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Why don't we have electric airplanes? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Katie, I have a question for you about the future.
0:12
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let me polish my crystal ball over here.
0:16
Speaker 1: All right, Well, I'm wondering what's the invention that will
0:20
Speaker 1: tell you that the future has arrived? You mean, what
0:23
Speaker 1: will make me feel like I'm living in a science
0:26
Speaker 1: fiction novel. Yeah, exactly, and not something like a global
0:29
Speaker 1: pandemic or climate disaster. Let's avoid, you know, dystopian futures. Well,
0:34
Speaker 1: I'm tempted to say transporters, or food replicators or sentient toasters,
0:39
Speaker 1: but I think the number one classic is the flying car. Nice.
0:44
Speaker 1: But you know, it makes me sure her to imagine
0:46
Speaker 1: what l A Freeways will be like when they go
0:49
Speaker 1: three dimensional. I thought you wanted to avoid dystopian futures. Yeah,
0:53
Speaker 1: you know, you're right, but driving in l A is
0:55
Speaker 1: a dystopia already. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist,
1:15
Speaker 1: and I definitely want to be able to talk to
1:17
Speaker 1: sentient toasters. And I'm Katie, and I host a podcast
1:22
Speaker 1: called Creature Feature, and I think sentient toasters would be
1:26
Speaker 1: It would be an awkward conversation when you got to
1:28
Speaker 1: get your toast and spurnt like you weren't clear enough
1:33
Speaker 1: about how much you wanted it toasted. I thought, this
1:36
Speaker 1: is what you wanted. You're talking about an emotional toaster. Yeah, exactly.
1:41
Speaker 1: I would probably just eat burnt toast to spirits feelings. Man,
1:46
Speaker 1: you just identified a huge downside to AI, and now
1:50
Speaker 1: we have to worry about how everything feels. Oh my gosh, exactly. Well,
1:56
Speaker 1: at least we don't have to worry about how planes
1:57
Speaker 1: feel yet. Well. Well him to the podcast, Daniel and
2:01
Speaker 1: Joy explain the universe, in which we don't worry about
2:05
Speaker 1: how the universe feels, but we do try to explain
2:08
Speaker 1: all of it to you. We dive deep in the
2:11
Speaker 1: very nature of reality with the tiniest little particles are doing,
2:14
Speaker 1: what is real, what's going on down there, and we
2:16
Speaker 1: zoom all the way out to the hugest questions about
2:19
Speaker 1: the very nature of the universe, where it came from,
2:22
Speaker 1: where it's going, what it's got going on, and what
2:25
Speaker 1: it means to be human in this crazy, bonkers, beautiful,
2:29
Speaker 1: wet and wild universe that we find ourselves in. Usually
2:32
Speaker 1: I'm joined by my friend, co host and collaborator Jorge
2:35
Speaker 1: Cham the fabulous cartoonists behind PhD Comics, but he's on
2:39
Speaker 1: vacation today, and so we have our wonderful, hilarious guest host,
2:43
Speaker 1: Katie Golden. Katie say hi to everybody. Hi everybody. And
2:47
Speaker 1: one of the things we like to do on this
2:48
Speaker 1: podcast is not just wonder about how the universe works,
2:52
Speaker 1: but also wonder about how we can make it work
2:55
Speaker 1: for us. One side benefit to understanding the universe, of course,
2:59
Speaker 1: is fig hearing out what those rules are and then
3:01
Speaker 1: bending them to our will, figuring out how to make
3:05
Speaker 1: our lives the best they can be given our knowledge
3:08
Speaker 1: of the universe. Why understand the nature of the universe
3:12
Speaker 1: if you can't, for example, invent ascension toaster? Yeah, what
3:15
Speaker 1: the heck is the point? Like, come on, Daniel, get
3:19
Speaker 1: on it. Modern medicine, energy and dependence, none of that
3:22
Speaker 1: is nearly as important as sentient toasters. I want my
3:25
Speaker 1: toaster to giggle when I put a toast in it.
3:28
Speaker 1: Tickle ish toasters. Wow, this is getting a little personal now,
3:34
Speaker 1: But it does seem like we are making progress. I mean,
3:37
Speaker 1: I look around me, and I see a lot of
3:39
Speaker 1: stuff that exists that feels sort of like the future.
3:43
Speaker 1: You know. I think electric cars are maybe the best example,
3:46
Speaker 1: because every time I see an electric car sneak up
3:48
Speaker 1: on me super quiet, or accelerate from zero to sixty
3:52
Speaker 1: and like two seconds, I'm like, wow, this definitely didn't
3:55
Speaker 1: happen when I was a kid. It makes me feel
3:57
Speaker 1: that jarring effect when the world just changes quickly and
4:01
Speaker 1: feels like the very nature of human existence has suddenly shifted.
4:04
Speaker 1: It doesn't help that electric cars also have that spaceship noise,
4:08
Speaker 1: you know, when they kind of get close to you
4:09
Speaker 1: or it's like, oh, I think that's great. It makes
4:14
Speaker 1: it harder for them to sneak up on you, but yeah,
4:16
Speaker 1: it also does give them that futuristic vibe. I wonder
4:18
Speaker 1: if everything that's getting electrified is going to have like
4:21
Speaker 1: a weird space noise, like when you electrify your garden equipment.
4:24
Speaker 1: Is your lawnmower going to make like pep sounds? I hope. So.
4:29
Speaker 1: I think that it's really fun whenever sort of retro
4:32
Speaker 1: futurism becomes correct, like how the spaceship noises that cars make,
4:38
Speaker 1: or or ads being everywhere, and it does really seem
4:41
Speaker 1: like everything is getting electrified. Right, We're definitely aiming to
4:46
Speaker 1: reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and other dirty technologies
4:50
Speaker 1: that are harming the planet and causing global climate change
4:54
Speaker 1: and making it like very hot right now where I am.
4:58
Speaker 1: I'm in Copenhagen for the sun or and it is
5:00
Speaker 1: a ridiculous heat wave over here. I'm sitting in a
5:03
Speaker 1: little apartment, but I'm sweating down my back, and I'm
5:05
Speaker 1: sure lots of folks out there are experiencing the extreme
5:08
Speaker 1: weather we're having. So we were these sentient toasters the
5:11
Speaker 1: whole time. Are we the toaster or the toast ee?
5:16
Speaker 1: Sometimes I feel like the toasted or toast we don't
5:21
Speaker 1: do something about our dependence on falsil eules, we are
5:24
Speaker 1: definitely getting toasted. And so people have been making a
5:26
Speaker 1: lot of progress and lots of stuff is getting electrified.
5:29
Speaker 1: It's really cool to see. But you know, there is
5:31
Speaker 1: one industry that still relies entirely or exclusively on fossil fuels,
5:38
Speaker 1: and that is jet airplanes. It's one of the saddest
5:42
Speaker 1: parts about traveling, where you think, well, there's no way
5:45
Speaker 1: to travel without using an immense amount of fossil fuels.
5:48
Speaker 1: But it's also so exciting that planes have brought our
5:53
Speaker 1: world so close together so that you can fly from
5:56
Speaker 1: the US to Copenhagen, or I can fly from the
5:58
Speaker 1: US to Italy, and so what the heck, where's our
6:01
Speaker 1: electric planes, Daniel, Exactly where are our electric planes? Because
6:06
Speaker 1: we all know that it might require some sacrifices to
6:09
Speaker 1: adjust the patterns of human life so that they're more
6:12
Speaker 1: amenable to you know, having our grandchildren and not be
6:15
Speaker 1: living in caves, for example. But we hope that we
6:18
Speaker 1: don't have to give up international travel, because yeah, that
6:21
Speaker 1: changes the way the world feels. And it would be
6:23
Speaker 1: weird if we have to go back to a place where,
6:25
Speaker 1: you know, it took a long time to get to
6:27
Speaker 1: the other side of the planet, where China was like
6:29
Speaker 1: days or weeks or months away. Imagine if you had
6:32
Speaker 1: to sail to get to China or to Japan or
6:35
Speaker 1: the far East. You know, all of human culture would
6:37
Speaker 1: have sort of a shift in reverse, and it would
6:40
Speaker 1: look really weird in history, how things got closer and
6:43
Speaker 1: closer and closer, and then for like a hundred years
6:45
Speaker 1: or fifty years, the world felt like one place and
6:48
Speaker 1: then it cracked and broke again into various regions. It
6:52
Speaker 1: would be weird if that was just a moment, a
6:54
Speaker 1: window in history. Yeah, that wouldn't be good, especially in
6:58
Speaker 1: terms of cuisine, because you know, we would just suddenly
7:02
Speaker 1: have the stagnation and probably the British would have to
7:05
Speaker 1: go back to eating like weird horse parts. And in America,
7:10
Speaker 1: I don't know what we would do. I don't know
7:12
Speaker 1: what American cuisine would look like without a steady flow
7:15
Speaker 1: of people from other countries, but I don't think it
7:17
Speaker 1: would be pretty. Oh my gosh, beans on toast all
7:20
Speaker 1: over the world and so on the podcast today, we'll
7:22
Speaker 1: be asking the question why don't we have electric airplanes?
