An Evening with Neil De Grasse Tyson

I am still drinking it all in.   I sat there, pins and needles wracking my body.  I have never felt anything so electrifying in my life, save when I am at a concert with ethereal music.   Neil walks out on stage and begins the presentation in a very laid back manner.   He states it is entitled, 'An Astrophysicist Goes to the Movies'.  Oh, yes.  I knew I was going to love this even if it wasn't about my second favorite subject in the world; the realm of theater/film.    He began to speak of different movies featuring astrophysicists and the fact that beer commercials use these scientists at well.   He made fun of biologists and made quite the jab at geologists.  Being a little bit of a rock hound, I wasn't offended.  In fact, I found it telling and altogether true.  'Ew, this rock isn't shiny enough.  It's not feldspar !  I DON'T WANT IT !'.    Geologists, you know this too be accurate.   As for biology, that's my main field but what he said about physicists was absolutely comical.  He said, 'we call things what they are.  That's just how we roll.'.  It was delightful to see just how nimble he was on stage.   Never in my life did I ever think I'd get to see my idol wiggling around trying to explain surface  tension.   It was a sight I will never EVER forget.    He spoke of the Drake Equation and Einstein's Field Theory.   He talked about (my favorite thing) fractals !  :D  He mentioned that Elsa sings about them in Frozen.   'That's right, a Disney Princess sang about fractals !  OMG !'    (chuckling)   Neil is very earthy for an astrophysicist.   He was engaging and hilarious and even made up for the technological difficulties when the audio wouldn't sync with the video in his presentations.   I also don't think I will ever get the imagery of a fractal Doge out of my mind.  Talk about trippy.    My one question in mind was more engineering based, but he nearly answered it.   Before he could get into another favorite topic of mine, evolution, he spoke of thermodynamics.   In order for something to have energy, it needs to take in more than it emits.   So, a perpetual motion device is next to impossible.   Wanting to capitalize on a plasma engine, I can see this would create a problem as well.    Yet, it still begs the question, with all the refuse we have on this planet, we would be constantly feeding our engines and I think this would be practical.  I don't really have a design for the plasma engine but I do think that it could change lives.   I may not ever see it come to pass but I want the idea to get into the right hands, so if there are any engineers reading this blog, please do not hesitate to credit me in the finding and discovery of this potential energy.    It not, we can always revert to Tesla's AC method.  Stupid Edison (no offense) taking all the credit.  I like Edison as much as the next guy but he usurped Nicola's idea and used it for himself.    But enough of that rant, back to Mr. Tyson.   I am happy he mentioned Carl and what inspired such movies as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Contact and War of the Worlds (oh and by the way my favorite film, Independence Day is just War of the Worlds rehashed).
My favorite part of the evening is when he spoke about how much Thor's hammer weighed.   He stated it weighed 3.57 quadrillion pounds, or the equivalent of 300 African elephants.   I prefer that definition versus Marvel's and the materialist scientist Suveen Mathadhu.   As far as his challenge to numberphobes I found it reassuring that I am overcoming my fear.   I used to be afraid of numbers.  I am still not that great when it comes to math but I don't let it chase me off.   Heck I would've shied away from symmetry years ago but I find it so enrapturing that I can't look away.    I could've listened all night and not only that, I will never forget him saying 'balogna sandwhich' as well as saying that Hollywood's development of alien's with humanoid features; ie, legs, hands, feet, arms and of course a butt', is unrealistic and uncreative.   He said, 'It's awfully hubristic of us to think aliens in other worlds have butts, much less the ability to sit !'   What a cosmic evening !