#919 Neil deGrasse Tyson explains Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle from Joe Rogan Experience #919

Hello, freak bitches. While we're on this subject of subatomic particles and weirdness, I wanted to, I wanted, if you could, illuminate this often misused explanation for the observer effect. Because you know the particles waves and you watch them observe them and it changes the reaction. It is heavily misunderstood. It's misunderstood because people want to attribute it to magic, the magic of the mind and the consciousness looking at it. But isn't it in fact just measuring it? Yes. Thank you. Please explain. Next question. Explain to people because I'm so tired of talking to hippies. Joe, you're good. It just drives me nuts. You gotta carry your people with you. I tried. Where are they coming from? Where are you pulling? What? What? Where are you getting your people? I don't know. I don't own them for sure. You don't own them. So they're definitely not my people. They vary greatly. You can't even loop them together. You have an admirably diverse following and not many people can claim that. It's probably because of your diverse profile. I'm as open minded as I can be. But on top of that, you're smart and you read and you're thoughtful and you're also on some level of respect. You'll hear somebody out and you got your MMA thing. So no, you're in a lot of places and a lot of spaces and that's a good thing. We need more unity in this world. Well, thank you. Thank you. I'm going to explain what people are getting wrong. Okay, so very simplistic. It's much simpler than you think. Okay. All right, you ready? Yes. So I'm looking at you. The only reason why I can see you is because there's light reflecting off of your face, your body into my eyes. So there's light. Oh, by the way, these are stars. That's beautiful. Yeah, those are Hubble photographs. Oh my gosh. Yeah, those are images from the Hubble. I noticed them when I walked in. They're sheets that you put over the fluorescent light cover. And so when we look up, we actually see the real images from the Hubble. So you're pretending it's the night sky. Yeah. Well, it doesn't look as cool as it could be. Then you're not in a completely cavernous recording studio. Well, what I want to do in the future studio, I want to actually build a glass ceiling and have a full scale image, high resolution image of the stars. So a planetarium. Yes. You're describing a planetarium. Yeah, exactly. Call it that. It's a planetarium. Well, something like that, but I just wanted an image. Yeah, what you can... No, do better than that. Is there a way to do it? I'll do it. No, do better than that. You get a curved version of those very high resolution LED screens. Curved. Yeah. And then you put any image up there you want. Ooh, okay. And then it's the night sky tonight. It's what the sky looks like from Alpha Centauri. Oh, so like when you go to see one of those star shows at a planetarium and they show it on the ceiling above you. Well, yes. But nowadays, the ceiling itself is the source of light. It's not projected from something else. So then you just feed that with image data and then it becomes whatever you want. Can you hook me up with someone who knows how to do that? Yeah, I can totally. Ooh, I'm excited. Yeah, you don't know people. I've got people. I mean, people that like to... You mean my people? You mean my people for something? Well, you know the real people. I thought you had people. Well, you know the people at the cops that would teach the people. So we'll get started. Okay, so here's what's up. I'm looking at you. Okay. All right? Yes. And I see you. I want to know where you are. So I turn on the lights and I say, there you are. All right. Let's make you tinier. Let's make you mini me. Okay? Like in the movie. Right. So now there's a tiny version of you, a mini me version of Joe Rogan. Now you're little. I turn on the lights. You're still there. Okay? Okay. Because if the lights are not on, I can't see you. I don't know where you are. Right. It's that simple. Okay. Okay? When you start becoming the size of molecules right on down to the size of an atom, and I ask the question, where is Joe Rogan the atom? And I turn on the light to see you there. Because I think you're there. The light, the photon comes in, hits your atom and pops you into another location. The very act of trying to measure your position prevents me from measuring your position. And it has to have jack shit to do with your consciousness or your mind or your eyes or anything. It has to do with the fact that to know you're there, some information has to come from you to me, like shining a light on you. And the smaller you are, the more susceptible you are to the energy of the light changing your position in space. So my question is, how does it feel? Wait, you know what it's like? You ever, I don't know if this still happened, a quarter spills out of your pants pocket on the back seat of a car. And it's there in the wedge between the bottom and the back seat. And so you try to reach in to get it. And the act of reaching for the coin makes the coin move farther away from you. The act of reaching for it. Right. Because you separate your position. You're separated and it just slides down even further. And that's not your mind making that happen. It's the act of the measurement that is affecting what it is you're trying to measure. And this was discovered in quantum physics to the point where that's actually, it's the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It's one of the basic foundations of all of quantum physics.