neil degrasse tyson (astrophysicist/americanmuseum of natural history): hi, i'm neil degrasse tyson, your host for nova sciencenow. welcometo a brand new season. on this episode, i'm blindfolded and takento a secret location. where am i? why? well, because of what they produce here:diamonds. bryant linares (apollo diamond, inc.): thediamonds are 100 percent real diamond. they're chemically, physically and optically identicalto mined diamonds, with one exception: we grow them. neil degrasse tyson: yes, they're growingdiamonds, and not just for bling. diamonds
have unique properties. it's cutting through the ice like a knifethrough butter. some say they could someday replace siliconchips. stephen steiner (massachusetts institute oftechnology): silicon is so 20th century. it's time to move on. neil degrasse tyson: but can these manmadediamonds fool an expert? ara arslanian (cora international): if i haveto guess, i would guess this one. neil degrasse tyson: also, we'll profile agame-playing, tv-watching computer science professor who could pass for one of his ownstudents, many of whom he calls "dude."
luis von ahn (carnegie mellon university):...like, "dude." and they're like, "dude." neil degrasse tyson: this dude is so creative,not only did he invent a key internet program millions of us use every day, but he figuredout how to turn this mindless task into valuable work. luis von ahn: what can you do when you canget 100 million people working on the same thing? and i think we can do amazing things. neil degrasse tyson: and within weeks of the9/11 terrorist attack, weapons- grade anthrax had been dispersed though the mail. alan zelicoff (bioterrorism expert): the firstthought that most of us had was that this
was likely a state-sponsored effort to causeharm in an already chaotic situation. neil degrasse tyson: the f.b.i. led one ofthe most extensive and expensive criminal investigations ever, and it was the new scienceof microbial forensics that cracked the case. we'll show you how, and more, on this episodeof nova sciencenow. diamond factoryneil degrasse tyson (as treasure-hunter indiana jones): treasure hunters are known for takingrisks, especially if they're after something as valuable as a giant diamond. these days, big diamonds are in demand, andnot just for jewelry. some think they hold a key to a new age of electronics. ...problemis the right kinds of diamonds are extremely
rare in nature and hard to find. (as scientist indiana jones): dr. tyson, wehave an answer. (as treasure hunter indiana jones): some scientistshave a new recipe for diamonds, made, not in the earth, but in the lab. recently, i got to visit a secret place. ican't tell you where it is, because, well, i don't really know where it is. i could onlyget there if i agreed to be blindfolded. bruce likely: it will be a little while driving,so make yourself comfortable. neil degrasse tyson: in fact, the locationis so secret, our entire film crew had to be blindfolded.
when i finally got to peek, it didn't lookall that unusual. where am i? oh, sorry! but don't let appearances fool you. robert linares (apollo diamond, inc.): you'reat the u.s. diamond factory. neil degrasse tyson: a diamond factory? or maybe a better term would be a diamond"farm," because, as i discovered, what they're doing in the back rooms of this ordinary officebuilding is actually growing diamonds. bryant linares: the diamonds we grow are 100percent real diamond. they are chemically, physically and optically identical to mineddiamonds, with one exception: we grow them.
neil degrasse tyson: and some of the diamondsthey grow here are beautiful. so basically, you're making diamonds in machineslike this? but robert linares didn't start this companysimply to make bling. he wants to make diamonds that will revolutionize technology. robert linares: diamond is going to have ahuge worldwide impact for the next 50 years. bryant linares: it's going to be in our cellphones. it's going to be in our electric cars and in our power grid. it will be everywhere. neil degrasse tyson: the company hopes torealize the potential that scientists have seen in diamond for years. because it's notjust pretty, it's one of the most impressive
materials in the universe. patrick doering (apollo diamond, inc.): diamondhas an amazing toolkit of properties. james e. butler (naval research laboratory):you can boil it in any acid or any base and it doesn't destroy diamond. patrick doering: the highest velocity of soundis in diamond. if you could speak to somebody through diamond, the sound would get theremuch faster than it would through air. neil degrasse tyson: and it's not just soundthat travels quickly through a diamond. heat moves faster through a diamond than any otherknown substance. jim butler at the naval research lab demonstratedthis to me with a simple experiment...
jim butler: do you have a credit card? neil degrasse tyson: ...and a block of ice. i only just met you, so how about my triple-acard? jim butler: that's fine with me. press against the block and count the numberof seconds until your fingers get cold. neil degrasse tyson: this is going to takeawhile. jim butler: this is going to take awhile,so it's not going to happen. and did it make any dent in the ice? neil degrasse tyson: okay, i don't see any.nothing, there's nothing there.
