Feel the Photon | StarTalk

2m read

·Nov 11, 2024

So I tried to get Wayne Shorter to express sounds of the universe through jazz, through his saxophone. OK. So I prepped him for a cosmic phenomenon to see how he—can he roll with it.

Uh-oh. This is going to be deep. Let's check it out. I want to describe something astrophysical to you, and I'm wondering if you can convert that to a musical expression. In the center of the sun, energy is created by fusion, and a photon of light is born. This photon of light, careening back and forth, eventually escapes the sun. That takes hundreds of thousands of years for that photon to get from the center of the sun to its surface, and it takes 8 minutes to get from the sun to Earth. Is there music in that? Yeah.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Can you feel the photon? Trying to—

Feel the photon. Feel the—oh, I like that. Feeling—that's an album title right there, feeling the photon. The photon fears nothing. OK.

[sustained note] And if I move in any direction other than that, I think this one thing incorporates all of the movement and struggles and everything like that and all of the short-term goals and stuff like that that other people be looking for, and this photon is wrapping around that whole thing for millions and millions of years, and something else is wrapping around that, and that's us.

OK, now we know why people hate jazz. What the hell was that? Did you see your face in that clip? He was like, "pah," and you were like, what the hell are you doing? What are you doing Wayne Shorter?

Go with what you can get started on most quickly. And get that first user.

The Most Complex Language in the World

View All

How Do You Get a Haircut in Antarctica?: Day in the Life of a Scientist | Continent 7: Antarctica

[Music] So this is my Scott based haircut. This is a new one for me. I can say I’ve got my haircut in Antarctica by a butcher. By butcher, that’s a carpenter, and he’s only got one eye, and he’s half L, and he’s only got one eye. He says, “Half fine, here…

This U.S. Fencer Is Named After a Warrior Queen—and It Shows | Short Film Showcase

I don’t like to fight people, but you can’t get by without fighting. My mom named me after Queen Ninga from Angola; she was a warrior queen. I met Peter Westbrook when I was nine. Peter Westbrook is a legend in US fencing. He fenced at a time when black f…

Here's what would happen if ALL humans completely disappeared

Foreign. It’s 9:41 AM. We’ve just woken up and brewed yourself a cup of coffee. Outside your window, you see the normal bustle of cars honking at a busy intersection, people waiting in clumps across the street, either mouthing conversations you can’t hear…

Directional derivative

Hello everyone. So here, I’m going to talk about the directional derivative. That’s a way to extend the idea of a partial derivative. Partial derivatives, if you’ll remember, have to do with functions with some kind of multivariable input. I’ll just use t…

Life in Flight | Chasing Genius | National Geographic

I’ve been building stuff since I could walk. If I could get my hands on it, I’d take it apart, and if I had an idea, I’d try to build it. When someone says something’s impossible, I can figure out the way to make it possible. This all started with a visi…

Being ruthless in business

I don’t think you have to be ruthless to be successful in business because it really depends what business you’re in. If your job is a litigation lawyer or a family lawyer, yeah, you have to be pretty ruthless. That’s not a fun kind of environment to work…

Feel the Photon | StarTalk

More Articles