Cosmic Queries: UFOs

About This Episode

“Keep Looking Up” has a different meaning this episode as Neil deGrasse Tyson and Eugene Mirman turn a scientific eye towards Unidentified Flying Objects. Find out why the laws of physics and the conservation of angular momentum make the spinning flying saucers from old Sci-Fi movies a bad idea, and how aerodynamic drag and weight considerations influence the design of real spaceships. Neil and Eugene discuss the possibilities and limitations of organic biological spaceships, aliens made of pure light, transporters, and aliens from the future or other dimensions. Neil speculates on what we might learn from UFOs if we ever found one, like alien technology, new materials made from undiscovered elements, and how they keep their anti-matter from annihilating their matter if they use antimatter drives. Plus, interesting soup ingredients, why the moon doesn’t have much metal, and why centrifugal force makes it hard to throw up on carnival rides.

NOTE: All-Access subscribers can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: Cosmic Queries: UFOs.