jim butler: so, how about a piece of copper?so hold it by the edge. neil degrasse tyson: this'd be like holdinga penny. jim butler: yeah, holding a penny, but thisis just a nice, pure piece of copper. neil degrasse tyson: about a half inch fromthe edge. jim butler: okay, now count the number ofseconds. neil degrasse tyson: oh, right there! jim butler: so, how many seconds? neil degrasse tyson: that was three seconds. jim butler: three to four seconds. and whatdid you do to the ice cube?
neil degrasse tyson: it's still cold. i cutthe ice. this small piece of copper sliced right throughthe ice, because, unlike the plastic card, copper is an excellent conductor of heat.so it drew the heat right out of my fingertips, melting the ice and leaving my fingers cold.impressive, huh? but then, jim offered me a big chunk of diamond. jim butler: hold it just by the tip. now,touch the ice and count the seconds. neil degrasse tyson: instant. it's cuttingthrough the ice like a knife through butter. jim butler: yes. neil degrasse tyson: it turns out diamondconducts heat five times faster than copper.
all this is possible because of diamond'sunusual crystal structure. pure diamond is made of all carbon atoms, but the carbon atomshave to be arranged in a unique way to give it the amazing properties of diamond. if you arrange the carbon atoms in anotherway, you get this: graphite, one of the softest materials around. stephen steiner: well, obviously, these aretwo very different materials. graphite is black, it's opaque; when we rub it againstpaper, it comes apart. whereas diamond is transparent; it's hard, one of the hardestsubstances known to mankind. patrick doering: diamond has the highest atomicdensity of any material. so there's more atoms
per cubic centimeter than any other material. neil degrasse tyson: but diamond isn't justhard, it has impressive electrical properties, as well. stephen steiner: a centimeter-thick plateof diamond can withstand 10 million volts of electricity. neil degrasse tyson: electrical engineerswould love to exploit these unique properties, but they've been frustrated by the ones thatcome out of the ground, because they're all slightly different. jim butler: the reason we cannot use diamondsout of the ground for a lot of technological
applications is because no two are alike.they're like snowflakes. have you ever seen two snowflakes that are alike? we've got billionsof diamonds that we've mined out of the ground but trying to find two that have exactly thesame properties is actually very difficult. neil degrasse tyson: it all comes down tohow natural diamonds form. most natural diamonds formed billions of years ago, deep beneathearth's crust, under extreme pressures and temperatures. volcanic activity transportedthem to the surface, where we find them today. patrick doering: so the earth is not a reallywell-controlled crystal growth furnace. so what happens is you're left with whateverthe earth gives you. you have to then scratch your head and say, "what can i do with it?"
neil degrasse tyson: decades ago, engineersfigured out how to make diamonds in giant, hot vises. but the process is impracticalfor making large stones, and it's difficult to produce a crystal that's pure carbon withoutdefects. but what if you can manufacture diamonds andguarantee purity and consistency? robert linares: neil, you have to put yourglasses on. neil degrasse tyson: the folks at apollo diamondsay they can do it. they're one of just a few companies makingdiamonds using technology known as "chemical vapor deposition," or c.v.d. patrick doering: so, to grow a diamond, youhave to start with a piece of diamond. so
you start with a very thin plate of diamond.it's as thick as a human hair. neil degrasse tyson: here's how it works:they start with thin slices of pure diamond called "seeds." the seeds are then placedinside a vacuum chamber; a cocktail of gasses is pumped in. apollo's exact recipe is top-secret,but it, of course, includes gasses that contain carbonã³such as methaneã³which are heatedto extreme temperatures, so they become what's called a "plasma." so what temperature is that plasma? patrick doering: that plasmaã³if you couldmeasureã³the temperature's probably 3,000 or 4,000 degrees celsius. it's about the sametemperature of the gas that you'd find at
the edge of the sun. neil degrasse tyson: the extreme heat breaksapart the gas molecules, and then, through a complex chain of reactions, carbon atomstake their place on the crystal below, following the pattern established by the diamond seed. over the course of a week or more, diamondsgrow bigger and bigger. when they emerge from the grower, they don't look much like diamonds,until they're cut and polished. and then... the diamonds baked up here look great to me,but what would an expert think? to find out, i took a sample to the famous diamond districtin new york city, where i met ara arslanian, who buys and cuts some of the most impressivestones in the world.
ara arslanian: fifty carat, they will chargeyou four million. neil degrasse tyson: aah! not 10,000, not100,000? ara arslanian: no, no, no. this is real, thereal mccoy. neil degrasse tyson: this is the real thing? ara arslanian: this is the real thing. neil degrasse tyson: so, you know why i'mhere. so, even though small stones aren't usuallyhis thing, ara agreed to participate in our little experiment. point-two-nine and point-three carat.
