When Neil deGrasse Tyson visits NYCB Theatre at Westbury for a multimedia show on Dec. 10, the brilliant astrophysicist brings along his vast knowledge of the universe to the theater-in-the-round. (To read about his movie tweets, click here.)
The theme of his engagement, “The Cosmic Perspective,” will touch on Earth’s place in the enormous emptiness of space and how it influences what humans think and feel about science, culture, politics and life itself.
The director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History will also bring his unmatched enthusiasm for the many wonders of the universe.
The most famous astrophysicist in the world says that no matter how many times he gazes into the sky, he still finds himself amazed at all of the space frontiers that science has yet to break through.
“Everything is astounding, that’s the attraction to being an astrophysicist,”
he said.
As everything we know about the universe can change in an instant, here are a few of Tyson’s current most amazing thoughts on the mysteries of the cosmos.
Multiverse
This heady concept theorizes that the reality currently enjoyed by humanity is not the only reality in existence. In a series of televised lectures, The Inexplicable Universe, Tyson posits that there is nothing in the universe that comes in ones; the Earth is not the only planet, our sun is not the only sun and our Milky Way is not the only galaxy. “You want the universe to be singular, but nothing before this has ever been singular. As far as we can tell, there is nothing in the universe that comes in ones, perhaps not even the universe itself.”
Black Holes
“The fact that black holes even exist is astounding,” said Tyson. A black hole is a region of space from which nothing, including light, can escape. Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, the understanding of how gravity works in the universe, states that any presence of mass or energy will warp the fabric of space and time. Sometimes, Tyson says, the concentration of matter is so great, that mass will collapse and become a singularity. “You fall in, you don’t come out.”
Liquid Water On Mars
According to data sent back from the red planet, scientists confirmed that liquid water flows on the surface of present-day Mars. “This gets you thinking about all sorts of fun stuff,” said Tyson. “Can it support life? Do we harvest the water? Is that even possible? How do we do it?” Tyson says the fact that this is a recent discovery proves that all we know about the universe is but a fraction of what we could possibly know in the future. “There will always be discoveries like that. Those kinds of frontiers are out there to be broken. It’s astounding to know what’s out there and even more astounding to think about what we don’t even know yet.”
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