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Will solar sails take us to the stars? · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the all New Toyota Corolla. Welcome
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant's with me. Jerry's over there, so it's stuck,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: you should know. On a Friday here, it's a sleepy
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Friday here. Yeah, there's like two other people in the
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: whole office. Yeah. I think the work from home program
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  Speaker 1: is great and I think that apparently us utilize that
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: on Friday's. Yeah, I need I like it. Oh, it's awesome.
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  Speaker 1: It's nice and quiet. Yeah. You know, these companies like
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: that are trying to get people to come back in
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: not telework. Oh really? Is that a new movement, the
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: non teleworking movement? All I didn't make mouch sense. I'm
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: going backwards back in time. Yeah, you know, I might
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  Speaker 1: as well make them drive to work in a horse
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  Speaker 1: drawn carriage and wear a suit and tie on for days. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: Good to see you, my friend. Thanks, good to see
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  Speaker 1: you too. Man. Are we gonna sail through the galaxy together? Yeah?
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  Speaker 1: I've got one intro. So about four years ago, okay,
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  Speaker 1: there was an astronomer named johann Kepler. I heard of him,
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  Speaker 1: Johannes Kepler, take your pick is the s silent? Who knows?
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  Speaker 1: I think Johannes he founded the Kepler effect. Yeah. So
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  Speaker 1: he also had this idea that, um, there was a
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  Speaker 1: what's called the solar wind, that there was a wind
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  Speaker 1: that blew through space, and it was evidenced by the
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  Speaker 1: curvature of comets tales. You could see them just kind
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  Speaker 1: of bending a little bit, and that was because they
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  Speaker 1: were being blown by the wind. So Kepler, as was
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  Speaker 1: pretty much the thinking at the time, during the age
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  Speaker 1: of exploration when he lived, UM, he said, maybe we
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  Speaker 1: should construct some sales, some mighty sails that can survive
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  Speaker 1: in outer space and just sail around the galaxy. That's
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  Speaker 1: pretty forward thinking. It is forward thinking. And Kepler was
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  Speaker 1: wrong about the solar wind. There isn't a wind in space,
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  Speaker 1: although there is solar wind now, but it's just some ion,
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  Speaker 1: positively charged ions that hit the magnetosphere of the Earth
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  Speaker 1: and um create the northern and Southern lights. It's not
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  Speaker 1: like a warm wind literally blowing through space exactly. Um.
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  Speaker 1: But Kepler's suggestion led to just this huge, incredible irony
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  Speaker 1: wherein we have figured out now how to sail through
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  Speaker 1: space not using wind but using sunlight. And it's been done. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's been It's been proven now several times. Think in
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  Speaker 1: two thousand ten Japan did it and uh in two
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  Speaker 1: thousand fifteen. A pretty major one is gonna set. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: the biggest one, for sure, it's gonna literally set sail.
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  Speaker 1: I think it's square feet. That one is huge. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's a I think ten city blocks. No, that was
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  Speaker 1: a different one. I'm sorry. Square feet though, was definitely
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  Speaker 1: the largest one that will have been put in space.
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  Speaker 1: There was one that was ten square called the Nano
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  Speaker 1: sale that was that worked just fine, that NASA launched,
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  Speaker 1: was up in orbit for a year and then came
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  Speaker 1: back down and they were able to do all sorts
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  Speaker 1: of cool stuff with it. And even before then, apparently
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  Speaker 1: the the idea of sailing through space, this analogy between
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  Speaker 1: space and the oceans, um is not lost on anybody
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  Speaker 1: who's into this whole idea and um, even before this,
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  Speaker 1: the current incarnation, there were uses of solar sales, like
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  Speaker 1: in the seventies. I think Voyager two UM, which is
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  Speaker 1: one of those deep space probes, was having trouble with
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  Speaker 1: its attitude it was having attitude problem and it needed
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  Speaker 1: an adjustment. So the the controllers down on the ground
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  Speaker 1: turned its solar arrays and used UM them like a
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  Speaker 1: solar sale to correct its attitude. Worked. UM, and then
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  Speaker 1: it worked enough that in the seventies, remember Haley's comment, Okay,
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  Speaker 1: well that was six that it came through, and we're
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  Speaker 1: going to be the last generation to be able to
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  Speaker 1: see it twice. Probably when's it coming back? I think
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  Speaker 1: it was sixty years or sixty years, so let's see.
