Summary
In this episode of Star Talk Radio, guest host Bill Nye answers listener questions with Chuck Nice. They cover a wide range of topics such as the Tunguska event, deflecting asteroids, the Large Hadron Collider, clocks running at different speeds, and more. Nye also discusses the possibility of life on planets revolving around red dwarfs and how technology can affect human evolution. The lightning round segment covers various topics including Stephen Hawking's time-travel theory and what happens to a black hole after it runs out of stuff to eat.
One of the interesting topics discussed is whether people at the equator age more slowly due to their speed relative to those closer to the poles. While the difference is insignificant, astronauts do age slightly more slowly than people on Earth due to being in orbit. The hosts also talk about the possibility of deflecting asteroids using lasers or repelling beams, but the international effort to find and deflect asteroids is a huge challenge.
Nye also touches on the topic of human evolution and how advancements in technology can affect it. He believes that there must be some form of life out there, and if someone claims they have never wondered about it, they are lying. The lightning round segment covers various topics including Stephen Hawking's time-travel theory and what happens to a black hole after it runs out of stuff to eat.
Lastly, the context discusses the physics problem of the binary star system and the three-body problem. The Earth and the Moon can be considered a system with a center of gravity between them as they both orbit the Sun. Similarly, Jupiter and its four massive moons can be considered a complex system. The question is then posed about the engineering hurdles preventing traveling faster than the speed of light. The answer is that as far as we know, the speed of energy is the speed of light, and you cannot go any faster.
