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Is it possible to move the sun? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, if you could travel to another solar system,
0:11
Speaker 1: would you sign up to do it? Oh? I would
0:13
Speaker 1: so love to be in another solar system, but I'm
0:17
Speaker 1: not sure I'm up for actually taking the trip. Or really,
0:20
Speaker 1: do you get spasic easily? Yeah, especially after forty years
0:23
Speaker 1: of eating the same food. Well, why don't you just
0:25
Speaker 1: take the Red Eye? You know, like you go into
0:28
Speaker 1: hibernation and then you wake up when you get there.
0:29
Speaker 1: That's kind of like teleporting almost. I do like naps,
0:32
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure I'm up for a forty year nap.
0:35
Speaker 1: I have to pay for economy plus in or to
0:37
Speaker 1: have enough room to really sleep. Come from me to
0:39
Speaker 1: sleep well for forty years. Well, if you could visit
0:41
Speaker 1: another solar system without actually traveling there, how about that?
0:45
Speaker 1: Would you be up for them totally? If I could
0:47
Speaker 1: just sit on my couch and then like open the
0:49
Speaker 1: door to see another world, I'd be in Oh. Man,
0:52
Speaker 1: Then I've got an idea for you. I just need
0:55
Speaker 1: four trillion dollars. If you have that in your pocket,
0:58
Speaker 1: let's crowdsource it from our list. O Nurse. Hi, I'm
1:17
Speaker 1: or I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD Comics. Hi,
1:20
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I dream about
1:23
Speaker 1: traveling the universe from my couch. Welcome to our podcast
1:27
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe, a production of I
1:30
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, in which we take mental trips all over
1:33
Speaker 1: the universe, from the heart of neutron stars to what's
1:36
Speaker 1: happening inside a black hole, to crazy stuff at the
1:39
Speaker 1: microscopic level, and try to explain all of it to
1:42
Speaker 1: you in a way that also maybe makes you laugh. Yeah.
1:45
Speaker 1: I think of us as your audio guide to in
1:48
Speaker 1: your tour of the universe as you travel from the
1:51
Speaker 1: farthest reaches to the smallest places in the universe. That's right,
1:55
Speaker 1: And we might not just be limited to a mental trip.
1:57
Speaker 1: It might be possible to actually take a trip somewhere
2:01
Speaker 1: else in the galaxy. Maybe someday, sometime in the future,
2:05
Speaker 1: humans will actually set foot on planets in other solar systems. Yeah,
2:09
Speaker 1: it's been a dream of humanity for a long time.
2:11
Speaker 1: I think, right, it hasn't it been to travel to
2:14
Speaker 1: another star and discover new world and maybe discover different
2:17
Speaker 1: civilizations out there in space. But it's always been kind
2:20
Speaker 1: of a difficult thing to get out into space and
2:23
Speaker 1: to travel somewhere because the distances are so big and
2:28
Speaker 1: it's a pretty hostile environment out there in space. Yeah.
2:31
Speaker 1: Do you think it's a dream of humanity as a
2:33
Speaker 1: species or like of all humans, because I would love
2:37
Speaker 1: for difference between NY and all humans. Well, I would
2:41
Speaker 1: love for humanity to explore the galaxy and learn all
2:44
Speaker 1: these things and send us pictures back. But I don't
2:46
Speaker 1: particularly want to be in a spaceship or be an astronaut,
2:50
Speaker 1: though I'm like a big proponent of the humanity doing
2:53
Speaker 1: it one small step for some other man. Oh, I see,
2:57
Speaker 1: you just want to sit back, But you don't want
2:59
Speaker 1: to be the one who had discovers another world or
3:01
Speaker 1: to be the one who's who travels to another world.
3:04
Speaker 1: So even if we discovered another world, you wouldn't want
3:06
Speaker 1: to go there unless I could do it from my couch.
3:08
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not up on I don't even like
3:09
Speaker 1: going skiing, you know, So I'm not that up on
3:11
Speaker 1: like physical danger. I see, But you just want to
3:16
Speaker 1: know that somebody else went there. Yes, totally. I will
3:19
Speaker 1: pay more taxes and encourage people to work on these projects,
3:23
Speaker 1: and I want us as humans to do it. But
3:26
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily want to be that one. I wonder
3:28
Speaker 1: how common that a feeling is, though. I wonder if
3:31
Speaker 1: everybody else out there who's pro space travel also actually
3:35
Speaker 1: wants to do it themselves. Yeah, I can see what
3:37
Speaker 1: you mean. I mean not maybe not everyone can get
3:39
Speaker 1: over the fear of possibly dying while you're exploring, but
3:44
Speaker 1: everyone probably thinks it would be cooled for someone else
3:47
Speaker 1: to discover a new place. Yeah. And I think for
3:50
Speaker 1: some people that fear of death is living. You know.
3:52
Speaker 1: Some people really want that thrill of living on the
3:55
Speaker 1: edge and doing something dangerous and uh, I want to
3:58
Speaker 1: hear all about it when they get back to live
4:00
Speaker 1: in the centers, comfortably, in the center of things. I do.
4:04
Speaker 1: I like my couch. Well, it is sort of an
4:06
Speaker 1: impediment for you know, A big challenge for humans to
4:09
Speaker 1: travel into space is a space is sort of big,
4:13
Speaker 1: and there's really nothing out there, and you can die
4:15
Speaker 1: at any moment because it's such a hostile there's no oxygen,
4:18
Speaker 1: you know, the vacuum would kill you, the temperature would
4:20
Speaker 1: kill you. It's a it's a pretty big barrier to
4:24
Speaker 1: overcome if we want to discover other things out there. Yeah,
4:27
Speaker 1: and one classic solution is, you know, try to take
4:29
Speaker 1: what you need with you, make a little box and
4:32
Speaker 1: fill it with air and food and all that stuff,
4:34
Speaker 1: and sort of take the minimum human survival necessities and
4:38
Speaker 1: pack them with you. But you know, that's sort of
4:40
Speaker 1: like camping. You know, it's fun for a while, but
4:43
Speaker 1: it can be a little uncomfortable, and you know you
4:46
Speaker 1: don't want to do it for forty years or forty
4:48
Speaker 1: thousand years. And so people are wondering, like, is it
4:52
Speaker 1: possible to maybe explore the universe without ever leaving your home?
4:56
Speaker 1: You mean teleporting and we teleport your couch, you and
4:59
Speaker 1: your couch. Can we a couch that teleports Daniel somewhere else?
5:03
Speaker 1: You know, that's a good question on Star Trek. How
5:05
Speaker 1: come they have to stand up when they're in the teleporter?
5:07
Speaker 1: Why can't they just be a chair there? We can't
5:11
Speaker 1: even get to do stand up to teleport. You're like,
5:15
Speaker 1: I've just stand up. Forget about it, Get about it,
5:18
Speaker 1: I forget about it. I'm turning into an old man.
5:20
Speaker 1: Every time I go somewhere, I'm always looking for a chair.
5:22
Speaker 1: You know, where can I sit down? Are you laying
5:25
Speaker 1: down as you were recording this Daniel on Advisive Counsel.
