Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Selects: Will We Find Evidence of Aliens by Their Engineering Projects?
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: M Hey everybody, it's your old pal Josh, and for
- 0:03Speaker 1: this week's Select, I invite you to listen to our
- 0:05Speaker 1: ridiculously interesting episode on Dyson's Fears. It's a really cool
- 0:10Speaker 1: look at how we'll start harnessing energy in the solar
- 0:13Speaker 1: system in the future and eventually from the universe as
- 0:16Speaker 1: a whole. And when we do stand back. I hope
- 0:20Speaker 1: you find this one as interesting as Chuck and I did,
- 0:23Speaker 1: so getty up and enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
- 0:31Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
- 0:39Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant,
- 0:44Speaker 1: Jerry's over there. Their foot on the button, and that
- 0:47Speaker 1: means this is stuff you should know the podcast. The
- 0:51Speaker 1: foot on the button, just waiting to cut us off. Yeah,
- 0:55Speaker 1: that's what no one knows. But Jerry has a kill
- 0:58Speaker 1: switch at her foot for all of our profane tirades. Yeah,
- 1:03Speaker 1: it would kill us if she ever pressed it. That's right,
- 1:06Speaker 1: That's why they call it that. But she's not very
- 1:08Speaker 1: good at it. I've noticed I've noticed some stuff slips by. Yeah.
- 1:13Speaker 1: I told her she's like Keith Richards of podcast producers,
- 1:16Speaker 1: because he can't use guitar pedals, So he's known for that.
- 1:20Speaker 1: Is that a thing? Well, I mean I don't know
- 1:23Speaker 1: how known he is maybe among guitar players, but he uh,
- 1:26Speaker 1: he just plugs right into the amp. That's pretty great. Oh,
- 1:30Speaker 1: I see. And his he was on Mark Maron's podcast.
- 1:33Speaker 1: It was a great interview in maren he you know,
- 1:36Speaker 1: it's pure Keith Richards and he was just basically like,
- 1:39Speaker 1: you know, I have a hard time standing upright, like
- 1:41Speaker 1: I can't mess with trying to press foot pedals. Right,
- 1:45Speaker 1: that's Keith Man. Yep. Very pure. Yeah. And by pure,
- 1:50Speaker 1: I mean pure heroine, pure China. He's clean now, But
- 1:57Speaker 1: is he really? That's astounding? Well, I mean no, I
- 2:00Speaker 1: mean he doesn't do like hard drugs anymore. I got you,
- 2:04Speaker 1: And I think he drinks and smokes weed. I got you.
- 2:09Speaker 1: Come on, yeah, like Christine. Actually, Maron smoked his first
- 2:13Speaker 1: cigarette in a decade in that show with him. Oh
- 2:16Speaker 1: that was smart, a good decision. He was like, I
- 2:19Speaker 1: have to how can I not? Yeah, he easily could
- 2:23Speaker 1: not have done that. I'm disappointed, did he really? Yeah?
- 2:27Speaker 1: Keith Richards offered him a smoke and he's like sure, Yeah,
- 2:30Speaker 1: I mean I see that, but at the same time
- 2:31Speaker 1: I was assos to not smoking. Listen to you. I
- 2:36Speaker 1: know I'm being judge wagging your finger, so Chuck, Yes,
- 2:42Speaker 1: have you ever used energy? Yes? Well, you know, when
- 2:48Speaker 1: you're using energy, most likely you're using something like a
- 2:52Speaker 1: fossil fuel, right, yeah, right, like gasoline or natural gas
- 2:56Speaker 1: or something like that, stuff that comes from decomposing dinosaurs. Yes, Okay.
- 3:01Speaker 1: The problem with using decomposing dinosaurs, as most people know,
- 3:05Speaker 1: is that it's essentially a non renewable resource. There's no
- 3:08Speaker 1: more dinosaurs decomposed any longer, and even if there were,
- 3:12Speaker 1: it would take tens of millions of years for them
- 3:15Speaker 1: to decompose into fossil fuels for us, right, right, even
- 3:18Speaker 1: if we could, even if we had dino d n
- 3:21Speaker 1: A and we could make new dinosaurs just to kill
- 3:25Speaker 1: them and watch them decompose, which is something we would
- 3:28Speaker 1: do if we had the capability, I guarantee you, right, Um,
- 3:33Speaker 1: But we don't have that capability as far as I know, Like,
- 3:35Speaker 1: no one's working on that track right now. I don't
- 3:38Speaker 1: think just uh Steven Spielberg, right, maybe someone at Rutgers. So, um,
- 3:48Speaker 1: we we have to come up with energy sources that
- 3:51Speaker 1: we won't eventually run out of. And obviously there's like
- 3:53Speaker 1: wind and solar and as far as solar power goes,
- 3:56Speaker 1: from what I understand, we're actually doing pretty well right now.
- 3:59Speaker 1: Like right now, we use something like point zero one
- 4:02Speaker 1: percent of the sunlight that reaches Earth to to power
- 4:07Speaker 1: our our world, So there's a lot of room for
- 4:10Speaker 1: growth potential. The thing is is, I also saw that
- 4:14Speaker 1: if we keep growing and our energy consumption keeps growing
- 4:18Speaker 1: uh at something like one percent a year, within a
- 4:20Speaker 1: thousand years will be using more than the entire amount
- 4:25Speaker 1: of sunlight that hits the Earth UM can provide. So
- 4:29Speaker 1: we really need to come up with something else. Yes,
- 4:32Speaker 1: The problem is is even if we harnessed all of
- 4:35Speaker 1: the energy here on Earth, we would very quickly outgrow
- 4:40Speaker 1: whatever energy it provided. So some people have said, well,
- 4:43Speaker 1: why don't we just go straight to the source. If
- 4:45Speaker 1: the Sun is such a great source of energy, but
- 4:47Speaker 1: it's shooting that energy out in directions other than the Earth, UM,
- 4:52Speaker 1: the stuff that is starting towards the Earth doesn't make
- 4:55Speaker 1: it very frequently. Well, let's just go to the sun
- 4:59Speaker 1: and and basically strangle the life out of it to
- 5:01Speaker 1: get energy from it right, great idea and one of
- 5:05Speaker 1: the first proposals of it. I don't want to say
- 5:09Speaker 1: a serious proposal, because although it's been taken seriously over
- 5:13Speaker 1: the years and almost been interpreted like scripture. Um, it
- 5:18Speaker 1: was a thought experiment to begin with. It's something called
- 5:21Speaker 1: the Dyson's fear. Yes, um, well, I guess we should
- 5:26Speaker 1: introduce the man. Not that we have him here, that'd
- 5:30Speaker 1: be awesome. He's he's still around. Yeah, I know, he's
- 5:33Speaker 1: an old dude. But we're talking about Freeman Dyson, not
- 5:37Speaker 1: to the maker of the vacuum cleaner or the bladeless
- 5:42Speaker 1: fan or the bladeless hair dryer. Is that really a thing?
