Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / How to be a supervillain with physics.

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How to be a supervillain with physics. · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Hey, do you ever think about your legacy? I mean, like,
0:12
Speaker 1: what am I going to be remembered for? Yeah, you
0:14
Speaker 1: know what's going to be the first line of your obituary? Well,
0:17
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be dead, so I don't think I'll be
0:19
Speaker 1: too worried about it. But I just hope it's not
0:21
Speaker 1: something like slipped on a banana Revenge of the Bananas.
0:25
Speaker 1: That might be like comically and karmically appropriate. Yeah, it's
0:28
Speaker 1: a super subject. But what about you? What do you
0:31
Speaker 1: want to be remembered for. I don't know. I guess
0:33
Speaker 1: it would be nice to not be remembered for, like
0:35
Speaker 1: destroying the planet and exterminating the human race. It seems
0:39
Speaker 1: like a low bar there. But your physicist, you work
0:44
Speaker 1: at a giant energy particle collider. I think you might
0:47
Speaker 1: be in the wrong field there. That's why I worry
0:49
Speaker 1: about it. Well, as long as you're not the one
0:51
Speaker 1: pressing the button, you're probably okay. Right, that person is
0:53
Speaker 1: going down in history or lack of history, because we'll
0:56
Speaker 1: all be gone. What's that? I didn't hear you as
0:58
Speaker 1: pressing this big red button. Don't do it. Hi am
1:16
Speaker 1: or handmade cartoonists and the creator of PhD Comics. Hi.
1:19
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I actually have
1:21
Speaker 1: pressed the big red button in the control room at
1:24
Speaker 1: certain kidding. They have one. They have one, absolutely. Is
1:27
Speaker 1: it like a toy one or for real, like the
1:29
Speaker 1: one that pulls out all the stops or does all
1:32
Speaker 1: the stops? You know, they have a real one. They
1:34
Speaker 1: also actually have a decoy for visitors so they can
1:37
Speaker 1: come in and press the button and see all the
1:39
Speaker 1: lights go on. That one doesn't actually do anything, but
1:41
Speaker 1: there is one in the center of the control room
1:43
Speaker 1: which shuts everything down in case of emergency. Wow, and
1:46
Speaker 1: you've pressed that one. I have pressed that one. I
1:48
Speaker 1: was on shift something like twelve thirteen years ago when
1:51
Speaker 1: the LHC had that big accident and there was a
1:54
Speaker 1: short and liquid helium spread everywhere and we had to
1:56
Speaker 1: shut everything down urgently. Well that's exciting. Does that mean
1:59
Speaker 1: you say if the universe? I don't think I saved anything,
2:05
Speaker 1: but I did get to press the button, so good
2:07
Speaker 1: points for me. Maybe you'll get a Nobel Prize for
2:11
Speaker 1: saving humanity. I just want to not end humanity. Well,
2:14
Speaker 1: welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explained the Universe
2:17
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio, in which we take
2:20
Speaker 1: you to the end of human thought and the forefront
2:23
Speaker 1: of human ignorance and ask questions about the nature of
2:26
Speaker 1: this crazy universe. We try to peel back a layer
2:29
Speaker 1: of reality and show you what's underneath. We try to
2:33
Speaker 1: ask questions that if we knew the answers, would change
2:36
Speaker 1: the way we felt about being human and about living
2:39
Speaker 1: in this world. We don't shy away from all of it,
2:42
Speaker 1: and we try to explain all of it to you. Yeah,
2:44
Speaker 1: because it is a fascinating world, full of interesting and
2:47
Speaker 1: awesome things to discover, and a lot of interesting things
2:50
Speaker 1: that could potentially destroy the world. I mean, that's kind
2:52
Speaker 1: of the nature of physics. There's a lot of power there.
2:54
Speaker 1: There is a lot of power. There are fearsome forces
2:57
Speaker 1: that are in delicate balances. You know, our son, for example,
3:01
Speaker 1: is squeezed together by gravity and constantly exploded by fusion bombs.
3:05
Speaker 1: And it's amazing how stable our situation is given how
3:08
Speaker 1: fragile it seems. Yeah, it is sort of a weird
3:11
Speaker 1: sort of mixture in the universe of feeling like things
3:15
Speaker 1: could end at any moment, but also it's sort of
3:17
Speaker 1: being amazed that we're still here. Yeah, it's sort of
3:19
Speaker 1: like we're balancing on a knife edge, and we've been
3:21
Speaker 1: doing it for thousands and thousands of years, billions of years,
3:25
Speaker 1: billions of years if you include all the microbs. Why
3:28
Speaker 1: hasn't you know, just a puff of wind come to
3:30
Speaker 1: knock us off in one direction? Why haven't we been
3:33
Speaker 1: sterilized by a nearby supernova? Yeah, it seems like physics
3:36
Speaker 1: has a lot of ways in which things can end.
3:39
Speaker 1: It's almost like a handbook for future supervillain. The more
3:43
Speaker 1: you understand the universe, the better you are manipulating it
3:47
Speaker 1: and bending it to your will. So in some sense,
3:50
Speaker 1: the task of physics is to reveal those handles, is
3:53
Speaker 1: to figure out, like, huh, how does this whole machine
3:55
Speaker 1: actually work? Because if you know how it works, you
3:57
Speaker 1: might be able to twist the knobs to get your
4:00
Speaker 1: particular desired outcome. Yeah, and you know, obviously, and we
4:03
Speaker 1: want to do good things with physics, and people have
4:05
Speaker 1: done amazing and wonderful things with physics and understanding of
4:08
Speaker 1: the universe. But you might also do some other things
4:12
Speaker 1: with what you learn about the universe. You might and
4:14
Speaker 1: we often get questions from listeners. That makes me go,
4:18
Speaker 1: why is this person asking this question? Why are they
4:22
Speaker 1: interested in building a giant laser that they could put
4:25
Speaker 1: in space and point at the Earth. Why is their
4:27
Speaker 1: email address double encrypted? And why can't you find any
4:31
Speaker 1: trace of this person on the Internet. That's right at
4:33
Speaker 1: underground Volcano Layer dot com effort that has good reviews
4:37
Speaker 1: on yon. But yeah, it's a question we often get
4:40
Speaker 1: on the inbox. People seem to be very curious about
4:43
Speaker 1: different ways that you can end the world using physics.
4:46
Speaker 1: That's right, and personally, while I'm very interested in physics
4:50
Speaker 1: and revealing the nature of reality, I chose particle physics
4:53
Speaker 1: because I thought it would have basically no immediate applications,
4:57
Speaker 1: meaning I'm not equipping supervillain or master criminals or dictators
5:03
Speaker 1: with technologies that they can use to terrorize or slaughter
5:06
Speaker 1: innocent civilians. That's one reason I got into particle physics.
5:09
Speaker 1: So that makes me feel two ways about sharing these
5:12
Speaker 1: secrets of the universe with everybody out there. I thought
5:15
Speaker 1: your story was going to take a different twist. I
5:16
Speaker 1: thought you were going to go with the butt It's
5:18
Speaker 1: like I started off wanting to do good for humanity,
5:21
Speaker 1: but then I learned more about particle physics. That's the
5:25
Speaker 1: character arc for Daniel Whites and the comic character. That's
5:29
Speaker 1: the supervillain origin story. Here, we're living it right now. Well,
5:32
Speaker 1: we're still in the preamble because I'm not a supervillain yet,
5:35
Speaker 1: so this is still all lead up to my supervillain
5:37
Speaker 1: origin story. I'm just creating other supervillains by sharing physics.
5:41
Speaker 1: I see, you're like in that movie trilogy where you're
5:43
Speaker 1: the good guy in the first movie, but then you
5:45
Speaker 1: turn into the bad guy in the second movie. Hey,
5:47
Speaker 1: you know, every bad guy thinks that they're the good guy. Okay,
5:50
Speaker 1: so maybe we're all just a bad guy. But we
5:53
Speaker 1: are here to help, or at least we try to
5:54
Speaker 1: help here on the podcast, answering people's questions, and so
5:57
Speaker 1: today we are going to take a step at some
5:59
Speaker 1: of these in thing suggestions from readers about ways in
6:03
Speaker 1: which you might use physics for the wrong ends. So
6:07
Speaker 1: to the end the podcast, we'll be tackling how do
6:14
Speaker 1: it be a super villain using physics. I can't tell
6:17
Speaker 1: if everybody out there just pulled out pencil and paper
6:19
Speaker 1: because they want to take notes, or if they're now
6:22
Speaker 1: writing a furious, angry email. Why would you even do that?
