Coming up on StarTalk, it's another Things You Thought You Knew episode, all about asteroid fields, the analemma, and the zombie apocalypse. Check it out. welcome to star talk your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide Dark talk begins.
Jack. Yes. Hey, man. So, you know, there's this latest StarTalk book. We spend a large part of a chapter exploring how empty space actually is yeah you can get a sense it's empty because it's there's a big vast voids and things all right and but i don't think people really feel how emotionally Emotionally empty I put myself out there. I mean, I'm friendly. I don't get it. You know? I want to.
Connect with people I want to I just I don't understand why I just can't seem to make that kind of tight fit with anybody It's tough being space God it just seems like no matter how much comes into me. I just don't New stars are happening all the time, but still, it just doesn't do it. What do I have to do to have some sense of accomplishment? Fulfilledness in my life, I don't. I'm sorry space our time is up next week
Who would ever think to personify space? Okay, that's not even a thing, right? All right, so... so so let's take a look we have eight planets and they go out you know, four or five billion miles. But there's only eight of them, right? So clearly that's pretty empty, right? Yeah. That's pretty empty. Okay, let's keep going. But you know there are these asteroids.
Right. And most of them are collected in this flattened zone between Mars and Jupiter. Right. Okay. Because it's a flattened zone, we call it a belt. The asteroid belt okay there are comets that come into the sun from all directions. Right. And if you project it where they come from, it's a spherical region around the solar system. And we wouldn't call that a belt.
Because it's a spherical region, we call that a cloud. A cloud, right. A cloud. The Oort cloud, Jan Oort, who's a Dutch astronomer. So he saw how many comets were coming in from every direction. And comics are moving fast when they're near the sun, all right? And when they go farther away, they move slower and slower and slower. So when he ran the math, before computers, by the way, he ran the math.
he concluded there must be billions of these comets way out there in these long loop orbits that come around. Right. And they'll spend most of their time far away from the sun because that's when they're moving the slower. Right. Pluto is the most significant member of the Kuiper belt of comets. Right. So that's a belt because it's a flattened legion around the sun. 1801, the first asteroid is discovered.
And people are excited because they think it's a planet. Right. They discover it orbiting in this big gap, suspiciously big gap, between Mars and Jupiter. People were saying, let's just keep looking. There's got to be something there. It's a bigger gap than you think should be there given the distances between other planets. Exactly. So, they found a series of planets.
And then they found another one. And then they found another one. And another one. The first four asteroids, Ceres, Pals, Vesta, and Juno. Ceres is the root. Ceres is the goddess of harvest. And that's the root to the word cereal. Okay. There you go. There you go. Okay. So. Anyhow once we started discovering many many many more of these We realize, wait a minute, they're all in the same swath of real estate. They don't sort of own their own space. And actually, they're really tiny.
Right. They're so tiny through a telescope, they look like a star. Stars are so far away, you can't see any size for them. These are right here with us. They're right here with us. So they look like stars, but they're not stars. Right. They're asteroids. Oh. You get that? Little stars. Star-like. Star-like. Star-like. Okay? So. Well, how many are there? Well, we started counting hundreds initially, then thousands, then tens of thousands.
than hundreds of thousands. Right now we're up over a million known asteroids with orbits and existence in our solar system. Right. And one of them has my name on it. No! You didn't know that? I did not. You did not know that? I'm serious, I did not. Okay a long time Yes, I do yes, I do I'm sorry I don't mean to brag a lot of asteroids. So there's a limit to how big your head can get
which he got an asteroid named after you. Just saying. I don't know about that. That's not bad. I mean, I wouldn't mind. I mean, can you see it? Now that's the thing. Well, I double-checked that. It's not headed towards Earth, or it's not on an Earth-crossing orbit. You don't want to be that asteroid. You don't want to be that asteroid. Yeah, it's just like, Neil Tyson is coming to kill y'all. so it's asteroid one three one two three tyson
One, three, one, two, three, Tyson. Yeah, that's what it is. That's cool, man. Okay, so, Ivan, wait a minute. Just very quickly. What? Can anybody get their own asteroid? Or is that something where somebody bestowed this honor upon you? It's not one of those things where it's just like one of these services where it's just like, you too can name a star. Give it to your girlfriend for Valentine's Day. Name a star. You use the salesman voice, right? Name a star. Alright, so.
