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SYSK Gets Weird Playlist: Will We Find Evidence of Aliens by Their Engineering Projects? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'm back with a neat and rollicking look at
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: some sci-fi theories, in the truest sense of the word sci-fi,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: about what lines of progress any intelligent civilization should follow.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: And this concept leads, pretty much inevitably, to things like
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: building space probes and harnessing the energy of stars, all
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: of which should leave some telltale trace of a civilization
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: already far more advanced than ours. What happens after that
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: is another story. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there with their foot
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: on the button, and that means this is Stuff You
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Should Know, the podcast.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: The foot on the button.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Just waiting to cut us off.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what no one knows, but Jerry has a
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: kill switch at her foot for all of our profane tirades.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it would kill us if she ever pressed it.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: That's why they call it that.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: But she's not very good at it, I've noticed.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I've noticed, too. Some stuff slips by.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I told her she's like Keith Richards of podcast
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: producers because he can't use guitar pedals.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: So he's known for that? Is that a thing?
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I don't know. how known he is
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: maybe among guitar players, but he, uh, he just plugs
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: right into the amp. That's pretty great.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, I see.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: And his, he was on, uh, uh, Mark Marin's podcast.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: It was a great interview. And Marin, he, you know,
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: it's pure Keith Richards. And he was just basically like,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: you know, I have a hard time standing upright. Like
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: I can't mess with trying to press foot pedals.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: That's Keith, man.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Yep. Very pure. Yeah. And by pure, I mean, Pure heroin. Yeah.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Pure China.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: No, he's clean now, but.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Is he really? That's astounding.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, no, I mean, he doesn't do like
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: hard drugs anymore.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I gotcha.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: I think he drinks and smokes weed.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I gotcha. But it's clean-ish.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: Come on. Yeah.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: He still smokes too. That's like pristine.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Actually, Marin smoked his first cigarette in a decade in
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: that show with him.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, that was smart. That was a good decision.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: He was like, I have to. How can I not?
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he easily could not have done that. I'm disappointed.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Did he really? Yeah.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Keith Richards offered him a smoke, and he's like, sure.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I see that, but at the same time,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I also see not smoking.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: Listen to you.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I know. I'm being judgy.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Wagging your finger.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: So, Chuck.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Have you ever used energy? Yes.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, when you're using energy, most likely you're
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: using something like a fossil fuel, right?
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Like gasoline or natural gas or something like that. Stuff
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: that comes from decomposing dinosaurs.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Okay. The problem with using decomposing dinosaurs, as most people know,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: is that it's essentially a non-renewable resource. There's no more
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: dinosaurs to decompose any longer. And even if there were,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: it would take... Tens of millions of years for them
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: to decompose into fossil fuels for us, right?
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Right. Even if we had dino DNA and we could
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: make new dinosaurs just to kill them and watch them decompose.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Which is something we would do if we had the capability,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: I guarantee it.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, sure.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Right? But we don't have that capability. And as far
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: as I know, no one's working on that track right now.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I don't think.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Just Steven Spielberg.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Right. Maybe someone at Rutgers. So we have to come
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: up with energy sources that we won't eventually run out of.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: And obviously there's like wind and solar. And as far
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: as solar power goes, from what I understand, we're actually
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: doing pretty well right now. Like right now we use
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: something like 0.01% of the sunlight that reaches Earth to
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: power our world. So there's a lot of room for
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: growth potential.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Sure.
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  Speaker 1: The thing is, is I also saw that if we
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: keep growing and our energy consumption keeps growing at something
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: like 1% a year, within a thousand years, we'll be
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: using more than the entire amount of sunlight that hits
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the earth can provide. So we really need to come
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: up with something else.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Yes.
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  Speaker 1: The problem is, is even if we harnessed all of
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: the energy here on earth, we would very quickly outgrow
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: whatever energy it provided. So some people have said, well,
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: why don't we just go straight to the source? If
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: the sun is such a great source of energy, but
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: it's shooting that energy out in directions other than the earth,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: the stuff that is starting toward the earth doesn't make
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: it very frequently. Let's just go to the sun and
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: basically strangle the life out of it to get energy
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: from it.
