Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff the Ball your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas, and
Speaker 1: we would like for you to just just take a
Speaker 1: moment to imagine Benjamin Franklin in space. Now, Benjamin Franklin
Speaker 1: had his uh, with his old timy clothes on. Oh yes, yes,
Speaker 1: the whole nine yards. We're not going to skimp on this.
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin in space. We want a hundreds Benjamin Franklin
Speaker 1: in space. That means uh, you know, the experiments, the
Speaker 1: the the the proclivity for for French ladies of ill repute,
Speaker 1: mac and cheese, mac and cheese. Oh sorry, that was
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson. Yeah, and kind of like mac and cheese. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm seeing this. I'm seeing him holding onto a kite yep,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe maybe not, And I'm seeing him with his
Speaker 1: space suit on over his old timey clothes, but then
Speaker 1: walking out onto the the exterior area of the ship
Speaker 1: for his his air bath. I knew, I knew you
Speaker 1: were going to take us there, Robert lamp. When you
Speaker 1: say air bath, you mean a jaunt in the nude yes,
Speaker 1: because because ben Ben Franklin, of course, he he was
Speaker 1: a big fan of of sleeping half the night through
Speaker 1: than getting up and uh spending a little time just
Speaker 1: setting around in the buff in the open air, reading
Speaker 1: a little bit, and then getting tired of getting going
Speaker 1: back to bed. And there there's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: there are a lot of studies that show that this
Speaker 1: is probably actually a very reasonable way to sleep. The
Speaker 1: nude reading is you know, left to the individuals. I
Speaker 1: was going to say that the getting up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night and sort of maximizing sleep patterns,
Speaker 1: not necessarily taking an air bath, as he called it, nude. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, there's no air outside of his spaceship. Um
Speaker 1: So if Benjamin Franklin did venture out of the airlock
Speaker 1: in the buff, what would happen? You know? Would would
Speaker 1: eyeballs would bulge, he would explode into a million meat pieces, yes,
Speaker 1: and froze, he would freeze and shatter. That's the thing
Speaker 1: we've we've seen so many different versions of what this
Speaker 1: might consist of in science fiction and if you look
Speaker 1: look at the various things that have been written about
Speaker 1: it too, from even from a scientific perspective. Um, it
Speaker 1: can get a little confusing at times because our ideas
Speaker 1: are sort of shifted over time and uh and and
Speaker 1: some some things that we thought would happen haven't really happened.
Speaker 1: And thankfully it's not something we have a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of data on, because we we aren't just throwing naked
Speaker 1: astronauts out the airlock in space. We're not doing a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of horrific decompression experiments just to see what
Speaker 1: would happen in these cases. Instead, we're taking all due
Speaker 1: precautions with our our astronauts and ensuring that these highly
Speaker 1: valuable individuals can carry on their daily task in safety. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so we we thought we would take this uh
Speaker 1: sci fi trope that's death by vacuum and really examine
Speaker 1: it and see what would happen and the various ways
Speaker 1: that that we do try to protect our astronauts. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So a good starting place for this system to mention
Speaker 1: just a few of them, the more notable examples that
Speaker 1: will refer back to as we progress. First of all,
Speaker 1: there is two thousand and one of Space Odyssey, which
Speaker 1: we often mentioned and everyone pretty much often mentions is
Speaker 1: one of the best sci fi films of all time,
Speaker 1: and really there's nothing like it. I recently watched it
Speaker 1: again and it's just it's stunning and uh and long
Speaker 1: and a little confusing, but I mean, all these things disorienting,
Speaker 1: and it just makes you think it's it's psychedelic, it's
Speaker 1: it's as at times it's it's it's hard science fiction
Speaker 1: in a way that it feels so real, that feels
Speaker 1: more real than it feels like a more real version
Speaker 1: of the future, a more genuine version of the future
Speaker 1: than we actually have grown into. And then and then
Speaker 1: there's other stuff in it that is just completely out there,
Speaker 1: that's just you know, the mind meeting the unknown. But
Speaker 1: there is one scene in which, after not Dave Bowman, Uh, Dave,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? Dave? That Dave, you can do
Speaker 1: the Dave voice, do it, Dave, what are you doing? Dave?
Speaker 1: Are you taking off your clothes and going for spacewalk?
Speaker 1: Well he doesn't do it in the nude, but he's
Speaker 1: space walks for about fifteen seconds with no helmet, and uh,
Speaker 1: it doesn't appear to cause him any pain. Uh. He
Speaker 1: re enters the Discovery through an open hatch and just
Speaker 1: carries on. And the modern viewers that he just comes
Speaker 1: up like a complete badass because he's just he's unfazed
Speaker 1: by it. He's just like, all right, it just drifted
Speaker 1: through the void, no helmet on. Now I'm good to go.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go shut down this computer. So there's that version.
