Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / How to see pictures of dinosaurs (featuring XKCD creator Randall Munroe)

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How to see pictures of dinosaurs (featuring XKCD creator Randall Munroe) · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Daniel. If you had a tough problem to solve, who
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: would you ask? M M. I guess it depends on
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: the problem. Is it like a particle physics calculation or
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: something like a tooth extraction? Well? What if you wanted
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: to do a tooth extraction with particle physics? Well, you know,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: usually you get the ideas nailed down and then you
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: just sort of hand it off to an engineer and
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: they figure out the details. Like we're like engineers are
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: to steer assistance, Like we're just there to fix your problems.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: You know, they're downstream, That's all I gotta say. I
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: don't know which position is better. Stream you start with
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: the man, I see, I see. You mean the bad
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: ideas just flow down. We flushed them to track the engineers,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: and the engineers turned into gold trickle down physics, I guess.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: But at the very top, of course are the comics.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Hi'm Joramade, cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi,
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, which puts me solidly
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: downstream on the intellectual river from cartoonists but above engineers,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: thank you very much. And I'm a professor. You see Irvine.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: We're actually do experimental particle physics for a living, and
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I'm the co author of our book, We Have No Idea,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: A Guide to the Unknown Universe. Yeah, and so welcome
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: production of I Heart Media in which we examine all
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: things crazy and awesome about the universe, things far away,
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: things nearby. We ask all sorts of questions on this podcast,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: and so today we'll be answering a couple of questions.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: But we're gonna do things a little bit differently today.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: So first of all, we're going to be answering how questions?
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: How two questions? And second of all, we're going to
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: be doing it with arguably the world's worst expert on
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: how two questions? So this is in some sense another
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: episode of Ask the Wrong Expert? But is this guy
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: an expert in everything or nothing? Well, if you are
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: on the internet, if you have access to the Internet,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: which we're guessing you have because you're listening to this podcast,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: thank you, yeah, thank you, thank you government agencies, and
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: you have an interest in physics and science and math
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: and geeky stuff, then you've probably most likely have come
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: across the work of our special guest today. For those
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: of you listening on today's podcast, I will be the
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: only one who is not a famous web comic, and
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: I'll be the only one who does not have a
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: degree in physics. One of these things is not like
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: the other one in every sense of the word. And
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: so today on the podcast we have New York Times
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: number one best selling author of what If and the
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: creator of the super popular web comic x k C
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: D Random one Row. Welcome, Randall. Hey, thanks for having me.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: It's super special to have you here today because not
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: only are you a cartoon robotisist who turned into cartooning
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: just like me, but it's pretty cool because you're awesome.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Feeling kind of left out here, You don't have to
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: have a robotics degree to be in this podcast. We'll
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: find a connection for you the later. Daniel, Yeah, you
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: you used to work at NASA, right, Randal? Yeah, I
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: worked there on three D vision stuff for a while
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: as an intern and then uh and then got hired
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: to work in a robotics lab on robotic navigation. Cool,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: and at some point you decided to become a cartoonist. Yeah, Um,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I was working on a contract basis in NASA. And
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: at the same time I was posting my comics that
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I had was mostly like doodles from my old notebooks.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: I was scanning them in and putting them on my website.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: And then at some point people started sharing those around
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: and asking if they could order t shirts or prints
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: of them, and uh, and then before I knew it,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: I was like spending a fair amount of time shipping
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: merchandise and handling that stuff. And and so when my
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: contract ran out at NASA, I didn't I didn't push
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: them to take me back. I was just like, y'all
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: try doing this comics thing for a little bit. And
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: I noticed on your website you have all of the
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: old original ones, like including like number zero, And I
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: wonder sometimes, like you ever thought about, like, you know,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: going back and editing it, or do you keep all
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: those on there for inspiration for future people trying to
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: launch their own side careers or I don't know. I
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: try not to do the thing where I go back
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: and add c G. I uh, you know, walking the
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: camera and stuff. But you know, um so no, I
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: I just think of it as like I posted it,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: and that's like the record of old of old stuff
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: I've put up. Yeah, you get a respect to archive, right, Yeah,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: exactly calls robotics Randall working on robots, um. I don't know.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: What I like about comics is that when I can
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: think of an idea for a robot and then draw
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: it and then it'll do what I want to draw
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: it doing. Whereas in real life building a robot like
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: way more of it was spent like debugging sensors and
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out why, like why will this half
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: of it not turn on? Everything is working right, it
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: works right when I take it out of the robot.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: What's different? You know that kind of frustrating debugging. So
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: comics are fun because that you can you can kind
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: of skip all of that because you get to just
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: draw the robot doing what you wanted to do. The
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: real world is very frustrating sometimes, I agree. Well, thank
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: you for joining us today, Randall. I know that you've
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: been criss crossing the country and giving talks and giving
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: book signing UM to talk about your new book which
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: is called it's called how to Absurd Scientific Advice for
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Common Real World Problems. Yeah, and so it's an awesome book.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: If anyone out there is listening and wants just a
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: really fun read to learn about science and physics and
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: do it in a way that is intrigue and interesting.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about what the book
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: is about, and maybe a little bit about how you
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: thought about the idea for the book. Well, I'm I'm
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: always thinking of like wildly and practical ways to do things,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: which which isn't usually my goal. I'll just be like
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: looking at a task, and especially if it's something that's
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: kind of repetitive or menial or like you know, boring
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: that I have to do a bunch of times, and
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: I'll think like, are there any other ways I could
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: do this? And I'm not trying to think of bad ideas,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: you know, but but most of them are bad ideas
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: or at least impractical in one way or another. But
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: what I find is like going over those ideas and
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: kind of taking them seriously for a moment, like as
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: a as it's like as a hypothesis, and then thinking
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: like how would this work? What problems would I run into? Uh?