- 5:49Speaker 1: They have a dice in hair dryer? Yeah, you know
- 5:51Speaker 1: what that. I was so disappointed when I found out
- 5:54Speaker 1: what the bladeless fan was. Why have you seen those? Yeah,
- 5:59Speaker 1: you can stick your and through it. It's amazing. Well
- 6:01Speaker 1: I know, and I was like it is it magic? Like,
- 6:03Speaker 1: how in the world isn't doing this? But it's got
- 6:06Speaker 1: a stupid blade. It's just housed in a in a casing. Yeah,
- 6:10Speaker 1: so that's a terrible name for it. And then it
- 6:12Speaker 1: just channels it up and you know, squirts it out
- 6:15Speaker 1: the front that they're The Dyson invention that always got
- 6:19Speaker 1: me was the air blade hand dryer. I think we've
- 6:22Speaker 1: talked about this before, where you stick your hand down
- 6:24Speaker 1: in there. Those Yeah, but they're so filled with germs
- 6:29Speaker 1: that Actually I was in a bathroom the other day
- 6:31Speaker 1: and they have an air blade now that just blows
- 6:34Speaker 1: downward onto your hands, and it's actually I'm like, Okay,
- 6:38Speaker 1: now I'm satisfied with this invention. Well, you know, you're
- 6:40Speaker 1: not supposed to rub your hand on the air blade itself, no,
- 6:43Speaker 1: but it's so close. It's like you're playing operation like
- 6:45Speaker 1: I'm trying to remove a funny bone or something like that.
- 6:47Speaker 1: It's almost impossible not to hit the sides of the thing,
- 6:50Speaker 1: you know, your big meat hooks or just rubbing all
- 6:52Speaker 1: over every gross. Yeah, it is gross, believe me, because
- 6:56Speaker 1: I walk out is crying with my hands held in
- 6:59Speaker 1: the air every time I'm to go to the bathroom. Well,
- 7:01Speaker 1: you and I have a very big thing about airport bathrooms. Um,
- 7:05Speaker 1: and I think I had the worst one of my
- 7:08Speaker 1: life at a Boston Logan on our last tour. Oh yeah,
- 7:12Speaker 1: what happened? It was just not up to snuff, Like
- 7:15Speaker 1: the first of all the door and this might have
- 7:18Speaker 1: been just this one bathroom, but the doors to the
- 7:21Speaker 1: stalls none of them secured, they've been ripped clean off.
- 7:26Speaker 1: Well they were there, but you couldn't you know, the
- 7:28Speaker 1: locks didn't work. It was just yeah, basically had to
- 7:30Speaker 1: push my hand against it, which grossed me out. Yeah,
- 7:32Speaker 1: that's not okay. And then the gap when the door
- 7:35Speaker 1: was shut was like two or three inches big, like
- 7:39Speaker 1: you could fully just look in and say, how you doing,
- 7:41Speaker 1: how's your poop? Yeah, that's the Mr. Peeper's model. It's
- 7:45Speaker 1: just not acceptable, you know, in this day and age,
- 7:48Speaker 1: to not have complete privacy in there. I mean, I
- 7:52Speaker 1: agree with you. I again, I'm going to reiterate. I
- 7:55Speaker 1: think there should be one stall for an entire bathroom
- 7:58Speaker 1: so that no one could possibly sit down next you.
- 8:00Speaker 1: But barring that, them all exactly. But barring that, though,
- 8:04Speaker 1: like the place, like what we have in our office
- 8:08Speaker 1: is acceptable. It's a good second. There's like a complete
- 8:12Speaker 1: wall in between you. There's a complete wall in front
- 8:15Speaker 1: of you and a door. It's a securely shut it's
- 8:18Speaker 1: a water closet. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess I
- 8:21Speaker 1: guess it is. The man I knew we were going
- 8:25Speaker 1: to get distracted by poop. Yeah, this isn't even the
- 8:29Speaker 1: porta potty I know, all right, So sorry. Back to
- 8:32Speaker 1: Freeman Dyson. Uh, not the vacuum maker. He was born
- 8:37Speaker 1: in England. He worked most of his career he's retired now,
- 8:41Speaker 1: but work most of his career as a physics professor
- 8:44Speaker 1: at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, not Rutgers. Uh.
- 8:53Speaker 1: He was a civilian scientist with the r EF and
- 8:55Speaker 1: World War Two. I went to Cambridge, then Cornell for
- 8:58Speaker 1: grad school. This guy's got some bona fides. Uh. And
- 9:02Speaker 1: then he's been in news recently by being a big
- 9:07Speaker 1: I mean, brilliant, brilliant man. But he's been in the
- 9:09Speaker 1: news recently by being one of the more prominent scientists
- 9:12Speaker 1: that on as a climate change skeptic. Oh is that right? Yeah,
- 9:18Speaker 1: and not like a complete skeptic, like he does believe
- 9:21Speaker 1: that it's I believe, Whereas what his stance is that
- 9:25Speaker 1: he does believe that it's man made, but he doesn't
- 9:27Speaker 1: think we have enough detail about all the variables for
- 9:32Speaker 1: these computer generated models to be accurate. So he's he's
- 9:37Speaker 1: basically saying like this is not the end of the world,
- 9:40Speaker 1: and in fact, he thinks that increasing levels of CEO
- 9:43Speaker 1: two can be a good thing for humanity. Ultimately, I
- 9:46Speaker 1: don't know, I didn't get that far. He's like, it
- 9:49Speaker 1: gives it gives you a pretty good buzz. Maybe, I
- 9:52Speaker 1: don't know. It's pretty interesting though. He's like, I think
- 9:55Speaker 1: starting about, you know, six to ten years ago, really
- 9:58Speaker 1: started making the news with his somewhat controversial because he's
- 10:03Speaker 1: a brilliant man, and all these other scientists are like, wow,
- 10:05Speaker 1: he's such a smart guy, but he's so wrong on this.
- 10:08Speaker 1: But then other people are like, no, he's totally right.
- 10:11Speaker 1: That's pretty interesting anyway. Um, so that's who he is.
- 10:15Speaker 1: And he in nineteen thirty seven, well not n seven.
- 10:19Speaker 1: He in the nineteen sixties was reading a book from
- 10:21Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven called Starmaker from uh, science fiction author
- 10:26Speaker 1: Olaf Stapledon, and uh, he saw this thing called a
- 10:29Speaker 1: light trap from this book. Uh. And this book also
- 10:33Speaker 1: had predicted things like virtual reality, and it's kind of
- 10:37Speaker 1: a pretty much a landmark sci fi science book. And um,
- 10:42Speaker 1: he said, hey, this light trap sounds like a good idea.
