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How GPS Works · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too. Jerry's at Cabin in the
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: woods even and this is Stuff you Should Know podcasting
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: from the future.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: That's right, And we are going to take a couple
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: of minutes here at the head of the show to
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: pay tribute to HowStuffWorks dot com founder Marshall Brain, who
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: passed away last November at the age of sixty three.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he is the guy who started at all and
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: it's really hard to understate the impact that that guy
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: had on our lives.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just about Marshall. He was an electrical engineer, had
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: a Bachelor of Science. He was a longtime professor he State,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and in nineteen ninety eight he founded as a hobby
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: HowStuffWorks dot Com because he wanted to. He had a
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: very pure goal, which was to make complex things understandable
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: and relatable to everyday people. And that is you know,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: that's what we still do. We were hired as writers there.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: I never met Marshall personally. I think I saw him
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: come through the office a couple of times early on,
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  Speaker 1: but I never had the pleasure of actually sitting down
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  Speaker 1: with the guy.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: I met him a couple of times. He was a
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: good guy. He I think some of his first articles.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: I think the first one might have.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: Been like how air conditioning works?
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, remember Scooby Doo. We did an episode on Scooby
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Doo based on one of his articles.
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  Speaker 1: Was that Marshall?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah totally Oh interesting, But yeah, he was a very
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: good guy.
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  Speaker 2: And without him, I can tell you I would not
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  Speaker 2: be podcasting, And if I were, it probably wouldn't be
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: a very good podcast because you and I would have
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: never met, and I would have never met. Like the
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: fact that Marshall came along and founded How Stuff Works
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: set my destiny in a lot of ways. So I'm
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: really grateful to him for that.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for both of us. He was also an author.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: One of his books is called The Doomsday Book, colon
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: the science behind Humanity's Greatest Threats, something that Josh has
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: particular interest in.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah for sure.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a transhumanist, down with Nick Bostrom and all
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  Speaker 2: those guys.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. So Marshall was also a TV host. He eventually
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: was the director of NC State's Engineering Opportunities Program, which
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: helped mentor aspiring inventors, and Marshall was survived by his wife, Leanne,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: his four kids, David, Arena, Johnny, and Ian, and their
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: dog Summer. And it was just really sad to hear
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  Speaker 1: the news because, like you said, Marshall wouldn't for him,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: we wouldn't be here now. And we'd like to think
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  Speaker 1: we're still carrying on his tradition of making complex things accessible.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: I like to think that too. Yeah, So here's to you, Marshall,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: rest in peace. And as tribute, we chose an article,
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: one of the few ones that we hadn't recorded, that
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: that Marshall wrote originally on GPS. And this is like
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: bread and butter Marshal brain stuff. There's engineering, there's science.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: There's some more engineering, uh huh, there's figuring things out
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: with circles and diameters and stuff like that, like straight
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: up Marshal stuff.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, classic Marshal, classic house stuff works. And even though
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: our show is kind of grown and more, if it's
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: fun to go back and do these every now and then.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. So let's get started, shall we.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: All Right, GPS tells you where you are the end,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: There you go.
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: That's that's word for word Marshall's article.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's actually sounds intimidating, but it's really not at all.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: It's a pretty simple process, believe it or not.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, surprisingly, But what it is.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Overall, GPS is a as Marshall wrote, a space based
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: radio navigation system that technically GPS is the one that
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: the US government owns. If you had lived in another country,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: it's not called GPS, it's called a GNSS.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Global Navigation Satellite system is the generic term. And
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: GPS has become like the Kleenex of global navigation satellite systems,
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: like it's the proprietary eponym.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. But you know, that's what the system is
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: that tells you where you are when you take out
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: your little smartphone and say where in the world am
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: I or how in the world do I get somewhere?
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: If you want to get somewhere, they got to know
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: where you are at that moment, and that's why you
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: can do that twenty four seven.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, And GPS is owned and operated by the American government,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: and it's paid for by the American taxpayers. But it's
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: used worldwide. I think out of eight points something billion
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: people on the planet today, six billion of them use
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: GPS every day. So it's America's gift, I think, is
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: what I'm trying to say, because if anything, that's what
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: America is known for. It's like creating things and giving
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: it away to the rest of the.
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: World for free.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we'll see what happens with that. You never know,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: but right now, that's the current situation. They do this
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: with satellites at least twenty four. Usually there's more than thirty.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: And if wherever you are on Earth, if you had
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: you know, super super long vision, you could look up
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: and see four of these bad boys with your eyeballs
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: because you got to have those four to tell you
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: where you are for sure.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Technically you just need three, but let's not get into
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: that right now. Okay, So those satellites are up a
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: medium Earth orbit about eleven thousand miles above Earth. They
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: circle it constantly. They're not geostationary, so they circle the
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Earth and they rise and set I guess every twelve hours,
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: so twice a day. They're like the tides basically, and
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: the GPS satellites are just one component. There's three components.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: There's a satellite component, there's the control component, which is
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: on the ground, the Space Force runs GPS, so they're
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: constantly tracking, monitoring, telling satellites what to do, like really
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: bossing them around. And then the third component is you,
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: the person using GPS, or more technically your receiver that
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: is telling you where you are in the world.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the important part, because I've tried. I've gone
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: out there without a phone and just shouted up where
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: am I nothing?
