StarTalk Radio · Neil deGrasse Tyson

Cosmic Queries – Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking with Charles Liu

March 6, 2026·1 hr 2 min·4 clips

Charles says the early universe was less than a glass of water at 10 to the minus 43 second.

1. StarTalk Radio's StarTalk Special Edition Cosmic Queries centers on quantum paradoxes, information, entropy, and spice dust. 2. Neil deGrasse Tyson hosts with Gary O'Reilly, Chuck Nice, and guest Charles Liu, who is identified as a professor of astronomy at the College of Staten Island. 3. The episode asks what observers are for, whether the universe needs minds to manifest information, and how physicists distinguish matter from the information it carries. 4. Charles describes the Copenhagen interpretation, Niels Bohr, and the claim that wave functions collapse when something is measured. 5. He contrasts that with René Descartes' idea that reality is filtered through human senses and that each brain constructs a distinct reality. 6. The conversation uses the double-slit experiment and wave-particle duality as a case where measurement changes what is seen. 7. Charles then defines information as the features that distinguish one blob of matter from another, such as spin up, spin down, or temperature. 8. He compares that to a bit in computing and says the information remains even when nobody measures it. 9. Entropy comes up through a 10-coin example, where 1,024 flip sequences collapse into 11 count outcomes for heads and tails. 10. Charles links that to boiling water, where water stays at 100 degrees Celsius while entropy rises during the liquid-to-gas transition. 11. The show moves to astronomy, where Andrew Martin from Stafford asks how a star's color can be separated from its velocity. 12. Charles answers with spectroscopy, emission lines, absorption lines, continuum radiation, and the need to check whether redshift is intrinsic or caused by motion. 13. Dust and extinction complicate the picture, because a white star behind a dust cloud can look red and a galaxy's light can be dimmed and reddened by the Milky Way. 14. Charles says extinction curves are built from laboratory dust studies and line-of-sight measurements that correct telescope data. 15. He notes that cosmic microwave background results were once confused by reddening in our galaxy, which forced a paper to be corrected. 16. The discussion also rejects the idea that AI can fully replace astronomers in separating dust effects from source light, because human judgment still matters. 17. April Walsh then asks why the Big Bang did not create an immediate black hole, and Charles answers with 10 to the minus 43 second, Planck time, and inflation. 18. He ties the early-universe energy problem to spontaneous symmetry breaking and says the four forces appear to have split from one original force. 19. The tone is a lively Q-and-A session with jokes, interruptions, and detailed explanations from Charles Liu. 20. Listeners interested in cosmology, astronomy, and physics questions will get the most from this episode, while people wanting a short casual chat may skip it.

As heard by us

A lively StarTalk grab bag turns cosmic dust from an observational nuisance into a story about where planets and people come from.

StarTalk's Cosmic Queries puts Charles Liu in the center of a loose, fast-moving grab bag on quantum paradoxes, information, entropy, and the less glamorous problem of cosmic dust.

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Why you'd press play

You are made of stardust -- and this episode makes that phrase finally earn its keep.

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