6:26
Speaker 1: We might get canceled from the internet. We also might
6:29
Speaker 1: get canceled because some supervillain out there might use this
6:31
Speaker 1: information to destroy us, literally canceled the universe. But yeah,
6:36
Speaker 1: I guess this is sort of like supervillain consulting our Like,
6:39
Speaker 1: if you ever wanted to be a super villain, here
6:41
Speaker 1: are ways in which you might want to approach this,
6:45
Speaker 1: And you can look at it the other way. You
6:46
Speaker 1: could say, Hey, supervillains out there, please send us a
6:50
Speaker 1: detailed speck of your plans to destroy the world so
6:53
Speaker 1: we can quote unquote help you with it. C c
6:56
Speaker 1: FBI dot gov. Yeah, maybe there are superheroes listening to this,
7:00
Speaker 1: in which case you know they can start making you know, counterplants.
7:04
Speaker 1: All right, Well, maybe what we should do when we
7:06
Speaker 1: answer each question is we should also give tips to
7:09
Speaker 1: the superheroes as to how to thwart this plan and
7:13
Speaker 1: then sit back and enjoy with a bag of popcorn.
7:17
Speaker 1: Better than a Marvel movie, watch this happen in real life. Well,
7:20
Speaker 1: if this is actually a thing, I mean, Daniel, you
7:22
Speaker 1: do get these suggestions and questions on Twitter and over email, right,
7:26
Speaker 1: I do, absolutely and usually They don't explicitly say, by
7:30
Speaker 1: the way, I'm a supervillain. They just sort of asked
7:32
Speaker 1: the kind of question of supervillain might But last week
7:35
Speaker 1: I did get an email from a listener named Frederick
7:38
Speaker 1: who said he wanted to know if it was possible
7:41
Speaker 1: to be a supervillain and destroy the world, and he
7:43
Speaker 1: had an idea he wanted to run by me. Oh wow,
7:46
Speaker 1: so he's self identified as a super or was he
7:48
Speaker 1: asking for a friend quote unquote, No, he's self identified,
7:52
Speaker 1: though I can't tell if it's tongue in cheek or
7:54
Speaker 1: if he's real and it's a tongue in cheek in
7:57
Speaker 1: cheek or something. Oh boy, did he end the know
8:00
Speaker 1: with ba ha ha ha. That might be a telltale sign.
8:03
Speaker 1: He does have a French accent, so I don't know
8:05
Speaker 1: what that means. Right the Bond movies they always have
8:08
Speaker 1: a European xing. Well, yeah, so Frederick sort of started
8:11
Speaker 1: this off, and then you went out there and you
8:13
Speaker 1: asked people to send you more ideas for how to
8:16
Speaker 1: be a supervillain. Yeah. I was wondering how many aspiring
8:18
Speaker 1: supervillains were out there with burning physics questions that they
8:21
Speaker 1: hadn't asked us, So I thought, let's hear all of them.
8:24
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's start with Frederick's question, And here's
8:27
Speaker 1: a question about the sun. Hello, Danyan, Hey, that's Frederick
8:30
Speaker 1: from Friends. I wanted to know what would be the
8:34
Speaker 1: best way to extinguish or turn of the sun. No,
8:38
Speaker 1: but I have any immediate pends. Thanks. Wow, he really
8:41
Speaker 1: does sound like a supervillain. Hey, but he says he
8:44
Speaker 1: doesn't have any immediate plans, so we shouldn't worry, right, Yes,
8:48
Speaker 1: Mr Bond, I have all the time in the world exactly.
8:51
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just planning to turn off the sun
8:53
Speaker 1: next year or the year after, so don't worry. Yeah,
8:56
Speaker 1: you can get back to me tomorrow or the day after.
8:59
Speaker 1: I still have to to implement my plan, that's right.
9:03
Speaker 1: That does give us time to give some tips to
9:05
Speaker 1: the superheroes out there working furiously to make sure Frederick's
9:08
Speaker 1: ambitions are not realized. Frederick has an interesting question. I
9:11
Speaker 1: guess if you are a supervillain and you wanted to
9:13
Speaker 1: take out the sun, how would you do it? Like,
9:15
Speaker 1: can you extinguish it like you said, or turn it
9:17
Speaker 1: off somehow? Because that would be a kind of catastrophic
9:20
Speaker 1: for humanity in the Earth. It would definitely be bad news.
9:24
Speaker 1: Almost all of the energy that we use here on
9:26
Speaker 1: Earth comes from the Sun, either directly like solar panels,
9:30
Speaker 1: or indirectly because plants eat it, and then we eat
9:33
Speaker 1: the plants or use their remnants millions of years later
9:36
Speaker 1: as fossil fuels. It's pretty essential. Without the Sun, our
9:40
Speaker 1: lives would definitely change a lot. So extinguishing the Sun
9:44
Speaker 1: would be pretty effective. Thanks. We get dark pretty quick exactly,
9:48
Speaker 1: but would die immediately. I mean, like if you just
9:51
Speaker 1: turn off the Sun, all the mass would presumably still
9:54
Speaker 1: be there, so our orbits would still be the same.
9:56
Speaker 1: I mean, it would just be kind of a permanent night.
9:58
Speaker 1: And then couldn't we use like energy from the core
10:01
Speaker 1: of the Earth, Like, wouldn't the Earth stay kind of
10:03
Speaker 1: nice and warm at least at the center for a while? Well,
10:06
Speaker 1: it depends on how you extinguish the Sun. We'll get
10:08
Speaker 1: into it. But some of these schemes involved adding a
10:11
Speaker 1: lot more mass to the Sun, which would definitely change
10:13
Speaker 1: the Earth's orbit. But if you could somehow just like
10:17
Speaker 1: flick the Sun off so it just went dark and
10:19
Speaker 1: then we lived in a cold Earth, then yeah, It's
10:22
Speaker 1: not true that we would all instantly die, right, but
10:24
Speaker 1: we would just lose all sorts of external energy. And
10:27
Speaker 1: so while you couldn't get energy from the core of
10:29
Speaker 1: the earth, because there's a lot of energy down there,
10:31
Speaker 1: you need to use all of that to grow food
10:33
Speaker 1: and you know, clean water and all that kind of stuff.
10:36
Speaker 1: So it would be a huge endeavor. We might not
10:39
Speaker 1: all die, but I think most of us would definitely die.
10:42
Speaker 1: I see, we would all look a little paler, probably,
10:44
Speaker 1: and we would get cabin fever and we get grumpy,
10:47
Speaker 1: and we'd be like arguing with each other. We'd be
10:49
Speaker 1: unhappy at least. That's probably the least of our But yeah,
10:52
Speaker 1: I guess this question is like, how would you do it?
10:54
Speaker 1: How would you turn off the sun or, as you said,
10:56
Speaker 1: extinguish it? Like can you just pour up a bunch
10:58
Speaker 1: of water in it to die it? Right, that's a
11:00
Speaker 1: lot of people's first thought. But you know, the sun
11:03
Speaker 1: is not like a fire. It's not just like an
11:05
Speaker 1: enormous fire. Fire is chemical, right, and you're extracting energy
11:10
Speaker 1: from the bonds stored in wood or whatever fuel that is.
11:14
Speaker 1: And the reason water puts that out is because part
11:17
Speaker 1: of that reaction is using oxygen from the air, and
11:19
Speaker 1: the water suffocates the fire and cools it very quickly.
11:22
Speaker 1: But you can't do that with the Sun because the
11:24
Speaker 1: Sun is not fire. The Sun is a huge exploding
11:27
Speaker 1: nuclear bomb. And the nuclear bomb doesn't require any oxygen
11:30
Speaker 1: to go off. And more importantly, if you add water
11:33
Speaker 1: to it, it's just like adding more fuel. This fusion
11:37
Speaker 1: bomb can burn that water. What so like if I well,
11:41
Speaker 1: if I poured some water on the Sun, first of all,
11:43
Speaker 1: it would probably like evaporate, right, would turn into plasma
11:46
Speaker 1: right away, before it even gets the center. It wouldn't
11:49
Speaker 1: stay as water. It would break down into hydrogen and oxygen.
11:52
Speaker 1: And what's hydrogen. Hydrogen is the fuel the sun burns.
