Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Jean McCormick. And Robert,
Speaker 1: did you ever have a geology textbook or any kind
Speaker 1: of old science textbook that showed those illustrations way back
Speaker 1: in the day of what the Earth looked like, what
Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth looks like before, you know,
Speaker 1: in previous geological eras you go way way back, what
Speaker 1: was it like to be on planet Earth? And and
Speaker 1: you always see the like the volcanoes and they've like
Speaker 1: caught right in the middle of an illustration some kind
Speaker 1: of meteor bombardment, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's always some sort of cataclysmic scenario going on, you know,
Speaker 1: something that makes for a nice painting other than just say,
Speaker 1: you know, a dead sea. Yeah. And in the really
Speaker 1: early ones where you see the Earth as a kind
Speaker 1: of primordial landscape, there is very often I have found
Speaker 1: on a red orange tint to them, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, Yeah, Like they paint the Earth at
Speaker 1: that period as a world of fire like that at
Speaker 1: one point, Earth was how we imagine hell yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I believe the the original Fantasia film has a as
Speaker 1: a segment in there which is sort of the primordial
Speaker 1: Earth that invokes some of this sort of imagery sort
Speaker 1: of red orange. I think, so that may be a
Speaker 1: little more technicolor huge, but but I think there's some orangine.
Speaker 1: Never sure as if there's like an off screen fire
Speaker 1: that's illuminating everything gels. But so I want to go
Speaker 1: back to say, okay, let's look at what we do
Speaker 1: know about the geological history of the Earth and try
Speaker 1: to paint a picture of the landscape from say, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe some early part of the Archean eon. So going way,
Speaker 1: way way back, if you were wells time traveler in
Speaker 1: the time machine and you accidentally you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't lean your leg up against the dial, and
Speaker 1: I went back all the way, what would it be like. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, we're gonna be talking about a time
Speaker 1: when the Earth has a very different atmospheric composition. So
Speaker 1: it's got a reducing atmosphere with almost no significant amount
Speaker 1: of free oxygen gas. And if you look across the landscape,
Speaker 1: you're going to see a lot of rocks, but you
Speaker 1: are not going to see visible plants or animals. Because
Speaker 1: the land part of the Earth has not been colonized
Speaker 1: by life. You're gonna see a hot, barren, rocky landscape.
Speaker 1: But there is life in this period. So where's the life. Well,
Speaker 1: if you go to the coastal regions, you might see
Speaker 1: these strange vertical bulbs protruding up out of the tidal
Speaker 1: pools around the Rocky coast and they're like black brains
Speaker 1: that are just jutting up out of the surf. These
Speaker 1: are the stramatolites. Have you seen these roberts? I don't
Speaker 1: think I've seen an image of this now. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so some of them still exist on Earth today. You
Speaker 1: can look at things that there were probably things very
Speaker 1: much like the stramatellites. Just Google image search. It is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. They're little black brains coming up out of
Speaker 1: the water. And these are these crazy bio sedimentary structures
Speaker 1: made by mats of of cyanobacteria, you know, these these small,
Speaker 1: tiny photosynthetic organisms trapping grains of minerals to build these
Speaker 1: bacterial mountain bulbs. And it's probably hot. It's probably hot out,
Speaker 1: but if you think about it, this is a world
Speaker 1: completely without fire. Yeah, there's no fire on planet Earth.
Speaker 1: And it's not just in a sense of like, oh,
Speaker 1: there are no there are no people having camp fires,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no there's no fire to be maintained. No,
Speaker 1: this is a time when Earth was a a fireless world,
Speaker 1: like fire was not possible. It was a time before fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you can create some some very hot scenes in
Speaker 1: this geological period, but there's not going to be any ignition.
Speaker 1: There will be no fire on planet Earth at this period. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's immordial as fire is to us. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's just mind boggling to think back on a time
Speaker 1: when it didn't exist. It was it's almost as if
Speaker 1: it had not been invented yet. Yeah, and that's crazy,
Speaker 1: because how could there be a world without fire. Fire
Speaker 1: is not like an invention of human beings as as
Speaker 1: you just alluded to. It's a natural product of chemistry.