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  Speaker 2: Right. Great idea.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: And one of the first examples, proposals of it i
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: don't want to say a serious proposal because although it's
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: been taken seriously over the years and almost been interpreted
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: like scripture um it was a thought experiment to begin
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: with it's something called a dyson sphere.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Yes um well i guess we should introduce the man
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: not that we have him.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: Here that'd be awesome he's he's still around yeah i
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: know he's an old dude But we're talking about Freeman Dyson,
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: not the maker of the vacuum cleaner or the bladeless fan.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Or the bladeless hair dryer.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Is that really a thing?
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: They have a Dyson hair dryer? Yeah. You know, I
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: was so disappointed when I found out what the bladeless
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: fan was.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Have you seen those?
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you can stick your hand through it. It's amazing.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Well, I know, and I was like, is it magic? Like,
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: how in the world is it doing this? But it's
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: got a stupid blade. It's just housed in a casing.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's a terrible name for it.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: And then it just channels it up and, you know,
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: squirts it out the front.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: The Dyson invention that always got me was the Airblade
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: hand dryer. I think we've talked about this before, where
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: you stick your hand down in there.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: I love those.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but they're so... Filled with germs that actually I
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: was in a bathroom the other day and they have
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: an air blade now that just blows downward onto your hands.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: And it's actually I'm like, OK, now I'm satisfied with
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: this invention.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, you're not supposed to rub your hand
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: on the air blade itself.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: No, but it's so close. It's like you're playing operation.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Like I'm trying to remove a funny bone or something
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: like that. It's almost impossible not to hit the sides
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: of the thing.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: You know, your big meat hooks are just rubbing all
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: over everything. That's gross.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is gross. Believe me. Cause I walk out
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: just crying with my hands held in the air every
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: time I go to the bathroom.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Well, you and I have a very big thing about
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: airport bathrooms. Um, and I think I had the worst
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: one of my life at, uh, Boston Logan on our
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: last tour. Oh yeah.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: What happened?
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: It was just not up to snuff. Like the, first
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: of all, the door, and this might've been just this
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: one bathroom, but the doors to the stalls, none of
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: them secured.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: They've been ripped clean off.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: Well, they were there, but you couldn't, you know, the
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: locks didn't work. It was just, I basically had to
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: push my hand against it, which grossed me out.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that's not okay.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: And then the gap when the door was shut was like,
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: two or three inches big. Like, you could fully just
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: look in and say, how you doing? How's your poop? Yeah.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: That's the Mr. Peeper's model stall.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Well, it's just not acceptable, you know, in this day
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: and age to not have complete privacy in there.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, I agree with you. Again, I'm going to reiterate,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: I think there should be one stall for an entire
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: bathroom so that no one could possibly sit down next
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: to you. But barring that.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: One stall to rule them all?
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: Exactly. But barring that, though, like, The place, like, what
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: we have in our office is acceptable. It's a good
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: second place.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's great.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: There's, like, a complete wall in between you. There's a
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: complete wall in front of you and a door that's
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: securely shut.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a water closet.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess it is.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: Like, you're fully enclosed.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of water flowing there.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, man. I knew we were going to get distracted
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: by poop.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this isn't even the port-a-potty episode.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: I know. All right. So, sorry. Back to Freeman Dyson.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Not the vacuum maker. He was born in England. He
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: worked most of his career. He's retired now, but worked
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: most of his career as a physics professor at the
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. Not Rutgers. He
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: was a civilian scientist with the RAF in World War II. Cool.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Went to Cambridge, then Cornell for grad school.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: This guy's got some bona fides.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: And then he's been in the news recently by being
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: a big, I mean, brilliant, brilliant man. But he's been
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: in the news recently by being one of the more
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: prominent scientists as a climate change skeptic.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, is that right?
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and not like a complete skeptic. Like he does
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: believe that it's, I believe what his stance is that
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: he does believe that it's man-made. But he doesn't think
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: we have enough detail about all the variables for these
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: computer-generated models to be accurate.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I see.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: So he's basically saying, like, this is not the end
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: of the world. And, in fact, he thinks that increasing
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: levels of CO2 can be a good thing for humanity ultimately.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: How so?