The person who discovers the asteroid has the power to name it after any person, place, or thing. oh so that's cool so somebody found this asteroid that you know and they were just like Hey, Neil, I'm going to name this asteroid. Wow, that I'm going to say. So that's an honor. That's more than an honor. That's like naming a child after somebody. Okay.
Okay, honestly that asteroids gonna be there long after we're all going your kids gonna die That's true if you named your kid after me and be like, okay, that's an honor for like what 70 years It's not like your kid's going to live forever. You know, I was named after Chuck Nice. No, but that asteroid will be there for generations to come. Long after I'm dead. That's a serious honor. There it is. Okay. So that's one of the asteroids in the asteroid belt.
Okay. We know of a million. There's probably as many as a billion. Depends on how small you want to count. Okay. All right. So now watch. That swath of real estate is so large, okay? Let's ask the question. What is the average distance between asteroids? Okay. That's a very honest question. That's an honest question. Now, if you base it on movies... That average distance would be around six and a half feet. And the rocks are banging off the side of the ship.
And jostling the ship. Right. And even in Star Trek, Captain, we're entering a asteroid field. And there they go. So, yeah, this is cinematic trope. What's going on as you enter an asteroid field, okay? I got a feeling Or a tradition, another cinematic tradition is about to bite the dust, courtesy of Neil deGrasse Tyson. Why do you gotta build it like that? Why you do that? Something telling me, man. Okay. The average distance between asteroids in the asteroid belt is about 6.
Thousand miles. Oh my god so basically you're like okay so you can't see it but Over there to the left, if we're not careful. in about a month. We might hit that asteroid. Imagine showing that. Showing that in the movie, right? That's the new movie version, okay? Captain, we've entered the asteroid belt. Oh my god! Well, what is the potential damage number one? I don't know how to say this captain, but we can't see any of them They're too far away
How shall we maneuver the ship? There's no need to. I'm actually gonna go take a nap now, Captain. I'm gonna go lay down because... That's how much danger an asteroid belt actually poses. So what's interesting is our first space, we have four, well, five. More than that I'm old enough to remember the first four spaceships
to go beyond Mars in the solar system to reach the outer planets. So if you want to go to the outer planets, you have to cross the asteroid belt. Right. Okay? We did this calculation. Early on. Pioneer 10 and 11. Twin spacecraft. First to have enough energy. to leave the solar system, but they're not as famous as Voyager 1 and 2. Right. All four of those spacecraft went through the asteroid belt
And nothing happened to them. And if it did, NASA would have been the laughingstock of all spacecraft out of space programs. You It's like when my dad took me to learn how to drive. The parking lot of the supermarket and the supermarket is closed and I hit a lamppost So, yeah, I'm just trying to get real here. I mean, so that's all I'm saying. Oh, my God. Yeah. That's terrible. We don't worry about crossing the asteroid belt. We just send stuff through.
It's not even a thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, honestly. Oh, my God. And once again, I can say once again. Star Wars has it completely wrong when it comes to the science of space. Thank you Star Wars for your assiduous consistency. Where you just get it wrong every time. So anyway, that was a long lead up to that one little bitty fact there.
That was so much fun, but actually and that's the coolest thing actually those are two cool things we learned one You are never getting hit by asteroid and asteroid belt. That's number one tyson321 no it's 13123 tyson 13123 tyson which means at the time that was named for me there was in the tens of thousands of named asteroids.
That's it. But now we're in the high hundreds of thousands getting named. And so there's asteroids named after, like I said, people, places, and things. If you discover enough asteroids, you can name one after your pet. Yeah, you know, so there's somewhere named fluffy Three one one two three there's an asteroid named Santa
That was kind of cool. The Santa world. I have a friend of mine who was at a telescope on Christmas Day, and he made shorter observed asteroid Santa on Christmas Day. Oh, man. Just for the grins of it. Hello, I'm Alexander Harvey and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson. How long is a day? Depends are my kids with me because then it's too long But 24 hours Is what they say? 24 hours. It's 24 hours. We can repeat that every day without, okay? That's fine.