- 10:45Speaker 1: I'm going to rip it off. Yeah he did, And
- 10:48Speaker 1: he actually It was I think a paper that was
- 10:50Speaker 1: published in Science and the General Science in nineteen sixty
- 10:53Speaker 1: and it's really short. Did you read it? Yeah, yeah,
- 10:56Speaker 1: it's like I think it took up two pages in Science, um,
- 11:00Speaker 1: out of like a thousand or something like that in
- 11:02Speaker 1: that volume. But um, he basically said, this would be
- 11:07Speaker 1: a great thing, as you say, to rip off, for
- 11:10Speaker 1: a thought experiment I'm working on. Right, because just very
- 11:13Speaker 1: recently something called Project OSMA had been created, and that
- 11:17Speaker 1: was they started to search the sky for extraterrestrial intelligence.
- 11:21Speaker 1: It was the first cit um and they were looking
- 11:23Speaker 1: for radio signals still are. But Dyson was saying, well,
- 11:27Speaker 1: hold on a second, if you're gonna start looking for
- 11:29Speaker 1: extraterrestrial beings like signs of intelligent civilizations, you should maybe
- 11:33Speaker 1: start looking for these and and they came to be
- 11:36Speaker 1: called Dyson's fears because he was the first one to
- 11:39Speaker 1: popularize it, even though he got the idea from old Off. Yeah,
- 11:43Speaker 1: he actually said, um, he thought a staple in sphere
- 11:46Speaker 1: was a better name, but I guess not good enough
- 11:49Speaker 1: to actually use it, right, right, Yeah, he said it
- 11:52Speaker 1: once very quietly. Yeah, But so this dysons he it
- 11:57Speaker 1: was originally created as a again a thought experiment. He
- 12:01Speaker 1: wasn't He didn't talk about how to construct it necessarily
- 12:05Speaker 1: or anything like that, although there were some follow up
- 12:08Speaker 1: correspondence UM after the letter first came out, but almost
- 12:14Speaker 1: immediately people started thinking about how you would create one
- 12:18Speaker 1: of these things, this this Dicen sphere, and the whole point,
- 12:22Speaker 1: we should say, basically, at its at its basis, a
- 12:25Speaker 1: Dicen sphere is UM an engineering project, a megastructure that
- 12:32Speaker 1: initially was thought to be basically a hollow sphere that
- 12:36Speaker 1: you built around a star, for example, we would build
- 12:39Speaker 1: it around our sun. And the whole point of this
- 12:42Speaker 1: thing is on the inside of this sphere are solar arrays,
- 12:47Speaker 1: so that all of that sunlight, like we were talking
- 12:50Speaker 1: about earlier, that gets wasted as far as we're concerned,
- 12:54Speaker 1: is captured and converted into usable energy for us. And
- 12:59Speaker 1: and in Freeman Dyson's point was, if you build one
- 13:03Speaker 1: of these things, you're going to capture light. Light won't
- 13:08Speaker 1: get out, but infrared radiation heat, thermal heat will escape.
- 13:13Speaker 1: And so if you're looking around the skies for aliens,
- 13:15Speaker 1: look for something that has a tremendous amount of like
- 13:18Speaker 1: the infrared radiation of a star, but isn't putting any
- 13:21Speaker 1: light out? And maybe you just found an alien civilization.
- 13:23Speaker 1: That's how it began. But people started trying to figure
- 13:26Speaker 1: out how to make one of these things almost as
- 13:28Speaker 1: soon as he published that letter. So the one thing
- 13:31Speaker 1: I don't get was he saying that look for this
- 13:34Speaker 1: because other civilizations out there are using a dycen spear.
- 13:38Speaker 1: He he said that it would be likely that they
- 13:41Speaker 1: that this would be an invention they came up. Got you, Yeah,
- 13:45Speaker 1: all right, well, um let's go should we go to
- 13:48Speaker 1: uh this U Nikolai kardas Chef question. I think we
- 13:53Speaker 1: can't put it off any longer. It's pretty interesting. In
- 13:55Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties there was an astrophysicist named Nikolai karda
- 13:59Speaker 1: chef and um he was a Bond villain and actually
- 14:05Speaker 1: he wasn't, but he should have been. Um. He had
- 14:07Speaker 1: this idea that there were three classifications of civilization, uh
- 14:12Speaker 1: type one, which is basically, we have learned how to
- 14:16Speaker 1: harness all the energy on the home planet, like everything
- 14:21Speaker 1: you can possibly harness here on Earth. And you would think, well,
- 14:26Speaker 1: that's probably us. We're not quite there yet. Uh. Really
- 14:29Speaker 1: smart dude name Michio Kaku um not a bond villain either.
- 14:33Speaker 1: He said, uh, in the next hundred years or so,
- 14:36Speaker 1: maybe two hundred years, we might actually be a Type
- 14:39Speaker 1: one civilization. Yeah, And like you said, that's where every
- 14:43Speaker 1: bit of Judeo thermal energy, every drop of sunlight, every
- 14:47Speaker 1: um um, every bit of hydroelectric power, all that stuff,
- 14:53Speaker 1: every potential bit of energy is being harnessed by us.
- 14:56Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, We're nowhere near that right now. I
- 15:00Speaker 1: think Cocu's assessments a little rosie. Oh well, and I
- 15:04Speaker 1: can say that because he was on our TV show
- 15:07Speaker 1: sort of well he was he yes, he appeared on,
- 15:11Speaker 1: but we didn't interact with us in a real way exactly.
- 15:14Speaker 1: He has no idea who we are, no none. Uh
- 15:17Speaker 1: So Type two is the next, of course, and they
- 15:21Speaker 1: that kind of civilization would understand how to harness all
- 15:23Speaker 1: of the energy not only on your own home planet,
- 15:27Speaker 1: but the energy of a star in its own solar system. Right,
- 15:32Speaker 1: that's where the that's where the Dyson's fear comes in,
- 15:35Speaker 1: and that's what we aspire to do one day, right,
- 15:39Speaker 1: maybe a million or so years from now. And then
- 15:42Speaker 1: Type three is just kind of like following this logical progression, right,
- 15:47Speaker 1: and that's harnessing all the energy of all the galaxies,
- 15:52Speaker 1: or of entire galaxies, not necessarily all of them. Yeah.
