Neil deGrasse Tyson

No. But clearly others are.

Space Station Astronauts routinely travel a few thousandths of a second into our future. Beyond that, get over the fact that for the foreseeable future we remain prisoners of the present.

Just someone who is in love with the universe. And as Carl Sagan said, "when you're in love, you want to tell the world".

I'd bring my iPhone, as the most compact representation of modern culture there is. And I'd visit a civilization on a galaxy 65 million light years away. Assuming I can get there instantaneously, I would look back to Earth with their presumably super telescopes and witness the extinction of the dinosaurs - the light of which is just now reach them.

Last I checked, it was plate tectonics that shaped the mountains. The rest of your statement, to may eyes, waxes more poetic than sensible.

Kepler 22-b is just the beginning. We need a whole catalog of earth like planets around sunlike stars in the goldilocks zone so that we can learn the statistics of who and what we are. Next steps, seeing if their atmospheres offer telltale signs of surface life - life as we know it, that is. Oxygen, among them.

As for terraforming - we can't predict next week's weather on Earth. The hope of terraforming another planet to our liking in the face of that fact seems among the most far-fetched concepts preoccupying the futurist.

We currently enjoy an unprecedented capacity to monitor the Sun - in HiDef. So the reporting of solar flares and other surface burps is at an all time high, but in fact the Sun is as "quiet" as it's been in more than a century. So if we don't survive 2012, it will be no fault of the Sun, or any other 2012 hoaxing that pervades the internet.

I think too much has been made of the approaching "singularity". Apart from the fact that the movement stole or perfectly good word for the center of a black hole, the machines (originally) and the computer (recently) have surpassed human performance in countless ways. So If the day comes when a computer can solve other classes of problems, more power to it. But the idea that somehow all of life and society will be recognizably different is, to me, an overstatement.

"Get over yourselves"

Raising my children. Still a work in progress, but I'm happy with what I see thus far. whether or not they become scientists, they are no doubt scientifically literate.

My tweet from yesterday summarizes any eulogy I would give: Gone too Soon: Christopher Hitchens 62. Tireless supporter of human rights and fighter of dogma under any guise. http://dft.ba/-1dTT

A re-boot of the 1980 Cosmos series presented by Carl Sagan. A sequel befitting the 21st century in which we live. 13 episodes, as was the original. To air in the spring of 2013. On FOX. Yes, on FOX.

No. All motion and all gravity distorts time. For high precision work, the full hammer of relativity needs to be invoked to get the right answers. GPS satellites, for example, invoke relativistic adjustments to their time-keeping, because of their high (and persistent) orbital speeds.

That for the accolade. But I'm just sharing my love of a subject, folded with my love of life. And in my walks of life I have found that not enough people share, lest the world become a more awesome place.

There will be more reports that they might have found it. And at some point we will all agree that it's there. Would have been much more fun for physics if it was not there. Nothing like a failed prediction to stir the pot.

I retain a curious fascination with the Wall Street McDonalds. It has large brass handled front doors. Has a stock ticker in full view. And there's a piano player during lunch. Apart from that, my favorite place to eat in the city is home. The great tragedy of learning to cook a dish better than what you find in a restaurant. Also, wine at home is manifold cheaper than wine in a restaurant.

No. The human mind, forged on the plains of Africa in search of food, sex, and shelter, is helpless in the face of infinity.

Therein is the barrier to learning calculus for most people -- where infinities pop up often. The best you can do is simply grow accustomed to the concept. Which is not the same as understanding it.

And when you are ready, consider that some infinities are larger than others. For example, there are more fractions than there are counting numbers, yet they are both infinite. Just a thought to delay your sleep this evening.

To discover something you expect to be there does almost nothing to advance physics. We're all focussed now on the misbehaved neutrinos, and any other UNEXPECTED result that may emerge from CERN, the most energetic particle accelerator in the world. FYI: One of many signs that the USA is fading: Our Super-conducting Supercollider, which was cancelled by Congress in the early 1990s, would have been 3X the energy of the current Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Now our particle physicists stand on the Atlantic shores, look across the ocean, and long for the frontier that was once theirs.

