Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What Is A Dyson Sphere?

Transcript

What Is A Dyson Sphere? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Hey, or hey, what do you think is the most
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: impressive thing humanity has ever built? It's a pretty good question.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Let me think about it for a second. I think
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I think I would have to say probably the most
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: impressive human achievement is the refrigerator. Obviously, I mean the
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: refuge every day. I couldn't live with that without it.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: It's pretty awesome. That's a cool answer. I was sort
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: of thinking things like, you know, the Great Wall, or
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the Golden gate Bridge or the Birge Khalifa, you know,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: stuff that would inspire all you know, things that like
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: last for generations. Well, you know, there is still in
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: my fridge that's been there four generations. I don't know.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: I look at these projects sometimes and I think, you know,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: humanity can really accomplish great things when we work together.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: It's really sort of impressive what we can pull off,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: and we we all work together. Yeah, well, I don't know.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I mean I once ate everything in my fridge all
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: by myself. I mean I didn't meet the rest of
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: humanity for that. Yeah, well, you can accomplish great things
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: by yourself. But it makes me wonder sometimes like what
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: future humans will build, Like what are the great what's
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: the Great Wall of the twenty one century. You know
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: what kind of achievements will we what kind of monuments
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: will we leave behind for future humans? The Great Refrigerator
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: of China. That's right, a huge refrigerator in space that
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: you can see from space, that you can see from
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: space that it needs to be cleaned. Hi, I'm poor.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I'm the cartoonists behind the comics are piled Higher and
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Deeper or PhD comics. And I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: And I smash protons together at the Large Hagon Collider
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: to try to figure out what the universe is made
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: out of. And together we wrote a book called We
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Have No Idea, which explores all the things we don't
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: know about the universe. And right now you're listening to
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio, in which we try to mix
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: accessible science with a huge quantity of low quality jokes.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: What do you mean? Are you saying my jokes are
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: low quality or no? I'm saying we spray a huge
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: number of jokes and our editor just picks out the
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: ones that are best to our listeners. Think we're funny, Yeah,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: are awesome editor exactly our producer who we should give
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: a shout out to for sure, Taylor, thank you so
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: much for making us funny. Thank you for making us
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: sound funny. And speaking of human achievements, today's podcast is
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: all about monumental constructions and accomplishments. What can civilizations do
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: when they get together and build something enormous? Yeah? What
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: can humans? What are humans capable of making? Like, what
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: are the limits of our ingenuity and resources and our
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: ability to work together? That's right, because you know, there
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: are a lot of problems right in the world, like
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: a global energy consumption and global warming, and that's right,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: and some of those are being tackled, right, like we're
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: developing solar power so that we can get energy just
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: from the sun and not burn fossil fuels and to
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: meet the global energy demands. Right, But if you extrapolate
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: forward and you think, like, what is humanity gonna need?
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Our global energy consumption is just increasing and it seems
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: unlikely unless we have some cataclysmic event in our civilization
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: that that's ever going to turn around. So if you
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: project forward, you might wonder, like, how is humanity going
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: to meet its energy needs in the future. If we
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: don't invent some fantastic new form of fusion, right, what
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: can we do to to rapidly increase the amount of
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: energy we have accessible? And that's the question two of
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: our listeners had, and so they sent us questions via
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Twitter and via email. That's right. So we owe a
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: shout out to Evertenson and to Steve Davis for requesting
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: this topic. So today on the podcast we'll be covering
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: the topic what is a dycen sphere? That's right? Yeah,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: so the dycen sphere? Daniel, Um, So this is the
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: idea that you know, we could maybe build something that
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: can really take advantage of all that amazing power that's
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: coming out of the sun. Right. That's right. If you
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: think about like grabbing solar power and you think, well,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: we might need a huge amount of it for your
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: first instinct is like, let's just put a bunch of
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: solar panels in the desert, right, Let's just like build
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: solar panel after solar panel. After all, nobody's really using
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: that land. Is a lot of sun out there, right.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: But as humanity gets more and more greedy about energy,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: you might think, like is there enough room on Earth
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: to put enough solar panels, right, So is that true? Like?
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: What if we covered all of the Sharad Desert in
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: solar panels, would that not be enough? I think that
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: would be enough today. Like actually, I think today all
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: you need to do is cover like Delaware with solar
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: panels and you'd have enough energy to power the entire
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: United States or maybe even the Earth. What really, yeah, exactly,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: solar pan So you're just ready to Delaware, Delaware. That's
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: where all those fake companies are set up, aren't they. Um,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: we probably have listeners in Delaware, so you might want
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: to check with them before you. They might appreciate the shade,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: you know, being relocated. Sorry, um all we have authority
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: here from J. H. Cham a podcast host, or we're
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: gonna raise your house and put solar pants emin eminent
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: podcast main being moved out of Delaware. Well, I just
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: check the numbers, and it turns out Delaware is actually
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: a bit too small. I think you need to add
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Maryland to hope. That's okay with Maryland. No, But the
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: point is that I think today human civilization can survive
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: using energy captured by a pretty small fraction to the
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Earth's surface. But imagine in the future. Right, what if
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: we want to build a huge civilization, what we want
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: to construct enormous things? We want to send ships across
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: the stars. We're gonna need incredible amounts of energy and
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: you know, not gonna be able to burn cold to
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: do that, and we're not going to be able to
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: necessarily cover the Earth and solar panels, and so people
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: started thinking big. People started thinking what's the limit, Like,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: what's the maximum number of solar panel solar panels you
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: can make? What's the biggest solar panel you can build? Yes? Exactly?