11:56
Speaker 1: So it's like adding oil to cooking fire. You're literally
11:59
Speaker 1: adding agen and hydrogen to a hydrogen bomb. Yeah, you
12:02
Speaker 1: want to put out this fire, and you pour curacine
12:04
Speaker 1: on it, Well, lead that didn't work. That's essentially what
12:06
Speaker 1: you'd be doing. And that's true of almost anything you
12:09
Speaker 1: add to the Sun, unless it's too heavy, unless it's
12:13
Speaker 1: got too many protons inside of it. It's too high
12:16
Speaker 1: numbered an element for the Sun to burn, right, Because
12:18
Speaker 1: as a reminder, the Sun works using fusion, which kind
12:21
Speaker 1: of takes two light elements together and build a heavier
12:24
Speaker 1: element that releases energy. That's why the sun is factory
12:27
Speaker 1: for taking lower number elements, elements with fewer protons and
12:30
Speaker 1: the nucleus and producing heavier things or is astronomers say metals,
12:35
Speaker 1: because for astronomy, everything that's not hydrogen or helium is
12:38
Speaker 1: a metal, And so it's turning hydrogen and helium into
12:42
Speaker 1: heavier stuff lithium and carbon and neon and oxygen, and
12:45
Speaker 1: it does that by squeezing them together and then releasing
12:48
Speaker 1: some energy. But that's only true up to about iron.
12:51
Speaker 1: If you squeeze to hydrogen nuclei together, you get helium
12:55
Speaker 1: plus energy. If you squeeze to iron nuclei together, then
12:58
Speaker 1: you get something heavier, but you lose energy. It costs energy,
13:03
Speaker 1: so at that point you start to cool down the sun. Right,
13:06
Speaker 1: It's almost like things that are lighter than iron want
13:08
Speaker 1: to fuse together, or at least it's like a positive reaction,
13:12
Speaker 1: but anything heavier than iron doesn't really want to get together,
13:15
Speaker 1: so you have to put energy in. Well, we have
13:18
Speaker 1: to invite it on the podcast to ask it about
13:20
Speaker 1: like what does it really want man, But energetically, yeah,
13:23
Speaker 1: it's not favorable. If you have a star that has
13:26
Speaker 1: a lot of iron at its core, that iron isn't
13:29
Speaker 1: gonna be able to fuse, or if it does, it's
13:31
Speaker 1: going to be sucking energy away from everything else, so
13:33
Speaker 1: it'll be cooling the star. The whole point is you
13:36
Speaker 1: need a self sustaining reaction. You need to be producing
13:38
Speaker 1: energy to make the next one. And so that's why
13:41
Speaker 1: less than iron is fusion that drives the star forward,
13:44
Speaker 1: and heavier than iron cools the star. Right, It's almost
13:46
Speaker 1: like adding ashes to a fire. It doesn't do anything right.
13:49
Speaker 1: It can't burn anymore, that's right. The ash just sort
13:51
Speaker 1: of gets in the way. So I guess a way
13:53
Speaker 1: to turn out the sun would be just to dump
13:55
Speaker 1: a bunch of iron into the sun, right like it
13:58
Speaker 1: just back up roocoloads of it and pour it in
14:01
Speaker 1: and it would all sort of, I guess, fall to
14:02
Speaker 1: the center of the Sun, and then the Sun would
14:05
Speaker 1: just be unable to sustain the fusion reaction. And more technically,
14:10
Speaker 1: the reaction happens mostly at the core of the Sun,
14:13
Speaker 1: and so if you put a bunch of iron in
14:15
Speaker 1: and it just sort of like floats around the surface
14:17
Speaker 1: for a while. The Sun will just burn away happily.
14:20
Speaker 1: The iron won't fuse, but the helium and the hydrogen
14:23
Speaker 1: inside of it still will. But if that iron gets
14:25
Speaker 1: to the core and it sort of pushes out the hydrogen,
14:28
Speaker 1: then that really will disrupt the burning of the Sun. Interesting,
14:32
Speaker 1: would it be hard for the iron to get to
14:33
Speaker 1: the core because I imagine the center is like exploding
14:36
Speaker 1: and there's like stuff coming out and being stuff being
14:39
Speaker 1: pushed out. Would it be hard for like, if I
14:41
Speaker 1: just sprinkled the Sun with some iron, maybe the iron
14:43
Speaker 1: would just stay on the surface. Well, we don't really
14:45
Speaker 1: understand the convection inside the Sun very well, and that's why,
14:49
Speaker 1: for example, we still don't really understand the Sun's magnetic
14:52
Speaker 1: field and stuff like that. But we do think that
14:54
Speaker 1: the heavier stuff tends to fall to the core. In
14:57
Speaker 1: really large stars, you end up with these shell with
15:00
Speaker 1: the heaviest stuff at the core and the lighter stuff
15:02
Speaker 1: on the outside. And so eventually the iron will fall
15:05
Speaker 1: to the core, but it might not be immediate. All right,
15:07
Speaker 1: So that's one way to turn off the Sun. Just
15:09
Speaker 1: give it some iron supplements. So what are other ways
15:11
Speaker 1: that you can take it out. The other thing is
15:13
Speaker 1: you don't really need iron. It's true that iron can't
15:16
Speaker 1: fuse and release energy, but there are other things that
15:19
Speaker 1: are too heavy for our sun to fuse. Like the
15:22
Speaker 1: really biggest stars confuse things up to iron, but you've
15:26
Speaker 1: got to be really massive for that. Our star is
15:28
Speaker 1: not heavy enough to create the conditions to fuse even
15:30
Speaker 1: lighter things like oxygen or carbon. So you put enough
15:33
Speaker 1: oxygen or carbon at the core, you can actually put
15:37
Speaker 1: out our sun because it's not hot enough to fuse that,
15:40
Speaker 1: even though in theory another star could what you mean,
15:43
Speaker 1: I could put out the sun with ashes, is what
15:45
Speaker 1: you're saying. Anything that it can't fuse would put it out.
15:48
Speaker 1: And our star and not big enough, not hot enough
15:50
Speaker 1: at its core to fuse things like oxygen. Other stars
15:53
Speaker 1: are right, which is how we get heavier elements. But
15:56
Speaker 1: ours is sort of a smaller, colder star compared to
15:58
Speaker 1: the big Poppas and mamas out there. I mean, we
16:00
Speaker 1: just said that if you put water, you're putting oxygen
16:03
Speaker 1: and hydrogen. Wouldn't the oxygen then kind of put out
16:06
Speaker 1: to the sun. Yeah, but you're also adding hydrogen, right,
16:09
Speaker 1: And so you're adding fuel to it, so water is
16:12
Speaker 1: not the way I would do it. I would put
16:13
Speaker 1: pure oxygen, or pure carbon or pure iron. I feel
16:15
Speaker 1: like you're saying that we can just blow on the
16:17
Speaker 1: Sun and it'll go out, like you just go. If
16:20
Speaker 1: you're big enough and you're your puff is big enough,
16:24
Speaker 1: you could put out. It's not that way. Yes, that's true.
16:27
Speaker 1: If you can blow out an entire sun's core of breath,
16:30
Speaker 1: then you could blow out the Sun. There you go,
16:32
Speaker 1: that's the problem for the supervillain. Super lung Man could
16:35
Speaker 1: totally blow out the Sun, and then you can also
16:37
Speaker 1: put out the Sun by taking stuff out of it. Right.
16:40
Speaker 1: The reason the fusion is happening in the Sun is
16:42
Speaker 1: because there's so much gravitational pressure because it has so
16:45
Speaker 1: much mass. And we once talked about how small a
16:48
Speaker 1: star could get, and we figured out it's something like
16:51
Speaker 1: eighty times the mass of Jupiter, whereas our Sun is
16:54
Speaker 1: like a thousand times the mass of Jupiter. And so
16:57
Speaker 1: if you stripped away a lot of the fuel from
16:59
Speaker 1: the Sun, then it wouldn't have enough mass to keep
17:01
Speaker 1: up that gravitational pressure, and it would basically fall apart
17:04
Speaker 1: and the fusion would stop. But you'd have to take
17:06
Speaker 1: away like more than nine of the mass of the
17:09
Speaker 1: Sun and blow it out into space somewhere. Really like,
17:12
Speaker 1: if you took out the Sun would still keep going.