i showed ara three small cut gemstones. onewas grown in apollo's lab, the two others came from diamond mines. ara arslanian: ...so tiny. i'm not used tothose. neil degrasse tyson: as i told you, at leastone of these is manmade. ara arslanian: let me put this thing on mytelescope. here we go. neil degrasse tyson: i see them sparkle fromhere... ara arslanian: yeah. neil degrasse tyson: ...as all good diamondsshould do. ara arslanian: they pretty much look the same.so, normally, i'm a rough guy; i do the rough
diamonds. if i have to guessã³well it's awild guessã³i would guess this one. neil degrasse tyson: that's the .3 carat. the one that is manmade is this one. ara arslanian: but i know what i'm seeing,i'm seeing here. i couldn't distinguish which one is manmade and the natural. neil degrasse tyson: with the customary jeweler'sloupe, ara couldn't detect any difference in the manmade diamond. ara arslanian: yeah, it's amazing what theycan do. it's like a toupee. it's the feeling which got...you can...which one you prefer,the toupee or your real hair?
neil degrasse tyson: the real hair. ara arslanian: even if the toupee looks great. neil degrasse tyson: more advanced equipmentcan reveal subtle differences, and apollo isn't trying to trick anyone. in fact, theirmanmade gemstones are marked with a microscopic brand, so the people who buy them know justwhat they're getting. but for scientists, what's most exciting aboutgrowing diamonds is not how you can make them just like natural stones but how you can makethem different. because with chemical vapor deposition, orc.v.d., diamonds can be grown into shapes and sizes nature could never produce.
and you can tinker with the recipe. jim butler: in a c.v.d. diamond we can actuallycontrol how we grow the diamonds. we can engineer the material to have the property match theapplication that we need. neil degrasse tyson: for example, add a littlebit of the element boron to the carbon gas mixture, and you get a blue diamond. that'swhere the famous hope diamond gets its distinctive color, but boron does more. patrick doering: so when you put the boronin it, it not only makes the diamond blue, it also changes its electrical properties.so a diamond with no boron, perfectly pure diamond, basically, you can't get any electricityto flow through it. when you put boron in,
you can now get electricity to flow throughthe diamond. and this is an essential component, if you want to make an electronic device. neil degrasse tyson: today, most electronicdevices, from computer chips to televisions, are built from silicon. but silicon has itslimits. stephen steiner: silicon is so 20th century.it's time to move on. silicon has some fundamental drawbacks: it fails when it gets hot. somewherearound the boiling point of water, it starts to break down. it's not able to process informationanymore. well, it turns out that there are a numberof features of diamond which blow silicon out of the water.
neil degrasse tyson: so, take an electrictrain. today, these modern machines carry tons of silicon transistors to manage thehigh-voltage electricity coming into the train. but what if you could make those transistorsout of diamond instead? stephen steiner: diamond can come to the rescue.diamond has the ability to switch much higher frequencies, much higher voltages. jim butler: then all of that electronics couldbe simplified, the weight could be removed. you could envision that your train, insteadof having one to two tons of electronics per railcar, might have only fifty pounds of electronicsper railcar. neil degrasse tyson: and a lighter train ismore energy efficient.
the field of diamond electronics is in itsinfancy, and a lot more work needs to be done before diamond starts replacing silicon, butthe potential is there, and the diamond growers have big dreams: diamond switches that couldimprove our aging electrical grid, diamond windows for spacecraft, and who knows whatelse? stephen steiner: mother nature was the onlymanufacturer of diamond for a really long time. and that's what's so exciting abouta material like diamond...is because it's kind of been kept in a little treasure boxfor a long time, and now, we've just begun to open that treasure box, and all of thepossibilities which come with it are beginning to emerge, as well.
on screen text: so what is apollo's secretingredient? they're still not saying. but diamond-making scientists at the universityof nuevo leon, mexico use tequila. we're not kidding. they created diamonds using a similarprocess and their own "secret ingredient." anthrax investigationneil degrasse tyson: when a murder is committed, one of the key ways to link the culprit withthe crime is by tracing the murder weapon. for instance, every gun leaves a unique signatureon the bullets it fires. match the lethal bullet to the gun, you might find your murderer. but what if the murder weapon isn't a bullet,but a tiny microbe, invisible to the naked eye, a bacterium? how would you trace it toits source?