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: And where would you put it? Okay, so this is
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: where the question of what is the Dyson's fear comes from? Exactly?
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: This is a thought a thought experiment by Freeman Dyson,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: a famous physicist, to think about what is the biggest
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: solar panel? Is it possible? Could we build one? How
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: would you do it? And could we see if other
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: civilizations are doing it? Wow? That's amazing? All right? So we,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: as usual, we're wondering how many of you out there
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: actually knew what a Dyson's fear was Like If someone
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: approachedate on the street and ask you, hey, have you
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: seen any dicens fears? Or hey, do you know what
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: it is? Or would you contribute ten dollars towards building
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: a Dicen sphere um. So, as usual, Daniel went out
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: into the streets and ask people randomly out there if
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: they knew what a Dyson's fear was. Yeah, here's what
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: people had to say. Have you ever heard of a
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: thing called a Dyson sphere? I know it in the
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: context of looking for other life on other planets, because
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: it's basically like a ring that you can build around
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: a star to harness its light for energy. You look
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: at the light patterns. If something interferes with the patterns
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: and like in a certain way, it can lead to
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: the assumption that maybe there's a Dicen sphere around it.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: There's something awesome. Okay, yeah, it's this gigantic thing that
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: you've put around like a solar system and then you
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: can harness all the energy. I heard of it. I
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: don't know what it is, all right, So pretty much
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: no across the board. Well, I would say we got
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: our our typical set of binary responses, a bunch of news.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: I got a bunch of weird looks too, people like
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: is you're making this up? Like is that a thing?
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Really is this like a test? You know, I wonder
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: how many people have thought you were talking about the
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: dice and vacuum cleaner. That thing really sucks. Um No,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: I think I think it was like people thought maybe
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: it was a control question, like I was making things up,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: like have you ever heard of the you know, um
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: smith gabakabui or whatever, And because it was like a
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: trick question, like to see if you if you try
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: to make up some funny things. Yeah, which actually gives
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: me the idea I should do that, right, We should
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: have a trick question and see if people spout off. Um,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: you know, Oh yes, I told I saw a Nova
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: episode about that, and it's in balls, you know, electrophons
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: and whatever. What would it be about? Let's be dark?
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Should be like dark, a dark black hole about that?
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Oh you know what, that's actually really cool. And people
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: are written and asking whether you can have a black
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: hole made of dark matter, which is a really awesome question,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: which we should talk about in a different episode. Um,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: but an anti dark matter black hole? Dark matter black hole? Yeah,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: isn't that a cool idea? An anti dark matter black hole?
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Oh well, we don't know if dark matter has anti particles.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: We don't even know dark matter is made of particles,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: so we don't know if there is such a thing
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: as anti dark matter. But we know there is dark matter,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: and we know there are black holes. So people have
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: this tendency to like ram them together anyway, So nobody
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: thought you'd meant the vacuum cleaner because you know the
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Dyson vacuum cleaners. They are known for having this like
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: sphere out front that that you used to pivot and
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: to roll around and like it twist the head of
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: the vacuum cleaner as you tilt and turn. Did you
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: get some like check from Dicing company? Because I didn't
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: get one. I don't understand why you're promoting the Dicing
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: vacum Maybe if you used to link if you used
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: to link Dyson slash or he got a check slash
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: and didn't share it with Daniel. Well, um, let's break
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: it down for people. Then what what is the Dyson's fear?
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: So the dycens vary is basically the idea of maximal
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: solar panels. Right, you want to build solar panels, you
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: cover the earth. The Earth captures a tiny fraction of
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: the energy from the sun. Right, It's it's like a tiny,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: tiny fraction right like to the Sun, the Earth just
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: looks like a little marble way out there in space exactly,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: and so it's it's barely catching any of its rays exactly.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: So imagine a spear, and the radius of the sphere
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: is the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Right. So,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: now imagine a sphere that's basically the size of the
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: Earth's orbit. It's like a ball centered on the Sun
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: that reaches all the way to Earth exactly, and it's
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: made out of what well, I mean, just imagine the
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: spear for now geometrically, and think about what fraction of
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: that sphere is covered by the Earth. Right, this is
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: the point you're making before. It's like a tiny dot.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: Most of the Sun's energy just gets rated out into space,
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: right it. Maybe it hits a Jupiter or Saturn, but
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: the vast majority of it just gets shot out into space. Right.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: So the idea is, if you really want to go big,
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: if you want to build a huge project, you know,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: then could you build solar panels that capture a significant
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: fraction or even dare I say, all of the Sun's energy? Right? All? Wow,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: So it's like a giant solar panel that surrounds the
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: sun completely. Yeah, I mean, like, let's do with the
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: thought experiment. Let's think as big as possible. How much
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: energy would that be? Um, you know, how would you
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: do it? And could you tell if other people had
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: done it? And so this is the origin of it.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: Freeman Dyson thought about this and he wrote a paper
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: about it, and he thought, could you build one of
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: these things? And if another civilization around another star had
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: done this, could we tell and could we use that
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: to find alien civilizations? This is like a legit physics paper.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: This is a a legit physics paper is published in Science,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: one of the top journals, and really yeah, And the
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: thing I love about that is about it is that
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: it's visionary. It's like, what would we do in a
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: thousand years, what would we do in a million years?
