Latest / Stuff You Should Know / What is the future of Earth?

Transcript

What is the future of Earth? · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: from house stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is always Charles W.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, maker of some fine yarns, spinner of yarns,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: your yarn spinner. I am uh, I guess I am
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: too to a certain extent, part time seamstress. Yes, but
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: you only make these suits of light formed by Matta doors.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: That's right, Josh, Chuck. Yes, how's it going? It's great.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear the interrupt with this. Why.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know, because I thought this is a pretty
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: interesting thing that we're doing. I agree. This is not one,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: not two, but three articles in one that's right, combined
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: ms mashed, taken totally out of context and repeated incorrectly. Yeah,
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: we might be all over the place on this one.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Not necessarily. I've I've I've discovered a structure to this.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: So and follow me. Okay um, let me give you
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: the intro first, Chuck, h have you heard of the
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Kio satellite? No? Okay um. If you read Ben Bolan's blog.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: You would have heard of age written about it twice.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Who yeah, um stuff, they don't want you to know.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: It's Ben Bowling. Car Stuff's Ben Bowling, just a general
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: man about town of awesomeness, Ben bowl And he wrote
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: about the Kio satellite, which was originally conceived and I
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: think by a French artist named Jean Marc Philippe. So
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: if you didn't believe me that he was French, I'll
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: bet you do now. Um. And his idea was to
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: basically create a time capsule and launch it into space. Right,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: so he had standard stuff, um, standard time capsule stuff.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: You know, a drop of human blood encased in a
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: diamond with the human genome engraved on the outside of it.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Kim Kardashian's bikini. Yeah, um the uh, let's see a
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: sample of air water, Um, basically earth wind and fire
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: but without the fire and with air, and then a
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: CD of earth wind and fire which would be great
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: and water. Yeah, I don't know why you wouldn't put
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: it in in. There would be a fun little ironic twist.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: He got a bunch of um, a bunch of press
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: because one of the cool things that he's invited people
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: to do is to enter your own message whatever you
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: want to say, UM, up to six thousand characters, which
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: is still substantials, fure paragraphs. UM. And originally, since this
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: was from you could send it your submission in via
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: regular mail or as Time Magazine put it in two
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: thousand electronic mail. UM. Now I'm quite sure you can
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: only go to Kyo dot org and enter through the website. UM.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: But then all of this will be compiled into again
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: based on the Time magazine report a CD ROM. Now
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: it'll be transcribed onto some DVDs. UM. Now those things
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: should have been launched like five times. But he's seeking
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: private funding. It's a good idea. People are with it.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Has no one ever done this? No, But the the
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: whole point of it is is all this stuff is
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: going to be put into Seid like shot in the
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: space and it's going to be given I'm not quite
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: sure how a fifty thousand year orbit, and then after
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: fifty thou years it should fall to Earth hopefully be discovered. Um.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Within all this will be some sort of pictogram depicting
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: how to create a DVD player, and then interesting, some
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: future civilization would be like, oh it's a DVD, it
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: will just pop it in our DVD player and then,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I can't believe what um Mitch mausch
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: fourteen had to say about about what life is like
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: on Earth fifty years? Yeah, what is this l well mean?
