Please welcome, I can't believe he's here,
one of the greatest minds of our time,
Neil deGrasse Tyson.
(audience applauds)
Oh my God.
I can't believe it!
Hi it's an honor for me.
It is such an honor for me too.
No for me oh my gosh, no thank you.
I'm not gonna lie.
I was nervous doing your research because you're so smart
that it's almost intimidating to talk to you.
No, all that knowledge is for us all.
Oh, that's nice.
(Neil laughs)
That's a kind way to like-
Yeah, that's how I think about it.
Yeah I'm just revealing what is knowable out there
in a way that can be digested.
Can I ask, what does Earth Day mean to you
knowing that it's one of many things
that you studied, attached to,
care about, exploring
how do you going that far out into the distance,
turn the visual back and look at our Earth.
What does this day mean to you?
You need that because that is the true perspective
that enables you to think globally.
I mean, consider when we went to the moon
between 1968 and 1972,
the Apollo missions to the moon
we went to the moon to explore the moon.
And what do we do?
We looked back and we discovered Earth for the first time.
And there it was just-
From that perspective.
There it was just a drift in space in this void
where no one is gonna come to save us from ourselves.
And what descends upon you
and what descended upon us all at that time
was a kind of a cosmic perspective.
Yes.
And when you have a cosmic perspective,
you can't help but think globally
about every problem that you confront.
What do you feel about all these men
trying to colonize Mars?
(Neil laughs)
It's like my big question.
I think there's some women among them were there
but are you worried that
this was their escape patch for when Earth gets trashed?
Is that what you're...
It is that I think what do these people know
that the rest of the general public doesn't know?
There's some people have the Earth set for us
to become a multi planet species.
That'd be kind of fun.
But I think the reasons why they want it are not,
well-informed 'cause they wanna make sure
in case something bad happens on one planet
the species still survives, all right?
I'm just thinking it would be easier
to deflect the asteroid than to terraform Mars
and ship a billion people there.
Terraforming, my favorite word of the past decades,
you turn Mars into Earth.
You see the soils and the atmospheres
so they can just get off a ship and walk around.
If you have the power to turn Mars into Earth
then you have the power to turn Earth back into Earth.
That doesn't mean I don't wanna go to Mars.
I'll go take a vacation there.
You gotta give me a few books and a good streaming account
for the seven months it takes to travel
and then you're there and you come back.
I don't have any problems with that.
But don't worry so much about it.
You need somebody to keep the dream going.
Yes.
And one other point I wanna make,
there's all this talk about let's save Earth.
Earth doesn't care about you or anyone.
It'll survive anything we deliver.
Earth, the planet, usually what people mean
when they say save what they mean,
save life on Earth.
Make sure Earth can always continue to sustain life.
But Earth, the physical object, is gonna be here
for 5 billion years, no matter what we say or do.
So it's about the delicate biosphere that we are a part of.
And if you're not aware of that,
your actions can be the unraveling
of your entire civilization
which is what's happening with climate change.
Yes.
We are warming the planet and the ice melts.
I tweeted once people were shocked by it.
If we lose the ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland,
the water levels will rise
up to the Statue of Liberty's left elbow,
where she's holding the document
and she's somewhere in this picture, there she goes okay,
up to her left elbow.
That means you lose all of New York
and most of the coastal cities,
all the coastal cities of the world.
And you start melting the ice cap,
are you gonna pick up cities
and move them inland 30 miles?
You're gonna do that in the next few decades.
No, this will be a rewriting of what it means
to have civilization in the first place
unless that gets arrested.
And you need Earth Day to remind us of it.
In "Cosmic Queries",
I mean, it's celebrates asking the questions
about the universe
and you've had some really unique tweets
that people have really grabbed on to with this book.
Yeah, it's interesting.
I decided to include several dozen,
maybe 30 or so tweets
that relate to the flow of content in the book.
The tweets are kind of like biscuits for you.
As you read through
some of the deepest questions people have asked
how did it all begin?
Are we alone in the universe?
How will it all end?
And not all those questions have secure answers.
Some were just sort of poking at the beast, right?
And some questions we don't even know
if it's the right question to ask.
I do think it is time to just innovate and get into green
and stop politicizing it
because that is not science
and it's not how we sustain our lives.
I don't care what party you're with.
I don't care what religion you are.
This is about humanity.
And this is just about how we remain here.
If case those strong billionaire men
don't have their Freudian achievement and get us on Mars,
real soon.
And speaking of being green, I heard directly
from Steven Spielberg that he imagined ET
as a vegetable and not as an animal.
So that's why ET could touch the plants.
And the plants would come back to life.
You remember that?
I just thought it was an interesting bit of trivia.
And you love Hollywood, in fact-
Love it.
You contributed with James Cameron
to create the night sky for "Titanic"?
Only when he had the re-release
on that Centennial release.
Okay.
'Cause I tweeted they he had the wrong sky
over the sinking "Titanic".
I love that he heard you.
I love that you did that with him.
The man as a man of his word.
I'm so excited to be talking with you.
(upbeat music)