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I didn't get that far.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: He's like, it gives you a pretty good buzz.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Maybe. I don't know. It's pretty interesting, though. He's like,
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: I think, starting about... you know, six to 10 years ago,
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: really started making the news with his somewhat controversial. Cause
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: he's a brilliant man. And all these other scientists are like, wow,
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: he's such a smart guy, but he's so wrong on this.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: But then other people are like, no, he's totally right.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: That's pretty interesting.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Anyway. Um, so that's who he is. And he, in 1937, well,
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: not in 1937, he, in the 1960s was reading a
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: book from 1937 called star maker from, uh, science fiction author,
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Olaf Stapledon. And, uh, he saw this thing called a
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: light trap from this book. Uh, and this book also
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: had predicted things like virtual reality. And it's kind of a,
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: pretty much a landmark sci-fi science book. And, um, He said, hey,
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: this light trap sounds like a good idea. I'm going
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: to rip it off.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he did. And he actually, it was, I think,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: a paper that was published in Science in the journal
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Science in 1960. And it's really short. Did you read it?
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, I think it took up two pages
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: in Science out of like a thousand or something like
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: that in that volume. But he basically said, this would
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: be a great thing, as you say, to rip off.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: for a thought experiment I'm working on, right? Because just
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: very recently, something called Project Ozma had been created. And
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: that was, they started to search the sky for extraterrestrial intelligence.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: It was the first SETI. And they were looking for
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: radio signals. Still are. But Dyson was saying, well, hold
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: on a second. If you're going to start looking for
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: extraterrestrial beings, like signs of intelligent civilizations, you should maybe
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: start looking for these. And they came to be called
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Dyson Spheres, because... He was the first one to popularize it,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: even though he got the idea from Olaf.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he actually said he thought a stapled sphere was
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: a better name, but I guess not good enough to
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: actually use it.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: He said it once.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Right, very quietly.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But so this Dyson sphere, it was originally created as, again,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: a thought experiment. He didn't talk about how to construct
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: it necessarily or anything like that, although there were some follow-up.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: correspondence um after the letter first came out but almost
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: immediately people started thinking about how you would create one
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: of these things this this dyson sphere and the whole
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: point we should say basically at its at its basis
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: a dyson sphere is um an engineering project a megastructure
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: that initially was thought to be basically a hollow sphere
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: that you built around a star For example, we would
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: build it around our sun.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: And the whole point of this thing is on the
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: inside of the sphere are solar arrays so that all
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: of that sunlight, like we were talking about earlier, that
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: gets wasted as far as we're concerned, is captured and
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: converted into usable energy for us. And Freeman Dyson's point
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: was if you build one of these things, you're going
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: to capture light. Light won't get out. But infrared radiation, heat,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: thermal heat will escape. And so if you're looking around
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: the skies for aliens, look for something that has a
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: tremendous amount of like the infrared radiation of a star,
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: but isn't putting any light out. And maybe you just
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: found an alien civilization. That's how it began. But people
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: started trying to figure out how to make one of
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: these things almost as soon as he published that letter.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: So the one thing I don't get was he saying
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: that look for this because other civilizations out there are
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: using the Dyson sphere.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: He said that it would be likely that this would
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: be an invention they came up with.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Okay, gotcha. Yeah. All right, well, let's go. Should we
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: go to this Nikolai Kardashev real quick?
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: I think we should. I think we can't put it
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: off any longer.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: It's pretty interesting. In the 1960s, there was an astrophysicist
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: named Nikolai Kardashev, and he was a Bond villain. Actually,
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: he wasn't, but he should have been. He had this
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: idea that there were three classifications of civilization. Type one,
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: which is basically we have learned how to harness all
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: the energy on the home planet. Like everything you can
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: possibly harness here on Earth. And you would think, well,
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: that's probably us. We're not quite there yet. Really smart
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: dude named Michio Kaku, not a Bond villain either. He
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: said in the next hundred years or so, maybe 200 years,
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: we might actually be a type one civilization. Yeah.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: And like you said, that's where every bit of geothermal energy,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: every drop of sunlight, every, um, um, every bit of
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: hydroelectric power, all of that stuff, every potential bit of
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: energy is being harnessed by us.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We're nowhere near that right now. I think Kaku's
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: assessment's a little rosy. Oh, well, And I can say
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: that because he was on our TV show.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Sort of. Well, he was.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Yes, he appeared on.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: But we didn't.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: He didn't interact with us in any real way. Exactly.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: He has no idea who we are.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: No, none. So type two is the next, of course.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: And that kind of civilization would understand how to harness
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: all of the energy, not only on your own home planet,