If first try to lose some weight. if the planet has the same density as Earth, then at 2.5 x our diameter, you'd weigh 2.5 times more than your Earth weight. After that, I'd surely buy a coastal beach house. Always loved the ocean.

Yes. But as long as our energy source is fossil fuels extracted from the ground beneath our feet, we are hopeless far from wielding the energy necessary to open a wormhole in the space-time continuum.

Ha Ha. No. But your question reminds me of the fact that in a mirror, the optics conspires so that you can only kiss yourself on the lips.

I can accept data, if the data require it of me. But for an extraordinary result such as ultraluminal neutrinos, you must not only repeat the experiment, which they did, somebody else has to duplicate the experiment as well. Only then will the result gain acceptance. This is the way of science. A fact often neglected by journalists - especially those who chase the results of single experiments and report them as new truths.

Fois Gras. On my deathbed that will be the only food I will regret not having eaten more.

Favorite meal? Several. Lobster with a side of pasta in garlic sauce, accompanied by a Les Clos Grand Cru Chablis. I also love my own pistachio-mint encrusted rack of lamb, roasted potatoes, blanched broccoli, accompanied by a vintage Pauillac. And my wife makes an awesome meatless lasagna. FYI: About 2/3 my dinners in a week are vegetarian.

Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler, & Hoyle 1957 "The synthesis of elements in the Star" which is the first realization that we are stardust. http://rmp.aps.org/abstract/RMP/v29/i4/p547_1

The accusations of cultural relativism in the science is a movement led by humanities academics. This should a profound absence of understanding for how (and why) science works. That may not be the entire source of tension but it's surely a part of it. Also, I long for the day when liberal arts people are embarrassed by, rather than chuckle over, statements that they were "never good at math". That being said, in my experience, people in the physical sciences are great lovers of the arts. The fact that Einstein played the violin was not an exception but an example.

And apart from all that, there will always be bickering of university support for labs, buildings, perfuming arts spaces, etc. That's just people being people.

Ptolemy, in the margins of his greatest work AD 150, "Almagest" (which literately translates from the Arabic to "The Greatest"): In this book he lays out the mathematical foundations for the geocentric universe. Reflecting on the motions of the planets, not fully understanding what's going on, he penned: "When I trace at my 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."

These are always hard to predict. Who would have thought 20 years ago that the smart phone would out-perform every handheld device ever portrayed in a science fiction story, even those taking place centuries into our future. With that caveat, I'd say machine-brain implants that connect the internet directly to our neurophysiology. That'll be fun. Perhaps then we can beat Watson on Jeopardy.

If she does not know who I am it probably means she watches very little television. A person can hardly be faulted for that. My biggest concern would not be that she didn't recognize who I am but if the ideas I share about the universe are foreign to her. Ideas should always matter more than people.

LIGO: http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/ Like Don Quijote, trying to accomplish the near-impossible. These are physicists trying to detect the passage of gravity waves across earth, sent by distant colliding black holes.

I would teach how science works as much as I would teach what science knows. I would assert (given that essentially, everyone will learn to read) that science literacy is the most important kind of literacy they can take into the 21st century. I would undervalue grades based on knowing things and find ways to reward curiosity. In the end, it's the people who are curious who change the world.

The Bible [to learn that it's easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself]; The System of the World (Newton) [to learn that the universe is a knowable place]; On the Origin of Species (Darwin) [to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth]; Gulliver's Travels (Swift) [to learn, among other satirical lessons, that most of the time humans are Yahoos]; The Age of Reason (Paine) [to learn how the power of rational thought is the primary source of freedom in the world]; The Wealth of Nations (Smith) [to learn that capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself]; The Art of War (Sun Tsu) [to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art]; The Prince (Machiavelli) [to learn that people not in power will do all they can to acquire it, and people in power will do all they can to keep it]. If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world.