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  Speaker 1: That would be two thousand fifty four. We'll make it.
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  Speaker 1: We'll see. Um. The the there was a whole NASA
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  Speaker 1: program that lasted about a year to rendezvous with a
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  Speaker 1: solar sale, using a solar sale to rendezvous with Haley's comment,
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  Speaker 1: I don't know what they were gonna do when they
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  Speaker 1: came upon it, but um, the idea of a solar
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  Speaker 1: sale and the fact that a solar sale will work
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  Speaker 1: has been proven and known since at least the nineteen seventies,
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  Speaker 1: but only recently have we been launching these things and
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  Speaker 1: getting them to do what we want, which is travel
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  Speaker 1: through space without the use of rocket fuel. Yeah, because
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  Speaker 1: that's a huge thing, man, Rockets use a lot of fuel,
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  Speaker 1: and it's a constraint. It is, in fact, the weight
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  Speaker 1: of the Space Shuttle, the dearly departed Space Shuttle was fuel.
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  Speaker 1: And the way rockets work in general is they expend there,
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  Speaker 1: they shoot their payload to get them going, and then
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  Speaker 1: they cruise basically. But that's a lot of payload and
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  Speaker 1: a lot of fuel, and but they they're not just
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  Speaker 1: constantly like have their foot on the accelerator, you know,
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  Speaker 1: because they can't tote around all that fuel. No. Well,
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  Speaker 1: even if they did just sit there and have the
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  Speaker 1: gas pedal to the metal all the way, eventually they're
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  Speaker 1: going to run out of fuel too. So it's a
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  Speaker 1: double constraint. You have a finite amount of fuel and
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  Speaker 1: you can't accelerate constantly. Um. Plus there's also a third
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  Speaker 1: one too that the solar sale pretty much has over
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  Speaker 1: a rocket um it can return to Earth, which is
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  Speaker 1: called de orbiting UM. So let's talk about this, like,
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  Speaker 1: what do you need to have a solar sale? Like?
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  Speaker 1: It's a pretty basic simple it really is, but it's
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  Speaker 1: pretty much the future of space travel. We've talked about
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  Speaker 1: antimatter spacecraft before, Yeah, that might have been where we
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  Speaker 1: mentioned this. Actually definitely touched on this once to put
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  Speaker 1: these two together. If the solar sale is definitely the winner, Um,
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  Speaker 1: anti matter spacecraft requires us to be able to produce
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  Speaker 1: something that doesn't exist yet, which is in I can't remember,
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  Speaker 1: an anti proton maybe yeah, I can't remember. Um, this
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  Speaker 1: is like, we've got everything we need right now to
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  Speaker 1: do this, so let's do it. What we need continuous
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  Speaker 1: force from the sunlight. You need a large mirror that's
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  Speaker 1: really thin. We'll get into that, and you need something
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  Speaker 1: to launch it. You can't launch these things from the ground. Um,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: they do great once you get them up there, but
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  Speaker 1: you're still gonna have to launch it into space. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Even still, it's such a minor constraint. It's it's ridiculous.
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  Speaker 1: A scoff at its inclusion. And the reason this works
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  Speaker 1: is because light, uh, it releases electromagnetic radiation in the
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  Speaker 1: form of protons. And these protons even though they don't
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  Speaker 1: have mass. Photons, what say protons? These photons, even though
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  Speaker 1: they're on a mass, they have momentum, and that is
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  Speaker 1: that momentum when it hits a solar sale is just
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  Speaker 1: like a little wind blowing a sale. It transfers its
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  Speaker 1: energy and it's just it's almost the same thing as
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  Speaker 1: a wind blowing a sale. Yeah, when you put a
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  Speaker 1: bunch of them together, it is very much like that.