5:29
Speaker 1: I refused to answer that question. Well, this is a
5:34
Speaker 1: pretty big topic and a pretty big question, and and
5:38
Speaker 1: so one of our listeners had maybe a good idea
5:43
Speaker 1: or came upon a good idea for maybe how we
5:45
Speaker 1: could travel comfortably to other solar systems. Yeah, I got
5:49
Speaker 1: a wonderfully hilarious email from one of our listeners who
5:52
Speaker 1: heard our podcast about terraforming and found that it came
5:56
Speaker 1: in handy in a random conversation he had. So here's
5:59
Speaker 1: what Daniels Saunders from London wrote to us. He says, Hi,
6:03
Speaker 1: I just want to say thanks for the terraforming episode.
6:05
Speaker 1: It came in surprisingly handy. When I was loading my
6:08
Speaker 1: groceries onto the checkout at the supermarket to checkout assistance,
6:12
Speaker 1: we're talking across to each other about whether or not
6:15
Speaker 1: we could ever move to another planet, maybe Mars. They
6:18
Speaker 1: didn't seem to have much idea on the subject. So
6:21
Speaker 1: after a minute or two, I couldn't help myself and
6:23
Speaker 1: I began explaining all the things I learned from your podcast,
6:27
Speaker 1: making a magnetic feel, the giant mirror for heating, dumping microbes,
6:30
Speaker 1: et cetera. They were pretty amazed that some random guy
6:33
Speaker 1: happened to know these things. I gave credit where credit
6:36
Speaker 1: is due and pointed them to your podcast. But then
6:39
Speaker 1: they asked me if it would ever be possible to
6:41
Speaker 1: physically move our planet or our solar system somewhere else
6:45
Speaker 1: in space. So I'm writing to you to ask, Wow,
6:48
Speaker 1: what an awesome email? And what is where is this
6:51
Speaker 1: supermarket where people talk about science at the checkoutline? Nowhere here.
6:57
Speaker 1: I've never overheard somebody asking such a complicated physics question
7:01
Speaker 1: in public where I feel like, that's what I got
7:05
Speaker 1: a PhD in physics for. So somebody would be like,
7:07
Speaker 1: what is the branching ratio of the top cork from
7:09
Speaker 1: the bottom cork? I wonder if anybody knows. At the
7:13
Speaker 1: checkout line, you're like, oh my god, this is the
7:15
Speaker 1: moment I've been preparing for for thirty years. Or you're
7:18
Speaker 1: on airplane they're like, excuse me, is someone have a
7:20
Speaker 1: PhD in particle physics on the plane. We have an
7:22
Speaker 1: emergency calculation we need to do. Never happened to me.
7:26
Speaker 1: We have an emergency particle collision. We need to analyze.
7:30
Speaker 1: What are these courts? We don't know what to do
7:32
Speaker 1: with them. But he does raise a fascinating question. So
7:35
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that Daniel in London had this interaction
7:39
Speaker 1: and generated this wonderful, fascinating question. Yeah, it's awesome to
7:43
Speaker 1: think that our listeners are having these conversations with other people,
7:46
Speaker 1: and even more awesome that they're telling them about our podcast.
7:49
Speaker 1: That's right. So if you are one of those checkout
7:52
Speaker 1: assistants from that supermarket, welcome to the podcast and thank
7:55
Speaker 1: you for listening. This one is for you. But it's
7:57
Speaker 1: an interesting idea. And so the idea is that Daniel
8:01
Speaker 1: wrote in about is that you know, it is sort
8:03
Speaker 1: of hard to pack everything with you to go on
8:06
Speaker 1: a trip into outer space to another solar system, because
8:09
Speaker 1: you know, you're you have to build your house your spaceship,
8:11
Speaker 1: and you have to bring in a food and air
8:13
Speaker 1: and be able to recycle everything. And so I guess
8:17
Speaker 1: the idea here is that instead of building a spaceship,
8:20
Speaker 1: think of it as us already being in a spaceship
8:23
Speaker 1: called Earth. That's right, Yeah, just make Earth our spaceship,
8:27
Speaker 1: like Earth is now a mobile home or a camper van, right,
8:30
Speaker 1: take your house with you as you travel, or not
8:33
Speaker 1: even just the Earth, the entire solar system could be
8:36
Speaker 1: our you know, our camper. Yeah, well, I think you
8:40
Speaker 1: need to bring the sun. Otherwise you'd end up in
8:41
Speaker 1: the Rogue Planets episode that we just did, and that
8:43
Speaker 1: would be pretty cold. That's a whole different episode. We
8:49
Speaker 1: actually in a Netflix that I know you've seen it,
8:51
Speaker 1: where they something like I think either a meter meteor
8:55
Speaker 1: is coming or the Earth gets knocked out of orbit
8:58
Speaker 1: until they build these giant engine to push the Earth
9:01
Speaker 1: to anoder another solar system. Wow, and would you rate
9:04
Speaker 1: the physics in it as excellent? I would rate these
9:06
Speaker 1: special effects? Is not bad? Not bad? By not answering
9:12
Speaker 1: the question, you've answered the question, and so the question
9:14
Speaker 1: will be tackling today. Is is it possible to move
9:23
Speaker 1: our solar system somewhere else? I think that sounds like
9:26
Speaker 1: a wonderful way to explore the galaxy. I stay on
9:28
Speaker 1: my couch and you just let me know when we're
9:30
Speaker 1: getting near another solar system. You know, but then what
9:33
Speaker 1: would you do? You wouldn't even want to visit the
9:35
Speaker 1: neighbors because you would be like have to stand up.
9:38
Speaker 1: What Well, you could just train the telescopes, you know,
9:40
Speaker 1: we could like turn hubble on those near now nearby planets.
9:46
Speaker 1: I see, you just want to look at pictures while
9:48
Speaker 1: sitting on your couch. And if we get if we
9:51
Speaker 1: get close enough to some alien solar system and there
9:53
Speaker 1: are aliens, I'm sure they'll come meet us and we
9:55
Speaker 1: can send our you know, strapping young representatives, young men
10:00
Speaker 1: and men of our species to go and meet them.
10:03
Speaker 1: It doesn't need to be some forty five year old,
10:05
Speaker 1: grumpy business podcaster. Right, I'm not the prime candidate to
10:10
Speaker 1: meet aliens. What if everyone refuses? Everybody refuses, It's like
10:16
Speaker 1: he's staying in his couch. Why should I get up?
10:19
Speaker 1: But it risk my life. We're all five years old, now,
10:21
Speaker 1: all right? If nobody else will do it, I will
10:24
Speaker 1: sign up. I will go. Really, yes, I'll take one
10:27
Speaker 1: for the team. Absolutely. Let's let's let's write up the petition.
10:33
Speaker 1: Who wants to go into space? No? One, Daniel Europe.
10:35
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure this is not a situation I'm ever
10:38
Speaker 1: going to actually encounter. So I'm comfortable volunteering in that scenario.
10:42
Speaker 1: You're comfortable in the craziness of other human beings to
10:45
Speaker 1: do more recklessly. Yeah, people want to do that stuff.