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And he chose kio because apparently, k e oh are
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: the three most common phone names in all the world's languages.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: It's a pretty good idea. I love it. At the
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: very least, it coincides with one of the articles. We're
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: talking about what will the Earth be like in fifty
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: thousand years? Boom intro done, nice job, Uh, And to
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: get the fifty thousand years, Josh, we are going to
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: also touch on the articles five years in five thousand years,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: and through this I'm also going to be uh disseminating information.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: I found a Live Science article that hit and and
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: they sort of culled um opinions from scientists all over
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: the world on what might be going on, and that's
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: all within the next two hundred years. And the story
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: is not good. Well, yes, so here's here's the structure
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: I mentioned previously, Chuckers. There's a couple of ways to approaches, right.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: We're so we're talking about the fifty years from now, Um,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: there there's one. There are two big questions. One will
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: humans be around each of these periods, And there's two
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: possible answers, yes or no. And then depending on the answer,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: we choose you, we choose our own adventure, and we
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: end up with treasure or being chased by pirates. Right.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: The other possible answer is okay, if humans are around,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: how advanced is our technology and specifically how advances our
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: ability to tap energy, which apparently is totally correlated with
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: how advanced or technology will be? Right, So I guess
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: approaching the idea where humans aren't around for any of this.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Just go watch a documentary called Life After Us or
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Life After People. I didn't get to watch it. It's cool,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna watch. It's a very neat little hour and
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: a half documentary that was a mini series like some
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: time Ago on some other channel. Um, but it is
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: a neat little um documentary like what if? And it
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: shows like what how long? Basically the Earth will erase
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: any mark of humanity after we're gone? And it doesn't.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: It takes a very it takes a startlingly short time,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: and the dogs go feral and it's crazy. Really Yeah. Um,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: but let's say humans are around, especially in that five
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: hundred years scenario. Well before we get there, can I
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: read some of these highlights and this is in the
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: next you know, up until so this in the immediate future,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: some of us it will still be alive. I'll just
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: read a few of these. By the year just to
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: scare you. Uh, less rainfall could reduce agricultural yields by
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: up in some parts of the world. Uh. World population
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: will be seven point six billion by up to eight
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: percent of the coral reefs in the world will be lost. Yeah,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: because of increased ten richers in the sea and higher acidity. Right,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: was it lower a cidity? I think it's higher. Acidity
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: is higher okay, um and the Arctic Sea could be
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: ice free in the summertime by the year twenty three.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: And these are recording to you know. That was specifically
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: James Overland of the n O A A and Muin
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Wang of the geophysical research letters from you dub So
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: I'm just not I'm not trying to preach some wacky
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: global warming conspiracies here quoting from other people. Okay, by uh,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: ocean acidification okay, it is acid could kill off most
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: of the coral reefs. At least four hundred bird species
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: could become endangered or extinct due to deforestation and people
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: eating them. In Australia, all your Aussies out there, there
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: will likely be an additional heat related deaths per year. Josh,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: it gets worse. Between one point one and three point
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: two billion people will experience water shortages and up the
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: six million people will go hungry. You know, it's crazy.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: We we've talked a lot about this, like what happens
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: when we run out of water? Um, the climate porn
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: one where we like warned against exactly what we're doing
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: right now. Um, we've talked about a lot of this.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Go back and listen to it. Everybody agreed. Uh, sea
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: levels could rise in New York City by more than
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: three ft flooding Uh Brooklyn Queen's Coney Island. So let
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: me let me add something there. Three ft it's a
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: meter roughly, and there's um that's that's totally within the
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: predictions of sea level rise due to global warming. Right
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: about half a meter to two meters is what's predicted.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: So one meter in there, if the sea levels rise
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: by one meter in the US will lose ten thousand
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: square miles of dry land in the southwest. If the
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: sea levels rise one meter um in India, Bangladesh and Indonesia,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: they will lose, respectively, six thousands square kilometers, thirty thousand
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: square kilometers and thirty four thousand square kilometers of dry
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: land lost. And believe me, Indonesia doesn't have much more
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: than thirty four thousand square kilometers of dry land to
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: give up, right um, and the total of twenty four
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: million people will be displaced. I know that that's that's
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: three ft that's think about it. I mean like, it
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: doesn't seem like much, but it goes, you know, a
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: ways back. Plus also we lose all those wet land buffers,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: so erosion um really takes a hold as well. Well.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: They also along those lines predicted that coastal population is
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: going to balloon to about five billion. People already live
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: along the world's most populous populated river basins, so everybody's
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: gonna have to move back a little bit, everybody back up.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: So while this is happening too, by the y, while
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: some places are flooded, other places gonna be drying out.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, desertification, And we've talked about that. It's about
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: that and then flash forward, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: be much higher than any time during the past six
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: and fifty thousand years, Ocean pH levels will be the
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: lowest they've been in the last twenty million years, and
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: the ability of things like coral crabs, oysters, any kind
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: of shelled fish exoskeleton probably isn't going to be alive
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: in a quarter of all species of plants and land
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: animals could be driven to extinction. So that's okay, So
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: let's say chuck that tomorrow. Everybody's like, we're going all
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: wind power. Everybody just prepared for some dark couple of years.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: But we're gonna be fine. We're done doing fossil fuels tomorrow,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: and we don't put any more anthropogenic c O two
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: into the atmosphere. If we did that, within a few
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: decades ce A two levels would go back to normal
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: whatever you could consider normal without human contribution. But then
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: about years from now, we could expect to enter another
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: ice age, which the last a hundred thousand years. So
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: you're starting to get the idea that humans just being
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: us on a planet, just burning fossil fuels, dead plants
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: and animals for energy. It's as extremely primitive as you're
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: about to see. Um, we are in trouble one way
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: or the other. Oh yeah, and dude, that's not even
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: talking about extinction level events that are gonna happen at
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: some point. That's normal glacial stuff that may happen millions
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: of years from now. But at some point something will
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: destroy humanity. Okay, yes, agreed. But over the short term,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: say five years, we have, Um, we have a a
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: big challenge to stay alive. Um. We have to basically
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: become Our technology has to outgrow the frequency of catastrophic events,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: things like a meteor comment and ice age client a change. Um.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: And that's Michio Kaku talking. Um. But if we can,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: if our civilization can advance fast enough that we can say, oh,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: there's a comment that's coming and there's going to be
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: a mass extinction event. Luckily our technology is sufficient that
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: we can go out there and destroy it before it
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: gets anywhere near Earth will be fine. Well, we should
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: be able to ensure our survival at least here on
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: the planet. And the way to do that is to
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: go from what we are now, which is essentially a
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: type zero civilization, to a Type one civilization. Yes, we
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: should go ahead and mention this that's very important. Uh,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: the Kim Kardashian scale. That's twice in one episode. I
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: don't even know it. I don't even know who she is.
