Has Neil deGrasse Tyson Ever Been Wrong?

0:00 I thought I'd do an explainer on being wrong interesting something quite frankly that I would think you're unfamiliar with being NE to Grass no no no so I was once asked yeah you know I give a public talk and Q&A at the end and someone said when was the last time you were wrong interesting and I almost didn't understand the question I had to think hard about what the person meant by that question okay and I realized there levels of being wrong okay and I don't think she meant all levels okay I and why not because for example all right I'll be home at

0:46 6 as you get home 615 you covered in glitter what happened so you were wrong right but no that's not a federal case to be made of that and it just you were just wrong another one is let's go left here instead of right that'll be the fastest way home and then there's traffic oh my goodness so you were wrong again yes right so there's all these daily things where you're wrong and so I'm still trying to figure out what she means by this because I'm saying wrong all the time wa what where are you coming everyone is wrong all the time yes right yes yes so I started ascending the wrong ladder to find the place where I thought she might have meant and let me go through scientific wrong okay when you

1:35 are on the frontier most of the time you're wrong right because there's not enough evidence or the quality evidence doesn't justify being right all you can say is this may be the I think it's this and then someone has better data or more data and they show you that you're wrong so this what you're just pointing out right now was the biggest mistake with respect to information being given about covid-19 yes precisely because people are thinking well if a scientist speaks it must be it must be right well when I say equals MC s yeah that's right exactly okay because that is we know that's true right we have the benefit of

2:20 Decades of theory experiment and observation so much so that it now becomes a law it's we can call it a law if you want we stop calling things law yeah yeah yeah did just because until the 20th century it was it was laws of thermodynamics laws of gravity laws of electricity and then we just stopped that yeah because we found that as thorough and as accurate and as brilliant as all those laws were we realized that they may be incomplete oo I love that and that's different from being wrong yes it's a whole other different thing oh that's lovely okay incomplete it's just incomplete the grade I got the most in college incomplete I forgot about that grade I forgot about don't give me an F I'll

3:06 just I am not failing anything okay I'm just going to be incomplet Inc I'm just listen this is going to cost me a few more dollars for these credits but I'm I'm incomplete I forgot all about again the incomplete grade all right so we would find that classical mechanics as brilliant and as effective and as much as it explained to the world right it didn't explain the whole world and we needed a deeper understanding then quantum physics comes in we are in the Centennial decade of the development of quantum physics as a branch of physics that's how young it is 100 years yeah it's the youngest of the major branches of there are other branches like Quantum chromodynamics and things but basically in terms of the big ass branches of physics 100 years old whereas Newton and

3:53 gravity been around 400 years okay so we find there's a deeper understanding of reality in which it's embedded so in that sense it's you're incomplete but not wrong okay excellent so I don't know do you should one say that you're wrong in that case I I don't know so because covid-19 was novel in the sense that it had not come around before by the way that's what they called it at first the novel coron virus correct that's eviden that we were unfamiliar with its ways and means right and the ways of what how it works how it gets transmitted how communicable it is all of these were uncertain at some level the CDC which is accustomed to just declaring what is true is trying to declare truths about

4:39 something that is in progress in our understanding of how it behaves so I think the public and agencies need to look back on that episode and think about how to approach that the next time yeah and say for example you can say here's what we know now based on Research available to this week check back in a week if there's more research papers that come in we will update you okay we say no we thought this would work but we have refined evidence that it'll work better if you do if you add this regimen compared to that regimen we realizing it's not transmitting on the surfaces as much as we thought you don't have to wash your groceries coming in exactly but starting out that way it might have been the case never know you

5:26 just never know when you're on the frontier so scient typically we're wrong all the time on the frontier but once it gets verified then it by multiple experiments by multiple people including your competitors well most importantly most importantly because they're the people like I said the greatest thing about science is it's filled with haters science is filled with haters and scientists are just like oh oh bring it on haters bring it yeah check my work like yeah there someone wrote a wrote an article 100 against Einstein right okay because I they're the haters right haters okay because they didn't want to believe relativity it was too weird for them and Einstein replied I'm paraphrasing here he says if I'm wrong you wouldn't need a hundred reasons for

6:12 it you would just need one if you right damn that's a rap battle if I ever saw that's for the quote from Shakespeare me thinks the lady doth protest too much yes here's another way you can be wrong you can be wrong and right at the same time all right so so there's claudus tmy alexandrian mathematician brilliant and he codified the geocentric Universe wow okay okay and how do you do that and still make sense of the world well if Earth is in the middle and you look up in the sky and you see planets moving forward and then backwards slow down and go back forward again how do you explain that if you're in the middle the planet must be making Loops of its own thus was the codification of

6:58 epicycle where all planets as they orbited the earth made Loop the loops of their own CU that's what we see in the night sky so he codifies this he was wrong as all get out and it made perfect sense but it it's what it looked like yeah look at that we seen it and he was humble about it though really in the margin of his book which exists in uh the Arabic translation because I think some of the original copies were burned in the when the Alexandria library burned but it had already been translated and was in bagd dad and it's it it's known today by the Arabic title Al maest Al maest the greatest yes people knew this was some badass stuff so in the margin how humble was he to write when I trace at my