Speaker 1: Then there's there's Mission to Mars, in which Tim Robbins
Speaker 1: takes his helmet off and his face like instantly freezes
Speaker 1: and distorts and he's dead just in a second. Um,
Speaker 1: which is I think a typical response to watching that
Speaker 1: movie and its entirety as well. Um, there's Outland, which
Speaker 1: is really a very enjoyable film. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've seen this. When this one is a shot, it's
Speaker 1: it's great because you have Sean Connery as the good
Speaker 1: guy and I think believe Peter Boyle plays the villain.
Speaker 1: And it's like a mining colony in space. It's basically
Speaker 1: a space Western. I mean, it is a straight up
Speaker 1: space Western, and it's a hell of a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I have secretly hope that Nicholas winding Refin will we'll
Speaker 1: do a remakeup it. It will probably never happen, but
Speaker 1: I think it would be great for it. But there's
Speaker 1: are a whole bunch of scenes where uh, guys in
Speaker 1: space suits are shot. It ruptures their suit and then
Speaker 1: their heads swell up like a balloon and then pop
Speaker 1: and it's you know, and to to the modern viewer,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a lot of fun, but as we'll discuss,
Speaker 1: it's complete hooey as far as what would actually happen. Um.
Speaker 1: There's the movie Event Horizon, which, uh, it's a supernatural
Speaker 1: space film that teenage Robert Lamb loved, could not get
Speaker 1: enough of. Modern Robert Lamb that does not really want
Speaker 1: to see it again. But in this film, a character
Speaker 1: passes through the space without a suit briefly and he survives,
Speaker 1: but it's a very traumatic experience and I believe he
Speaker 1: suffered some sort of blindness from it. Um and they
Speaker 1: are also I believe they prep him by getting him
Speaker 1: to it to push all the air out of his
Speaker 1: lungs before he goes. Now. In Sunshine, communications Officer Harvey
Speaker 1: tries to jump from one spaceship to another, and he
Speaker 1: tries to do it without a suit and doesn't quite
Speaker 1: make it, and within a minute or so his his
Speaker 1: arm is really so brittle that it breaks off like
Speaker 1: an icicle. Yeah, which makes for a good cinem I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, Danny Boyle is a great filmmaker. So Sunshine
Speaker 1: is a beautiful film to watch, but not not all
Speaker 1: the science. It's gonna really line up. But some of
Speaker 1: the things that you're hearing already swelling, freezing, Uh what
Speaker 1: else is there any other swelling, freezing, exploding? Um? I
Speaker 1: don't know if any of these another ones we looked
Speaker 1: at really went into burning, but that is a concern.
Speaker 1: Would be easy to say, oh, you would just catch fire,
Speaker 1: or one you wouldn't catch fire, but I don't know,
Speaker 1: you would just turn into beef jerky. I guess could
Speaker 1: be another possible example, and I'm sure somebody has used
Speaker 1: that somewhere in science fiction, right, although we don't get
Speaker 1: that's not an angle that comes up much, but it
Speaker 1: is a real possibility, So I could see it being
Speaker 1: a possible distortion of what could happen. Is right, And
Speaker 1: these distortions really do have some basis to them. It
Speaker 1: does not mean that if you were to take off
Speaker 1: your space suit that you would explode, but it does
Speaker 1: mean that there's a measure of swelling going on in
Speaker 1: the body. And we'll get more into that. But I
Speaker 1: think that's what's so intriguing about this idea, that's a death,
Speaker 1: death by vacuum. Yes, so at this point we should
Speaker 1: we should take a step back and let's say, let's
Speaker 1: look at space itself. Let's look at the void and
Speaker 1: discuss exactly what this environment is. And then we'll say, well,
Speaker 1: we'll answer the question what would this do to an
Speaker 1: individual without a space suit, an individual without a helmet,
Speaker 1: or indeed a naked Benjamin Franklin just floating about without restraint,
Speaker 1: with with less restraint than usual. Well, um, one of
Speaker 1: the things I wanted to mention all the it has
Speaker 1: really no impact on whether or not someone would explode
Speaker 1: in space without a space suit. Is sound? Okay, there
Speaker 1: is no sound in space, right. Sound travels by making
Speaker 1: molecules vibrate, So in order for sound travel, there has
Speaker 1: to be something with molecules fort to travel through. On Earth,
Speaker 1: sound travels to your ears by vibrating air molecules. In
Speaker 1: deep space, the large empty areas between stars and plants,
Speaker 1: there are no molecules to vibrate. There is no sound,
Speaker 1: making it that much more creepy for our sci fi
Speaker 1: body explosion to happen. Yeah, in space, no one can
Speaker 1: hear you scream. Right, that's the that's the Aliens tagline, right,
Speaker 1: that's it, that's his tagline. So yeah, So in space
Speaker 1: we have the void, we have a vacuum. So first
Speaker 1: of all, obviously there's no oxygen. That's just the no brainer.