17:15
Speaker 1: The Sun would still keep going. It would be a
17:16
Speaker 1: much smaller, colder star, but it would still keep burning. Well,
17:20
Speaker 1: this one seems harder than blowing on it. How do
17:23
Speaker 1: you take a ninety percent of a star? I guess
17:25
Speaker 1: you blow on it really hard. I don't know. I
17:27
Speaker 1: don't have a plan for that, you know, I see, Well,
17:31
Speaker 1: that doesn't help our supervillain friend Frederick here about that.
17:33
Speaker 1: I'm kind of relieved. Maybe so, I guess what's the
17:36
Speaker 1: lesson for superheroes? Then? If you see anybody accumulating Jupiter
17:40
Speaker 1: side blobs of carbon or iron, be worried. If you
17:44
Speaker 1: see a giant Jupiter size ball of oxygen heading towards
17:47
Speaker 1: the Sun, start digging. I guess it's the lesson. Call
17:51
Speaker 1: somebody and start digging. Do something. I mean, if you're
17:53
Speaker 1: a superhero, don't just watch this happen, you know, at
17:57
Speaker 1: least let us know. All right, Well, let's get into
18:00
Speaker 1: other questions we have for potential supervillains. Here, we want
18:03
Speaker 1: to use physics two spice things up in the universe.
18:06
Speaker 1: We have questions here about freeze raise giant nuclear power ants,
18:11
Speaker 1: so let's get into those. But first let's take a
18:13
Speaker 1: quick break. All right, Welcome back to Daniel and JORGEZ
18:29
Speaker 1: super Villain Academy, where you can learn to destroy the
18:32
Speaker 1: human race for a cheap, cheap rate and conveniently. Daniel,
18:36
Speaker 1: you're already a professor, so you're you know, code name
18:39
Speaker 1: could just be the professor. Is that a super villain
18:43
Speaker 1: or superhero code name? I think it's usually a super villain.
18:47
Speaker 1: That right, You never see a good professor. What about
18:53
Speaker 1: Professor X. He's need to lead the X academy? Oh true, yeah, yeah, yeah,
18:57
Speaker 1: well he has the X. So are you professor D
19:00
Speaker 1: I'm professor w Professor why? All right? We're answering questions
19:06
Speaker 1: here of suggestions people have sent about ways that you
19:09
Speaker 1: can use physics to potentially kind of end things for
19:12
Speaker 1: humanity on bread or by accident. I think these things
19:16
Speaker 1: would be pretty tough to do accidentally, so there's not
19:19
Speaker 1: a lot of mystery about people's intentions if you see
19:21
Speaker 1: them pulling off one of these schemes. All right, Well,
19:23
Speaker 1: our next question is from Brian, and he has a
19:25
Speaker 1: question about ants. Hi, Daniel and Jorge. This is Brian
19:29
Speaker 1: Field calling, longtime listener, first time caller. As you well know,
19:33
Speaker 1: I have developed a race of giant nuclear powered robot
19:36
Speaker 1: ants as part of an unholy technological horror. I plan
19:40
Speaker 1: to unleash and crush my many enemies. During my beta
19:43
Speaker 1: testing phase, I allowed the ants to communicate with each
19:46
Speaker 1: other via wired internet cables to speed up the debugging process.
19:50
Speaker 1: But now that I've upgraded to WiFi six on the ants,
19:53
Speaker 1: they really only function well in swarm mode and tend
19:56
Speaker 1: to get lost when they go on individuals seek and
19:58
Speaker 1: destroy missions, and I think the WiFi is the problem.
20:02
Speaker 1: Any advice. Also, let me know which major city would
20:05
Speaker 1: like to be appointed the local warlord of Thanks so much,
20:09
Speaker 1: talk to you later. Wow, that was a pretty detailed
20:12
Speaker 1: confession there. I don't know what to do with that man.
20:16
Speaker 1: This person has already very specific plans. It sounds like
20:19
Speaker 1: he just music called tech support, not a physicist. He's
20:23
Speaker 1: like kind of control with my WiFi. Maybe he can
20:25
Speaker 1: turn it off and on. Maybe they'll help. I happen
20:27
Speaker 1: to know this person is already a working theoretical physicist.
20:32
Speaker 1: I see, al right, Well, his question is how can
20:35
Speaker 1: we build giant nuclear powered ants? And I guess he
20:38
Speaker 1: means like ants the insect, not your parents, sister, giant
20:43
Speaker 1: nuclear powered aunts and uncles and cousins, And that sounds
20:47
Speaker 1: even more terrifying, Oh my gosh, even more dangerous. Yeah,
20:50
Speaker 1: so this is a fun question, you know, giant nuclear
20:53
Speaker 1: powered ants. And as I was thinking about how to
20:55
Speaker 1: answer this, I thought, I wonder if I know anybody
20:58
Speaker 1: who's sort of an expert on robotics, maybe like robotics
21:01
Speaker 1: inspired by insects. And then I remember, I do know
21:05
Speaker 1: this guy who got his PhD thinking about how cockroaches run.
21:09
Speaker 1: I know someone like that, so I like to forget
21:12
Speaker 1: him sometimes. So I thought, let's ask him instead of
21:15
Speaker 1: me answering the question, Let's see what Jorge has to
21:18
Speaker 1: say about giant nuclear powered ants. Yeah. I do have
21:22
Speaker 1: a PhD in robotics and I focused on making carckroach robots.
21:26
Speaker 1: But answer a bit of a more of a challenge.
21:29
Speaker 1: I think he means like little tiny robots, which is
21:31
Speaker 1: kind of like a whole new, different kind of problem,
21:33
Speaker 1: like how do you miniaturize all of these things? But
21:35
Speaker 1: I want to ride down the street of this city.
21:37
Speaker 1: I've been appointed warlord of on top of one of
21:40
Speaker 1: these giant nuclear powered ants. Oh. I see you're thinking
21:44
Speaker 1: like giant. Oh I see, I'm gonna crush my enemies. Oh,
21:48
Speaker 1: because I don't think Brian said giant in his question,
21:50
Speaker 1: did he? I wonder if he meant like little tiny
21:52
Speaker 1: ones like a swarm, or like once you can ride
21:55
Speaker 1: around it. All right, Well, let's think about both. How
21:57
Speaker 1: hard would it be to build super tiny, miniature nuclear
22:00
Speaker 1: power dance. Well, it would be kind of hard. Yeah,
22:04
Speaker 1: I know that at least twenty years ago that people
22:07
Speaker 1: were making little tiny robot flies. So I've seen those.
22:11
Speaker 1: I've seen videos of those. You can make little tiny,
22:13
Speaker 1: little mechanisms and little wings that can beat and generate
22:16
Speaker 1: enough lift to you know, fly around. So I think
22:18
Speaker 1: that's possible, like making little tiny mechanisms. And it's the
22:21
Speaker 1: idea there that you're trying to understand how the insect
22:25
Speaker 1: does it by repeating it, or you're just trying to
22:27
Speaker 1: have the advantages of the insects, like you want a
22:29
Speaker 1: tiny robot that can fly into a window and spy
22:32
Speaker 1: on your enemies. Well, I think it's mostly engineers doing this.
22:35
Speaker 1: But I don't think they think too much about the
22:37
Speaker 1: Engineers don't have enemies. Engineers just you know, facilitate the
22:41
Speaker 1: supervillain stuff. Stop asking why I just do it. No,
22:45
Speaker 1: it's a combination of both. You know, you want to
22:47
Speaker 1: understand how flies do it and what's going on, and
22:50
Speaker 1: if you can replicate it, if you can make a
22:51
Speaker 1: robot that does it, that means you understood it pretty well,
22:54
Speaker 1: so that that's kind of the theory. And also, you know,
22:56
Speaker 1: to make better robots like little you know, flies are
23:00
Speaker 1: super efficient and super fast and they they're super like
23:03
Speaker 1: good at turning corners when they fly, So if you
23:05
Speaker 1: can make a robot they can do that, that would
23:07
Speaker 1: be you know, super useful. And how do you power
23:10
Speaker 1: these tiny little robots? Obviously Brian is imagining some super
23:13
Speaker 1: tiny little arc reactor, but in reality, how do you
23:16
Speaker 1: power a super tiny robot? Yeah, that's always the question
23:19
Speaker 1: in robotics is like how where do you get enough
23:21
Speaker 1: power to like carry it around and have it enough
23:24
Speaker 1: to last in a while. That's kind of the core
23:26
Speaker 1: issue robotics. Well, I think that's a question kind of
23:28
Speaker 1: for you. I mean, he's asking about nuclear powered ants,
23:31
Speaker 1: like what's the smallest nuclear reactor you can make. Can
23:35
Speaker 1: you make one that's like the size of an ant?