10:48
Speaker 1: There's always like thousands and thousands of people applying to
10:51
Speaker 1: be astronauts, so there's no need for me to try
10:53
Speaker 1: to elbow my way in there. Well, it's sort of
10:55
Speaker 1: I'm surprised that this idea is out there, you know
10:58
Speaker 1: that that um people have and thinking about this, and
11:00
Speaker 1: it sounds like you did some research and you found
11:02
Speaker 1: some stuff in it. Yeah, they're definitely people have been
11:05
Speaker 1: developing concepts or how this could be possible, and it's
11:08
Speaker 1: kind of important. There are reasons why we might want
11:11
Speaker 1: to move our son, not just out of curiosity, not
11:14
Speaker 1: just out of the desire to explore the universe and
11:17
Speaker 1: be lazy on our couch, but also, you know, for
11:20
Speaker 1: the survival of our solar system, there could be times
11:22
Speaker 1: we need to move it. So I thought it was
11:25
Speaker 1: a fascinating question. But as usual, we were wondering how
11:27
Speaker 1: many people out there had even heard of this idea
11:30
Speaker 1: much let's think that it's possible, And so as usual,
11:33
Speaker 1: Daniel went out there and asked people in the street
11:35
Speaker 1: if they thought it's possible to build a machine that
11:38
Speaker 1: could move a star. So here's what people had to say, Yes,
11:43
Speaker 1: but maybe in the far future, not what the materials
11:46
Speaker 1: we have right now. How would you do it. Maybe
11:49
Speaker 1: some concepts involving stretching the space behind star and condensing
11:55
Speaker 1: it in front over like a warp drive, like a
11:57
Speaker 1: warp drive. Yes, and don't think so. I don't think
12:01
Speaker 1: the technology is therey yet right now, but I think
12:04
Speaker 1: it might be possible. I think it would be hard
12:07
Speaker 1: with the resources on the planet here, just because we
12:10
Speaker 1: have such finite resources, you know what. We have to think, well,
12:13
Speaker 1: how much are we taking away from Earth to try
12:15
Speaker 1: and move something that's even bigger than the Earth. And
12:17
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard. But I think it's a maybe
12:20
Speaker 1: for me, And I wouldn't say no, I wouldn't say yes.
12:22
Speaker 1: You might not fund it. Do you think it's possible? Yeah? Probably,
12:26
Speaker 1: I believe to be possible because photons do carry momentum,
12:29
Speaker 1: so if you were able to harness the energy from photons,
12:32
Speaker 1: you wouldn't but like also like being able to put
12:36
Speaker 1: that force into the Sun, you would be able to
12:37
Speaker 1: move the Sun to use the Sun's own energy. Yeah, yeah,
12:42
Speaker 1: I think that's impossible. Impossible, No, but I think we
12:45
Speaker 1: could get away with lyon about it all right. You
12:50
Speaker 1: have to be a very strong machine expensive. Is it possible?
12:56
Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel like it caused a lot
12:58
Speaker 1: of have ECU the whole circulating around its systems. That
13:03
Speaker 1: would make it a bad idea, not impulsible, not impossible, yes,
13:08
Speaker 1: all right, not a lot of confidence in the concept.
13:12
Speaker 1: People were shocked. Sometimes I had to repeat myself because
13:15
Speaker 1: people thought they must have misheard the question, because it
13:19
Speaker 1: was so ridiculous to move a star, not none necessarily
13:23
Speaker 1: a son, but just like a star is there and
13:26
Speaker 1: you're moving it. M m m. Yeah, it's a crazy concept.
13:30
Speaker 1: In fact, it's the central feature of one of my
13:33
Speaker 1: favorite science fiction series by Alistair Reynolds, where they try
13:37
Speaker 1: to tackle this problem of having an interstellar empire, you know,
13:41
Speaker 1: where the distances are so vast it takes forever to
13:43
Speaker 1: travel or even communicate, and they solve the problem by
13:46
Speaker 1: dragging a bunch of stars close to each other so
13:49
Speaker 1: they can have an interstellar empire that's not actually that big.
13:52
Speaker 1: And so, you know, it appears in science fiction, it's
13:55
Speaker 1: it's in the realm of people's thought. But not most people.
13:58
Speaker 1: Most people thought this is a crazy idea. Oh, I see,
14:01
Speaker 1: you've read about this in a science fiction novel. Yeah, yeah,
14:04
Speaker 1: it's a cool idea, and you know, all best ideas
14:07
Speaker 1: start in science fiction novels. All right, but it's a
14:09
Speaker 1: crazy concept. Everyone out there thought it was kind of crazy.
14:12
Speaker 1: It's just the idea of moving a star, much less
14:14
Speaker 1: our star. Um, So there's all kinds of questions here.
14:17
Speaker 1: Why would you want to do it, how would you
14:19
Speaker 1: do it? What would it mean to do it? So
14:21
Speaker 1: let's dig into all of these crazy questions. But first
14:24
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break, all right, Daniel, So moving
14:40
Speaker 1: a star? How do we move a star? Why would
14:42
Speaker 1: we want to move a star? And how could it
14:45
Speaker 1: even be practical or plausible to move an entire star
14:49
Speaker 1: like our sun to somewhere else in the galaxy. It's
14:52
Speaker 1: a crazy idea, mostly because stars are really really big.
14:57
Speaker 1: I mean, the mass of our Sun is tend to
14:59
Speaker 1: the thirty ms, and it's a lot of kilograms, you know,
15:05
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's like a million earths. It's more than
15:08
Speaker 1: a million earths, and the Earth already pretty big. Of course,
15:12
Speaker 1: the Sun is already moving, it's orbiting the center of
15:14
Speaker 1: the galaxy, and what we're interested in is changing its motion. Right,
15:17
Speaker 1: And because F equals m, a tells you that you
15:21
Speaker 1: need a force in order to move something with mass.
15:23
Speaker 1: You want to accelerate the sun, move it somewhere else.
15:26
Speaker 1: You've got to apply a force, and then I am
15:28
Speaker 1: in the bigger something is the harder it is to
15:31
Speaker 1: move it. Yeah, so it's it's hard to get Daniel
15:33
Speaker 1: off the couch. Imagine getting the Earth off the couch,
15:36
Speaker 1: and now imagine moving one point three million earth couch.
15:41
Speaker 1: You know, since you're suggesting I'm so massive, maybe we
15:43
Speaker 1: should be measuring the Sun and the units of Daniel
15:45
Speaker 1: right here you go. Isn't it about to say one
15:48
Speaker 1: point three million Daniels? That's right, I am the Earth.
15:53
Speaker 1: I have eaten everything. Um, it's big. So you need
15:55
Speaker 1: a really big force, Like we're talking cosmic scale engineering,
15:59
Speaker 1: which is awesome to think about and to read about
16:02
Speaker 1: in science fiction novels, but very difficult to actually pull off. Well.
16:06
Speaker 1: To the basic idea is that you would build like
16:08
Speaker 1: an engine or how would you even approach this problem
16:12
Speaker 1: of moving a whole star? So you need a lot
16:15
Speaker 1: of energy, and you need something that produces a lot
16:17
Speaker 1: of energy, and the only thing nearby that sort of
16:20
Speaker 1: produces enough energy to move a star is a star.