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  Speaker 1: Especially if you think of wind as little discrete packets
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  Speaker 1: of wind, this is little discrete packets of light and
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  Speaker 1: also chuck. When a photon hits a reflective surface, a
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  Speaker 1: highly reflective surface, it transfers its momentum twice. The first
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  Speaker 1: time when it hits it pushes it along, and then
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  Speaker 1: when it pushes off to bounce off to reflect so
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  Speaker 1: it transfers momentum twice. So photons hitting a reflective surface
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  Speaker 1: in outer space, the vacuum of space where there's no resistance,
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  Speaker 1: that's something that you know you can kind of get behind. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's significant. And if you look at an individual photon
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  Speaker 1: or even um sunlight as a whole, it doesn't have
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  Speaker 1: a lot of it doesn't exert a lot of force.
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  Speaker 1: It's something like nine Newton's per square mile. Yeah, like
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  Speaker 1: that's the reason they can't take off from the ground. Um.
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  Speaker 1: Nine Newton's is what you get from the Sun to
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  Speaker 1: the Earth, right, and in an astronomical unit, right nine
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  Speaker 1: three million miles, you're gonna get about nine Newton's of force.
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  Speaker 1: That's how much Yeah, by the time they reach this
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  Speaker 1: this area, that's how much force there, Which is the
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  Speaker 1: reason why you can't take off from the Earth with
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  Speaker 1: a solar sale because you need about one point six
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  Speaker 1: seven million newtons of force for a liftoff of like
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  Speaker 1: a rocket, and they're they're way behind as far as
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  Speaker 1: lifting off from the ground, right, and once it's out
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  Speaker 1: of space to a rocket is clearly superior for quick
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  Speaker 1: acceleration because it can produce like two point one million
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  Speaker 1: newtons of thrust and again sunlight produces nine two point
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  Speaker 1: one million compared to nine. But the big advantages again,
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  Speaker 1: your solar sale doesn't use any kind of fuel once
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  Speaker 1: it's unfurled and deployed, and it can accelerate constantly. And
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  Speaker 1: this is the big advantage that it has over rockets. Yeah, well,
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  Speaker 1: that flashy rocket might blast off and shoot its payload
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  Speaker 1: and go zooming through space. The little solar sale is
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  Speaker 1: just kind of going about its way, getting little faster,
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  Speaker 1: getting little faster. And eventually that rocket, though, is gonna
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  Speaker 1: go through all its fuel and the little solar sale
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  Speaker 1: is going to catch up to it because it constantly
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  Speaker 1: has its foot on the gas. As a matter of fact,
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  Speaker 1: there's a really good UM analogy in here. I guess
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  Speaker 1: it's not even an analogy, it's some sort of statement
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  Speaker 1: maybe that if we launched the Solar Sale right now,
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  Speaker 1: it would take about eight years for it to catch
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  Speaker 1: up the Voyager one, which is the most distant rocket
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  Speaker 1: based or fuel based UM spacecraft in the in the universe.
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  Speaker 1: Now we've launched, it's towards the edge of the Solar
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  Speaker 1: System right now. Which, by the way, did you know
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  Speaker 1: that all of the images you've seen of the swirling
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  Speaker 1: Milky Way galaxy overhead are fake? I didn't know that.
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  Speaker 1: We don't have any way to produce that photograph. We've
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  Speaker 1: reached the edge of our solar system. We have no
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  Speaker 1: way of looking above the entire galaxy. So all of
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: this is what we surmise this. Yeah, but it's never
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  Speaker 1: presented that way. You think like, well, it's the that's
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: our photos of the Milky Way. I never thought like, right,
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  Speaker 1: that's impossible, Like we're not even sure how many arms
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  Speaker 1: the thing has. Wow. I just think it's a little
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  Speaker 1: arrogant too two produce pictures like that and not say
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: this is an artist rendering. This is an artist rendering
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  Speaker 1: it probably says that at some point, right, I never
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: noticed that. It's like those fake newspaper articles where you
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: get to the end of it, this is this is
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  Speaker 1: an advertisement, right yeah? Um, alright, So we were talking
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: about the it would take eight years to reach the voyager. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and that's like one of the big which has been
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  Speaker 1: sailing for twenty years. Yeah, and that's one of the
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  Speaker 1: b and that that maybe the biggest advantage of a
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  Speaker 1: solar sale is deep space exploration because the problem with
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  Speaker 1: anything else is gonna eventually gonna run out of fuel.
