it's one of 100 billion other galaxies. so we have good precedent for recognizing that the universe is really bad at making things in one's, and that may be true even for the universe itself. that they could simply be multiple universes. i think that maven two out of three of his questions. you are keeping notes. >> host: he asked, you know, you talk about this in several of your books, in your talks, is there a religious aspect to the big bang theory? and then have you ever considered running for office. >> guest: the thing is when you use the word religion it comes with certain expectation of what it means. here in the west, most places in the world when you say religion, it involves a document of some kind, a holy document, a holy book that prescribes what you

should believe even in absence of evidence. and it then tells you about what conduct you should have in the fact of that belief system, okay? insights you can put forth an idea that does it have evidence, but everybody is looking for evidence. and if we cannot generate evidence for it, then it ultimately which is simply be discarded or put on a show. so evidence matters in this. so if you want to call it a religion with evidence, okay, that's just a very fresh usage of the word religion in your vocabulary. i don't debate words with people. i don't value time invested in debating definitions. just tell me how you are using the word and i will tell you whether what it agrees with. if you're using the word religion in a way that allows evidence to define what his people inc., say and do, then

fine, it's all religion because that's what sites does. it finds evidence that the find and discover the truth of the world. that's just not simply how anybody else in the world is using the word religion. they are using it to refer to some kind of spiritual elements that require faith in something being true, rather than evidence for something being true. >> host: medical office tragic i was once asked by the "new york times", ," there was sometg pass, several and passes ago in congress and they just thought they would have five and ask people who are definitely not politicians what solution do they have for getting things through congress and fixing things. the way they asked it was, if you were president what would you do? what solutions do you have? so i wrote back, if i were president, i wouldn't be

president. you can find, it's on my website. if i were president, just google that and my name tyson, it will take you -- it might take you to the new times part, but it duplicated it in my website because they cut out a paragraph that there was not enough space, so the full response to the question is there. it comes down to the expectation that if you run for office, you somehow can change everything, and i'm not into that. -- i'm not convinced of that. i'm a little contrary in. my views are the little opposite of what a lobbyist does. a lobbyist goes straight to the politician to influence the politician in ways that serve the interest of the lobbyist and who they represent. for me, any elected official represents people who put them into office. so as an educator what matters is not so much who the official is. what matters is, what is the

state of enlightenment of who is doing the voting. because people, for example, all new, recognize and value what science is and how and what works, they would never even dream of voting for someone who doesn't know that. because that person would then not represent the full interest. so i would rather educate and electric so they can put people in office who can make scientifically informed decisions about everything they do, rather than just install myself into office and lead people who don't yet have this knowledge or insight. 88% 88% of congress stand for reelection every two years. you can convince one congressman or another, but then you have to start all over again. you educate the electorate, we

are good. i go to the bahamas, elect people who will take this country into the future rather than back into the cave. >> host: next call for neil degrasse tyson comes from david in east hampton massachusetts. good afternoon, david. >> caller: another family member of mine, i was telling him you on tv and suggesting he might want to watch and he told me something that he heard. i don't not accurate this is a with the story, but basically he said something about something called an m drive, what is it and how does a work? and also i'd be interested to her about other possible drives for spaceships for long-distance travel like to mars or even further. >> guest: that's a great question. let me give some back story. right now our rocket ships,

we're still using chemical energy. so you have some molecule which when you break it apart it releases energy. in chemistry we say it is exothermic as opposed to endothermic with the reaction absorbs absorbed energy. and by the way, we experience this, if you ever see cold packs that you can buy in a drugstore where you sort of squeeze it and the thing gets cold, that's an endothermic reaction, sucking energy out from its environment. and yet he packs would opposite happens. you get very clever with the chemistry and make this happen. rocket engines are endothermic, so we squeeze the rocket and then, so it's highly exothermic, what a rocket engine does. what we have had chemicals since robert goddard back in the early 1920s or so. so very little has improved in

our capacity to propel ourselves through space since, for 100 years almost no. so there's been some talk about the kinds of drives. one of them is a solar sail where you can use propulsion from sunlight, that you open up a huge sale relative to the size of your craft so that you get maximal pressure from sunlight and i can accelerate you and accelerate you for free. with the way you would move around is you would attack just what you would a sailboat. you would tack into the wind or away from the wind, but here the wind is sunlight that you're doing this with. then you can navigate the solar system. it's a little slower but maybe you would ship cargo that way and vince and people faster. so the future of space exploration need not be limited to chemical energy. there are other drives.