Speaker 1: It seems like it's should be something that's just universal.
Speaker 1: There should be fire everywhere, right, it's physics and chemistry.
Speaker 1: But I guess we should look at what it takes
Speaker 1: to make a fire. Yeah, so most people are probably
Speaker 1: familiar with this. You have a have three prerequisites for fire,
Speaker 1: the fire pyramid, the fire fire triangle. Yeah, when we
Speaker 1: were researching this, I found some rather elaborate ways to say, hey,
Speaker 1: the stuff that makes a fire. Uh so you gotta
Speaker 1: have your heat obviously, that's one's that's one line. You've
Speaker 1: got to have your fuel. Another, what is burning? You
Speaker 1: gotta have something that burns, and you have to have
Speaker 1: oxygen for that fire to consume oxidizer. Yeah. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that you can see from this, though,
Speaker 1: is that fire is the interaction of these three elements.
Speaker 1: It's not so much a thing in itself as it
Speaker 1: is an event or a process. It's an interaction between
Speaker 1: these three elements. And that's kind of counterintuitive to us
Speaker 1: because like when you carry a torch and it feels
Speaker 1: like you're carrying a substance of something somewhere. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: don't think of it as is the same as being
Speaker 1: a sayn explosion, which of course is also a chemical reaction,
Speaker 1: but it's more of an instantaneous effect. A fire is
Speaker 1: almost you can almost think of it as a as
Speaker 1: an explosion and slow motion or something like that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a but but since it takes place over time,
Speaker 1: we think of it as a thing as a substance, right,
Speaker 1: But it is an interaction. So let's look a little
Speaker 1: deeper at this interaction. What happens when a fire starts? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it comes back to those three ingredients we're
Speaker 1: talking about. Uh, and it's interesting to to break down
Speaker 1: each of those and get where they come in to
Speaker 1: the long deep history of planet Earth. Okay, Well, one
Speaker 1: source is heat. That's not really a problem, right, That's
Speaker 1: never really been a problem obviously on the planet. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, a sparkle do it, Lightning strikes, Volcanic activity
Speaker 1: is sparking rocks like one rock falling down, scraping another one, Um,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, meteorites, all of these have taken
Speaker 1: place throughout Earth's deep history. So that's that's never been
Speaker 1: We've never wanted for heat. Okay, so we've got heat,
Speaker 1: But what about the other two planks oxygen and fuel?
Speaker 1: Was we alluded to earlier? You had a different atmosphere
Speaker 1: back exactly? Yeah, Uh, it wasn't until five hundred and
Speaker 1: forty million years ago, that's the beginning of the Paleozoic era,
Speaker 1: that the photosynthetic organisms essentially terraformed the planet's atmosphere into
Speaker 1: an oxygenated balance, capable of providing the necessary the necessary
Speaker 1: second ingredient for fire, that being oxygen. Right, they did
Speaker 1: to Earth what what we might want to do to
Speaker 1: Mars in a thousand years or something. Yeah, transformed, it
Speaker 1: changed its atmosphere through some chemical engineering. And uh, and
Speaker 1: one thing you might have noticed is, and when I
Speaker 1: was painting the picture earlier, you know, I said, we
Speaker 1: had some photosynthetic organisms, but we didn't really have an
Speaker 1: oxygen atmosphere yet. It took a while, right, So, photosynthetic
Speaker 1: organisms appeared, and they were creating some oxygen, but for
Speaker 1: a long time it seemed like oxygen was accumulating in
Speaker 1: the oceans or sort of reacting with stuff on the
Speaker 1: surface of the Earth and oxidizing it. But over time
Speaker 1: we did start to build up a serious oxygen atmosphere.
Speaker 1: And uh, this didn't go so well for a lot
Speaker 1: of organisms, right, yeah, yeah, I mean it was an apocalypse.