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: They're like, get a phone.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: One of the cool things about GPS is this was
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: kind of roughly figured out a long time before we
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: even had satellites. There was a doctor, doctor Ivan Getting,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: who is a physicist and American, who basically said, hey,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: you know what, you could find out someone's three D
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: coordinates if you use radio signals and just calculated the
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: time it takes for those signals from different sources to
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: reach a single point on Earth and that's GPS basically.
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: And the people around Getting, especially his greatest critics, were like, oh, yeah, yeah,
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: how are you going to do that? There's nothing up
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: in space, you jerk, How are you going.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: To do it?
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Exactly?
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: And he said, just wait, And they sat around and
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: they waited, I don't know how long. They waited for
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: a while, and they finally went home, and then a
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: couple of years after that, the Soviets came to the
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: rescue in a certain weird way. They launched Sputnik, and
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: in America, in the United States, it was not a
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: happy time. They called it the Sputnik crisis because basically
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: at the time, we thought the Soviets were just like
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: some backwater backwards country, and all of a sudden they
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: were the first ones to launch a satellite into space,
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: and it took us by surprise. But doctor Getting's theory
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: was able to be put into use because American scientists
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: figured out that you could track Sputnik because it's radio signals.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: I don't know quite how to put it. Let's say
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: they engaged in the Doppler effect. They dabbled in Doppler
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: so that when the satellite was moving away from you,
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: the frequency that reached you here on Earth was different
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: than the frequency when the satellite was moving towards you,
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: or when the satellite was just stationed above you. So
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: they figured out that you can track satellites based on
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: these radio signals, and that gave the initial rise to GPS,
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: which is you need to track the satellites to know
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  Speaker 2: where they are because that is an essential piece of
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: information for GPS, and that kind of led to people saying, like, okay,
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: let's get getting's idea off the ground.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Literally, yeah, literally, off the ground and into space. Sputnik
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: was October fifty seven, and a couple of years later
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: we said, oh, yeah, we'll see your Sputnik and we'll
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: raise it five satellites or I guess raise it four
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: for a total of five satellites.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: Sure, all aces, that's right.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: And this was nineteen sixty I'm sorry. In nineteen sixty
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: seven they had really precise clocks on board these satellites.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: And then just five years, six years after that, in
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: seventy three, Navstar was formed and that is the system,
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: the program that is GPS basically. And then we said,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: all right, now, it's just gonna take this about twenty
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: years to figure all this out.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, nineteen ninety five, the whole thing was finally operational.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: They just kept shooting up satellites and tinkering with it
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: and get it going. And I wish we would have
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: kept the name Navstar. I think it's a little cooler
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: than GPS, but I don't know, maybe it sounds a
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: little more hostile or assertive. So GPS is probably okay.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: You want to talk about assertive. What about space.
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: Force Space forces? I don't know, it's space Forces. That's
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: the name.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: Sounds like a movie. It does, like a mel Brooks movie.
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: It us.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: But so we called the GPS and there were two
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: versions that they released at the same time. One was
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: L one. That bandwidth was used for civilian purposes, everything
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: from well, if you weren't in the military, let's say
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: you used L one, If you were in the military
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: used L two.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: It's much more.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Precise out of the gate. But the entire reason that
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: this went from what I think was originally a military
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: project intended just for use by the military, to one
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: where everybody who had a GPS receiver could use it
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: for free, was actually based on a tragedy that occurred
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: in nineteen I think eighty three with Korean Airlines Flight
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: zero zero seven.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a flight intended to go from New
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: York to Seoul. To get there, they were flying over
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: Alaska and still today we don't really know why, but
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: it veered off course about two hundred miles into Soviet airspace.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: This was not a great area of Soviet airspace to
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: be near because it was near some secret military installations,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: and so they scrambled a couple of fighter jets, Soviets
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: did miggs I reckon, and they tried to contact the plane,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: could not get in touch, and then down the plane
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: with a missile and killed everybody, two hundred and sixty
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: nine people. I remember this. I was twelve. Oh yeah, yeah,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, of course I didn't understand something
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: like that fully at twelve, but I remember it being,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: you know, all across the news.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Well, having been raised in the United States and being twelve.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty three during the Cold War.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: I bet you were so mad at the Rusky Comis
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: for doing that.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Oh man, oh man. There was probably a song on
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: FM radio that you know, encapsulated this. Oh I'm sure
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: like that a DJ made, you know, not a real song,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: right right, There were so many It used to be
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: such a thing.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. Weirdly, it was a thing. But I'll
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: bet it was the survivor that sang the song.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Probably. What I don't fully get now. What I
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: do get is that, you know, airplanes and air airlines
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: have GPS on their airplanes, so they don't do this now.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: But why did that like broaden it to the public
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: at large, Like, couldn't they have just said, all right,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: it's for the military and for the FAA.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: Maybe they just thought that there were other potential tragedies
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: that they couldn't foresee that could be gotcha.