Was fun to be interviewed with him out of character in this event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXh9RQCvxmg But my favorite private moment was at his home, the day before he was flying to LA. In his library I noticed a blank space on a shelf, adjacent to a stretch of trophies and awards he's won for his comedy and journalism. I asked why that spot was blank. He said it's for the Grammy he was going to win that weekend - which he did.

Thanks. So that I don't have to be the meanie.

If moving faster than light were possible, it would also mean you could go back in time. I would go straight to the Big Bang -- and earlier. Surely the most awesomest moments in all of time

50% of my college education was in courses that had nothing to do with math or science. And I don't regret a moment of it. There's something to be said for when all parts of the brain fire at all times. Harvard, for example, a liberal arts school, has many more Nobel Prizes in the sciences than does MIT. Just a random fact to reflect on.

About making physics more appealing, not enough attention is given to the power it grants the student. it's typically taught as just another subject, rather than as the foundation of nearly all knowledge of the natural world. If more people knew that, perhaps they'd be flocking to the physics classes rather than shunning them.

No question about that one: Big Bang Theory. The characters are playful and I can relate to every one of them, either from personal experience or from close friends and colleagues.

yes. But not as currently conceived by Branson and others. They promise orbital flight, as a natural next step from the vertical joy-rides that take you above the light-scattering molecules of Earth's atmosphere. To go up and back is VERY DIFFERENT from reaching orbit with the requisite speed of 17,000 miles per hour -- sideways. That being said, who wouldn't take such a trip. I'd surely save several years of vacation money for those 20 minutes or so. Good luck to them.

Saturn in our own solar system. And You gotta love Alpha Centauri. The closest star system to our own. Not yet known if it has planets, but it's always best to meet your neighbors.

This is my second time ever on Reddit.

: - )

Broadway & Off-Broadway Theater. Fancy restaurants, half the time reflecting that I could make it better myself. Wine tastings. Reading antiquarian books on science - especially those on which our understanding of the physical universe pivoted. Playing with my kids

No Higgs will force a re-consideration of the "Standard Model of Particle Physics". But it can force much change since the idea and concept works quite well, as is - three energy families of particles that correspond to the Quark, the photon, the electron, and the neutrino. So any new idea will more likely enclose the Standard Model than full-up replace it.

Looking up at a star-filled sky.

Many people are not prepared to understand how innovations in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) are fundamental to the economic health of nations. they think that scientists are just another special interest group fighting for money like everybody else. In my next book (Feb 2012) titled "Space Chronicles" I make this point at length.

You don't need to tell them anything

Apart from that fact, it is they who need advice, the day you finally tell them.

The 100 years passes on Earth. The duration of the trip for the traveler can be made arbitrarily short, just by increasing their speed relative to that of light. Then when they return 200 years later, everyone on Earth will have forgotten about them -- a hidden cost of fast space travel.

p.s. none of this has anything to do with "making sense" http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2001/03/01/coming-to-our-senses

Come to a public lecture. Always listed here: http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/upcoming-appearances

Depends on how broadly SOPA gets invoked. If it's just to stop piracy then who but ardent hackers could argue against that. Even so, there's so much legitimate public domain content on the internet than it just might not have the devastating effect that people fear.

Then it wouldn't be a surprise.

Send hamsters first. If the elevator where itself a hoistable mini-hotel, then who would complain about having to stay in space a few more days?

Low Earth Orbit? Yes. But would rather go to the Moon or Mars.

I have unorthodox views on that subject. The exact truth of what a popularizer says is not as important as whether the program or speech or interview sparks interest within the viewer. In the end, true enlightenment must be a self-driven quest. And the details are incidental to this journey.

I was in the year 2000, apparently. In People magazine's sexiest man alive issue. Hard to get big-headed about it. Consider the category. And that year, Brad Pitt was the sexiest man alive, transcending category. So not only was all that 11 years (and 30 lbs) ago. The category was without precedent, and has never repeated. Which led one of my students to assert, "That means you are the Sexiest Astrophysicist there ever was, and ever will be".

