Astrophysicist, science communicator and Hayden Planetarium Director Neil deGrasse Tyson still finds himself mystified by the secrets of the universe. (photo courtesy of StarTalk/C. Picadas)

If Neil deGrasse Tyson could take a Route 66-style road trip anywhere in the universe, he’d need a Ford Galaxie 500, a bucket of popcorn and a few billion years.

“I’d go back in time with a front row seat and watch the moon get formed,” Tyson said. “And I want to make sure I’m eating popcorn while that happens.”

The famed astrophysicist and science communicator explained the cataclysmic event that formed Earth’s moon approximately 4.5 billion years ago with all the enthusiasm of a car collector describing his dream ride.

“All evidence suggests that the Earth got sideswiped by a Mars-sized protoplanet,” Tyson said, his hands tracing the path of the celestial collision. “And that debris field coalesced to form the moon that we now love today. I want to be eyewitness to that.”

Like the many travel guides that have long helped motorists navigate the Mother Road, Tyson’s new book, “Lost in Space: 5,000 Facts for Navigating the Universe,” is full of similarly fascinating facts, staggering figures and intricately detailed maps. But it’s meant to help readers chart a much, much larger course than Route 66 – the cosmos.

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s new book, “Lost in Space,” is available at stores and online.
(photo Courtesy of Neil Degrasse Tyson)

Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium, is known for his ability to break down complex scientific topics – black holes, exoplanets, star formation – into easily accessible morsels that anyone can enjoy. His podcast “StarTalk” explores many of these starry subjects and answers questions, or “Cosmic Queries,” from fans: How big is the universe? Does it have an edge? Are we near the center?

“Astronomy is sometimes called the gateway science,” Tyson said. “We all know it’s fun. It’s funner than chemistry is for sure, and I don’t think I’m biased in saying that.”

“Lost in Space,” co-written by “StarTalk” producer Lindsey Nyx Walker and published by National Geographic, applies that same approach to its 5,000 facts, illuminating science with familiar images, pop culture references and Tyson’s signature sense of humor.

“As an educator, I have no hesitation giving you starter information, getting you hooked on the content, knowing that you’ll come back for more. That’s what any good drug dealer does,” he laughed.

The facts in “Lost in Space” range from revelations about ourselves – did you know that 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second? Or, if you weigh 150 pounds on Earth, you’d weigh 380 pounds on Jupiter? – to insights into the mind-boggling scale of the universe.

“For example, one of them is, ‘How wide is the sun?’” Tyson said. “You can answer that in a metric way, but that wouldn’t be very ‘StarTalkian.’ You could say it’s 864,000 miles, or you could StarTalkify that answer and say, ‘If you take 100 Earths and line them up side by side, you’ll get the width of the sun.’ See, now you’re never going to forget that.”

And don’t even get Tyson started on Saturn, one of his favorite planets.

“Saturn is a gaseous planet. Overall, it has relatively low density, unlike Earth, which has the density of rocks,” he explained. “In fact, Saturn is so low density, on average, it’s lower density than water itself. Which means, if you found a bathtub big enough, you could put Saturn in it, and it would float. Now you can’t unthink that image, right?”

When asked which of the book’s 5,000 facts surprised him most, Tyson pointed to one involving L. Frank Baum’s “Oz” series.

“In the beginning of one of his books, [Baum] explains how he knows what’s going on in Oz, because how else would you know? And where the hell is Oz? Like, who knows where Oz is?” Tyson said.

Baum’s explanation was amusingly quaint – he communicated with Princess Ozma, the monarch of Oz, by telegraph.

Walker discovered that astronomers later borrowed Ozma’s name for Project Ozma, the first radio telescope search for signals from extraterrestrial intelligence.

“I had always known it was called Project Ozma,” Tyson said. “I did not know why until my co-author Lindsey Walker uncovered that fact.”

Aliens, of course, are a recurring subject for Tyson. He’s constantly fielding questions about UFOs, UAPs and ETs. While he has said that extraterrestrial life is plausible given the size of the universe, he doesn’t buy any so-called evidence that aliens have ever visited Earth. In fact, Tyson believes most of humanity’s speculation about “little green men” reveals more about ourselves than it does about the possibility of life beyond our planet.

“These evil alien tropes, those are our fears placed upon the aliens. Because any time a more advanced part of civilization encountered a less advanced part, it never boded well for the less advanced part,” Tyson said. “Evil aliens are more a mirror than anything else.”

Tyson’s skepticism, however, hasn’t stopped him from enjoying the “what-ifs” of alien life. His previous book, “Take Me to Your Leader: Perspectives on Your First Alien Encounter,” explores what extraterrestrials might actually look like, how they might reach us and what they might think of our societies.

“It’s an exploration of the assumptions you’ve made about aliens and ourselves, and how you need to blow that open while retaining scientific integrity,” Tyson said.

For example, if aliens were looking down on Los Angeles – with its snakelike freeways and endless traffic – what might they think of life on Earth?

“I think they would ultimately look through the window of a car, and they see these squishy life forms that are not as rigid as the car itself,” Tyson said. “So they might deduce that yes, we’re the brains of the operation and that the car is our exoskeleton.”

Tyson also wondered what extraterrestrials would make of drive-thrus, where humans obtain food without ever leaving their “exoskeletons.” And what might they think of a car hauler carrying several vehicles?

“The aliens would surely think those are pregnant,” he said.

While Tyson suggests aliens might be puzzled by our highways, he believes the transportation concept could one day prove useful for traveling through space. Just as the interstate highway system supplanted Route 66 by expediting travel between faraway cities, Tyson envisioned an interplanetary network that might one day do the same between planets.

“When I think of the solar system, I think we should build roads that connect everywhere to everywhere, or rocket pathways. A rocket pathway would be a path along which you can refill your rockets,” he said. “Once it’s in place, now you can accommodate all manner of people’s creativity about how they would use those routes, and so I think that’s how we ultimately use the Eisenhower interstate system.”

For all the facts Tyson can rattle off about space, he still finds himself fascinated by what science has yet to uncover.

“No one has ever measured the size of an electron,” Tyson said. “It could be zero diameter, for all we know. And that, to me, that’s mind-blowing – mind-boggling, I should say.”

Whether through “StarTalk,” “Lost in Space” or a rapid-fire 20-minute conversation, Tyson has made a career out of explaining the wonders of the universe. But with each answer, he said, more questions emerge.

“Once you know everything that’s knowable, what you’ve done is you carved your way to the edge of the circle, but as the area of that circle grows for knowledge accumulated, so too does the perimeter of your ignorance. Big circles have bigger perimeters interfacing with the unknown,” Tyson said. “When I look up at the night sky, I don’t relish in what I know. I lose sleep over questions I don’t yet know to ask.”