23:38
Speaker 1: Depends on the size of your aunt, you know. I
23:40
Speaker 1: think the current existing smallest nuclear reactors are things like
23:44
Speaker 1: on submarines, and those are tend to be small and quiet,
23:48
Speaker 1: but definitely bigger than an ant since you have people
23:52
Speaker 1: inside of them. So if we go warlord size riding
23:56
Speaker 1: on top of ants, then maybe you could fit in
23:59
Speaker 1: nuclear reactor inside of them. And I know that people
24:01
Speaker 1: are working to make these things smaller and smaller because
24:04
Speaker 1: also we have nuclear reactors on satellites, though those tend
24:08
Speaker 1: to be much lower power. That's the kind of thing
24:10
Speaker 1: where you want power for like fifty years, but you
24:13
Speaker 1: really only need a trickle, not like you know, I'm
24:16
Speaker 1: going to climb up this building and shoot laser out
24:18
Speaker 1: of my eyeballs kind of power. Right, But things like
24:21
Speaker 1: the Mars are over, the robots we sent to Mars,
24:24
Speaker 1: those have nuclear powered reactors, right, or not reactors, but
24:27
Speaker 1: at least they have like a you know, radioactive material
24:29
Speaker 1: and then they's decaying and you capture all the energy
24:32
Speaker 1: and then that's how you kind of fill up your
24:34
Speaker 1: battery exactly. That kind of thing is not really a
24:37
Speaker 1: nuclear reactor. It's more like a nuclear battery. You have
24:40
Speaker 1: some kind of material there which has a lot of
24:42
Speaker 1: energy in it, and you know it's going to decay
24:44
Speaker 1: and release heat, and so it's sort of like just
24:47
Speaker 1: gonna gradually give up some of its energy, which then
24:50
Speaker 1: you can use. You can turn it into electricity and
24:53
Speaker 1: use it. But you know, a nuclear powered submarine, for example,
24:56
Speaker 1: has a real reactor in it that's undergoing fission all
24:59
Speaker 1: the time. This control old, sustained nuclear reaction. That's a
25:02
Speaker 1: huge amount of energy. It's much much more powerful than
25:05
Speaker 1: one of these like nuclear batteries that's on the rover
25:08
Speaker 1: or on some of our satellites. But theoretically you could
25:11
Speaker 1: make a tiny version of it, right, Like, couldn't you
25:13
Speaker 1: just miniaturize everything and make a little tiny reactor that
25:16
Speaker 1: they is doing fission. You could, although it's a challenge,
25:19
Speaker 1: right because for fission, you need these neutrons to fly out,
25:23
Speaker 1: and you need them to be not too hot and
25:24
Speaker 1: not too cold, and so you need some sort of
25:26
Speaker 1: moderating thing and the surface area to volume is very
25:29
Speaker 1: important for keeping the reaction going. And so you know,
25:33
Speaker 1: you can't just scale everything up and down, which is why,
25:35
Speaker 1: for example, like if you take an ant and you
25:38
Speaker 1: scale it up, the physics doesn't work because the surface
25:40
Speaker 1: areata volume changes and so the physics changes. So shrinking
25:43
Speaker 1: things the physics also changes, and you might need a
25:46
Speaker 1: completely different design. But I don't think there's anything in
25:49
Speaker 1: principle preventing it. I think you could probably design the
25:52
Speaker 1: super tiny nuclear fission reactor. You just need really tiny
25:56
Speaker 1: tweezers to kind of put it together, basically. Yeah, And
26:00
Speaker 1: the good thing about it is that the energy lasts
26:02
Speaker 1: a long time, right, A little bit of fuel can
26:04
Speaker 1: last you for years or even decades. Wow, So this
26:08
Speaker 1: would be nuclear powered radioactive ants to the list of
26:13
Speaker 1: potential dangers. Well, what about like the computer you would
26:16
Speaker 1: have to put into an ant like that we make
26:18
Speaker 1: computers that small or what does? At some point? You know,
26:21
Speaker 1: we're limited by how much processing power we can fit
26:24
Speaker 1: into its brain depends how smart you want the ant,
26:27
Speaker 1: I suppose, But we can make chips really really small
26:30
Speaker 1: these days and pretty powerful, and so I don't think
26:33
Speaker 1: that's really going to be an issue. All right, Well,
26:35
Speaker 1: and then I guess the answer is that you can
26:37
Speaker 1: make a tiny nuclear powered ants and giant wants for
26:41
Speaker 1: that matter, because all the problems are kind of about scale. Yeah,
26:45
Speaker 1: it's much easier to make them big than to make
26:47
Speaker 1: them small. But you know, good luck Brian with your
26:50
Speaker 1: WiFi connection. You know, I'm sure you can debug that.
26:54
Speaker 1: It's funny how he's gone in this far, but the
26:56
Speaker 1: problems are in WiFi. Well that's because he's a theoretical physicist.
26:59
Speaker 1: He tackle all the hard problems. Now we're stuck on
27:01
Speaker 1: the easy one. He's like, why am I only getting
27:04
Speaker 1: three bars and not four bars? They can't figure that out?
27:08
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thank you Brian for that question. Our
27:10
Speaker 1: next question is a pretty traditional supervillain weapon. I think
27:13
Speaker 1: you always see it isn't in comic books. So our
27:15
Speaker 1: question is from Mark and he has a question about
27:19
Speaker 1: freeze raise. My supervillain weapon of choice would be a
27:22
Speaker 1: freeze ray. And there are really two types of devices here.
27:26
Speaker 1: One device would just let me freeze an individual person,
27:29
Speaker 1: turn them into a block of ice like that, sort
27:32
Speaker 1: of like the old Batman shows or the Incredibles. The
27:34
Speaker 1: other choice is a device that would let me select,
27:37
Speaker 1: say a thousand square miles and either cover it in
27:40
Speaker 1: five feet of ice or freeze everything down to thirty
27:45
Speaker 1: below zero in that space. And there must be a
27:48
Speaker 1: way to do this, because if Duluth, Minnesota is thirty
27:51
Speaker 1: below zero, Indiana is not thirty below zero. So there
27:54
Speaker 1: are ways to contain it using high pressure or low pressure.
27:57
Speaker 1: Or could we get rid of the ozone layer that
28:00
Speaker 1: trap the heat, Like, couldn't you cut that out into
28:03
Speaker 1: above a space and just let space freeze it up?
28:07
Speaker 1: I don't know. Oh boy, Yeah, Mark has ideas. Mark
28:12
Speaker 1: does have ideas. He wants options. It seems like he's
28:15
Speaker 1: thought about different angles and a lot of different ways
28:18
Speaker 1: in which he could use this. That's true. He's very creative.
28:20
Speaker 1: I happen to also know that Mark is a cartoonist,
28:22
Speaker 1: and you know you have to watch out for those.
28:24
Speaker 1: M Y's right. Don't let him near physics. It's a
28:27
Speaker 1: dangerous combination. Don't mix cartoons in physics exactly. It's an
28:31
Speaker 1: explosive cocktail. But yeah, his idea is the freeze rate, which,
28:35
Speaker 1: like he said, you can see in a lot of
28:37
Speaker 1: comic books like Batman, Mr. Freeze or Froz Oh. I
28:40
Speaker 1: think wasn't in The Incredible the movie? Isn't that something
28:43
Speaker 1: you eat a frozen like like a chocolate froz. Oh, yeah,
28:46
Speaker 1: I think that was the joke. But yeah, I guess
28:49
Speaker 1: he wants like some kind of device that shoots a
28:51
Speaker 1: ray that whatever it touches it freezes, like it lowers
28:55
Speaker 1: the temperature immediately. Yeah. That sounds super cool, and you know,
28:59
Speaker 1: I'd like to have one in my kitchen, sort of
29:01
Speaker 1: like the anti microwave, so I could like super quickly
29:04
Speaker 1: cool something down rather than having to just let it
29:07
Speaker 1: gradually diffuse out into the air. But it's a difficult proposition,
29:12
Speaker 1: and the biggest obstacle is that if you're shooting a
29:15
Speaker 1: ray at something, a ray is typically like a beam
29:18
Speaker 1: of energy, right, it's particles, or its waves or it's something,
29:22
Speaker 1: but it's energy. So if you're gonna shoot a ray
29:24
Speaker 1: at something, you're basically always going to be adding energy
29:27
Speaker 1: to that system. Interesting, yeah, because like anytime you're admitting something,
29:31
Speaker 1: you're probably putting energy out into the world. Yeah. Even
29:35
Speaker 1: if you shine a flashlight on something, you're heating it up.