16:24
Speaker 1: I mean a star is a huge fusion engine and
16:27
Speaker 1: it's pumping out an enormous amount of energy, and the
16:31
Speaker 1: simplest idea is to think about all the fusion energy
16:34
Speaker 1: that is pumping out, mostly in terms of photons and
16:37
Speaker 1: protons and stuff like that, and that's not creating a
16:40
Speaker 1: force in the star because it's pointing in every direction.
16:42
Speaker 1: Like the Sun pushes out and it pushes down and
16:44
Speaker 1: pushes left to pushes right. Every time it shoots out
16:48
Speaker 1: a photon to the left, that gives a little bit
16:50
Speaker 1: of force to the right. But on the other side,
16:52
Speaker 1: it's shooting out photons to the right, which gives it
16:55
Speaker 1: a force to the less. It's balanced. It's like a rocket,
16:57
Speaker 1: but it's shooting in all directions at the same time. Yeah,
16:59
Speaker 1: exactly what would happen if you attached eight rocket engines
17:03
Speaker 1: to yourself and set them all off at once, right, Well,
17:05
Speaker 1: you wouldn't go anywhere, like in all different directions. Here
17:09
Speaker 1: it perfectly balanced, perfectly balanced in all different directions. I
17:11
Speaker 1: guess they would just squish you. But um, that's essentially
17:15
Speaker 1: what the sun is right now. So the idea is,
17:17
Speaker 1: instead of having the Sun pushing in all directions, to
17:20
Speaker 1: somehow get it to only push in one direction, so
17:22
Speaker 1: it uses its own energy to fly through the galaxy. Wait,
17:26
Speaker 1: this is one idea. So one idea for moving the
17:29
Speaker 1: Sun is to somehow coax it or fool it into
17:32
Speaker 1: only shooting in one direction so it naturally moves. Yeah,
17:36
Speaker 1: and you can't really change the way the Sun operates.
17:39
Speaker 1: What you gotta do is sort of like reflected. So
17:41
Speaker 1: you remember once we talked about solar sales. We talked
17:45
Speaker 1: about like sailing through space by capturing the momentum of photons,
17:49
Speaker 1: and the idea there was basically, have a huge mirror
17:52
Speaker 1: and when a photon hits the mirror, it bounces off
17:55
Speaker 1: and that pushes the mirror. Well, if you build a
17:58
Speaker 1: really big solar sale, like the size of the Sun, okay,
18:03
Speaker 1: and you put it next to the Sun, what he
18:05
Speaker 1: would do is bounce some of those photons ones that
18:08
Speaker 1: hit the solar sale, that would bounce it back the
18:10
Speaker 1: other direction. So what did the sail get blown away?
18:14
Speaker 1: The sale would definitely get blown away because it's a
18:16
Speaker 1: huge solar sale, and that's the idea. But if you
18:19
Speaker 1: could somehow attach it to the sun, right, attach it
18:23
Speaker 1: to the Sun. The small problem building a sale the
18:27
Speaker 1: size of the Sun and the small problem of attaching
18:30
Speaker 1: it to the Sun. Well, actually that problem is not
18:33
Speaker 1: that tricky because the Sun has a huge amount of gravity,
18:36
Speaker 1: and so if you just put it in the right place,
18:38
Speaker 1: then the amount of pressure you're getting on the solar
18:41
Speaker 1: sale is balanced by the gravity of the Sun pulling
18:44
Speaker 1: on it, and it would sort of stay in the
18:46
Speaker 1: same place, would become in a sense part of this
18:49
Speaker 1: like larger gravitational system of the Sun plus the sale,
18:52
Speaker 1: so the Sun would hold it in the right place,
18:54
Speaker 1: given like a gravitational chain there to to attach it to. Yeah,
18:59
Speaker 1: so actually attaching a solar sale to the Sun not
19:01
Speaker 1: physically like strapping it to the core of the Sun,
19:04
Speaker 1: which is you know, sort of the way it works
19:05
Speaker 1: in your brain, But you can do effectively the same
19:08
Speaker 1: thing gravitationally. Did you actually run the numbers, like, wouldn't
19:10
Speaker 1: it need to be super heavy for it to have
19:14
Speaker 1: a gravitational effect on the Sun? Yes, But anything you're
19:18
Speaker 1: building that's going to be the size of the Sun
19:20
Speaker 1: is going to be heavy. If you build this thing
19:22
Speaker 1: and it's like a micron a very thin aluminium or something,
19:26
Speaker 1: a micron of thin aluminium, that's you know, one a
19:30
Speaker 1: U y that's ninety million miles wide. That's still a
19:33
Speaker 1: lot of aluminium. That's a lot of microns. But these
19:35
Speaker 1: are even that much aluminium that we in in our
19:38
Speaker 1: solar system. That's such an engineering question, man. I see,
19:45
Speaker 1: if we could magically create matter that's what you're saying,
19:49
Speaker 1: and make it a decize at the Sun, then no problem.
19:52
Speaker 1: Now we probably do have enough materials if we like
19:55
Speaker 1: liquidate you know, a planet or two, or you know,
19:58
Speaker 1: some asteroids. There's probably enough stuff out there. Um, But
20:02
Speaker 1: actually fabricating that there, I mean, we'll talk about that later.
20:05
Speaker 1: It would cost a lot of money. The physics of
20:07
Speaker 1: it sort of does make sense, yeah, And and the
20:10
Speaker 1: reason is that, you know, the Sun puts out a
20:12
Speaker 1: lot of energy. It makes like ten to the forty
20:15
Speaker 1: five photons per second, and so it's pumping a lot
20:19
Speaker 1: of energy. So you're saying, capture some of it and
20:23
Speaker 1: have it pulled the Sun along with it gravitationally. Yeah.
20:27
Speaker 1: So you'd imagine having a huge mirror, for example, in
20:30
Speaker 1: the position this mirror next to the Sun, and half
20:33
Speaker 1: of the photons will come out of the Sun would
20:35
Speaker 1: get reversed in their direction and go the other way,
20:38
Speaker 1: and so the net force would be. It would be
20:40
Speaker 1: like if the Sun just had a huge flashlight and
20:42
Speaker 1: it was shining it off into space, that would push
20:45
Speaker 1: the Sun. It would get pushed in the direction away
20:47
Speaker 1: from this beam, so in the direction of the solar
20:50
Speaker 1: sale and so that would move the Sun. It would
20:53
Speaker 1: accelerate the Sun. Now there's some limitations there, like you
20:56
Speaker 1: can't have this solar salem in the plane the planets,
21:01
Speaker 1: you know, like if you have in the plane of
21:02
Speaker 1: the planets, then it's shooting a huge beam of photons,
21:05
Speaker 1: you know, into the Solar system. You could like fry
21:08
Speaker 1: a planet. We don't want to do that, So you
21:10
Speaker 1: sort of limited also in the direction you can aim
21:12
Speaker 1: this thing. You don't want to strap a huge rocket
21:14
Speaker 1: to the Sun and pointed at the Earth for example.
21:16
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's it's sort of sounds to me
21:18
Speaker 1: like like if you're in a boat and you put
21:20
Speaker 1: up a sail and then you blow in it with
21:22
Speaker 1: your mouth and expecting that to move you across the sea,
21:27
Speaker 1: Like you know, you're blowing on it, and somehow it
21:31
Speaker 1: feels like it kind of feels like a closed system.