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  Speaker 1: And that's what this one. I think it is set
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  Speaker 1: to go deeper into space than anything ever. Yeah, if
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: it makes it, and probably pretty quickly. So like the
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  Speaker 1: whole advantage of um of this is that when the
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  Speaker 1: solar sales starts to pick up, let's talk about how
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: fast it moves? Real quick you want to does it? Hall?
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: But and not at first? So it picks up one
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  Speaker 1: millimeter per second of movement every second once it starts,
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  Speaker 1: So it's moving a millimeter a second at first. That
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  Speaker 1: is not fast at all. Um. By comparison, a a
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  Speaker 1: rocket moves about fifty six a second something like that.
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  Speaker 1: That's right. So it begins very slowly, right, but then
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  Speaker 1: it starts to accelerate. There's constant acceleration, and by the
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  Speaker 1: end of a day, it'll have reached three kilometers per hour. See,
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  Speaker 1: and it will have already traveled for miles. By the
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  Speaker 1: end of twelve days, it will have accelerated to thirty
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  Speaker 1: seven hundred kilometers per hour. That's fast. And eventually, chuck um,
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  Speaker 1: it's going to start traveling about up to two hundred
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  Speaker 1: thousand miles an hour. That's three d thousand kilometers per hour.
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  Speaker 1: That's basically you would make it from New York to
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  Speaker 1: Los Angeles on the ground in less than a minute.
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  Speaker 1: That's pretty quick. It is quick. But get this. They
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  Speaker 1: figured out that if you use ground based light propulsion,
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  Speaker 1: which would use a lot of energy um to direct
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  Speaker 1: the lasers at this thing, you could get it up
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  Speaker 1: to something like eighteen thousand miles per second eight thousand,
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  Speaker 1: six hundred miles per second, which is a tenth of
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  Speaker 1: the speed of light. And once we do that, we
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  Speaker 1: could make it to a nearby star in about twenty years.
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  Speaker 1: That's pretty good. We could make it to outer planets
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  Speaker 1: within a couple of weeks, so The potential for this
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  Speaker 1: thing is enormous because it's proven it uses no fuel
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  Speaker 1: at least if you're using the sun, and it's the
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  Speaker 1: technology that could get us into interstellar travel. That's pretty awesome.
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  Speaker 1: So what's it made of? Well, the sale itself is
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  Speaker 1: key because it's got to be super lightweight and super thin.
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  Speaker 1: You can't just fly a big mirror up there. Um.
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  Speaker 1: What NASA is working with today is something called CP
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  Speaker 1: one and it is one d times thinner than a
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: sheet of stationary um. But that is crazy. I know.