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: And could we use those ideas if we could predict them,
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: could we use those ideas to discover super advanced alien civilizations?
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Like let's not look for other civilizations at the same
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: level as us. Let's look for civilizations that are like
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: a million years or a billion years ahead of us
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: and trying to anticipate what they would do and how
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: we would spot them. So I love that kind of
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: visionary thinking, like if if you use your imagination wildly,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: where could humans go? And then that we could maybe
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: see or get evidence of from other civilizations out in
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: the universe. Yes, exactly right, exactly like trying to think
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: of what the grown ups they're doing, because we're basically kids.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: You know, we are pretty new to this whole universe.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: We've been intelligent for you know, maybe tens of thousands
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: of years. We've been technological for decades, right, we've been
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: communicating for you know, less than that, And so we
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: are brand new on the universe stage. And there may
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: be a pimples voices cracking if we're not even there. Man,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: we're not a puberty. We're growing hair and from places. No,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: we are still pooping our pants. Um, from the civilization
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: point of view, like literally mean literally and here we're
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: filling it with pop. We are pooping the bed, that's true. Um.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: And so you know, you might ask like what are
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: the growing ups doing? And the same way it's hard
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: for kids to anticipate, like what is an adult life like?
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: And how would you tell what's going on? It might
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: be hard for us to predict what super advanced civilizations
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: would do and how they would live and how they
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: would get energy. So that was the idea of Freeman Dyson.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: He thought, can we spot other stars being wrapped by
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: their feet by these spheres? Um to what kind of
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: physics is was he? Oh, he's famous for being really broad.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: He's like, he's done all sorts of physics. I think
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: he even did some chemistry. Um, he did quantum mechanics.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: He's thought about consciousness. He's one of these modern day
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: you know, renaissance men who have like thought endabbled in
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: all sorts of different kinds of physics. I wonder if
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: your name affixed that, you know, like, if you go
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: around with the name Freeman Dyson, is it just the
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: expectation that you really amazing personality? What that you only
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: have that expectation because there's a guy in the him
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: that who has an amazing hum But that's what I mean.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: It's like he's got the perfect name to be a
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: renaissance man. It's the other direction. Man, he was a
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: renaissance man, and now therefore his name is connected with
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: being a renaissance man. It doesn't work the other way.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: It's not like you're born He's like the original cool guy.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: It's not like they're like Galileo that sounds like could
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: be a great scientist. Yeah, No, I think it's the
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: other direction. Um, But he does have sort of a
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: mystical name. I always thought his name, you know, I
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: always connected his name with like the Freemasons, you know,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Freeman Dison. He sounds like he's probably the member of
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: a secret society somewhere. Yeah, like cool people who are
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: trying to build names, trying to build mega structures. Even
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: that word is fun to say, right, mega structures. So
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: he had this idea, he thought, hey, what could we
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: possibly what could have aliens civilization much more advanced than us.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: What could they possibly be doing that we could maybe detect?
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: And he had the idea that maybe they figured out
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: a way to capture all of a sun energy, like
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: building something basically like wrapping up a sun. Yeah, exactly.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: And that's pretty hard to do. I mean imagine, as
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: you were saying before, that you had to build something
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: that size, right, Like the radius of it is millions
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: of miles, right, So you're gonna construct something that wraps
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: the whole Sun at like the distance from the Earth
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: to the Sun and grabs all that energy. I mean,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: the size of it is is boggling like um, the
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: inside of that sphere did a few calculations, inside of
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: that sphere would have the surface area of five hundred
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: and fifty million earths. Wow, which sounds doable. Maybe, I
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: don't know. It's it's hard to build something that big.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, in order to build something that big, you
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: need stuff, right, you need materials, You need like, you know, matter,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: And if you're gonna build it, you need to basically
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: use all of the matter in Jupiter and Saturn and
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: the asteroid belt. You use up like all the stuff
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: in the Solar system just to build that shell. Like
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: it's just barely enough stuff to build a shell all
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: the way around the Sun. But why does it need
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: to be the radius of where the Earth is? Couldn't
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: you just make it smaller and be more convenient to
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: make make it the radius of what's the mercury the
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: closest one, you know, as small as sphere around the
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Sun and then just have like a cable running to
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: us to Earth. Yeah, you have to balance, right, the
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: closing extension cord extend. The closer you get to the Sun, um,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: the hotter things get and things melt and it's harder
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: to work, you know, So you want to balance there.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: You don't want you don't want to be like immediately
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: surrounding the Sun. You don't want to be really far
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: away because that's to be bigger um between tents to
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: build something that close to the Sun. Yeah. The other
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: advantage if you built it at the radius of the
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Earth is then you'd have an awesome livable surface, right,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: you people could live on the inside of that sphere,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Like you could put dirt down and plant crops and
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: you'd be at the be in the habitable zone. Right,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: you'd be the right distance for the Sun to have
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: the right temperature. Oh, you build it at the rates
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: of this Earth and where the Earth is, then really
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: it could be like um, sunny Florida all year round exactly.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, let's all around the solar system. Yes, let's