So it's an innocently playful moniker that I carry, but I never volunteer it.

If you are referring to that bootlegged photo of me from many moons ago: http://i.imgur.com/vwGWK.jpg ...at the time, I was still wrestling and doing a bit of dance. So I was in very good shape. My mutton chops would be gone within a year of that photo, replaced with pointy sideburns. My continuing, silent homage to the original StarTrek series. I don't remember the event for when the photo was taken, but given the glow of sweat on my skin it was probably a party and I was surely dancing.

Most inventions are incremental. The best are not. Consider the microwave oven. That was not an incremental advance on the traditional oven. Consider also atomic weapons. These are fundamentally different things from conventional weapons, even though their power is still measure in units of a previous technology - in that case, "tons of TNT".

A curious fact that is. Light bulbs were once measured in "Candle-power" Cars are still measured in Horse Power. Glad we don't measure rockets in car power.

Curiosity is not designed to find life. Instead it will look for biochemistry that would serve life. That being said, if a creature scurries by, or crawls up to the camera, that would not require complex chemistry experiments to confirm.

I criticize only the shows that claim accuracy and fail. The rest, I sit back and enjoy. I admit (confess) to enjoying Armageddon, where Bruce Willis saves the world from a killer asteroid. That one violated more laws of physics than any other in memory. But it's operated on very little pretense of accuracy. So I'm okay with it.

Now about that sonic screwdriver....

Poker.

Gotta love earth from space, on any scale. My favorite recent image is taken by Cassini in orbit around Saturn. In this image, Saturn has eclipsed the Sun. And in this view there's a four-pixel sized speck to the left of the ball, outside the ring, barely visible without a zoom. That's Earth. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Saturn_eclipse.jpg

Learn evolution on your own. There's nobody stopping you from accomplishing that. And if the absence of evolution is state sanctioned, then move from the state. Such an exodus (if you allow the term) will render the region without scientifically literate people and the local economy will collapse in this technologically competitive 21st century in which we live. My hope is that Americans usually pay attention to when they lose money. So poverty may be the force required to effect these changes.

As for a career in science education, just remember that you sparking interest and enthusiasm in a student is far more valuable than the simple imparting knowledge.

The bizarre effects of Relativity come about from three cosmic facts: The speed of light in a vacuum is always measured to be the same value by everyone, at all times, no matter your state of motion. And the laws of physics are the same everywhere. From that comes all these bizarre effects on time and space -- things you learn in the first two weeks of Intro Relativity. A favorite (classic) book I can recommend on this subject is "The ABC of Relativity" by Bertrand Russell

http://www.amazon.com/ABC-Relativity-Bertrand-Russell-Paperbacks/dp/0415154294

Of course I'd find out what he had to say. But I'd be all questions: I'd see if he was deep, and more informed than the rampant science illiteracy contained in Biblical Genesis. I'd ask him where he was, and what it looked like there. I'd ask what's the ambient temperature, and if he's wearing clothes. If so, i'd then I'd ask why. I'd also comment on how crowded things must be if all (or most) of the 100-billion dead people were in heaven with him. I'd ask why he keeps trying to kill us all with disease, pestilence, and natural disasters. I'd ask why 99% of all species there ever were are now extinct -- if God works in mysterious ways, that way is mysteriously genocidal. I'd ask why, in I Kings VII he gets the wrong value for Pi -- would have been an excellent place to display knowledge of math ahead of the state of knowledge of the day. AFter all that I'm guessing he might just escape and occupy somebody else's head.

Thank you.

Eyewitness to 9/11. Four blocks from my dining room window. A distance closer to the base than the height of the towers themselves. The escaping lower Manhattan with my family. No need to recount it here. It's actually all on my website: http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/tags/subjects/world-trade-center

Congress did the right thing and declared it a National Laboratory. It's now receiving proposals from the scientific community for Zero-G science to be conducted. At that level, I don't know if public engagement is necessary. Any more than you know or care about the dozen or so other National laboratories across the country.

