Bill Nye Answers Even More Science Questions From Twitter

Bill Nye here, I'm back to answer

some of your science questions,

this is Science Support: Part two.

(light dynamic music)

Angel Supreme could be N-L, Suprema,

If the earth is round, why doesn't all the water fall off?

The water is held on the earth by gravity

and get this, so is the air, wait, there's more,

not only is the earth gravitationally pulling on the water,

the water is ever so slightly

gravitationally pulling on the earth, whoa,

and see, this is Isaac Newton's insight,

he saw the apple fall off the tree

and he realized that not only is the earth

somehow pulling the apple down,

but the apple is mutually, gravitationally

pulling the earth up, Like, dude, that's so out there,

I know, I know.

Miss Misery, how charming,

My dad, I don't get the internet,

seriously, where does it come from?

Like how does it work?

The internet is a system of computers

and we are able to store information,

for example, an alphabet or numbers

can be represented by a code, that everyone's agreed on

and the code is a pattern or a system of binary bits,

this is to say either ons or offs

and you sir, Miss Misery's dad,

I'll bet you're of a certain age,

where you remember Morse code?

Morse code's the same thing,

it's either a dot or a dash, a dip or a dah,

so we've taken it to a whole nother level of dips and dahs,

where we are able to store and transmit billions

and trillions and quadrillions and sextillions of bits

to represent language, numbers, calculations

and you are part of this greater whole,

what a time to be alive, man, way to go.

Chelsea Briggs, Whoa, did a meteor

just hit my home state of Michigan?

Everyone is calling me,

is the world coming to an end?

I would say, based on my presence here

although you can't see it,

but there's a crew of camera and audio people here,

I don't think the world ended as we know it,

just judging in so far as you are able to send a text,

I bet the world didn't end for you either.

So once in a while, a meteor streaks through the sky,

now for fun, I'll give you these three words,

meteor means something streaking through the sky,

meteor has to do with the sky in Greek,

a meteorite is what you call it,

when it makes it all the way

to the earth's surface as an intact rock,

an asteroid is different, a comet is different,

I guess that's four words,

but yeah, meteors come into our atmosphere,

streak through the sky all the time,

meteorites once in a while.

If you like to worry about things,

you're living at a great time,

because we discovered that the ancient dinosaurs

were almost certainly wiped out

by a great big asteroid or a cluster of asteroids.

LeDieuNoir, Why can't I walk through solid objects,

if all I'm made of is neurons, protons and electrons?

So let me say, I think you tossed in the word, neuron,

when you may have meant neutron,

but neurons enable you to think about this

and keep in mind that protons and electrons

are not all you're made of, there's also some energy

driving these things around, making them interact

and there are these fabulous subatomic particles,

the subatomic particles are in turn made of others,

even smaller particles, quarks

and so these things all interact

and if you like to wonder about things,

this is a great thing.

We're made of protons, neutrons and electrons

and the reason you can't walk through solid objects,

the reason objects like you are solid

is because these things,

especially the electrons repel each other,

so when you try to push on something,

the electrons repel each other so strongly

that we perceive it as a solid object.

All the electrons, neutrons

and protons came together

and they are almost entirely

made of exploded, ancient stars,

so you and I are made of stardust,

you and I are at least one way

that the universe knows itself, Whoa, dude!

I hope that fills you with reverence,

I hope you stop and think about that

at least once every day.

MiddleSchoolSpanTchr, Teacher,

Are the seats in the front of the plane

the best to avoid turbulence?

Generally yeah, especially swept wing aircraft

will do this and it reminded some aeronautical engineers

of a Dutch person on ice skates,

so traditionally it's called Dutch Roll

and you damp out the Dutch Roll

with the rudder on the vertical tail,

so yeah, generally the front of an airplane

is smoother than the back,

but this is a pretty subtle effect in the modern world.

Maybe on an old MD-80 or DC-9,

McDonnell Douglas-9 aircraft or maybe even on a MD-80

and maybe even an old 707 you'd feel that,

but nowadays hardly ever, why?

Because of the coupling of stability and control

and our understanding of computers

and our ability to have computers

to not only do a position, velocity, acceleration

and jerk, but also snap,

Whoa!

Carry on, sit wherever you like.

@Alisha_Blackbur writes,

Does anyone ever really know how gravity works?

The answer is we know with extraordinary precision

what gravity will do, we can land spacecraft on Mars,

taking into account general and special relativity,

the speed of the spacecraft

and the influence of the earth's gravity

on the rate at which we perceive time passing,

we can take that into account to have your cellphone

tell you which side of the street

you're standing on, we can do that,

but where gravity actually comes from remains a mystery,

Alisha_Blackbur, you are living in a time

when we may discover how this happens.

Last summer, we built these big,

Interferometry Gravitational Observatories

and we observed the ripple

of a very strong gravity wave.

All the other energy that we can come across,

like the energy, the light that's bouncing off my head

and going into this camera lens

and then off your computer screen into you,

we understand that very well

and we use waves to analyze this flow of energy.

Well, people who discovered relativity,

Einstein's the famous guy, realized that gravity

should perhaps also travel in waves

and we can make predictions with that

and we built these observatories

and we've discovered them, proved that they existed,

who knows what the future holds?

It's an exciting time, go wild!

Shay, @Singer_Shay17,

If trees produce oxygen,

then can't paper do the same thing,

if it's made out of trees?