Speaker 1: But of course there's furthermore, there's no atmosphere. There's no
Speaker 1: atmospheric pressure hugging you in. We've discussed in the podcast
Speaker 1: we just recorded about emotions in space that of course
Speaker 1: here on Earth there is air pressure. There's all this
Speaker 1: heavy air doesn't seem like it has any eight or
Speaker 1: pressure to it, but it's constantly pressing in on us.
Speaker 1: It's hugging us. It's like a corset that we have
Speaker 1: worn so long we no longer realize we're wearing it.
Speaker 1: But take that corset off and stuff is just gonna
Speaker 1: float free. That's right, because there is an absence of
Speaker 1: matter in space. Also, the temperature it's cold, Yeah, it's uh, certainly,
Speaker 1: space itself doesn't really have a temperature because it's just
Speaker 1: the void. So I mean, here's the thing. When it
Speaker 1: comes to heat transfer, they're basically three ways that it
Speaker 1: takes place, there's radiation, there's convection, and there's conduction. Radiation
Speaker 1: is the only method of heat transfer for objects in
Speaker 1: a vacuum. So you end up in the situation where,
Speaker 1: even though the void around you is not going to be,
Speaker 1: you know, pressing up against you with some temperature, you're
Speaker 1: exposed to some really severe uh examples of temperature variation
Speaker 1: uh in terms of really cold stuff and then also
Speaker 1: really hot uh. The heat coming from the radiation. For instance,
Speaker 1: uh NASA's bulky white space shoot suits that they wear
Speaker 1: in the spacewalks. So let's say you're out there, you're working.
Speaker 1: Let's say you've got your back turned to cold, dead space,
Speaker 1: and then your your front is turned towards the sun. Well,
Speaker 1: they have found that there can be upwards of a
Speaker 1: two hundred and seventy five degree farenheight difference from one
Speaker 1: side to the other, just based on where you're you're
Speaker 1: facing just that kind of an extreme. So the white
Speaker 1: is reflective and you're not absorbing that heat. Right. It's
Speaker 1: another One of the other things that springs to mind too,
Speaker 1: is a lunar dust. Back when we were sending people
Speaker 1: to the Moon, you had to be concerned with the
Speaker 1: fact that are you have this this white uh space,
Speaker 1: and it's reflecting all of this solar radiation. So it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's keeping you from absorbing all of this heat.
Speaker 1: Uh you're reflecting it, but get coated in some dark
Speaker 1: moon dust and suddenly you'll start absorbing it and it
Speaker 1: could bake you alive. Not a good way to go.
Speaker 1: Not a good way to go. Uh. And that's not
Speaker 1: really a plot line you see much and stuff by movies. No,
Speaker 1: but it could be used as a weapon. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's it's it's it's an underutilized idea there. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like all you need is a black paint gun.
Speaker 1: It goes without saying that in a vacuum, most liquids
Speaker 1: have a such a low boiling point that they vaporize
Speaker 1: almost instantly. But that is a reminder that we just
Speaker 1: don't have moisture floating around in space. In fact, in
Speaker 1: the past, when astronauts have urinated, the results were expelled
Speaker 1: into space where it boiled violently, and then the vapor
Speaker 1: then passed immediately into a solid state. It's a process
Speaker 1: known as d sublimation, and you end up with a
Speaker 1: cloud of really fine crystals of frozen urine, which is
Speaker 1: sort of a beautiful thing. Yeah, yeah, I've I've heard
Speaker 1: it described as being fairly beautiful. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: that some astronauts had mistaken those crystals for distant stars.
Speaker 1: There's some accounts of that name them after themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, But you've touched on something with the with
Speaker 1: the with the liquids boiling, because because you often hear
Speaker 1: the idea too that oh, if you're exposed to the void,
Speaker 1: your blood would boil and you would just it would
Speaker 1: just be this awful mess like and I mean just
Speaker 1: that idea of boiling blood is just hellish and awful,
Speaker 1: and it you can see where people would really get
Speaker 1: attached to the notion. So you have these visions, you know,
Speaker 1: if the blood boiling in the skin and like you know,
Speaker 1: blood vapor coming out of people or making you inflate
Speaker 1: and explode, and of course that's that's not going to
Speaker 1: happen um because of the containing effect of the skin
Speaker 1: in the circulatory system. So you swell a bit naked,
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin would kind of bloat a little bit. But
Speaker 1: the but the body, yeah, more, but the body itself
Speaker 1: is its own kind of precious suit for this kind
Speaker 1: of thing, And and it keeps dissolved tissues in a
Speaker 1: liquid stage, so only body flu is directly exposed to
Speaker 1: the vacuum would actually boil away. And uh, marriage says
Speaker 1: has happened to a NASA test subject a leaky space
Speaker 1: suit in an altitude chamber. The last thing he recalled
Speaker 1: before of losing consciousness with the sensation of his saliva
Speaker 1: bubbling on its tongue, which is kind of awful and
Speaker 1: cool at the same time. Um, let's talk about space
Speaker 1: suits real quick, just because I want to talk about
Speaker 1: how they do actually protect astronauts of space. They have
Speaker 1: pressurized atmosphere, so the space suit provides air pressure to
Speaker 1: keep the fluids in your body in a liquid state.