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: If there's one thing that I'm not it's in Ronald
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: Reagan's head, right, I just don't know.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Uh. So, we have one GPS system, which is kind
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: of a problem. We don't have a backup yet, which
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: you know, we'll talk a little bit about that more later.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: But there is more than one GPS because it's not
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: like China and Russia are like, hey, we'll just you know,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: use your GPS when we want to bomb something.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: We want to shoot a missile at you.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So China and Russia and the EU all
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: have their own GPS, and I think they all have
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: backups even and we don't.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Right, it just takes too many floppies to back up
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: our GPS.
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: So we're just.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: Going without right now. Yeah, you want to take a break.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's take a break. I think it's a fantastic setup.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Okay, and when we come back, we're gonna really wing
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: it by trying to explain how GPS works.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: All right, So if you want to geo locate something
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: or somebody you're gonna need and you're on Earth, you know,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: you can just use longitude and latitude and that'll do
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: a pretty good job.
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: GPS is like, hey, what if you want to find
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: out where you are relative to C level, we can
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: do that and you can't longitude and latitude. Yeah, and
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: GPS does that with microwaves. They decided not to use
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: radio waves for reasons we'll talk about, but they use
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: microwaves sent down to Earth.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: They do.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: And so these microwaves I've seen both, Chuck, I've seen
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: that they're constantly beaming transmissions like basically uninterrupted from the satellites,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: or that they do it like on a repeating pattern.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: Regardless however this information arrives, it contains a few really
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: important pieces of information. And one thing we should point
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: out apparently there's a misunderstanding that a lot of people
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: think when you open up like your location services or
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: whatever on your phone, your GPS antenna ping satellites, that's
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: not the case. It passively listens for GPS, the four
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: GPS satellites broadcasting constantly or intermittently, and it picks them
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: up right, and so the information it gets is the time.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: And this is a really important component. And we've talked
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: before about atomic clocks and just how ridiculously precise they are,
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: and on a GPS satellite there's multiple atomic clocks that
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: are keeping time together and to make sure that they
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: stay synchronized. And then the satellite sends its own location.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Apparently they figure out their location using celestial landmarks like quasars,
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: so the satellite knows where it is at all times,
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: so it can tell you or your GPS receiver. And
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: then there's a satellite ID that says I'm me and
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: that is good.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Enough, that's right, And that is in the form of
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: a pseudorandom code. And one of the cool parts about
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: that is it it's going to tell you like, yeah,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: it's coming from this satellite. Here's my pseudorandom code. But
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: it also uses us a slightly differently all frequency, so
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: the frequencies don't jam one another. So all these satellites,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: because the frequencies are just slightly varied, can all talk
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: to each other because you don't want satellites up there
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: jamming each other.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: No, but they can also talk to you too, virtually
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: at the same time, if not at the same time,
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: because don't forget, you're getting information from four different satellites
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: to figure out where you are. So you don't want
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: to get one from one wait a couple of minutes,
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: get one from the other. You want them all to
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: be coming in basically at the same time, and by
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: slightly altering their frequencies, they can all arrive.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Right. And this is one final bit of key key
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: information here. All these satellites, great, they're beaming microwaves down. Fine,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: If we didn't know how fast those microwaves traveled, then
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: none of that would do us any good. We have
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: to know exactly how fast that stuff travels in order
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: to measure a distance, and in this case, we know
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: that electromatic wave microwaves travel at speed of light one
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: hundred and eighty six two hundred and eighty two miles
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: per second.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Right, So now they have all the basic information. I
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: think this is why you were saying at the outset.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: This is actually kind of a simple.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: Setup. GPS is if you take it.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: So if that satellite sends you an information piece of
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: like a signal, and it says I sent this exactly
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: at one forty five pm and it arrives at one
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: forty five pm and one second. And you know that
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: microwaves travel at the speed of light, you can use
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: that information to calculate the distance between you and the satellite. Okay,
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: when you know that the satellite is located here in space,
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: and then you figure out your distance from the satellite,
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: you start to have your first piece of information about
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: where you are. Because now you know where you are
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: relative to one satellite. That's not enough information to tell
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: you where you are on Earth, but it's a real
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: good start.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: That's right. And you might be thinking like, yeah, but
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: what about stuff getting in the way, Like if this
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: stuff is supposed to be exact, then you know, what
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: about a tall building or what about you know, weather
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: in space like that can throw all this off, right, guys,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: And that's true. But they have a very pretty brilliant
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: workaround for that. One method is called differential GPS, And
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: they have these antenna on Earth that are that are