7:32
Speaker 1: If we've made so much progress electrifying everything else, toasters
7:36
Speaker 1: and garden equipment and boats and cars and all sorts
7:40
Speaker 1: of other stuff in your life, why don't we yet
7:42
Speaker 1: have electric airplanes? Why can't we make airplanes that are
7:46
Speaker 1: smooth and quiet and zero emission? And this is what
7:50
Speaker 1: some of you had to say about why we don't
7:52
Speaker 1: have electric airplanes, some very clever responses, that's right. So
7:57
Speaker 1: before you hear these responses, think to yourself, do you
7:59
Speaker 1: know what the limitation is for electric airplanes? And if
8:03
Speaker 1: you'd like to participate for future podcast episodes, please write
8:07
Speaker 1: to us two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot Com.
8:10
Speaker 1: Here's what some listeners had to say. We have lots
8:13
Speaker 1: of electric hairplanes, but we don't have electric versions of
8:18
Speaker 1: say commercial passenger airliner type power planes because we don't
8:23
Speaker 1: have good enough batteries. We don't have a way to
8:26
Speaker 1: store electricity that's as energy tense as Jeff Field. I'm
8:30
Speaker 1: going with weight on that one. Well, actually airplanes can
8:35
Speaker 1: list a ton of weight. I'm going with storage capacity
8:41
Speaker 1: or or weight and storage capacity. I don't know if
8:44
Speaker 1: we could put some batteries together that could could put
8:47
Speaker 1: out that much thrust or that much force for hours
8:51
Speaker 1: at a time and not just run out or overheat
8:56
Speaker 1: for that matter, because they need more power, and our
9:00
Speaker 1: electric motors aren't powerful enough to fly a plane like
9:04
Speaker 1: they're okay for driving cars, but not for flying planes.
9:08
Speaker 1: First store on electric planes would be the electromagnetic field
9:13
Speaker 1: is so much stronger the further way you get. Let
9:16
Speaker 1: that be less parties in the air. So I guess
9:20
Speaker 1: possibly that would be an issue with running batteries that high,
9:24
Speaker 1: having a wonder perhaps to set the batteries. I guess
9:29
Speaker 1: that the rhythm for which we still do not have
9:31
Speaker 1: any electrical airplanes, there are technical limits in the energy storage.
9:35
Speaker 1: I think that the batteries are still too bulky. Maybe
9:37
Speaker 1: the storing of energy to make them a viable solution
9:40
Speaker 1: for commercial flood. I'm thinking right now that we can
9:43
Speaker 1: do you know, like those trolleys or tramps that you
9:52
Speaker 1: have the electric cord and you just touch it and
9:55
Speaker 1: you can go. We can do that, like we can
9:59
Speaker 1: we can actually to a zip line between us, like
10:05
Speaker 1: North America and Europe and other continents and do this
10:11
Speaker 1: electric zip line, electric hipplanes. I don't know how you
10:14
Speaker 1: would get the propulsion with an electric airplane. Besides, it
10:18
Speaker 1: probably would be extremely heavy. I feel like people came
10:21
Speaker 1: up with some pretty good ideas. I mean, speaking as
10:24
Speaker 1: someone who knows very little about batteries and how they
10:29
Speaker 1: might go inside of a plane. I do like zip
10:32
Speaker 1: lining electric airplanes. I like the idea of a trans
10:35
Speaker 1: continental zip line. Trans continental zip lines. Wow, that seems
10:41
Speaker 1: pretty crazy. I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable like snapping
10:44
Speaker 1: into a zip line where I can't even see the
10:47
Speaker 1: other side, and it's like stretching over the ocean. I mean,
10:50
Speaker 1: they're gonna give you like a boat to fall into
10:52
Speaker 1: inciece it snaps. I don't think that would help some
10:56
Speaker 1: like inflatable raft or something like, I am definitely not
10:59
Speaker 1: glibing into that. Yeah, just hold an inflatable raft under
11:02
Speaker 1: you and it'll be fine. There's some good questions in
11:04
Speaker 1: here also, like the basic question of how an electric
11:07
Speaker 1: airplane does propulsion? Right, how does it even move forward
11:10
Speaker 1: if you're not burning gas and exploding the results out
11:14
Speaker 1: the back of a get engine? How do you even
11:16
Speaker 1: get propulsion in an electric airplane? Which is a good question.
11:19
Speaker 1: And then of course lots of good stuff about batteries.
11:21
Speaker 1: So why can't we just plug a plane into a battery,
11:26
Speaker 1: make a big old battery and get it going, Because
11:30
Speaker 1: it seems like if we can get a car to go,
11:33
Speaker 1: you know, we should just be able to scale that
11:35
Speaker 1: up to plane size. Why don't we just like strap
11:38
Speaker 1: a bunch of testla's together and launch it into air? Right,
11:41
Speaker 1: there's already tesla's in space, so we got them above
11:45
Speaker 1: the air and below the air? How going to be
11:47
Speaker 1: so hard? Well, it is tricky, And you know, to
11:49
Speaker 1: answer one of those listeners questions about the propulsion mechanism,
11:53
Speaker 1: essentially we're talking about fans right about like turbo props,
11:57
Speaker 1: just like in a tesla, you have a battery which
11:59
Speaker 1: then binds an electric engine and that engine pushes the
12:02
Speaker 1: air back. So you don't have a jet engine. There's
12:05
Speaker 1: no electrical equivalent of a jet engine, but you can
12:08
Speaker 1: spend something, and spending something is a fantastic way to
12:11
Speaker 1: get airborne and to get this sort of forward thrust
12:14
Speaker 1: you need. But the real issue with an airplane is
12:17
Speaker 1: that airplanes need a lot of power because you need
12:20
Speaker 1: to move forward to get that lift over the wings.
12:22
Speaker 1: That they also have to be light like. This is
12:25
Speaker 1: not as much of a constraint on a car. Car
12:27
Speaker 1: just sits on the ground, and you prefer it to
12:30
Speaker 1: be lighter because then you get better acceleration. But it's
12:32
Speaker 1: not like it doesn't work if it's heavy, right, And
12:35
Speaker 1: so for an airplane you have this delicate balance between
12:39
Speaker 1: power needs and weight, and batteries are not great at that. Now,
12:44
Speaker 1: hang on, Daniel, you say that airplanes need to be light,
12:47
Speaker 1: but if you've ever tried to power lift and airplane
12:50
Speaker 1: all on your own, I think you would find it's
12:53
Speaker 1: pretty heavy. Right. Airplanes are pretty heavy. These things do
12:57
Speaker 1: weight tons, but there's a limit, right, If you're heavy
12:59
Speaker 1: enough off then they just cannot take off, or you
13:02
Speaker 1: need an impossible amount of thrust. What you really need
13:05
Speaker 1: is energy density. You need lots of power per unit weight.