But suppose you were to use the sun to keep track of that. How about the time it takes the sun to get to its highest point in the sky each day? That ought to be 24 hours. Because every day the sun rises and it gets a high sports high and then it goes and it sets on the other side. Right? Right. That ought to be 24 hours. Right. But it's not. Exactly. Damn daylight savings time. No, no. There are some days where the sun is early. At its highest point in the sky relative to your clock
And sometimes it's late in the sky. You're thinking it would cross the highest point in the sky at high noon, right? High noon, that's what they say. Sometimes it gets to high noon before noon comes. And sometimes it gets to high noon after noon comes. Sometimes the sun is fast, and sometimes the sun is slow. Now, of course, we're the ones in motion around the sun, so I shouldn't be sun-centering those sentences. But just for now, that's what I'll do. And it can be by up to 15 minutes.
too fast or too slow relative to your 24-hour day that's correct cool all right what that means is You can't really use the sun to tell you when noon is. Because the sun will be ahead of that or behind it. So if you're okay, plus or minus 15 minutes, sure, use the sun. Oh, CP time, don't go there. That's the sun. The sun is like, what you talking about? 15 minutes, that's the sun. We're still good. We're still on time. We're still on time. 15 minutes.
Are you going to tell people what CP time is? I don't want to, but I'm going to have to. But yeah, CP time. No, don't do it. Just make people go to the Urban Dictionary. Yeah, go to the Urban Dictionary and look up CP time. If you... Drew the shadow, the tip shadow of a stick in the ground. Every day at 12 noon, the tip of that shadow will trace out a figure eight on the ground over the 365 days of the gear. There'll be four days Where the Sun hits 12 noon at the highest point and it's our
All the other days of the year, it's either before or after. That's the width of the eight. tells you how much before and how much after 12 noon the sun arrives at that point on the sky. Now, this sounds really obscure, Doesn't it? But every single sundial ever made has a figure eight on it. I was going to say, it sounds obscure now because we don't use the sun to tell time.
But if you're actually using the sun to tell time and you don't want to end up on CP sun time. So you would use the figure eight. to adjust for the fact that the sun was either slow or fast so that you'd get the proper time accurate to within about a minute or two. Damn. Actually, I've done this experiment. You get it to within a minute. a properly oriented sundial when corrected by this figure a
That figure eight is called an analemma. That is the name of that figure eight. And so you might ask, how come the sun is not behaving? How come the sun's not behaving? Thank you, Chuck. Because they got nothing to do with the sun. It has to do with the fact that Earth's orbit around the sun is not a perfect circle. When we are closer to the sun, we are moving faster in our orbit. If we move faster in orbit than when we're farthest from the sun, we have to turn a little bit extra.
to complete the sun's journey from noon to noon. Because we moved in our orbit around the sun, so if we turned to exactly the right same direction, we're not going to see the sun anymore. We have to keep turning to compensate for that. And so these effects are not only because we're in motion around the sun, but because sometimes we're traveling faster and sometimes we're traveling slower. Those conspire to make a figure eight.
And that figure is called an analemma. If you have old cartographic maps of the world, like old globes, look in the South Pacific where they put... you know, the legend for distancing the compass rose and things. In there you'll find an NLM typically. Now that is something I'm going to be honest had no idea. Never heard of before just now that it never just completely know
But it makes perfect sense. And it's very important because, of course, if you want to keep time. And by the way, so let's go back to a perfectly circular orbit, which we don't have. You would get this adjustment. Anyway, okay, so it takes 23 hours and 56 minutes for the Earth to rotate once on its axis.