Speaker 1: Oxygen space suits must apply pure oxygen because of a
Speaker 1: low pressure, and then of course you've got regulated temperature.
Speaker 1: Now let's take a quick break, and when we get
Speaker 1: back we can talk about what happens when you strip
Speaker 1: off a space suit. All right, we're back. So we've
Speaker 1: been talking about some of the science fiction ideas about
Speaker 1: what happens when you take your space suit off in
Speaker 1: the void. We've mentioned some of the attributes of the
Speaker 1: void there's no air, there's no pressure, that the solar
Speaker 1: adiation can just quickly heat things up a whole lot
Speaker 1: to two pretty uh hellish temperatures. And then likewise that
Speaker 1: there's the cold, chilling void to concern yourself with as well.
Speaker 1: So we've been taught tackling the question what what would
Speaker 1: actually happen? What actually does happen when the body's exposed
Speaker 1: to this kind of environment. Well, you rip off your
Speaker 1: space suit and you get about fifteen seconds some saying
Speaker 1: between nine and leven depending uh, and that is about
Speaker 1: roughly how much time it takes for deoxygenated blood to
Speaker 1: circulate from your lungs to your brain. So when I
Speaker 1: say you get fifteen seconds, fifteen seconds of consciousness left. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is going to be the big kicker, you know,
Speaker 1: for for what's happening out there. This is ultimately going
Speaker 1: to be the factor for a niked Benjamin Franklin on
Speaker 1: the exterior, right. I mean it's kind of awful because
Speaker 1: it could be fifteen seconds where you witness your demise,
Speaker 1: or it could be fifteen seconds. Uh And if someone
Speaker 1: can act quickly, well, then you could be resuscitated. It
Speaker 1: is possible. Um, But The deal is is that the
Speaker 1: sucking the air from your lungs is part of why shoot.
Speaker 1: But the deal is is that the sucking the air
Speaker 1: from your lungs is is really part and parcel of
Speaker 1: why your demise would come on. See, when you're placed
Speaker 1: in a vacuum, the gas exchange process works and reverse
Speaker 1: your lyngs actually pull oxygen out of the body and
Speaker 1: dump it back into the lungs where it's exhaled, which
Speaker 1: only serves to hasten the onset of hypoxia. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the air rushes out explosively even and can really
Speaker 1: damage the lungs in the throat. Um. And it's all
Speaker 1: because of this tremendous pressure differential inside versus the outside. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And as you had mentioned, Um, the the spit any
Speaker 1: sort of liquid on your tongue and sweat on your
Speaker 1: body would boil away. Um. This has been described as
Speaker 1: a fizzy feeling like drinking soda and water. Vapor will
Speaker 1: form rapidly in the soft tissues and somewhat less rapidly
Speaker 1: in the venous blood, causing swelling. So there's this idea
Speaker 1: of you know, our sci fi idea of exp loading. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also it comes back to that, I believe it
Speaker 1: is the event horizon um scene where they said, make
Speaker 1: sure you get all the air out of your lungs
Speaker 1: because you're about to be exposed to the void. Yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently holding your breath makes it worse. Yes, do not
Speaker 1: hold your breath when exposed to a vacuum. Um. The
Speaker 1: number of other factors that they can come into play.
Speaker 1: I mean, this can essentially give you the bends. They
Speaker 1: can force the air bubbles into your blood vessels. Uh.
Speaker 1: There a whole lot of nasty things that can happen
Speaker 1: to the human body without even getting into the realm
Speaker 1: of exploding heads. You know, just the moisture in your nose, eyes,
Speaker 1: and mouth that evaporates, causing localized frost bite. As you
Speaker 1: had mentioned before, exposed skin begins to burn, um, so
Speaker 1: you get an extreme uh sunburn, your dermal tissues begin
Speaker 1: to swell. And when it comes to the idea of
Speaker 1: freezing or turning into beef jerokee. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: it's it's worth noting that that you would have to
Speaker 1: worry about getting a pretty bad sunburn if you were
Speaker 1: out there without a suit. But in terms of like
Speaker 1: freezing solid and chattering like in sunshine or going all
Speaker 1: of you know, frozen face like Tim Robbins uh in
Speaker 1: Mission to Mars. Uh. Here's a quick quote from a
Speaker 1: fill over at bad Astronomer, and he says, the human
Speaker 1: body holds a lot of heat, and it would take
Speaker 1: a long time to freeze. Have you ever found yourself
Speaker 1: literally freezing solid when you go outside on a winter's day? No,
Speaker 1: of course not yet. Losing heat by transferring it to
Speaker 1: cold air is far faster than doing so by simply
Speaker 1: radiating it away as you would in space. If it
Speaker 1: takes a long time in frigid air, it would take
Speaker 1: even longer in frigid space. So there you have it.