that was the challenge facing the f.b.i.,in 2001, when they saw their first real case of bioterrorism. and, as correspondent peter standring reports,even microbes can leave telltale signs of their origin. but you've got to look awfullyclosely to see them, all the way down to single letters of their d.n.a. peter standring (correspondent): from theoutside, this could be just another science building at northern arizona university. theinside is another story. you don't get in here without one of thesesuits, and a damn good reason. you might be studying, for instance, how plague spreadsthrough colonies of prairie dogs, or how one
of the most infectious bacterium in the world,coxiella burnetii, gives rise to debilitating q fever. as for our excuse for being here, it's totell the story of how scientists, in this lab and across the country, participated inone of the most extensive criminal investigations ever, and, in the process, not only solveda mystery, but helped launch a new kind of science: "microbial forensics." our story begins just after 9/11, with thewreckage at ground zero still fresh and americans confronting the possibility they are underattack again. evidence came first from a local hospitalin boca raton, florida. a photo editor of
a tabloid newspaper, robert stevens, was dyingfrom inhalation anthrax. he might have contracted it naturally; found in soil, anthrax, a spore-formingbacterium will, on occasion, infect a human. but it has also been turned into a deadlybiological weapon, and stevens had received a letter with a strange powderã³facts whichbrought in the fbi. thomas dellafera (u.s. postal inspection service):when mr. stevens turned up sick, in late september, early october, there was concern, certainly,that he had anthrax, but on the tails of the 9/11 attacks, the radar antennas were up andinvestigators were monitoring that situation. peter standring: the f.b.i. rushed anthraxfrom stevens's body to biologist paul keim at northern arizona university. two yearsearlier, keim had invented a test to distinguish
one strain of anthrax from another. paul keim (northern arizona university): somy laboratory and my research program had been focusing on anthrax for about 10 yearsprior to the attacks in 2001. we were the experts on anthrax types, and we had collectionsof anthrax from all around the world. peter standring: keim set out to match theanthrax killing stevens with one of the 88 strains in his collection. as he comparedfragments of d.n.a. for eight genetic markers, one strain stood out. researcher: as you can tell, for each oneof these markers, they line up exactly all the way across.
paul keim: and what we found, of course, wasthat this strain, this type of anthrax, was known to be a highly virulent strain beingused by the u.s. army for vaccine studies. and it was called the ames strain. peter standring: isolated from a texas cow,in 1981, the strain had been sent to fort detrick, maryland, home of the u.s. army medicalresearch institute of infectious disease. but it didn't stay at usamriid. researchers,intrigued by its virulence, passed it from lab to lab, which made a lab the most likely source ofstevens's infection. alan zelicoff: and for people who study thebiological weapons problem, the first thought
that most of us had was that this was likelya state-sponsored intentional effort to cause harm, in an already-chaotic situation, inthe united states. peter standring: that suspicion grew as fourmore letters laced with anthrax turned up at the new york post, nbc's new york headquartersand the u.s. senate. the enclosed notes seemed to leave no question about their origins. by late november, 22 people had been infected;five were dead. it seemed certain terrorists had acquiredanthrax, weaponized to disperse easily. but from where? we might never have known, exceptfor one crucial development. now, if you think back to those dark daysin 2001, you may recall that the anthrax attacks
and 9/11 weren't the only events making headlines.in fact, a huge scientific achievement, only recently considered impossible, was shiningjust over the horizon. scientists stood on the verge of reading theentire human genetic code or genome, three billion letters of d.n.a., represented hereby as, cs, gs and ts. together, these four chemical letters spell out instructions formaking every living thing. since the d.n.a. of other species was alsobeing read, the f.b.i. began to wonder if the new science of genomics might hold thekey to the anthrax mystery. they approached the institute for genomicresearch, in rockville, maryland. known as tigr, the institute had already decoded thed.n.a. of several microbes.
claire fraser-liggett (university of marylandschool of medicine, institute for genome sciences): and the work that we proposed was to do aninitial comparison between the d.n.a. sequence from the anthrax bacterium that killed mr.stevens and the original ames anthrax bacterium that was collected in 1981. peter standring: never before had two entiregenomes of a species been compared at every unit of their d.n.a. it meant matching upfive million chemical letters, over 5,000 genes. the hope was that the ames strain hadmutated as it passed from lab to lab, and those mutations could be used to identifywhere the attack anthrax had come from. while tigr went to work, the f.b.i. beganto collect samples from all the labs working
with ames anthrax. thomas dellafera: we went to the c.d.c. toidentify all the laboratories that were authorized to work with pathogens; we went to publicationsto identify individuals who had worked with anthrax. at some point in early 2002, we'didentified a total of roughly 99 labs, worked our way down to where we ended up with 16domestic labs and three foreign labs. after months of work, investigators at tigrcould finally compare the two ames genomes: the original sample from the cow and the anthraxused in the attacks. jacques ravel (university of maryland schoolof medicine, institute for genome sciences): so, to our disappointment, when we finishedthose two genomesã³a quarter million dollars