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: but the energy of a star in its own solar system.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Right. That's where the Dyson sphere comes in. Yeah.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: You know, that's what we aspire to do one day. Right.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: Maybe a million or so years from now. And then
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: type three is just kind of like following this logical progression.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: Right. And that's harnessing all the energy of all the
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: galaxies or of entire galaxies, not necessarily all of them.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that the second, the second stage, the
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: type two civilization would be, um, the, either the hardest
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: to get to or take the longest to get to. Right.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: And that's because when you build that first Dyson sphere,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: your technology and your energy efficiency and your productivity is
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: going to just shoot forward exponentially from that point on.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, yes.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: So once you build that first one, you can start
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: building more and more and more, much more quickly. So
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: you jump from a type two to a type three
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: civilization pretty, pretty fast. compared to how long it took
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: you to go from a Type I to a Type
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: II civilization.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's like any product, even. That first
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: one is tough, and then you can scale it. But, well,
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: we'll get to the robots here soon.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: In fact, let's take a break.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: I'm getting a little psyched, Chuck.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: And we'll talk a little bit more about the sun
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: right after this. Da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da. All right. So I went
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: when I said the word son.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought that was odd.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: No, it's not.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: You know, I honestly had no idea where you're going
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: with this.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Well, you do. You're being coy. Uh, Most people out there,
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: most longtime listeners know that our Sun podcast was one
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: of our biggest struggles and would have been our biggest
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: achievements had we done it right.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: It's the biggest pity applause we get for the Sun. No, no.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: It was fine. That's what we get.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: You tried.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Good for you for trying.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: But let's talk a little bit about the Sun. This
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: stuff I can deal with at least.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: As far as its immense power and energy. And I
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: love that our own article has some of these comparisons.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: The sun can generate 5 times 1023 horsepower.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: I think that that is a typo. I think that
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: it's supposed to be 5 times 10 to the 23rd power.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: Oh, you think?
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: That's the only explanation I have for that.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that doesn't make sense.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: That's a really small number, actually.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. It'd be like.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: About 5,100, 5,200 horsepower.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's five times 10 to the 23.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: It's got to be.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Someone just got lazy there.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Seriously.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: They're like, I don't know how to do the little
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: 23 thing. Right.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know how to use superscript. What am I,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: like a great editor?
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: Superscript. That's what it is, right?
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Superscript and subscript. Right.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: So let's put it this way. And this one is
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: the one that cracks me up. The sun has enough
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: energy to melt an ice bridge. Two miles wide and
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: a mile thick from Earth to the sun in a
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: single second.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: In a single second.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: That's pretty good.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: This is the only article I think I've ever seen
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: an ellipse in. Like the author was like, wait for it. Yeah.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: In a single second.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't even think they did the ellipse right.
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Isn't the ellipse supposed to be right after the letter
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: or is there a space?
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: I think there's supposed to be a space on either side.
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: Oh, really?
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Technically, yeah.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: I've been doing these wrong then.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Well, don't feel bad. This thing says five times 1,023 horsepower,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: so it's all good.
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: All right, what else? One trillion, one megaton bombs going
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: off every second.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: If you're warlike.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: And then finally, one single second. of sun action, whatever
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: that is, is enough to power our Earth for a
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: half a million years. That drives it home.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: It does. But it also gives you an idea of
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: just how primitive we are energy consumption wise. Yeah. Like,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: it's crazy because, you know, we're really worried about running
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: out of our non-renewable resources. But we use such a
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: minute amount of energy that the sun could power the
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: energy use we use currently for half a million years
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: in one second.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's nuts. Right.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: So that also kind of takes your mind, though, too.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: And this is, I think, one of the things, one
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: of the buttons that Freeman Dyson pushed recently. It makes
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: you realize, like, holy cow, we could do some really
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: amazing stuff if we could capture a significant amount of
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: that power that the sun puts out.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: Even an insignificant amount.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, really.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: You'd keep Iggy Pop going for, like, another hundred years.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: So, like you said, the idea behind the Dyson sphere
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: is this structure. He originally proposed a hollow sphere in space.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: kind of referred to it as a shell. But I
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: think now, or I think he went on to make
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: it a solid sphere.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: So he actually said he was really, what's the opposite
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: of clear?
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: Convoluted?