there's a plasma drive we have very hot gas and you let very highly high-speed particles come out. the hotter the gases, the faster the particles move, and that is a very low impulse propulsion but it is very high in, so you're not going to accelerate very much when one particle comes out but this accumulates. you can ultimately accelerate to very high speeds doing so. so here's the problem. this and the m drive and all these frontier means of propulsion, you can go real fast. instead of taking nine months to get to mars, you'll take a month. perhaps. if you want to go visit saturn, instead of taking 20 years you will take two years. but even if you got to the speed of light, near the speed of light, you will not reach the speed of light, near the speed of light, you want to cross the

galaxy, we will watch you do this. by our time it will take you 100,000 years to cross, at the speed of light. so the answer here, by the way, you'll age much more slowly so you will get there without much time having elapsed. but we who sent you will see you take 100,000 of our years to do that. so this is not of -- you come back, we would have all long forgotten about you, that is if civilization is still here. so none of these drives solve the interstellar problem, relative to a human lifespan. if we lived in the years as individuals, sure, who cares if it takes a thousand years to get somewhere? if it's a really interesting place worth going to. so what we really need is wormholes. wormholes.

just, you open a door here and on the other side of the door, on the backside you in another part of the galaxy. by the way, views of this program probably read more books than see movies, but there's a movie called monsters inc., an animated kids film. there's a lot of good adult humor in it, too. so these are monsters that work in a factory. these are monsters whose sole job in life is to scare little children. because of course, why else be a monster? they work in this factory in this factory makes doors, doors. and they have the door. it's just a door. they opened the door and go through it, and it is the door of a child's closet in the kids bedroom. so they emerge from the kids closet to then scare the child. then they go back through the door and there back in the factory. that's a wormhole.

they didn't say that in the movie that's a wormhole. that's how a wormhole would work. i try to be clever one time. i was in charlotte airport, i had to go from a big plane to a little plane, and i swear i walked five miles in the airport. this is probably just like a mile but it felt impossibly long. so i tweeted, try to be clever and i say i can't wait into we have wormholes, and that with all gates can be just adjacent to one another. d 400 pitches on the other side of gate number one. someone tweeted back, dr. tyson, if we have wormholes, then we won't need airport. busted. you got it. >> host: not proven, wormholes? >> guest: it works on paper, but we don't know how to make one or keep an open because it will have a tendency to want to

collapse. it works in science fiction. that the best place we can invoke a wormhole. but until then we're going to be pretty much earthbound. >> host: if we left right now tt would take us that much to get to mars? >> guest: no, no. you can't leave right now forget to leave when mars and earth are properly aligned. judges to remind people, use mars in the sky, start traveling to it, no, , no. you have to travel to where mars will be when you get there. so it's a matching of trajectories that matters here. what we call the minimum energy trajectory. it's one where you burn your engines and you shut them off and you coast to mars, until mars pulls you into its gravitational influence and then you fall towards more. >> that takes about nine months. but if you run your engines the whole time, we don't have enough fuel, if we're filling stations

along the way you could do this, you fill up, burn your engines and then you are accelerate to mars, by the way, that would give you artificial gravity inside the ship if the ship is accelerating. but to slow down you to turn the ship around and accelerate to slow down, but if you do that, you get to mars in weeks, a few weeks. it will take a vote load of fuel to do that but if fuel is cheap, why not? just filling stations. >> host: san mateo, california, you are on booktv with neil degrasse tyson. >> caller: yes. in the bay area there's a show -- i do question about einstein. the thwarting of knowledge from

political forces, like for instance, right now there is i think a woman astrophysicist in hawaii who wants to, they know exactly what to look for, they have a telescope, the largest in world, would be perfect except for some american, unser, native hawaiians who consider it sacred so can't do it. and so i guess they will build in the canary islands or something. i was just thinking, another example would be in terms of political physics. there was supposed to be a super collider built in texas in the late '80s and early '90s which would dwarf the one that's in europe, the largest one in the world. because of the texas republicans saying we can't build it, pay for it. they can pay for wars but they can't pay for science. i was just wondering, it seems

to me like at this point we probably would have figured out dark matter by now, may be the on her to understanding dark energy. >> host: you covered a lot of topics here, and will get a response in a second. do you work in science in any way? >> caller: no. i wish. i'm unemployed, but actually on my last universal basic income. i just try to get some books in the library, but it's hard to concentrate. >> host: thank you very much. >> guest: thanks for the questions. i think books have always been the great portal to other places and other ways of thinking. so happy to hear that you are sort of in whatever is your wife's trajectory in this moment. books are giving you of the

things -- life -- physical books, there are two sean carroll's, there's a science writer, biologist, and then there's a physicist. i assume you meant the physicist when you mentioned carol what he might've meant the other one, but either way. how why is the most perfect spot on earths surface of a telescope. it is at 14,000 feet above all moisture they could interfere with your view between you and the universe. airflow from the ocean across the mountain is what we call laminar instead of turbulent so that the images you get through the telescopes are sharp rather than blurry. so in recent years there's been resistance to adding more telescopes to the mountaintop and resistance have come about

from native hawaiians who value the mountain as a sacred place. and so if we are in a culture that respects cultures, as much or if not more sides, and you get locations where you want to build something technological that conflicts with a religious or cultural or spiritual or sociological value, you don't, and then you go somewhere else. this happens. so these are choices a country makes your what was manifest here is if there's a telescope that was going to be in hawaii and is now in the canary islands, and we were going to have a particle accelerator, but the next particle accelerator to do what always is going to do is down switchman, it simply means we will lose the leadership in those areas and others to come,