29:37
Speaker 1: I mean a really small amount, because the amount of
29:40
Speaker 1: energy in your light beam is small compared to the
29:43
Speaker 1: energy at that rock or whatever is holding. But you
29:46
Speaker 1: heat something up every time you shine light at it,
29:49
Speaker 1: or shoot electrons at it, or any kind of ray
29:52
Speaker 1: is going to heat something up. So it's almost like
29:54
Speaker 1: you need like a vacuum ray, like a ray that
29:55
Speaker 1: sucks energy out of something and that will cool it down. Yeah,
29:58
Speaker 1: that's right. And there is one exception. There is one
30:01
Speaker 1: way that people have figured out how to cool something
30:04
Speaker 1: down by shooting a laser at it. Interesting. You can
30:09
Speaker 1: use the laser, which normally would heat something up, to
30:12
Speaker 1: cool stuff. Yeah, And this is a cool technique that
30:15
Speaker 1: people invented to try to get materials really really cold.
30:19
Speaker 1: People interested, for example, in like the quantum state of
30:22
Speaker 1: objects when they get really close to absolute zero, things
30:25
Speaker 1: like Bose Einstein condensates invented this really cool technique called
30:30
Speaker 1: laser cooling. And it seems weird because you're like shooting
30:33
Speaker 1: a laser beam with something and that seems like it
30:35
Speaker 1: must heat it up. But if you set it up
30:37
Speaker 1: in a very very clever way, then it can actually
30:40
Speaker 1: result in overall cooling. I have to spectrum in my
30:43
Speaker 1: head that it's a blue laser. Is it a blue
30:45
Speaker 1: laser because it's blue is cold? Yeah, and the red
30:50
Speaker 1: red ones are the hot ones, right, yeah, and it's
30:52
Speaker 1: got like ice crystals all around it the laser beam. Yeah.
30:55
Speaker 1: So how did these cooling lasers work. Well. The idea
30:57
Speaker 1: here is that you have a very specific kind of
30:59
Speaker 1: at of atoms that can absorb energy at one specific energy. Remember,
31:03
Speaker 1: the atoms can't just absorb all kinds of energy. They
31:06
Speaker 1: can only absorb it if there's like the right spacing
31:09
Speaker 1: between energy levels for their electrons. Electrons zooming around them,
31:13
Speaker 1: for example, can't just be at any arbitrary energy. It's quantized.
31:16
Speaker 1: It's like a ladder there. So if you shoot energy
31:20
Speaker 1: at an atom and the energy corresponds to exactly one
31:23
Speaker 1: step of the ladder, then it can absorb that energy.
31:25
Speaker 1: If it's too much, if it's a little bit more
31:28
Speaker 1: than that, it can't absorb that energy. So that's something
31:30
Speaker 1: you have to know about atoms when you think about this.
31:32
Speaker 1: So you start with a bunch of atoms and you
31:34
Speaker 1: shoot a laser at the atom that has energy just
31:37
Speaker 1: below what the atom can absorb. So then only atoms
31:41
Speaker 1: moving quickly towards the source of the laser will be
31:45
Speaker 1: able to absorb it. They can do that because they
31:47
Speaker 1: will see the laser energy Doppler shift it up, it'll
31:51
Speaker 1: be blue shifted to just the right energy. Then they
31:54
Speaker 1: absorb that energy and admit it in a random direction,
31:57
Speaker 1: and this has the overall effect of lowering their speed
32:00
Speaker 1: because it takes their speed in one direction and sort
32:03
Speaker 1: of bends it in another direction, and so that overall
32:07
Speaker 1: their magnitude of their speed has decreased a little bit. Well,
32:11
Speaker 1: that's a pretty interesting scheme there. It sounds like you're
32:14
Speaker 1: sending in light through this laser that's just at the
32:18
Speaker 1: right frequency for only some of the atoms to give
32:22
Speaker 1: off their energy, whereas the other atoms ignore it exactly.
32:26
Speaker 1: So it selects some of the atoms to absorb it,
32:29
Speaker 1: and they absorb it, and then they naturally re emit it,
32:31
Speaker 1: but they go in another direction. And so it takes
32:34
Speaker 1: like all the atoms that are moving at the laser
32:36
Speaker 1: really fast and it points them in other directions. This
32:39
Speaker 1: has the effect of overall slowing down the atom because
32:42
Speaker 1: it takes like some of its speed in one direction
32:45
Speaker 1: and points it in another direction. And I guess you
32:47
Speaker 1: take that energy that goes off in the other direction
32:49
Speaker 1: and you absorb it or you take it away another way. Yeah,
32:53
Speaker 1: it just gets radiated off exactly shoots out as a photon.
32:56
Speaker 1: And so you can do that, but only with a
32:58
Speaker 1: certain kind of atom, Like if you shoot it at
32:59
Speaker 1: a person, it wouldn't have the same effect. It has
33:02
Speaker 1: to be like a specially tune atom and laser to
33:05
Speaker 1: work together. Yes, and you need a bunch of atoms
33:07
Speaker 1: that are already pretty cold. You need them to be
33:10
Speaker 1: happy to absorb this laser. So you need a laser
33:13
Speaker 1: that's very finely tuned to the kind of atom, and
33:15
Speaker 1: you need a pretty pure like cold gas, and this
33:18
Speaker 1: will help you cool it even further. Like nobody starts
33:21
Speaker 1: with like a hot hamburger and laser cools it down
33:24
Speaker 1: to room temperature. That's just not something that's practical, but
33:27
Speaker 1: has anyone We're all working on that all the time. Man,
33:31
Speaker 1: It's like the biggest open problem in physics. Forget dark matter.
33:34
Speaker 1: How do you cool down a hamburger? No, it's something
33:37
Speaker 1: like if you have atoms at ten degrees kelvin, this
33:40
Speaker 1: can help you get them down to one degree kelvin
33:43
Speaker 1: or microkelvin or mill kelvin. But it is an example
33:46
Speaker 1: of a real ray which can actually cool a material.
33:49
Speaker 1: But if you shoot it at a person, even if
33:51
Speaker 1: they're pretty cool, it wouldn't work. It would just heat
33:53
Speaker 1: them up. Yeah, exactly, would just heat them up unless
33:56
Speaker 1: there happen to be you know, exactly the right gas
33:58
Speaker 1: of sodium atoms. But otherwise know and Mark wants to
34:02
Speaker 1: do more than that. He wants to freeze like an
34:03
Speaker 1: entire square mile of earth. But what if I'm just
34:07
Speaker 1: using my imagination here, What if you have like some
34:09
Speaker 1: special ray gun, you know, that looks at what it's
34:11
Speaker 1: shooting and tunes the laser just right for each adam
34:14
Speaker 1: it's shooting at and to maybe get to use the
34:16
Speaker 1: same cooling effect. Is that possible? I suppose it would
34:19
Speaker 1: be possible on the surface, But you're such a complicated
34:21
Speaker 1: mix of stuff. You need so many different kinds of beams,
34:25
Speaker 1: and I think that those things might interfere with each
34:27
Speaker 1: other because you need objects that would only accept with
34:30
Speaker 1: one kind of laser light and at the other laser
34:33
Speaker 1: lights that you mean for you know, a different kind
34:35
Speaker 1: of material hit the wrong kind, then they might accidentally
34:38
Speaker 1: heat it up. What if you kind of expand the
34:41
Speaker 1: your imagination a little bit, like what if you should
34:44
Speaker 1: make a ray that shoots a process during kind of particle,
34:47
Speaker 1: maybe that when it hits you it absorbs your energy.