13:09
Speaker 1: If you just don't have enough power per weight of
13:11
Speaker 1: your fuel or of your battery, then you're not getting
13:14
Speaker 1: up off the ground. You can get off the ground
13:16
Speaker 1: if you're really heavy, as long as you have enough
13:19
Speaker 1: power for all that weight, right, which is how, for example,
13:22
Speaker 1: a seven forty seven gets up off the ground because
13:24
Speaker 1: its engines are enormous and the energy density of its
13:28
Speaker 1: fuel source is pretty good. And that's why we use
13:31
Speaker 1: so much fuel for a plane. Right, That's right, that's
13:33
Speaker 1: why we use so much fuel. And you know, this
13:35
Speaker 1: actually reminds me of like the rocket ship problem. You know,
13:39
Speaker 1: taking off from the ground into the air is similar
13:42
Speaker 1: to like accelerating a rocket or lifting a rocket up
13:45
Speaker 1: into the air. When you lift a rocket, you know,
13:48
Speaker 1: it's only like the very tip top of the rocket
13:50
Speaker 1: that actually is like the payload, maybe the satellites or
13:53
Speaker 1: the people or whatever. Most of the rocket below it
13:55
Speaker 1: is fuel because you need to lift a bunch of
13:58
Speaker 1: fuel to lift the rocket. And then because the rocket
14:01
Speaker 1: is so heavy, you need more fuel to lift the rocket,
14:04
Speaker 1: and it exponentially takes off and pretty soon you're mostly fuel.
14:08
Speaker 1: And so that's the same problem with an airplane is
14:11
Speaker 1: that if your energy source, like a battery, is too heavy,
14:14
Speaker 1: then you need more power to lift that heavy battery,
14:17
Speaker 1: and so then you're gonna need to bring more batteries,
14:19
Speaker 1: which are also need more power to lift them, and
14:22
Speaker 1: pretty soon you're trying to fly the Empire State building.
14:24
Speaker 1: So if a human was a rocket or an airplane,
14:28
Speaker 1: basically we'd be legs filled with like food, just kind
14:33
Speaker 1: of splashing around and then like a teeny tiny head
14:37
Speaker 1: and teeny tiny body. That's disturbing. Oh, I love the
14:41
Speaker 1: biological analogy. Imagine if your stomach was like of your volume. Wow,
14:47
Speaker 1: they'll take a lot of toast. And really the issue
14:49
Speaker 1: for batteries replacing jet fuel is that it just doesn't
14:53
Speaker 1: compare in terms of energy density like jet fuel. The
14:56
Speaker 1: reason it's so amazing is that it's super duper concentrated.
15:00
Speaker 1: There's so much energy packed in per kilogram of jet
15:04
Speaker 1: fuel because it's basically ancient sunlight that's been like boiled
15:09
Speaker 1: down into this chemical that stores that energy super duper effectively.
15:14
Speaker 1: So if you get a battery that could do the
15:17
Speaker 1: same amount of work as jet fuel, the battery is
15:21
Speaker 1: going to be a lot heavier. The battery is going
15:23
Speaker 1: to be a lot heavier exactly. So we measure this
15:25
Speaker 1: in terms of energy density, so that's like energy per weight,
15:29
Speaker 1: So like what hours per kilogram And you know, what
15:33
Speaker 1: hours is a really weird unit because what's are like
15:37
Speaker 1: energy per time and then you multiply by time to
15:40
Speaker 1: just get energy back. So I understand why they don't
15:42
Speaker 1: just use energy instead of what hours. But anyway, this
15:46
Speaker 1: is sort of the standard, and jet fuel is really
15:48
Speaker 1: really good in terms of energy density. It has like
15:51
Speaker 1: twelve thousand what hours for every kilogram of jet fuel.
15:57
Speaker 1: And if you're not familiar with what a what hour is,
15:58
Speaker 1: here's like a stat of get you acquainted. Like one
16:01
Speaker 1: person working for eight hours doing manual labor can do
16:05
Speaker 1: about five hundred watt hours of work in an eight
16:09
Speaker 1: hour day. So that's half of a kilowatt hour in
16:12
Speaker 1: an eight hour day. So that's what you know an
16:14
Speaker 1: individual person can do, So that's what watt hours. That's
16:18
Speaker 1: a lot of wat hours. And you know you've probably,
16:20
Speaker 1: for example, looked at a light bulb and saying, oh,
16:22
Speaker 1: this light bulb is a hundred watt bulb that measures
16:25
Speaker 1: how much energy it uses per time. And so for example,
16:28
Speaker 1: you have a hundred watt bulb, it takes ten hours
16:32
Speaker 1: to use a thousand watt hours because a hundred watts
16:36
Speaker 1: times ten hours gives you a thousand watt hours or
16:40
Speaker 1: a kill a watt, So it gives you a sense
16:41
Speaker 1: for like how much a kill a watt is. And
16:44
Speaker 1: jet fuel is really concentrated, has twelve kilowatt hours per
16:48
Speaker 1: kilogram of jet fuel, So like a kilogram of jet fuel,
16:53
Speaker 1: which is you know, a couple of pounds of jet
16:54
Speaker 1: fuel is as much energy is like twenty five guys
16:58
Speaker 1: working all day. So this stuff is really really dense
17:02
Speaker 1: with energy. All right, Well, if we get a bunch
17:04
Speaker 1: of guys in an airplane on a giant hamster whale
17:08
Speaker 1: running the engine, I think we've cracked it. The problem
17:11
Speaker 1: is twenty five guys weighs a lot more than one kilogram, right.
17:15
Speaker 1: That's the amazing things that there's all these energy in
17:18
Speaker 1: one kram of jet fuel. What about real, real little guys,
17:25
Speaker 1: tiny elves that could do is much work at twenty
17:29
Speaker 1: five grown men. Santa's really onto something that's why I
17:34
Speaker 1: uses elf labor. That's the amazing thing about jet fuel,
17:37
Speaker 1: and you know that's why it takes millions of years
17:39
Speaker 1: to boil it down from sunlight into plants photosynthesizing and
17:43
Speaker 1: then decaying and then getting compressed and turning into jet fuel.
17:47
Speaker 1: It's amazing stuff. It really is pretty incredible. It's just
17:50
Speaker 1: too bad. It's so bad for the environment. Yeah, because
17:52
Speaker 1: when you think about it's like Earth has been creating
17:56
Speaker 1: this fine wine for millions of years, just incentrated sunlight,
18:01
Speaker 1: and then we just kind of burn all of it up.
18:04
Speaker 1: It's too bad that we're not a little more respectful
18:07
Speaker 1: of this the stuff that Earth has been cooking and
18:11
Speaker 1: storing so much carbon in for so long. That's right, Well,
18:14
Speaker 1: I guess we will be when we run out of it.
18:16
Speaker 1: And so the relevant comparison, the reason that like batteries
18:19
Speaker 1: can't power an airplane right now is that they just
18:22
Speaker 1: don't have the same energy density. They have about two
18:25
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty watt hours per kilogram. That compares to
18:29
Speaker 1: twelve thousand for jet fuel. So it's a factor of
18:33
Speaker 1: like forty or fifty. Jet fuel has forty to fifty
18:37
Speaker 1: times as much energy per kilogram than like the best
18:40
Speaker 1: batteries we have today. I understand why jet fuel is
18:45
Speaker 1: light because it's super concentrated, But why can't we get
18:50
Speaker 1: batteries to be super concentrated. That's a great question, and
18:53
Speaker 1: we'll talk about it in a minute when we talk
18:55
Speaker 1: about the physics of batteries and how people are working
18:58
Speaker 1: on making better battery But first let's take a quick break.
19:15
Speaker 1: So I just asked you, Daniel, why can't we make
19:18
Speaker 1: batteries super concentrated, Like maybe put a super dense neutron
19:23
Speaker 1: star inside a battery, or really muscular hamster and a
19:27
Speaker 1: hamster whale. How do we get a battery that is
19:31
Speaker 1: super dense but not too heavy that it takes down
19:35
Speaker 1: a plane? Yeah, Well, the answer is we're just not
19:37
Speaker 1: smart enough yet. It might be theoretically possible to make
19:41
Speaker 1: a battery that energy dense, we just haven't really figured
19:44
Speaker 1: it out yet. And part of that comes from the
19:47
Speaker 1: materials we use to make batteries, of course, because you
19:49
Speaker 1: want really light stuff in your battery if you don't
19:52
Speaker 1: want it to be really heavy. But to dig into that,
19:54
Speaker 1: we probably have to have a better idea of like
19:56
Speaker 1: how batteries actually work. Yeah, because when I look at
19:59
Speaker 1: a battery, it just this little canister of mystery that
20:02
Speaker 1: I put into my clocks and my remote and it
20:06
Speaker 1: makes them go. But I just think of, like, Okay,
20:08
Speaker 1: I know there's acid in there, right, because when I
20:11
Speaker 1: leave battery out for too long, it this acid spills out.
20:16
Speaker 1: But the rest of it is very mysterious to me. Yeah,
20:19
Speaker 1: batteries are actually really amazing, and I have a lot
20:22
Speaker 1: of fun digging into the chemistry of how batteries work.
