Paul Mecurio
Appearances
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
The Kobe satellite. You mean right after he scored 81 points? No, not that guy.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
So circling to the Hubble tension. So tell me, something's got to give.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
So what James asks is, is there some physics we just haven't yet discovered? Are we missing physics?
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
No pretension. Yeah. We don't need that. Congrats, man. That's awesome. Appreciate you, sir. That's awesome, man. Absolutely.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
But nothing is real in that quantum field. Well, expectations.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
Yeah, you come up with something. Is weird the scientific term you're going with here?
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
You're just the laziest group of people. Vera Rubin Telescope.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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?
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
And is that a constant? In other words, that is a proven theory that works every time? Well, it's hard to do.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
Unless you're drunk on Thunderbird, then you're not looking up at the stars.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
All right, you thought it was a town in Connecticut, not a university.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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?
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
Here we go, next one. David from upstate New York. I recently watched a side channel show with Hakeem.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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?
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
Okay. You know, I was thinking the same thing. I was not.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
Not the stars that make the constellation. Yeah, not this constellation. And not the strain that killed millions of people.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
Wait, in this scenario, how far away from me are you when you're running by me?
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
So you're like literally running here. I've never heard of this paradox.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
And the thing that you see and I see are days apart. Days apart. Because of our physical perspective.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
I've never gotten heckled from the left and the right at the same time.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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?
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
Yes, exactly. Right, right. Yeah, okay, here we go. I've always been bothered by physicists' preoccupation with
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
Isn't there just one general type of nerd? Science nerd, like a TV nerd, like that kind of thing.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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?
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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?
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
You don't even need it at that point. It's like, what are you trying?
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
Why are we trying to create the energy? You know what?
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
And you can be a nerd, you can be a geek, you can be an enthusiast.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
Because it was all about sort of just lifting everybody up. All together.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
The more you include, the better the knowledge. Highly laudable facts.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
Well, but your show does. Cosmic Queries is a perfect example of that.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
But you can't have a thing that says IMAP and then the word mapping is in the middle of it.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
That's not working. We're going to have to redo this.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
That's right. What do you anticipate that you might find there? I mean, you must have something.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
Whoa, Quark Star. All right. Here's a little bit more heady than theirs, though. Well, this is a Cosmic Queries. Yes.
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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?
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
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...
StarTalk Radio
Hubble Trouble with Hakeem Oluseyi
There you go. Yes, sir. We got you. And you were on my podcast.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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?
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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?
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
Clever mom. Yeah. I like that. And then, yes, and then made a right turn and got into comedy.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
Isn't there a practicality issue, though, because corrosion is a problem with that process, right?
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
Work on the Late Show with Stephen. We go back to the Daily Show together.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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?
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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?
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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?
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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?
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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?
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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,
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
People are on board. You do a little drive-thru. You enjoy the— That's how that works.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
Is this the new PR campaign for the Department of Nuclear Energy? Exactly.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
And this is exactly, and Gary referenced it in comparison to smartphone development. It could get, these reactors could get so small.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
Can I just say I would be very concerned about that statistic, the death part?
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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?
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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?
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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?
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
Put it in the blue bag. And put it on Staten Island.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
Exactly. There's the glowing Paul house.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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?
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
Maybe if you guys tried harder, there would be.
StarTalk Radio
Solving AI’s Energy Problem with Kathryn Huff
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.