21:33
Speaker 1: You're exactly right, if you were only blowing on the sail,
21:35
Speaker 1: you'd go nowhere. But if you're blowing on the sail
21:38
Speaker 1: and your friend is blowing the other direction, right, your
21:40
Speaker 1: friends blows will actually push you somewhere. So if we
21:44
Speaker 1: could just turn off half of the sun, that would
21:47
Speaker 1: be great. This is effectively like turning off half of
21:49
Speaker 1: the Sun and having it only blow in one direction. Oh,
21:52
Speaker 1: I see, but and then but then and then the
21:55
Speaker 1: sail would push also pull the sun. Yeah, well, that
21:57
Speaker 1: the Sun would actually be pushing itself, right, to be
22:00
Speaker 1: pushing itself because it's the photons that are going away
22:03
Speaker 1: from the sale would be I'm pushing the Sun effectively.
22:07
Speaker 1: And then the Sun would have this sale sort of
22:09
Speaker 1: captured in its gravitational system, and so hopefully it would
22:13
Speaker 1: be stable. But that's one of the problems is that
22:15
Speaker 1: it's it might not be that stable a situation. You know,
22:19
Speaker 1: if this thing like gets twisted of tiny bit, then
22:23
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it's unstable and it's falling into
22:25
Speaker 1: the Sun, and your four trillion dollar engineering project is
22:28
Speaker 1: literally toast and the whole reason that you um melted
22:32
Speaker 1: down Mars could have been for nothing. And the Martians
22:37
Speaker 1: are pissed, all right, So that, but that's just one idea.
22:39
Speaker 1: One idea is to use like a giant solar sale
22:42
Speaker 1: and focus the Sun in one direction. What's another way
22:45
Speaker 1: that we can maybe move the Sun. Another way is
22:48
Speaker 1: to sort of use the fuel of the Sun to
22:51
Speaker 1: power an enormous rocket. So you know, if you were
22:55
Speaker 1: like a five year old and you thought how would
22:57
Speaker 1: I do this? You say, okay, well, I'm just going
22:58
Speaker 1: to build a huge rocket and attach it to the Sun.
23:01
Speaker 1: And that's basically this idea. Um. But you know, a
23:05
Speaker 1: rocket like that is going to take a lot of energy,
23:07
Speaker 1: and fortunately the Sun is you know, it's a huge
23:10
Speaker 1: ball of fuel. Basically it's helium, it's hydrogen. So if
23:14
Speaker 1: you could build a big enough rocket, then you can
23:17
Speaker 1: just use the fuel from the Sun itself to power
23:19
Speaker 1: that engine and push the Sun. Wow. And how would
23:22
Speaker 1: you push it again gravitationally? That's a great question. Like
23:25
Speaker 1: you know, if you build an engine and you want
23:27
Speaker 1: to move something, you imagine like strapping it to something.
23:29
Speaker 1: But you don't want to strap this thing to the Sun,
23:31
Speaker 1: and nobody can build a leather strap the side of
23:33
Speaker 1: the Sun, so you'd actually have to build a two
23:36
Speaker 1: directional rocket. So one that sort of pushes the rocket.
23:40
Speaker 1: Another one that pushes the sun, so it keeps the
23:44
Speaker 1: sun sort of in front of it. Imagine it's sort
23:45
Speaker 1: of like a tug boat pushing a really big ship.
23:49
Speaker 1: You can't touch the ship, so it has like a
23:50
Speaker 1: little like a particle accelerator or a rocket to sort
23:53
Speaker 1: of keep the sun in front of it. Does that
23:57
Speaker 1: pause mean that made perfect sense or no sense at all?
24:00
Speaker 1: No sense that helf to me, So so maybe step
24:03
Speaker 1: me through it. So you build a rocket, you build
24:05
Speaker 1: like a little space ship, right, and then you put
24:07
Speaker 1: it out and in front of the sun for a
24:09
Speaker 1: form in front of the in the direction you want
24:12
Speaker 1: to go, or behind the sun the direction you want
24:14
Speaker 1: to go. You put it behind the sun. So the
24:16
Speaker 1: sun is in the direction you want to go, and
24:18
Speaker 1: the rocket is behind it, and the rocket is burning
24:21
Speaker 1: away from the sun. Huh okay, so the rocket is
24:24
Speaker 1: pushing towards the sun. But then so that the rocket
24:27
Speaker 1: doesn't fall into the sun, it shoots out a beam
24:30
Speaker 1: in front of it that pushes the sun. Oh, you're saying,
24:34
Speaker 1: shoot a beam of of what of whatever? You know, hydrogen, helium,
24:38
Speaker 1: whatever comes out of your reaction. You can push anything
24:41
Speaker 1: sort of blow on the Sun to get it to
24:44
Speaker 1: movie blow on the Sun. Yes, so you're you're imagine
24:48
Speaker 1: you're pushing some enormous ball or you have some like
24:51
Speaker 1: twenty meters high basketball and you have trying to push it.
24:54
Speaker 1: You're running and you're pushing, you're blowing on this thing
24:57
Speaker 1: to keep it in front of you. Yeah, oh boy,
25:00
Speaker 1: all right, it's complicated. My rocket is getting energy from
25:03
Speaker 1: the Sun. Yeah, you're stealing matter from the Sun to
25:06
Speaker 1: fuel it. So you have to like slurp stuff off
25:09
Speaker 1: of the Sun, you know, the Sun's plasma and the
25:13
Speaker 1: winds and all that stuff in order to fuel this thing.
25:16
Speaker 1: Oh like the straw, how would you scoop things up
25:20
Speaker 1: from the Sun. That's what. You could use magnetic fields
25:27
Speaker 1: to sort of channel large areas of the Sun's radiation
25:31
Speaker 1: into this thing to sort of grab it. Or you
25:34
Speaker 1: might have to build like a dice in sphere to
25:37
Speaker 1: capture more of the Sun's emissions and focus that into
25:40
Speaker 1: your rocket. So it would be pretty complicated, built like
25:44
Speaker 1: a giant catchers mid you sent to power your rocket
25:48
Speaker 1: and whatever it is you're throwing at the Sun to
25:51
Speaker 1: push it, so you grab some of the stuff it's
25:53
Speaker 1: shooting out and you use it to push it back out.
25:56
Speaker 1: That's right. And if you're worried that this would like
25:59
Speaker 1: eat up the sun pretty quickly, the sound is pretty
26:01
Speaker 1: big and even this ridiculous contraption would take a pretty
26:05
Speaker 1: small fraction of the energy of the sun, so we
26:09
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about that, all right. So those
26:11
Speaker 1: are I think, two pretty um solid ideas. I don't know,
26:15
Speaker 1: they seem pretty both pretty crazy, but they're out there.
26:18
Speaker 1: Those ideas are out there, and they're not I guess
26:20
Speaker 1: what you're saying is they're not impossible. They're physically possible,
26:24
Speaker 1: but um, maybe maybe they might be engineeringly impossible. I
26:28
Speaker 1: just quote it coined that term. Um. But but at
26:32
Speaker 1: least they're technically possible to do these things. Yeah, there's
26:35
Speaker 1: sort of like what you would come up with if
26:37
Speaker 1: you had a chalkboard and ten minutes, uh to solve
26:40
Speaker 1: this crazy problem. And we haven't really gotten that much
26:43
Speaker 1: further than those first ideas, because it's a great minute.