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  Speaker 1: They worked with Milar for a little while, aluminum reinforced miler,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: which if you've ever seen Milar balloons, like, that's super thin.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: It's like a foil um and it's a one fourth
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: the thickness of a one ply plastic bag. And that
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: was the Cosmos one that used the Milar sale. But
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: basically all these sales are are reflective. It's got to
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: be reflective because the photon has to bounce off of it,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: and it's got to be super lightweight and super thin.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: And like any sale, the larger the better. Yeah, you know,
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  Speaker 1: the more photons you can catch, the more speeds are
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: gonna get. I guess eventually he said, the one that's
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  Speaker 1: going up two thousand fifteen is called the solar Sale Demonstrator.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: It's dubbed the sun Jammer, which is after an Arthur C.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Clark story. Um, and then apparently is where solar sailing
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: was term was coined. Yeah. I love that guy. Yeah,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: but that's the one that's going up in two thousand fifteen.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: He was two thousand and one of space outsy right. Um,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: and it apparently collapses down to something the size of
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: a dishwasher and weighs a hundred and ten pounds. You
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: and I could lift that together, Um, and I could
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: lift that by myself. They Wow. They pack the thing
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: into a rocket, shoot it up into space. Once it's
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: in space and orbit, it gets kind of shot out
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: a little bit, and then it, I guess inflates. I
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: believe the booms that hold the sales in place are inflatable,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: which makes them even more lightweight. Yeah. It's almost like
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: a kite. Um. If you imagine in the supports of
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: a kite, we're all just inflatable, and you would just
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: blow it up. Those would those forms would take shape
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: as buttresses, and then the sale would unfurrel and then
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: then your sun Jamin. Yeah, land Ho Um, you talked
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: about lasers. That is one of the um I guess
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: co fuels, even though it's not a fuel that these
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: things might use. If there aren't enough photons, maybe they
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: can use lasers to continue to power these um but
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: not for launch though, right, or could they use them
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: for launch? I I it looks like they did launch it,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: son somehow, I think you could. I think it'd just
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: be slow. Um, But I think that the probably the
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: most immediately usable method would be to launch it into
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: space and then hit it with the laser once it's
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: in space. Right. I also saw microwave beams have been
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: used too. Yeah, there's a whole other kind kind of
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: competing microwave sale. But the problem is they have to
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: be a lot bigger because of the larger wavelength of
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: a microwave. Seems like using all these things in conjunction
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: together it is probably a good way to go. You know, well,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: microwave juice, LI laser juice. Why not use whatever you can?
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: But the yeah, the difference between just using sunlight. One
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: of the problems with sunlight is you have to be
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: going away from the sun because that's the way the
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: direction the photons are gonna gonna so yeah, I think
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: about that, and um, they've pointed out where you can
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: go towards the sun, but you have to basically go
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: out and then come back around and use the photons
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: to slow you down. Um it just seems kind of Yeah,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: I wonder if any of these are ever gonna be
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: manned them. They could be if we can figure out
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: how to not crush people in eighteen thousand, six hundred
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: miles per second speed. Yeah, I guess that's true, because
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: can you slow these things down? I don't know. That's
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: a good question. Yeah, I don't know. The other question
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: I had about this that I couldn't find anything on
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: is if these things are a hundreds the thickness of
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: a sheet of stationary and I've seen gravity, so there's
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of debris space. How are what's keeping the
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: space debris from just punching holes right in it and
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: just tearing it to shreds. Well, I think it's probably
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: stronger than you would think considering how thin it is,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: because it's reinforced. But yeah, you're right, Well, there there's
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: a gravity man, and like solid things were just blown
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: to bits. That guy's face did you like that movie? Yeah?
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: I did. Yeah, I didn't. Um. I didn't go into
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: it expecting the best movie ever, like a lot of
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: people did, and like you know, a lot of hype
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Crank Neil deGrasse Tyson. We should call it angular momentum,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: not gravity. It's like, this is a blockbuster Hollywood movie.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect. I
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: thought it was. I thought it was great. Yeah. And
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: if you're learning your science from Sandra Bullock, yeah you're
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: in trouble. Yeah. Yeah, you should learn it from other
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: people like yellow graphs, dice um. The other thing that
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: I saw that solar sales can be easily used for
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: is de orbiting that space debris. Apparently you can send
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: some stuff up there, have it go into US uh
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: an orbit, capture a bunch of the space debris. I guess,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: just basically wrap itself around it and then bring it down. Uh.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: I think the way that you bring it down cleaning
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: up space is pretty much it's a big deal. Yeah. Uh.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: And I think the way that you bring solar sales
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: down so easily is because when you don't need fuel
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: to bring them down, um, and you can just angle
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: them in certain way, so that the sunlight pushes them
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: down towards Earth and they burn up. Oh yeah, that's
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: pretty nifty. It is. So we may be using them
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: just around Earth first, but these are the things that
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: could very easily lead to inner sellar travel within our lifetime.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. We're talking twenty years right now. You
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: take a lot longer than that without this. Yeah, I'm
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: definitely we should follow up in on the Is that
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: the sun Jammer? Yeah? Which is next year now? Because
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: this is our our New Year's Eve episode, isn't it. Yeah?