Speaker 1: Everything became great poison of everything that came before. But
Speaker 1: you know, okay, so so at this point, we've got
Speaker 1: our we've got our heat, and we finally have our
Speaker 1: oxygen available, and this of course brings us to fuel
Speaker 1: what is actually going to burn yeah, you can't burn rocks, right,
Speaker 1: have you ever tried? That doesn't work out? So well, Uh,
Speaker 1: this is actually the last ingredient. They became available for
Speaker 1: hire since you've got to have a terrestrial plant matter
Speaker 1: that builds up and you know, is burnable, and terrestrial
Speaker 1: plant matter was scarce in this early age. In fact,
Speaker 1: the earliest evidence of charred vegetation dates back a mere
Speaker 1: four hundred and forty million years ago. That's not that
Speaker 1: long ago, I mean geologically speaking. So that's the evidence,
Speaker 1: of course, right, But so if the Earth has been
Speaker 1: here four point five billion years and so it's only
Speaker 1: been within the last billion years that we have evidence
Speaker 1: of fire on Earth. But then it took off after that,
Speaker 1: because we'll be exploring it got huge. It's really big. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it became a rather big deal. Um. It came to
Speaker 1: define the new Earth. You had geologic ages in which
Speaker 1: fluctuating oxygen levels contributed to the rise and fall of
Speaker 1: terrestrial burn rates. Um. And then and of course the
Speaker 1: humans eventually came along. They took a shine to fire,
Speaker 1: and the rest is history. You know. I think it's
Speaker 1: interesting to think about Earth as the fire planet, right,
Speaker 1: because where where else in the universe, do we know
Speaker 1: for sure there is fire? It is my understanding that
Speaker 1: there is nowhere else in the universe that we know
Speaker 1: for sure has fire. Now, there could be fire, there
Speaker 1: could be, but what you would need that triangle you'd
Speaker 1: write the fuel, you'd need the oxidizer or the oxygen,
Speaker 1: and you need the heat and that just I don't
Speaker 1: know of anywhere else other than Earth that you have
Speaker 1: all three of those things, right we Yeah, we do
Speaker 1: not know of a place that has fire other than
Speaker 1: the Earth right now. Maybe out there many people believe
Speaker 1: it exists, but for now, there is no such thing
Speaker 1: as extraterrestrial fire. You know, they call Earth the water planet,
Speaker 1: but this makes me think that we should also think
Speaker 1: of it as the fire planet. I mean, fire seems
Speaker 1: even more unique to Earth than water does. There's water
Speaker 1: ice on plenty of other planets or moons and stuff
Speaker 1: in the Solar system, right And of course one can
Speaker 1: certainly imagine a water world in which fire is possible,
Speaker 1: but even more rare because if you just have oceans,
Speaker 1: if you don't have we well just to wet, or
Speaker 1: if you don't have plenty of dried materials around, they're
Speaker 1: gonna they're gonna be able to fill that uh that
Speaker 1: the third notch on the ingredients list, then it's not
Speaker 1: gonna happen. Yeah. This also makes me think about how
Speaker 1: the atmospheric composition and just the basic nature of a
Speaker 1: planet create the environment under which fire can arise. But
Speaker 1: also it sort of turns the knobs, right, It's not
Speaker 1: just like you can have fire or you can't. Fire
Speaker 1: is a chemical reaction, and chemical reactions tend to be uh,
Speaker 1: they tend to be degrees of susceptibility to them, right,
Speaker 1: Like you can increase all of the catalytic conditions that
Speaker 1: make this chemical reaction right to take place. So, for example, uh,
Speaker 1: can you imagine a science fiction story? Can you imagine?
Speaker 1: Of course you can. You have a great imagination. Let's
Speaker 1: imagine the science fiction story where space space explorers they're
Speaker 1: flying around, they're looking for a safe planet they can
Speaker 1: land end on with a breathable atmosphere because they're having
Speaker 1: engine trouble or something, and the only planet nearby is
Speaker 1: this planet that has an oxygen atmosphere. But they sat
Speaker 1: down and they realized, whoa, it's got a really oxygen
Speaker 1: rich atmosphere. So not just oxygen, but much higher concentrations
Speaker 1: of oxygen than we're used to in Earth's atmosphere today.