spent on each oneã³and we just did not findany difference. claire fraser-liggett: essentially all five-million-plusletters in these two genomes were identical. and at that point, i think the same thoughtwas running through everybody's mind. and that was that perhaps this was going to endup as a dead-end. peter standring: and there our story mighthave ended, except that one month later, a researcher at usamriid, using the sort ofsharp-eyed observation that sherlock holmes would have admired, noticed something almostunnoticeable: among the colonies of attack anthrax being grown in petri dishes, the colorand shape of some looked slightly different. jacques ravel: and we thought this could bethe way to crack the case. we knew that those
differences had to be linked to a geneticdifference. and we went after those genetic differences. peter standring: four types of odd-lookingcolonies, known as morphs, were separated out, so their d.n.a. could be extracted andsequenced. months and millions of dollars later, the results were in. jacques ravel: what you can see here, aftercomparing the genome of some of the morph, and, in this case, morph d, what you can seeis that the genome of morph d is missing a large portion. peter standring: remarkably, three involvedonly altering a single chemical letter of
d.n.a. jacques ravel: if you look at morph a, wechange from a c to an a; and in morph b, a t to a c; and in morph c, a g to an a. peter standring: so the only difference then,between morph a, b and c here and the ancestral ames strain, is this one letter? jacques ravel: it's one letter, only one,out of the 5.2 million letters that makes the genome. peter standring: that's a very subtle change. jacques ravel: extremely subtle. and a lotof people, you know, when they looked at it,
could have said it's just an error in a sequencing. peter standring: so this was the beginningof being able to trace back the attack anthrax to its origins? jacques ravel: exactly. we finally had a combinationof signatures that was extremely unique to the anthrax used in the attack. peter standring: searching for four mutations,the f.b.i. began testing the samples it had collected from labs working with ames anthrax. claire fraser-liggett: it turns out that onlyeight out of the nearly 1,100 samples contained all four of the genetic mutations that hadbeen associated with the anthrax sent through
the mail. thomas dellafera: we then went back to thoseresearchers, investigated the source of those samples, and determined they all came froma particular spore sample known as rmr-1029. peter standring: the flask labeled "rmr-1029"was traced to an army lab at usamriid. its keeper: a senior biodefense researcher namedbruce ivins. was he the perpetrator? ask the f.b.i., and you will hear no doubt. thomas dellafera: i can say with certaintythat every member of the taskforce is convinced it was dr. ivins, and, unfortunately, we arenever going to get our day in court. peter standring: the reason? ivins committedsuicide after he became the prime suspect
in the case. but others doubt ivins couldhave made the anthrax used in the attacks. alan zelicoff: it's not easy to do openly,particularly in a place like usamriid, where there are many people around and where, ithink, there's a very strict protocol associated with working with any dangerous pathogen. peter standring: moreover, not a single sporewas ever recovered from ivins's property. claire fraser-liggett: i don't think the sciencewill ever be able to say who the perpetrator was. the best the science would ever be ableto do would be to lead investigators back to a potential source. on screen text: anthrax has been found toexist on all continents except antarctica.
but in 1912, polar explorer r.r. scott mayhave brought it with him, probably through infected ponies. the evidence? scott's hut, 90 years later:scientists found anthrax d.n.a. auto-tuneneil degrasse tyson: "our love was like a supernova," yeah, i sing. "in the nebula of my soul." okay, i'm not great. "but now i find her heart is like a big blackhole."
all right, i'm terrible. but here's what i'mwondering: if, digitally, you can remove red-eye, smooth over wrinkles, make people look thinner,then why don't we have the technology to make me sing better? andy hildebrand (antares audio technologies):we can fix neil. neil degrasse tyson: this guy invented a wayto do it. andy hildebrand: we can fix neil's pitch.he's still going to sound like neil, though. neil degrasse tyson: electrical engineer andinventor andy hildebrand designs pitch-correction software. he calls it auto-tune. "pitch correction?" is that a euphemism for"fixing bad singers?"
andy hildebrand: yes, we fix bad singers. neil degrasse tyson: i visited andy at antaresaudio technologies in scotts valley california, where he and engineer justin malo... justin malo: hey, neil. neil degrasse tyson: ...showed me how it works. hummmmmmmmmm. andy hildebrand: great. there you go. youdid that. neil degrasse tyson: that wavy line representsthe exact frequency of my voice. this line shows where a perfect a should be, so, nottoo bad.
andy hildebrand: he's right dead nuts on intune. look at that. neil degrasse tyson: so how does a computerknow that? andy hildebrand: when you hear a, you're hearing440 vibrations per second. neil degrasse tyson: so somebody at the beginningof time said 440 vibrations per second is an a? andy hildebrand: a. neil degrasse tyson: so, if you sing or playa pitch at 440 cycles per second, the computer calls it an a and it rests on this line. b-flatwould go on the line above it, g-sharp below, and so on.