- 15:56Speaker 1: I think that the second, the second age, the type
- 16:00Speaker 1: to civilization, would be um the either the hardest to
- 16:06Speaker 1: get to or take the longest to get to. And
- 16:09Speaker 1: that's because when you build that first dicense fear, your
- 16:13Speaker 1: technology and your energy efficiency and your productivity is going
- 16:17Speaker 1: to just shoot forward exponentially from that point on. So
- 16:23Speaker 1: so once you build that first one, you can start
- 16:25Speaker 1: building more and more and more much more quickly. So
- 16:28Speaker 1: you jump from a Type two to a Type three
- 16:31Speaker 1: civilization pretty pretty fast compared to how long it took
- 16:35Speaker 1: you to go from a Type one to a Type
- 16:37Speaker 1: to civilization. Yeah. I think it's like any any product,
- 16:41Speaker 1: even that that first one is tough, and then you
- 16:43Speaker 1: can scale it and uh, but well we'll get to
- 16:46Speaker 1: the robots here. So okay, in fact, let's take a break.
- 16:50Speaker 1: I'm getting a little psych chuck, and we'll talk a
- 16:52Speaker 1: little bit more about the sun right after this. All right,
- 17:20Speaker 1: So I went when I said the word sun, Yeah,
- 17:25Speaker 1: I thought that was odd. No, it's not, you know,
- 17:27Speaker 1: I honestly had no idea where you're going with this?
- 17:30Speaker 1: Well you do, you're being coy. Uh. Most people out there,
- 17:35Speaker 1: most long time listeners, know that our son podcast was
- 17:38Speaker 1: one of our our biggest struggles and would have been
- 17:42Speaker 1: our biggest achievements had we uh done it right. It's
- 17:46Speaker 1: it's the biggest pity applause. We get yeah for this son, No, No,
- 17:52Speaker 1: it was it was fine. Get you tried, Yeah, good
- 17:56Speaker 1: for you for trying. But let's talk a little bit
- 17:59Speaker 1: of about the sun. This stuff I can deal with,
- 18:02Speaker 1: at least as far as its immense power and energy. Um,
- 18:06Speaker 1: and I love that our own article has some of
- 18:09Speaker 1: these comparisons. Um, the sun can generate five times one
- 18:15Speaker 1: zero to three horsepower. I think that that is a TYPEO.
- 18:19Speaker 1: I think that it's supposed to be five times ten
- 18:22Speaker 1: to the twenty three power. You think that's the only
- 18:25Speaker 1: explanation I have for that. That doesn't make sense. That's
- 18:27Speaker 1: a really small number. Actually, yeah, I agree, it would
- 18:31Speaker 1: be like about horse power. Yeah, that's five times tinted.
- 18:39Speaker 1: It's got to be someone just got lazy there. Serious.
- 18:42Speaker 1: They're like, I don't know how to do the little
- 18:44Speaker 1: twenty three thing, right, I don't I don't know how
- 18:46Speaker 1: to use superscript. What am I like a great editor?
- 18:49Speaker 1: Superscript that's what it is, right, superscript and subscript. Uh so,
- 18:55Speaker 1: let's put it this way, and this one is the
- 18:56Speaker 1: one that cracks me up. Um, the sun has enough
- 18:59Speaker 1: energy eat to melt an ice bridge two miles wide
- 19:03Speaker 1: and a mile thick from Earth to the Sun in
- 19:06Speaker 1: a single second. In a single second. That's pretty good.
- 19:10Speaker 1: This is the only article I think I've ever seen
- 19:12Speaker 1: an ellipse in like like the author was like, wait
- 19:15Speaker 1: for it in a single second. Yeah, I don't even
- 19:19Speaker 1: think they did the ellipse right. And the ellips supposed
- 19:21Speaker 1: to be right after the letter or is it their space?
- 19:23Speaker 1: I think there's supposed to be a space on either side.
- 19:25Speaker 1: Really technically, yeah, I've been doing these wrong. Then, well,
- 19:29Speaker 1: don't feel bad. This thing says five times one thousand
- 19:32Speaker 1: three horsepowers. It's all good, all right? What else? One
- 19:37Speaker 1: trillion one megatson bombs going off every second if your
- 19:41Speaker 1: war like, and then finally, one single second of sun
- 19:47Speaker 1: action whatever that is is enough to power our earth
- 19:52Speaker 1: for half a million years. That drives it home. It does,
- 19:57Speaker 1: but it also gives you an idea of just how
- 20:01Speaker 1: primitive we are energy consumption wise, Like, it's it's it's
- 20:06Speaker 1: it's crazy because you know, we're really worried about running
- 20:09Speaker 1: out of our non renewable resources, but we use such
- 20:12Speaker 1: a minute amount of energy that that the Sun could
- 20:17Speaker 1: power the energy use we use currently for half a
- 20:21Speaker 1: million years in one second. Yeah, that's nuts, right, So
- 20:25Speaker 1: that also kind of takes your mind though too. Um,
- 20:28Speaker 1: And this is I think one of the things one
- 20:30Speaker 1: of the buttons that Freeman Dyson um pushed. It makes
- 20:35Speaker 1: you realize, like, holy cow, we could do some really
- 20:39Speaker 1: amazing stuff if we could capture a significant amount of
- 20:43Speaker 1: that power that the Sun puts out, even an insignificant amount. Yeah, yeah,
- 20:48Speaker 1: you'd keep Iggy Pop going for like another hundred years.
- 20:53Speaker 1: Uh So, like you said, the idea behind the Dicen
- 20:57Speaker 1: sphere is this structure originally proposed a hollow sphere and
- 21:03Speaker 1: kind of referred to it as a shell. Um, but
- 21:06Speaker 1: I think now or I think he went on to
- 21:10Speaker 1: to make it a solid sphere. He so he actually
- 21:13Speaker 1: said he was really, um, what's the opposite of clear? Yeah,
- 21:21Speaker 1: I guess a little convoluted. He he didn't really go
- 21:24Speaker 1: to the trouble of spelling it out, because again, remember
- 21:26Speaker 1: this is a thought experiment that had to do with
- 21:29Speaker 1: finding aliens, not an engineering schematic. So he used some
- 21:33Speaker 1: very it was vague. That was the word I was
- 21:35Speaker 1: looking for. He was using some vague words, and we're like, wait,
- 21:37Speaker 1: what what what are you talking about? What is this sphere?
- 21:41Speaker 1: Is it? Is it cohesive? Is it like a solid body?
- 21:44Speaker 1: Is it hollow in the middle? What's going on? And
- 21:46Speaker 1: he came back and said in a letter a follow up,
- 21:49Speaker 1: he said, no, no, no, like there's there's no way
- 21:52Speaker 1: you could build something that would go around our sun
- 21:55Speaker 1: that would be a solid body that was hollow in
- 21:58Speaker 1: the middle, Like it couldn't be a cohesive whole because
- 22:01Speaker 1: the rotational forces, the sheer forces, and the gravitational forces
- 22:06Speaker 1: acting on it would just obliterate it immediately. Like it's
- 22:11Speaker 1: it just be mechanically impossible to make it like that.