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: think big. Let's think like, you know, we're gonna do this,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: what would be the best thing to do, Like humanity
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: is gonna be huge and having a huge amount of energy. Um,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: then let's like, let's prepare for the future of humanity
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: and build five hundred and fifty million times the land
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: of the Earth. The amount of energy to this thing
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: with capture is just ridiculous. Like if you captured all
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: of the energy of the Sun every year. There's this
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: number which is pretty hard to understand. It's three hundred
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: and eighty four yatta watts, right, what's being stive energy
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: and yatta being at a lot of what a whole
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: lot of exactly? No, it's um three point eight times
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: ten to the twenty six watts, right, Like, it's just
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: a ridicul list number. So I thought, well, let's explain
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: in terms of how much energy humanity currently uses. Right,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: So currently the power use of humanity is one thirty
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: three trillion the energy put out by the sun WoT
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: three thousand billion times how much we use right now? Yeah,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: so we don't really need this thing today or tomorrow
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: or next year. Right. This is the kind of thing
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: that would that would support a civilization with enormous energy consumption.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: You know, the kind of thing where you're like building
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: huge spaceships and you're pushing them to other star systems
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: with like lasers, you know, like light sales that capture
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: laser beams, Like, you would have an incredible amount of
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: energy if you could really capture all of the energy
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: output of the Sun. Okay, I have a lot of questions,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break, all right, So
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: that's a dicense fear. It's this idea that you can
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: maybe build a shell around the Sun and capture all
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: of the energy that's coming out of it. And you
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: would want to build it kind of far away from
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: the Sun because otherwise it would just melt. Uh. And
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: but it would be humongous. It would be bazillion times
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth. Would take a lot of
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: stuff to to build that shell. You take a lot
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: of stuff. It would be enormous. And there's a lot
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: of other problems, Like problem number one is you'd have
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: to be really strong. I mean, this thing is going
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: to have a huge amount of weight on it, right, yeah,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: like a and and just like it would get toussled around,
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: right because it would have to hold together. Yeah, and
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: it doesn't. You wouldn't also have any gravity, right, like
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: the gravity we experienced from walking around on Earth comes
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: from Earth. But if you're if you build a huge
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: shell the size of the Earth radius and and build
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: it around the Sun, then it's balanced gravitationally, right, you
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: don't feel it doesn't feel the Sun's gravity. There's no
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: net gravitational force on it for the Sun, so it'd
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: be sort of like floating around the Sun, nothing to
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: keep it in place, which means it could like drift,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: you know, and like one side of it could get
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: too close and maybe bump into the Sun or something.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: It would be pretty hard to maintain. You need like
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: jets on it to keep it in the right place.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: I think an interesting idea is that just the idea
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: that you can envelop a sun, right like it, you know,
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: your intuition. My intuition tells me that if you cover
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: it up the Sun it would snuff out, but not
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: so right like you could. The Sun doesn't need any feedback, right,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: it's just pumping that energy out. It doesn't need It
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: doesn't need or care, doesn't need to know or care
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: about what happens to the photons and protons that it's
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: flying out. Yeah right, that's what I mean. Like you
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: could you could capture a sun literally, yeah exactly, and
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: it would burn happily inside your you're pumping out energy,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: yeah exactly. And you know, that's basically what we want
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: to do here on Earth. On a much smaller scale,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: I mean that's fusion, right. Fusion says, build a little plasma,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: make it really hot, have it burned, and have a
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: pump out radiation which we then capture. That's energy. Um,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: So we want to do that, and you know, we
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: want to do that in a miniature way on Earth
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: and a controlled way. But we basically have a huge
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: fusion furnace already and it's going pretty well and it's
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: not too far away. So some people say, let's just
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: capture that energy, right, Why have fusion here on Earth
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: when it's already going in the center of a whole
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: lot of you exactly, um, giant trillion size shell. That
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: sounds much easier. Yeah, and uh, and so you might
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: be thinking also, like, all right, well a huge shell
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: sounds like too much, Like you don't need to complete
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the shell, right if if you don't need thirty three
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: trillion times our energy, what if you just build a
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: partial shell, right, Like, I mean, that's basically every solar panel, right,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: the one you have in your roof right now is
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: a tiny little bit of a Dicen sphere, right, It's
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: a tiny little license sphere element. So you might think
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: we don't have to go all the way. It's not
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: like a you have just a few little solar panels,
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: or you have the whole thing. You might just build
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: you know, part of a shell, like half a shell,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: or just a ring of the shell or a patch
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: of the shell. Yeah. Yeah, like a good middle ground
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: is like a ring. And you can imagine putting them
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: like in Earth orbit, right, so they're all in the
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: same orbit, so they don't bump around each other. You
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: got a bunch of like really big solar panels in
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Earth orbit gathering all this energy um and and sending
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: it back to Earth. But you know you were you
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: were saying earlier, like and then you just put out
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: a big cable. That's actually kind of a tricky problem,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Like how do you get this energy and bring it
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: back to Earth? I don't know, you can't. You can
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: just run an extension cord. Yeah, you need a whole
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: lot of yadda extension chords. Um yea yeat a mile.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Now you need some sort of wireless energy transfer, which