as long as that continues. that's just the reality of this. one of the many interesting things about science is that it is, signs is not a national thing. in fact, it's not anybody's national thing. these are objective truths being explored in the objective universe. so if the united states doesn't do it, that doesn't mean no one else will. other nations will rise of. for example, the largest telescope in the world today which focuses on radio waves, it used to be the telescope in puerto rico, largest dish in the world. in fact, many movie scenes or films are concluding several important ones from carl sagan said film contact. now the largest radio telescope in the world is in china. so the aliens were sending signals to us, we have to fight it out of the din of cosmic

radio noise, the chinese will be the first to communicate with aliens, not the americans. this will just continue. it's one of the signs that the united states is sort of fading on the world technological stage. stage. there are many but these are part of them. if you do nothing science matters, then in the future you will be buying products innovated elsewhere, and your economic health and stability, you could still be a functioning country but you will not be leaving the world in anything that will be shaping tomorrow's civilization. >> host: steve, anaheim, california,, please go ahead. steve, , anaheim. one more time jerk all right, i apologize, dr. tyson. steve is not there. but you brought up carl sagan. what was your relationship? >> guest: it wasn't, you do, i think the press occasionally overstates what the relationship was.

i met him when i was 17, just an anonymous high school kid. but what was remarkable about that, that he was already famous soviet not yet done cosmos but he is already famous, had been on johnny carson, the tonight show multiple times. cover stories in parade magazine. he was already well known and i'd apply to cornell where he was on the faculty and unknown to me the admissions office sent my application to him to get his comment and reaction. .. the bus and went from new york

in december in the winter, cold and he met me outside the building show me the lab. reach behind him. ever forget this, didn't even have to look. signed it to me, i said wow, that's bad a. >> the book that you have written. i still have that book. it says to future astronomer. carl. so at the end of the day, he drives me back to the bus station and it begins to snow. not an uncommon thing in new york. then he says, here's my home throne. if the bus can't come through, you can spend the night at my place. i'm just like nobody from nowhere. i remember thinking, if i'm ever remotely as famous as him, i

would have a duty and obligation to treat students at this level of kindness and generosity he exhibited with me. i didn't openly attend cornell but that was in indelible moment in terms of how to behave. the presence of others who have ambitions contracts that you have laid or tracks that you're on. so thereafter, i attended one of his talks, he gave a couple of talks, he blurred my second booe here -- >> no. 1994. >> i wrote a letter i was a kid who did this. it's my second book. so he read it, wrote a blurb and

said page 17, i think you have a typo. that's how you know he actually did go through the whole book. but i was it until he was widowed and julian one of the co-authors of one of the cosmos, a woman with huge talent in her own right, deeply insightful. i would say she's one of the most enlightened people i've ever met. ask a question and she will say, i never thought of that. that's good. keep talking. you just off the next hour and i will listen. when you meet somebody like that, it's a special thing. i was invited by the state to host. she continued to co-author that is a colleague of mine.

other than that, i had a few encounters with carl, maybe five but we weren't beer drinking buddies, it wasn't that relationship. mark was a mentorship which you would presume persistent one on one exchanges. it was more, let me pose a different question. you actually have to be close to someone for them to serve as a mentor. i think you do. you just have to be aware of the examples they set. and what place they occupy in society. if you are observant and they are successful at that, then just simply being aware that if you are receptive to it, being aware and receptive can in his own way, have him serve as a

mentor. so i can think of him as a mentor but if you is the word, it's a different impression than what people expect of the word. so how many day jobs you have for now? >> i claim only one day job, everything else is a night. i'm director of new york city's paid times area. another in boston, by the way. it's buried within the boston example science but it doesn't have his own storefront. they foundation, well, well we were the first planetarium -- fifth planetarium in the united states. after los angeles, pittsburgh, chicago was the first, and there is another. then came us. all that happened very quickly. within ten years or so.

between 1930 -- 1935. so it was a life we gave money. it still active today to give monies to kids after school. i'm director of that planetarium at the american museum of natural history. but also, i enjoy writing and a perfect day for me is when the phone doesn't ring and there's nothing in my inbox and i can just write. i also want to get back to the lab, not something i've been in much lately. some for me, at the computer producing data from telescopes, your rising things that can be tested. being a scientist again. i greatly miss that. a small section of the time i invest in the week.