"but now i find her heart..." when you're out of tune, the notes don't fallso neatly onto the lines of the grid. "...big..." that's awful. "...black hole." andy hildebrand: well, it's creative, it'screative. okay. neil degrasse tyson: "...supernova..." those lines are me singing the word "super." "supernova..."
my pitch is all over the place. if anything,it's closest to this note, here. justin malo: neil, you sang an f, which normallyis okay, if you're in the key of f. and we're not, so we moved your f to an e. neil degrasse tyson: "supernova..." so justin gently nudges it down to where ane would be. "supernova..." you're changing the frequency of the soundthat came out of my vocal cords. justin malo: actually, yes. alvin and the chipmunks (audio recording):"christmas, christmas..."
neil degrasse tyson: changing pitch isn'tnew. you can change someone's voice by fast forwarding on a tape recorder, but you'd soundlike... alvin and the chipmunks (audio recording):"christmas, christmas time is here." neil degrasse tyson: ...well, a chipmunk. pitch correction software lets you changethe pitch... ...while keeping the essential tone of a voicethe same. and so, although few engineers are willingto admit it, pitch correction software, like auto-tune, has become an indispensable toolin most recording studios. andy hildebrand: it's been used by a lot ofpeople: madonna...
madonna (film clip): "music makes the bourgeoisie..." neil degrasse tyson: ...celine dion... celine dion (film clip): "you got one heartyou are following..." neil degrasse tyson: reba mcentire uses itlive? reba mcentire (film clip): "starting overagain..." neil degrasse tyson: you're telling me a singercan sing into a microphone a bad note, and out the speakers comes a good note? andy hildebrand: yes. neil degrasse tyson: now, that's evil.
andy hildebrand: to modify something isn'tnecessarily evil. my wife wears makeup. is that evil? is that okay, honey? neil degrasse tyson: evil or not, the recordingindustry kept auto-tune on the down-low. andy hildebrand: the secret popped out ofthe bag when cher did "believe." cher (film clip): "do you believe in lifeafter love?" andy hildebrand: i couldn't believe it. cher (film clip): "...aside and i can't breakthrough..." neil degrasse tyson: rather than graduallyand naturally reaching up to each note...
cher (film clip): "i can feel something insideme say..." neil degrasse tyson: ...like this, cher'sproducer forced auto-tune to jump suddenly from one pitch to the next. cher (film clip): "i feel something insideme say..." neil degrasse tyson: is this some knob thatyou turn? neil degrasse tyson: all right. andy hildebrand: and we can turn this knobto zero, which means "move instantaneously to the new pitch." and so, if we do that,your voice would sound like this. neil degrasse tyson: "but now i find her heart..."
did you plan for people to use it that way? andy hildebrand: no. i didn't think anybodyin their right mind would ever use it that way. neil degrasse tyson: well a lot of artistsdo. t-pain (film clip): "she got me doing thedishes anything she want for some kisses" ojo (film clip): "i was young and in love..." snoop dog (film clip): "she might be withhim but she's thinkin' bout me, me, me." neil degrasse tyson: but it's mostly usedto tweak out-of-tune performancesã³a kind
of cosmetic surgery. "...big black hole." in my case though, more like triple-bypass. andy hildebrand: try to change this to thekey of c. neil degrasse tyson: moving the traces ofmy voice up in pitch or down... "...supernova..." ...justin coaxes me into tune. "supernova of my soul..."
it took several hours. "...of my soul..." how well did it work? you be the judge. "our love was like a supernova in the nebula of my soul, but now i find her heart is like a big black hole..." justin malo: it's a lot more pleasing. neil degrasse tyson: i thought the first onesounded pretty good myself, i don't know. kidding aside, there's no substitute for trainingor talent.