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: locked in. They're stationary, They're not going anywhere. We know
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: exactly where they are. They're called known points for that reason,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: and since we know exactly where those are, they're receiving
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: these transmissions from GPS, and so they can calculate whether
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: or not the location is off and that you know,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: if this thing is locked in place, but the calculation
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: coming from the GPS is off by a little bit, Hey,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: it must have gone through some thick shrubbery or bounced
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: off a building or something. But either way, we're locked
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: in place. So we know exactly what that should be,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: and thus we'll know what that discrepancy is and we
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: can account for that.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: So, once that that nome point has that discrepancy, it
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: sends that out, that information out to all the GPS
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: receivers in the area, so they can use it to
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: adjust their own GPS readings that they're getting from those
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: satellites that were slightly off. But they didn't have any
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: way to remedy it. Now they do because the nome
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: point is like, hey, so like be as off? I like, right,
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: nano seconds, don't tell it, but yeah, I just wanted
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: to let you know.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and hey, listen, I won't tell everybody. I'll just
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: adjust it on my end and they'll never know that.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: You screwed up, right, And also there's something in your teeth, right,
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Oh it's cool.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: Gross cale is so gross.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: You don't like gail.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: I can't. I have to choke it down. And gross
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: is the wrong word. It's just too harsh.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, too much kale, like a salad with only kale,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: or like God forbid you eat a bag of kale
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: chips like this, you would die.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: You wouldn't be able to breathe any longer.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: It's too much at once. Yes, oh boy, all right,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: so now we get to try lateration. Take it away, friend.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Oh no, you're the trilateration expert between us. Let's tell
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: everybody what happened.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Well, first of all, let me explain that try lateration
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: is not the same as triangulation, because we're not talking
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: about ankles. We're talking about distance. And somewhere in there
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: is the key of where I was screwing up. Because
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: you had sent me this and very elegant, sort of
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: simple to explain.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: Way, Hey, this is lot, this is Marshall.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'll have Marshall brain. It was explained about, you know,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: like a Venn diagram, three circles overlapping and then the
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: point where they overlap is where you are. We'll explain
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: that more thoroughly. But I was just drawing three random circles,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, three random circles don't always intersect it
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: a point, right, Like they might overlap in an area,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: and so the center of that area maybe is what
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: we're talking about. But then I realize you can't just
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: draw three random circles and expect them to have a
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: tangent point because they don't always. Right in the case
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: of GPS, I guess it's just a very exact measurement
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: from one place to another, and in that case they
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: will intersect.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Right, Okay, Okay, So I think you should also tell
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: everybody that when you sent me a picture of your
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: three circles with.
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: The like the part where they overlap, they all overlap.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: You would put a point in there re morote bingo
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: with an exclamation point.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: You're like, case, I.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Thought I really figured out something here.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: I think you may have discovered something else that we're
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: not aware of yet, So I don't.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Someone will tell us just put it to this.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: No, I think like you might have just intended like
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: a new way of calculating things.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: No, I'm sure there's a name for it, and some
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: science person's gonna say, oh, chuck, that's just blank.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: I wish they would because I don't know either. But
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: I like, it's off to you because man, I can't
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: tell you how many circles. I guess you probably drew
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: just trying to get this to work. And I don't
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: blame you. I was smart and was like, there's madness there.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to try to understand this as best
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: I can. I'm not going to try it myself.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: I got a freaking compass at one point because you
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: were like, it's because the circles are willy nilly, and
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: I was like, okay, I'll draw them perfect.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: Okay, So well, let's talk about trilateration because in theory,
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: I guess it's very simple. And the way that Marshall
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: described it was, let's say you're lost. You're in the
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: United States, and you ask somebody where you are, and
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: that person says you are six hundred and twenty five
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: miles from Boise, Idaho.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: And you say, thanks a lot. That doesn't tell me much, right.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: You actually push them down as they're walking away.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: After you get away, you're chased by the police, but
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: you make it down an alley and hide behind some
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: garbage cans as they pass by. You have a good idea,
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: you go buy a man and you spread out your map.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: Maybe you buy a compass as well, I'll a chuck,
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: and you draw a circle around Boise, Idaho, using Boise
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: as the center point that is six hundred and twenty
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: five miles in diameter, or at least represents that by scale, right,
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: And you're like, Okay, I am somewhere on this circle
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: that has a diameter of six hundred and twenty five
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: miles around Boise. Kind of helpful, it's a little bit
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: narrowed it down, but I need more information. So you
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: go find somebody else and you say, hey, do you
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: know where I am?
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Is this where I could come in?
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah?