Speaker 1: And then let's also say it's got high temperature, is
Speaker 1: in low moisture, you could actually have a sort of
Speaker 1: maximally flammable planet, right because it would be Yeah, for
Speaker 1: the same reason one does not smoke while using an
Speaker 1: oxygen mask, exactly. Yeah. And also for the same reason
Speaker 1: that you can see tragedies in like NASA history for example,
Speaker 1: So you know the crew deaths during testing for the
Speaker 1: Apollo one mission. They were during testing for this mission,
Speaker 1: they were they were trying to test the capsule for liftoff,
Speaker 1: and there was a cabin fire. It was probably ignited
Speaker 1: by a spark from some bad wiring, but the problem
Speaker 1: was that the capsule was filled with pure oxygen environment,
Speaker 1: which combined with the high pressure and then the presence
Speaker 1: of flammable materials in the cabin meant that any fire
Speaker 1: could just completely easily rage out of control in a
Speaker 1: in a heartbeat. And that's exactly what happened, and it
Speaker 1: killed the three astronauts while they were testing on in
Speaker 1: January nine seven. Then that was grisome, white and chaffey,
Speaker 1: and so you can imagine in a in a whole
Speaker 1: planet like this, if like your whole planet's atmosphere is
Speaker 1: somewhere closer to what it was like in that Apollo
Speaker 1: one test cabin. That's not that's not an easy place
Speaker 1: to live, right, and to the environment, right, wander around like,
Speaker 1: am I afraid of dropping a tool and accidentally causing
Speaker 1: a spark? And you'd have to also be careful way
Speaker 1: for your compost, that's, of course, because that's another way
Speaker 1: that you can have a combustion, the sort of spontaneous
Speaker 1: combustion that occurs certainly with compost hay bales, but arguably
Speaker 1: with people as well. Uh, spontaneous seeming combustion, which is
Speaker 1: another topic. Wait, Robert, you've got to give me the
Speaker 1: straight on this. Okay, spontaneous human combustion. Is it real
Speaker 1: or not? It's been a while since I researched it.
Speaker 1: We have, we have an older episode on it, which
Speaker 1: I can link to on the landing page for this episode.
Speaker 1: As I recall, it is certainly possible, but it gets
Speaker 1: difficult when you look at individual instances because a lot
Speaker 1: of times there are other explanations that could could be
Speaker 1: in place. Yeah, I remember some skeptical takes, at least
Speaker 1: thinking that I'd come across people saying, you know, almost
Speaker 1: all these cases can be explained just by people accidentally
Speaker 1: setting fire their clothes, smoking in this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Um as I recall, though there are some there are
Speaker 1: some theories for how it could take, how it could occur,
Speaker 1: had it. But it's kind of a case by case
Speaker 1: situation though. So if it can happen with fertilizer, could
Speaker 1: happen with us. Yeah, if your body is enough like fertilizer,
Speaker 1: then you then then then you could go up like
Speaker 1: a torch. I think my body is much like fertilizer.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna do a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to discuss how fire shaped
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Speaker 1: we're back, so today in this episode, we're gonna be
Speaker 1: referring to this excellent two thousand nine paper from Bioscience
Speaker 1: called a Burning Story, which would be a great Pixar movie.
Speaker 1: But it's a Burning Story call and the Role of
Speaker 1: Fire in the History of Life by Julie GI Pausas
Speaker 1: and John E. Keiley, and I want to start with
Speaker 1: a quote that they have from their paper that they
Speaker 1: write quote, A world without fires is like a sphere
Speaker 1: without round nous. That is, we cannot imagine it. Wildfires
Speaker 1: have shaped our world since long before humans emerged. We
Speaker 1: cannot understand our biota and biota means all of the
Speaker 1: biomass that makes up a certain area, you know, all
Speaker 1: all of the life there. They say, we cannot understand
Speaker 1: our biota in terms of adaptations and ecosystem distribution without
Speaker 1: including fire as a process in the natural history of
Speaker 1: the planet. So they're they're saying fire is not just
Speaker 1: something that happens occasionally and you know it's suddenly like,
Speaker 1: oh there's a fire, freak out, got a run from it.