andy hildebrand: if the singer doesn't havea good tonality to their voice, we're not going to make that better. do us a favor. don't go on american idol. profile: luis von ahnneil degrasse tyson (as game show host): welcome to find that robot! the show where our electronicbachelorette tries to guess which of our three mystery contestants is not human, becausesometimes, like on the internet, the difference is not obvious. batchelorette computer: bachelor number one,what is your idea of the perfect date? neil degrasse tyson (as bachelor number one):i'd take you to the finest restaurant, and
i'd recite love poems to you while we sipexpensive champagne. batchelorette computer: hmmm; i don't drink.bachelor number two? neil degrasse tyson (as bachelor number two):we would take a long walk on the beach, watch a beautiful sunset, and i'd learn all aboutyou by moonlight. batchelorette computer: great. bachelor numberthree, what is your idea of the perfect date? bachelor number three computer: the perfectdate is june 23, 1912. batchelorette computer: he's the one! neil degrasse tyson (as game show host): oh,what a lovely couple. (as himself) in this episode's profile, we'llmeet a guy who not only invented a way for
a computer to spot another a computer, buta way to do it that will actually help mankind. luis von ahn may seem like a slacker. he loveswatching television. luis von ahn: i watch a lot of tv. that'show i spend most of my time outside of work. if i had more time, i would fill it 100 percentwith watching tv. right now i'm watching heroes, dexter and fringe. weeds, i've been watchingweeds, as well. neil degrasse tyson: when he's not watchingtv, luis is playing games. luis von ahn: i definitely play some games,like nintendo d.s. or the wii, and some computer games. laura dabbish (luis von ahn's fiancee): luisis the kind of person who gets a game, and
he wants to beat the game, you know? playit nonstop until he beats it. neil degrasse tyson: luis even calls everybody"dude." luis von ahn: that's a really good trick,if you don't know their name. just like, "dude." and then they're like, "dude." neil degrasse tyson: but luis is no slacker.he's a hotshot carnegie mellon computer science professor. he drives a porsche. and, at age30, he's quickly raced to the top of his field. you may have read about him. and you've almostcertainly used his cutting edge computer programs. so when luis watches tv and plays games, he'sactually doing serious research. peter lee (carnegie mellon university): idon't think it's relaxation for him. in fact,
i've never known him to relax. he is a sponge,just trying to understand what motivates this social animal, which is the masses. neil degrasse tyson: and unbeknownst to you,you're probably already working for luis: fighting spam, digitizing books and labelingimages on the web. you're part of luis' master plan to mobilize the largest workforce inthe history of mankind; the hundreds of millions of people who use the internet. luis von ahn: one of the things that i'm tryingto figure out is, what can we do with this many people? what can you do when you canget 100 million people working on the same neil degrasse tyson: as for the source ofhis ideas, luis is a human think tank.
luis von ahn: i guess i'm a big pacer. i pacewhen i do most things. so yeah, when i'm trying to think or solve a problem, i pace around. laura dabbish: any time he has a problem,and he's, sort of, ruminating over the problem, that's what he does. you would see him walkup and down that hallway 20 times a day. he can take a problem that seems impossible andjust sort of see the solution, see through it. luis von ahn: i have multiple ideas per day,all the time. the vast majority of these are completely idiotic. usually, i just sit onthe idea for several months. and if i have not decided that it's idiotic, then it's...mightbe a good idea.
neil degrasse tyson: luis' first big ideacame when he and his adviser, manuel blum, were approached by yahoo!. manuel blum (luis von ahn's ph.d. advisor):the chief scientist at yahoo! told us he had a problem. neil degrasse tyson: the problem was spam,and it was clogging up yahoo!. spammers needed a vast number of email accounts to send theirspam, and they were using automated computer programs to sign up for them. luis von ahn: spammers were writing programsto obtain millions of yahoo! email accounts every day, because they wanted to send spam.
neil degrasse tyson: luis and manuel neededa way to tell the difference between a well-meaning yahoo! subscriber, and a malicious spam computerprogram. luis von ahn: we came up with this idea oftrying to give a test to figure out whether it's a human or not. it's got to be a computerized test, givento humans and computers. so the computer must be able to grade a test that it cannot pass.you know, it looks paradoxical. neil degrasse tyson: what luis and manueldeveloped was a captcha, a secret password that people can read, but computers can't. manuel blum: the computer can take some characters,and it can put them on a rubber sheet, and
they can then stretch this sheet and pourpaint on it, and change the looks of these characters, to the point where it can no longersee the original characters, and then can put it out there knowing that humans are stillvery good at being able to recognize this. neil degrasse tyson: so using captcha, peoplecould sign up for yahoo! accounts, but automated spam programs could not. captcha has spreadacross the web. it's now used by most major websites. peter lee: captcha has had this amazing impact.there are fairly good estimates that more than 750-million different people in the worldhave solved at least one captcha. neil degrasse tyson: luis' resourcefulnessand his quest for efficiency go back as far
as he can remember, as a boy growing up inguatemala, where his family owned a candy factory. luis von ahn: i think growing up in a candyfactory has influenced me. it's quite a complex process, the machines of making the candyand wrapping it and everything. i always wondered how all of those machines worked. neil degrasse tyson: at the age of seven,luis even built his own machine, to do his homework faster. luis von ahn: i was taking a penmanship class.the assignments were to draw a lot of ovals, like, a gazillion ovals. and that was reallyboring. so what i did, is i put, like, five
pens together. i was just using that one thingwith the five pens and it was going five times faster. of course, i got caught. but it wasgreat while it lastedã³doing my homework in 20 minutes as opposed to an hour and a half. neil degrasse tyson: twenty years later, luisapplied this same kind of efficiency to the time wasted typing in captchas. luis von ahn: i started feeling bad, becauseeach time you type a captchaã³you know, the squiggly charactersã³essentially, you waste10 seconds of your time. and if you multiply that by 200 million, you get that humanityas a whole is wasting, like, 500,000 hours every day, typing these annoyingcaptchas. i started thinking, is there a way
in which we could use this human effort forsomething that's good for humanity? can we make good use of those 10 seconds of yourtime? neil degrasse tyson: luis struggled with thisquestion. and then he got involved with an even bigger project: putting all the old booksin the world onto the internet. luis von ahn: there's a lot of projects outthere trying to digitize books; google has one, the internet archive has another one. neil degrasse tyson: but there's a problem.many of the books are old and faded, so when the computers scan them, they don't recognizemany of the words. luis von ahn: for things that were writtenbefore 1900, between 30 percent and 40 percent
of the words, the computer is going to decipherwrong. manuel blum: they were written at a time whenthe type didn't line up always nicely, and what remnants we have of it are smudged. neil degrasse tyson: luis's solution was totake these hard to read words from old books and use them as captchas. but this raised a new problem, the computerwould now present a word that it could not read in the first place. manuel blum: the computer didn't know whatthe answer was. how is it to be able to tell what the right answer is?