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Hey, well I'm not going to tell you that, but
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: how about this. You're six hundred and ninety miles from Minneapolis.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: Okay, So that's great.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: At least they didn't repeat the Boise thing, right, because
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: if they said that, you'd just be like, man, that
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: didn't help it all. But now you know where you
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: are from Minneapolis, and you can do the same thing
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: with Minneapolis using that as the center point of a circle.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: You draw one a circle with a radius of six
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: hundred ninety miles around Minneapolis. Now you're really close because
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: what you'll find is the circle around Boise and the
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: circle around Minneapolis.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: They overlap, right, Yeah, you get little football in the middle.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a ven diagram. And if you look
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: at a ven diagram where those two circles overlap, there's
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: two points where they intersect, right where they cross each other.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: Those lines cross each other. And because you are six
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: hundred and twenty five miles from Boise and six hundred
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: and ninety miles from Minneapolis, you are somewhere where those
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: two circles overlap. With those two points, one of those
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: is right, the other is off by hundreds of miles,
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: So you still need to narrow.
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: It down right.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: So you're like, is there one more wiseacre in this
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: town who will tell me? By not telling me where
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: I am where I am right? And so you go
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: into this final the only other gas station in town. Guys,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Someone told me how six to twenty five from Boise
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: didn't help much. Someone else said six' ninety from Minneapolis.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Please just tell me where I am. They said, oh, oh,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: you're six hundred and fifty miles from Tucson val.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Do you just trash the place at this point.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you just lay waste. You find the nearest broom,
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: and you just start knocking everything.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: Off the shelves. My collector beer steins. All right.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: So now you got three circles though, And this is
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: where I got super tripped up because I was like,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: oh cool, let me draw this out. And I drew
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: it out, and I was like, these don't intersect it
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: at a common point, right, But if you're using exact
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: GPS calculations distance from a satellite or in this case,
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: points on a map, then that's that's you know exactly
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: where you are because it's going to intersect it at
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: only one place. At three points.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all three circles will overlap with one another, so
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: they intersected two different points. Each circle intersects with the
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: other at two points, but all three of them will
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: only intersect it one single point. And you have just
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: trilater related your position. Now you know where you are.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: And Marshall said, this is Denver, by the way, that's
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: where you are is Denver. Because I think if we
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: hadn't have included that, some people would have been really upset.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you knew you're in Denver because you can't
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: catch your breath and it smells like weed everywhere.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: That's right, And now you have to figure out what
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: to do even though you're dead.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and liberals and conservatives are smashed together and everyone's like,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: what kind of state is this?
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: It is? It's crazy like that, isn't it?
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I love Colorado. I think it's interesting that way.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: It's like all of these shows we've done in Denver.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: It's like a wedding, like split.
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: Down the middle.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: The people on one half of the room all have
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: guns out. The other half are all playing Hackey Sack. Right,
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: it's an interesting place.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: And one guy goes, hey, you ever try to shoot
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: a Hackey sack? Admit air watch this kind of fun.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, So let's trilater elation. That's two D trilater relation,
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: because what you've done has found your If you were
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: a flat point and the Earth was flat, which it's not,
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: that's all we would need to do. But the Earth
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: is a sphere. It's round, and so what GPS uses
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: is three D trilateralation, which rather than flat circles, it
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: uses spheres. And when the three or four usually could
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: use four satellites where those spheares all intersect the one
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: point that's where you are, because now you not only
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: know where you are longitudinal latitudinally, you also know where
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: you are at altitudinally.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: My friend, I hate to break it to you, but
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: you did the old Josh Clark insert an extra consonant.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: Thing, trilateralizational.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: It's trilateration, I know.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: And I've been wanting to say trilateralization for so long.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Well you aren't even taking it out. You were saying trilateralation.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: Okay, all right, So.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Now that's three ways.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: So trilateration, trilateration.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: That sounds made up like space force, I know, all right,
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: trilateration isation, yeah, elie station.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: So that's it.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: That's how you figure out well, I should say, that's
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: how your GPS receiver figures that out. It has it
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: knows where those three or four satellites are because they
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: tell it where they are. It figures out the distance
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: between you the in your receiver for each of those four,
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: and it tells it, oh, here's where I am, because
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: here's where all those that information intersects.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Right, And I think you mentioned the spheres while I
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: was obsessing about the extra l right, Yes.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: I did, Okay, And there's a really pretty image out there.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: I can't remember what website I found it on, but
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: if you search like how GPS trilateration works, it will
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: come up, I'm sure. But it shows like the four
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: spheres created by the satellites and they're all in four
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: different primary colors and it's so pretty.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: I saw it.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I understand that there are three primary colors, but
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: whatever the fourth one is, it's basically a primary color
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: as far as I'm concerned.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, should we take our second break?
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: I think so, Chuck. We earned it with that trilater
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: relation trilateration explanation exploration.
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: We'll be right back, okay, Chuck.
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: So there's one other thing, kind of like a little sidebar.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: I felt what we should talk about. If you've ever
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: tried to figure out where you are and your phone's like,
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: turn on Wi Fi and we'll get a better reading.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: I've never understood that until you explained it.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: So what it's trying to do is it's prompting you
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: to turn on your Wi Fi based positioning system. And
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: that is based essentially on the same thing that doctor
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: getting was getting at, which is you can use information
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: from different sources in comparing those sources to figuring out
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: where you are, and so rather than using satellite information
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: this it bases it on the known strengths of different
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: Wi Fi network towers, antenna and so, depending on how
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: strong one signal is compared to where you are, in
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: addition to comparing it to another signal, and another signal
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: and another signal. It's like, oh, you're you're in Denver, right.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: You don't know how dumb I am.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: I don't think you're dumb, and I know you're not dumb,
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: but let's hear what.