i have a possibly delusional envisioned that i'm visible enough, other people want to do exactly what i do and they rise up and then all the media starts focusing on them and i can back away, unnoticed. then i go to the bahamas and recover and i speak into the lab and nobody knows i missing, i'm just gone. that's my ideal future. then you'll never see me again. however delusional it is, i think about it all the time. there's that. when i'm invited, i give public talks, although i can't on all of them, i get 200th month. severe triage was set down between zero to four. ideally them together so that it's rapid succession cycle back home. so there's that. i get a call from the press, i'm

a servant of the public appetite. for knowledge of the universe and science. i live in new york city we are right now. it's a major newsgathering center. cnn, real headquarters aren't atlanta. >> all very close to the hayden sanitarium. >> and the comedic talkshows, the daily show, they are all here as well. people fly in state overnight and i'm home for dinner. i say honey i'll be home in 20 minutes. that's a lot of time and effort. more than you might think because you like to see me on for the five minutes. the evening news for example. there's the pre-call and you got to get there an hour early and

about a change in look presentable and then -- it like bites out of the day. so i don't have that many others might have our long stretches of hours with nothing coming in. as a different kind of thinking, a different kind of creativity that will manifest when you have long stretches where you are not talked in 20 different directions. there's an old saying, if you want to be more creative, become less productive. hadley divine productivity? lookup productive i am, yet, but did you create anything? did you have a new idea? did you invent something? have you reflected on reality? is a whole other thing the human brain does when given the opportunity. i try to carve time just for

that purpose. >> who is honey? you said honey, i will be home for dinner. [laughter] >> i don't actually say honey but that's the trip. so, my wife. we both like -- we are both foodies. we're not crazy foodies but we are in the door, and the front door but not in the middle maybe. we care about how the food taste. one of my regrets is how we finally perfected the dish. we can no longer order at a restaurant because it we make it better than they do. going to a restaurant is no longer special. i think really, if i say so myself, i make a really excellent rack of lamb that i can no longer order at a restaurant because it's not as good as mine. that takes that off the list.

my roast chicken is pretty good, too. i don't order chicken and restaurants anymore. unless it's a very fancy just with the chicken is incidental to how fancy it is. see the artist slightly more expensive than it should be to see if something rises up and the many that we observe. so we care about food and wine and also go to the theater oft often. we love a good corny musical, a good dramatic play and we have the electric to be able to do that as red and residents of new york city. >> you have a phd in math? >> yes, she does. >> you've been very patient, you are on booktv. >> it's a pleasure to speak with

you. my question is, and around the fourth century bc, there was a great named hip artist, discovered something called precession. for all those time it all on his other i don't want to be political, or to be scientific, would you explain precession and the effect it has on this planet? >> thank you for the question. progress was a brilliant -- i just imagine what he'd be discovering today. if you woke up in the 21st century world and you show him these tools we have, science and of course he had hardly any tools. he had a brilliant brain.

the procession is, we have our earth and well, multiple processions. anything that rotates will evolve, will generally present process. if you have an elliptical orbit, is the planet repeating that, over time, that you that oval returns. even though the plant is continually opening. the shape will move around the center object that is turning. that would be the procession of your orbit. earth spins on our taxes and we go in one direction. the direction where the north pole is. the north star. however, we're not fixed in space doing that. we actually wobble and one full wobble 26 dozen years. 26000 years.

13000 years from now, our axis will not be pointing toward the star, it be pointing toward a different object over here if it happens to be one. so this is the procession of earth's rotation and the way this manifests is on the night sky, we call it a precession of the equinox. earth's equator projected onto the sky, actually drifts across the constellations over 26000 years. so what this means is the first point of aries as an astrologer will tell you, which is the son entering the constellation areas on march 21. that is the declaration of the first and beginning march 21, if you're born in the next 30 days, your astrology will say you are areas. the sun is in front of the stars in the constellation. today, people didn't know about

distance, so they would say the sun is moving through. the sun is not really moving at all. but they didn't know this back when they lay this out. asserting the universe is controlling your life. this first point of aries drifts. this was 2000 years since this was laid out. aries was then identified. if you now look at maps and ask, what does the sun do when it is, but it's march 21, it is not entering areas. it's an entire constellation shifted from. it's 112 of 126,000 years. sonic constellation at all. when you go to your course, if you do this and say i'm a libra or a scorpion or davis, it tells you what you should be thinking or doing, the name of your

astrological sign actually has no correspondence to what's going on in today's sky. it is a holdover from what people used to think 2000. as a free country, regional horoscope if you want, i stop you. go ahead. i would expect that people voting for people in charge with no that you don't put someone who thinks the universe is influencing their life be in charge of other people who know that it isn't. >> from your most recent book, physics people in a hurry quote, some of the water you just drank passed to the kidneys socrates, and jennifer. >> is that a question? [laughter] >> x down on that. >> in that part of the book, i try to make sure in astrophysics

in a hurry, it's not the big book. there's a lot in there. i wanted to make sure every ten pages or so, it was something that would blow your mind that was cosmically true but you got to go, what? in fact, they have to. reporter: that to fully absorb the significance of it. here's the point, in this cup of water, there's water in here, there are more water molecules in this cup of water then there are cups of water in all the world's ocean. that's how small molecules are. what that means is, i take this and toss it out, there's enough molecules in what i tossed to enter every other possible cup of water anyone draws from the world water supply. is enough to scatter to every

possible cup of water in the world. so if i drink this, comes back out of my body in some way or another, any one of the half-dozen ways. so that reenters the environment, the clouds, goes to the streams, it goes to the oceans, give it enough time it mixes completely. saturday drank a glass of water socrates, it is of certainty, that some molecules the test his kidney were in that class you just drank. and this is a statement of the conductivity of life. the communality of our existence with one about one another. the interdependence, what it is we do how it is we behave. it's not me that by the same reasoning, there are more molecules of air in every breath you draw there are breath of air in all the earth's atmosphere.