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Hardly that's good, okay. Uh. Russian astrophysicist Nikolai kardas Chev
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: um put forth his theory that our technical advancement is
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: in direct correlation to how much energy we can consume
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: and tap into harness. Yeah. Yeah, uh, type one, which
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: we're not even there yet. We're type zero right now.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: As we can harness everything on this planet period, every
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: kind of energy we can tap into, right, but it's
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: um it should be any type of energy that's available
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: that's non extracted. Basically, any kind of non harmful energy
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: is kind of the caveats, So it's basically solar radiation,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: nuclear fusion, that kind of thing. We use a billionth
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: of the Sun's No, there's a billionth of the Sun's
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: energy available to us on Earth through solar radiation. We
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: currently harness a millionth of that. So we have a
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: ways to go. But if you look at our progress
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: over the last hundred years, we were harnessing like zero
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: of it pretty much, and now we're harnessing a million,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: So it's quite possible, according to Michio Kaku, that will
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: be able to harness a UM within a hundred years.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Well yeah, they say that. Over the past ten thousand years,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: are scientists estimate that we have evolved a hundred times
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: faster than at any other time. So if that continues,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: then hopefully we can keep pace. I mean, just look
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: at our advances in lighting over the last hundred years.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: I mean that we went from fire to incandescent light
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: bulbs to compact fluorescence. Um. Yeah, I feel like we're
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: we're exponentially advancing. Agreed. So if we moved to a
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: type one, we harness a hundred percent of the energy
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: on the planet, we become UM. By definition, according to Cardaschef,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: a planetary a truly planetary species, where like we probably
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: have a universal language, we're all communicating via the internet,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: like we are earthlings, and we no longer see ourselves
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: as Americans or Mexicans or Latvians or um whoever? Right, right,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: exactly um. And as a result, our technology should be
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: advanced enough that we can control roll things on the
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: planet that threatened us, like I say, just or climate change.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: So if we can do that, then we ensured our
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: survival here on Earth, at least from those sort of
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: natural disasters. Exactly. Good point, Chuck, because we could always
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: kill ourselves via war or something like that, or we
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: may enter the Singularity before we've sufficiently attached ourselves. The
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: machines become post human, and if the Singularity takes off
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: before then we are doomed. All right, let's get through
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: these next to it real quick man. Type two means
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: we can summon the power of an entire star system.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: That's pretty pretty impressive, which um Freeman Dyson, Yeah, physicist,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: he said that his his whole thing is that um,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: a type two civilization could like basically put a gaggle
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: of satellites around a star and um like harvest its
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: energy like that. Yeah, and he just for the record, Uh,
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: michio Ki who says we might be able to get
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: to type one in a hundred years and Dyson says
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: it's going to be more like two. Still A sounds
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: too bad, No, I mean that's a that's leaps and
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: bounds from where we are now. And Type three, Josh,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: the geekiest of all. We can command energy on a
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: galactic scale. I don't even know what that means. I
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: think basically it means like, um, so we can get
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: other solar systems. Yeah, we can harness the energy of
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: more than one star at once, and we would have
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: power beyond anything we could conceive of. Probably also by
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: that time, that would, I guess, mean that we were
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: capable of interstellar travel, which would probably mean that if
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: there's anybody else out there, we're contacting them, which hopefully
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean we're at war with them, but probably does
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: at least at first. So you mentioned technology growing, It's
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: a little something called Moore's law. Uh, computer speed and
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: complexity levels every eighteen months. If that continues, then potentially
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: in the not too distant future, there could be a
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: lot of robotics going on controlling these things instead of people,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: or in addition to people. What do you think about that.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: I think that if we're not already fused to those machines,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: machines were slaves, which is trans humanism. Yeah, right, which
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: I mean if you're looking at it, over a hundred years,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: we're so close to mastering genetics that there's if we
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: stay on this track, it's pretty much impossible that we
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: won't have diverged from evolution, taken ourselves out of natural selection,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: because we'll be able to fix ourselves. So well that
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: really the only thing that we just genetics alone, the
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: only thing we wouldn't be able to fix probably is death. Well,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: don't be so sure. Uh, there's a Cambridge University geneticist,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: Aubrey de Gray who has said these famous words, the
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: first person to to be one thousand years old is