Speaker 1: As far as the idea of shattering astronauts, uh, it
Speaker 1: would take you would have to find an astronaut e
Speaker 1: that been floating free for quite a bit before they're
Speaker 1: going to actually just you know, break into pieces. Right right,
Speaker 1: your body is gonna cool slowly, relatively coolly, uh or slowly,
Speaker 1: I should say. And then the hypoxia that you experience
Speaker 1: really does have its own set of issues, including a
Speaker 1: loss of vision of course, wits at that point, followed
Speaker 1: by convulsions, um, lots of consciousness and uh, cyanosis when
Speaker 1: your skin turns blue. So at this point you're not
Speaker 1: dead really, Um, you're just kind of you're on your
Speaker 1: way there. Your brain is still functional, in your heart
Speaker 1: is still going, and you can still be revived according
Speaker 1: to NASA, with surprisingly minimal permanent injury if if you
Speaker 1: are immediately returned to an atmosphere and this savior window
Speaker 1: is only ninety seconds long. Now, there was an accidental
Speaker 1: experiment with US, and NASA actually has us on the
Speaker 1: website in the section that fields all the various questions
Speaker 1: they get. They say, at NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center, which
Speaker 1: is now renamed Jonathan Space Center, we had a test
Speaker 1: subject accidentally exposed to a near vacuum in an incident
Speaker 1: involving a leaking space suit in a vacuum chamber back
Speaker 1: in sixty five. He remained conscious for about fourteen seconds,
Speaker 1: and uh, they began to re pressurize the chamber within
Speaker 1: fifteen seconds and then he regaining consciousness. So he was fine.
Speaker 1: But you know, all those things did not have in
Speaker 1: his blood to not boil his eyeballs, did not you know,
Speaker 1: explode out of his head. Yeah, based on everything that
Speaker 1: then we've been reading when you compare real life to fiction,
Speaker 1: when you compare science to science fiction, the two thousand
Speaker 1: and one example is pretty spot on, except he wouldn't
Speaker 1: be so spotless on the other side. It would he
Speaker 1: would look and feel like he'd kind of been beaten
Speaker 1: up a lot more from that brief space walk. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because in addition to that swelling, you'd have a lot
Speaker 1: of bruising as well. Yeah, so he'd be pretty battered.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't just you know, shake it off, no matter
Speaker 1: how you know, tough an astronaut he really is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I Ben Franklin would be uh, he'd be okay.
Speaker 1: That ninety two window a little worse for wear, but
Speaker 1: he would be okay. Now I can't help but think
Speaker 1: back to some stuff we talked about in our episode
Speaker 1: the Werewolf Principle, where we talked about cyborgs in space. Uh,
Speaker 1: cyborgs in space, of course, was this paper by Manford E.
Speaker 1: Klins and Nathan S. Klein published in Astronautics in September
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty and it was pretty pivotal, like they
Speaker 1: basically infinite the word cyborg um. And they were talking,
Speaker 1: I mean, their whole thesis here was let us consider
Speaker 1: changing the organism to meet the demands of a new environment,
Speaker 1: instead of bringing a portion of that organism's native environment
Speaker 1: with them into hostile environments. In other words, the whole
Speaker 1: problem with with the humans exposing themselves to the void
Speaker 1: and suffering all this damage is because, surprise, surprise, we
Speaker 1: are not meant we are we we are not meant,
Speaker 1: we are not We have not evolved to live in
Speaker 1: that kind of an environment. Um, So to what extent
Speaker 1: could we change ourselves to better deal with an environment
Speaker 1: like that? Here's a quick quote from that paper, just
Speaker 1: to refresh everybody. They said, give man in space, in
Speaker 1: addition to flying his vehicle, must continually be checking on
Speaker 1: things and making adjustments, merely in order to keep himself alive.
Speaker 1: He becomes a slave to the machine. The purpose of
Speaker 1: the cyborg, as well as his own homeostatic systems, is
Speaker 1: to provide an organizational system in which such robot like
Speaker 1: problems are taken care of automatically and unconsciously, leaving man
Speaker 1: free to explore, to create, to think, and to feel.
Speaker 1: So among the various things that that the author suggested,
Speaker 1: uh they brought up enzymes enzyme tinkering to create anaerobic organisms.
Speaker 1: In other words, astronauts that don't require air or can
Speaker 1: live in different atmospheres lower body pressure to facilitate space walks.
