Running Out of Matter with Michelle Thaller

About This Episode

Could spacetime curve in the opposite direction and produce a repulsive field instead of gravity? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice tackle fan questions about photons, heat death, gravitational waves, neutron stars and more with astrophysicist Michelle Thaller.

The episode opens with an urgent conversation about NASA funding cuts and the exodus of top scientists and engineers leaving for overseas programs. We get into fan questions: what actually happens to a photon when it’s absorbed and reemitted? Does it restart its journey through spacetime with a new identity? What is the heat death of the universe, and will matter eventually run out? Why does temperature increase as you move away from the sun’s surface? We answer these and also get into what the Parker Solar Probe is teaching us about the sun.

We explore gravitation and whether it can be inverted. Michelle uses the question to walk through how LIGO detected gravitational waves from two black holes colliding 1.4 billion light years away, capturing the most energetic event in the universe.

We explore neutron stars, fast radio bursts, and the first generation of stars the James Webb Space Telescope is hunting for. Learn how the mysterious “little red dots” may rewrite our understanding of how the earliest stars formed. Michelle closes with a message for young girls considering science: you don’t need a special kind of genius, you just need to be unable to get it out of your head. Keep Looking Up!

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