If aliens are just like us, then they should be feared.

I think I'm average-looking, But persistent TV appearances force a level of grooming beyond what is normal. I was thinking if giving a semi-annual vanity report on my Facebook page (long ago reached its 5000 limit, sorry about that. And although one exists, I have no interest in maintaining the fan-page) but haven't gotten around to it yet. So the lesson here is that whatever you look like when you wake up, you can always look better.

Weightless, all the way. (But after a few doses of dramamine.)

Thanks for asking. It's all here. http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/buy/books/the-sky-is-not-the-limit

I like the passion and fervor with which Reddit users participate in discussions. I would not have done an AMA or its equivalent in any other venue. I have several Q&A portals on my website that open and close depending on load. (They're closed right now.) Several of my colleagues assist this effort. Beyond that, I prefer to write and give talks.

Newton is scientific hero. unquestionable. Just search Tyson and Newton on YouTube and you should go straight to see me waxing poetic on the man. (Unless Mike Tyson has a Newton video too, but that's unlikely.)

I can do better than a single sentence. I offer a single word: "Maybe"

As a group, brain teaser books and small puzzles. I was endlessly fascinated by them. To this day, perhaps. I spent a week straight in astrophysics graduate school, when I surely should have been studying something or another, teaching myself to solve the Rubick's cube.

All in my next book "Space Chronicles". You just have to wait until February 27, 2012. Sorry. http://www.amazon.com/Space-Chronicles-Facing-Ultimate-Frontier/dp/0393082105

I suppose if pressed to answer I'd have to agree. But after Earth, it's Saturn. See my Saturn desk lamp in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo38-0I8uc0

Wormholes. Wormholes. Wormholes.

It's a little beyond our technology at the moment, that's why it fell in priority among planetary scientists for what missions they want to do next. But I'd say yes, definitely in the next 20-30 years.

Live or visit? Visit, sure. Live, perhaps never. There's no place like home.

Did you know that Antarctica is wetter and balmier than Mars, yet people are not lined up to build condos there.

Addressed above.

Never been to India - the world largest democracy. It's nonetheless on my list. Thanks for warm request.

StarTalk Radio: http://www.startalkradio.net/?page_id=3 (also in iTunes)

My favorites from the archive: Jon Stewart 1 & 2 / Physics of Superheroes 1 & 2 / Conversation with Nichelle Nichols 1 & 2 / conversation with John Hodgman / & Live at the Bell House 1 & 2

Enjoy.

Big objects formed from the original rotating gas cloud. Google the "Nebular Hypothesis" for more on this. But it also accounts for why the planets (and asteroids) all orbit the same direction and in approximately the same plane. Everything else - especially wayward comets, were likely flung into odd orbits by close encounters with Jupiter, whose gravity wreaks havoc on passersby.

Gotta be my last question. Sorry for all whose questions follow this one. Three hours is a good chunk of time for any activity.

Curious thing about protests: People are shocked when they turn violent, with police exercising force far greater than the forces they oppose. But its the very act of police violence that garners headlines. And it's those headlines that trigger change more than any other force.

People praised Mayor Bloomberg for allowing the protesters to stay on location. But it was not his authority to grant or deny. The right to protest for grievances with the government to be redressed is fundamental to what it is to be American -- a nation founded on the need to protest the abuses of government.

In a free market economy you can't dictate the salaries of what a board chooses to compensate its executives. We have all bought into the capitalist system of our nation. Outlawing the fact that some people get too much money would be like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500. But what one can do is draft a manifesto that offers guidelines for what is a sensible distribution of compensation in a company -- for example, setting a maximum ratio of salaries between the highest compensated person and the lowest. Companies that comply would then get listed as best for its workers. This would put social pressure on the system, in much the same way the Green Moment has put social pressure on companies to conduct business with greater respect for the environment. That may be the best hope for the 99% movement.

Bye Reddit for now. Maybe another one in February 2012. As always, keep looking up.

-Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeting @neiltyson https://twitter.com/#!/neiltyson