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: is pretty tricky. I mean, we know how to do this,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: but it's not it's not that easy. Basically, it's lasers,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: right for long distance energy transfer. The only way we
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: know how to do it is lasers. So so you're saying,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: let's build a giant laser out into base and pointed
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: at the Earth and shoot and point out at the Earth. Exactly.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: It's like um or you can think about more like
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: a magnifying glass. Like basically it's like take the Sun's
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: rays and focus them on the Earth, right, you know,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: so we're basically like you know how you take a
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: magnifying glass when you're a kid and like fried little bugs.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: We're basically doing that to ourselves. So it's that's pretty dangerous, right.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: You need some sort of way to absorb that energy
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: here on Earth in a safe way, and you know,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of things to figure out, but as usual,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: we can just leave that to the engineers. Okay, So
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: let's see you're saying, it's kind of an alternative to
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: what if you just cover like the Sahara Desert. Wouldn't
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: that set us up for the next billion years or
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: something that would set us up for a while. Yeah.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: I think there are people who own the Sahara Desert though,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: so they might have something to say about that. Um
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: they can move to Delaware. You were just solve some
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: problems all over the place Man Global Solutions by or
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: hit chand Um. So we we definitely do not need
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: this any time in the near future, Like like we
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: if we invested in solar power, we would be set
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: up for a while. Oh, I see you're saying we
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: don't need it, but maybe aliens needed. Well I'm saying
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: we don't need it now, but like, let's think big, right,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Let's think about like what is humanity needed a thousand years,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: in a million years. Let's if you're gonna build this thing,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: you got to start thinking about it now so you
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: can figure this stuff out. And it's always fun to
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: think aspirationally, like could we build this? You know, is
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: it possible? What technology would you need? Because often that
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: spurs ideas, right, people like m I wonder if you
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: could transfer laser from an orbiting ring of solar panels
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: to the Earth. How would you do that? And then
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: they get interested. Then they come up with some invention
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: which makes, you know, for better Hamburgers or something. But
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: a lot of cool stuff comes out of just like
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: thinking aspirationally. I say, you're saying, like, what if in
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: a thousand years there are thirty three trillion yodda people
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: in on Earth? And we need all that energy. Maybe
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: we should think about these kind of crazy he is
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: in advance, Yeah, exactly, before we have covered Delaware. We
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: covered the Sahara. It's not enough. Yeah, so you could
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: do the whole sphere, which seems a little crazy because
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: you need all this material. You could do a ring
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: right of orbiting orbiting solar panels. That's sort of um,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: you know, intermediate, but there's also a lot of other purchase,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Like you could have a few rings, right, you have
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: like different rings at different radius or you know, orbiting
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: different directions or something they have to think about, you know,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: collisions and shadows and stuff like that. But that kind
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: of stuff is pretty practical, isn't that a famous science
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: ficture novel like the ring idea where a ring around
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: the Earth? No ring world. The Hillary niven Um had
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: this idea of a ring world. I don't know if
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: he had a son in the middle of it or not,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: but yeah, definitely you could build a ring and you
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: could be spinning, you know, so you could live on
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: it that kind of thing. Um. Okay, so that's one idea. Ring.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: You can also do like a patch, right, or like
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: small patches. Yeah, exactly, you have these small patches, and
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: some people are thinking about the idea of uh, they're
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: not satellites. They're called stat heights because they don't move,
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: But they're basically just big floating patches of solar panel
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: and they they avoid um flow falling into the sun
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: because they partially absorbed the Sun's energy. That's where you
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: get the energy for the solar panel, but they also
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: partially reflect it. Right, think about what happens when you
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: reflect energy. Basically you're getting a push, right If A
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: if a photon comes and bounces off of you, then
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: you're getting a little push from that photon. So if
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: a if a big solar panel is half reflective and
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: half absorbent, then half the energy goes into you know,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: electricity or whatever, and half of it keeps the solar
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: panel from falling into the sun. So these things could
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: basically like float on the solar wind um, which I
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: think is pretty cool. There's something beautiful about about all
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: these like huge super thin solar panels out there floating
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: on the solar wind um. Half half the energy keeping
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: them a light, and half of them the energy keeping
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: our televisions on. They're not fling around the Earth they're
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: just floating out in space and we would kind of
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: swing by them every year. Yeah, exactly exactly, and they
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: would be stationary with respect to the Sun. Right, they
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: wouldn't be orbiting the way we are. Um. And that
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: would be pretty cool something something really cool about that, um. Right.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: And I think the thing that God Freeman Dyson thinking
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: about this is if aliens were doing this, how could
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: we spott it? How could we tell if somebody was
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: doing this? And initially you think, well, if they build
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: a whole sphere, then they're blocking out their sun. We
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: wouldn't even know their son exists, right, So how would
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: we even know anybody is there? There could be out
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: there tons of stars covered up in these days, in spheres.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure they call it something different unless
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Freeman Dyson is an alien, which would explain as cool
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: is but um, you're right, like, there could be stars
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: out that there are covered up by alien civilizations. We
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: just don't know it because we can't see them. Yeah.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: So he actually had a cool idea. He said, all right,
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: if you build these things, it will block out the