20:25
Speaker 1: So this is gonna be like between my expertise and yours,
20:28
Speaker 1: because like I think of chemistry sort of sitting between
20:31
Speaker 1: physics and biology. But it's still pretty fun stuff. Kudos
20:35
Speaker 1: to all the chemists out there, of course, we love you. Yeah, well,
20:38
Speaker 1: let's get chemical chemical. And so the way battery works
20:44
Speaker 1: is you have to have two different kinds of materials.
20:47
Speaker 1: Each one sits in sort of like a fluid like
20:49
Speaker 1: an electrolyte, and you've got to find two different weird metals.
20:52
Speaker 1: Metal number one has some kind of atom that really
20:56
Speaker 1: wants to dissolve into that fluid, and when it does so,
20:59
Speaker 1: it leaves behind an electron. So you need some sort
21:02
Speaker 1: of like kind of atom that has like an electron
21:05
Speaker 1: and its outer shells that it really wants to get
21:07
Speaker 1: rid of, and it's dying to like dissolve into this
21:09
Speaker 1: liquid so that when it does, it leaves behind that
21:12
Speaker 1: electron in like the bulks, you like a slab of metal,
21:16
Speaker 1: and it's dropping little bits of that metal into liquid,
21:19
Speaker 1: and it's gathering extra electron so it's getting more and
21:21
Speaker 1: more charged as it happens. So that's like metal number
21:25
Speaker 1: one in one quarter. It's becoming more and more like electronified. Right,
21:30
Speaker 1: It's just very annoyed with its own electron, so it's
21:33
Speaker 1: trying to escape by dissolving and then leaving behind a
21:36
Speaker 1: bunch of annoying electrons. And then on the other side,
21:39
Speaker 1: you've got the opposite situation. You find some metal whose
21:42
Speaker 1: atoms really don't want to leave it, like they want
21:44
Speaker 1: to reattach if you have them in solution. They want
21:47
Speaker 1: to like precipitate out of solution and back onto the bulk.
21:51
Speaker 1: But to do so they need another electron, Like they
21:54
Speaker 1: want to form bonds with their friends back in the blob,
21:57
Speaker 1: but they can't do it without another electron. So you
22:00
Speaker 1: have this material here that like wants electrons, and then
22:03
Speaker 1: you just connect them with a wire, and what happens
22:06
Speaker 1: is that all the extra electrons from metal A will
22:09
Speaker 1: flow along the wire to where the electrons are wanted,
22:12
Speaker 1: because that's what electrons do. They go where they are needed, right,
22:15
Speaker 1: And you might wonder like, well, how did the electrons
22:17
Speaker 1: know to go from A to B. It's not like
22:19
Speaker 1: you know this little electron monster dot com where it's
22:22
Speaker 1: like advertising for electrons over here, please Craigslist for electrons,
22:27
Speaker 1: miss connections, looking for a metal who needs an extra
22:33
Speaker 1: And it's fun to think about electricity microscopically, and the
22:36
Speaker 1: key to doing that is remembering that in physics everything
22:39
Speaker 1: is local. Right. There's never like piece A says to
22:43
Speaker 1: piece B, hey send me all your electrons, or the
22:45
Speaker 1: other way around, or here come a bunch of electrons.
22:47
Speaker 1: Everything is super local. It's all about like one particle
22:50
Speaker 1: talking to another. And so at some point along that wire,
22:53
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a spot where it wants an electron.
22:55
Speaker 1: It's ready to take an electron. It's gonna be next
22:58
Speaker 1: to a spot that has an extra electron. It's gonna
23:00
Speaker 1: be like the interface and it's going to suck up
23:03
Speaker 1: that electron because that's what it can do. Wanting an
23:05
Speaker 1: electron means that there's like a low potential left for
23:08
Speaker 1: an electron to fall into. And then because it's stolen
23:11
Speaker 1: an electron, now another electron further down the wire is
23:15
Speaker 1: gonna say, I'm crowded over here with all my friends
23:17
Speaker 1: the extra electrons. It's gonna slide over into that empty spot.
23:21
Speaker 1: And then essentially that just happens over and over again.
23:24
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like a relay racer or what
23:27
Speaker 1: am I trying to say? What are those things where
23:29
Speaker 1: you're like, are in a big line and you're passing
23:33
Speaker 1: one item down the line. It's like an assembly line. Yeah,
23:36
Speaker 1: that's what I'm trying to think of. Exactly, Yeah, exactly.
23:39
Speaker 1: It's just like an assembly line. And the net effect
23:42
Speaker 1: is that you get electricity because you're moving electrons from
23:45
Speaker 1: one side to the other. They're flowing through the wire
23:48
Speaker 1: and so you get electricity flowing from that wire that
23:51
Speaker 1: connects A to B. So A will dissolve more, getting
23:55
Speaker 1: more and more electrons flowing along the wire to be
23:58
Speaker 1: who needs those electron to let its lost bits reattached
24:02
Speaker 1: to its bulk. So that's what a battery is. You
24:04
Speaker 1: just gotta find metals with those properties and suspend them
24:08
Speaker 1: in this electual light, connect them with a wire, and boom,
24:11
Speaker 1: you've got a battery. And that's to release the electricity.
24:14
Speaker 1: If you want to recharge the battery, you just have
24:16
Speaker 1: to somehow force electricity the other way. You put a
24:20
Speaker 1: potential across it and drag the electrons the way they
24:22
Speaker 1: don't want to go. Then the opposite chemistry will happen.
24:26
Speaker 1: All the depositing and dissolving that we're happening before will reverse.
24:30
Speaker 1: And that's how you recharge a battery. You like, return
24:32
Speaker 1: it to its original state. And so that's the physics,
24:36
Speaker 1: and I guess the chemistry and maybe the psychology of
24:39
Speaker 1: how a battery works. That's what happens every time I
24:42
Speaker 1: recharge my phone, when I let it get down to
24:45
Speaker 1: like one person and just forcing all those electrons back
24:49
Speaker 1: and reverse in their congolne and I imagine they're not
24:51
Speaker 1: too happy about it exactly. Now we have to worry
24:55
Speaker 1: about the feelings of individual electrons. Man, I'm never gonna
24:58
Speaker 1: get anything done. Gotta right so many I'm sorry cards
25:02
Speaker 1: to those electrons. Well, maybe we should just do everything
25:04
Speaker 1: democratically right. Every time we make a decision, we have
25:06
Speaker 1: all the particles vote, and then we just do what
25:09
Speaker 1: everybody wants. I'm not sure we're gonna get anything done,
25:12
Speaker 1: and I feel like that would be very explosive if
25:14
Speaker 1: we talk to certain electrons. And so the thing that
25:18
Speaker 1: limits us the thing that tells us how energy dense
25:21
Speaker 1: the battery is, because remember our goal here is to
25:24
Speaker 1: have a lot of energy stored with a very few kilograms.
25:27
Speaker 1: Are the weights of the materials we're using, right, and here,
25:30
Speaker 1: for example, lithium here is an excellent, excellent choice for
25:33
Speaker 1: building batteries because lithium, for example, is on that side
25:37
Speaker 1: of the periodic table where it really wants to lose
25:39
Speaker 1: an electron, right, And so it's very good for building
25:42
Speaker 1: this kind of metal. And then you can mix it
25:44
Speaker 1: with other kinds of stuff like cobals and other stuff,
25:47
Speaker 1: and you can get the opposite kind. You can get
25:50
Speaker 1: both A and B. You can get the depositor and
25:52
Speaker 1: the dissolver using lithium. And lithium also is pretty low
25:56
Speaker 1: on the periodic table, so it's not that heavy, right.
25:59
Speaker 1: It's elm at number three after all, right, so we've
26:02
Speaker 1: already got a pretty light metal. It's just not not
26:07
Speaker 1: light enough to make these batteries as light as gas
26:11
Speaker 1: or as light as Jeff fuel exactly. And the key
26:14
Speaker 1: is what lithium is connected with. It's not pure lithium, right,
26:17
Speaker 1: These are lithium ions and lithium alloys, and currently we
26:20
Speaker 1: use things like cobalt in there to make the particular
26:23
Speaker 1: mix of elements. We need to get a good dissolver
26:26
Speaker 1: or a good deplet, and so that's really the key
26:28
Speaker 1: is how much energy is released per electron that moves
26:33
Speaker 1: from A to b, right, And so if you can
26:36
Speaker 1: get either more energy released from A to B, which
26:39
Speaker 1: depends on you know, the energy levels of the atom
26:42
Speaker 1: you're dealing with, or you can get the atoms to
26:44
Speaker 1: be lighter, then you can get a better energy density ratio.