Speaker 1: They're they're casting fire more as a very standard, regular
Speaker 1: part of Earth life that shaped the life forms that
Speaker 1: exist on the planet today. Yeah, because they think back
Speaker 1: to the three ingredients, think back to the the the
Speaker 1: ways that those things occur um. So you have lightning strikes, meteorites,
Speaker 1: et cetera, volcanic activity, these are all things that can
Speaker 1: that can and do touch off natural wildfires, and so
Speaker 1: periodic wildfires in the exact um you know, the schedule
Speaker 1: of the wildfires, the exact regime of the wildfires, which
Speaker 1: we'll get into a bit, will vary, but you're going
Speaker 1: to have whole ecosystems that evolve with fire being in play.
Speaker 1: Now on our planet. It's important to note there is
Speaker 1: no such thing as a fireproof organism, and certainly we
Speaker 1: have some wonderful examples of creatures in sci fi and
Speaker 1: fantasy that you know that roll aroun sound in fire,
Speaker 1: or particularly thinking of in Dungeons and Dragons, you have,
Speaker 1: you know, an entire plane of fire, and they're all
Speaker 1: these like salamander like beings that live there and fire elementals.
Speaker 1: But life as we know it here on Earth is
Speaker 1: not so rugged. Now I'm trying to think what that
Speaker 1: would even be. Let's let's cut out the magic, no
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragons stuff. No, no, no dark curses or protections,
Speaker 1: just biologically. Could there be an organism that survives in fire.
Speaker 1: I don't really see how that would happen, unless maybe
Speaker 1: if it's something kind of like a weird like combination
Speaker 1: of a turtle and like B B eight from the
Speaker 1: Force awakened, so it's like a shell all around with
Speaker 1: maybe some holes that it can slide open and close
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah. I mean, we certainly have species that
Speaker 1: are fire resistant, and we have plenty of species that
Speaker 1: are able to to varying degrees game wildfires and certainly
Speaker 1: exploit the benefits of wildfire fires. But we haven't We
Speaker 1: have nothing that is fireproof. Nothing that that that that
Speaker 1: is not destroyed by the flame, its flame is present
Speaker 1: in sufficient amounts, right exactly, So fire excites molecules. The
Speaker 1: structure of our molecules is rather important to us. You'd
Speaker 1: have to find some organism to which I guess it's
Speaker 1: surrounded by molecules that can be burned and don't really
Speaker 1: matter fire. And this is important for the ways that
Speaker 1: humans use fire, Like fire breaks things down, Fire changes
Speaker 1: the chemistry of things. Uh and uh and and it's
Speaker 1: we're just not I mean, we're just highly susceptible to that. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: the the fire world is a real part of the world,
Speaker 1: and it's something that all kinds of organisms have come
Speaker 1: up with these adaptations too. So like, like we said,
Speaker 1: there's no fireproof organism, but what does it mean to
Speaker 1: be a fire resistant organism? Okay? Well, one example that
Speaker 1: often comes up or sequoias. Okay, So, so some plant
Speaker 1: species actually depend on fire is part of the reproductive cycle,
Speaker 1: while some simply evolved long ago to weather regular wildfires.
Speaker 1: So some can get through it, right. Uh. Sequoia seeds,
Speaker 1: for example, actually remain dormant until fire breaks down the
Speaker 1: outer coating as such a good control. Burn can can
Speaker 1: also aid the environment by stimulating local vegetation. Um, you know.
Speaker 1: And on on top of this, you have a situation
Speaker 1: where the fire is going to uh, it's not going
Speaker 1: to burn down the larger plants in the various forest
Speaker 1: environments are just gonna be scorched. And yes, some will succumb,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, it's gonna be the smaller
Speaker 1: things that get burned away, the undergrowth, and then that
Speaker 1: opens up that area for new vegetation to move in.
Speaker 1: It also allows various animals new opportunities to thrive. So
Speaker 1: it it's a dynamic aspect of of many different environments
Speaker 1: and and it's not just limited like it's easy to think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, like California dry hills or grasslands, and certainly
Speaker 1: those are areas dry areas with vegetation are going to
Speaker 1: be very susceptible to wildfire. But wildfire also exists in
Speaker 1: tropical jungle environments. There are plenty of examples of that.