neil degrasse tyson: luis found a solution:to combine the word from an old book with a traditional captcha generated by the computer. manuel blum: we'll give two tests, one thatwe know the answer to, one that we don't. and if the person can solve the one that weknow the answer to, then we'll assume they can solve the one that we don't. neil degrasse tyson: they called it recaptcha.now, every time you type a captcha, you may very well be working for luis, transcribingan old book. peter lee: today, on the order of 125 to 150books per day are being digitized because of recaptcha. it's an amazing thing.
neil degrasse tyson: and it's not just books.recaptcha is also transcribing the entire back archive of the new york times. luis von ahn: the new york times has thishuge archive of 130 years of newspaper archived there. and we've done, maybe, about 20 yearsso far of the new york times in the last few months. and i believe we're going to be donenext year, by just having people do a word at a time. neil degrasse tyson: with captcha and recaptchaunder his belt, luis was a hot commodity when he graduated with his ph.d. from carnegiemellon. peter lee: he became this, kind of, sensation.people immediately understood that there was
something very new here. luis von ahn: i had offers from microsoftand yahoo! and all kinds of companies. for the microsoft offer, they even had bill gatescall me. neil degrasse tyson: but luis wanted to becomea professor. luis von ahn: i did turn my back on a lotof money. but in the end, i decided that i liked the academic job better. neil degrasse tyson: just days after takinga teaching job at carnegie mellon, luis won the half-million dollar macarthur fellowship. luis von ahn: when i found out that i hadwon the macarthur fellowship, i had been a
professor at carnegie mellon for a week. iprobably shouldn't be saying this on tv, but i stopped worrying about tenure. please giveme tenure. neil degrasse tyson: and it's not just thegenius grant that may help luis get tenure. peter lee: luis von ahn is one of our verybest teachers. in fact, last year he won one of the top awards for teaching here at carnegiemellon. luis von ahn: so my philosophy for teachingis, make it interesting or fun or just keep them engaged. that's the most important thing.secondary to that is teaching them something. on screen text: okay, wait a minute. rewind,please. bachelor number three computer: "the perfectdate is june 23, 1912."
what's so special about june 23, 1912? youtell us. go to pbs.org. cosmic perspective: carbonneil degrasse tyson: and now for some final thoughts on carbon. you might think of carbon as kind of an unpleasantlittle element. after all, it's the active ingredient in soot. it's also the stuff leftover after you burn your toast. but it's actually quite distinguished amongelements. carbon has the highest melting point. pure carbon can become graphite, one of thesoftest materials around, used every time you write with a pencil. meanwhile, pure carbon,when exposed to heat, pressure and a little bit of time, also makes diamond, one of thehardest materials around, used for the cutting
tips of masonry saws and jackhammers. perhaps you didn't know, but when light passesinto a diamond, it slows down to only 40 percent of its speed in a vacuum. oh, and did i mentionyou can use diamonds to make jewelry? but carbon's greatest distinction of all isthat it's the building block for the molecules of life. carbon is remarkably fertile. youcan make more molecules with carbon in them than you can with all other kinds of moleculescombined. so we shouldn't be surprised that lifeã³themost complex expression of chemistry we knowã³is based on carbon. and because carbon is the third most abundantchemically active ingredient in the universe,
right after hydrogen and oxygen, we're givenevery reason to presume that yet-to-be-discovered life, elsewhere in the cosmos, would be basedon carbon as well. so what would we do? where would be withoutcarbon? jewelry would be a lot less interesting. but that would be the least of our concerns,since life itself probably would not exist at all. and that is the cosmic perspective. and now we'd like to hear your perspectiveon this episode of nova sciencenow. log on to our web site and tell us what you think. you can watch any of these stories again,download additional audio and video, explore
interactives, hear from experts, and muchmore. find us at pbs.org. that's our show. we'll see you next time.stay tuned for scenes from the next nova sciencenow, but first...