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: light of the Sun. But if it's made of matter
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: and it's absorbing the energy, of their sons. Then it's
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: gonna glow, it's gonna get hot, and it's going to
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: give off infrared radiation. So you won't see the stars
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: the way you normally would, you know, in the visible
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: spectrum and all that stuff, but you would see sort
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: of a black patch of sky plus a bunch of
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: infrared radiation, which shows you that there's something hot there. No, really,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: you would attribute that to an alien civilization building a
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: shell the size side a giant shell around this area,
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: and not just some like hot rock or well, how
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: do you get a hot rock? How do you get
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: something out in the middle of space, not next to
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: a star that's warm? Right? Are there stars that are
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: like basically like cinders kind of? Yeah? There are some. Yeah,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Well this is the point of his paper. He's like,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: how could you see this? And he had the idea like,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: let's look for infrared radiation. And I'm sure you know
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: reviewer number two had your reaction no, come on, um,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: But he talked in the paper about like other things
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: that might mimic the signal and how you could tell, etcetera. Um,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: but it's a good idea, right, Like, how else could
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: you spot these things unless you saw them building it. Right,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Unless you watch them building, you could see the star
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: like winking out year by year as they're constructing this thing.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: That would be super awesome. But wouldn't it take them
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: like hundreds of years to build it? Right? I mean
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: even an advantage. We're talking about hypothetical super advanced aliens.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: I could say anything. Right, maybe they spend like a
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: million years building it and then it's just like unfolds
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: in one year or something. Right, who knows just as
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: we're looking at their star. Yes, you'd have to be
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: super lucky. Right, So I think either you're super lucky
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: because you're seeing them build it, or you see these
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: things radiated. And people have done this. People have like
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: looked out in the night sky and said, are there
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: places where all we see is infrared emission? Right? And
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: and um, so people did this third way and they
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: found seventeen candidates, seven team candidates, and um most of
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: them they were able to explain due to other astronomical things.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: You know, it's a dead star, wars, it's this, or
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: is that? But there were four candidates. I looked at
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: the paper and they described in this way. And I
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: have to quote it directly because I've never seen this
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: in a scientific paper where they say that four of
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: these candidates have been named quote amusing but still questionable,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: which means like what people call me, I mean they
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: feel so connected to the to the universe. Now, yeah,
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: I mean tells you what scientists find funny. But there
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: is something hilarious about like finding things out there and
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: not really understanding them, and like what is going on
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: out there in space? And the thing I love about
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: looking at in space is that every time you do
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: it you find something weird. Is you're always surprised. There's
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: always something weird out there. What do you think they
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: meant by amusing but still questionable. I think they meant
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: we can't rule out alien megastructure. And that's what's amusing
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: about it, right, Like it makes you seriously consider that,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: you know, And if you're an astronomer, we don't know
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: what's amusing in the sense of like it makes you think,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: it makes you muse about it, or it makes you hope.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: You know, astronomers always have to keep in mind that
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: they might that today might be the day they discover
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: alien civilizations. Right, it's a it's a low, it's low
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: on the list, right, they gotta rule out a thousand
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: other things first. But one day I think we will
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: discover alien civilizations, right, and somebody will be it will
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: be today for somebody, It'll be right now for somebody,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: and so you always got to keep that in mind. Right, Wow,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: all right, let's get into it. But let's take a
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: quick break first. Okay. So Dyson's fears are this idea
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: that you can surround the whole Sun with some kind
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: of structure to capture all of its energy. And Dyson
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: proposed this as a way to maybe detect alien civilizations.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: That's right, And he said, let's look for let's look
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: for stars that might be blocked by alien megastructures. And
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: so you're saying that we actually maybe found one of
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: these stars. Yes, a couple of years ago, there are
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: astronomers that were looking at stars and they saw this
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: one and they were watching it, and the light from
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: it did this weird thing. It wasn't constant, right, most stars,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: the life from this constant. I mean you see a
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: little bit of twinkling from the dust between us and them,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: but mostly the lights pretty constant. And astronomers look at
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: these stars sometimes to see if they can spot planets
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: in those solar systems, and the way they do it
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: is they look to see if the planet goes in
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: front of the star, and if that happens, if you
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: see a little dip and how bright the star is,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: because it's basically a little mini eclipse, but that dip
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: is like, you know, one percent maximum, Like if you
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: were watching our Sun from really far away and Jupiter
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: went in front of the Sun, the Sun's brightness would
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: dip like one percent. So that's the kind of thing
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: people are doing. They're watching stars looking to see if
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: they dip. And then they found this star and they
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: saw a dip not one percent, not two, but like
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: twenty percent, like a huge fraction of the star's brightness
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: just went away. But then it came back, and then
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: it went a way again, and then it came back
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: and then like it's not regular, right, it's not like
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: you know, if if a planet is orbiting a star
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: and blocking it, then it's regular. And you can use
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: that to figure out like how quickly does the planet
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: orbit the star? Right, what is the period of it?