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: And and like what would then what would the side
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: effects of doing it with this way be? How hard
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: would it be? How expensive would it be? Um? That's
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: always really fun. It's like I like that kind of
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: analysis because I really like, like, I really like doing
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: math and and engineering and planning when there's like a
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: cool goal in mind. I always have a hard time
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: with when math gets really abstract. For example, like I
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: see an equation on a board and I'm just like, oh,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: I hope I don't have to solve that. But if
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: that equation will tell me whether there are not I
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: can attach engines to my house and make it fly
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: into the air. Like suddenly, I'm way more interested. So
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: I was like, like, practical applications. Wait, so wait, I
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: thought I thought you told me earlier you were physicists.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: What is this interest in like real world applications? Well,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: oh those? So I feel like I get along so
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: well with everyone who does physics um and I And
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: I think the reason might be, like the way I
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: see it is that physics is for people who are
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: too um, too practically oriented to go into like pure math,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: but then at the same time like not concerned enough
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: with details and implementation to be engineers. So if you
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: wander back and forth between like the theoretical and the practical,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: you have to walk that like narrow path, but that
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: takes you into physics because if you're too interested in
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: the abstract structures that you know, theoretical structures explaining things,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: you get peeled off into like algebraic geometry eventually, and
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: and that has no connection to reality. Yeah, who needs
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: lee algebra? Right? But if you actually uh, actually out
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: after tracked, algebra has a deep, deep connection to reality.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Underlies the connection is that it funds to pull a
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: bunch of mathematicians start I always feel bad using algebraic
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: geometry is my example of a thing that I'm not
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: interested in because I'm like, I'm so sorry to any
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: algebraic gey im a trists out there. But yeah, then
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: but like at the same time, like I wanna you know,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: I want to practical application, etcetera. But then like actually
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: building robots, I quickly get frustrated with like the practical
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: aspects of it and just want to think, like, theoretically,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: how would this robot work if I had solved all
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: these minor engineering problems, So like, yeah, right in between
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: the theoretical and the practical. I totally agree with you, though,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: the best part of the problem is when you can
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: just hand it off to the engineers and say make
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: it work for less than a trillion dollars. Please. We
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: figured out all the theory, now make it work. Yeah.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: But you know, we were talking earlier a bit about
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: how it's sort of not just about um making something
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: or achieving something or getting to somewhere. It's it's about
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: but sometimes you discover along the way, and when you're
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: in the process of getting there, where your curiosity sort
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: of leads you in in in finding new things that
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: you maybe didn't think about. Yeah. I really find that
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: a lot of the time, especially with computers. I'll have
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: an idea for how to automate something that will save
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: and I think it'll take a lot of work now,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: but it'll save me time in the long run, and
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: it never saves me time in the long like it's
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: always I would have been better off just continuing to
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: do it the other way, but in the process well,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: and but in the process of building the automation too,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: I'll like learn to use some software library that doesn't
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: actually help me with the problem I'm working on, but
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: now I know how to use that software, and and
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: then later on when there's a problem where it is
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: actually really helpful, I have a head start already like
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: I've already learned how to use it. So sometimes like
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: solving a ridiculous, you know, contrived thought experiment or word problem,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: or analyzing a plan that definitely won't work, we'll teach
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: you something that then is helpful, uh with solving something else. Um.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: And then also it's just sometimes really fun. And so
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: that's kind of what your whole book is about, how
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: to answer ing sort of scientific advice for common real
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: world problems. Uh, it's you sort of go into how
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: to do sometimes simple even simple or seemingly simple task
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: and you sort of, um follow your curiosity and find
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: kind of the sometimes the worst possible way to do it,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: but where you sort of learn a lot and think
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: about cool signs. I've always like hated moving because you
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: have to pack. It's so disrupted to your life and
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: uh and just takes over everything and takes so much work.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: And I started thinking, like, Okay, is there a way
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: I can avoid packing all these boxes? And I then
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: I was thinking, you know, my house is already a
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: boxing structure, all my stuff is in there. Could I
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: just lift the entire house? And like, there's no way
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: that's gonna end up being less work than just packing
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: the boxes. But um, you know, I'm gonna let's tryport
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: you just maybe you know, because sometimes, uh, sometimes like
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: almost all the time, it's pretty clear, you know, this
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: isn't gonna be a bad idea, but like sometimes sometimes
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: you never know. Um, the like whoever was the first
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: person to you know, went like if you get a
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: cut and you're like, oh man, this looks red and swollen,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: it looks pretty bad. I'm going to take some of
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: this mold from a sandwich and just rub it on it.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Like that sounds definitely like a bad idea, but like
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: that's penicill and that's how that works, and that like
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: is that the true story that discovery pill? Yeah exactly, yeah, no, um,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: I think it involved the earl of sandwich actually, oh
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: yeah yeah and the duke of penicillin. You know, it
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: was a jest. It's not like these weird ideas always
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: turned out to be good, because like there's a lot
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: of stuff that you could rub on an infected wound
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: and it would make it much worse. Like so like
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out just a long trail of bodies