so by the same calculation, every breath you take contains molecules that pass through the lungs, molecules of nitrogen, not the oxygen because that makes us back with the trees. but certainly nitrogen. well, most of the nitrogen. the nitrogen cycle as well. but molecules which scatter quickly and easily throughout the atmosphere, some of the molecules passes through the lungs. whatever your favorite historical character, jesus, it would have passed through their lungs. so, what to think of us as separate and distinct from one another, we're not connected to the world that we are. for me, i think it's fascinating. >> is or something you studied or learned that you just can't get you on surround yet? >> tents.

>> there's something that i never expected because they are too big or too weird. often when you say this, it implies that now, that makes sense. but as i lead off the book, commenting that the universe is under no obligation to makes sense too any of us, i don't have a requirement that i can wrap my arms around it. i can just recognize it is there. except it even if it just sounds completely weird. so you accept it because the evidence shows it is true. not because you have faith or because you want it to be true because you needed to be true, it's because observation and experiment, verified observation and experiment, demonstrated the truth in that. >> you tweet, several million

followers here followed your tweet that you followed a march 11, 2016, i occasionally wonder whether the entire universe is nothing more than a snow globe in the living room metal of an alien. >> so you wonder that, is that all? the universe is all we know. it's our entire existence. look at what we do to, i don't know if this is still typing to do, do you ever have been in farm? the ants just doing their thing. i don't know if they are happy or sad or thinking about, but do they know they are in an and farm? today have self-awareness?

do they have any idea? do bees know you are about to steal the money? the have a world where they are pollinating plans and coming back in picking honey. today have any idea that we created that world for them? the b farm. any idea at all? we get to do this because we are smarter than they are, so we can outsmart them and create an environment in which we think they are happy. therefore, they do it is they want. so we outsmart our pets. we feed them and continue to be them, that keeps them in there and we provide for them but there's like, we do things because we are smarter than them and we they don't know the difference. so, could it be that the thing we know and learn in this world is just for the entertainment of an alien?

is that so hard to imagine? i know you don't want to think that, what to think we have free will, went to think that we are in charge but are we? so yes, i don't remember what time of day but i think tweets are date stamped and time stamped but i don't remember when i posted that. >> this is an e-mail, question from neil. are we alone? why are there any evidence about ufos? that's how he phrased it. is any evidence of ufos? why? >> the seminar we alone on earth rather than in the universe? we are not likely alone in the universe. you look at how common the ingredients of life are. , it is.

hydrogen and oxygen, nitrogen and carbon. we are made of this stuff. that's the foundation. this stuff is everywhere we look in the universe. so whatever happened on earth, it's not likely to be where we are unique because carbon chemistry on which life is based is the most chemistry there is. carbon is abundant across the universe. so if there's life somewhere else, it's probably based on carbon. it's a fascinating bias but it's not unjustified. the universe has been around for jingling years. plenty of time to evolve all manner of creatures out there. particularly microorganisms. we have no reason too not think of microorganisms as aliens.

they don't have that they ship, they are just alien life on another planet. have we visited that's a different question than whether we assert there is life elsewhere in the universe. whether we have people looking for life in the universe not only any life but intelligent life. we try to be clever about how we conduct those experience. with the ufo community puts forth as evidence is weak on a level that in any scientific circle would be kicked out of the lab. we have things like eyewitness testimony. i'm sorry, this is not working. no. if you walk into a conference and say, this is true because i saw it, you will get laughed off

of existence. we're not saying you didn't see it, we are simply saying that you cannot present that as evidence for something that you want all of us to embrace. so, eyewitness testimony is not something of value inside of scientific circles. especially if it's something that would be truly extraordinary like visitation by aliens. i need more than your eyewitness testimony. i trust it if you tell me the rest yesterday. i need better data than that. i probably west one trust that because it's not in stored me extraordinary, because it's no not -- in your data taking system that involves your eyes and brain, it is why in science we invent tools of measurement. to replace our sense.