26:48
Speaker 1: That's the total amount of time. I think we're talking
26:51
Speaker 1: about these ideas more than anyone has actually thought taught
26:54
Speaker 1: them through. You know, there's a whole field and people
26:56
Speaker 1: like published papers thinking about the details of these things
27:00
Speaker 1: in more depth, but in sort of you know, big
27:03
Speaker 1: idea concepts. How could you attack this problem, not like
27:06
Speaker 1: the gritty details of how you would actually build this
27:08
Speaker 1: How could you attack this problem? In general? There haven't
27:11
Speaker 1: been that many more like great ideas for directions to
27:14
Speaker 1: attack other than the solar sale and the massive engine.
27:17
Speaker 1: Is there an actual journal where people discuss these things?
27:20
Speaker 1: The International Journal of Physics, fan Fiction, International Journal of
27:25
Speaker 1: Absurd Concepts, the Journal Engineeringly Impossible Concepts, engineeringly um. Alright,
27:37
Speaker 1: well they're plausible, at least at least in the chalkboard.
27:40
Speaker 1: They work, um, But I guess maybe a bigger question
27:43
Speaker 1: is why would we want to do this? And is
27:46
Speaker 1: it even practical or feasible? And so let's get into
27:49
Speaker 1: those questions. But first let's take a quick break, all right, Daniel. So,
28:06
Speaker 1: also on the table on our trukboard is this idea
28:08
Speaker 1: of moving the sun our sun to another solar system
28:12
Speaker 1: as a way to you know, see the see the
28:14
Speaker 1: sites out there in the universe. And so we talked
28:17
Speaker 1: about ways in which we could do it. Possibly they
28:21
Speaker 1: sound kind of crazy, but it sounds possible now. But
28:23
Speaker 1: now the question is why would we want to do it?
28:25
Speaker 1: Why would we you know, we were pretty good here
28:28
Speaker 1: in this part of the galaxy, things are pretty stable.
28:30
Speaker 1: Why would we want to get off of our solar
28:33
Speaker 1: system couch. I don't know. You sound kind of skeptical.
28:35
Speaker 1: When we started out, you were sort of excited by
28:37
Speaker 1: the possibility of doing something crazy that I told you
28:39
Speaker 1: what the plans were. Now you seem like, I'm not
28:42
Speaker 1: so sure this is going to happen. Well, engineeringly, he's
28:47
Speaker 1: kind of ridiculous. To be honest, as an engineer, I'm
28:51
Speaker 1: just like, you know what, to stay on the couch.
28:54
Speaker 1: This is not this is not anywhere near a plausible
28:57
Speaker 1: but you know, it's fun to think about. And so
29:00
Speaker 1: or maybe maybe the reason the need isn't great enough,
29:03
Speaker 1: you know, maybe if there was need, I would, you know,
29:05
Speaker 1: get off my couch here and all right, let's talk motivation.
29:08
Speaker 1: Let's motivation problem. Well, one reason, of course, it's just exploration,
29:14
Speaker 1: Like if we wanted to explore other parts of the galaxy,
29:17
Speaker 1: that this is one way to do it, and you
29:19
Speaker 1: could effectively move all of humanity and all of our
29:21
Speaker 1: resources and you wouldn't have to build spaceships. And send
29:24
Speaker 1: people out there into space. And you know, space travel
29:26
Speaker 1: is annoying, and who wants to be born on a
29:29
Speaker 1: colony ship and die in a colony ship and never
29:31
Speaker 1: sit but on a planet. That sounds kind of depressing.
29:34
Speaker 1: And so you could sort of just gradually explore the
29:37
Speaker 1: whole galaxy, you know, imagine like taking our star instead
29:40
Speaker 1: of just sort of floating along and the galactic swirl
29:43
Speaker 1: going the other direction. Then we could be like every
29:47
Speaker 1: few years or so visiting a new solar system, maybe
29:50
Speaker 1: like being on a cruise, maybe without the coronavirus. Yeah. Um,
29:54
Speaker 1: so in the ideas that we would then then get
29:56
Speaker 1: close to other stars so we can look at the
29:58
Speaker 1: better or actually they like, you know, send probe out
30:01
Speaker 1: to visit other solar systems. Both. I mean, you wouldn't
30:04
Speaker 1: want to get too close because you don't want the
30:06
Speaker 1: gravity of that star to interfere with the gravity of
30:09
Speaker 1: our solar system and perturb some orbits and cause you know,
30:12
Speaker 1: cataclysmic events. But close enough that you could send probes
30:16
Speaker 1: in a reasonable amount of time. Yeah, and hey, it's
30:18
Speaker 1: like a cruise, you know. You can either get off
30:20
Speaker 1: and go explore the local scenery, or you could stay
30:23
Speaker 1: on the boat. You're saying it's more practical to build
30:26
Speaker 1: a giant engine around the Sun than it is to
30:30
Speaker 1: just go a little bit further with a probe. I
30:32
Speaker 1: think it's um, it's sort of a longer term plan.
30:36
Speaker 1: You can build a ship to go visit one solar system,
30:39
Speaker 1: but this is a plan to like visit all of them.
30:41
Speaker 1: This is you're retired and you bought an r V
30:43
Speaker 1: and you want to see the country, and so you
30:45
Speaker 1: decide instead of taking a lot of little trips, you
30:47
Speaker 1: just drive all around in your house. All right, So
30:50
Speaker 1: the exploration is one reason, um, to get off the couch.
30:54
Speaker 1: But what are some other possible needs that we might
30:57
Speaker 1: have to do this. Well, we might see a day
31:00
Speaker 1: injer to our solar system, and we might have a
31:02
Speaker 1: lot of warning, Like we track all the other stars
31:05
Speaker 1: in the galaxy, and it might be that, you know,
31:08
Speaker 1: one swirl around the galaxy, we see something coming another
31:11
Speaker 1: star is headed for a near collision with ours, or
31:15
Speaker 1: you know, close enough that it could steal some of
31:17
Speaker 1: the planets, and we might want to change the trajectory
31:20
Speaker 1: of the Sun in order to sort of get out
31:21
Speaker 1: of the way. If there's something that might destroy our
31:26
Speaker 1: solar system, and then we might want to move it
31:28
Speaker 1: somewhere else, yeah, or move our solar system out of
31:32
Speaker 1: the way precisely like a rogue planet, or like a
31:34
Speaker 1: rogue star. Well, a rogue planet would be really hard
31:37
Speaker 1: to see far in advance because they're not bright, So
31:40
Speaker 1: it has to be a star that's on a near
31:41
Speaker 1: collision course with ours. You know, earlier in the history
31:44
Speaker 1: of the galaxy, I think more of this kind of
31:46
Speaker 1: stuff happened, and things are sort of calm er now
31:49
Speaker 1: because all the bumps that have happened have mostly happened,
31:51
Speaker 1: but there could still be more. And you know, in
31:54
Speaker 1: the very far future when we collide with Andromeda, then
31:58
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a lot of chaos, and so, you know,
32:00
Speaker 1: long term planning, we might want to be able to
32:02
Speaker 1: sort of shift where our house is. You know, you
32:05
Speaker 1: might want to jump ship, yeah, or just take your
32:08
Speaker 1: ship with you. You know, like if you saw a
32:10
Speaker 1: huge rock about to fall in your house, it'd be
32:12
Speaker 1: nice if you could wheel your house over to the
32:13
Speaker 1: next block, right, Oh, I see, Instead of getting off
32:17
Speaker 1: the couch, you'd be like, move my couch, Please call
32:22
Speaker 1: the movers. Move the couch with you in it to
32:25
Speaker 1: or move the whole house. Yeah, And it doesn't have
32:27
Speaker 1: to be just that a star is going to collide
32:29
Speaker 1: with us. We might, for example, spot a star and
32:32
Speaker 1: be able to predict that it's going to go supernova,
32:34
Speaker 1: and that could be really dangerous. If it's a star
32:37
Speaker 1: goes supernova close enough, you know, within fifty or a
32:39
Speaker 1: hundred light years, you could fry the Earth the X
32:42
Speaker 1: rays and the gamma rays. It's a huge amount of radiation.