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: of people who rub things into their wound and but
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: the one person who picked the right mold survived. That's right.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: And we can't interview dead people in the podcast, which
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: is why you're here today and not all those other folks.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: But I think there's a there's a really interesting lesson
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: here that connects, you know, not just engineering, but also
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: physics and just following your curiosity and sometimes you discover
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: stuff that's totally unexpected. And you know, on this podcast
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: a lot we talked about these things like you're interested
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: in X, and then along the way you discover why.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: And the universe is filled with fun mysteries to unravel,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: and so that's part of the joy of doing physics
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: and sometimes abstract geometry. Alright, alright, I'll learn. We just
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: gotta come up with a good for him to to
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: that will require learning about that. If you want to move,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: you can turn your whole moving process into a computer
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: script if you learn algebraic geometry, I promise. Alright, alright,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: we'll talk dot slash move dot sh alright, So to
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: them the program, we are going to be asking you
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: randall um, and we're going to be trying to answer
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: together three how two questions, And so the first one
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: on the list is one directly from your book. But
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: before we keep going, let's take a short break. I
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: love your book. That is hilarious And for those of
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: you out there who are interested in science with a
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: healthy dose of silly humor, then you know, that's probably
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: why you're listening to this podcast. You're going to really
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: enjoy this book. But make sure when you're reading it,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: you know, in a public place, or people will think
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: you're weird for giggling so much. Um. But one of
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: my favorite chapters of this one chapter twenty six, how
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: to get somewhere fast. And you know, it talks all
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: about you know, movement on Earth. But one of the
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: most fascinating bits is is at the end you're talking
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: about how to get around the universe right and how
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: especially if you wanted to get to the edge of
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: the universe in a fast way. Is that the idea? Like,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: how how it's the fastest way to get to the
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: end of the universe. Yeah, well, I was thinking about
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: how you know, they're there are all these limits of
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: like the speed of light and stuff that the limit
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: how quickly you can get somewhere, But there are also
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: the more practical limits, um, if you want to if
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: you want to travel from here, you know, to across
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: the country or across town or whatever. Um. Most of
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: the time you aren't limited, but you're limited by traffic
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: or whatever. But if you are able to rid of
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: all of those limitations, you've still got a kind of
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: fundamental limit by how fast the human body can accelerate
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: and over really brief intervals UM. People can handle handle
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: fairly high accelerations, especially if you're a fighter pilot you
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: have one of those suits with the compresses your legs
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: so the blood doesn't all drain from your head. Over
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: longer periods of time, we don't do a great if
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: we are accelerated faster than you know, like Earth gravity,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: that's when our body squishes or is that just when
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: we pass out? Um? No, Like the idea is that
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: like we're always existing at one Earth gravity of acceleration um,
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: because Earth's gravity is pulling us down and so you know,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: your blood is uh, you know, being pulled down to
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: your feet when you're just standing um. Which is why
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: like if you if you like injure something, you're supposed
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: to elevate it to like keep it, I don't know,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: from keep it from bleeding, uh as much I think
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: This is something that a lot of people don't really realize.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: They're a where of the fact that there's a speed
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: limit to the universe. They don't think often about how
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: long it would take to get to that speed limit.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Right the imagine how you press the button and jo
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: you're going half the speed of light. Of speed of light. Yeah,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: if you made a rocket that you know, you press
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: a button, it moves and it's and it just accelerates
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: up to the speed of light. If it doesn't, you know,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: in a week, that will be crushed against the back
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: of the room you're in by the acceleration and it'll
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: it'll like you'll just be a puddle in the back
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: of the rocket, and no amount of mold will help you.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: With the sandwiches, you can actually be turned into it
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: pretty tasty. Same to that point, So you're saying that
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: there's there's a speed limit to the universe, but there's
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: also also kind of an acceleration limit to the human body. Yeah,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: and this acceleration limit um is actually it does have
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: sort of practical consequences. You're on Earth, um generally, our
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: modes of acceleration don't involve accelerating at one g uh
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: you know, at this high speed especially, you know, it
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: gets added onto the gravity that we're already feeling. So
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: if your car accelerates too fast and you're pressed back
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: into the seat, it's uncomfortable, you know. So you have
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: for example, yeah, I think that the very fastest cars
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: will do about one g of acceleration sideways. Um. And
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: that's on top of the one g already pulling you downward.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: And because of the way you add you know, forces
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: that are in different directions, it means you'll be experiencing
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: a total of about one point four ges diagonally yea, yeah,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: and people and that's okay, you can handle that for
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: a while. It doesn't feel that comfortable. But at that acceleration,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: it takes you, you know, a good thirty forty five
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: minutes to get around the world because you have to
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: accelerate up and then you have to accelerate back down
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: at the other side. Oh so if you if you
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: do the math and accelerated that speed at that exploration
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: and then right away start decelerating it that, yeah, exactly,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: then you would take you how long to be around
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: the world. To get to the other side of the
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: world will be like thirty forty five minutes in that range.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: There are some funny details there, like if you if
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: you accelerate fast enough and you get up to a