26:48
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what people are working on. First of all,
26:50
Speaker 1: people are working on like making lithium ion batteries more
26:55
Speaker 1: powerful without switching to some new kind of technologies and
26:58
Speaker 1: new basic element and people are working on that every year,
27:01
Speaker 1: like shaving off a little bit here, making that more efficient,
27:04
Speaker 1: or tweaking with a kind of you know, mixtures of
27:07
Speaker 1: stuff that you need. And we're seeing some improvement like
27:09
Speaker 1: the lithium ion batteries that we have now have twice
27:13
Speaker 1: the energy density as the first prototypes that were invented
27:16
Speaker 1: in the nineties. So that's some pretty good progress. Yeah,
27:19
Speaker 1: our phones keep getting smaller or sometimes bigger, depending on
27:23
Speaker 1: what people want. I can't figure it out. They're getting
27:25
Speaker 1: thinner but wider, and eventually our phones were able to
27:28
Speaker 1: toast bread and maybe even fly across the ocean. Sure,
27:31
Speaker 1: I'm into it. But yeah. So we have the lithium
27:35
Speaker 1: which really wants to shed its electron that people are
27:38
Speaker 1: working on to maybe make that more either more efficient
27:42
Speaker 1: or try to use another lighter element than lithium. Do
27:45
Speaker 1: we have any issues with the dissolvent, Like what is
27:47
Speaker 1: the other metal that is trying to get the electron? Yeah,
27:51
Speaker 1: it's mostly lithium, but they mix in the cobalt and
27:54
Speaker 1: other kinds of stuff in there, and you know, without
27:56
Speaker 1: getting too nitty grady on into the chemistry of folks
27:59
Speaker 1: I talked to said that they think that lithium iron
28:02
Speaker 1: batteries might be able to get twice as energy dense
28:05
Speaker 1: as we have them today. Right now, we're like two
28:08
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty watt hours per kilogram. We might be
28:11
Speaker 1: able to get to like four hundred five hundred by
28:14
Speaker 1: twenty five, So that's a factor of two. That's pretty good,
28:18
Speaker 1: but that means we're still like a factor of twenty
28:21
Speaker 1: away from jet fuel, and that's not going to make
28:23
Speaker 1: for an economical airplane. We'll have way for thin phones though. Yeah,
28:28
Speaker 1: Well they just get bigger and bigger and last longer
28:31
Speaker 1: and longer, and people won't care. I keep pushing for
28:33
Speaker 1: a smaller and smaller phone. Everybody around me has these
28:35
Speaker 1: like basically these like many tablets in their pocket. I
28:38
Speaker 1: don't understand. Maybe I have just like little pointy fingers,
28:41
Speaker 1: but I'm also team small phone. It's kind of fit
28:45
Speaker 1: in your pocket or it's not a phone, right right exactly,
28:48
Speaker 1: it's gotta fit in girl pockets to people, scientists either
28:52
Speaker 1: invent girl pockets that are bigger, phones that are smaller.
28:55
Speaker 1: Pick one. My daughter is discovered this also that like
28:59
Speaker 1: pants for women don't have real pockets, and she is outraged.
29:02
Speaker 1: She's like, what's the deal here, Like, why do I
29:05
Speaker 1: have to wear men's pants if I want pockets? It
29:07
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense. Sometimes the pockets are just a
29:10
Speaker 1: ruse to it just looks like a pocket and there's
29:12
Speaker 1: nothing there. So you know, we need to crack the
29:17
Speaker 1: code for electric airplanes so we can save the planet,
29:20
Speaker 1: and we need to crack the code for women's pockets
29:22
Speaker 1: so we can put freaking phones in there. Guys, we
29:25
Speaker 1: might be able to solve the secrets of the universe
29:27
Speaker 1: on this podcast, but I don't think we're ever going
29:29
Speaker 1: to crack the secrets of fashion. That is definitely just
29:32
Speaker 1: beyond us. But back to the researchers. You know, these
29:34
Speaker 1: folks have been working on this for a while and
29:36
Speaker 1: the actually want a Nobel Prize in two thousand nineteen
29:39
Speaker 1: for the development of lithium batteries, Like it was a
29:42
Speaker 1: big step forward when people were able to make lithium
29:45
Speaker 1: batteries work. They're much lighter, much more rechargeable, much more efficient,
29:50
Speaker 1: and also more cycles than other kinds of batteries. Like,
29:53
Speaker 1: you want a battery that can hold a lot of energy.
29:55
Speaker 1: You also wanted to be reusable. You don't want a
29:58
Speaker 1: disposable airplane, right, You don't want a car that you
30:01
Speaker 1: charge it up, you use it and then it's done.
30:03
Speaker 1: I do imagine what the disposable airplane. It just flies
30:07
Speaker 1: from airport a right into a junkyard where people disembark.
30:12
Speaker 1: I know, I know, and we're all experienced with like
30:15
Speaker 1: lithium batteries working really really well when you first get
30:18
Speaker 1: your phone or your laptop and then degrading. That's because
30:21
Speaker 1: they start to grow these like filaments and deposits on
30:24
Speaker 1: the surface of the lithium bits that prevent them from
30:27
Speaker 1: depositing or depleting as well. But they've gotten pretty good.
30:30
Speaker 1: You know, a laptop, for example, they expected to be
30:32
Speaker 1: able to recharge it like five hundred or a thousand
30:35
Speaker 1: times over the lifetime of the laptop, and for a
30:38
Speaker 1: test level for example, the goal is that it lasts
30:41
Speaker 1: like ten years, which is something like, you know, maybe
30:43
Speaker 1: three thousand charges. So lithium batteries already really impressive. I
30:48
Speaker 1: feel like we're sort of already living in the future
30:50
Speaker 1: for lithium batteries, but of course they're not yet good enough. Yeah,
30:54
Speaker 1: I mean so, because if we wanted to make a
30:57
Speaker 1: really tight plane, we could potentially have a battery strong enough.
31:01
Speaker 1: Could we have like personal a plane for one person
31:05
Speaker 1: that could have a modern day battery in it? Or
31:08
Speaker 1: they still not efficient enough. No, we'll talk about that
31:11
Speaker 1: in a minute. And you can probably have electric airplanes
31:15
Speaker 1: for a smaller number of people. But if we want
31:17
Speaker 1: to do like you know, cargo or seven forty seven's,
31:20
Speaker 1: that's going to be a challenge. And so people are
31:22
Speaker 1: working on other technologies to improve batteries. The problem is
31:26
Speaker 1: that some of them are also not that stable. Right.
31:28
Speaker 1: You want something that has a lot of energy per
31:31
Speaker 1: electron and can also can give that up and doesn't
31:34
Speaker 1: weigh a lot, but some of these combinations are literally exclusive.
31:38
Speaker 1: This is what I was going to ask, because we've
31:40
Speaker 1: seen these stories of Tesla's just spontaneously combusting and driving
31:47
Speaker 1: around on autopilot while on fire, which is bad enough
31:52
Speaker 1: for a car, it seems particularly frightening if it's a plane. Yeah, exactly.