Speaker 1: Because those areas are gonna have dry spells as well,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be combustible materials, and therefore it's a part
Speaker 1: of those environments is as well. Yeah, totally you see
Speaker 1: it in grasslands, you see it in savannahs. There is
Speaker 1: such a thing as desert fire. And also one of
Speaker 1: the things about fire on earth is that wildfires trigger
Speaker 1: cycles of wildfires. Fire begets fire in a certain way because,
Speaker 1: for one thing, you can look at how fire prevents
Speaker 1: bigger fires. This makes any sense, there's another reason for
Speaker 1: control burns, Yeah, exactly. So, like small fires in a
Speaker 1: certain area will clean out the underbrush, you know, dry
Speaker 1: vegetation near the ground that if allowed to grow unchecked
Speaker 1: by fire, could eventually lead to larger fires that actually
Speaker 1: catch you know, the crowns of trees on fire, and
Speaker 1: those become very hot and spread very uncontrollably. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: there was There was certainly a time in like forest
Speaker 1: management and agriculture where I think we we just we
Speaker 1: just said, Okay, fires are bad, We're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: cut them out wherever possible. But yeah, you just you
Speaker 1: just destabilize the natural environment and the environment's ability to
Speaker 1: roll with periodic wildfires. And on the subject of periodic wildfires,
Speaker 1: we mentioned regimes of fire rightlier, and that's a that's
Speaker 1: a great term, yeah, because it sounds like, you know,
Speaker 1: fire demons ruling them a broken world, a new flaming
Speaker 1: king since to the throne of coals. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: some dark imagery, Joe. But but it's a good day
Speaker 1: for that sort of thing. Um. Yeah, So you have
Speaker 1: you have a single forest fire that's an event, just
Speaker 1: a fire event, but then a series of fires over time.
Speaker 1: That's a fire regime, and that a fire regime. That
Speaker 1: is what organisms evolve to roll with, not an individual fire,
Speaker 1: but but regimes of fire. It's sort of like how
Speaker 1: organisms are not going to be adapted to an individual storm,
Speaker 1: but they will be adapted to the local climate, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And of course the regimes are gonna vary in some areas,
Speaker 1: some areas gonna be more prone to wildfires than others,
Speaker 1: as we discussed, because you're talking about about the various
Speaker 1: factors here. Human agriculture of course alters the situation somewhat.
Speaker 1: You have interactions of humidity, conditions, fuels, ignition sources. All
Speaker 1: these determined the particular regions fire regime. You also have
Speaker 1: to take into account topography and wind, like what's gonna
Speaker 1: how are those going to affect the spread of the flames.
Speaker 1: And certainly I think any of our listeners who live
Speaker 1: in more in places where wildfires are more of a
Speaker 1: regular concern um. And so we think about California, Arizona,
Speaker 1: places like that. You know, you're gonna be far more
Speaker 1: familiar with these realities than than a lot of our listeners.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the craziest looking wildfires I've ever
Speaker 1: seen was from some footage I saw of wildfire in Australia.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen video of like the the Australian
Speaker 1: fire storms and like Canberra? Oh? I don't think I have.
Speaker 1: Oh man, it's otherworldly. It does not look like Planet
Speaker 1: Earth where it is like those old illustrations from the
Speaker 1: previous geological areas where the entire sky is orange and
Speaker 1: like flames and sparks are just whipping around in the wind.
Speaker 1: It is unreal. You should look that up. Fun fact.
Speaker 1: I bring up Ian and Banks a lot in his
Speaker 1: Culture series of novels because he always has some fabulous
Speaker 1: sci fi visions that he's discussing being a technology or
Speaker 1: certainly visions of alien life in alien worlds. And in
Speaker 1: his just absolutely excellent book The Player of Games, Uh,
Speaker 1: there is a there's a planet that pops into it
Speaker 1: since it's a it's a water world. So you just
Speaker 1: have this ring of land with this constant fire that
Speaker 1: moves all the way around it, and it's an essential
Speaker 1: part of the of of the the eco system. So
Speaker 1: if the fire were to get put out, that seems
Speaker 1: like that could just be like the end of life
Speaker 1: terrestrial life on this planet. Yeah. Yeah, it's like this
Speaker 1: alien vision on It is even more dependent on fire
Speaker 1: than anything we could, you know, experience here on Earth.