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: high enough speed, because of the curve of the Earth,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: there's sort of the centrivigal force flinging you outward that
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: cancels out gravity um, And so if you're moving it
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: like orbital speed, you don't actually feel any acceleration from gravity,
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: which means you could afford to do a little bit
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: more acceleration uh forward because you would have less force
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: on your body that you know, you have more acceleration
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: budget to work with. But then if you go too
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: fast the curve trying to follow the curve of the Earth,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: you have to it's like you're being swung against the
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: outside of a curved wall as you're going around it
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: too fast, and that you know, centrivigal centriviugal acceleration of
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: anyone how you do it um that starts to become
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: a problem. So just like if you go too fast,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: sticking to the Earth is hard. That takes extra force
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: um and an extra stress on your body. So if
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: you wanted to go a light speed and stay on
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: the Earth's surface, which sounds like a dangerous way to
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: drive your Lamborghini. Yeah, that'd be a definitely a scenario
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: where you end up as a puddle on the wall
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: of whatever vehicle you're in. Am I the only one
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: here who doesn't have a Lamborghini? It did I miss
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: out on the you don't hand use the official podcast
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Lamborghini Coop. There's a sign up sheet outside you used
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: to sign up. I know so little. All I know
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: is that that car sounds fast and expensive and actually
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: know if it's a good high acceleration comp if you
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: wanted to accelerate to the speed of light. It's interesting,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: you know at one and then basically you're saying you
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: have to accelerate at one g. That would take a
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: shockingly long time. Yeah, it's it's actually kind of weird
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: to me that it's it's a really long time. Um,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: if you're going to accelerate, I you're gonna accelerate for
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: more than you know, a few minutes in a car
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: or whatever you want it to be at Earth gravity,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: you want to accelerate it one G and not any
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: more than that, because like long term, it'll take a
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: toll on you. Um. But and if you want to
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: get up to the speed of light. Uh, if you
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: have no relativity from what I just think about how
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: long it takes to get your speed up to around
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: that range. It's about a year, Like it takes a
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: year to ramp up to the speed of light. Yeah,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: which is both really long but also weirdly short, because
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: I think of the speed of light as being unimaginably large,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: but it's weird. So it's weird that it's kind of
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: within a human you know, time frame. Wait, I thought
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: it was impossible to get to the speed of light.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Are you saying, like, get up to the speed of
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: light or what do you mean? Yeah? Well, so you know,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: to get up into the range of the speed of
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: light is on the range of a year. But as
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: you start to get near it, things get a little
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: bit more complicated because that's when relativity comes in and
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: suddenly the math stops being like addition and subtraction and involves,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: you know, at least a few more symbols. Yeah, it
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: gets a little none in there, But it depends a
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: little bit on how you state the question. Right. If
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: you state the question is how much acceleration are you achieving,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: then you can say, well, I'm accelerating by this certain amount,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: but if that takes more and more energy as you
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: get closer and closer to the speed of light. But
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: it's also it's a funny sort of coincidence of numbers,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Like the number of seconds isn't in a year is
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: about three times ten of the seven, and the speed
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: of light divided by Earth gravity is about three times
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: ten of the seven. Sort of funny coincidence. Takes one
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Earth year to accelerate at one G to one C.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: It's like we were It's like we were meant to
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: go at the speed of light. It also makes you
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: wonder like if we were on another planet where the
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: gravity was much much stronger, right, like say we're not
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: a super Earth somewhere, and we could tolerate five G,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: then we could be more of an interstellar species because
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: we could accelerate it five G. Right, So some aliens
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: out there there are much better at exploring the universe
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: than we are. They'll they'll get there five times faster,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: they'll accelerate five times faster. Right, they'll get to the
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: speed of light faster. But you know, in the end,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: if you're going fifty light years, you know the times
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: been accelerating decelering doesn't actually matter very much. I think
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: that's what you were saying. Yeah, Well, the funny thing
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: is with relativity UM, when you when you subject yourself
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: to that kind of acceleration um in one sense from
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: someone watching from the outside, Uh, it looks like you're
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: getting up closer and closer to the speed of light,
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: but then your speed kind of plateaus. But because of
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the way time is changing for you, you'd be plateauing.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: You know, your speed would be leveling off as you
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: got near the speed of light. But they would also
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: see all the clocks on board your ship running slower. Oh.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: I was going to ask that when you say it
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: takes a year, is does it take a year for
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: me on the ship in my arm light speed Lamborghini,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: or would it like take a year for someone watching
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: me from the outside. Well, for the first year or so,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: your clocks will be mostly in sync, and then as
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: you get near that speed of light, they start to
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: diverge and you're for you, it feels like, uh, your
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: clock is still running normally, You're still under one g
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: of acceleration, and you see mile markers in the universe
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: going by you faster and faster and faster. But part
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: of the reason you're seeing them go by faster and
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: faster and faster is because your clock has started running
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: slower from the perspective of the rest of the universe,
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: so to you, it feels like it's taking less and
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: less time to pass each marker um. But that's that's
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: partly because your your time is running slower. On your
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: ship right, or another way to look at it is