I understand the premise of your question,

but compare how well a fish swims when it's alive

with how well it swims after you've caught it and killed it,

we make paper out of dead trees,

dead trees don't move around as much

and they don't produce nearly as much oxygen.

Carry on, Shay.

Jools Watsham, I was just thinking:

that's good, I'm glad, Jools,

As artificial intelligence becomes more intelligent,

we might wanna stop using the term, artificial

to describe it, I mean, the best AI

is one that learns itself, right?

So is it really artificial?

Either way, let's not start off on the wrong foot.

Heart symbol icon emoji thing.

Artificial intelligence gets the term,

because humans created computers,

that act as though they are what you and I call intelligent.

For me, the line that will be crossed

is when our computer systems,

which are artificially intelligent, choose to make art,

when an artificial intelligence decides to do something

just for the sake of doing it,

then we will have crossed the line into intelligence,

so right now, I'd stick with AI

and don't be freaked out about AI,

you get on a, you go to an airport and you get on the tram,

that takes you from terminal A to terminal C

and you trust it, because engineers have designed a system

that figures out how much you weigh,

how much your luggage weighs,

how fast the doors should open, where it should stop,

how fast it should accelerate, how fast it should slow down,

it gets all that done and you trust it,

it's just the next few levels,

where the thing will get more and more complicated,

what we don't want is for worldwide systems

of the artificial intelligence to become so sophisticated

that we can't predict what they're gonna do

or there's so many moving parts,

you can't tell what's gonna happen,

that's what we don't want,

that's how we get blackouts in electrical grids and stuff,

but you're out there, Jools,

you're thinking deep thoughts, way to go.

@AyoTristan, Did I just hear thunder in a snow storm?

Is that a thing?

Yeah, it's a thing, thunderstorms happen

when it's cold enough for snow to form and you know what,

you observed that yourself, way to go.

Yokimo @joseflo13157012 writes,

I have no pinky toenail, is this evolution?

You'll notice that in evolution was an interesting thing,

a fascinating thing, a very important idea in evolution,

Yokimo, you don't have to be any better than you have to be,

this is to say, there is no force, no natural force,

no natural selecting pressure to have superpowers,

to have x-ray vision, to be able to run

faster than a speeding locomotive

or leap tall buildings in a single bound,

there's no motivation for that naturally,

you only have to be good enough,

so if you're able to live your life,

put on shoes, run marathons, whatever you might do,

dance swing dances, maybe the Balboa

or the Collegiate Shag or the East Coast Swing,

you can do all that without a toenail,

there's no evolutionary pressure for you to get one,

but it's a cool question and you know what else, Yokimo?

I'll bet you really have one,

it's just the nail bed's really small, I bet.

Carry on.

@LatimerAlder, question:

If #climatechange, that caused the end

of the last Ice Age was a good thing,

why is #climatechange today a bad thing?

Can anyone explain?

First, you know, as we say in comedy,

buy the premise, buy the bit,

what makes you think the climate change,

that caused the Ice Age was a good thing?

I gotta get over there in what is now France,

they had it going on, they lived in caves,

they hunter-gathered and scavenged,

they had sex, they carried on, who knows what,

they buried their dead carefully,

why was that a good thing?

Everything got hot, people started walking

all over the earth, I mean, was that really good?

But why?

The reason climate change today is a bad thing

is the speed, it's the rate at which humans like you and I

are causing climate change, that's the problem,

you and I are causing climate change and it's the speed,

people are gonna have to abandon coastal cities

as there are floods coming more and more frequently,

the pests that infect our crops,

pests are showing up earlier and sticking around later,

it's the speed, LatimerAlder that is the trouble

and whether or not Ice Age ending was a good thing,

it depends on whom you ask.

Go out there, go back in time,

take a meeting with Ogg and Oggette

and see if they thought it was great,

when there were mosquitoes all the time, it sucked, man.

@BrunetteLove7 writes,

@BillNye, my boyfriend and I

have been debating if water is wet.

I went into the convo,

conversation, thinking it is,

but he is adamant, water is not wet.

Can you please explain the science

behind the answer to this question?

For me, wet is sort of defined by water, yeah,

so if there's water present, it's generally gonna be wet.

With that said, we in fluid mechanics

think of air wetting the surface of a baseball

or a bird's wing or an airplane wing,

we talk about wetting and here's the definition of wetting

from a fluid mechanical standpoint for your consideration,

Myra Bruneta, it's when the fluid sticks to the surface,

air is a fluid, anything that flows is a fluid,

so if it sticks to the surface, then the surface is wetted.

So try this, get a flask, spin it with water in it,

spin it and you'll see the water

takes on some of the spin of the glass,

because it's stuck to the surface.

Take a ping pong ball and give it a lot of spin

either with a racket, a paddle or your fingers,

the air sticking to the surface,

wetting the surface influences its flay,

but now wax the hood of a car and put water droplets on it,

they bead up, they don't wet the surface, whoa.

Thank you for these questions,

I'm really glad you are all pondering these things.

I am not some brilliant guy, okay,

I'm just scientifically literate,

but the questions so far have been addressed in science

and are very well understood and and I depend on 'em,

that's why we have shapes made of glass and lenses

and drinkable water and electronic computer machines

it's because of science!

Carry on, people.