32:46
Speaker 1: So if we get to a point where are the
32:48
Speaker 1: science of supernovas is better, because right now it's really
32:50
Speaker 1: hard to predict exactly when they blow. Then and we
32:53
Speaker 1: see one coming, then we might want to get out
32:55
Speaker 1: of the way before we all get sterilized. We'd have
32:58
Speaker 1: to move the entire our solar system to be safe, right,
33:02
Speaker 1: to sort of continue Earth as it is, yeah, or
33:04
Speaker 1: we all have to get on ships and hope to
33:06
Speaker 1: land on another solar system. But it seems to me
33:08
Speaker 1: like we have one. We like, let's just move it
33:10
Speaker 1: out of the way rather than abandoning it. It's starting
33:12
Speaker 1: to seem more and more practical now. Huh Yeah, yeah,
33:15
Speaker 1: I guess if it's that or getting fried by a supernova.
33:19
Speaker 1: Let's do it this giant crazy rocket slash solar sale.
33:25
Speaker 1: And there's just one more idea I wanted to put
33:28
Speaker 1: out there, which is we're sort of far from the
33:30
Speaker 1: galactic center, where like thirty thousand light years from the
33:32
Speaker 1: center of the galaxy, which is a comfortable distance right now,
33:36
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't want to be any closer because the
33:38
Speaker 1: center of the galaxy is filled with crazy radiation from
33:41
Speaker 1: all the stuff that's happening at the center. You've got
33:43
Speaker 1: the black hole, gas and dust. He's getting squeezed and radiating.
33:47
Speaker 1: So it's like a death zone. And we don't know
33:49
Speaker 1: sort of the future of that death zone. Like as
33:52
Speaker 1: the black hole in the center of the galaxy grows
33:55
Speaker 1: and eats more stuff, that radiation from the center of
33:57
Speaker 1: the galaxy might get larger and larger as you get
34:00
Speaker 1: out to sort of the suburbs, and so we might
34:02
Speaker 1: need to sort of like escape that radiation by pushing
34:05
Speaker 1: ourselves further out and having a larger radius. Oh I see,
34:08
Speaker 1: So get away from the dangerous part of the galaxy.
34:11
Speaker 1: Moved to the suburbs, moved to the excerpts right with
34:13
Speaker 1: our house, to the sub to the suburbs that just
34:16
Speaker 1: moved to the suburbs. You know, put your house and
34:18
Speaker 1: wheels and move it to the suburb. Yeah, we're already
34:20
Speaker 1: in the suburbs, so this would be like moving to
34:22
Speaker 1: a small town in the middle of nowhere. Might be safer,
34:26
Speaker 1: all right, but then we wouldn't be able to explore anything.
34:28
Speaker 1: We wouldn't be But you know, and thinking really really
34:32
Speaker 1: long term, like we could use this strategy to go
34:34
Speaker 1: visit other galaxies. We could like leave the Milky Way behind.
34:38
Speaker 1: We could float our Sun and like go to Andromeda
34:42
Speaker 1: or go to another galaxy entirely. Yeah, because we have
34:45
Speaker 1: our own little bit battery pack, which is the Sun. Yeah,
34:48
Speaker 1: we don't need anything else in the galaxy. It's not
34:50
Speaker 1: doing anything for us. So our star and planets together
34:53
Speaker 1: could survive out there in intergalactic space for a long
34:57
Speaker 1: long time as we float towards another galaxy. All right, Well,
35:00
Speaker 1: it's getting to the final part of this, which is easy.
35:02
Speaker 1: Is it even practical? Let's say we did have a
35:04
Speaker 1: big need to do it to move our solar system.
35:06
Speaker 1: Is it even practical or feasible? I will say it's
35:09
Speaker 1: definitely not. In the near future. You basically have to
35:13
Speaker 1: be a civilization that's capable of building a dycen sphere already, uh,
35:18
Speaker 1: in order to make this possible. And we are far
35:20
Speaker 1: far from that, right because we don't even you need
35:23
Speaker 1: don't where do you get all these materials and the
35:25
Speaker 1: energy to build it? Yeah, you need a lot of
35:28
Speaker 1: wrong materials, and so you need a very vigorous like
35:31
Speaker 1: space mining operation. There are asteroids out there that are
35:35
Speaker 1: just like, you know, a trillion tons of platinum or whatever.
35:38
Speaker 1: You probably can find those materials, but that means you
35:41
Speaker 1: have a heavy industry in space that can go search
35:44
Speaker 1: these things and tow these asteroids and and fabricate these
35:48
Speaker 1: things and put them together. I mean, we're talking about
35:52
Speaker 1: a thousand years of technology. We haven't even started on
35:55
Speaker 1: well a thousand years, I don't know. I mean, these
35:58
Speaker 1: things accelerate rapidly, so it's hard to make very far
36:01
Speaker 1: future predictions. But I can't imagine we're gonna have a
36:03
Speaker 1: heavy space industry in the next forty years. So we're
36:09
Speaker 1: just not there in terms of the industry required to
36:11
Speaker 1: do it. But it let's say we even if we are,
36:13
Speaker 1: is it it's still possible? Like it wouldn't be like
36:16
Speaker 1: I feel like, if you move the Sun, wouldn't that
36:18
Speaker 1: leave all the planets behind or disturb their orbits or
36:22
Speaker 1: you know, just kind of you're risking throwing the whole
36:25
Speaker 1: Solar system out of whack. I was really worried about
36:28
Speaker 1: that also, and all of my reading I didn't find
36:30
Speaker 1: anybody addressing that. You know, if if you give a
36:33
Speaker 1: push to the Sun, you're not giving a push to
36:36
Speaker 1: the planets, and so the planets are going to fall
36:38
Speaker 1: behind a little bit, yeah, exactly, so they can go
36:41
Speaker 1: into a different orbit. Yeah, or you could just lose
36:44
Speaker 1: them entirely, and that would not be a good outcome.
