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00:03I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium at New York City's American
00:08Museum of Natural History, and I've been asked by the producers to investigate the science
00:13behind the movie Ice Age Collision Course.
00:17You've seen the effects of space travel, planetary shifts, and the force of gravity.
00:26But how do they actually work?
00:28For these answers, you'll need to ask an expert in astrophysics.
00:34Luckily, I am one.
00:37So bring it on.
00:44First question.
00:46In the movie, Scrat reaches the moon in 16.5 seconds.
00:54How fast would Scrat have to be traveling to reach the moon in that time?
00:58You know, it's not how fast he gets there, it's how quickly he'd have to accelerate to reach
01:03the speed necessary to get there in 16.5 seconds, and that acceleration would squash him into
01:09a pile of goo at the back of the spaceship.
01:11The moon is about a quarter million miles away.
01:14A quarter million miles divided by 16 and a half seconds.
01:17Uh, it's gonna carry the two, and it comes out to about 16,000 miles per second.
01:25That's how fast.
01:30Scrat accidentally forms our solar system at the beginning of the movie, which takes place
01:40in the Ice Age.
01:42How long ago was our solar system actually formed?
01:44There was a lot of loosey-goosey movement with the timeline in this film.
01:49You know, we think the Ice Age was like a zillion years ago, and it was like tens of thousands
01:53of years ago.
01:55Dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago.
01:59A billion years ago, we had single-celled organisms.
02:03Four billion years ago, the solar system was formed from collisions of objects, orbits unstable, cast
02:15hither and yon, and Scrat was there because Scrat caused it.
02:25Next question.
02:28Scrat uses a tractor beam to shoot a planet towards Jupiter, and it bounces off, creating
02:34a big red spot.
02:37What is Jupiter's big red spot?
02:40Jupiter's red spot is a storm.
02:42It is a cyclone, except it's spinning the opposite direction from cyclones on Earth, so
02:46we call it an anti-cyclone.
02:48And it's a storm that's been raging for more than 300 years.
02:52Jupiter rotates twice as fast as Earth, and your rotation rate gives energy to spinning
02:58storms on a planetary surface.
03:00So Jupiter has storms bigger than Earth.
03:04You can fit multiple Earths inside Jupiter's red spot.
03:07So, don't mess with Jupiter.
03:13Next question.
03:16Scrat witnesses two planets collide, which results in the creation of the asteroid belt.
03:24How do asteroid belts actually form?
03:27Well, we know we have an asteroid belt, and it's a region of craggy rocks between the orbit
03:32of Mars and Jupiter.
03:34Asteroids are pieces of planets that have broken apart and collected in that belt in orbit around
03:39the sun.
03:39There's countless asteroids there.
03:42But if you glued them together into one single object, one single mass, you get like 5% the mass
03:52of our own moon.
03:53So there's really not much total material there.
03:57Our asteroid belt is not nearly as massive as the one Scrat witnessed.
04:03But I think Scrat created that asteroid belt.
04:07He was messing everything up in the early solar system.
04:11No, I shouldn't say he messed it up.
04:13He turned it into the solar system we have come to know and love.
04:16Thank you, Scrat.
04:23Next question.
04:24What are the conditions of an electrical storm like?
04:27Hurry, Granny!
04:28Don't you hurry me!
04:30I've been struck by lightning more times!
04:32Ah, Granny!
04:36Can static electricity actually be harnessed?
04:39Oh, no.
04:42We're all familiar with static electricity.
04:44You know, you're wearing socks, took your shoes off, and you're on a wool carpet, and you rub
04:48your feet, and you touch the doorknob, there's an electric shock.
04:50Everyone, try not to create any sort of friction.
04:54No friction.
04:55Got it.
04:56Yep.
04:57Cool beans.
04:58Friction is what now?
04:59When you build up charges over here, and if there are more charges here than there, and
05:03you bring them near one another, it'll gap across the air and transfer until they're
05:07exactly equal.
05:09Because electricity doesn't like being unequal.
05:12In Ice Age Collision Course, all these rocks had extra static electricity sitting there.
05:18No.
05:19No.
05:20That gets a D minus, if I were to grade it.
05:23Because the rock is sitting on Earth, and the Earth is this huge repository of charges.
05:29If you have excess charges on a rock, and the rock is sitting on the ground, the charges
05:32go into the Earth.
05:33Like that.
05:34I'm not going to wait around for you to walk through it, and then send charges back and
05:37forth to you, as they did in the movie.
05:40So, it was fun to watch everyone get electrocuted several hundred times.
05:49So, I'll give it to them.
05:52This movie features magnetic crystals.
05:54Are there magnetic crystals on Earth?
05:59How do they behave, and where do they come from?
06:02Actually, any crystal I've ever played with was not magnetic.
06:06And none of the crystals in a geode are magnetic, so I don't want to say no on this one.
06:11I'm going to say, I don't know.
06:13Sorry, I can't help you.
06:14I'm an astrophysicist, not a geologist.
06:17Simpleton!
06:18Ninkum Pope!
06:19Next question.
06:21Would you be able to alter gravity in space, like Scrat does in a spaceship?
06:28In supergravity mode, why does the acorn flatten Scrat out?
06:32Now, on the alien spaceship, they can control the force of gravity with a lever that he
06:36happens to knock into gravity mode 56G.
06:46The acorn now weighs 56 times what it did before.
06:50Now, acorns don't really weigh that much.
06:52An ounce, at most.
06:54So, 56 times that, that's like four pounds.
06:57Yeah, there's no reason for it to completely flatten him out, given other things that Scrat
07:02goes through in the movie.
07:03Like doors slamming on him.
07:07I mean, I felt sorry for him, but not when the acorn rolled over him.
07:10No.
07:11No.
07:11I felt sorry for him when his teeth fell out.
07:17Next question.
07:18When Scrat is floating in space, he's able to move around at varying speeds.
07:24Is this actually possible?
07:27Well, unless you have retro rockets, or you can strategically burp in one direction or another,
07:34once you're floating in space, you will continue floating in that direction until some force
07:39acts upon you from the outside.
07:42That's one of Newton's laws of motion.
07:44We haven't known that for hundreds of years.
07:46So, unless Scrat got alien technology, all bets are off.
07:51But if he's just floating, no, no, no, he'll just float.
07:57Forever.
07:59Unavailable to make another movie for you.
08:03One last question.
08:05Would you be able to hear Scrat scream in space?
08:10If Scrat is in a spaceship, and that spaceship has air, and Scrat screams, yeah, you'll hear it.
08:16The sound waves vibrate the air molecules, and it'll go from Scrat's mouth to your ear.
08:21Sure, sure.
08:22If Scrat is in a spacesuit in space, and Scrat screams, you're not going to hear it.
08:27You have to stick your ear on the helmet.
08:31And then you can hear the vibrations from the mouth, through the air in the helmet,
08:34to the glass of the helmet, to your eardrum.
08:37But through space, no one can hear you scream.
08:42Scrat scream.