Paul Mercurio
👤 PersonPodcast Appearances
Paul, there were a lot of cosmology questions in there.
Big bang, multiverse, black holes.
Yeah, people are into that.
I see you as a negative gravity person.
Tend to be negative.
It's Baron Paul Mercurio.
Your womb is barren.
I'm trying to keep that under wraps.
By the way, look at you all dressed up like a little schoolboy.
Well, because you asked me to help you move furniture, and so that's what I did.
What the hell happened down there?
What did you do to piss off Paramount?
Apparently, I broke CBS and Paramount, apparently, on the Late Show.
Right, because you're on the staff of the Late Show.
I work on the Late Show, perform on the show, and we are not going to be in existence come May.
And I am going to be sleeping outside in your bushes looking for any nickels I can find.
Yeah, so, you know, I'm looking, you know, whatever.
You know, if you know anybody.
You went to law school.
Investment banker.
I could do M&A deals and make you laugh.
And make you ravioli all at the same time.
I thought Baron, that feels right.
Baron Paul Mercurio.
I command presence.
I have a presence.
Cut me on the neck, eight stitches, but otherwise it was great.
So I'm honored and I want to thank the Patreon exclusive.
How did you know it was an accidental cut?
What makes you think that was an accident?
I need security when I come on this show.
Tamsen's got my back.
So we're going to do some... Yeah, let's do some Q&A here.
All right, just some general grab bag.
May, unless something happens and I screw something else up and get us fired.
earlier but may and I'm also doing my off-Broadway show Permission to Speak touring with it and we have it on Patreon now so people can go and enjoy it there and support it because I don't have any money I'm poor I'm out of a job
You know, I'm eating hay, if you care.
I shouldn't be eating hay.
All right, here we go.
I'm 15 years old and was wondering, you said recently that we only know 4% of the universe.
4% of the universe, which includes everything we know.
So do you think there are more types of science out there left, sorry, to create or discover?
Or would the rest of what we would know about the universe just be branches of what we already know?
Love that question.
Yeah, it's a great question.
You know it's bad when Neil says it's gonna be a long answer.
Because they're interdependent to answer.
Interdependent to answer this other question.
Some of these questions.
Well, you need a nip and a tuck.
That's not even a real mustache, anybody.
Does AI potentially bring us to, not either through the use of AI or AI itself, other types of science or the uses of various sciences?
But my thought is a manifestation of several things that I know, and the chances are, statistically, that AI knows some of those things as well.
Not just chances are, it does.
Provided those things are online.
Right, which they statistically probably are, so it could probably formulate the same question.
Not as good as mine, if I'm really smart.
Can you tell me what branch of science we can use that compels people to take their bike on the subway?
It's not a moving bike rack, okay?
I don't take my car to the airport and check it on the plane.
It is a little weird.
No, it's a lot weird, and it needs to stop.
It's a little weird.
Yeah, and the handlebars end up my butt, and that's not what I paid $2.90 for, whatever I'm paying for.
Okay, so the neuroscience surgery will adjust that first in your brain.
Please, don't defend it.
Oh, this is from Brazil.
Assuming I got this right,
We can intuitively think of Hawking radiation as matter escaping a black hole when a pair of virtual particles is created outside of it.
That is precisely correct.
Okay, so you got that part right, and you get a dishwasher.
The antiparticle falls into the black hole and...
And it annihilates itself with its counterpart already in the black hole.
This sounds like a movie.
Leaving the other one loose to fly away.
And since particles don't have identity... Make an adjustment there.
And since particles don't have identity, it's like that particle just escaped from the B-H.
Well, you know, someday you'll be cool enough.
You got to hang out with the cool kids to hang out with the BH.
The question is, why do black holes favor antiparticles?
The creation of virtual particles should be random all the time, every direction.
So it should be 50-50.
But we don't have proof of that.
Isn't that the case?
All right, great question.
This is Prateek Nagar.
My name is Araya, 12 years old.
I'm from Salt Lake City, Utah.
I love watching your explainers and the fun and knowledge that comes with it.
While in class, the question came up in size, which are we humans closer to, the universe or an atom?
I was very intrigued by this question, especially because atoms are incomprehensibly small and the universe is incredibly big.
If we are closer to the size of the universe, could there be a time knowing that the universe is expanding, that we are closer to the size of an atom?
Read me a bedtime story.
Right, and I'm not trying to.
That's the only way to answer that question.
This seems like, and I'm not saying this to be pejorative.
Not available in paperback.
This seems like an obvious question that doesn't even need to be asked.
And I don't mean that to be mean spirited, but like to me, I'm a complete lay person.
The answer was your toe.
Of course it's 15 versus 25.
No, you didn't know that in advance.
These are powers of 10.
But this question wasn't in the context of powers of time.
And it takes fewer 10 times.
It's 10 tens, right?
And that's all I'm saying is it's obvious that that would take 15 tens to my toe.
And that's why this relationship is never working.
We need marriage counseling because you don't bother to think what I think.
Very good question.
And he's 12 years old.
I can't even give a compliment.
Average question, 12-year-old.
Try better the next time.
That's Neil talking, not me.
I thought it was amazing.
This is Ethan Henning from Houston, Texas.
I have a question about power sources.
