Paul Mecurio

So Paul. Yes. Dr. O came back to my office. Oh, he's the man. He's the man, Dr. O. He knows his stuff. Man, we love it. He's in charge of a lot of acronyms. Wait till you hear the acronyms.

Right, right.

The Kobe satellite. You mean right after he scored 81 points? No, not that guy.

We'll ask you about that in a minute. I didn't know from your sweatshirt that you were a CEO. You're looking good, man.

So circling to the Hubble tension. So tell me, something's got to give.

So what James asks is, is there some physics we just haven't yet discovered? Are we missing physics?

You and I don't need to be here. Let's go.

No pretension. Yeah. We don't need that. Congrats, man. That's awesome. Appreciate you, sir. That's awesome, man. Absolutely.

But nothing is real in that quantum field. Well, expectations.

I actually have a device that does that.

Yeah, you come up with something. Is weird the scientific term you're going with here?

You're just the laziest group of people. Vera Rubin Telescope.

Everybody knows that, Neil.

That's right.

Nancy Grace Roman had millions of dollars. We're going to jump to the next. That was a great question, James. We're going to jump to the next one. Adam Omelon. Hi, Dr. Tyson and Dr. Olusi. Adam from Poland here. First of all, I am a big fan of everything Dr. Tyson is involved in. I love his books, all his programs he's been on.

My question is about the ability to detect various particles in the atmospheres of very distant planets. We know that the light is altered as it travels towards us, but how exactly does this happen?

And is that a constant? In other words, that is a proven theory that works every time? Well, it's hard to do.

All right, we're going to go on to Jordan Vecina from North Dakota. I've been curious about dark matter. So you went from Denmark, Poland, North Dakota.

It may not ever go. I've been curious about dark matter. Is it possible that the reason why we don't understand dark matter is because it defies our understanding of the laws of physics? Meaning, is it possible that dark matter is something that can travel faster than light? Or how massive gravitational effect without having large mass? Love the show.

Unless you're drunk on Thunderbird, then you're not looking up at the stars.

Is it awaiting new physics?

All right, you thought it was a town in Connecticut, not a university.

It does, but just go along with it.

But at what point, no, seriously, do you go, let's stop looking and move on to something else? It's like looking for a second sock and you just don't find it.

Yes, exactly.

So the answer is that we're never going to stop trying to pursue this theory. Something is amiss. The question is, what is it? But is it possible that dark matter is something that could travel faster than light? What is your theory on that?

Dark matter just feels, every time I read about it, it just feels like, I don't know, like a guy shows up at a party or something, and he just, it's there, but it makes, it's a weird vibe. I think it's a crisis.

Here we go, next one. David from upstate New York. I recently watched a side channel show with Hakeem.

And I fell asleep. It was really boring. That was weird. Why would you write that, David? I'm the guy who wakes everyone up. No, you're the best, man. You're the best. I recently watched a side channel with Hakeem. It was about gravitational waves. Just wondering, can they also alter time? If a huge collision occurred near our solar system, how would we feel them?

Would we be alive to physically notice?

Okay. You know, I was thinking the same thing. I was not.

Not the stars that make the constellation. Yeah, not this constellation. And not the strain that killed millions of people.

Wait, in this scenario, how far away from me are you when you're running by me?

So you're like literally running here. I've never heard of this paradox.

And the thing that you see and I see are days apart. Days apart. Because of our physical perspective.

Even though you're in the same place, yeah. While we're sitting here, I'm here, you're running by, we look up at the Andromeda at the same time, and we're seeing something from the same location, essentially. We're seeing things days apart. Days apart. And that leads to the idea of what is now, and your now and my now are two different nows. There is no now. No, there is now. There's always now.

Plus, we were blerds.

I've never gotten heckled from the left and the right at the same time.

Black nerds. There's no way there's a black nerd. No, there's two of them. Trust me. At least. They don't know each other yet, but they're there. Oh, I could give you a list. Is that right? Oh. Do you have a secret meeting before it was like public that you guys are black nerds? Yeah.

It was about gravitational waves, wondering can they also alter time? If a huge collision occurred near our solar system, how would we feel them? Would we be alive to physically notice?

But there are a whole host of, it's an infinite number of things that could cause a gravitational wave, right? But actually, wait, wait, wait.

All right, we're going to move on. Can we do a lightning round? Yeah, absolutely. We got some great ones. Here we go. Okay, go. Lightning round, dude.

Yes, exactly. Right, right. Yeah, okay, here we go. I've always been bothered by physicists' preoccupation with

with conservation of information especially in regard to particles falling into a black hole firstly it sounds more like a philosophical position than one derived from through mathematics or scientific method correct me secondly mr heisenberg taught us that one can never know all information about a particle thus can't we consider that information to never have existed in the first place and thus can't be destroyed i i have one thing for alan alan if you're gonna

ask a question on acid, you got to send the tablets to us too so we can be on the same wavelength and answer the question. Tablets? Go. You mean tabs. There you go. There we go. There we go. Alan Geist, go ahead and answer that question.