- 22:13Speaker 1: So he said, so maybe you would make something like
- 22:15Speaker 1: a bubble or a swarm or something like that. Yeah,
- 22:20Speaker 1: And he said in the letter, I've been closed some
- 22:22Speaker 1: blotter acid. Put it on your tongue. You're gonna love this.
- 22:26Speaker 1: It's dynamite, and call me in an hour. Might make
- 22:29Speaker 1: a little more sense. Uh yeah. Our own article points
- 22:33Speaker 1: out that one of the first downsides, obviously, if you
- 22:36Speaker 1: surround the Sun completely, is that sunlight has I mean,
- 22:41Speaker 1: I know we'd be harnessing that energy, but sunlight provides
- 22:45Speaker 1: a lot more than just energy. Oh yeah, like it
- 22:49Speaker 1: makes us happy. Yeah, people write entire songs about how
- 22:52Speaker 1: sunshine makes you happy, like John Denver, did you know?
- 22:56Speaker 1: And that was just on the shoulders. It would be
- 22:59Speaker 1: a global bummer if somebody enclosed the Sun. That's like
- 23:02Speaker 1: super villain kind of stuff, right, Okay, so that's a problem.
- 23:06Speaker 1: Another problem, though, is that if you're going to build
- 23:10Speaker 1: something like this, and and Dyson even suggested the size
- 23:12Speaker 1: of it. He was saying it would need to have
- 23:14Speaker 1: a radius, so a radius not even a diameter half
- 23:18Speaker 1: of the diameter, a radius that was two times the
- 23:21Speaker 1: distance of the Earth to the Sun. So this thing
- 23:25Speaker 1: would be massive, which means that it would also enclose
- 23:29Speaker 1: the Earth too, right, Like he wasn't proposing you just
- 23:32Speaker 1: go up and create this tight ball around the Sun,
- 23:36Speaker 1: Like it would be much further spread out and it
- 23:38Speaker 1: would actually encompass the Earth's orbit within it. Oh, so
- 23:42Speaker 1: it would be like this, this is mine. It belongs.
- 23:45Speaker 1: It belongs to the Earth and no one else and
- 23:48Speaker 1: can get any sun. Yeah, it would. It would block
- 23:51Speaker 1: off the stuff outside of two times the distance of
- 23:54Speaker 1: the Earth's orbit. So there's a couple of planets out
- 23:56Speaker 1: there that would would get the old screw job. But
- 24:01Speaker 1: but but the ones inside twice the distance of Earth's
- 24:05Speaker 1: orbit would really benefit from it. It's very selfish. Yeah.
- 24:09Speaker 1: But the other problem is to chuck is I imagine
- 24:11Speaker 1: it would. Things would get pretty hot pretty quickly inside
- 24:16Speaker 1: this thing, So the Earth would be destroyed. Yes, he
- 24:21Speaker 1: and to get around this, and a lot of people
- 24:23Speaker 1: I don't think got it immediately. He said, well, you
- 24:28Speaker 1: just live inside the Dyson's fear like like in the
- 24:31Speaker 1: outer shell of it. Oh, sure, make it habitable. Yeah right,
- 24:35Speaker 1: well that makes sense. Yeah, but what you were saying
- 24:38Speaker 1: about just the sheer size of it there. There literally
- 24:41Speaker 1: aren't enough raw materials on our entire planet to make
- 24:45Speaker 1: something this big. In fact, in our in our entire
- 24:48Speaker 1: solar system, there probably aren't enough raw materials to make
- 24:51Speaker 1: a structure like this and not and not still try
- 24:55Speaker 1: to inhabit it. There's just no way. Um. Some people
- 25:00Speaker 1: say though, and in Freeman himself. I keep waying to
- 25:03Speaker 1: call him Freeman, like that's his last name, but I
- 25:05Speaker 1: just end up sounding like I know him on a
- 25:07Speaker 1: first name. He he was saying, Um, you might be
- 25:12Speaker 1: able to build something like this by disassembling Jupiter. Well
- 25:17Speaker 1: that was his suggestion. Yeah, he said, disassembled Jupiter and uh,
- 25:22Speaker 1: put it back together, and you could build a Dyson
- 25:27Speaker 1: sphere um that had the radius twice the distance from
- 25:33Speaker 1: the Earth to the Sun and make a solar array
- 25:36Speaker 1: of it. Must have been some good acid. Yeah, good
- 25:39Speaker 1: for him. All right, So I think we're both in agreement,
- 25:43Speaker 1: and most people are in agreement that this severe idea
- 25:47Speaker 1: is not at all tangible, not as like a cohesive whole. No,
- 25:52Speaker 1: like it just remains in the realm of thought experiment.
- 25:55Speaker 1: So why bother. Oh well, that's the interesting thing to me.
- 26:00Speaker 1: It basically is kind of like he meant it as
- 26:04Speaker 1: a thought experiment. It's been brought out of the realm
- 26:07Speaker 1: of thought experiments. And yeah, we're in no way, shape
- 26:10Speaker 1: or form capable of doing this, but a lot of
- 26:13Speaker 1: people have tried to figure out how to do it,
- 26:15Speaker 1: and I think it's it's one of those things that
- 26:17Speaker 1: it's like yeah, it's theoretically possible. Um, but we're just
- 26:22Speaker 1: it's not at our We're nowhere near that that level
- 26:27Speaker 1: of capability right now. Well, I think his other ideas
- 26:30Speaker 1: that he came up with, though, are are decent. Oh,
- 26:33Speaker 1: like the swarm and stuff. Well, yeah, I mean, let's
- 26:35Speaker 1: let's get to that. He uh he himself even said
- 26:38Speaker 1: the sphere is probably not very realistic at all, So
- 26:41Speaker 1: why don't we do this, Why don't we think of
- 26:43Speaker 1: different machines maybe that are independent of one another, that
- 26:47Speaker 1: actually circle the Sun, collect this energy and then beam
- 26:50Speaker 1: it back to Earth. Right, So, so to him, his
- 26:54Speaker 1: initial idea was that sphere, and then what it came
- 26:57Speaker 1: to be was that the sphere was like the umbrella
- 27:00Speaker 1: term for these different slightly more realistic ideas, like the
- 27:05Speaker 1: swarm or the bubble. So like like, what's the swarm? Uh, well,
- 27:10Speaker 1: the swarm maybe they they are in different orbits and
- 27:15Speaker 1: they like the swarming likens it to bees, like instead
- 27:19Speaker 1: of gathering pollen, they're just around the Sun, moving around,
- 27:22Speaker 1: gathering energy and power, and so those might be habitable too, right,
- 27:27Speaker 1: And they're like they're there's solar rays that are satellites
- 27:30Speaker 1: that are moving around on independent orbits of one another.