7:44 pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies I no longer touch Earth with my feet I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of Ambrosia wow he was feeling it he was high as I don't know what how you get high back then what they everybody got high back then are you kidding me and there were no laws against it that's the that's the great part so ad150 was that's what he penned that in the margins of this his greatest work in the manuscript of his greatest work so there it is now you can be wrong but interestingly wrong that triggers the work of other people he's on the frontier so like I said scientists on the frontier were wrong 90% of the time he was wrong but interesting wrong

8:30 because using the epicycles you could predict where the planets would be exactly it had some utility right 1400 years later cernus comes along says maybe the sun is in the middle and not the Earth if you put the sun in the middle you don't need the epicycles right because the planets the planets are doing their thing all on their own all doing their thing okay by the way if you have epicycles you have to declare that planets occasionally go backwards they invented a word for that the astrologers invented a word for that oh yeah it's Mercury in retrograde retrograde oh my God that's a little nothing in my life is working mercur is in in retrogade I give me my crystal I need to make sure that my life gets

9:15 right okay anyway listen I don't go ahead and hate me I don't care please anyway you just indicted an entire demographic no here's the thing here's my thing you are welcome to to believe whatever stupid thing you want you are welcome to believe that and I should have the right to say look at you dummy that's the problem with the world today is that no one can stand up to any type of criticism I get it you know what I mean which is just somebody else is looking at you critically all right that's all okay so now here we go so to have a word for when the thing goes backwards when it's not actually going backwards is an interesting fact that is inter so for if you're at NASCAR and you see the cars going around a CLE when it's on the other side of the track you

10:01 don't say it was going backwards there's not a special word for it when it's on the other side of the sun coming back left and right you don't invent words for that true it's going in the same forward at all at all times okay so here's what's interesting cernus says let's put the sun in the middle epicycles even after he did that were more accurate predicting the positions of the planet than his heliocentric model did look at that I know so do you throw it out if it's not as good as what was there before you know why it didn't work no because he presumed that the almighty creator of the universe who Zeus No we're past Zeus now Zeus was

10:48 Tomy now we're talking about he he's Christian cath he cath this is this middle of the 16th century okay okay polish Catholic all right so he presumed if God made the universe what's the most perfect geometric shape circle circle so planets are clearly moving in Perfect Circle cir why why would God make it work in any move in any other shape exactly exactly because God is perfect exactly and circle perfect so it's got to be what got exactly sense so invoking deity as a motivating force for his create his scientific thinking all right it's not imp perfect circles no that's why he wasn't getting the right answer it would be another 50 years before Kepler German mathematician using data

11:33 from CH I practice that just I just want to show off Tu bra yeah most people say tao BR okay Tuco bra all right okay I worked at I just want give me a pat on the back right there you go thank you sounds like a sausage tle bra T bra uh a master Observer of the night sky okay and got data on where all the planets were and and everything and when they were where they were in the sky Kepler used it and after torturously scratching his head over what it all meant he finally landed on the fact that planets orbit in ellipses rather than in perfect circles bada bing everything everything worked everything worked out here's the point kernus was wrong right Tommy was wrong

12:21 yes cernus was wrong yes but Tommy was more wrong even though his model made better predictions so this wrong thing is very weird when you're on the frontier just saying within wrong you can bracket a little bit of right yes yes beautifully put and cernus bracketed enough right to say let's stick with this and see if something else needs adjustment let's go back 20 years all right just 20 years no or a little more than 20 years 30 years 30 years okay mid 1990s okay there was the discovery of the first exoplanet yes okay so now why it was a pulsar Planet we're not thinking there's life there right because the Pulsar is what's left over after the star blew up we're not

13:08 thinking life but still a planet orbiting another star this is an important result and it was a little odd but this planet orbited once every 365 days that was a little weird okay how do you get that that's exactly our year of course yeah other planets in our soul system don't have that orbit and so these properties that were reported were oddly similar to Earth the existence of this planet was inferred by its gravitational tugging on the Pulsar itself and pulsars have rapid pulses so you can time these you can time it and know exactly if it's coming towards you or moving away the timings of these pulses are Exquisite clocks to

13:54 check for this okay and they inferred the presence of an earthlike planet with a 365-day orbit headlines Earth [Music] two then six months later somebody looks back at the data they had modeled Earth as a perfectly circular orbit around the sun oh that's not good just for to simplify it right sometimes you do that just to simplify the calculations EXA but if that's your base model then when Earth is closer to the Sun we're moving faster we're farther from the Sun we're moving slower right that signature got imprinted in the object we were observing if you don't

14:39 recognize that that's coming from you you're going to project it into everything you see it was egg on their faces of course it is yeah because it it they they should have known better by the way I understand why that's wrong so they really cracked the bed however this is science okay if you're wrong you don't want somebody else discovering that that's right they found it they printed the retraction and it was reported at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society the retraction of that paper and got into standing and people were like y way to go way to be wrong you stupid stupid people you're amazing what amazing dummies you are so