Speaker 1: I don't know about naked spacewalks, but to to make
Speaker 1: it less of a you know, a differential um and
Speaker 1: and various other options as well. So it so it's
Speaker 1: not quite a magic ball that allows us to see
Speaker 1: exactly what we might be doing in the future. But
Speaker 1: but I love that that even this, this older paper
Speaker 1: did force us to think about an age when we're
Speaker 1: changing ourselves to deal with space well. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: you have European Space Agency tests that are looking at
Speaker 1: something like an Arthur Pod like creature Tarte grade to
Speaker 1: try to find out why this particular creature can survive
Speaker 1: in the vacuum for up to ten days. You know,
Speaker 1: what what special about was going on in its physiology
Speaker 1: and what might we borrow from it. Now, as you
Speaker 1: mentioned that that, um, that paper really was pressent in
Speaker 1: the in the sense that it was trying to figure
Speaker 1: out the various ways that we would try to adapt
Speaker 1: ourselves with the technology that we have. We know that
Speaker 1: Mars is on the books forties or at least that's
Speaker 1: the idea right now. That doesn't mean that we're going
Speaker 1: to be taking naked spacewalks. But the longer we are
Speaker 1: in space, the more time that you know that, if
Speaker 1: you're run a three year mission, um, the more your
Speaker 1: chances of having these sort of issues come up with
Speaker 1: space suits depress rising, and so the more interesting this
Speaker 1: question becomes what happens when you expose yourself to the vacuum?
Speaker 1: And it's not just this you know, romantic side death
Speaker 1: drive of just floating off into space you know, forever more.
Speaker 1: But it really is this fascinating question of how what
Speaker 1: actually happens to yourself and how how could you so
Speaker 1: you know, go beyond your human limits? H it Also,
Speaker 1: I can't help but think I guess that the fiction
Speaker 1: uh writer and sci fi fantomy can't help but imagine
Speaker 1: what if what have we we reached a point where
Speaker 1: exposure to the void was like a rite of passage,
Speaker 1: you know, like um like I think that I think
Speaker 1: the various things here on Earth that like the interstellar
Speaker 1: right of passage? Yeah, like well, like for instance, I
Speaker 1: think to the George R. Martin books and there's like
Speaker 1: a there are a group of people there that live
Speaker 1: in the Iron Islands, and they're all sort of like vikings,
Speaker 1: but but they have this right of passage that they
Speaker 1: all go through where they're all essentially drowned and resuscitated,
Speaker 1: and it's about forging the relationship with the water and
Speaker 1: uh and uh and there were their their religion and
Speaker 1: the way they view the water and their eventual return
Speaker 1: to the ocean in the form of drowning or death.
Speaker 1: So I can't help but imagine something similar with with
Speaker 1: with ast Not's in the future, Like what have would
Speaker 1: have to become a man or to become a um,
Speaker 1: you know, a full pledged adult, uh, space faring human,
Speaker 1: you had to do those nine seconds in the void,
Speaker 1: you know, and and be changed by it. I'm just
Speaker 1: imagining this uh future, Tony Robbins, that's right, what I
Speaker 1: guess thinking about the firewalking. Yeah, a very extreme, very
Speaker 1: dangerous form of firewalking. We've terraformed several planets. You've got
Speaker 1: this interstellar right of passage. If you want to show
Speaker 1: your how strong you are as a human, then you
Speaker 1: will expose yourself to the void. Yeah, surely somebody has
Speaker 1: done that before. If they haven't, I thought of it first.
Speaker 1: So cut me in on the deal. That's right, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: there you have it, Um, spacewalk nude, Ben Franklin, Ben Franklin.
Speaker 1: He's not gonna explode, he's not gonna boil, but he's
Speaker 1: he's gonna die, That's all there is to it. But
Speaker 1: unless he gets inside within a certain amount of time
Speaker 1: nine seconds, and we have some people on hand to
Speaker 1: revive him. On that note, let's call over the robot
Speaker 1: and have a little listener mail. You know, we heard,
Speaker 1: we heard a lot of stuff back regarding our episode
Speaker 1: on watch Stoppers, on the idea that some people just
Speaker 1: cannot wear watches because they have crazy electronic signals going
Speaker 1: on in their bodies, or they've got magnetic powers, or
Speaker 1: they're living too close to high, high tension wires, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So we did a whole episode sort of looking at
Speaker 1: that from a skeptic that kind of stirred stirred the
Speaker 1: beehive a little bit. We did. Yeah, yeah, And so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read just a couple of the replies we
Speaker 1: received here um with the various ideas about it. This
Speaker 1: one comes to us from Jen. Jen writes, this is
Speaker 1: high Robert and Julie I recently listened to your podcast
Speaker 1: on debunking the myth about individuals who claimed they can't
Speaker 1: wear watches. I am relieved to say that I was
Speaker 1: someone who thought I killed my watches, and with good cause.
Speaker 1: About three years ago. I went through five batteries in
Speaker 1: about three months and just one watch. I then went
Speaker 1: on to wear other watches my backups. I suppose that
Speaker 1: all went dead within a short amount of time. I
Speaker 1: finally gave up around the same time. I was at
Speaker 1: the doctor's office in an exam room when the clock
Speaker 1: on the wall uh spontaneously went crazy, spinning forward in
Speaker 1: time three hours in just ten minutes. And you know
Speaker 1: that's because you when you're a doctor's room. The clock
Speaker 1: never met The staff had to take it down and
Speaker 1: take out the batteries, and then made a comment about
Speaker 1: my breaking the clock. Sadly, none of this translated into
Speaker 1: time stopping superpowers from me, no matter how am I
Speaker 1: not much I tried. After listening to your podcast, I
Speaker 1: decided to get another battery for my dead watch. I'm
Speaker 1: happy to say that after twenty four hours, it is
Speaker 1: still ticking. Thank for the podcast and keep up the
Speaker 1: good work. And who is up from that was from Gin.