56 minutes and four seconds to rotate once. Well, how come it's a 24 hour clock? Because in that time we orbited the earth and we have to turn four minutes extra to then see the sun back where it's supposed to be. So, we say Earth rotates once in 24 hours. That is false. That has never been true. Earth faces the sun every 24 hours. It turns back to the sun with an aligned spot every 24 hours. And that has to be adjusted because sometimes we move faster in our orbit and sometimes we move slower.
All of that's going on. And you just wake up, have breakfast, go to work, and come home. There you go. Now you can have a true appreciation for your digital clock, people. Yes! Yes, and... And by the way most ancient peoples knew about this Because what else are you doing? They didn't have HBO, you know, Max at night. What else are you going to do at night? You're going to look up. Right. My God, do they ever play anything else on this channel? God.
On the Sky Channel. On the Sky Channel. By the way, December 21st in the Northern Hemisphere, first day of winter. Okay. The arc that the sun takes across the sky is very low. In fact, it is the lowest arc. of all arcs of every other day of the year. Okay? Okay? December 22nd, the path is a little higher in the sky. And this continues. to June 21st, where the arc that the sun takes across the sky is at its highest. Okay. This is...
Part of the reason, like the primary reason, why it's warmer in the summer and colder in the winter. The sun is not very high and it's not up for very long. The ancients were very concerned about this. Ancient pagan cultures, very concerned about this. Because the sun is everything. It gives you warmth and your crops and your agriculture. So there's the sun getting a lower and lower arc. In the sky so around December 21st it stops getting lower the Sun stops Solstice
Yes. So is the sun. Armistice. You stop the arms. So it doesn't stop in the sky. The trajectory, the daily trajectory across the sky doesn't get lower. But then they weren't sure. It took a couple of days to make sure. And when you can say, hey, it's on its way back up again, that would happen a few days later. Right. That's what day that happened. Probably around, I don't know, the Christmas.
You know, nice Christmas. So huge celebrations. So now Christianity says we don't want you worshipping pagan gods. We want you worshipping Jesus. That's right. And so there was a swap There's an adjustment. Where are you going to put the birth of Jesus? Passages in the Bible. taken literally for what they say, would put it in the spring, not in December. But if you want to get as many converts as you can, you can't take away their holiday. That's because pagans know how to party.
Pagan's party, baby! You can't stop the Pagan party! You can't stop the Pagan party! Oh, they got the bonfire and everything is drinking! It's amazing! And they were like, coming all the way, you know? Hey guys, by the way, you can't worship this anymore, and, uh,
There's this guy, Jesus. You're going to have to kind of worship him. Well, does he drink? Well, not really. I mean, he can change water into wine, but he's not a big drinker. That's a start. That's a start. That's a start. Yeah. Tell you what. Tell you what. Here's a compromise. How about you guys keep your party and we'll just celebrate him as a part of the party. We're good with that.
Start the fire! There it was. That's it. So, that's basically the entire reason for the birth of Jesus and Christmas being December 25th. Yeah, because that's when you assure the sun's arc returns in the sky. So all of this is going on in the 24-hour day and the calendar and the 365 days of the year. That's all. That's awesome. Anyhow, here's your analemma for you. Analemma, baby. Analemma did right by you in the end, I think.
Chuck, you don't have to- look too deep into the news to find all kinds of ways That we're all gonna die. Oh yeah. That's why I like the news. When I get depressed, I just turn it on and sit back and bathe in apocalyptic grandeur. It's wonderful. You know, there's the asteroid, there's a killer virus, there's AI. Yep. And the list goes on and on. And people like stay up nights thinking about ways we're all going to die.
The one that is treated the most lightly, however, is one that I think should be given a little more serious attention. Okay. And that's the zombie apocalypse. Okay, I'm gonna ride with you for a second. I'm gonna ride with you for a second. Okay? Why? Why? Alright, okay. You don't think I got this? Listen, hey, here's the deal. I've doubted you in the past.
And it has worked out. So I'm going to give you a little more leeway right now. But, you know, I got to tell you, this twig is very thin. I don't know if I can support all this weight. Okay, so the zombie apocalypse is, the way it's typically shown in a movie, is there's some virus that affects Right. And they bite you and then you're affected by that virus. But that virus manifests by killing you. Right. And then you come back to life.