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: your stationary and the universe is moving past you faster
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: and faster, and moving things get shrunk by relativity, and
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: so with's a mile to somebody else now becomes smaller
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: and smaller distance to you. This whole relativity stuff is
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: all mind bothering, right, And the thing people should remember
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: is that your clock always runs at one second per second. Right,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: clock that's sitting next to you, not moving relative to you,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: always runs normally. Other people's clock always move slowly. So
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: you're on the LFE Bi Lamborghini, you see earth clock
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: running slowly, they see your clock running slowly. And the
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: last crazy factor remember is that people don't have to agree.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Like on the Lamborghini, you can see one thing on Earth,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: you can see another thing that seems to contradict, and
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: everybody can be correct even if they contradict each other,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: because there's no actual, absolute truth in the universe. It's
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: all just relative. The weirdest consequence of this, in my opinion,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: is like that as you're excelled, if you were able
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: to keep accelerating one g, which right now we don't
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: have a way to do. Um, there's there's there. There
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: are a couple of really wild proposals out there that
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: involve nuclear bombs, uh that I'm I'm very into, but
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: are probably not practical. To see how much he's smiling
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: when he says nuclear bombs, But this is why I'm
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: glad you just keep things theoretical and on paper exactly.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: The nuclear bomb thing is something that a couple of
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: theoretical physicists are very excited about, and all the people
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: who actually have to deal with like the the actual
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: like nuclear material and stuff, are like, what are you thinking.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: But so other than other than those weird proposals from
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: the theoretical physicists, we don't we don't have any technology
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: they'll let us accelerate it one g. But we also
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: don't have any any clear reason to think it's impossible. Um,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: so if we did have a way to do that,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: and we were accelerating, we we could get up in
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: within a year or so to near the speed of
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: light as and then the relativity starts to come in.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: But if we keep it, If if you're in this Lamborghini,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: you keep accelerating at that speed at one g U,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: your your clock starts running slower, and it feels like
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: you're get moving faster and faster and faster. UM. It
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: feels like you're reaching other parts of the universe in
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: less time than it should take you. So it's as
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: if you're going faster than the speed of light. If
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: you sit down and do the math on what that
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: converges towards, like how okay, if you let five, ten,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: fifteen years go by on your ship, you'll get closer
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: and closes speed of light. Your time will stretch out,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: So it's like you're living longer and longer um, and
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: it actually gives you time to reach way farther than
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: you You stop aging in a way take a long
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: time for people on Earth, you could you maybe could
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: get to the other side of the universe. Yeah, so
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: the you know, getting trips across the galaxy, it might
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: be like a hundred thousand light years, so it should
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: take you a hundred thousand years moving at the speed
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: of light. But after those first few years, you've gotten
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: close enough to the speed of light that time on
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: your ship is barely passing. So someone outside watching you,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: it'll still you know, uh, my ten thousand years might
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: pass at the universe in the universe, or a hundred
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: thousand years might pass in the universe, but for you,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: very little time. You know, you'll get those first few
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: years and then your clock slows to almost to stop,
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: which is why so many listeners writing with the question
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: what is it like to be a photon? Because they
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: wonder like, can photons think it's time frozen for a photon? Um?
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: And unfortunately we've never been able to interview a photon
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: on the podcast, so we don't know the answer. We
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: haven't won our show all the time here in the room.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: But you know, none of them stopped to Yeah, they
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: they for a photon, the entire universe has contracted to
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: a single point. They have a single moment in time,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: like time doesn't pass for them at all because they
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: are moving at the speed of light. How can you
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: even build a clock or have a clock as a photon,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: how do you measure time as a photon? Because you
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: can't build a clock out of light. Everything is moving
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: at speed of light relative to you. If there's a
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: funny crazy heart answer watches that. Well, the coolest thing
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: about this one g of acceleration is if you look
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: at like, okay, in a human lifetime, how far can
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: you get? And you find that it takes you about
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: about thirty years to get to where you can go
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: almost arbitrarily far, like crossing the entire observable universe. It
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: you know, billions of light years. And it's really that's
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: another weird coincidence that, like the size of the universe
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: is about how far you could go in one human
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: lifetime at one G of acceleration thanks to relativity slowing
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: down the clock for you, right, And that's the observing
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: universe today. And of course that if the universe was
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: sort of static and waiting around for you to do
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: your tour. But of course the universe is expanding, right,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: So yeah, that's the problem is for you it only
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: takes thirty years, but the but for the rest of
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: the universe, a lot of time passes. So the universe
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: is expanding, and you'll feel like you're going faster and faster.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: But then you'll also be like, wow, the universe is
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: getting bigger, faster and faster, and like the expansion of
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: the universe is accelerating, which you know we've recently learned,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: but to you, it would be seemed to be accelerating
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: much faster. It would be doubling in size in a
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: few years. So you would actually never be able to
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: catch up to the edge of the universe at this
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: even even if you could accelerate to near the speed
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: of light. Yeah, because the universe doesn't follow these rules, right,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: there's no speed limit to that. Yeah, well, it sounds
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: like that's the answer to how to question? Which is it?