Speaker 1: All right, John, let us know if it's still working.
Speaker 1: I would be curious. Yeah, because, as I mentioned to
Speaker 1: uh one of our listens on Facebook, it was a
Speaker 1: little irritated with the with the skeptics approach, and um,
Speaker 1: you know, like I told her, I would love to
Speaker 1: live in in a world where humans had these powers.
Speaker 1: So if there's evidence that it the it that it,
Speaker 1: that it happens, I would love to hear about it.
Speaker 1: Well in her case too, wasn't it just a bunch
Speaker 1: of different electronics that? Um? Yeah, And I'm affected by her, yes,
Speaker 1: And uh, it's not just think she wanted to send
Speaker 1: us some sort of paper she found, which I would
Speaker 1: I would, So I'm holding off on non reading any
Speaker 1: of her comments until such time as she supplies that.
Speaker 1: But we have a few other ones here heard from Eric,
Speaker 1: and Eric writes and it says the first thing I
Speaker 1: wondered when you were talking about watch stoppers was can
Speaker 1: they wear the old fashioned mechanical wind up type of watch?
Speaker 1: These watches are powered by spring. You have to wind
Speaker 1: up every day, no battery, no electricity. You did mention
Speaker 1: the shielded watches. I bet that would work, not because
Speaker 1: the watches shielded, but because it's a higher quality, I
Speaker 1: never stopped to watch. But I did have a very
Speaker 1: cheap watch that caused my entire arm to swell up
Speaker 1: and turn red. It was very painful, but the watch
Speaker 1: was still working when I threw it away. Well, at
Speaker 1: least you threw the watch away and not the arm,
Speaker 1: all right, And we also have a few Facebook comments
Speaker 1: about the issue. Summer Rights sentence says, good morning, I
Speaker 1: just finished listening to your podcast watch Stoppers, and I
Speaker 1: immediately thought of my mother. She has always been one
Speaker 1: of those people who couldn't wear watches, but she has
Speaker 1: also had issues regarding all electronics. She worked for a
Speaker 1: company that manufactured circuit boards, and all employees needed to
Speaker 1: wear a grounding band so they wouldn't short circuit the
Speaker 1: boards while working on them. When my mother first started
Speaker 1: working there, the QC department noticed a lot of her
Speaker 1: boards were coming back dead, so they ended up testing
Speaker 1: her with a machine at the register's static electricity. As
Speaker 1: a result, they discovered that even with the band on,
Speaker 1: the area around her was still off the scale, and
Speaker 1: the only way that they were able to combat it
Speaker 1: was to have her wear three bands at any given time. Also,
Speaker 1: when we signed up for our cell phone plan, I
Speaker 1: got my mother the same phone iPhone as the rest
Speaker 1: of our family, and this day she can never keep
Speaker 1: a charge on them. I say that them because we've
Speaker 1: swapped it out at least two times for more than
Speaker 1: three to four hours. So while I'm sure some things
Speaker 1: are situational, like my mother's television screen outputting in green
Speaker 1: bad tube, I couldn't help but think there might be
Speaker 1: some credence who reclaimed that electronics and her don't have
Speaker 1: the healthiest relationship. He had the great work. Sincerely, Summer. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I can't help but think about Michael Persinger,
Speaker 1: who I think i'd bring up probably like once every
Speaker 1: two months. But he is the guy who worked with
Speaker 1: transcarannial magnets and was able to actually manipulate parts of
Speaker 1: the brain that had to do with seeing visions through
Speaker 1: these magnets. And he found that some people were more
Speaker 1: susceptible to the magnets than other people that had a
Speaker 1: high nobility or a lovability and um, so there's sort
Speaker 1: of a question mark to me about what that means
Speaker 1: in terms of electromagnetic activity. I still stand by, you know,
Speaker 1: a watch as a watch and we tend to bang
Speaker 1: it around, but that that particular experiment is very interesting
Speaker 1: to me. The transcarannial magnets cool. All right. We also
Speaker 1: heard from Kelly. Kelly writes in this says, Hello, guys,
Speaker 1: I love the show and the blog. I wanted to
Speaker 1: write in a tangential response to the past two podcasts
Speaker 1: on what Human Watch Stoppers and lightning rods. My problem
Speaker 1: is to touch screens don't work for me. iPhones, iPods,
Speaker 1: e readers, and many other devices that are becoming so
Speaker 1: common in everyday life are close to me due to
Speaker 1: this handicap, including the self checkout at my local library
Speaker 1: and many a t m s. While trying to figure
Speaker 1: this out, my very clever daughter pointed out that is
Speaker 1: a healthcare worker in an inner city hospital and minor germophobe.
