News & Opinion
World renowned astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson shared his thoughts on the universe being gay or straight in a now viral clip from comedian Theo Von's podcast "This Past Weekend".
During Dr. Tyson's guest appearance, Theo Von asked the Star Talk host if he thinks "outer space is gay or straight" during their conversation about aliens.
"Practically everything we see and measure in space not only objects but temperature, size, density is on a spectrum. So for you to say is the universe gay or straight, I'm going to tell you that whatever the universe is - it's on a spectrum," began Neil deGrasse Tyson.
"In fact the very word spectrum comes from what happens when you take light and break it up into its colors. We just happen to assign names to the seven colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, but it's a continuum."
He continued, "We're just being lazy by assigning seven colors. Our brain doesn't want to see nuance because it's easier for us to think in binary. Are you with me or are you against me? Well maybe you're somewhere in between. Are you a boy, are you a girl? Maybe they're expressing themselves somewhere in between and your brain has a difficult time recognizing a spectrum and so you're requiring it be into a bin, so there you are forcing other people to match how you see the world.
The world is not gonna change to fit your inability to recognize how it's actually manifesting.
Theo Von then asked Tyson if he thinks the universe is bisexual?
"No, it's on a continuum" he replied.
To further expand on how the universe is on a spectrum and a continuum, Neil deGrasse Tyson provided an analogy about how society forces hurricane strengths into categories despite how even a 1 mile difference in speed could change the category we associate with it.
"..So my point is even with hurricane speed strengths, we force them into categories when it's actually a continuum."
"So it's a Continuum out there so so because it looks kind of gay I feel like but then sometimes it does things that seem really straight but those are also my definitions of those, said Theo Von.
"Correct, you're forcing the universe into your two categories."
Thereyou have it gayes. from the words of the great Neil deGrasse Tyson himself, the universe is on a spectrum and should not be forced into categories. But it's interesting to think how would we as a society could function without labels and categories.