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: You have to say.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: I say this out loud at the risk of losing
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: listeners that might be new listeners are like, I can't
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: listen to this guy.
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: Oh this is really dumb.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Up until said yesterday, whenever my phone or my car
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: or something said that, you know, turn on your Wi
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: Fi to improve accuracy of your location. It's like, I'm
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: not near my house. What is this thing asking me
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: to do. I'm not near my WiFi.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: You weren't like, you're not the boss of me.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: No, I was just that's pretty dumb.
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: It's not everywhere. It doesn't have to be your house
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Wi Fi.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: So yes, that's one way it does it, and it
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: does it in your house too, but that's because your
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: router is a big blabbermouth and tells everybody where you are.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: So I not get it.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: It's like they don't know I'm not near my house.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Why is it asking me to turn on my wife?
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: So stupid?
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Oh boy? All right, So, speaking of the opposite of stupid,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: your smartphone? How accurate are those things? When GPS first
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: started they said, and this was again like ninety five ish,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: they said it's gonna be accurate to within one hundred
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: meters ninety five percent of the time, which at the
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: time was like, hey, that's not bad at all, Like
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: that gets me in the in the neighborhood of where
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: I want to be. They've gotten much much better now
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: they say two meters within two meters of six point
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: six feet, but it's really closer than that. They did
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: some measuring in twenty twenty one and the global average
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: across all users was about just a little more than
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: two feet. And you know again that that depends on
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of things. If it's got tall buildings in
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: the way, space, weather, atmospheric conditions, Apparently, like a really
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: dense like jungle canopy or a thick shrubbery can actually
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: degrade the accuracy of that signal.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you got a hickory tree. Well ts for you
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: because GPS isn't gonna work.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: Is that a thick tree, thick canopy?
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: I would, Yeah, I think so. I mean it's a
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: known shade tree.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: No a, oh, it's a uh, it's a it's a KST.
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Put it on the If it could broadcast information, it
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: would also be a known point.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: So there's a there's a couple of other things that
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: can mess with your GPS signal coming from the satellite
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: because remember I said that they navigate celestially. Well, if
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: the Earth's position itself relative to the satellite, satellite can
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: know where it is. But if the Earth shifts a
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: little bit, like the magnetic core slashes around just enough
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: that the Earth kind of wobbles a little bit, or
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: if the c currents are particularly strong, it can like
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: slow the rotation of the Earth. Those things, I mean,
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: just the tiniest, tiniest changes can alter the accuracy of
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: the signal that it gets. But that's just the signal
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: that they're like, we're going to get you within six feet.
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: They don't guarantee.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Your receiver, and your receiver typically adds a little bit
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: of inaccuracy. I think five meters is usually what you
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: what you're going to get from like your average dumb gpsceiver.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I get. I mean, it's amazing we're here
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: because if you're like GPS to just say this is good.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: If you're five feet away from the restaurant or your
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: friend and you don't see them, that's on you.
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, just look up.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: So we're getting better though, you know.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: Now, No, it's getting I mean I imagine they're going
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: to have it. I think March twenty four. If you're
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: an ideal, if it's clear skies, you're out in the
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: middle of the desert or something, they can they can
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: be as accurate as thirty centimeters.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: Which is five double A batteries end to end. We're
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: going to get even better than that, though, chuck, because
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: right now there's some really good GPS antenna that are
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: starting to pop up in smartphones, and those those are
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: dual band, dual band, dual frequency receivers. One of those
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: two and that uses the L one, the standard civilian
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: GPS band that has been around since the beginning but
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: has gotten better over time. And it also uses the
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: new wiz Bang L five and this is like the
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: next generation of GPS. It's not widespread enough yet. There's
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: not enough satellites out there that are L five for
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: an intended to just rely on that. But when you
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: put L one and L five together, it gets pretty good.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: The thing is is you might ask yourself, like, why
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: would you need to get like within centimeters of the
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: restaurant that you're going to. It doesn't make sense. Well,
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: some people use GPS for more than just finding the
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: restaurant that they're going to.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. And your parents and grandparents might be
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: using their garments still, so just have patients with them.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: I think that garment was actually one of the original
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: GPS devices.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's still being used in certain cars in
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: certain people's families.
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: Are those things even supported any longer?
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Man. It's pretty funny though. It's like
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: looking at at a MySpace web page or something when
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: you look at it. Oh, Ben, it is, But yes,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: I took us off task. You were talking about other
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: things that this is used for a lot we talked
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: about landing airplanes. That's pretty important. Accuracy is pretty important,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: maybe not down to the centimeter, but if you want
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: to track soil moisture, you can do that via GPS.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: If you want to measure the size of a glacier
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: and whether it's shrinking or moving, you can do that
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: very very accurately, and not just sort of ballpark things anymore.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Migration patterns. If you want to see where that school
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: of whales is headed and how they know when they
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: get there, and how far there are from where they started,
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: you can do that with great accuracy.