Speaker 1: I wash my hands dozens of times per day and
Speaker 1: also use alcohol based sanitizers nearly as often throwing a
Speaker 1: couple of surgical scrubs with ionized soaps, and my hands
Speaker 1: are chronically dry and cracked, despite the best lotions by
Speaker 1: pharmacists can recommend. All this washing has effectively removed the
Speaker 1: moisture and sweat from my skin. Thus I cannot transmit
Speaker 1: a charge to from a device. I find some help
Speaker 1: if I use the stylist, because the the metal of
Speaker 1: the body of the style is touches more of my
Speaker 1: hand palm and increases the chance of making a connection.
Speaker 1: In times of desperation, I have resorted to licking my
Speaker 1: fingers to get it to work. This is a real problem.
Speaker 1: More and more of the machines I interact with as
Speaker 1: part of my work are using touch screen technology. While
Speaker 1: some of them might use different types of screens resistive, surface,
Speaker 1: acoustic wave, they're enough ones like this that I'm getting very,
Speaker 1: very frustrated. I thought you might like the story. Perhaps
Speaker 1: some of your listeners had a similar problem or nova solution.
Speaker 1: So far, my best response is to hand the phone
Speaker 1: to my teenager, who rolls her eyes at how mom
Speaker 1: can't use technology. Well, there's the hot dog method. I
Speaker 1: think we brought up the idea of using a hot
Speaker 1: dog as a stylus. Yeah, that's pretty um a pretty
Speaker 1: good way to go, and imagined a began would work
Speaker 1: as well. There's less Greece. Yeah, but that's interesting, interesting
Speaker 1: firsthand account of some of the problems that can occur
Speaker 1: when we're trying to interact with this uh ubiquitous technology.
Speaker 1: And then finally we heard from Sean, who writes Sinences
Speaker 1: High Guys. I was just listening to the Human Lightning
Speaker 1: Rod episode. I can say from experience that a car
Speaker 1: is a safe place in a storm, because I was
Speaker 1: inside one that was struck by lightning. I'm an archaeologist
Speaker 1: in upstate New York, and I was driving back in
Speaker 1: the rain from the day of excavating on the New
Speaker 1: York State Throwaway. We were at a toll plaza and
Speaker 1: when bang, there was a flash of light in the
Speaker 1: car stalled. I dream some words you can't say on
Speaker 1: the podcast. We managed to restart the car and went
Speaker 1: back to the University at Albany. In the parking lot,
Speaker 1: we saw that the bolt had hit the top rear
Speaker 1: brake light and exited through the rear right tire, which
Speaker 1: was now flat. Nobody was hurt, just really shaking up.
Speaker 1: What was really weird was that the rest of my crew,
Speaker 1: only a few cars behind us, didn't see anything happen
Speaker 1: at all. I love the show, Sean. Have you ever
Speaker 1: been in the car when lightning struck nearby? Not to
Speaker 1: my knowledge, very disconcerting. Yeah, yeah, and thank goodness, there's
Speaker 1: the Faraday effect in play right, keeping you safe inside cool. Well.
Speaker 1: You know, if anyone else has any comments or personal
Speaker 1: accounts related to lightning strikes and watches that mysteriously stopped
Speaker 1: working or other electronic devices that we have trouble interacting
Speaker 1: with in a chronic fashion, but we would love to
Speaker 1: hear about it, and we would love to hear about
Speaker 1: your thoughts on this episode about naked space walks, about
Speaker 1: taking your helmet off, and outer space. Um, about the science,
Speaker 1: about the science fiction. I know there's some great examples
Speaker 1: from science fic and that I didn't mention or am
Speaker 1: not aware of, and I know you guys and gals
Speaker 1: will fill me in on that, and I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear about them. So uh. In the meantime, if you
Speaker 1: would like to reach out to us, you can find
Speaker 1: us on Facebook. You can find us on tumbled We're
Speaker 1: stuffed to bowl your Mind on both of those. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter where we are blow the Mind.
Speaker 1: You can find us on YouTube where we're doing all
Speaker 1: these videos now, and you can find that by going
Speaker 1: to mind Stuff Show or Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: Both of those accounts go to the same place on YouTube.
Speaker 1: And hey, we have a website where all of this
Speaker 1: stuff is wrapped up into one place. If there's something
Speaker 1: you're looking for related to stuff the Bowl of your Mind,
Speaker 1: this is the mother ship and you can find it
Speaker 1: at stuff to Bow your Mind dot com. And speaking
Speaker 1: of YouTube, check out our sister podcast, Christine Conger of
Speaker 1: stuff Mom Never Told You on YouTube. She has got
Speaker 1: some really great stuff. They're very funny. It's YouTube dot
Speaker 1: com board slash stuff Mom Never Told You, And don't
Speaker 1: forget to drop us a line at blew the Mind
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