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: And they watch it um for many periods and they
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: figure these things out. You can measure the mass the planets.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: It's really awesome. But there was no pattern here, right,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: There was like dips and then days would go by
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: when it would be bright again, and then more dips
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: would come, and then it was like two years when
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: there were no dips, and then another huge dip came,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: and so people were like, what is going on with
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: the brightness of this star? What is this? And so
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: immediately that little voice in everybody's head was like, could
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: this be Aliens? Aliens? Could this be it? Could we
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: be watching an alien megastructure be constructed? Really? That was
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: the first thing that came to people's mind. Of course,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: was of course it was anybody anything strange, You're like, Aliens,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: that's right, Aliens. I've never seen a car like that before. Aliens?
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: What is this fruit called? Aliens? How did you do
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: that magic trick? Card trick? Aliens? Exactly? How can one
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: man eat so many bananas? Aliens? Aliens? Yes, it's always
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: on our minds, right, And of course the first thing
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: they did it's like, all right, let's kind of try
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: to come up with other explanations. What else could explain this?
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: And so they went through a long list of reasons
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: to explain it. But it's really unusual. We have not
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: seen another star like this. It's not like you see
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: this all the time. And so you have a bunch
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: of ready explanations, right, people have to really stretch their
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: minds to imagine how you could block like twenty percent
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: of the light of a star and not be an
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: alien megastructure. How do you know it was one star
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: and not like two stars. I think they know the
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: star pretty well. I mean you can you can tell
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: the difference between one star and two stars. I mean
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: two stars would orbit each other. Um, I think you
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: could resolve them. But I don't know. It doesn't matter.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: I don't know me. Um. But what they think, hey,
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: maybe let's consider other all turn out as besides then,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: what they did is they looked. They did something really
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: interesting is they went back through historical measurements and they said,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: you know, people have been taking pictures the night sky
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: for decades and decades, and not all of his digital
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: and not all of his as good as recent data,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: but we have pictures of lots of the night sky
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: going back like a century. So what they did is
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: they went back and they looked for pictures to this
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: star over the last hundred years, and what they found
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: is that over the last hundred years, this star has
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: been gradually fading, like getting less bright, yeah less right,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: Like it's twenty percent less bright than it was a
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: hundred years ago, but it's steadily Yeah. Well, we don't
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: have really constant data over the last hundred years, right,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: we have like snapshot and then the snapshot in the
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: snapshot in the snapshot. Recently, because we've noticed the stars weird,
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: people have been watching the star a lot more and
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: so they've been seeing a lot more of these dips
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: and trying to understand them. Um. But the dips can
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: be very dramatic and they're not regular, um, and it's
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: kind of hard to explain, all right, So um, so
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: you're thinking it could be aliens, it could be alien.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: How how would alien? What would aliens be doing? You're
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: like just flipping the switch on and off kind of
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: like my kids do know they would be building a
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: dicen sphere, right, Maybe why would go on and off?
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Maybe they're partially maybe they're part way done with constructing
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: their dicensphere, right, And what we're seeing is like orbiting
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: the Sun and blocking it. Rights, it's irregular. Over the
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: last hundred years they've been building it up, and now
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: you're saying it's might be operational and it's rotating and
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: that causes these dips. Yeah, exactly. And when the dicensphere
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: is between us and their star is when the is
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: when the when the light from that sun gets dimmer.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: It's it's hard to have. It's hard to come up
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: with other explanations for irregular dips in the light. And
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: so let's go through them. Though, because it's um in
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: the end, people think it's probably not aliens, which is
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: you know, the story of every scientific discovery ever um.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: But there's not really one convincing explanation. Okay, so what
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: are the possibilities here? The leading possibilities are that it's
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: a it's like a lot of dust, like a huge
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: cloud of dust. And but it's not regular. It's not
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: like our asteroid belt where like the asteroids are sprinkled
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: all the way around the Sun. It's some like asymmetrical
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: cloud of dust. I mean like a patchy like a
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: patchy clumpy. Yeah, it's like spread up. You know what
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: you need in that case, then you need a dice
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: and vacuum cleaner. Fear somebody clean up with it's a mess.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Got the best section the code dice and dot com
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: slash to anyone. Exactly. It's like mega made from spaceballs.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: Somebody's cleaning up that system. Um. Yeah, so like maybe
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: like a huge patch of dust. And what they did
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: is they looked at the light from the star and
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: they noticed that the light from the star is not
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: dimmed equally across all wavelengths. Right. Remember light has different
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: wavelengths from the reddish to the bluish and the invisible
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: wavelengths as well. It doesn't dip the same at all
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: frequencies of light. Yeah, and you know, one the basic
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: idea that Dyson had was let's look for light. Let's
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: look for stars that are basically only emitting in the infrared,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: because that's what a huge mega structure would emit. But
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: the direction of the spectrum which light is absorbed in
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: which light is coming out, suggests that it's dust. It
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: looks like the kind of thing you would get if
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: there was a big dust cloud, would maybe like pockets