Speaker 1: But it serves as a kind of an interesting model too,
Speaker 1: to exemplify the importance of wildfires in our own ecosystem,
Speaker 1: to say that, yes, they do occur, and they and
Speaker 1: in the appropriate cycles, they play an important role. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we come
Speaker 1: back there will be more about alien worlds and fire. Hey.
Speaker 1: I'm Chuck and I'm Josh and we're the host of
Speaker 1: Stuff you should know the podcast, that's right, And if
Speaker 1: you're into understanding cool and unusual and seemingly ordinary and
Speaker 1: even boring things that are made interesting, you should check
Speaker 1: us out. Please and thank you. We're on iTunes, Spotify,
Speaker 1: Google Play Music, anywhere you get podcasts. All right, we're back, Okay, Robert,
Speaker 1: I have a question for you because thinking about alien
Speaker 1: worlds and fire and the fact that we live on
Speaker 1: the only fire world, and the fact that we know
Speaker 1: of a time in the history of the Earth where
Speaker 1: fire was not possible on this planet was just chemically
Speaker 1: not going to happen. Um, my question is could technological
Speaker 1: civilization arise on a planet that doesn't permit fire? So
Speaker 1: we think about um, other planets and other other biologies
Speaker 1: were always considering this. You know, we're like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: our closed minds. We think everybody's got to be like
Speaker 1: us in the universe in order to have some kind
Speaker 1: of technological intelligence. Maybe our our minds are not too closed,
Speaker 1: Maybe they're too open when we're trying to imagine, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, powerful alien technologies, aliens with spaceships and radio
Speaker 1: transmitters and stuff like that, arising on planets that have
Speaker 1: different atmospheric compositions, or might be water worlds or something
Speaker 1: like that. Because I just started to think, how on
Speaker 1: Earth could we put on Earth it not intended? How
Speaker 1: could we possibly have generated tech knowledgy on this planet
Speaker 1: without the chemical readiness to create fire in our atmosphere?
Speaker 1: Just imagine the life forms that arise on a planet
Speaker 1: with a non oxygen atmosphere and no other gases that
Speaker 1: could play the role of an oxidizer. First of all,
Speaker 1: you've got the question about how how would they cook
Speaker 1: food and stuff like that, And actually, we're gonna do
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a two part episode about fire.
Speaker 1: In the second episode, we're gonna talk more about the
Speaker 1: ideas of how cooking informed the intelligent beings we became.
Speaker 1: But also here's a maybe even a much bigger one.
Speaker 1: What about smelting or to create metal tools? Like, how
Speaker 1: do you create metal tools without fire? You might be
Speaker 1: sitting there thinking for a second, like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: there's other hot things, and uh, really, what else could
Speaker 1: you use? What are you saying you would stand over
Speaker 1: a volcano and somehow find a way to use that
Speaker 1: to create metal tools? I mean it is it starts
Speaker 1: becoming very difficult trying to figure out how you would
Speaker 1: do this. And then without metal old tools, could you
Speaker 1: actually expect discoveries of things like electricity, optics, fundamental forces.
Speaker 1: Um So, it just made me wonder, well, is there
Speaker 1: any non fire equivalent? Is there a margarine of fire
Speaker 1: in the chemistry that's available to this universe? You know,
Speaker 1: is there some other universal exothermic chemical reaction, a reaction
Speaker 1: that puts off heat that that can be transported around
Speaker 1: as easily as fire and started as easily as fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's easy to think of various sci
Speaker 1: fi visions of sort of you know, organic purely organic
Speaker 1: species that have organic spaceships and organic technology. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not totally discounting that vision, but when you start
Speaker 1: breaking it down and look at look at the only
Speaker 1: model we have for technological ascension, that the role of
Speaker 1: fire just cannot be divided front it right, Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: forcing one of the scenarios where we just we cannot
Speaker 1: envision or it's very difficult to envision another system that works.