Right. Yeah, and using then the virus is basically you're a host for the virus. In your state of being undead. Undead, correct, correct. And by the way, there's a Key and Peele skit about the zombie apocalypse. Did you ever see it? No. Okay, so they're in a suburban neighborhood. And... These zombies are coming down the street, and Key and Peele, they own homes on this street. And the zombie comes towards them, then pauses, stops, and then just keeps walking. I won't bite them
These are racist zombies. That's a good bit. That's a good bit. That was hilarious. That's pretty funny. All the white people in the neighborhood were like running for the hills. And they're out in their backyard playing ping pong. Right. In a barbecue. Yeah. It was just, what would it be if the zombies were racing? That's right.
So that's the idea. And so they're undead. And you've got to buy into that premise, and then you have the whole movie. Right. All right. Okay. So one thing that The Walking Dead did so well in their series is to show for you that Sometimes what we have to fear most is ourselves and not the zombies. Okay, now that I can go with. If you knew zombies were like everywhere taking everything out. Then, who's in charge? Who has access to the...
goods and services and foods and things you need to survive. Society. So all of a sudden, society becomes a Wild West in the face of a zombie apocalypse. Okay. So, for me... I think a little differently. Well... Think more sharply about the zombie apocalypse to me a zombie apocalypse is The person who drives the truck. The people who drive the truck. that bring the food from the farms to the grocer or from the canning facility to the distribution facility, they're taken out.
Zombies don't drive trucks. Okay. The person who controls the water treatment plant that then sends clean water into your pipes is taken out. The person who delivers gasoline to the gas station or fills up or the power station, they're taken out. So a zombie apocalypse is not fundamentally different. From a pandemic. Right? We saw some of this.
At the beginning of COVID. The supply chains were broken. Right. Because people stayed off the roads and other people got sick. So you're not driving a truck that day. You're not running the grocery store that day. And then what happens if the grocery store is open? What do you do? Well, you go in and you buy 800 rolls of toilet paper. That's what you do. I mean, clearly that's the only thing to do. How big is your ass? Exactly, you know?
So, yeah, I would have bought food. I'd find other ways to wipe my ass, is how I would think about that. Yeah, I mean, I think it was, I don't know, it was spring. It was spring, you know. I was going to say that we've been using leaves. forever. Human beings have been using leaves since the beginning of time. So, you know, toilet paper is not really the number one priority, okay? As far as I would have seen it, okay.
So, in a zombie apocalypse, forget the zombies. What's happening is society begins to shut down. Right. And we are so dependent. even the littlest things in society. Alright, if the electric company goes out and you got to put gas in your car, the pumps run on electricity. Yeah. Okay, if you have an electric car when you're not recharged unless you have solar panel
Okay, now suppose the solar panels break. Do you call solar panel fix-it man? No, they're taken out by the virus. And so systematically, civilization as we know it unravels. And let me tell you this, when I'm driving in a car and I see a deer crossing the road, or I see an eagle flying above, or I see a squirrel or a chipmunk, I say to myself, In the apocalypse, they're just fine. Yeah, nothing changes. Nothing changes for them.
They know where to get food. They know how to mate. They know where to live and get shelter. They know what to do from one season to the next. And they might hibernate. They don't need anybody. And so here I am, here we are as humans saying, well, we're smart and we're this. By the way, Chuck, who said that humans are the smartest? Creatures ever I think it was probably a human
Not humans. I'm pretty sure. Pretty sure. It wasn't aliens saying, oh, on the grand scheme of, no. We declared that. Right. And so now, in a Darwinian sense, your your ability to survive the survival of the fittest Didn't mean you have the biggest muscles. It meant you are capable of thriving in an environment You are best fit for that environment. And so we created a civilization. I don't know how to gut a deer. I don't know how to chase a turkey. I don't know how to...