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: where the sun shines through. Yeah, exactly, And that's what
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: the are. And so maybe what we're seeing is basically
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: the profile of this dust cloud. But that's not really
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: a satisfying explanation, because like where does this dust cloud
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: come from? You know, most stars don't have dust clouds
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: around them for several reasons, like especially old stars like
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: young stars who's like just been formed, that it's being
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: formed inside a huge cloud of gas and dust. Then, yeah,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: you expect a lot of um of gas and dust.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: So like stellar nurs certainly, let me guess, Let me guess, Daniel,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: you think it could be Aliens? I always random guess
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: to what physicist might think it is Aliens. Well, you're
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: both right and wrong, like one possibility is. So the
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: point is you don't get dust around old stars usually, right,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: because that dust gathers together and forms planets or or
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: even just gets blown away by the solar radiation. Right,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Like solar radiation pushes dust out of these systems. So
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: maybe a planet blew up, right, maybe it's Aliens and
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: they had a huge war and like one of them
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: blew up the other one's planet, And what we're looking
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: at is like planetary debris or something. What that would
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: be super awesome. Right from this fully operational battle station,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: you're seeing the remnants of the Death Star. Yeah, but
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: but before people get too excited about that one. That
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: one doesn't really hold together because in that case, you
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: would see it would be like warm, right, because like
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: the planet blows up, you got these big blobs of
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: glowing matter um, and it would glow in the infrared.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: But we don't see that. So it's consistent with cold
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: dust um, which is kind of hard to explain, Like
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: we don't understand how you can get this rear, irregular
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: blob cold dust around the star. What if it was
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: a planet destroyed by like a cold freeze ray aliens?
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: What is that superhero that that shoots freeze rays? Yeah, yeah,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: ice Man, the Ice Man. Yeah exactly. Ice Man came
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: and froze their planet and it's shattered into a bunch
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: of fruit. Might as well offer that as an explanation.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: I see. So you're scoffing on my explanation of aliens,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: and but instead as a more likely explanation, you're suggesting
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: the Iceman came and froze. Yeah, that's what I always
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: go to first, superheroes. You know that's true. I guess
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: the cartoon is would go to superheroes first as an explanation. Um,
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying I think I think I should get
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: a physics degree. You know, I have a stow upon
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: you from Daniel and Jorge University, an honorary PhD in
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: superhero physics. Oh man, that should be a great product
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: for a store. And you know how how much value
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: I put in honorary PhDs. That's why you have three
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: of them. That's why I have exactly zero of them. Um.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: And so another explanation, another idea is that maybe it's
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: just a really weird star. Maybe there's no dust there.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: Maybe the star is just like doing something weird inside
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: of it, Like it's not glowing constantly as something weird
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: going on inside. It's like flickering, you know, it's not
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: burning consistently, but there's something inside it's like absorbing at
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: the energy, or it's sputtering a little bit. Um an
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: unstable star. Yeah, yeah, some some kind of weird process
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: that gives variable light. But the problem with all these
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: explanations is that it's a big universe and we've looked
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: at a lot of stars and we've never seen anything
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: like this. But for and so, any process you propose
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: to explain this have to also explain why it's only
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: happening to this star. And not to any of the
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: other zillions and gazillions of yadas and yadas of stars
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: that we've seen, right, Right, Like, if it's a cluster
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: of comets or of planet that blew up like you
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: would expect, if it's not totally impossible, that would be
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: happening dozens or hundreds or thousands or millions of times
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: we've seen other ones. So that's the real puzzle. That's
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: what makes this star interesting is that it really does
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: seem unique, right, So maybe we're seeing something really really unusual, right,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: that could happen um or maybe it's aliens because you're
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: seeing we're seeing we can see like billions and trillions
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: of stars, right, that's just one of them that's doing
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: something weird. Yeah, well, our soulars, our galaxy has you know,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: hundreds of billions of stars. That's a lot, and so
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: we can't see all of them, of course, but yeah,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: we've observed a lot of them and we've never seen
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: anything like this, So it's pretty weird for one star
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: to stand out in the galaxy. Wow, So it could
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: be an alien license fear, yeah, or could be the
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: you know, the villain's layer for Iceman. Well, you know
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: Ice alien exactly. Yeah, all right, so that answers the
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: question what is the dicens fear? And hopefully people out
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: there founded amusing but not questionable. That's right. And maybe
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: someday we will build a dicense fhere and aliens far
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: far away, we'll be having a podcast talking about could
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: we see if they had built a dicense fhere around
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: their son um? You know, maybe humanity will be able
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: to accomplish these great enormous infrastructure projects and work together
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: and not just to ourselves. It makes me hopeful to
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: think that one day we could we could build such
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: a vast projects and have that much energy at our fingertips. Yeah,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: that would be cool, and it would spare dela like
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: a refrigerator. So everybody in Delaware, no need to pack
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: up your bags anytime soon. We're not taking over. That's right.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: Rest easy, Delaware, Sleep well tonight another day when we
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: didn't find aliens. All right, Thanks for joining us. I
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: hope you guys enjoyed that. We'll see you next time.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: Thanks for tuning in. If you still have a question
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: one Word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcast from My Heart Radio, visit
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.