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: certainly already alive today. Uh, and whether they realize it
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: or not, barring accidents in suicide, most people that are
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: forty years old or younger now can expect to live
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: for centuries. She's definitely on me, Aubrey. Maybe not British,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: perhaps he or she Weslie Leslie definitely sherlock out there
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: as far as his or her predictions. But scientists do
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: think that we are. I mean, they can already extend
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: the age in other mammals and laboratories, and we're funding
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: it to the tune of two point four billion dollars
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: a year anti aging. So yeah, who knows. And we
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: talked about this before. To cryonics. Cryonics is all coming
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: back together. Uh, let's see what else, chuck. So five
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: years we will most surely be around, I would say,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: and we will either be a suffering primate species in
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: the sweltering he or freezing um and and iceage that
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: began because we abandoned fossil fuels without thinking it through. Um.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: But we'll probably still be around, right, especially if you
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: look at catastrophic global change, it will probably be okay,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: most of us will be those of us in life. Um,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: what about five thousand years from now? Seventy two? Are
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: the seven thousands now? Yeah? Seven seventy yeah, two twelve. Yeah.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: This this thing is blowing my mind so much. I
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: don't even know a year it is now. Uh. Robert
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Lamb wrote this one, and he says that if we
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: reach that type one status, then that's great news because
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: then we've been able to stave off ecological disaster by
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: being able to control these things and harness energy elsewhere.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: But he also points out, like we said earlier, warfare,
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: warfare and uh self destruction might do away with us. Sure,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: if we're gonna type the chief type two status, then
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: the sky is the limit or the galaxy is the limit? Right? Well,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: that's the one with interstellar travel, I believe, um. And
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: then he also talks about diverging through trans humanism post humanism,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: where if we take ourselves out a natural selection, that
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: will probably looking back, be a point where it's a
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: significant as Homo sapiens diverging from Neanderthals or whatever happened
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: back there, because you know, there's a lot of speculation
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: that humans are like six Neanderthal and like tem percent
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: something else, and like we're we we very much interbred
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: with these um individuals we were competing with as well. Interesting,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: so I guess it wouldn't be diverging, but um, say
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: the extinction of UM Neanderthals and the skyrocketing of Homo
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: sapiens because think about we're talking about fifty years ago.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Fifty years ago, Home of Sapiens were just now reaching Europe,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: and Neanderthals were very much still around and alive and
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: possibly taken to the seas because they think that they
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: were the first ones to UM basically build canoes. Yeah,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: they've gotten a bad rap and they're just now starting
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: to be understood. Interesting. Yeah, if you don't know your pass,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: you don't know your future. Josh, Well, that's the that's
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: kind of one of the basis of this this little
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: exercise we're doing now. It's kind of like if you
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: look at where we've come, especially if you're talking about
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: how quickly we're progressing. I mean five hundred years ago, um,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: who was it? Pontsa daily On discovered the Turks in
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: the cake coos in fifteen twelve, twenty years after the
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: Age of Exploration began, Like at where we are now,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: we go to Turks and cacause right now, if we
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: had a lot of money, dude, we can go to Mars.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Not really not us, but we can land things on
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: a robotic cameras. That's like the beginning of the new
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Age of exploration. But humans, they'll colonize Mars at some point.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: I look that that's another question to this whole thing
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: as well, like what will the Earth look like? If
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: you look at the first two in five years and
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: five thousand years. Robert took a really ethnocentric view of it.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: He made it about humans. But you kind of wonder,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: especially in the five thousand year thing, like will we
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: just be like Earth is kind of played out. We're
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: gonna leave and there won't be anyone here, will be
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: on Mars or will be somewhere else, and the Earth
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: will just be like, Man, I'm glad I thought this
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: guys would never really rape and me while my junk. Yeah,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: I believe so, man, do we need to talk about
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: actual procession? This is the one. Yeah, we kind of
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: do because this one if you ask me, fifty thou
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: years from now, No, humans won't be around. I don't
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: think so. But we'll have either left or we will
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: have diverged so much from humans as we are now,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: they we won't be around. And if we, if there
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: are like human descendants, uh, they will be at such
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: peace with the Earth that like we can talk about
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: it almost in its natural state of what it will
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: look like in fifty years. I'm going with the extinction