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: To me, it seems like the answer is to just
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: go for it, right, Like, don't miss around, don't go
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: at half the speed of light, don't go at three
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: quarters of the speed of light. Just keep going otherwise
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: you're been a die old age on the way. Yeah,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: once the Andrews and one g Lamborghini. Let's let's talk
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: to u Elon Musk about that, the Italian Elon Musk.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: All right, that's great, and so we have another how
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: to question for you randall this one about dinosaurs and
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: black holes. But first let's take a quick break. Alright.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: We're answering questions today with a super special guest, Random
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Row of x K c D Comics and the author
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: of the new book How to Observe Scientific Advice for
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: common real world Problems, And so we had a listener
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: actually write it in with a totally relevant question for you.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: It's a absurd scientific question with maybe a real world solution.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: And so here's a question from a listener. Hi, Daniel
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: and Jorge. My name is Chris, and I'm an avid
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: listener from North Carolina. I've read about how scientists can
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: resolve images of stellar objects behind galaxy clusters that have
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: been warped and magnified due to gravitational lensing. So I
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: started thinking about black holes and came up with this
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: question for you. If we were someday able to build
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: a theoretically perfect telescope, would we be able to resolve
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: a billion year old image of ancient Earth that's been
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: gravitationally lensed back to our telescope around a black hole
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: half a billion light years away, where with the photons
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: have diffused too much for an image to even be
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: resolvable at that distance. Thanks, and keep up the great work.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: So that's a totally awesome question, right, Yeah, I guess
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: the question is really sort of like, how how could
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: we take a picture of the Earth from a long
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: time ago? Like if we wanted to get a picture
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: of dinosaurs or maybe the first life forms on Earth?
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: How how can we possibly do that? Yeah, And a
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: lot of people writing with a similar question. They ask,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: is the light if the light from the stars that
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: are really far away is just arriving now, so we're
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: seeing stars that are billion years old, if they're billion
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: light years away, does that mean that the light from
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: the Earth is out there somewhere so other people can
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: see it, Right, And that's a common question, And it's true,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: like light from the dinosaurs is out there somewhere. Somebody
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: a billion light years away is training their telescope on
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: the Earth. They're seeing the Earth a billion years ago,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: which probably didn't have dinosaurs on it or whatever. Yeah,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: And I love this idea that because if you look,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: you know, most of the time, light goes in a
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: straight line, unless and if you don't have a mirror,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: it gets bent by gravity, it steers around a little
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: bit when it goes past a star. But if you
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: want to make it do a U turn, you you've
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: got to have something really really dense and really heavy,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: like a black hole. But like in principle, this idea
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: is sort of it could work, you know, because when
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: there are paths that light can take going around a
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: black hole where it comes in and just does a
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: U turn, skims really close to the you know, it
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: comes kind of near the event horizon, but it doesn't
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: quite fall in and it and it just slingshots around
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: it and comes right back at you. Help me paint
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: the picture here, guys. So you're saying that an image
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: of the earth, like we're giving up photons all the
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: time time, and those photons have an image of us,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: like a snapshot of of you know, when I took
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: a shower thirty years ago, or an outdoor shower I
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: was showing with some dinosaurs and uh, and so that
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: light leave family podcast. I was giving some dinosaurs a shower. Yeah,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: my pent dinosaur um. And so that image leaves the earth.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: And you're saying that that image can actually come back
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: to us and possibly we can possibly capture it right,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: and and the physics here, remember folks. Is, photons don't
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: have mass, but they can be bent by gravity because
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: gravity bend space right a curve space. And we see
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: this all the time because because we see light bent
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: by heavy stuff that's between us, like dark matter, stuff
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: between us and the source of the light. Yeah, and
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: so there are paths that the light could take around
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: a black hole to come right back to us, and
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: would be like looking at a mirror. If you if
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: you could take a photo of a black hole up close,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: you'd see a bunch of rings of light around it,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: and those rings represent images of you know, other stuff
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: around the black hole that but for the light. The
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: light will have followed paths that loop around it, and
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: sometimes there will be even one to three loops before
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: it comes back to concentric rings around the black hole
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: that represent images. But the images closer and closer to
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: the black hole have made more and more loops around it.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: And so there's light that can orbit a black holes
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: not inside the event horizon, but outside the event horizon.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Is light that can essentially never leave even as though
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: it's not inside the event horizon. Yeah, forming this this
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: like photon sphere around the black hole. That's what you're saying,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: there's an image of right now, there's an image of
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: me going around a black hole multiple times. Well, that's
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: where we run into the practical problems here, which is
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: that that there are these paths that light can take,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: but you're only giving off so many photons. There's only
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: so much light coming off of you. You're saying, I'm
