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