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: level event. Okay, but let's back up and talk about procession.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Do you understand this? Yeah? So basically, you know, the
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Earth as it rotates around the sun, or as it
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: revolves around the sun, it also rotates spins on its axis,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: the imaginary line that goes from the south pole in
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: the north pole. The thing is is it doesn't spin
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: in a perfect tight spiral. And we talked about this before.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: It's not like a a patent manning throw. It's more
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: like a tim tebuff throw. It's got a little wobble
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: to it, you know what I mean. So at any
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: point in time, the Earth is wobbling between I think
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: twenty one two point one twenty two point one. Okay,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: So if it's a twenty twenty two point one, it's
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: a lot closer to being vertical, perfectly vertical, which means
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: that there's a lot less difference in the seasons. If
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: it's over at a twenty four point five degree angle,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: the seasons are so different that they could actually be
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: about lopsided from where they are now, where in the
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: northern hemisphere we would have um summer in the winter
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: and vice versa. Um. That's just that's just over like
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: a sixteen thousand year cycle, right. There's also something else
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: called um obliquity, which is a forty two thousand year
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: cycle UM, which is kind of like the the extreme
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: of procession. What does that mean? It's the same thing,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: but it's over a longer period. That's the one with
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: the tilt, okay, where the toil goes fully back and forth.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Got you, and then you have eccentricity, And this one
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: is more about the revolution around the sun, right where
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: the orbit of Earth around the sun is it goes
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: over a I think in ninety two thousand year year
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: ninety seven thousand year cycle. It goes from a close
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: to a perfect circle too in the lips and as
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: it's going through that when you factor in obliquity and procession, Chuck,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: what does this all mean? At some point you have
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: a much colder Earth than in other points, which is
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: what it counts for ice ages. They think that's right
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: about every Uh, well, they last for about a hundred
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: thousand years and in between, which is where we are now,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: we got about ten thousand years of pretty good weather. Yeah. Um,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: we are, like I said, right smack in the middle
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: of the one. And scientists think, um, the next ice
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: age will reach its peak in about eighty thousand years. Yeah,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: so as far as our fifty thousand your prediction, not hours,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: but the fifty thou your prediction, we will not likely
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: be in the next ice age, although ice will be encroaching.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: They think as far south as like New York City. Well,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: not necessarily, because I did. I ran across the study
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: that said the next ice age we'll start about fift
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: dred years from the time that carbon dioxide levels don't
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: exceed like two forty five parts per million volume. So
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: when's that I don't know because we're way above that now, gotcha.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: But it would have to come back down. And then
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: once that happened, in about fifteen hundred years, we'll be
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: in an ice age. Again. This is all scary stuff,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: but I think about it. That's if we have an
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: advanced to a type one civilization. If we have, then
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: we'll have figured out how to write the Earth on
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: its axis and there it will just be spring all
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: year round and everybody will just be happy as larks.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: It's like Guatemala, it will land of eternal spring. That's right.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Are we two extinction level events? Yes, this is the
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: one that will be the toughest to deal with. I
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: think so busta rhymes the extinction level event. Uh. If
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: you look back, like we said, you got to look
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: back to your past and your future over our four
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: billion plus history of the Earth. Um apocalypse is global
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: apocalypse has happened. It's unavoidable, whether or not it's an
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: impact event like an asteroid or a comment or some
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: sort of gas related expelling event which happened, or the
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: scariest of all, Now that I've read up on it
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: the super volcano, which is pretty scary, like tectonic activity
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: basically causing a volcano that would block out the Sun
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: for ten to twenty years. Yeah, which is what happened
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: at the end of the Permian Period, which I don't
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: think it was coincidence that the supervolcano erupted at the
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: end of the Permian Period. I think it ended the
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: Permian period two million one years ago. Yeah, million years
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: the great Dying, as they call it, the Permian Triassic
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: extinction event. And they don't know that it was it
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: was a super volcano, um the eruption of the Siberian traps.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: They don't know for sure, because you can't know something
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: happened two hundred fifty million years ago. They think it's
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: could have been an impact event, maybe uh uh anoxia,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: which is when the oceans became really depleted depleted of oxygen,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: maybe some other gas event, or maybe a combination of