31:58
Speaker 1: And you know they have these limitations like even checking
32:01
Speaker 1: something in your luggage that has a lithium battery in
32:04
Speaker 1: it for that reason, and so people are really careful
32:07
Speaker 1: about the stability of these things. And some of these
32:10
Speaker 1: technologies that people are working on for the future of
32:12
Speaker 1: batteries involves like lithium in combination with oxygen or lithium
32:17
Speaker 1: in combination with fluoride, because fluoride is very powerful and
32:20
Speaker 1: very and much lower on the periodic table than cobalt,
32:24
Speaker 1: so you can get a lot more energy like per electron,
32:27
Speaker 1: maybe even up to twenty times are current batteries which
32:31
Speaker 1: would bring us like in the realm of jet fuel,
32:34
Speaker 1: But it's very tricky and nobody's really sure if you
32:37
Speaker 1: can make a lithium fluoride battery work and if you
32:40
Speaker 1: can overcome the stability issues. Right, it seems like when
32:44
Speaker 1: we try to have some of these really really light
32:49
Speaker 1: flying aircraft options, sometimes it kind of ends up in
32:53
Speaker 1: a Heisenberg Lindenburg Lindenburg Heisenberg's uncertainty principle for really futuristic
33:00
Speaker 1: planes where the plane just blips out of existence, and
33:03
Speaker 1: the Hindenburg for the more balloon shaped planes. It seems
33:08
Speaker 1: like a very significant problem because every kind of engineering
33:12
Speaker 1: issue that you would have on the ground is going
33:16
Speaker 1: to be even more drastic when you have it in
33:19
Speaker 1: the air, because you have this giant hunk of metal
33:23
Speaker 1: that you do not want to suddenly explode and lose
33:28
Speaker 1: that sort of airborne nature. Do you know, like how
33:32
Speaker 1: we make these chemicals more stable? Are people working on
33:36
Speaker 1: trying to get them to be safer or is it
33:38
Speaker 1: just too hard to get these combinations of chemicals to
33:42
Speaker 1: be stable. People are definitely working on it, and Mad
33:45
Speaker 1: props to these folks, because this is crazy materials engineering.
33:49
Speaker 1: You know. It's not like you start from legos and
33:52
Speaker 1: you get to build anything you want. They can do
33:54
Speaker 1: anything you want. You got to start from the materials
33:56
Speaker 1: we have around and the properties that they have, you know,
34:00
Speaker 1: and so you're very limited in your toolkit and combining
34:03
Speaker 1: these things in just the right way to get the
34:05
Speaker 1: electron transfer without being explosive. It's a real challenge, and
34:08
Speaker 1: there's lots of folks around the country working on this
34:10
Speaker 1: stuff because not only would be like hugely valuable, right,
34:15
Speaker 1: like to be able to make batteries twenty times as
34:18
Speaker 1: energy dense as the current ones, Like wow, that pattern
34:20
Speaker 1: would be worth a jillion dollars, but also it's a
34:23
Speaker 1: fun puzzle. You know. I work at like the smallest
34:26
Speaker 1: little particles and think about how you can combine them
34:28
Speaker 1: to make other particles. But this is much more difficult.
34:31
Speaker 1: These folks really are limited in the toolkit they have,
34:34
Speaker 1: and so mad props to everybody out there creating new
34:37
Speaker 1: kinds of goo and all sorts of new materials that
34:39
Speaker 1: have these weird electronic properties. Maybe someday we could have
34:43
Speaker 1: just like a sort of bag full of liquid, like
34:48
Speaker 1: a water balloon type thing we put in a plane.
34:50
Speaker 1: That's just is a big old squishy battery. Well good chemicals.
34:55
Speaker 1: That would be cool, especially if the battery could get
34:57
Speaker 1: used up and smaller. Another real downside of batteries we
35:01
Speaker 1: haven't even talked about is that the battery doesn't like
35:04
Speaker 1: shrink as you use it, right jet fuel, as you
35:07
Speaker 1: burn it up, it disappears. So seven forty seven is
35:10
Speaker 1: much lighter when it lands than when it takes off,
35:13
Speaker 1: and so it's like not using as much jet fuel
35:16
Speaker 1: for the second half of its trip as it did
35:19
Speaker 1: for the first half of its trip. But that's not
35:20
Speaker 1: true for a battery, right. A battery doesn't get lighter
35:23
Speaker 1: as you use it up, and so that the airplane
35:26
Speaker 1: is just as heavy in the second half as the
35:28
Speaker 1: first half. So they actually would have to be more
35:30
Speaker 1: energy dense than jet fuel to have the same basic economics.
35:34
Speaker 1: Not if we make strip poker compulsory on planes and
35:37
Speaker 1: everybody has to participate and throw their clothes out the
35:40
Speaker 1: win though, wow, and what if those clothes have AI
35:45
Speaker 1: and then we have to ask those clothes, you know,
35:47
Speaker 1: how do you feel about this situation. Yeah, darn it,
35:50
Speaker 1: darn those super intelligent shirts. But I want to hear
35:55
Speaker 1: more about my own personal aircraft. But before in, let's
36:01
Speaker 1: take a quick break while I see if I have
36:04
Speaker 1: enough money to buy myself my own personal little bubble aircraft.
36:08
Speaker 1: I think I've got some change in my couch I'm
36:10
Speaker 1: going to go through, all right, So, Daniel, how am
36:27
Speaker 1: I going to get my little electrified Katie plane that
36:31
Speaker 1: can just carry me and maybe my dog across the
36:34
Speaker 1: Atlantic just on a whim and I park it in
36:37
Speaker 1: a garage? Like how close are we to that? Well,
36:39
Speaker 1: you know that might be a reality pretty soon. This
36:42
Speaker 1: energy density issue is an issue for long flights where
36:46
Speaker 1: the plane is really really heavy and you need to
36:49
Speaker 1: go really really far. But if you're willing to take
36:52
Speaker 1: a smaller, lighter airplane or just not go as far,
36:57
Speaker 1: then it's totally possible to have electric air planes. And
37:00
Speaker 1: some of you might even remember that crazy flight of
37:03
Speaker 1: the Voyager that was solar power. Remember that one that
37:06
Speaker 1: flew around the world for like twenty four hours. That
37:09
Speaker 1: was an electric airplane because it took energy directly from
37:12
Speaker 1: the sun and used it to power its motors. Yeah,
37:15
Speaker 1: because when you're flying a plane usually you get above
37:18
Speaker 1: the cloud cover. So it seems like having a solar
37:21
Speaker 1: power airplane is a pretty good solution if you can
37:23
Speaker 1: get it to work. If you can get it to work.
37:26
Speaker 1: And the key for that airplane was it was super
37:28
Speaker 1: duper light and had almost no cargo, and the pilots,
37:32
Speaker 1: for example, like lost a bunch of weight before they
37:33
Speaker 1: even took off, you know, like they didn't even bring
37:36
Speaker 1: a toothbrush along. You know, this is very very much
37:39
Speaker 1: on the edge of what people could do. So you
37:41
Speaker 1: definitely could not use solar power to power a large,
37:45
Speaker 1: heavy airplane where you're actually carrying stuff and people. But
37:48
Speaker 1: it turns out that the biggest part of flying actually
37:51
Speaker 1: is not like launching seven forty sevens from here to China.
37:54
Speaker 1: Most of the people who take airplane chips don't go
37:57
Speaker 1: internationally or you know, from l A to Sydney. Something
38:01
Speaker 1: like half of the airline tickets sold last year were
38:04
Speaker 1: for shorter trips like under five hundred miles, and the
38:07
Speaker 1: airplanes that we use for those trips right now are
38:10
Speaker 1: actually ones designed for much longer flights. And so it's
38:14
Speaker 1: really pretty initiaient right now. We're using these like airplanes
38:17
Speaker 1: designed for thousand mile flights on all these short little hops.
38:21
Speaker 1: So I sense that you're saying flying cars from l
38:26
Speaker 1: A to San Diego? Am I wrong? Yes? Exactly. You know,
38:31
Speaker 1: like if you fly from LA to San Diego, it
38:33
Speaker 1: just like a hundred miles. Then the airplane basically never
38:36
Speaker 1: has a chance to get up to cruising speed where
38:38
Speaker 1: it's most efficient for using jet fuels. So it's like
38:42
Speaker 1: always speeding up or always slowing down, and that's really inefficient,
38:45
Speaker 1: and so it produces a huge amount of CEO to
38:48
Speaker 1: sort of per mile. And so instead if you develop
38:52
Speaker 1: like smaller airplanes that are not capable of doing these
38:56
Speaker 1: longer flights, but are only capable of doing a hundred
38:59
Speaker 1: three hundred, five hundred mile trips, and you don't need
39:01
Speaker 1: as much energy because the whole plane is smaller, is lighter,
39:05
Speaker 1: and so that opens up this window where you can
39:08
Speaker 1: like satisfy a huge fraction of air travel much more
39:12
Speaker 1: efficiently than you can with jet fuel. So with these planes,
39:16
Speaker 1: they would take like the pilot and then maybe ten
39:20
Speaker 1: people or something like little little tiny commuter planes. Yeah,
39:24
Speaker 1: that's the kind of thing we're talking about. And people
39:26
Speaker 1: are working on lots of different kinds of stuff, and
39:28
Speaker 1: this is real. This is not like, you know, people
39:30
Speaker 1: are doing research and maybe this will happen in twenty six.