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: Also things use it to basically stay in position, like
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: modern agricultural equipment like harvesters, they go in a straight
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: line by themselves thanks to really precise GPS. Same as
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: self driving cars. Oh sure, yeah. Like apparently it's just
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: grown so ubiquitous and so reliable that contractors use it,
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: like like digital blueprints will have GPS coordinates for like
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: a nail or an electrical outlet or something like that,
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: so you can know exactly where that thing's gonna go,
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: Which I mean that's got to cut down on construction
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: costs and time dramatically.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought the thing on tunneling was kind of cool.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: I never really thought about that. But if you're tunneling
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: through two sides of a mountain to ideally meet in
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: the middle and have a one long tunnel, that's not
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: one tunnel with a little zigzag in the middle because
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: they were off by a little bit. You can do
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: that down to the centimeter, you know, or thirty centimeters rather.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a tunnel that goes through a mountain with like
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: a hairpin turn.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: In the middle area.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: That sounds great.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: And if you put all this stuff together, all these
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: different uses for GPS, which again the American taxpayers give
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: to the world for free, it generated I think in
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty ninety four billion dollars worth of stuff, right,
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: all of that receivers that were sold, all the tunnels
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: that were drilled correctly, Like, all that stuff came to
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: generate ninety four billion dollars and in the next five
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: years it's expected to hit almost three hundred billion. So
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: it's a big deal. Like, we rely on GPS a lot,
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: and so because we rely on something this much, and
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: because like you said, we don't have a backup of
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: GPS in particular.
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: It can be pretty delicate.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: I guess you could say to put it delicately, because
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: it can get screwed up pretty bad, pretty easily, and
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: in fact, on a very local level, you or I
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: could go screw up somebody's GPS for fun anytime we wanted.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a little disconcerting to learn. I thought like, oh, well,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: surely this thing has just some weird, robust government shield
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: that can be hacked, right, And that's not true. In
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: fact the military, I mean it's part of military, just
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: regular operations to jam GPS for another country, they're planes
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: and drones, or to spoof it is when you send it,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: you know, jam it and make it nonoperable. But you're like, oh,
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: here's some fake coordinates that you're going to think are real, right, Yeah,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: like they do that all the time. Countries do that
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: to us all the time. But like you said, any
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: schmow that's got three hundred bucks can get a software
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: defined radio and figure out how to use it and
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: jam somebody's GPS. And so your neighbor's walking around wondering
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: where that restaurant is.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: I know, they're like a Friday's, right, I want to
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: go to Bennigan's. Yeah, so you were talking about spoofing. Apparently,
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: Iran in twenty nineteen, just for kicks, spoofed British cargo
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: ships GPS and told that it was in international waters
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: when really they had drifted into Iranian waters. So Ron
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: was like, Oh, you're our ship now, and you're our
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: crew now. And they held the whole thing for ten
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: weeks just by being jerks.
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: Apparently.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: I can't figure out what the point would have been
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: for that, other than to flex.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a little odd. I'm sure somebody knows,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: or maybe it was a flex.
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and the kids still say that, right, they flex.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Oh you're asking the wrong guy.
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: Okay, well let's say they do.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, Ruby says things I don't understand, and I
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: just don't even ask.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: I know, I know my niece Mila was schooling a
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: son slang and I'm like, there's no context for that.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: It doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I'm trying to think
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: of one example. I know I'm gonna get wrong.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: No cap no, something like skibbity Oh uh, Skibbity's toilet.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: Yes, and I.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: Understand, yes it's a web video or whatever, but the
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: videos itself make no sense whatsoever too.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Hey, you know all we did in the eighties
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: was short and awesome, to OUs and unass.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: That our big contribution that was.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: As sophisticated as we got. I don't know about the
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: skippity stuff.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't mean to complain. I mean the
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: generation like builds on the mask, comes up with its
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: own stuff. I'm happy about that. I just don't understand it.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Well, that's the point I think.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: You know, I think you're right, actually, and I'm kind
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: of hurt by that.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's you know, kids and teens come up
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: with their own language, so adults don't know what the
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: heck we're talking about, and they can laugh behind our backs. Yeah,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: we did the same thing.
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: I didn't.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: We said that's very unaus and our parents were like,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: what are they saying?
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: I can't make heads or tails of it.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: Airlines can get jammed. There was a study that found
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: intentional jamming of airlines was a problem in three regions
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: only three. More than seventy thousand flights were jammed between
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: February and August of twenty twenty two. And that you know,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: once you jam it up, you can't reset it. Like
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: that plain Lands and then the unjamming happens.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to turn the whole thing off and
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: reset everything. You can't just reset the GPS antenna.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: And they need to work out all that stuff, don't
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: you think.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: They definitely do. But something about those flights being jammed,
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: Those are civilian flights being jammed by bad actors and
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: sometimes governments and militaries. So what you're trying to do,
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: essentially is to crash a plane full of people.