- 27:34Speaker 1: And if you and the way that they would make
- 27:36Speaker 1: a dicense fear is, yeah, there's a lot of space
- 27:39Speaker 1: in between them, but if you step back a few
- 27:41Speaker 1: orders of magnitude further back into the other parts of
- 27:44Speaker 1: the galaxy or the universe, it would appear is basically
- 27:48Speaker 1: a whole sphere around the Sun. So it still falls
- 27:52Speaker 1: under that category, right. He had to keep that sphere
- 27:55Speaker 1: think because of branding. He didn't want to lose that.
- 27:59Speaker 1: He's like the genies out of the bottle. They're like,
- 28:01Speaker 1: you really don't need it to be a sphere. He's like, oh,
- 28:03Speaker 1: it's got to be a sphere. Uh. So those satellites
- 28:06Speaker 1: are actually they would be called statites. Well, no, if
- 28:11Speaker 1: they were the bubble, they would be statites. This guy's
- 28:14Speaker 1: got it wrong. Oh really, I thought the solar sales
- 28:20Speaker 1: could be the statites. Now, So the what I saw
- 28:24Speaker 1: the difference between the swarm and the bubble was that
- 28:28Speaker 1: the swarm has the satellites in orbit around the star
- 28:31Speaker 1: and they're they're in their own orbits, not interacting with
- 28:34Speaker 1: each other. A bubble is where the satellites are in
- 28:39Speaker 1: a fixed position relative to the star. So those are
- 28:42Speaker 1: the statites, right, so they're just kind of hovering outside
- 28:45Speaker 1: of the star um, not in orbit, just kind of
- 28:50Speaker 1: hovering instead. And then those are the two and then
- 28:53Speaker 1: the third are the solar sales. Correct, Well, you can
- 28:56Speaker 1: make a solar sale, or you can make any of
- 28:58Speaker 1: them with solar sales. And I don't know where that
- 29:00Speaker 1: guy got that. Yeah, do we do a whole episode
- 29:03Speaker 1: on solar sales? Yeah? So, I mean it makes sense
- 29:06Speaker 1: if you get a bunch of these solar sales orbiting
- 29:09Speaker 1: the Sun, uh, you might think that you could harness
- 29:13Speaker 1: the power and send it back to Earth some way,
- 29:16Speaker 1: right exactly, And like that's that's like you could use
- 29:19Speaker 1: that with with with any of these like whether it's
- 29:23Speaker 1: a bubble, whether it's a swarm, whatever you're doing. Um,
- 29:26Speaker 1: And if you, like you said, a second ago made
- 29:29Speaker 1: them habitable, then all of a sudden you have a
- 29:32Speaker 1: recipe for survival for the human race if Earth ever
- 29:36Speaker 1: becomes untenable. Right, we can't tear a four mars. We
- 29:39Speaker 1: can go live on these things. And and when we
- 29:42Speaker 1: think about living out in space, my brain immediately goes
- 29:44Speaker 1: to like the cramped tiny tin can conditions of the
- 29:48Speaker 1: I s s these things don't need to be like that.
- 29:51Speaker 1: I mean, if we're creating dicens fears, we're going to
- 29:53Speaker 1: be advanced enough that we could build some really looks
- 29:57Speaker 1: um satellites and stat heights as solar race to go
- 30:01Speaker 1: hover or orbit around the Sun. Right, so they could
- 30:04Speaker 1: be huge, so so big in fact, that that Dyson
- 30:08Speaker 1: was saying this, this doesn't have to be an engineering
- 30:12Speaker 1: project that's carried out by a central global government that's
- 30:17Speaker 1: directing the whole thing. That as our energy consumption and
- 30:21Speaker 1: energy needs continue, nations could take it upon themselves individually
- 30:26Speaker 1: to create these solar sales that are habitable, put them
- 30:29Speaker 1: into orbit independently, and just through the desire to preserve
- 30:34Speaker 1: one's own life, would make sure that their orbit wasn't
- 30:37Speaker 1: going to intersect with somebody else's orbit. He was already
- 30:39Speaker 1: up there, and just organically a dycen spear in the
- 30:43Speaker 1: form of a swarm or a bubble could form on
- 30:46Speaker 1: its own, just by self interested nations developing this technology
- 30:51Speaker 1: basically independent of one another. I don't know, I was
- 30:57Speaker 1: he had some far far thinking the far thinking, alright, uh,
- 31:04Speaker 1: should we take another break? I think so, all right,
- 31:07Speaker 1: we'll do that, and we'll wrap it up a little
- 31:09Speaker 1: bit with how to get this energy back to the
- 31:11Speaker 1: home planet star. Alright, so earlier you talked about dismantling
- 31:40Speaker 1: Jupiter with a socket set a couple of screwdrivers. Mercury
- 31:48Speaker 1: is another planet that people have talked about as potentially harvesting. Um.
- 31:53Speaker 1: The good thing about Mercury couple of things. One is
- 31:56Speaker 1: that it is near the Sun. Yeah, so who needs
- 32:00Speaker 1: it already? Yeah, so it would make it um proximity wise,
- 32:03Speaker 1: it makes a little bit of sense. And uh, I
- 32:06Speaker 1: think this. Oxford University physicists Stewart Armstrong is who proposed this.
- 32:11Speaker 1: And um. One of the other great things about Mercury
- 32:14Speaker 1: is it has a lot of great raw materials, namely iron,
- 32:18Speaker 1: that we could use. And he he actually suggested that
- 32:22Speaker 1: we could disassemble Mercury fully in basically what amounted to
- 32:27Speaker 1: a forty year stretch thirty days. I could do it right, exactly,
- 32:33Speaker 1: if a contractor tells you you can take Mercury apart
- 32:35Speaker 1: in thirty days, don't trust him, agreed. Um, No, this
- 32:39Speaker 1: was this was in basically four ten year stretches combined
- 32:44Speaker 1: equals forty years. Obviously, but um, I think his point.
- 32:48Speaker 1: Armstrong's point was that you don't have to disassemble mercury
- 32:52Speaker 1: as a whole and and wait until it's fully disassembled
- 32:55Speaker 1: to put it together into dice and to start creating
- 32:58Speaker 1: a dicensphere. You can disassemble and then start reassembling as
- 33:01Speaker 1: you go. And once you start getting one bit of
- 33:05Speaker 1: it online, it's going to help power and create better
- 33:08Speaker 1: efficiency to harvest and reassemble mercury the rest of mercury,
- 33:13Speaker 1: you know, like we were talking about earlier, And not
- 33:17Speaker 1: only that, but you could use that energy all of
- 33:19Speaker 1: a sudden, you could. That would be super computing like
- 33:22Speaker 1: you've never seen. Uh, space travel would get faster, um
- 33:26Speaker 1: like all these technologies that we can't even like think
- 33:28Speaker 1: about yet would be growing at exponential rates, right, And
- 33:32Speaker 1: I mean that's the point, like when you're like, well,
- 33:34Speaker 1: what would we do with with you know, all of
- 33:37Speaker 1: this energy every second coming off of the sun. Who knows?