39:33
Speaker 1: You know, United Airlines invested a billion dollars last year
39:38
Speaker 1: in an e plane startup. This is for an aircraft
39:41
Speaker 1: that's designed to fly like up to sixty miles and
39:43
Speaker 1: just carry like five ish people, and they're expecting to
39:47
Speaker 1: have like commercial flights in twenty four. So that's basically
39:51
Speaker 1: around the corner. Like, this is a billion dollars by
39:53
Speaker 1: a big company. This is not like, you know, somebody
39:56
Speaker 1: investing a million dollars on a whim. This is a
39:58
Speaker 1: real investment. This is kind of thing that's actually going
40:01
Speaker 1: to happen. Now, do these aircraft like get up to
40:04
Speaker 1: the altitude that the larger planes do. Are they more
40:07
Speaker 1: low flying? Yeah? I think for shorter flights you don't
40:10
Speaker 1: need to get as high, but you definitely want to
40:12
Speaker 1: get up to a certain height for the lower air
40:14
Speaker 1: pressure so there's less resistance and then you can be
40:16
Speaker 1: more efficient. But there are people working on all sorts
40:18
Speaker 1: of different scales of these things. You know, there's some
40:21
Speaker 1: people working on even larger ones. The largest plane anybody
40:25
Speaker 1: has made so far that actually has flown, like in
40:27
Speaker 1: reality in our universe is like a retrofitted version of
40:31
Speaker 1: a Sessna and it can take nine passengers and it's
40:34
Speaker 1: fully battery powered. And this is something that like exists today. Yeah,
40:39
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. I mean, it's kind of like because
40:42
Speaker 1: when I think about some things that feel like impossible
40:47
Speaker 1: flying feats, I think about the Quotquotalists, which is this
40:52
Speaker 1: ancient pterosaur which is like a pterodactyl but the size
40:57
Speaker 1: of a small Cessna aircraft, which after researchers found its bones,
41:03
Speaker 1: they thought, okay, maybe it has wings, but maybe it
41:05
Speaker 1: just didn't fly because it was so big. But they
41:09
Speaker 1: were able to work out through physics and math that yeah,
41:12
Speaker 1: they could actually fly, and they probably flew these long distances.
41:16
Speaker 1: But of course these things don't use jet fuel to fly.
41:20
Speaker 1: They just use the power of muscles and whatever unfortunate
41:24
Speaker 1: little probably proto mammals they were eating. So this idea
41:28
Speaker 1: that if a pterosaur can figure it out, it seems
41:32
Speaker 1: like we should be able to figure it out without
41:34
Speaker 1: using jet fuel. Yeah, and it goes back to the
41:36
Speaker 1: question you asked originally, like why can't you get this
41:39
Speaker 1: thing off the ground if you have enough batteries And
41:41
Speaker 1: the answer is you can. You can basically fly almost
41:44
Speaker 1: anything you want enough batteries on it. It just won't
41:48
Speaker 1: go for very long. And so if you want any
41:50
Speaker 1: distance at all, you've got to find that sweet spot
41:53
Speaker 1: between shorter distances and smaller airplanes so they can actually
41:57
Speaker 1: take off. And so that's what people are working on,
42:00
Speaker 1: and you know, people are hoping that like by twenty thirty,
42:03
Speaker 1: there might even be a electric jet that can fly
42:07
Speaker 1: like a hundred and fifty people up to five kilometers.
42:10
Speaker 1: Easy Jet is working with a startup called Right Electronic
42:13
Speaker 1: to develop this kind of prototype that might be in
42:16
Speaker 1: service in twenty thirty. So we have the technology today
42:19
Speaker 1: for these smaller planes to go smaller distances. And there's
42:23
Speaker 1: also really advantages. You know, we talked about the energy
42:26
Speaker 1: density of jet fuel, but we haven't talked about the cost.
42:29
Speaker 1: Like jet fuel, that's expensive stuff. As you say, it's
42:32
Speaker 1: been cooking for millions of years. You got to gather
42:34
Speaker 1: from under the ground, right, It's complicated, whereas electricity, you know,
42:39
Speaker 1: it just falls down on earth from the sun and
42:41
Speaker 1: you can create it in lots of different ways, and
42:44
Speaker 1: the cost of electricity is really dropping because of the
42:47
Speaker 1: amazing solar power build out, and so one of these
42:50
Speaker 1: assessments that was retrofitted with an electric engine, for example,
42:54
Speaker 1: it costs like five bucks to take a flight, whereas
42:57
Speaker 1: otherwise it would have been four hundred dollars in jet fuel.
43:01
Speaker 1: So airlines are pretty interested in this because that's a
43:03
Speaker 1: huge part of their cost is spending on jet fuel.
43:06
Speaker 1: And I, as a passenger and someone who does like
43:10
Speaker 1: the planet, I am also interested your pro planet. I'm
43:15
Speaker 1: pro planet because I live here. I'm biased, and so
43:18
Speaker 1: I think what we might see is like a real
43:20
Speaker 1: revolution in the way air travel works, because if you
43:23
Speaker 1: have a lot of these smaller, cheaper airplanes that can
43:27
Speaker 1: go shorter distances, then you can actually start taking advantage
43:30
Speaker 1: of a lot of little airports. Can ever drive down
43:33
Speaker 1: the highway you see like a little airport and it's
43:35
Speaker 1: basically nobody taking off. Well, there's tons and tons of
43:38
Speaker 1: these underused regional airports all over the country. We already
43:42
Speaker 1: have the infrastructure to make these short flights to go
43:45
Speaker 1: from like little airport to little airport. Those things already exist,
43:49
Speaker 1: and so all we need are the airplanes. Basically, it's
43:52
Speaker 1: just the airlines dominated from mega airport to mega airport,
43:55
Speaker 1: but smaller airplanes that can go shorter businesses and cheaper.
43:58
Speaker 1: We're gonna get like this much richer network of destinations.
44:02
Speaker 1: You know, that would really change the tapestry of big
44:06
Speaker 1: countries like the US too, because currently things like where
44:11
Speaker 1: jobs are located, where people can find work, even things
44:15
Speaker 1: like the successive farms depends on proximity to airports. And
44:21
Speaker 1: if you have more airports for commuters to be able
44:26
Speaker 1: to fly to, it seems like it'll mean that, you know,
44:29
Speaker 1: we won't have as much because right now we have
44:32
Speaker 1: this big problem of population density in these big cities
44:35
Speaker 1: where people have to crowd. You know, people wonder like, well,
44:38
Speaker 1: why does everyone go to l A or or San
44:41
Speaker 1: Francisco or New York, these big cities. A lot of
44:44
Speaker 1: places people are dependent on being near an airport, And
44:48
Speaker 1: so if we kind of spread out the airports, it
44:51
Speaker 1: seems like we'll be able to have more jobs kind
44:54
Speaker 1: of spread out throughout the US. Yeah, exactly, And so
44:57
Speaker 1: I sort of look forward to that possibility where people
45:00
Speaker 1: can take these little hops from place to place on
45:02
Speaker 1: a quiet, clean, cheap electric airplane. That sounds like a
45:05
Speaker 1: lot of fun to me, But people, of course are
45:07
Speaker 1: still working on the long haul. We talked to the
45:10
Speaker 1: beginning of the podcast about like connecting different parts of
45:12
Speaker 1: the world, and you know, if you can't take a
45:14
Speaker 1: flight from here to Japan in twelve hours, if it
45:17
Speaker 1: really takes a lot longer to get there, if you
45:19
Speaker 1: have to take like, you know, fifteen little hops to
45:21
Speaker 1: get from here to Japan, it really would make the
45:24
Speaker 1: world feel different, and so it's definitely worth working on.
45:27
Speaker 1: But you know, it seems hard to understand how we
45:30
Speaker 1: could get there unless we manage one of these incredible
45:33
Speaker 1: breakthroughs in battery technology using like lithium fluoride. So people
45:37
Speaker 1: are being creative and working on like weird other solutions.