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: not very bright. None of us are very brilliant. Yeah, no, no,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: we're compared to how big and empty spaces. None of
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: us are very bright. I think that's through on a
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: couple of levels. Um, so we're giving off photons. But like,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: if there were a black hole right here and we
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: illuminated you with really bright light, you might be able
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: to pick up an image of you around there and
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: for you elliminute illuminated by normal, healthy natural lighting. Uh
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: that the odds of picking up a photon came off
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: of you and circled the black hole and came back
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: are negligible. So you just take a picture and that
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: you you would be represented by none of the pixels
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: in that photo. Well, I think what happened to my photon? Like, well,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: let's talk about what single photon is different? Right, I mean,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: the question is about an image, and that's like a
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: collection of photons that you know, get to travel around
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: the black hole and be reconstructed looking like Jorge, but
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: a single photon. Right, we see single photons from things
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: a billion light years away. That's how we see stars
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: because photons get here all right. Photons don't get like tired,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: they don't run out of energy right. Time is frozen
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: for them. So a single Jorge photon could go around
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: the black hole and come to Earth couldn't be identified
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: easily as this one, because we need a whole bunch
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: of or photons to see to be like, oh, hey,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: these form the shape of his face, you know, and
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: then we can identify. But that takes so many that
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: the odds of getting one of them is already slim,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: and the odds of getting all of them together, uh
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: take that all take the same path, is just too low. Well,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: we could just pass that problem off to the engineers,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: right exactly, Just like I was going to say, I
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: try to autograph all of my photons, so if you
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: see one with my signature, that's that's you know, it's
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: for me. So you're saying the likelihood that a photon
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: will survive the trip to the black hole and bag
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: is negligible because we'll hit something, you'll out because because
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: there's the one path that would come back to Earth.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: If you hit just the right angle on the black hole,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: it'll make a loop around and come back to Earth.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: But for almost every other angle it'll loop around and
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: come off in some completely different direction. It's like you're
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: trying to It's like you're you have a basketball and
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: you're trying to throw it another basketball across the court,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: but it has to hit the basketball and bounce back
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: to your hands. And so like the odds, almost every
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: time you try that, even if you're really good at
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: aiming and you hit the best at ball sitting on
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: the other side of the court, it's just gonna hit
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: it and bounce off to the side, not even on
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: a YouTube video. Well, with a YouTube video, you get
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: to try so many times. Did you ask Sequila Neal
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: to try that? I did not. UM. I had a
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: lot of fun asking people for for advice for my book, UM,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: but I wasn't able to reach Mr O'Neill. But the
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: I did actually try. I did actually try asking a
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: radio astronomer a question that's very, very similar to this
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: because I was thinking black holes are all so far away.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: It's like the basketball shot you. There's no way you
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: could make that, you know, it's and the photons would
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: take so long to get there and come back. You know,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: we wouldn't be able to get a picture of you,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: um and into long after we were all gone. But um,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: there are other objects near us that we could bounce
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: signals off of it. And And they aren't black holes, but
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: maybe they could be reflective. And so I talked to
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: a radio astronomer and said, you know, are there any
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: big clouds or something where we could send out a
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: signal of radio waves and they would somehow resonate and
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: bounce back, and then we could pick them up here.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: And because you want to watch TV from forty years ago, yeah,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I was thinking that'd be a great way. You could
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: store a bunch of data. You just put on the
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: radio telescope, send it out and then forty years later,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: you know, if the thing is twenty light years away,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: forty years later, that data comes back to you. You
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: didn't have to you could. That could free up your
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: hard drive space like a radar or exactly and something
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: to yourself. Yeah, And she said, no, there isn't There
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: isn't anything out there beyond the Solar system like that.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: But we, she pointed out, we do use the Arecibo
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: dish as a radar dish. We bounced signals off of
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: asteroids and then pick up the reflection from them. So
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: it's like it's not just it's not just a telescope.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: It's like a giant flashlight. And I think that's so cool.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: World's biggest flashlight. All right, So it sounds like the
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: answer of how to take a picture of the early
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: Earth is um with a lot of luck, that's right. Yeah,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: And so I think it's totally possible for those photons
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: to go out there, come around a black hole, and
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: come back to Earth. But practically speaking, it's going to
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: take a really bright source and a really big mirror
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: and a huge teles cipt tog out this photons. Cool.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Al right, Randall, we have one last question for you.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: We're running a bit out a time, but I did
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: this is more of a personal question, and I'm making
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: it sound really serious, but I've thought it'd be fun
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: to ask you that I was gonna say. I thought
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: it'd be a fun question to ask you how to
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: make a web comic. If you had to answer the
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: question how to make a web comic, what would you answer?