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess a little convoluted. He didn't really go
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: to the trouble of spelling it out because, again, remember,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: this is a thought experiment that had to do with
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: finding aliens, not an engineering schematic. So he used some very–
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: it was vague. That was the word I was looking for.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: He was using some vague words. People were like, wait,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: what are you talking about? What is this sphere? Is
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: it cohesive? Is it like a solid body? Is it
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: hollow in the middle? What's going on? And he came
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: back and said in a letter, a follow-up, he said, no, no, no.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Like there's no way you could build something that would
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: go around our sun that would be a solid body.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: That was hollow in the middle, like it couldn't be
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: a cohesive whole because the rotational forces, the sheer forces
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: and the gravitational forces acting on it would just obliterate
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: it immediately.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Like it'd just be mechanically impossible to make it like that.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: So he said, so maybe you would make something like
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: a bubble or a swarm or something like that.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And he said in the letter, I've enclosed some
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: blotter acid. Put it on your tongue.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: You're going to love this. It's dynamite.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: And call me in an hour. Might make a little
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: more sense. Yeah, our own article points out that one
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: of the first downsides, obviously, if you surround the sun completely,
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: is that sunlight has, I mean, I know we'd be
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: harnessing that energy, but sunlight provides a lot more than
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: just energy. Oh, yeah.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Like it makes us happy. Yeah. People write entire songs
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: about how sunshine makes you happy, like John Denver did.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: Uh-huh. And that was just on his shoulders.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: It would be a global bummer if somebody enclosed the sun.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: That's like supervillain kind of stuff, right?
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: So that's a problem. Another problem, though, is that if
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: you're going to build something like this, and Dyson even
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: suggested the size of it, he was saying it would
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: need to have a radius. So a radius, not even
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: a diameter, half of the diameter. A radius... That was
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: two times the distance of the Earth to the sun.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: So this thing would be massive, which means that it
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: would also enclose the Earth too, right? Yeah. Like he
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: wasn't proposing you just go up and create this tight
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: ball around the sun. Like it would be much further
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: spread out and it would actually encompass the Earth's orbit
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: within it.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, so it would be like this is mine. It
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: belongs to the Earth and no one else can get
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: any sun.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it would block off the stuff outside of two
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: times the distance of the Earth's orbit. So there's a
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: couple planets out there that would get the old screw job.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: But the ones inside twice the distance of Earth's orbit
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: would really benefit from it.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: That's very selfish. Yeah.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: But the other problem is, too, Chuck, is I imagine
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: things would get pretty hot pretty quickly inside this thing.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: So the Earth would be destroyed.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: And to get around this, and a lot of people
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: I don't think got it immediately, he said, well, you
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: just live inside the Dyson sphere, like in the outer
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: shell of it.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, sure. Make it habitable?
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: Right. Well, that makes sense.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: But what you were saying about just the sheer size
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: of it, there literally aren't enough raw materials on our
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: entire planet to make something this big. In fact, in
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: our entire solar system. There probably aren't enough raw materials
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: to make a structure like this.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: No. And not still try to inhabit it. There's just
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: no way.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: Some people say, though, and Freeman himself, I keep wanting
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: to call him Freeman, like that's his last name. But
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: I just end up sounding like I know him on
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: a first name.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: Basis.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: He was saying you might be able to build something
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: like this by disassembling Jupiter. Well, that was his suggestion.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: Oh, really?
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he said disassemble Jupiter and put it back together,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: and you could build a Dyson sphere that had a
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: radius twice the distance from the Earth to the sun
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: and make a solar array of it.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: Must have been some good acid.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: Good for him.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: All right, so I think we're both in agreement, and
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: most people are in agreement, that this sphere idea is
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: not at all tangible.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Not as like a cohesive whole.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: No, like it just remains in the realm of thought experiment.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: So why bother?
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, well, that's the interesting thing to me. It basically
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: is kind of like he meant it as a thought experiment.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: It's been brought out of the realm of thought experiments.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: And yeah, we're in no way, shape or form capable
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: of doing this, but a lot of people have tried
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: to figure out how to do it. And I think it's,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: it's one of those things that's like, yeah, it's theoretically possible. Um,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: But we're nowhere near that level of capability right now.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: Well, I think his other ideas that he came up with, though,
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: are decent.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, like the swarm and stuff?
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah. I mean, let's get to that. He himself
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: even said the sphere is probably not very realistic at all.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: So why don't we do this? Why don't we think
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: of different machines maybe that are independent of one another
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: that actually circle the sun? collect this energy, and then
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: beam it back to Earth.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: Right. So to him, his initial idea was that sphere,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: and then what it came to be was that the
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: sphere was like this umbrella term for these different, slightly
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: more realistic ideas, like the swarm or the bubble.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: So, like, what's the swarm?