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: Like that's your shot. It's not like a really.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: Dedicated shot at it, but that's pretty much the goal
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: of doing that to an airliner.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you have no idea how much I put
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: my hand over my mouth when you said bad actors,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: and I almost shouted out a few names of actors.
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: Who are you gonna name?
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: No, I can't because you know, you never know people
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: might listen to this. Where I'm sensitive to hurting people's
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: feelings now here in my fifties.
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: I think that's great, man, Well text me some names
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: then I will. Okay.
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: There's another thing that spoofing, I believe I think they
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: spoofing for it is to cheat at games like Pokemon Go. Yeah,
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: where you can fake where your own GPS coordinates are
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: to say like, oh, I'm at the I don't know
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Pikachu's layer or something like that. So give me the
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: egg that Pikachu's guarding, which I can turn into like
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: some ski ball tickets and get a comb.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: Or skibbity toilet. I hope that doesn't mean something dirty, right.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: It means nothing from what Mela's told me, Like, it's
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: just basically a thing you say. Okay, I hope I'm
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: not outing Mela is uncool though.
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm just glad that you have someone in your
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: life that's a down with that kind of stuff, because
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: it's pretty vital these days.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: I don't know if it's vital that I know that
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: skibbity toilet exists.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: But maybe not that. But Skibbity toilet has its own
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Wikipedia entry.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: Oh, I believe it. Have you seen the videos though
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: that it's based on.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: No, But I see a screenshot now and their MESMERI
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: it doesn't pull me in.
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: You should watch a second or two of it. You
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: don't need to watch much. You get the gist of
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: it really quick. But it's like like you'll find that
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: your mouth is open, not in awe, but just because
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: you're like you're glazed over right. So, like you said,
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: the United States is not unaware of the vulnerability. That
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: was what I was saying. It was in a delicate position.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: It's vulnerable. It's a very vulnerable system, and you know,
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: like globally and also locally. So they are taking steps
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: to update it and that is going to come in
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: the form of adding more and more L five satellites.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: But for now, if you want to be a little shocked,
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: taking into consideration how dependent we are a GPS, the
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: average age of a GPS, specifically the United States is
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: Global Positioning System satellites is thirteen years.
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that is real the old for a satellite.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: But Chuck tell him how old the oldest satellite in
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: the constellation of GPS satellites is.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: Uh, that would be twenty seven years old, is that right?
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Yes, that thing has circopania. Oh I guess that's
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: it for GPS. Huh.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. This was more fun than I thought. And you
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: know what, I'm glad we had some fun and had
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: some laughs because it feels like a lighter tribute for Marshall. Yeah,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: something else for sure.
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: Hopefully we made you proud, Marshall, and thanks again for everything.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: And since we said thanks to Marshall Brain and I
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: think it's time for listener mail.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this forget Rice. How about some peace
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: and love? Hey, guys, A big fan of the show.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: I love listening when training for marathons and loved the
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: recent marathon episodes. While listening to the history of refrigeration,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: the Rice method for managing a musculo skeletal injury was mentioned.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Did you know guys that in twenty twenty the medical
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: world throughout the Rice method and transitioned it to Peace
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: and Love.
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: I don't even remember mentioning that, let alone knowing that
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: did bit.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: I think I probably did so for peace and love.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: We have protection avoid activities at cospain for two to
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: three days elevation. The A is avoid anti inflammatories because
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: apparently that reduces healing, and you should avoid ice too.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: I have heard that that anti inflammatories are actually not
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: very good for you.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: I just I never take those anyway, because I don't
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: really need to.
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: But yeah, lucky, some people really need them.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: I know. I'm sure where I was a so down
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: to c compression e education, which is avoid a necessary
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: passive treatments. Your body will heal, so I guess educate yourself.
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: They were like, you really need an e here.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah basically, and then we and is not spelled out,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: but love is load. Let your pain be your guide, optimism,
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: condition your brain, vascularization, pain free cardio and exercise, restore
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: mobility through active approach. And Sarah says this is a lot.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: I hope people can learn to avoid ice and anti
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: inflammatories for optimal recovery. But it's having a hard time
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: catching on.
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: And I imagine why.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: That is from Sarah pt bird Nerd Hollingsworth and she's
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: a bird nerd and loves our bird episodes.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: That's awesome. Thanks Sarah, way to spread the good word.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: I know there's a lot of good advice and information
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: in there, but it's just going to take months of
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: digesting that information to try to figure out those acronyms. Yeah,
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: if you want to be like Sarah and put something
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: on our radar that we weren't aware of before, we
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: love that kind of thing. You can send it to
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: us via email like Sarah did to Stuff Podcasts at
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: more podcasts myheart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.