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know what advice to give here,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: because to me it seems interesting how many people uh
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: kind of stumbled into it by accident, Like you know,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: for me, I was drawing. I was drawing comics in
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: my notebooks. I wasn't thinking about publishing them. Uh. And
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: then I eventually went back over them and said, oh,
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: some of these I want to put these online somewhere. Um,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: but I wasn't really planning. I figured that career it
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: sounded kind of cool, but it was like not open
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: to me because you got to know how to come
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: up with jokes and also how to draw. And when
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: I was a little kid, I was saying, oh, I
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: don't know, sudden coming with jokes sounds hard, and I
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: definitely don't know how to raw. I guess the cartooning
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: is probably a bad career. So I was trying to
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: do other things and then and then just stumbled into
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: it by accident. So are other cartoonists mad that you
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: can be so successful just drawing stick figures? Oh? I mean,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: I know, it's it's it's definitely it definitely saves time
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: and hand hand vessels. But no, it's a it's a
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: thing that that I just feel like I was I
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: really lucked into right place, right time, you know, I
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: was doing this and and it I feel really lucky
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: that I've been able to make a career out of
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: this without having to learn to draw faces, which is
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: really hard. That's something I've always had a really hard time.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: But so I'm in awe of people people who can
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: actually draw faces, you know, like like you, I always
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: imagine that you put a lot of care and a
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: lot of attention into each stick figure, like you think
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: really about the post and well sure, it's like you know,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: if I'm drawing with like five lines, I'm gonna make
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: those five really good, right. Yeah. And you were telling
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: me earlier that, um, there are actually a lot of
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: physicists who have become cartoonists, like you keep a list.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well, I mean it's just it's kind of surprising.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: You know, I think your your degrees, you know, engineering
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: but close But Bill, are you rounding up engineering into physics?
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: You know we're neighbors. Um yeah, no, aside from me,
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: there's uh, you know, there's Zach Wieners Smith who does
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, he has a physics degree. Bill Aiman,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: who did Fox Trade, he also has a physics there really, um,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: but my favorite fact about that is that of all
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: of the people, of all of the physics majors who
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: got physics screes but then left physics to go into
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: cartooning and uh, and then of those people, of the
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: ones who were born on October seventeenth, I am not
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: even like the most successful, because it turns out Mike Judge,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: who did Beavis and butt Head and Office Space, he
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: also has a physics theree and also shares my birthday.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: That is wild, No, I haven't I feel like he's
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: just like my my birthday twin rival out there. Well,
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: there you go, folks, proof that a physics degree is
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: guaranteed success in life, no matter what field you end
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: up in, or maybe only cartooning, or or maybe it
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: says that physics is such a terrible career choice and
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: most people would rather do cartoonings. Well, you mentioned you're drawing.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: I have a question about that. I've noticed in a
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: lot of your recent work you have actually really detailed
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: and sophisticated three D drawings. Of stuff. I wonder is
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: that something that you developed later You ever thought about
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: like modifying or adapting your style of drawing people, or
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: is that is your comic styles would have frozen now,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: you know people. People sometimes ask if I've taken a
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: drawing class, and sometimes they ask it in a way like, oh,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: so did you do art school? And I'm like, what
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: does it look like? I did art school? Sometimes they're like,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: have you ever thought about taking a drawing class? Like
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: it's like, oh, thanks, but no, the only the only
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: drawing classes I've taken. I took a few technical drawing
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: classes for like drawing blueprints and stuff, and learned, you know,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: a little bit about how to do how to do
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: those kinds of shapes for like diagrams, which I think
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: was actually really it was helpful over comics, but almost
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: more helpful for physics. I feel like the number of
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: times you've had to when you're doing a physics class
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: you have to draw a three D cube on a
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: on a board to try to explain something like cubes
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: are hard to draw, but like you could learn to
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: do it. So I feel like that almost that's a
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: drawing class that, like physicists should take because they should
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: all learn cartooning just just basically alternative. There. I'm working
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: on it. Well, I think that you know, all of
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: your work and your books and your comics, they really
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: sort of reflect your personality and your curiosity, and especially
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: this latest book, how To, I think it really reflects that, um,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: you know, the mind that you have where you sort
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: of go into deep dive on a simple question and
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: discover all these interesting and amazing things about the universe.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: It's the mind of a physicist. Well, I'm really I'm
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: really glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, and I mean that
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: in the best possible way. Well, thanks very much for
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: joining us on the podcast and for answering how ridiculous?
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: How two questions? Yeah, if you're interested in getting Randall's book,
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: just a quick reminder, it's called how To Absort. Scientific
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: Advice for Common Real World Problems. That's right. It's out
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: in hardcover from Riverhead and we totally recommend the you
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: pick it up. Thank you so much. Well, thank you
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: so much for having me on. This was a lot
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: of fun. Before you still have a question after listening
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: to all these explanations, please drop us the line. We'd
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: love to hear from you. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's one Word, or
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. For
• 41:33
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• 41:36
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• 41:40
  Speaker 1: favorite shows.