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: Well, the swarm, maybe they are in different orbits, and they,
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: like the swarm, he likens it to B's. Like, instead
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: of gathering pollen, they're just around the sun, moving around,
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: gathering energy and power. Right. And some of those might
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: be habitable, too.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: Right. And they're like, they're solar arrays that are satellites
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: that are moving around on independent orbits of one another.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: And the way that they would make a Dyson sphere is, yeah,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of space in between them. But if
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: you step back a few orders of magnitude further back
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: into the other parts of the galaxy or the universe,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: it would appear as basically a whole sphere around the sun.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: So it still falls under that category, right?
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he had to keep that sphere thing because of branding.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: He didn't want to lose that.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: He's like, the genie's out of the bottle.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: They're like, you really don't need it to be a sphere.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: He's like, oh, it's got to be a sphere. So
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: those satellites are actually, they would be called statites.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Well, no, if they were the bubble, they would be statites.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: This guy's got it wrong.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, really?
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: I thought the solar sails could be the statites. No?
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: So what I saw, the difference between the swarm and
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: the bubble was that the swarm has the satellites in
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: orbit around the star, and they're in their own orbits,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: not interacting with each other.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, I got you.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: A bubble is where... the satellites are in a fixed
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: position relative to the star.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: So those are the statites. Right.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: So they're just kind of hovering outside of the star,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: not in orbit.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Just kind of hovering instead.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: And then those are the two, and then the third
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: are the solar sails, correct?
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Well, you can make a solar sail, or you can
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: make any of them with solar sails, and I don't
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: know where that guy got that.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, did we do a whole episode on solar sails?
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, I mean, it makes sense. If you get
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: a bunch of these solar sails orbiting the sun, you
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: might think that you could harness the power and send
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: it back to Earth some way.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Right, exactly. And, like, you could use that with any
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: of these, whether it's a bubble, whether it's a swarm,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: whatever you're doing. And if you, like you said a
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: second ago, made them habitable, then all of a sudden
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: you have a recipe for survival for the human race
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: if Earth ever existed. becomes untenable, right? Right. Or we
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: can't terraform Mars. We can go live on these things.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: And when we think about living out in space, my
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: brain immediately goes to like the cramped, tiny tin can
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: conditions of the ISS. These things don't need to be
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: like that. I mean, if we're creating Dyson spheres, we're
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: going to be advanced enough that we could build some
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: really lux satellites and statites as solar arrays to go
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: hover or orbit around the sun, right? So they could
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: be huge. So big, in fact, that Dyson was saying,
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: this doesn't have to be an engineering project that's carried
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: out by a central global government that's directing the whole thing.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: That as our energy consumption and energy needs continue, nations
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: could take it upon themselves to, individually to create these
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: solar sails that are habitable, put them into orbit independently,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: and just through the desire to preserve one's own life
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: would make sure that their orbit wasn't going to intersect
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: with somebody else's orbit who was already up there, and
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: just organically a Dyson sphere in the form of a
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: swarm or a bubble could form on its own just
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: by self-interested nations developing this technology basically independent of one another. Wow.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: I don't know. He had some far-thinking thoughts.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Far-thinking?
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: I don't have those.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: Should we take another break?
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: I think so.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: All right. We'll do that, and we'll wrap it up
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: a little bit with how to get this energy back
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: to the home planet. Da-da-da-da-da Da-da-da-da.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Stuff you should know.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: All right. So earlier you talked about dismantling Jupiter with
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: a socket set, a couple of screwdrivers.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: Uh, Mercury is another planet that people have talked about
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: as potentially harvesting. Um, the good thing about Mercury, a
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: couple of things. One is that it is, uh, near
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: the sun. Yeah.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: So who needs it already?