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: the super volcano and anoxia and an impact event sort
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: of all converging to basically wipe out most every living
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: thing on the planet. Yeah, like of all marine species
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: and um, how much of all land vertebrates. That's crazy.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: This eruption the Siberian Traps super volcano erupted for one
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: million years and it took the volume of lava was
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: between one and four million cubic kilometers and it took
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: thirty million years for the Earth to recover. That's a
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: big dying. And it was also the only known mass
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: extinction of insects in the history of the Earth, because
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: usually insects will live through stuff. Yeah they're fine, but yeah,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: this one wiped out. Apparently there used to be big
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: scary insects. Yeah, there was like a cockroaches like three
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: ft long, and dragonflies just as long. And so the
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: super volcano took care of that, and it could take
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: care of us one day very well. May of course,
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: that is if we're here and we haven't figured out
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: how to advance to even a type wine civilization. If
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: that's the case fifty years from now, we deserved it.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: I'm surprised there hadn't have been a super volcano movie.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: I think that's what that one with Pierce Brosnon was
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: shooting for it to kind of missed the mark well
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: because it was just local. Yah, It's like, oh no,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: it'll destroy parts of Los Angeles, not cover the world.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: That's it man. So I think that said definitively what
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: will happen on Earth five thousand and fifty thousand years
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: from now? And if you are around in fifty thousand
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: years and we're wrong, you can send us an email
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: and complain about it. Yeah, and tell us what you
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: thought of the Keyo satellite. Yes. Uh. If you want
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: to know more about what the Earth will be like,
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: type those words into the search bar how stuff works
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: dot com. We have some pretty cool future stuff on
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: this website. And I said the search bar, which means
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: it's time for listening to my old Josh. I'm gonna
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: call this Cannibalism on the High Seas. Just finished listening
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: to the podcast and the dinner party. Uh. You mentioned
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: this is one of the very few instances of cannibalism
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: and human history. Uh did you say that? Um? Yeah, okay,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: I did, all right. I was just picking up William
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Aaron's work. I recently learned of another one that I
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: thought it would share the story of the whaling ship
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: to Essex. We talked about that in the in this
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Weird ND this weird position right now because we have
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: recorded the whaling episode. Oh, talk about that, but it's
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: not out yet, okay, point time is catching up with us. Um.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: The Essex took off a whaling expedition from Nantucket to
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: South America in the eighteen hundreds. The ship harpooned a
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: sperm whale, then exacted revenge by ramming the small whaling
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: skill but also a large boat, which sank. The large
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: boat would sank quickly. Twenty men made it into a lifeboat.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: There's many rations and equipment that they could get aboard,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: and we're a drift for ninety days, um, as we
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: can expect. Once the rations insanity began to run low,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: they began casting lots to see who would be the
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: unfortunate savior. To the rest of the party. The interesting
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: anecdote that our instructor told us and she took a
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: class apparently, uh. Rather than just outright shooting the short sticker,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: they would wait, sidle up close and mutter reassurances like yeah,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: you know, you're doing okay for now, We've got a
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: couple of days. If we wait, we might hit land.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: And then suddenly spot something up on the far side
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: of the ship, and the man turned to look capal.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: He became dinner. It's just like so ruthless. Everything's gonna
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: be okay. Look over there. I'm not sure how true
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: this is, And in the case of cannibalism, it's hard
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: to say if that approach is more humane or not.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: I can only think I probably wouldn't want to see
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: it coming. The boat finally made it. Uh in there
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: and there were only eight of the twenty men left. Um.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: And apparently this inspiration for Moby Dick, which I think
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: is what we're talking about, right. And there's a whole
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: book on the Essex. It's supposed to be awesome. So
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: that's from Ashley with two e's awesome. Thank you very much. UM,
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: thanks for that. Very weird. It is weird the way
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: time works. I could have stopped that, but I just
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: figured that's fun. Already told her I read it. UM.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Let's see if you have a note about something that
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: we've already talked about but hasn't been released, we will
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: be very impressed. See if you can do it, UM,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: send it to us as a tweet UH at s
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: y S a podcast. You can get with us on
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Facebook at facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: or you can send us an email at Stuff Podcast
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com. MHM
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: It's ready, Are you