34:49
Speaker 1: It hits you and absorbs your energy and interacts with
34:54
Speaker 1: you somehow, does some sort of like fusion. Yeah, I
34:57
Speaker 1: suppose you know, fusion absorbs energy above of a certain element,
35:01
Speaker 1: as we were talking about earlier. So imagine you're shooting
35:04
Speaker 1: like really heavy elements at somebody hard enough that it
35:08
Speaker 1: creates fusion and that eats up some of the energy. Well,
35:12
Speaker 1: I think that you're going to end up putting in
35:13
Speaker 1: more energy in the beam still than it's going to
35:16
Speaker 1: get absorbed by the fusion. All right, Well, it sounds
35:19
Speaker 1: like it's not really possible, But here you have an
35:21
Speaker 1: idea about maybe using liquid nitrogen. I think Mark has
35:24
Speaker 1: to give up on the ray idea. But if instead
35:26
Speaker 1: you're willing to do things like shoot a tube of
35:29
Speaker 1: liquid nitrogen as somebody, that could very effectively freeze them.
35:32
Speaker 1: It's not exactly a ray, it's like, you know, it's
35:34
Speaker 1: a cylinder of matter you're shooting at somebody. But still
35:37
Speaker 1: it could really effectively cool something down, right, And that
35:40
Speaker 1: works because the nitrogen in your liquid nagen is so
35:44
Speaker 1: cold that when it hits you, it absorbs energy. Right, Yeah,
35:47
Speaker 1: the energy that is in you spreads out into you
35:50
Speaker 1: and the liquid nitrogen, and since it has essentially no
35:52
Speaker 1: heat in it, it's a huge sink for energy, and
35:55
Speaker 1: so it spreads out very rapidly. And so I did
35:58
Speaker 1: a little back up the envelope calculation, and for example,
36:01
Speaker 1: to freeze a person pretty rapidly, you would need about
36:04
Speaker 1: a ton of liquid nitrogen, about a thousand kilograms of
36:08
Speaker 1: liquid nitrogen. Wow. Yeah, let's be specific. We can be
36:12
Speaker 1: as helpful as possible. The superheroes and supervillains have to
36:15
Speaker 1: have budgets also, right, everybody has operations and legal fees
36:18
Speaker 1: and stuff. So you've got a plan. The devil's in
36:20
Speaker 1: the detail and in what you do with those details.
36:24
Speaker 1: All right, So I guess liquid nargen And well, I mean,
36:26
Speaker 1: if you have something that shoots liquid nigrogen, you could
36:28
Speaker 1: call that a ray, right, technically because there it's atoms too,
36:32
Speaker 1: particles in it. Yeah, I suppose so may Technically the
36:35
Speaker 1: definition of radiation is any kind of energetic particle or matter,
36:40
Speaker 1: and that includes things like helium, nuclei, and electrons. So sure,
36:43
Speaker 1: why not liquid nitrogen? Sure that's radiation? Now? All right,
36:49
Speaker 1: I guess it's past FDA approval here. All right, well,
36:53
Speaker 1: thank you Mark for that cool question, and so let's
36:56
Speaker 1: get into our last question for supervillains here on the podcast.
37:00
Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break. All right, welcome
37:15
Speaker 1: back to Daniel and jorgez Academy for Supervillains and or Superheroes,
37:20
Speaker 1: Academy for Marvel Movies, how to Guide for Destroying the
37:24
Speaker 1: Human race. And our next question comes from Andreas, who
37:28
Speaker 1: has a question about televisions. Yeah, this is a question
37:31
Speaker 1: from Andreas on Twitter. He wanted to know if it
37:33
Speaker 1: would be possible to invent a remote control that could
37:37
Speaker 1: control simultaneously all of the televisions on Earth, presumably to
37:43
Speaker 1: then brainwash people or just to sell them, you know,
37:46
Speaker 1: late night products. I think to drive them crazy. Imagine
37:49
Speaker 1: you're sitting down for your favorite show and boom, the
37:52
Speaker 1: TV switches to something else at the most exciting moment,
37:55
Speaker 1: or your sports team is about to score, and boom,
37:58
Speaker 1: the TV switches to something else that could drive people
38:01
Speaker 1: crazy and basically sparking apocalypse. You think the supervillain is
38:04
Speaker 1: more like a super prankster. I think the right pranks
38:08
Speaker 1: could definitely push humanity over the edge. I mean, we're
38:11
Speaker 1: all a little bit nervous these days. So, like you're
38:13
Speaker 1: watching the season finale of like Tiger King, and some
38:17
Speaker 1: of you cut to an endless commercial decided would crumble.
38:21
Speaker 1: We're hanging by a threat already, man, That's what I'm thinking.
38:24
Speaker 1: All right, Well, the question is, can you device something
38:27
Speaker 1: that will control all televisions and then the planet? I
38:29
Speaker 1: think they have already, right, this has been done. It's
38:31
Speaker 1: called Netflix. To me, this seems like a programming problem, right.
38:37
Speaker 1: You know, there's really no physical or technical barrier. All
38:40
Speaker 1: these devices are online, as you say, and they already
38:43
Speaker 1: received messages, and so you just gotta somehow get through
38:46
Speaker 1: a few layers of security, which probably aren't amazing. I
38:50
Speaker 1: wonder if hackers out there have already tried this, have
38:53
Speaker 1: tried to like hack into your television to change what
38:55
Speaker 1: you are watching. I imagine it's probably not that hard.
38:59
Speaker 1: I see, So you think it's just like a hacker problem. Yeah.
39:02
Speaker 1: I mean my television, for example, talks to everything with WiFi,
39:05
Speaker 1: and so you have a laptop out there, you somebody
39:07
Speaker 1: get connected to my WiFi network. Not that hard. You
39:10
Speaker 1: could probably hack into my TV and upload new instructions
39:13
Speaker 1: and a bot a boom, but a being you're in charge. Well,
39:16
Speaker 1: maybe the question is like, can you come up with
39:18
Speaker 1: a device that somehow admits some sort of wave or
39:21
Speaker 1: some sort of you know, signal that somehow overrides all television.
39:25
Speaker 1: That's usually what you see in movies. Well, in this case,
39:27
Speaker 1: I think what I would do is I would just
39:29
Speaker 1: have a program somewhere distributed via the Internet to everybody's
39:33
Speaker 1: WiFi in their house, right, so you wouldn't need to
39:35
Speaker 1: like reach everybody's TV from your own individual broadcast antenna.
39:40
Speaker 1: Who you just want to go over the Internet and
39:41
Speaker 1: then do it locally. I mean, actually, this happens to
39:44
Speaker 1: me all the time. My son somehow has hooked up
39:46
Speaker 1: his phone to the TV, and when it's in his pocket,
39:49
Speaker 1: he's accidentally changing channels without realizing it. So, you know,
39:53
Speaker 1: it's tire. Your son sounds like he's a super villain
39:57
Speaker 1: hacker in the making. He's just like stumbled way into
40:00
Speaker 1: it without even knowing how he's doing it. I'm always
40:02
Speaker 1: calling out to him, like, hey, turn off your phone.
40:04
Speaker 1: I was watching that. Maybe he's trying to drive you crazy, Danny, Yes,
40:07
Speaker 1: maybe he is. Maybe this is him. Maybe his name
40:09
Speaker 1: is actually is Andreas Torgersen. He's a domestic supervillain. And
40:14
Speaker 1: what domestic I mean in your house. Yeah, so I
40:16
Speaker 1: think if you're a super villain and this was your plan,
40:19
Speaker 1: probably you just need to hire a teenager, pay them
40:21
Speaker 1: in pizza for a week and they could probably figure
40:23
Speaker 1: this out. Done all right. Our last question here of
40:26
Speaker 1: the day comes from someone on Twitter again and they
40:29
Speaker 1: have a question about dark energy. This comes from somebody
40:32
Speaker 1: whose name we don't know, but they title themselves as
40:35
Speaker 1: hopeful Cynic on Twitter, and their question is whether it's
40:38
Speaker 1: possible to harness dark energy to power a Death Star
40:44
Speaker 1: style tripoint laser. Interesting, first of all, anonymous question that
40:48
Speaker 1: is suspicious, very sauce, and also great Star Wars reference
40:54
Speaker 1: here death Star dark energy. I feel like you know
40:57
Speaker 1: the power of the dark Side is coming through. Yeah,
40:59
Speaker 1: this is the great question. This made me wonder. I
41:02
Speaker 1: would like to know if that's possible. I wonder if
41:04
Speaker 1: that is possible. And one of the things that's exciting
41:07
Speaker 1: about this is the idea of harnessing dark energy. Dark
41:11
Speaker 1: energy is our description of the fact that the universe
41:14
Speaker 1: is expanding and that that expansion is accelerating, which requires
41:18
Speaker 1: some enormous amount of energy. And the cool thing is
41:21
Speaker 1: that when the universe expands, dark energy doesn't get like
41:25
Speaker 1: thinner or more dilute. When you make new space between
41:28
Speaker 1: like here and another galaxy, that's what dark energy is doing.