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So it would make it, um, proximity wise, it
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: makes a little bit of sense and, uh, I think
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: this Oxford University physicist, Stuart Armstrong, is who proposed this.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: And one of the other great things about mercury is
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: it has a lot of great raw materials, namely iron,
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: that we could use. Right.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: And he actually suggested that we could disassemble mercury fully
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: in basically what amounted to a 40-year stretch.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: I thought you were going to say 20. 30 days,
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: I could do it.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: Right, exactly. If a contractor tells you he can take
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Mercury apart in 30 days, don't trust him.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: Agreed.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: No, this was in basically four 10-year stretches. Combined equals
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: 40 years, obviously. But I think his point, Armstrong's point,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: was that you don't have to disassemble Mercury as a
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: whole and wait until it's fully disassembled to put it
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: together into Dyson to start creating a Dyson sphere. you
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: can disassemble and then start reassembling as you go.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: And once you start getting one bit of it online,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: it's going to help power and create better efficiency to
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: harvest and reassemble the rest of Mercury, you know, like
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier. Yeah.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: And not only that, but you could use that energy.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: All of a sudden, there would be supercomputing like you've
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: never seen. Space travel would get faster. Like all these
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: technologies that we can't even like think about yet would
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: be growing at exponential rates. Right.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: And I mean, that's the point. Like when you're like, well,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: what would we do with with, you know, all of
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: this energy every second coming off of the sun? Who knows?
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: We cannot conceive of the stuff we could do with
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: that amount of energy yet.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: But I guarantee it's not going to be, you know.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: using fuel, like charging our smartphones. It should be for
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: some pretty neat stuff, I guess.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: So the other cool idea is that, holy cow, how
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: many people would have to take part in this kind
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: of a project? Just literally the labor force you would need.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: And I think Armstrong is the one who said, well,
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: you could use robots, actually. And with the same idea
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: that once you get some of these robots going, if
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: they could self-replicate and build themselves, then you can just
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: kind of sit back and watch the paint dry on Earth,
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: and all these robots are up there just building themselves
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: and working and working and doing everything for you.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And that's why that was his– I don't know
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: if it was his point, someone's point along the way,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: is that when you start that– when you build that
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: first Dyson sphere– All of a sudden, it's just going
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: to keep going and going and going faster. It's going
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: to spread at an exponential rate. So you would go
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: from a type two civilization to a type three civilization
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: pretty quickly. And as a matter of fact, you would
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: also if this project was carried out by a centralized government,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: it would spread so quickly and so far in such
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: a relatively short amount of time. Something like going from
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: that first Dyson sphere to colonizing an entire galaxy in
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: something like a million years. that even if it was
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: a centralized government involved at the beginning, they would very
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: quickly lose control of the colonies because they'd be so
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: spread out and there'd be so many of them that
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: they would just basically become self-sufficient and spread over the galaxy.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: So the reason this is noteworthy is that if you
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: found one Dyson sphere, you would probably find millions or
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: billions or trillions of them in, in just a, in
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: a one section of the universe, right? You're not, you,
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: you probably are not going to find just one Dyson sphere.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: You're going to find a Dyson galaxy.
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: A type three civilization. And that's what they're looking for
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: by sifting through some of these old sky surveys. And
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: they found a couple of, of candidates actually in the
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: last year or so, I think. Oh yeah.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: There's a, there's a couple of, surveys that have found stars,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: and they have typical star names. One is KIC 8462852,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: which is a sexy name.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: And then the other is EPIC, which I'm pretty sure
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: they call EPIC, 204278916, right? Wow. And EPIC was discovered
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: by the Kepler spacecraft in 2014, and the reason these
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: things are noteworthy is because there is some sort of
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: weird transit pattern where the light dims, I guess randomly,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: or not necessarily on some sort of set schedule, around
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: these stars. And you would say, well, that's probably just
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: a planet or something coming in between it. Well, yes,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: they thought about that already. And normally a star will
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: dim by about 1%. when a planet-sized object comes in
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: between you, the observer, and that planet. These things are dipping,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: in the case of the KIC star, 22%. And in
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: the case of the EPIC star, 65%, right? Okay. They
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: have no idea what could be massive enough to dim
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: those two stars that much. They haven't encountered it before.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: There's a couple of theories. One of them said a
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: swarm of comets. Somebody else said, well, you could very
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: easily go from a swarm of comets to a swarm
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: of solar arrays. So maybe these are evidence of Dyson spheres.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's possible.
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's kind of fun to talk about
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: robots building themselves and them doing all this work up there.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: One of the big problems is we're not nearly, I mean,
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: we have robot technology now, but Nothing close to that
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: at the present. And as this article points out, that
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: you would need like it would have to be so advanced.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: These robots would have to be operating without fail up
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: there because they would be by themselves or be able
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: to fix themselves and fix problems. Like the intelligence would
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: need to be so far advanced. Like we can't even
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: imagine what that would be like.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: No, but I mean, even if Michio Kaku is off
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: by 100 or 200 or 500 years, that's not that
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: far off.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Like if we can harness all the energy on Earth,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: we should very quickly improve as far as our technology
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: is concerned. So who knows? Maybe those robots aren't that
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: far off, you know?