we know how people they are. how not representation they are of reality. colleges have done this ever since they been in psychology. signs we have known this since we've seen this influence of data. so now, now you take a picture or something that you don't understand. that's better than eyes, knife picture or video, that is better okay? so what is this? it's unidentified but that's what the youth stands for. unidentified. we don't know what it is, it is a mystery. would you want me to do about that? okay. what you say i just saw a ufo, it should just be a period at the end of that sentence. what typically happens is people

keep talking and they say, i don't know what it is, therefore, it must have been an alien visiting earth to observe us. when a minute, you just said you don't know what it is. because it was unidentified. now you're telling me what must be? the fact that admitted what you did not low that you are looking at, it clears the rest of this sentence that just came out of your mouth. i'm not going to stop you from trying to find the alien. i thought to meet aliens. but i have such low confidence in your claims that there aliens. that i will not invest any of my time but i'm glad you are. they -- i need something better than your video camera and better than your eyewitness testimony. ideally, bring the alien. okay? i'm not going to stop you from

doing this. everybody has a video camera today. everybody. where are the flooded youtube postings of people experiences inside a flying saucer? shaken hands with the aliens. where is that? we have video of extremely rare phenomenon now because everybody has a video camera. we have video of buses tumbling in 20 does. there was a day you wouldn't say, the bus is about to topple, let me go home and get my shoulder mounted field so i can from this. no, you get out of there when you see this happen. everybody has a video camera. we have rare surveillance footage of things. if you've been abducted and had an encounter, give me good video of it. and get others to have good video of it.

then we are good. as long as it is unidentified to you, i don't know, have i made myself clear enough? i have very high experience looking at the night sky and the sky. and knowing what can happen in the night sky and dates sky, i've seen things without the extra background that i have, i would have easily reported a ufo to the police. i know this. but because i've studied phenomenon of the sky, i could identify it. there are clouds that build above mountaintops that take circular form that are very high altitude, the cloud is even higher than the mountain, some of material are clouds but the clouds are very high up. they can have perfectly

cylindrical shape. watch what happens, the sunsets. at the bottom of the month, the sunsets for you, it hasn't yet set for those high altitudes. they can see the on the horizon. the sun is to them for you -- the cloud is lit by sunset colors. orange, red, it's vibrant. it's circular and looks for all the world like the mothership just came and docked over that on top. if you are susceptible to wanting this to be true, then that is the mothership. but for me, it is a cloud that naturally forms over mountains. then the people say, this is a good eyewitness. this is a general, a person who is human, that's all that matters. you are no more susceptible or

less susceptible anybody else. i don't care your title. i don't care if you are a military pilot. it doesn't matter. i don't care. you are human. you got to do better than that. if you get abducted, tell people. if they poke your gonads as all aliens do, we've been told. look over there, snatch something off the shelf. just do that, okay? then go back -- then where they let you out, you can say, look what i have stolen from the alien spacecraft. an alien coast or alien ashtray, then we can take it to the lab. if an alien came here on a space ship, anything you pull off the shelf is going to be interesting. still waiting for that to happen.

>> every guess we have, we ask who are they reading? what are some of the career influences, things like this. these are the answers we got. ♪

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we ask you your favorite books, influences and what you are currently reading. we just show that to our audience. you sent us extra notes. instead of titles, you gave explanations. on the day you are born, you say is one of your favorite books. >> well, children's books. >> was able that i would have written, i have a talent that she did. it's a very simple and beautiful account of all the things that are going on in nature in any given day of the year. but you have to read it to a

child, it's way for a child to be exposed to all the things that nature does in this world. what does as a planet in orbit around the sun. with the well was doing in the ocean. with a say walk through nature, it has nothing to do with the baker or politician or those other things happening on the day you were born. but nature is the, is what the child to whom you're reading the story is being exposed. i think it's beautiful. i get misty eyed when i read it. it's beautiful. >> the book you are currently reading, you call it a

midcentury assessment of the world value of science in guiding the progress. >> i like reading through the history of how people thought, especially as it may have been influenced by politics or culture of the time. 1950s, the dawn of the cold war and obviously before the war went up, but still feeling the aftermath of the second world that divided the world's powers and this is a scientist who was around and lived through it. made contributions through quantum physics and decided to write a bit for the public and that's not his first book. he has several books that he's written for the public. one is what is life. he's talking about how physics manifests in biology and these are short books but a friend of mine give it to me. i thought on a shelf.

he asked if i wanted to borrow it. so happens to be on my shelf at the moment. >> want to participate in our conversation with neil, evan 48 -- 8200 -- we also cycled through our media addresses three contractors that way. we've got 50 minutes left with our guest this afternoon. >> it's an honor to speak with you. i have a question about your education. i just finished my bachelors degree two weeks ago vacations. i'm trying to figure out what degree -- or should i go back and get a four year degree? i like physics. how did you figure out if you

wanted that degree and how did you pay for it? yes, i am thinking books. >> wow, that they great question. so, advanced degrees especially in academics subjects, as opposed to medical doctor while school, that sort of thing. when i think of academic subjects, i think you have to really love the subject. whereas, medical school, you have to love medical school to know at the end, want to be a medical doctor because you have friends who are medical doctors or who have been interning to enter academics, graduate school, you have to really love it. not going to get much. while you are in school, and when you get out of school, you won't get much money. the world, the rewards are the

act of pursuing the truths. in any field. it could be literature or history or art or academics. or mine, scientist. because also, things do not always go as you want them. you can be in the lab and do an experiment, nothing works. you don't get the result you expected. you'll get a result worth publishing. you have to start again, that is two years of your life. if all of what i just said is a chore, if you say, i don't want to be in that situation, then no, stay away. but if in your life, you have learned to love the questions themselves, without regard to whether you asking a question in designing experiments can answer, leads to an answer then this is that life.