15:27 the applause was that they found me they aded the error and it's not a mark on his reputation but if you go to your grave saying no I was right and people already know you're wrong give up take on another profession yeah no I love that story yes yeah that's said that speaks volumes I love it that's that's science at its best really absolutely yeah when it's at its worst it's at its best o give me I need mics to drop I'll give you a fist bump oh fist bump there so now that's the frontier of science now let am I where this woman was trying to get me to say when was the last time I was wrong no CU I figured out what she finally I figured out what she meant what does she mean is there something I believe really strongly ah with my heels dug in and I'm resisting evidence to the

16:12 contrary yeah then I'd be wrong and embarrassed by that she was going a new place that I think pervades in our society their people are certain of what they think and will fight you if you think something different and and they can't be con if they are wrong they can't be convinced well see that's the thing because when you have that belief which is not scientific because beliefs as I have said I don't believe this I don't believe in science I just believe the science it's not something to believe in it's not something to believe in yeah yeah as I said the good thing about science is true whether or not you believe in it right and of course what I mean by that is the science not the frontier because we're all wrong most of the time it's after that filters in

16:59 oh my gosh you can't just say I want to repeal the law of gravity you gained pounds last week I don't believe right it's too many Big Macs which by the way that is the the the defense and you'll see people make this defense I don't believe it I right and so that was the category of belief that I think she was inquiring within me and I carry no such beliefs that would be susceptible to that question because I am always open to the possibility yes because I'm a scientist and every matters now this is what everybody right now who is watching this yes this is what they're all asking what's that so then do you leave open

17:45 the possibility that there may be a God that created everything of course of course all the time oh snap no that's not a snap no wait a minute we have just really opened up something no one beli beles that about you let's assume that there's something in me that we can call belief okay okay the level of belief I place in something will always be proportional to the evidence that supports it imagine your whole life pivots on something that you believe is true oh I don't have to imagine that that's already happened okay yeah so uh this might be the case for example in religions yeah okay so Christianity

18:31 pivots on the resurrection of Jesus okay that's a major feature of Christianity and belief in that is a major tenant of what it is to be a Christian suppose you had access to a time machine and you say of all the events in the earth history what do you want to witness I want to go back to the day where The Rock was rolled away exactly okay so say and they said the angel said he is not here okay so now you go back to that day uhhuh and you see thieves roll it away and steal the body that would be information that would completely destabilize Crush everything that's right so that's the the extreme version of what I think she was asking me when was the last time you

19:17 were wrong and she wanted to know how willingly would I give up thinking I was right so that that's an EXT I give that just as an extreme Cas but from a neurological standpoint it wouldn't make a difference to most people they would enter a state of cognitive dissonance and they would find a reason why that information that they see visually does not match with their belief and then they would uh find way Cas so that they preserve the belief I think that's the most extreme example of what it would be to have a belief challenged and so if you bring evidence to me right that is compelling either better evidence or more evidence or or ideally both okay and I'll say hey I haven't thought about it that way thank you I will be thankful to the person for for calling that to my attention so that's why I kind of look

20:03 like a dog hears a high pitch sound when she asked that question what and then I I had to work my way to realize what she meant by it because as a scientist I don't want to say I Delight in being wrong I Delight in being corrected oo that's a different that's a big difference yeah yes correction always involves advancement and learning yes always at all times at all times some people are so brilliant that even when they're wrong they're right okay now you sound like Scarface I always start truth even when I lie okay so Albert Einstein when he wrote his general theory of relativity which is the understanding of gravity and the structure of SpaceTime Across

20:50 the Universe MH it would be applied that way by people like later than that theory right he didn't do it all but he laid the foundations for it okay in his equation there's a mathematical term that if it had a physical reality it would be an anti-gravity force and are we talking the famous eal MC S no no no okay I was say this is an equation for the universe and he said well all the galaxies in the universe that's brilliant I already see it wait wait wait all the left to themselves would have the universe collapse onto but but we're not collapsing so this term would be this pressure Force

21:38 pushing against everything keeping it in Balance but we don't know anything that's doing that and so he puts it in there because he has no other way to understand a universe that would not collapse on okay he has no way to understand it so he leaves it in it's called the cosmological constant and many many decades later by the way when I'm in graduate school we when we calculate cosmology we have to put in the constant and say it equals zero you have to do that because it's it belongs in the equation okay when Hubble discovered that the Universe was expanding then it's no longer a static universe and he doesn't need the pressure to hold it up against collaps and and then he said then he discarded

22:23 it as this non-physical thing that the math gave him but it has no physical counterpart and he called it his greatest blunder of his life oh my goodness until we discovered this negative gravity pressure in the universe and it's called Dark Energy exactly a Nobel Prize has been given for it yeah a Nobel Prize was given for what he rejected and so Einstein's biggest blunder was saying that was his biggest blunder exactly yeah that's amazing yeah so anyhow that's he was wrong but right God that guy was just so smart yeah yeah anyhow we're done here thanks for joining us on an explainer on being wrong there you go go home fellas tell your wife you're right baby it's not what I said that's not the lesson there not the takeaway here all right uh till

23:09 next time thanks Chuck pleasure Neil degrass Tyson keep looking up