- 33:41Speaker 1: We we we just cannot conceive of the stuff we
- 33:45Speaker 1: could do with that amount of energy yet. But I
- 33:48Speaker 1: guarantee it's not going to be you know, using a
- 33:51Speaker 1: few like charging our smartphones. It should be for some
- 33:54Speaker 1: pretty neat stuff. I guess. Uh. So the other cool
- 33:59Speaker 1: idea is that, um, holy cow, how many people would
- 34:04Speaker 1: have to to take part in this kind of a project,
- 34:07Speaker 1: just literally the labor force you would need. And um,
- 34:12Speaker 1: I think Armstrong is the one who said, well you
- 34:14Speaker 1: could use robots actually, uh, and with the same idea
- 34:18Speaker 1: that once you get some of these robots going, uh,
- 34:21Speaker 1: if they could self replicate and build themselves, then you
- 34:25Speaker 1: can just kind of sit back and watch the paint
- 34:27Speaker 1: dry on earth and all these robots are up there
- 34:31Speaker 1: just building themselves and working and working, uh and doing
- 34:35Speaker 1: everything for you exactly. And that's why that was his
- 34:40Speaker 1: I don't know if it was his point. Someone's point
- 34:42Speaker 1: along the way is that when you start that, when
- 34:45Speaker 1: you build that first license fear, all of a sudden,
- 34:48Speaker 1: it's just going to keep going and going and going faster.
- 34:50Speaker 1: It's going to spread at an exponential rate. So you
- 34:53Speaker 1: would go from a type two civilization to a Type
- 34:55Speaker 1: three civilization pretty quickly. And as a matter of fact,
- 34:58Speaker 1: you would also if if this project was carried up
- 35:01Speaker 1: by a centralized government, it would spread so quickly and
- 35:04Speaker 1: so far h in such a relatively short amount of time.
- 35:09Speaker 1: Something like going from that first dicense fhere to um
- 35:13Speaker 1: colonizing an entire galaxy in something like a million years,
- 35:17Speaker 1: that even if it was a centralized government involved at
- 35:20Speaker 1: the beginning, they would very quickly lose control of the
- 35:22Speaker 1: colonies because they'd be so spread out and there'll be
- 35:25Speaker 1: so many of them that they would just basically become
- 35:27Speaker 1: self sufficient and spread over the galaxy. So the reason
- 35:32Speaker 1: this is noteworthy is that if you found one dicens fear,
- 35:37Speaker 1: you would probably find millions or billions or trillions of
- 35:42Speaker 1: them in in just an one section of the universe.
- 35:46Speaker 1: Right You're not you You probably are not going to
- 35:48Speaker 1: find just one dicense fear. You're going to find a
- 35:51Speaker 1: dison galaxy, a type three civilization. And that's what they're
- 35:56Speaker 1: looking for by sifting through UM some of these old
- 36:00Speaker 1: sky surveys, and they found a couple of of candidates.
- 36:04Speaker 1: Actually in the last year or so, I think, yeah,
- 36:07Speaker 1: there's a there's a couple of surveys that have found
- 36:11Speaker 1: stars and they have like typical star names. One is
- 36:15Speaker 1: A K I C eight four six to eight five two,
- 36:19Speaker 1: which is a sexy name, and then the other is
- 36:23Speaker 1: E P I C, which I'm pretty sure they call
- 36:26Speaker 1: Epic two oh four to nine one six right, and
- 36:32Speaker 1: Epic was discovered by the Kepler spacecraft in two fourteen.
- 36:35Speaker 1: And the reason these things are noteworthy is because, um,
- 36:39Speaker 1: there is some sort of weird transit uh pattern where
- 36:45Speaker 1: the light dims um I guess randomly or not necessarily
- 36:51Speaker 1: on some sort of set schedule UM around these stars.
- 36:56Speaker 1: And you would say, well, that's probably just a planet
- 36:58Speaker 1: or something coming in between. Well, yes, they thought about
- 37:01Speaker 1: that already um. And normally a star will dim by
- 37:05Speaker 1: about one percent when a planet sized object comes in
- 37:09Speaker 1: between you, the observer and that planet. These things are
- 37:13Speaker 1: dipping on the in the case of k I C
- 37:17Speaker 1: Star and in the case of the epics star sixty five. Right. Okay,
- 37:27Speaker 1: they have no idea what could be massive enough to
- 37:30Speaker 1: dim those two stars that much. They haven't encountered it before.
- 37:35Speaker 1: There's a couple of theories. One of them said a
- 37:37Speaker 1: swarm of comets. Somebody else said, well, you could very
- 37:40Speaker 1: easily go from a swarm of comets to a swarm
- 37:43Speaker 1: of solar arrays. So maybe these are evidence of Dyson's fears. Yeah,
- 37:49Speaker 1: I mean it's possible. Well, you know, it's kind of
- 37:54Speaker 1: fun to talk about robot robots building themselves and them
- 37:58Speaker 1: doing all this work up there. Uh. One of the
- 38:01Speaker 1: big problems is we're not nearly I mean, we have
- 38:03Speaker 1: robot technology now, but nothing close to that at the present. Um.
- 38:08Speaker 1: And as this article points out, that you would need
- 38:13Speaker 1: like it would have to be so advanced these these
- 38:15Speaker 1: robots would have to be operating without fail up there,
- 38:19Speaker 1: because they would be by themselves or be able to
- 38:22Speaker 1: fix themselves and fix problems like the intelligence would need
- 38:28Speaker 1: to be so far advanced, Like we can't even imagine
- 38:30Speaker 1: what that would be like. No, but I mean, even
- 38:34Speaker 1: if Michio Kaku is off by a hundred or two
- 38:37Speaker 1: hundred or five hundred years, that's not that far off. Like,
- 38:41Speaker 1: if we can harness all the energy on Earth, we
- 38:43Speaker 1: should very quickly and improve as far as our technology
- 38:48Speaker 1: is concerned. So who knows, Maybe maybe those robots aren't
- 38:51Speaker 1: that far off, you know. Um. One other thing that
- 38:55Speaker 1: that I saw from this though, was when H. Freeman
- 38:59Speaker 1: Dyson was talking about disassembling Jupiter Chuck. He said that
- 39:03Speaker 1: it should take I don't know, roughly eight hundred years
- 39:06Speaker 1: worth of the Sun's energy output to disassemble and reassemble
- 39:09Speaker 1: Jupiter well, that's not bad, but do you remember how
- 39:12Speaker 1: much comes out of the sun in a second. We're like, whoa,
- 39:16Speaker 1: you know, that's so much. We would need eight hundred
- 39:19Speaker 1: years worth of that to disassemble and reassemble Jupiter. So
- 39:23Speaker 1: we we like, not only do we not have the
- 39:28Speaker 1: capability of building as Dicens fear, we don't even have
- 39:31Speaker 1: the capability of disassembling Jupiter. We just don't have any
- 39:35Speaker 1: way to harness that energy, which creates this kind of
- 39:38Speaker 1: um chicken or egg dilemma, like the way almost need
- 39:41Speaker 1: a Dicens fear to create a Dicens fear. At this point,
- 39:45Speaker 1: somewhere Freeman Dison is laughing on acid somewhere in New Jersey. Um.
