Best of Tech Support: Bill Nye, Neil DeGrasse Tyson and More Answer Science Questions from Twitter

Okay first question from Ashley @queasybake,

How do I know if I have the stomach flu or a hangover?

Well honey, did you drink last night, hmm?

Glug, glug.

Did you have food or did you have alcohol?

The internet is not for stupidity, ma'am.

The internet is for smart, established doctors like me

and my friend Louis here.

Think before you tweet.

(energetic music)

Greetings, greetings.

Bill Nye here.

Hey, Jim Cameron here.

So I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly.

Hi, I'm Anil Seth.

This is Dr. Ken Jeong.

Today I'm gonna answer some of your questions on Twitter.

You ever wonder what happens to your organs in space?

Like other shit floats around,

do your organs float around your body or nah?

Everything floats, including your guts.

You can feel that.

I mean you can feel like

your insides don't feel quite normal.

Certain processes that we have to deal with every day,

particularly using the restroom,

our body to likes to have gravity

telling us which direction to push stuff.

It creates some challenges.

If aliens exist, how do I know I'm not one?

You're probably not an alien

because you share all the same organs in the same place

with the same biochemistry, and highly common DNA

with the person sitting across from you,

and everyone else walking this earth.

You have DNA in common with yeast cells,

with an apple, with oak trees,

so that's some of the best evidence we know

that you yourself are not an alien.

BohemianMyAss, Is it possible to punch yourself

in the brain so that you just forget certain memories

and stuff like that?

I wish it was.

Actually forgetting is very adaptive.

It's very useful.

It would be terrible to remember everything.

In fact some people with really, really good memories

have a lot of problems in their lives

because they simply can't forget.

So is there a way to just get rid of particular memories?

We're not quite there yet, but there's some interesting work

in just with mice at the moment

that shows that it is possible

to eliminate certain memories from mice.

Whether that would also apply to humans or not,

is a long way down the road.

But don't punch yourself in the brain,

that's not gonna do it.

OfficalBeeRay, Alright, what the (bleep)

is a tractor beam and why does every Sci-Fi film have one?

Well, I actually haven't made a Sci-Fi film yet

that has a tractor beam in it,

but a tractor beam is mythical technology

where you can reach out with some invisible force

and grab something and pull it to you.

A tractor beam is obviously a technology we don't have,

but there is this little thing

called flux pinning by the way,

when you have a type-II superconductor

and a powerful magnetic field.

You get this thing called a Meissner effect,

which means that you can actually lock onto it

and hold it in place and manipulate it.

That's a tractor beam in a sense

that works over a very short distance,

so maybe we'll be able to figure out a tractor beam.

Rockyonline, I have a doubt related to evolution theory.

If we evolved from monkeys,

then why are there still monkeys?

(laughing)

Ha ha, that's brilliant.

You're the first guy to ever wonder this.

We did not descend from monkeys.

Monkeys and we have a common ancestor.

So you may have seen this picture, this famous arrangement.

This isn't really accurate.

It wasn't just one to the other to the other.

As we say, the family tree of hominids like you and me,

and even my old boss (laughs)

is not just a straight line

of one organism leading to another.

It's a bush as we way, so there's many, many branches

and you and I ended up on one of 'em.

So we did not descend from monkeys.

Monkeys and us have a common ancestor and you can prove it.

@drclarekane says, Help, need emergency hiccup cure

before clinic starts in approximately five minutes.

(yells loudly)

See, scared ya.

Alright @lifesthepitts, Why is my eye twitching?

Ohmygahstop.

First of all probably stop using words like ohmygahstop.

Maybe get some more sleep, drink less caffeine.

Alright, next.

Yokimo @joseflo13157012 writes,

I have no pinky toe nail, is this evolution?

You'll notice that in evolution

it 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,

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 East Coast Swing.

You can do all that without a toenail.

There's no evolutionary pressure for you to get one.

And you know what else, Yokimo?

I bet you really have one,

it's just the nail bed's really small.

I'll bet, carry on.

If the Higgs-Boson, etc.

forms an essential part of reality, which it does,

why can't it be found in our front room or all around us?

There's certain parts of our fundamental reality

that you only gain access to under certain conditions

of pressure and temperature and energy.

You don't experience a proton in your life,

but it's a fundamental part of nuclei

that make up the atoms that comprise your body.

So just 'cause you don't see it, feel it, touch it,

taste it, or smell it does not mean it does not exist.

Part of the entire purpose of why we have science at all,

in particular the methods and tools of science,

is to decode that which is true about nature

that otherwise transcends your sensory perceptions.

That is what science is.

You wouldn't need the tools if our brain sensory system

accurately decoded the world around us,

but it doesn't and that's why science tries to find

any way it can to remove your brain,

eye, ear, nose, mouth, touch from the operation

and the more we can successfully do it,

the less bias shows up in the result.

Just get the human out of it.

So yeah, reality is not what you perceive,

it's what the methods and tools of science reveal.