so it's a -- by the way, as an academic, if you get a faculty position or in some cases, hired by corporation, it's a decent living. you will be the wealthiest person but you have a car and house and family and there are no unhappy academics for the absence of money. so there's that part. i don't pay for? well, in my field, we also worked as a teaching assistant, which participates in this teaching enterprise that the school undergoes. so that was worth a seller. not very much money, many people have remains but that's a float money. after that, it's still not that much money but it's more than if you went into debt, college, doing what you love, then we are talking about the happiness of your life here. so what if you are in debt? at the contrary view that most people have, to most people but

my point is, if you get to do what you love, and some debt because associated with it, then you pay down the debt. the dedication of ten years, so what? we all willingly walk into 30 year mortgages when we buy a house. you're going into a debt, your don't buy it? justify it, the real estate value will be higher at the end. this is an investment. that's what we tell ourselves. for a lot of the time, there are exceptions to that, especially in 2008, but let's look at your education. as an investment. you're not investing in your enlightenment and future of happiness. shouldn't that be worth at least carrying some debt? such as the debt you will be

carrying in a home mortgage. i was never afraid of debt. i was in debt from college and from graduate school. so i didn't pay off my college debt for 15 years. as my salary kept going up, not talking about a lot of money, just talking about going up from student money to regular person my, all of a sudden the debt that i actually in so many years earlier, looks smaller and smaller. i'm making more and more money. i remember paying $10 a month. to start off paying that debt. then i could pay $50. then i pay $100 a month. so, i was investing myself and my future. so that's my answer. as they say, if you pick a

subject to study, that your loveless, you never be working for the rest of your life. you'll just be having fun. >> 2000 book, the sky is not the limit, essentially his autobiography in many ways. more. harvard university of texas columbia and i think the favorite sentence in that book, let's read it for our viewers. to set one genitals on fire, the absence of a creative solution to many problems rather than today. [laughter] >> was that a question? >> if you want to expound on that, that would be fine. if not, let's move on. >> so in high school and college, i was very athletic.

captain of my school's wrestling team. college i continue to wrestle. her first love was wrestling. i was a member of two different companies and i also liked being strong and member but also graceful. flexible and graceful. dance is that. if it's something else. so i enjoyed what it could do in me for my body. graduate school, i continued to wrestle and grow and advance. but i should have been, i should have never left the lab but i continued this. i started in texas where i met when wife. before that, in the year of my money problems they said, what you dance with us? after hours we danced at this strip club for women and i was

like, really buff at the time and i could do a full split, i could do things a stripper might do under those situations they described. so i said, i was really struggling. i probably would not have this much. i know i would not have struggled as much if i had a roommate. but i wanted to live alone. i spent four years in college with a remit. that increased mice expenses. so they invited me down to check it out. i saw them, the jockstrap that had been set on fire. they would shake their hips to great balls of fire. so in that instant i said, maybe i should. i'm embarrassed that that solution did not occur to me earlier.

of course i could tutor. so, you need that anywhere. everywhere needs a math tutor. from then on, i tutored math. for some $2 an hour. that was fine. it enabled me to make my and meat. >> chris is calling in from goldsboro, north carolina. >> thank you. it was great seeing you earlier today on. i always try to get moments where you are on tv. >> both of these are live. so i went from that studio. here and now i'm in this studio. >> i was in new york because you had to go from one area to

another. i said dang, he got there quick. [laughter] >> i got a wormhole actually but don't tell anybody. >> my first question involves what i've seen on the series of science channel called the how the universe works. it was one of those dealing with black holes. my question involves a feature they stress as a possibility. it involves the speed of matter excelling faster than light then this region of the blackhole because of the force of gravity. my question dates to, if these commissions were met outside of the blackhole and if it happened near a planet or a solar system, what would be the aftermath or the effects of such an event? >> thank you.

>> if i understand your question, you talk about somehow accelerating to the speed of light within beyond the speed of light and what effect would have on the environment? think that was the question. first of all, there's no known way experimentally theoretically to accelerate material body to the speed of light and beyond it. you can get close to it but you are not reaching the speed of light. we joked that the speed of light is not just a good idea, it's the law. it's not a matter of having a weight to invent it, which is the case with the sound barrier. concerned that anyone who said, we will never cost faster than sound ever, well, except that the tip of a bullet crack that you here, it's moving faster than sound. normally that, we had guns at the time.

a bullet emerged faster than sound. for anyone to say we will never go faster -- no. you don't know how, doesn't mean we never will. it's different with regard to light. it's not an engineering limit. it is a physical limit of nature. we've never seen it, we tried and it's never worked. theoretically, it's not possible. now, that some prevent somethi something, i will take the question beyond. it doesn't prevent something from existing faster than light, we have talked about the subject. you can't pass through the speed of light but you can exist on the other side. if you do, then you move backwards through time. we hypothesize a particle that does this, greek word of fast.