36:48
Speaker 1: So definitely, what if you blow on that too, Daniel,
36:51
Speaker 1: What if we attach rockets and everything we want to keep. Well,
36:55
Speaker 1: the problem is you can't build a solar sale on
36:57
Speaker 1: the Earth because it's not solar, right, it doesn't produce photons.
37:01
Speaker 1: And you don't want to build a rocket on the
37:03
Speaker 1: Earth and then like have it push on the Earth
37:06
Speaker 1: because that would be really destructive. So if you have
37:09
Speaker 1: to just get tugged along by the gravity of the Sun,
37:12
Speaker 1: which means you have to be pretty gentle, Like you'd
37:15
Speaker 1: have to start out really slowly to not perturb all
37:19
Speaker 1: these other orbits. You ramp up slow enough, then the
37:22
Speaker 1: planets would follow, because I guess the orbits are sort
37:26
Speaker 1: of stable and they would sort of stabilize. Yeah, but
37:28
Speaker 1: I don't think we know that very well. And you
37:30
Speaker 1: have to do a lot of calculations. You know. It's
37:32
Speaker 1: it's like somebody is spinning plates on their fingers and
37:35
Speaker 1: now you want them to also start running. Probably they
37:40
Speaker 1: could do it, but you'd want to start really really gradually.
37:43
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we'll we'll make those calculations annually and
37:46
Speaker 1: submitted to the Journal of Physics. Fans fit. But the
37:49
Speaker 1: good news is that none of these engines are that powerful.
37:52
Speaker 1: I mean, even if you built this solar sale, it
37:56
Speaker 1: would take like two hundred million years to go just
38:00
Speaker 1: a hundred light years. And that's because the Sun is
38:03
Speaker 1: just really massive and moving. It takes a huge amount
38:06
Speaker 1: of energy. So this engine would just sort of like
38:09
Speaker 1: very very gently, um push the Sun. It would take
38:13
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty million years before we even see
38:17
Speaker 1: the next star. Well, the next star is only a
38:19
Speaker 1: few light years away, but you know, a hundred a
38:21
Speaker 1: hundred light years, it's not that far on galactic distances.
38:24
Speaker 1: You know, the galaxy is a hundred thousand light years across,
38:27
Speaker 1: so you're not visiting the entire galaxy very quickly using
38:32
Speaker 1: that solar sale. And that's one reason why people are
38:34
Speaker 1: thinking about the rocket engine approach, because even though it's ridiculous,
38:39
Speaker 1: you know, to build a rocket engine that could push
38:41
Speaker 1: the Sun, it is more powerful and has more potential
38:44
Speaker 1: to push the Sun. Oh I see, that would do
38:46
Speaker 1: it in a less amount of time. Yeah, you could
38:48
Speaker 1: do it, like you could go a hundred light years
38:51
Speaker 1: and only like two million years. But still it's a
38:54
Speaker 1: that's a huge long term project. Like humanity has been
38:56
Speaker 1: around for thirty thousand years. You're saying, let's have a
38:59
Speaker 1: project that last two million years. Yeah, let's take a
39:03
Speaker 1: trip the last two million years. Yeah. It's like you've
39:06
Speaker 1: been dating somebody for a month and you propose going
39:08
Speaker 1: on a fifty year cruise, Right, what could go wrong?
39:14
Speaker 1: The coronavirus? Maybe those folks are going to be on
39:18
Speaker 1: that cruise ship for fifty years. You never know that
39:21
Speaker 1: never let him out? All right, So it's um, well,
39:25
Speaker 1: but again it all depends on the knee. Like if
39:28
Speaker 1: we have to move the Sun, then we have to
39:29
Speaker 1: move the sun, even if it takes a few million years,
39:32
Speaker 1: that's right. You know. Sometimes you just gotta call Bruce Willis,
39:35
Speaker 1: whether you have the budget forward or not, because you
39:37
Speaker 1: just got to solve the problem, and you know, freeze
39:40
Speaker 1: him so he lasts million years and only bring him
39:44
Speaker 1: out at critical moments. I think my favorite aspect of this, though,
39:48
Speaker 1: is not thinking about how humanity might do it, as
39:51
Speaker 1: awesome as that is, but thinking about aliens doing it,
39:55
Speaker 1: because if aliens pull this off, we might see them
39:58
Speaker 1: doing it, and that could prove they exist the same
40:00
Speaker 1: way like spotting an alien civilization, building a dice in
40:03
Speaker 1: sphere could prove that there are aliens. If we see
40:06
Speaker 1: a son like doing weird things moving non gravitationally, that's
40:11
Speaker 1: a clue that there's something interesting happening. I see. That's
40:14
Speaker 1: like options. See like you know, option A Daniel does it,
40:18
Speaker 1: Daniel doesn't want to do it. Option be somebody else
40:20
Speaker 1: does it, some other human does it, No other human
40:23
Speaker 1: wants to do it. To see, hey, look somebody else
40:25
Speaker 1: is doing it. I'm done. That's all I needed to
40:28
Speaker 1: And that's the ultimate stay on your couch, because then
40:30
Speaker 1: the aliens do all the work and they take the trip. Right,
40:33
Speaker 1: You're like, why don't you come visit us at our house.
40:35
Speaker 1: We'll just make dinner. Just put a big sign out
40:39
Speaker 1: saying open for dinner. Yeah, free bananas movies for any
40:42
Speaker 1: aliens who come to visit. And it's not just spotting
40:45
Speaker 1: aliens who are doing this so we can see that
40:48
Speaker 1: they exist. But maybe they would come and visit. You know,
40:50
Speaker 1: they could drag their star on their tour around the
40:54
Speaker 1: galaxy and they could stop over here and tell us
40:56
Speaker 1: all about the mysteries of the universe. All right, Well,
40:59
Speaker 1: it's super fun to sort of think about these crazy
41:01
Speaker 1: ideas and giant engineeringly complex projects, um, because you know,
41:07
Speaker 1: it kind of forces you to think about what is
41:09
Speaker 1: possible and how physics works out there in the universe. Yeah,
41:13
Speaker 1: and a lot of things that are very normal, very
41:16
Speaker 1: banal every day in our society seemed impossible and crazy
41:20
Speaker 1: just a couple of hundred years ago. And so what
41:23
Speaker 1: seems crazy to us now could be ho hum in
41:26
Speaker 1: the future, you know, and maybe this is a thing
41:29
Speaker 1: that our children's children's children's children will enjoy, getting to
41:33
Speaker 1: pick the next solar system that humanity visits. You know,
41:35
Speaker 1: you don't even need to get off the couch to
41:37
Speaker 1: make more children. So that's that all works out. This
41:41
Speaker 1: plan is perfect, all right, Well, I guess until then,
41:44
Speaker 1: couch potatoes keep on dreaming. There's a lot that humanity
41:48
Speaker 1: can do just thinking about these things from the comfort
41:51
Speaker 1: of your couch. I prefer to refer to this community
41:53
Speaker 1: as couchstronauts. Couch I see, fearless, non explore exactly explores
42:02
Speaker 1: of the mind. All right, We hope you enjoyed that.
42:05
Speaker 1: See you next time. Before you still have a question
42:15
Speaker 1: after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
42:18
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
42:20
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Speaker 1: Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
42:31
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I
42:34
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