45:40
Speaker 1: One of my favorites is this idea of like wireless
45:44
Speaker 1: power transmission. We talked about like carrying the energy with
45:48
Speaker 1: you on a battery. But we've also talked on the
45:51
Speaker 1: podcast about crazy ways to get around the universe, on
45:54
Speaker 1: things like solar sales, which is this thing which you know,
45:57
Speaker 1: gathers the energy of the sun and uses it to
45:59
Speaker 1: put yourself through space. The advantage there is you're not
46:02
Speaker 1: bringing any fuel with you. You don't have to carry
46:05
Speaker 1: the weight of the fuel and then the weight of
46:07
Speaker 1: more fuel to push that fuel. So people are talking
46:09
Speaker 1: about like beaming energy to the plane, but if you
46:12
Speaker 1: don't have to have a huge battery, you just like
46:14
Speaker 1: fire a laser at a spot on the plane. That's
46:17
Speaker 1: like absorbing that energy turns into electricity and then spins
46:21
Speaker 1: the engines. But if someone gets in front of that energy,
46:24
Speaker 1: being like say a flock of birds, they just get bisected. Right, Yeah, exactly.
46:29
Speaker 1: And this is sort of similar to what we've talked
46:31
Speaker 1: about on the podcast. Another time, we talked about space
46:34
Speaker 1: based solar power, like gathering energy up in space and
46:37
Speaker 1: then beaming it down to Earth using either lasers or microwaves.
46:41
Speaker 1: It seems a little bonkers, like you're inventing a death ray,
46:44
Speaker 1: but you know, people have tried this. NASA has actually
46:47
Speaker 1: done this demonstrate this technology with like a small unmanned
46:51
Speaker 1: solar craft that you could like beam energy to it
46:54
Speaker 1: and like recharge its batteries and it can fly longer
46:57
Speaker 1: because it doesn't have to have as big a battery
46:59
Speaker 1: if you can recharge it. I'm not sure how they
47:01
Speaker 1: would do that for like international flights. I can have
47:04
Speaker 1: to have like laser stations in the ocean to like
47:07
Speaker 1: recharge these things or beam it down from space from satellite.
47:10
Speaker 1: The whole thing seems kind of impractical, but you know
47:13
Speaker 1: today's impractical idea. Maybe it is tomorrow's future. But it
47:16
Speaker 1: would if you did get in the path of one
47:19
Speaker 1: of these energy beams, you would be toast right, because
47:23
Speaker 1: that seems like you would need a pretty concentrated high
47:26
Speaker 1: energy thing there. Or are they not as deadly as
47:29
Speaker 1: they sound? No, you're exactly right. And in the case
47:31
Speaker 1: of space based solar power, they avoid that by having
47:34
Speaker 1: the beams not be very dense and having like really
47:37
Speaker 1: large collection stations on the ground. But you can't do
47:40
Speaker 1: that for an airplane, right. An airplane is the size
47:42
Speaker 1: of an airplane, and so yeah, basically you're like zapping
47:44
Speaker 1: death rays in the air all over the planet just
47:48
Speaker 1: so you can go to Japan and do some shopping. Right,
47:50
Speaker 1: you'd have two problems if you miss the plane. One,
47:53
Speaker 1: the plane wouldn't get its energy and that would go down.
47:56
Speaker 1: And the other whatever you're hitting on the ground is
47:59
Speaker 1: not gonna be too happy with having its atoms completely rearranged. Yep.
48:03
Speaker 1: And then on the other side from like zapping your
48:06
Speaker 1: airplane with a hot laser, is the idea of bringing
48:09
Speaker 1: other kinds of fuel or like a hybrid. Remember when
48:11
Speaker 1: we went to electric cars, we didn't go straight to
48:13
Speaker 1: electric cars. We went to hybrid which had like you know,
48:17
Speaker 1: gas powered engine that could recharge your electric engine, and
48:20
Speaker 1: the electric engine which is for like getting around a
48:22
Speaker 1: little bit around town. Well, people are talking about hybrid
48:25
Speaker 1: approaches to airplanes where you have like a battery, but
48:28
Speaker 1: also you bring something along like hydrogen, which is like
48:32
Speaker 1: a fuel cell that can create electricity. And the advantage
48:35
Speaker 1: there is that, like hydrogen is much more energy dense
48:38
Speaker 1: than a battery. It's not quite as good as jet fuel,
48:41
Speaker 1: but it's much better than a battery, so you can
48:44
Speaker 1: like effectively bring along more energy. I'm getting a deja
48:48
Speaker 1: vu though, talking about hydrogen gives me an unsettling sense
48:52
Speaker 1: of deja vu with other aircraft that maybe shouldn't use
48:57
Speaker 1: exactly that is dangerous and all. So these fuel cells
49:01
Speaker 1: have to be very cold, like negative four hundred and
49:04
Speaker 1: twenty three degrees fahrenheit, and so not only do you
49:08
Speaker 1: have to bring the hydrogen, but then you have to
49:10
Speaker 1: bring along like very complicated cooling equipment to keep this
49:14
Speaker 1: thing frozen, and so it gets very complicated very quickly.
49:17
Speaker 1: But you know, there's some nice advantages to these hybrid
49:20
Speaker 1: solutions because you can do a little bit of this
49:22
Speaker 1: and a little bit of that. Right, we just don't
49:24
Speaker 1: want like a Hindenburg situation with the hydrogen. Nobody wants that.
49:28
Speaker 1: And you know, we could also do some other kind
49:30
Speaker 1: of combination where you have like some hydrocarbon fuel like
49:33
Speaker 1: jet fuel plus some batteries as a hybrid, and there
49:37
Speaker 1: are ways to do that in a sustainable way. We
49:39
Speaker 1: can take solar power, for example, and use it to
49:42
Speaker 1: generate hydrocarbons to like pull carbon out of the air
49:46
Speaker 1: and generate our own synthetic fuel and use that to
49:50
Speaker 1: power our airplanes. And then you know, when you burn it,
49:53
Speaker 1: it releases that carbon back into the atmosphere, but you've
49:55
Speaker 1: already pulled it out of the atmosphere to make the fuel,
49:58
Speaker 1: so it's not like you're releasing ancient carbon there that
50:02
Speaker 1: was stored millions of years ago back from the atmosphere.
50:04
Speaker 1: It's like fresh carbon you just took onto the atmosphere,
50:07
Speaker 1: store into fuel, and then release again. So there are
50:10
Speaker 1: ways to make like hydrocarbon fuels that are net carbon
50:14
Speaker 1: zero for the planet, and maybe combine that a little
50:18
Speaker 1: bit with some batteries and some electric propulsion and you
50:21
Speaker 1: might get net carbon zero long haul electric airplanes. That'd
50:25
Speaker 1: be cool. I just hope that's not too explosive exactly.
50:29
Speaker 1: And the bigger picture is that we have lots of
50:31
Speaker 1: ways to get there. Maybe improved battery technologies will let
50:35
Speaker 1: us get to the same energy density as jet fuel,
50:38
Speaker 1: or maybe some of these other clever, crazy solutions will
50:41
Speaker 1: let us get enough energy stored on a really huge
50:44
Speaker 1: plane to fly at halfway across the world. But even
50:47
Speaker 1: if we don't, we have bright prospects for short hop
50:50
Speaker 1: electric airplanes that can get you from LA to San Diego,
50:54
Speaker 1: or from New York to Philly, or somewhere else to
50:56
Speaker 1: somewhere else, And so I think we'll be seeing those
50:58
Speaker 1: a lot in our life, and pretty soon it's going
51:00
Speaker 1: to feel kind of like the future, you know, now
51:03
Speaker 1: I think about it, giant death ray is getting you
51:07
Speaker 1: from l A to Japan actually seems really cool, and
51:11
Speaker 1: I'm kind of on board. It's pretty metal. It does
51:14
Speaker 1: sounds like something in a science fiction novel. And maybe
51:17
Speaker 1: it can automatically toast your bread right just so to
51:19
Speaker 1: stick your bread out the window and it gets zapped
51:22
Speaker 1: by the laser. Killed two birds with one giant death ray.
51:25
Speaker 1: All right, well, thanks everyone for listening. If you're going
51:28
Speaker 1: on this crazy electrified ride with us, stay tuned for
51:31
Speaker 1: more episodes about everything that's crazy about the universe and
51:34
Speaker 1: the future of technology. Thanks for listening, and remember that
51:46
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge explained The Universe is a production of
51:49
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio or more podcast For my heart Radio,
51:52
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
51:56
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. No