I don't know. It's like in China. Wait, you mean they'd say like, you know, Paul McCure, the guy with the dark hair? Yeah, exactly.

Isn't there just one general type of nerd? Science nerd, like a TV nerd, like that kind of thing.

See, I do it with voice. Like, you know, Neil Tyson. He talks like James Earl Jones. I do it like that. You do it basically... This is CNN.

Yeah. Okay. Give me another one. There we go. My name is Ross. I live in Madison, Wisconsin. Could dark energy, whatever it is, be the mechanism behind the big squeeze? As an analogy, consider a magnetic field. It comes out of one pole, folds back on itself, goes into the other pole. Imagine this magnetic field being the fabric of space-time relationships. Is that something about dark energy?

Right, right.

Okay. When were we, this is Christopher from St. Louis, when were we looking into the cosmos for possible Dyson spheres? What criteria are we using to tell the difference between a Dyson sphere and something else?

Mm-hmm.

To create something larger.

Because it's not large enough or because it can't hold? Because it's not large, it's not, it's like. The stars are so much bigger than their planets. Have you seen the garbage bags that Costco sells? You put one of those around a star. Come on, guys.

You don't even need it at that point. It's like, what are you trying?

Right. What the hell are you doing?

Why are we trying to create the energy? You know what?

And you can be a nerd, you can be a geek, you can be an enthusiast.

See, I don't say get out of my face. I whip out my Texas instrument. Bang, bang, bang. Texas instrument. Holy cow. There you go. Yeah, he keeps it right next to his palm pipe. There you go.

At all levels.

Great place to drink.

Because it was all about sort of just lifting everybody up. All together.

The more you include, the better the knowledge. Highly laudable facts.

Always great to be back. Love you, man. Love you.

Oh, that's a great, yeah. They made that into a film. starring Tom Cruise. He jumps through a Milky Way covered in Vaseline. It's an amazing scene. And equations.

is fulfilled by that mission. Why haven't other societies picked up on that part of it? It's out there. It's a good example. Be inclusive. I have an answer.

Well, but your show does. Cosmic Queries is a perfect example of that.

It was off Broadway and then Broadway. Now we're out on the road. Out on the road. And it's called Permission to Speak.

But you can't have a thing that says IMAP and then the word mapping is in the middle of it.

That's not working. We're going to have to redo this.

Yeah, yeah. It's about stories from people, from me. Frank Oz is directing it. We love Frank Oz. Created Yoda. Try being directed by Yoda.

I'm done.

Yeah, I love these.

So it's like neutering a dog.

Olashay.

That's right. What do you anticipate that you might find there? I mean, you must have something.

Whoa, Quark Star. All right. Here's a little bit more heady than theirs, though. Well, this is a Cosmic Queries. Yes.

All right, okay. Let's do it. All right, this is James H. English. Greetings. He's from Denmark. I read recently that the universe is expanding too fast for our theories and models to fit, increasing the Hubble tension. Do you think the problem is with our models, or is there some physics we just haven't discovered to explain this?

I.e., is the rate not constant due to some undiscovered property of space-time? Or is there something wrong with the data? So our model's off, but...

There you go. Yes, sir. We got you. And you were on my podcast.

So the theory had to be adjusted.

And you became a comedian after you were mergers and acquisitions. Well, I'm like, how can I give my mother an instant heart attack?

And the issue there is in sort of these data centers, which are going to are and will continue to be everywhere, and the scaling of traditional power plants, nuclear power plants, you have to get to SMRs, right, which are not fully developed yet. Paul, could you tell the rest of us what SMR means? Small modular reactors. Did he get it right, Catherine?

Catherine, do you know how exhausting it is that I have to carry this guy all the time? But in that sense, the proximity is an issue, right? Because if your data centers are too far away from the source, the nuclear source of energy, you're going to have loss of data, loss of energy.

And so it becomes sort of being able to build a lot of these SMRs, which are smaller and can be closer to the data centers.

When I did say it, she said to me, I said, I'm going to leave Wall Street to be a comedian. She looked me right in the eye and she said, that better be your first joke.

Clever mom. Yeah. I like that. And then, yes, and then made a right turn and got into comedy.

MSRs? Yeah.

Isn't there a practicality issue, though, because corrosion is a problem with that process, right?

From the cartoon character.

Work on the Late Show with Stephen. We go back to the Daily Show together.

Well, with temperatures that high, can't you generate electricity that is more robust, for lack of a better term, and that can travel farther distances without loss?

I'm so highfalutin. You're not supposed to look me in the eye when you're talking. That's highfalutin. I have to avert.

But isn't the issue here partly like there's two streams of technology battling each other? In other words, demand for energy, right? Like in the year 2060, there's gonna be 12,230 streaming services alone, right? Okay, you're gonna have house plants that self-water, self-fertilize and can talk to you, right? I hope so. Can we, in all seriousness, can you keep up with that

Yeah, called Permission to Speak. And it involves, we're all disconnected and divisive, but if we get together and share stories, realize we have more in common than we think. So it's me involving. Yeah, it's born out of my standup and liking to talk to audience members and it's grown into the show and, The great Frank Oz is directing it, which still blows my mind.

with these lazy fusion people that clearly aren't pushing the envelope and just are phoning it in. No, in all seriousness, so can we develop energies fast enough to keep up with these incredible demands that are- But we have become more efficient.