it's also a word that draws from that. so that would be really cool if it existed in this world. they propose experiment for how to protect them. just because it's okay in the equation, it doesn't mean nature has to abide by that possibility. so some parties, let's say that i see that you walk in on the quarter and sit on a banana peel and fall. they, let me prevent that. i can send him the text to warn you about the banana peel. then we can go back in time and meet you. so i sent a message and said watch out for the banana peel. then i sent off the text.

ten seconds before you get to the banana peel, you get a text. what you do when you get a text? you reach in your pocket and you read it. while you are reading my text, that says watch out for the banana peel, use that on the banana peel. but you would not have slipped on it if i didn't distract you with the text that subject to look out for the banana peel. you would have been walking down the quarter. that's an interesting case where the act of trying to interfere with the past created the very thing you tried to interfere with. so there's still a lot more thinking we need to do on the frontier time travel. that's an example of something where an event may always be happy exactly that way. there's nothing you can do to change it. the act of trying to change it created the event you tried to change.

>> i just saw on tv, he lists clerk as an influence. chronicle rise of astrophysics in her remarkable set of books. >> agnes clerk, i have i think most of her books. i miss just say, many of her books. she wrote in the 19th century which was a golden age of astronomical discovery. we don't think of it that way. we have much bigger telescopes today. relativity and quantum physics, but the 19th century, if you were a lot of time, you would have separated how far scientists come. keep in mind, if there's more times going on than ever before, that the golden age for you. never mind what happens later. no, you like you are at the top. i have a book, not a person but someone else's. from 1890, ss, i wrote a book on

the sign in 1895. we've learned so much about this on. i have a new petition. celebrating this little bit of five years of discovery. what she did was chronicle, cosmic discovery. not only historically but she has books, she's a popularizer of then modern astronomy. before astronomy became what we think of astrophysics today. some of my books are kind of doing just that. i have a book called files, the motion of poodle. if she were alive today, i think she would have written that book. so i was delighted to learn that there were people who cared enough about science to then about it and share it with people who have an interest in science who are not otherwise doing that work themselves. so she's in existence proof that this is an interesting useful thing to do.

clt are tke. -- >> your book -- >> delighted to know there's something i don't know about. the more, the merrier. >> death by blackhole, you quote a gentleman named calvin who in 1901, said there's nothing new to be discovered in physics now. >> that was a boneheaded thing to say. he had a certain arrogance to him. if physicist arrogance. where in physics, there's no real understanding of chemistry without physics. no real understanding of biology without chemistry. physics i think is justifiably

considered the anchoring subject of all the scientists. so it's a justifiable claim. the question is whether it's your ego as a physicist. in his case, that's one of many examples where he's just kind of saying things that he really had no business saying. 1901, within four years, it would be discovered by albert einstein. but eight years after that, general theory relatively would be discovered for years after that. quantum physics would come down the pipe so you, that's got to be the most embarrassing statement i've ever heard by any scientist ever. who's otherwise respected. >> the site is not the limit cannot thousand and doctor neil wrote that 20th century ended

without us knowing the composition of 90% of the matter in the universe. >> we had numbers on that, it's not 85% of -- let me say, it's not that we don't know 85% of the matter is, we don't know 85% of the gravity is. that's a strictly accurate statement. we look around and see stars and planets move me, we add up all the gravity that should be making that happen, 15%. that includes everything we can think of and dream up and know of. black holes, gas clouds, stars, moons, planets. all of this, added up to 15% of what is driving the gravity of the universe. after that, something that we call arc energy is responsible for the acceleration of the universe. the numbers even higher so i can say some precision, 95% of everything that is driving the universe today, which includes but we call dark matter which i

referenced in the quote and what we call dark energy. those combined, we can measure their existence but we know nothing about them. they are driving 95% of what's going on in this universe. each of those gets a full chapter in astrophysics for people in a hurry. i won't let you get by msu here, no and respecting if not loving, how we came to discover the greatest mysteries in my field. dark matter and energy. >> asked her physics in a hurry is his latest. >> hello? hello. it's a great pleasure to talk to you. i'm a huge fan of yours. my question, you talked about long-distance space travel, the psychology and gravity, i have a

background in psychology. i'm just curious, would gravity, does everything we've ever done, every experiment in idea we never had, has had this gravity on us? if you are in a zero gravity area for a long time, there's a different gravity, would that affect the transition of electrical and chemical signals in the brain? >> that's an excellent question. i can say, it's not likely, experiments show that the answer is no. for most things that matter. so consider the following. when you stand up, when you're standing up and you have hunger and love and hate, normal psychoemotional feelings.

gravity is working downwards. now you just lay down. now gravity is pointing out of the side of your head. you have the same thoughts. somehow, your brain capacity is not deeply altered by this. you're still in a one g environment. >> we apologize for interrupting our programming and we can return to our program schedule. you look at upcoming programs apple tv c-span2. next, booktv visits missouri for literary site and talk with local office. the american dream is attainable today. later, general federal reserve chairman alan greenspan. they provide a history of capitalism in america.