- 39:51Speaker 1: One of the other big issues is, okay, let's say
- 39:53Speaker 1: that you could even do something like this and harness
- 39:55Speaker 1: this energy. UM to get it to Earth is another
- 39:59Speaker 1: big problem, um um. If we want to make it
- 40:01Speaker 1: actually actually usable. Um. Some people said we could laser
- 40:05Speaker 1: it over, but the problems with laser beams is after
- 40:09Speaker 1: about a mile you're gonna lose a lot of uh
- 40:12Speaker 1: if efficiency with it. So good luck with that. Microwaves
- 40:16Speaker 1: have been floated out there, but microwaves. Even though they're
- 40:21Speaker 1: more effective, longer farther out than lasers. Um, you're still
- 40:25Speaker 1: limited to about a hundred miles, which will do us
- 40:27Speaker 1: no good. Right, So what's the answer. I don't know. Yeah,
- 40:32Speaker 1: I don't have one either. I mean, I guess one
- 40:34Speaker 1: of the easy ones is, well, just inhabit the solar rays.
- 40:37Speaker 1: Go inhabit the Dyson sphere. Stop being so precious about
- 40:41Speaker 1: living on Earth. Yea um, which makes sense. But I
- 40:46Speaker 1: like living on Earth. Yeah, but would an Earth eight
- 40:49Speaker 1: hundred years from now be worth living on? Uh? It depends, Chuck,
- 40:55Speaker 1: will it be skipping skipping to school and skinning knees
- 41:00Speaker 1: and spelling bees and all that still? Because if so, yes, Yeah,
- 41:06Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about. It's another Simpsons reference.
- 41:10Speaker 1: He's it's a one where Principal Skinner came back, the
- 41:13Speaker 1: real Principal Skinner, and he's like, he goes, if if
- 41:17Speaker 1: you think skinning knees and spelling bees or corny, well,
- 41:22Speaker 1: then mr corn me up. That's right. That's when they
- 41:25Speaker 1: introduced Uh, I would like to introduce the Principal Skinner,
- 41:29Speaker 1: Principal ski Moore Skinner. Armontain's Ariane that's a great one. Um,
- 41:35Speaker 1: there's one other thing. You've got anything else? I got
- 41:37Speaker 1: nothing else. I got one more thing. So there's that
- 41:40Speaker 1: whole idea that Dyson came up with to search the
- 41:44Speaker 1: skies for this this imprint where there's a lot of
- 41:47Speaker 1: infrared radiation but no visible light. There's a problem with
- 41:51Speaker 1: that because this guy came along. His name was Robert
- 41:54Speaker 1: Bradberry's a futurist, I think maybe a science fiction writer. No, Robert,
- 42:00Speaker 1: his little little brother. Um Robert Bradberry said, well, you
- 42:04Speaker 1: know what, if you really wanted to um make these
- 42:07Speaker 1: dicense fears efficient, you'd make them in like the same
- 42:10Speaker 1: manner that those Russian nesting dolls are made Troishka, right,
- 42:15Speaker 1: So you'd have the the internal sphere and then outer
- 42:19Speaker 1: spheres going around and catching all that lost heat energy
- 42:23Speaker 1: and turning it into usable power, which is awesome because
- 42:27Speaker 1: you'd have basically a hundred percent efficiency as far as
- 42:30Speaker 1: the dicense fear was concerned. But if you're looking at
- 42:33Speaker 1: the stars, you would see nothing because not only would
- 42:36Speaker 1: there not be visible light, there also wouldn't be any
- 42:38Speaker 1: infrared radiation. And Freeman Dyson just hung his head, went
- 42:43Speaker 1: into his room and shut the door and laid down
- 42:45Speaker 1: on his bed for a while. The end. Yeah. Uh, Well,
- 42:51Speaker 1: if you want to know more about dicens fears, you
- 42:52Speaker 1: can start with this article on how stuff works dot
- 42:56Speaker 1: com by typing dicens fear into the search bar how
- 42:59Speaker 1: stuff works. As I said, and since I said how
- 43:02Speaker 1: stuff works twice, that means it's time for a listener mail.
- 43:07Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this. Uh we helped a lady out. Um. Hey, guys,
- 43:13Speaker 1: hope this email finds you. Well. Been listening for only
- 43:15Speaker 1: a short time, but it becomes so addicted. I've already
- 43:19Speaker 1: being about half of your episodes offered on Spotify. I
- 43:23Speaker 1: think she meant changed. We were on Spotify, by the way,
- 43:28Speaker 1: and you can being us all you want from that platform. Um,
- 43:32Speaker 1: like many others, I absolutely adore your show. I came
- 43:36Speaker 1: across the podcast after a very upsetting event in my
- 43:39Speaker 1: life save you the SOB story, and just say I
- 43:42Speaker 1: was going through intense grief. There was something about your
- 43:45Speaker 1: kind voice, is strong intellect, and raunchy humor that gave
- 43:49Speaker 1: me a thirst for learning and a new purpose in life.
- 43:51Speaker 1: Wait a minute, Wait a minute, wait a minute, do
- 43:53Speaker 1: we have raunchy humor. I didn't realize that. I think
- 43:58Speaker 1: she picks up on the that's like Cheach and Chong,
- 44:00Speaker 1: the sideways comments. We're like the new Cheech and Chong.
- 44:05Speaker 1: Thank you a billion times over for just being who
- 44:07Speaker 1: you are. The podcast was a large factor in saving
- 44:10Speaker 1: my life. Don't ever underestimate or doubt what you do
- 44:14Speaker 1: and know that there are people like me out there
- 44:16Speaker 1: soaking up every word. Sincerely, Cheery B. Thanks a lot, Cherry.
- 44:22Speaker 1: That's nice and I like hearing that we help people. Yeah,
- 44:25Speaker 1: it makes me feel good in my belly. Yeah, we
- 44:28Speaker 1: appreciate the compliment. That's very nice of you to take
- 44:30Speaker 1: the time to write in to let us know. Uh.
- 44:32Speaker 1: And if you want to get in touch with us
- 44:34Speaker 1: to correct us or call us out for something or whatever,
- 44:37Speaker 1: um lay it on us. Send us an email to
- 44:39Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
- 44:46Speaker 1: Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts
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- 44:52Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.