You know, that is why you have a got to get yourself a friend who has a bunker Any friend with a bunker knows how to do all of those things I live in the wrong part of the country for people to have bunkers with AR-15. I'm sure there's plenty of bunker people who would be very honored to be friends with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
You know it's just like we're pulling for the zombie apocalypse cuz Neil's coming over guys You know just gotta make sure you don't get bit on the way That's how I ordered one thing in a survival catalog. There's some fun-looking knife that I wanted. And one thing, it's a survival catalog, mind you, okay? And ever since then... I've been on the mailing list for guns, for tactical gear. So that's how they roll. You can buy a box.
Of food? Just add water? Yeah! Keep you going for three years. Yeah! Exactly, yeah. Yeah, I bought a, um... A self-defense protection, I'll call it. It's basically a weapon. I don't want to say what kind, but... You would think that I was Chuck Norris, not Chuck Nice. Not Chuck Nice. The mail that I get. I'm just like, clearly they do not know who they are sending this mail to.
So, there's a catalog called LA Police Gear, where, you know, you get, it's like, okay, now I know what everybody else is reading when I'm reading. You know I need that now LA police gear is a catalog that I want to have I'm ordering everything in it so that when I get stopped by the cops and they're just like on the ground I'm like you're on the ground
Were the last words Chuck Nice ever said? Get on the ground! You get on the ground! No, no, he'll just see that catalog on the seat next to you. Oh, go ahead. That could be it, too. You never know. That'd be it. So the point is that ask yourself how much of your survival depends on... the efforts of others to maintain the civilization that you're plugged into. Yeah. And like I said, we saw bits and pieces of it for COVID. And COVID virus was 3% fatality, right?
The morbidity, these mean slightly different things. But the fraction of people who contracted COVID who died, that was in the low single digits. And so if that had been higher, 20%? 50%? Oh my goodness. And it was working its way through civilization. then civilization shuts down and you are basically on your own. And that's exactly what happens in a zombie apocalypse. So I think we need to devote more attention. to the creativity of the writers and the producers who do these zombie stories
just to see how the people are reacting in the face of lost services. They even know in the zombie shows, you don't use a gun to kill the zombie, because guns use what? Bullets. And somebody's got to make the bullets. And if that person doesn't show up at the factory, you ain't going to have bullets. I gotta tell you, my favorite zombie series of all time is The Last of Us on HBO. And it's because of everything you just said.
doesn't really focus on zombies it focuses on our relationship with one another in the breakdown of society and it just shows how different groups of people how they coalesce And become their own sub-society. And they think about their survival in different ways. Yeah. And what they'll do and what their priorities are. Yeah. So I'm just saying. You know, zombies are... We're scared of zombies, but as you've clearly indicated there, Chuck, at the end of the day, maybe it is we...
We should fear not the zombies themselves. I'm going with both I'm already scared of us. If zombies show up, I'm going to be scared of them too. By the way, there's some, you know, people make up their own zombie rules, which is fine as long as it's consistent. There was one storyline where the zombies could not move backwards. They can only move forward. Which meant they cannot open a door that opens inward. Right. That's a dumb rule, you know. All I gotta do is get behind you now.
Right and then don't turn around and go back and say that's one rope and then a movie I didn't see
Z what's that movie world war Z. It's a good zombie movie. Those are some fast-moving zombies. The zombies should not be able to move that fast. That ain't right. That ain't right. Unrelenting. It's just crazy. That ain't right. The zombies should not be able to run yeah i'm sorry and run faster than anybody that's what made it yeah that's not how they got no ligaments in their bones and no the most i'll give them is in the thriller video
They can dance. I'm down with that. By the way, the only zombies I'm not afraid of. I'm like, those guys, They're too entertaining. Just one more number before you bite my brains. Just one more dice. One more, one more, one more. So anyway, that's all I wanted to tell you about. Ask yourself, how dependent are you on civilization itself? and then consider the zombie apocalypse.
And you're the first to go. Well, there you go. There's something good to think about during this season. It's the perfect season to think about zombies and the breakdown of society as a whole. I like it. All right. That's all I got for you, Chuck. Okay. Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Keep looking up.