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: I think so. Actually nice. So we're already or we're
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: about to be, depending on when you're listening to this
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: or when it comes out, So in just a year
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: or more, the sun Jammer will be doing this thing. Yeah,
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: we should do a follow up on it. My money
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: is on this one. Maglev trains. Yeah, uh, people going
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: without refrigerators, that's the future. Wiping your butt with cloth?
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: All right, you got anything else? I got nothing else?
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: I'd like this one. I think the solar sale Is
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: is literally the thing of the future. Yeah, I like
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: it too. Man Um. You want to wish everybody a
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: happy New Year. Happy New Year, Everyone be new year.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: And I'd also like to say a very happy birthday
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: to my sweet wife. That's right, I always forget it's
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: uh what what's the date birthday? Uh? Well, happy birthday, Umi,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: and happy New Year's everyone, and be safe and uh
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: we sail into the future. If you want to know
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: more about solar sailing, you can type that word in
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: the search part how stuff works dot com. And since
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: I said search bar, it's time for a message break.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Uh now, Chuck, it's time for listener mail. What am
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: I gonna call this? I'm gonna call this from Roanoke,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Virginia just because it's easy death metal for moan Oak. Hey, guys,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I was listening to the episode Why Does Music Provoke Emotion?
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Love that episode, by the way, because music has been
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: such an integral part of my life and everything I do.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: And it also reminded me of an experience I had recently.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: Metal music has always been my favorite genre. I know
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: this email? Uh did you read it? I guess id
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: is really connect with it. Anyway, I recently decided to
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: try out the black metal subgenre. I guess he'd previously
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: was into light metal, right, um, so I purchased Dark
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Thrones Transylvanian hunger, put it in my car CD player
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: and started driving with the music. When the music started,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: I got the strangest feeling. It reminded me of Christmas. Well,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: this seems like the last reaction when we get from
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: such a type of music. I think I figured it out.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: The music itself makes me think of icy, snowy winters,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: which I of course associate with the joy of snow
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: around Christmas as a child. Between this and the relaxing
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: tremorow guitars that were carrying the music, the cool breeze
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: that I felt through the car windows, and the pale moonlight,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: the whole experience made me feel a happiness that resembled
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: the kind of usually get around Christmas time. I just
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: found it really fascinating. Is something that I found so relaxing,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: would probably make most listeners want to scream and if
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: ash and not unlike the vocalist of most of these bands. Uh,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: It's so true that music can yield a different reaction
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: from everyone or anyway, I just thought you might find
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: it interesting and thanks for the great show that is
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: from Patrick Hagar Hagar in Roanoke, Virginia. I think you
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: see Hagar well I wanted, but it's h a G
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: and not a R. You should change his name to
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Hagar with a couple of them wounts. Yeah, it's like
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: then you're listening to Transylvanian Nightmare. What was it called? Yeah,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: I think that was right, Transylvanian hungar Uh which Manhattan transfer? No, No,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: that's the opposite of death metal. Um. If you want
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: to let us know about some strange reaction you had,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: it's something we've discussed right aside from drowsiness, right because
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: we've put a lot of people to sleep. Yeah. I
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: heard Jesse Thorn talking about the other day about what
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: a backhanded compliment that is or how it always makes
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: them feel bad. It doesn't bother me, no, And it
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: was on Judge John Hodgman, and Hodgeman was like, no, man,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: people are saying there in a very intimate moment, you
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: were relaxing them into sleep, and that's a compliment. So
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: that's that's how I just to take it. Hodgements guys
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: such a great perspective on things. Jesse, Come on, buddy,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: lighten up. Uh. Yeah, if you want to tell Jesse
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: to lighten up, or if you want to tell us
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: about some weird reaction you've had, We want to hear
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: about it. You can tweet to us at s Y
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com,
• 24:30
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• 24:34
  Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and you
• 24:37
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• 24:40
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• 24:43
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• 24:51
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• 25:01
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