it will so there are things that are hugely important to your life and your i mean the collective you that no one knows about yet correct, correct all that matters.
If you’re curious is that you’re exploring something you do not yet know i’ll give, can i give another example? I would love it. My are you my example’s okay yeah. Are they working on the show yeah so far so good, because i don’t want to be like? I don’t want to i’m just kind of absorbing it so feel free to okay.
Whatever you got, usually you do all the talking a lot of times. I do, but that’s scripted, that’s a lot easier! Oh real! Okay! Okay, now i’m not scripted, i’m just i’m just blathering. It works all right. My physics, professor in college, his name was edward purcell sounds like a nice guy, nice yeah. It turns out. He was a really nice guy.
He did calculations that gave us ways to measure the existence and the depth, and the composition of gas clouds in space did very important research. He also discovered a phenome co-discovered, a phenomenon where, if you put an electromagnetic field across an atomic nucleus, okay, it will actually change that field. According to the mass of the nucleus, the resonance between the light that passed across it and the nucleus itself – okay, it was called nuclear magnetic resonance, got the nobel prize for that afterwards, a clever medical engineer said: wait a minute if you could put this field across And know the mass of the nucleus and i can differentiate this nucleus from this nucleus.
I can make a machine put you in the machine, make images of all your nuclei and thus was born the magnetic resonance imaging which used to have, and but it’s one of the n words that you’re not supposed to use nuclear. It’S you go into a machine that uses nuclear magnetic resonance, but the hospitals figured nobody wants to go into a machine that has nuclear on it. They drop the n yeah drop, the n word right, kept magnetic resonance imager and it’s arguably the most potent tool in the arsenal of the medical doctor to diagnose the condition of your body without cutting you open.
That is based on a principle of physics discovered by a physicist who had no interest in medicine, so quantum physics, lasers nuclear magnetic resonance the list goes on. It goes another one. Yeah we’ll see one more. Okay, do you know the laser alignment that connected the space shuttle to dock with the space station used a certain laser and programming technology that was then adapted for lasik surgery, allowing the laser to align with your eye? Even if your eye moves so that the cut is always in the right place, so so then you might say well, why have a 18 billion dollar agency just to invent grooves in a pavement? Okay, we should have the transportation safety board invent this, but they didn’t yeah.
We should have other people invented, but they didn’t. This is my point, however complex or however simple. The germination of an idea does not always come because you legislated it and in the agencies that you set up, make sure they’re cross-pollinating pathways, without which people stay in their silos of thinking and no truly great discoveries would unfold. You can’t necessarily decide to tell someone to get an idea or to do something better, but when a better idea or a really forward-thinking organization comes along and happens to, do it really well spread it share it enable it thanks for watching .