What would be the best power source for a moon base that would have the purpose of mining and sustaining the lives of astronauts for six months?
Could it be fission?
Maybe it's solar.
I would love to know what you think.
I love this podcast.
It's my favorite.
Yeah, when you come on The Late Show, which I work on, you wear a tie or you got your vest?
We've talked about this on the show, needing portable nuclear plants to drive AI.
As the expert that we had on the show talked about, there's going to be a lot of those.
I'm not dumb, I'm smart.
I'm not dumb like they say.
Let's become fluid together.
Just stick your head out the window.
How do they deal with maintenance and that kind of thing?
I thought you had a speech impediment.
Just take care of it.
It took me an hour to get crossed out when it should have taken me five minutes.
No, I'm coming to your house and I'm going to just hide under the couch.
All right, let's move on.
Derek Evans, Dr. Tyson.
This is Derek from South Windsor, Connecticut.
I know where that is.
Longtime listener and attendee of live events.
Nice, thank you for coming to this.
First time Patreon supporter.
I think you need a juggler at the beginning of it just to kind of loosen things up.
In a recent conversation-
I'm going to do anything come May.
In a recent conversation you had about micro black holes, it had me wondering about interstellar travel.
How could you travel vast distances while being sure to avoid these tiny black holes?
And what time dilation or other unintended consequences would exist?
Or do they radiate away fast enough not to pose any problems?
Because it's compressing on itself?
The surface area?
Specifically why?
Don't duck the question.
Don't be a politician.
You should put that on a business card.
So if you're driving through that, you could literally use your knee to drive and eat a Big Mac, and then eventually... Put on makeup.
Put on makeup, answer some texts.
So we packed a lot in there in terms of direct expression, or do they radiate fast enough?
Yes, is the answer.
Not to pose any problems.
That's the answer, yes.
That's the answer, because of the dilation.
All right, Lily Rose.
Hello, Dr. Tyson and Lord Nice, or...
but he's not here, all right.
Hello, Dr. Tyson and Baron Mercurio.
Lily Rose here from, that really does roll off my tongue.
Lily Rose here from Virginia.
My question is, was the wow audio signal ever solved?
Have scientists determined what was heard or do you have any theories on what it was?
Thank you and love the show.
Can I just say something?
You guys couldn't come up with a better name?
What did you want?
I don't have a six-year-old, name it.
What's the speculation on what the source of this was?
But how close, was there any speculation?
But it was a consistent signal.
No, it was one blip.
Maybe it was from another star system.
An alien left the TV on and fell asleep.
Well, you're going to mock me, Mr. Wow?
That's as plausible as naming this thing Wow Audio.
It's not fair that you take acid for these and I don't.
No, but that's just people wanting to believe that.
Has the wow signal, has that been left alone?
Is anybody still pursuing that?
They went back to the region they couldn't find anything.
We're going to move on.
Conrad Dunphy, Dr. Tyson.
Conrad Dunphy here from Portland, Oregon.
On the multiverse-ish JWST coming out with a lot of data supporting the black hole universe hypothesis.
What is the likelihood that physics...
within a different black hole would be similar to ours, and if those physics are similar, what would be the first guess at how we escape our black hole universe to visit another?
Wow, that's a lot there.
So there's only some tentative evidence.
Maybe for those watching that don't know JWST.
So like Star Trek, the whole like transport me, beam me up, it could be a mess.
Do you think it's plausible that there's one with an identical...
No, I'm telling you, it should be Outlawed.
And even if you could go visit, you're not sure you want to because you don't know what you're going to step into.
It's not the same.
No, but the minute I entered the black hole through the wormhole, that universe... You have to come in contact with other matter.
What you got for me?
A long-time listener, first-timer inquirer from Athens, Georgia.
With all the excitement around JWST's discoveries of unexpected... That would be James Webb Space Telescope.
You're so annoying.
Unexpected mature galaxies.
A question struck me.
Why does Neil Tyson have friends?
That's a weird question.
What if we're not actually seeing galaxies from the early universe, but instead light entering from beyond it?
Not unlike a pinhole camera, could the Big Bang have been a narrow portal from a parent universe and JWST is now picking up photons that bled through that pinhole event horizon?
Maybe those galaxies look so evolved because they are.
Thanks for everything.
So how is that relevant here?
Right, but that's sort of answering the question from 30,000 feet.
So if we're not actually seeing galaxies from the early universe, but instead light entering from beyond it, not on like a pinhole camera.
Is it a constant that when a galaxy forms, it'll always emit ultraviolet?
I mean, there's so many, to me, as we talk about this, things we think we know, but we don't know, that anything could be happening out there, right?
Another great question.
Hello, this is Dennis from Salisbury, Indiana.
Dr. Tyson, if gravitons do exist, shouldn't we be able to cancel gravity waves when putting them under close scrutiny?
Can an equivalent to the double slit experiment be set up at LIGO to cancel the wave?
Well, isn't negative gravity basically static?
Well, therefore, if a wormhole exists, then negative gravity must exist, right?
Thanks for coming through.
Always great to see you.
And I think I'm going to try to dress up a little bit more when I come here.
I am a Baron now, so, you know.
If you see me on the street, please salute and curtsy.
Anybody needs their house painted, help moving, I'm handy with tools.