41:31
Speaker 1: It makes new space that comes with new dark energy,
41:34
Speaker 1: and so it's constantly essentially creating energy, which means that
41:37
Speaker 1: whatever dark energy is, it's capable of creating energy out
41:41
Speaker 1: of nothing, out of the vacuum, of violating conservation of energy.
41:46
Speaker 1: So that definitely seems like an appealing way to like
41:48
Speaker 1: gather a bunch of energy. I don't know about focusing
41:51
Speaker 1: into a beam that can destroy planets, but it definitely
41:54
Speaker 1: is a potential source of energy. Well, what's kind of
41:57
Speaker 1: interesting about dark energy is that it's sort of like
41:59
Speaker 1: phys this thing. It's sort of embedded in the fabric
42:02
Speaker 1: of space itself, right, like it's somehow coming from space
42:06
Speaker 1: itself and it's stretching it. So it's it's literally kind
42:09
Speaker 1: of all around us. We think, yeah, we really don't
42:11
Speaker 1: know anything about the mechanism of it. One idea is
42:15
Speaker 1: that it comes from the nature of space itself, that
42:18
Speaker 1: the quantum zero point energy of space provides some sort
42:21
Speaker 1: of repulsive effect which stretches space. That's like an idea
42:25
Speaker 1: of an idea. That idea itself doesn't actually work because
42:28
Speaker 1: if you try to use that idea and calculate how
42:30
Speaker 1: much dark energy there should be, you get a number
42:33
Speaker 1: which is different from what we measure by ten to
42:35
Speaker 1: the one hundred. So we're pretty far off from like
42:38
Speaker 1: understanding the detailed mechanism of it, which makes it pretty
42:41
Speaker 1: hard to know how to harness it. But we do
42:43
Speaker 1: know that it's out there and that there is a
42:45
Speaker 1: lot of energy stored in it. Yeah, I mean, it
42:48
Speaker 1: seems like what is it about. The two thirds of
42:50
Speaker 1: the energy of the universe is dark energy, so it's
42:53
Speaker 1: a lot the universe is mostly dark energy. The universe
42:55
Speaker 1: is mostly dark energy. That's right, though it's weird to
42:58
Speaker 1: think about because sort of like dark matter. There's more
43:01
Speaker 1: dark matter than normal matter, but dark matter is much
43:04
Speaker 1: more diffuse because it's spread out more like normal matter
43:07
Speaker 1: is pretty dense like our planet and our bodies and
43:10
Speaker 1: our sun. And there isn't that much dark matter in
43:12
Speaker 1: our solar system because there's also dark matter between the stars.
43:15
Speaker 1: It's spread out and in the same way dark energy.
43:18
Speaker 1: Even though there's more of it than anything else. It's
43:20
Speaker 1: not that powerful on a local scale because it's spread
43:23
Speaker 1: out throughout the entire cosmos. All that empty space between galaxies,
43:27
Speaker 1: for example, has dark energy in it, and so dark
43:31
Speaker 1: energy doesn't seem very powerful, but it's just because it's everywhere. Well,
43:35
Speaker 1: I guess then that kind of puts like a boschi
43:37
Speaker 1: of things because even if we did sort of know
43:39
Speaker 1: what it was and could harness it, I mean, you
43:41
Speaker 1: would to get any significant amount of it, you would
43:44
Speaker 1: need to sort of like farm a huge volume of
43:47
Speaker 1: space just to get a little bit of energy, right,
43:49
Speaker 1: because it's so diffuse and so kind of in the background. Yeah, exactly.
43:53
Speaker 1: I did a little calculation, and if you build a
43:56
Speaker 1: spring that was one light year long, then dark energy
44:00
Speaker 1: would make it longer around twenty two millimeters per second.
44:05
Speaker 1: So you know, that's not tiny, but it's also not huge.
44:08
Speaker 1: You know, two centimeters per second. It's not that much energy.
44:12
Speaker 1: I see. It's not something you could maybe put into
44:15
Speaker 1: a death star rate right away, not immediately. And also
44:19
Speaker 1: I don't know how they got those lasers to do
44:21
Speaker 1: that where they come together at a point and then
44:23
Speaker 1: change direction like that's pretty cool. That violates some lots
44:27
Speaker 1: of physics right there. That's the part that bumped you,
44:33
Speaker 1: Not how they're all standing upright in the same direction
44:36
Speaker 1: in space. So many things to talk about there, but
44:38
Speaker 1: that's the part that always makes my physics brain go, what,
44:41
Speaker 1: how do you bend the path of our laser with
44:43
Speaker 1: another laser? Yes? Exactly, all right, Well it sounds like
44:47
Speaker 1: hopeful cynic. You will have to do some physics for
44:49
Speaker 1: us to build this death rate, and you'll have to
44:51
Speaker 1: understand what dark energy is, which currently we have no idea.
44:54
Speaker 1: We have no idea, but it is promising because it
44:57
Speaker 1: means that there are ways to create energy and and
45:00
Speaker 1: if you really understood the nature of space and time,
45:03
Speaker 1: it might give you the power to extract free energy
45:06
Speaker 1: from the universe. Okay, I think that covers all of
45:08
Speaker 1: our questions for today. Daniel. How do you think our
45:10
Speaker 1: supervillain students did? Would you given an A or an
45:13
Speaker 1: A plus? Well, we have to see we've given them
45:15
Speaker 1: basically assignments, and now what comes next to see how
45:18
Speaker 1: well they execute the Hopefully they get an F and
45:23
Speaker 1: if they get an A, then we're all toasted. If
45:25
Speaker 1: they get an A, you probably won't even know about it.
45:28
Speaker 1: That's right, we'll be floating out in space, either frozen
45:32
Speaker 1: or mostly frozen. I think most of these seemed to
45:33
Speaker 1: have would freeze this. I guess if you see me
45:36
Speaker 1: and Jorge riding down the street on giant nuclear powered ants,
45:39
Speaker 1: then you'll know that Brian at least has succeeded. You
45:43
Speaker 1: know that we coopted our students ideas and used it
45:46
Speaker 1: for our own purpose. What kind of professor would do that?
45:48
Speaker 1: But I do think jokes aside that it is fun
45:51
Speaker 1: to think about these incredible forces that are a play
45:55
Speaker 1: in the universe that you know, all around us is
45:57
Speaker 1: an incredible amount of energy bound in to the nucleus
46:00
Speaker 1: of atoms and created in space in between everything. We
46:04
Speaker 1: have only begun to understand the very nature of the universe,
46:08
Speaker 1: and we know that it is filled with incredibly powerful
46:10
Speaker 1: forces and energy, some that we haven't even yet imagined. Yeah,
46:14
Speaker 1: because you know, it's amazing to think about the power
46:17
Speaker 1: that comes from understanding these things about the universe. You know,
46:20
Speaker 1: like once you understand them, that then you can do stuff.
46:23
Speaker 1: And you know, hopefully we want to just do super
46:26
Speaker 1: villain stuff. But to think about all the amazing things
46:28
Speaker 1: you can do with some of this knowledge about the
46:31
Speaker 1: universe and some of the amazing technology that can come
46:33
Speaker 1: from it. I mean, you can really, you know, get
46:35
Speaker 1: humanity out to the stars or help our civilization live forever. Yeah.
46:39
Speaker 1: It could be that in a thousand years people have
46:41
Speaker 1: a deeper understanding of the nature of the universe, and
46:44
Speaker 1: that some of the problems that we are struggling with
46:46
Speaker 1: today will seem trivial to them. They will seem like,
46:49
Speaker 1: why didn't they just figure this out? And so it
46:52
Speaker 1: could be that the obstacle between us and some utopia,
46:55
Speaker 1: he's really just knowledge. He's really just figuring out the
46:58
Speaker 1: nature of this crazy universe. Yeah. And so in the
47:00
Speaker 1: third movie of the trilogy, you know, all those supervillains
47:03
Speaker 1: actually turned out to be the good guys. He told you.
47:07
Speaker 1: You just have to wait for the third movie. The
47:09
Speaker 1: arc resolves itself. All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed that.
47:12
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, See you next time. Thanks for listening,
47:23
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is
47:26
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio or more podcast For
47:29
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
47:33
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows yeah,