But the advance is, I mean, there are guilt-inducing mirrors that are going to come out soon where you just stand in front of it and say, really, that's what you want to eat? Like, so, I seem to hit a nerve with you on that one. So... Or are you talking about your own life?

In all seriousness, can the technology that's needed, is it there to keep up with the demands and the new demands that we haven't even foreseen yet?

He's been a guest on our show. I know. He's constantly backwards talking, though, with that Yoda thing. It's extremely annoying. No, it's been really cool. We take it around the country, and folks can go to my website to check it out, where we're going to be, paulmancurio.com. But it's been really cool and sort of a breakout from my stand-up.

But isn't that part of the issue is the geopolitical concerns of this, right? The more we come up with this great technology and SMRs that feed these data centers, there's a lot of uranium out there, but they're not in every country. And some of these countries are borderline sort of friendly countries. Terrorists take over.

So how do you factor that in and should some other simultaneous technology be developed away from nuclear energy so that we're not so dependent on uranium and the potential- Yeah, do you have a hotline to the State Department?

That's right. There'll be a time when I can take my nuclear waste to the dump on a Sunday. On your own, yeah.

You have the right little bins for the right sort of waste. I have a guy who sorts my radiation. You got a guy? Yeah, I pay him 50 bucks and he's like whatever.

He's easy to find, he's glowing. Can you explain to me why, this is gonna sound like a neophyte question, but like why we haven't gotten better at reducing the amount of radioactive waste that gets generated in these processes And is there an attempt or again, are all you scientists just lazy?

Tom wanted a new challenge. If we're talking about not in my neighborhood, right? How you get people to come on board, which is great. Education, give people knowledge about safety. If you want to get people on board and you have a nuclear power plant, small or large, in their neighborhood, just put a Chick-fil-A in it. If you've got a Chick-fil-A attached to a nuclear power plant,

People are on board. You do a little drive-thru. You enjoy the— That's how that works.

Is this the new PR campaign for the Department of Nuclear Energy? Exactly.

Do we see

in our ever quest for capitalism and to market anything that we can that this these SMRs become so small that literally they'll be marketed as you could have your own nuclear reactor in your house right like I could see a day your own power generator that's the whole fusion Mr. Fusion but that's like gives a whole new meaning to nuking leftovers is that the limit of this you're gonna literally nuke leftovers and here's and here's an example in 1968 the movie 2001 came out imagining the world

And this is exactly, and Gary referenced it in comparison to smartphone development. It could get, these reactors could get so small.

I want to go to a picnic and show off and go, anybody want a smoothie? Here we go. I'm going to power it with my nuclear miniaturized... That seems like an overkill, but... You could just shake them. No, it's a damn good smoothie. Not the way I make it. With energy powder, strawberries, bananas.

I just want one in my basement. I want to be able to go to a party and say, just get a nuclear reactor in my basement.

You just want to be the first one on the block with a nuclear power reactor. The guy's just looking at you like, what? And then walks out.

You seem like you'd be great at it. You're very relatable. You make it understandable for somebody that doesn't know the world. I could borrow a few jokes, though. I don't think they're laughing enough. 50 bucks a joke. You're in. And I want to go in your bunker when the whole place melts down from nuclear. I know you got the best bunker. I know you do.

Can I just say I would be very concerned about that statistic, the death part?

Yes.

It's a relative number. It's a relative. But doesn't it beg for more regulation and sort of renewables? Like, you're right about solar. Like, you know, some guy that was working at Jiffy Lube is now selling you solar panels and putting it up half drunk. Like, isn't it?

We call him my uncle. That's way too precise an example. My uncle Archie. But doesn't it sort of beg for that on some level? Sort of if there's that level of sort of death rate relative to renewables?

So it doesn't sound so clean. But can't you point to the fact that nuclear power has been around for years, and people have accepted the fact that there's radioactive waste sort of hanging out anyway? Like, it's not a completely new concept?

And what people seem to ignore is if you put it in the right bag on Sunday nights when you put your garbage out, it's radioactive material, they'll pick it up.

Put it in the blue bag. And put it on Staten Island.

Exactly. There's the glowing Paul house.

I want flying cars, I want moving sidewalks, I want portability of nuclear reactors. Data centers are starting to chew up their share of the energy. And they're gonna continue to do it. AI and Bitcoin mining. And the right color bag to put your nuclear waste in when you put it out on a Sunday. Important. I'm not touching it.

Not yet. But is this an extension of this plasma fusion, which has a break-even? issue, right? More heat goes in to get the heat out, and that's an extension of traditional fusion process, right?

Maybe if you guys tried harder, there would be.

Here we go. Here we go. Okay. It went that way. By the way, when you were at the Department of Energy, when you left your office at night, would you turn the thermostat down? I'm just curious. Okay, good.