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: One other thing that I saw from this, though, was
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: when Freeman Dyson was talking about disassembling jupiter chuck he
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: said that it should take i don't know roughly 800
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: years worth of the sun's energy output to disassemble and
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: reassemble jupiter yeah well that's not bad but do you
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: remember how much comes out of the sun in a
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: second we're like whoa you know that's so much we
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: would need 800 years worth of that to disassemble and
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: reassemble jupiter so we like not only do we not
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: have the capability of building a Dyson sphere, we don't
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: even have the capability of disassembling Jupiter. We just don't
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: have any way to harness that energy, which creates this
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: kind of chicken or egg dilemma. Like we almost need
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: a Dyson sphere to create a Dyson sphere at this point. Yeah.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: Somewhere Freeman Dyson is laughing.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: On acid.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: Somewhere in New Jersey. One of the other big issues is, okay,
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: let's say that you could even do something like this
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: and harness this energy. To get it to Earth is
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: another big problem if we want to make it actually usable.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: Some people said we could laser it over. But the
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: problems with laser beams is after about a mile, you're
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: going to lose a lot of efficiency with it. So
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: good luck with that. Microwaves have been floated out there,
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: but microwaves, even though they're more effective farther out than lasers,
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: you're still limited to about 100 miles, which will do
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: us no good. Right. So what's the answer?
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't have one either.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess one of the easy ones is, well,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: just inhabit the solar arrays. Go inhabit the Dyson Sphere.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: Stop being so precious about living on Earth.
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Which makes sense, but I like living on Earth.
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but would Earth 800 years from now be worth
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: living on?
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: It depends, Chuck. Will it be skipping to school and
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: skinning knees and spelling bees and all that still? Because
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: if so, then yes.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know what you're talking about.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: It's another Simpsons reference. Oh, okay. It's the one where
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: Principal Skinner came back, the real Principal Skinner. Oh, yeah.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: Great one.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: He's like, he goes, if you think skin and knees
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: and spelling bees are corny, well, then Mr. Corn Me Up.
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: That's right. That's when they introduced, we'd like to introduce
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: our Principal Skinner, Principal Skimor Skinner.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: Armand Tanzarian.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: Yep. That's a great one.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: There's one other thing. You got anything else?
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: I got nothing else.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: I got one more thing. So there's. That whole idea
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: that Dyson came up with to search the skies for
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: this imprint where there's a lot of infrared radiation but
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: no visible light. Yeah. There's a problem with that because
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: this guy came along. His name was Robert Bradbury. He's
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: a futurist. I think maybe a science fiction writer.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: Ray?
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: No, Robert, his little brother.
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: Robert Bradbury said, well, you know what? If you really
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: wanted to make these Dyson spheres efficient– you'd make them
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: in the same manner that those Russian nesting dolls are made,
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: like a matryoshka, right?
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: So you'd have the internal sphere and then outer spheres
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: going around it, catching all that lost heat energy and
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: turning it into usable power, which is awesome because you'd
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: have basically 100% efficiency as far as the Dyson sphere
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: was concerned. But if you're looking at the stars... you
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: would see nothing. Because not only would there not be
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: visible light, there also wouldn't be any infrared radiation. And
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Freeman Dyson just hung his head, went into his room,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: shut the door, and laid down on his bed for
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: a while.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: The end.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: Yep. Well, if you want to know more about Dyson Spheres,
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: you can start with this article on HowStuffWorks.com by typing
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: Dyson Spheres into the search bar at HowStuffWorks, as I said.
• 43:05
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• 43:07
  Speaker 1: it's time for listener mail.
• 43:11
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• 43:18
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• 43:19
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• 43:22
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• 43:27
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• 43:29
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• 43:29
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• 43:30
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• 43:33
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• 43:33
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• 43:34
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• 43:40
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• 43:43
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• 44:00
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• 44:01
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• 44:03
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• 44:04
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• 44:06
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• 44:28
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• 44:28
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• 44:31
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• 44:34
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• 44:37
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• 44:44
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• 44:48
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• 44:56
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• 45:01
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• 45:11
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