Speaker 1: You know, I did think of one example, one counterexample
Speaker 1: for cooking, and it's when when Rachel and I were
Speaker 1: in Iceland. We were we went to a little town
Speaker 1: called hivera Garthy where they have a basket that you
Speaker 1: can boil an egg and well it's not boiled, where
Speaker 1: you can steam an egg by putting in a in
Speaker 1: a basket that hangs over a geothermal vent. This team
Speaker 1: comes out of Yeah, I can see that working. I
Speaker 1: thought you were going to go with the other like
Speaker 1: fermentation methods of preparing food, because certainly you can make
Speaker 1: an argument there, right, oh yeah, yeah, but that's that's
Speaker 1: not cooking. Well, it's in a way it's cooking. It's
Speaker 1: a it's it's cuisine. It's cuisine. Yeah, but yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's reatherly different from cooking. I guess. Uh. So we
Speaker 1: were talking about this the other day and we're and
Speaker 1: we were looking around and thinking, you know, somebody, somebody
Speaker 1: has to have tackled this. There has to be a
Speaker 1: scientist out there who's really gone in deep on this
Speaker 1: question of technological without fire. No, I I gotta say, Robert,
Speaker 1: this is all you. I had no idea anybody would
Speaker 1: have written on this. Well, uh yeah, because I was surprised,
Speaker 1: pleasantly surprised to find this a wonderful article by a
Speaker 1: scientist by the name of Michael D. Swords. Swords Like
Speaker 1: the Weapon right, uh, is titled could extraterrestrial intelligences be
Speaker 1: expected to breathe Our air? And it was published in
Speaker 1: a edition of the Journal of Scientific Exploration. Okay, now
Speaker 1: we should put up a big skeptics asterisk here and
Speaker 1: say that the Journal of Scientific Exploration is a publication
Speaker 1: that deals with friends fringe science like u apology and
Speaker 1: the paranormal, the horizons of science, as they would put it. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it has been accused by critics of promulgating pseudoscience.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to adjudicate that here, But we
Speaker 1: don't want to give the impression of an endorsement in
Speaker 1: general of this journal or its contents. Uh just put
Speaker 1: up this big red asterisk on the credentials of the
Speaker 1: journal in general. But we do want to talk about
Speaker 1: this one very interesting and at least seemingly solid paper. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and likewise, Sword himself is certainly no pure skeptic either.
Speaker 1: He uh is was an editor for the journal. If
Speaker 1: you have a UFO Studies board member of the J.
Speaker 1: Allen Heineck Center for UFO Studies. Uh So, he's very
Speaker 1: much a man who wants to believe he's retired now,
Speaker 1: but at the time of this publication he was with
Speaker 1: Western Michigan University. Uh and uh and and yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that the paper itself, though, so a gainfully employed
Speaker 1: scholars right right. So this is not like a guy
Speaker 1: in a cabin somewhere writing about UFOs. This is this
Speaker 1: is a and this was. And also it's worth pointing
Speaker 1: out this again, this is a pure of view journal,
Speaker 1: you know, for what it's worth. But again, when you
Speaker 1: when you look at the actual paper, I think the
Speaker 1: paper holds up pretty well. Well yeah, well, let's let's
Speaker 1: see what it says. Being judged for yourself. All right. So, Swords,
Speaker 1: whose doctorate studies are centered around the history of technology,
Speaker 1: points out in this article that the essential nature of
Speaker 1: fire is often overlooked by academics. He said, quote, the
Speaker 1: role of fire is partially obvious and maybe not so obvious.
Speaker 1: The maybe not is the necessar city of fire control
Speaker 1: fire to manipulate materials and break them down into their
Speaker 1: elemental components. Breaking materials down is the road, the only
Speaker 1: road to establishing material technology that makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: I think that's in line with what I was just saying. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He mentions that the critics of this only road approach
Speaker 1: that insisted there are alternatives such as depending on additive
Speaker 1: approaches uh, the addition of one substance to another components elements, alloys, etcetera.
Speaker 1: As a means up for new material science is without fire. Wait,
Speaker 1: how would you create alloys without fire? Well, that's the
Speaker 1: that's the argument point, isn't it. Uh So this is
Speaker 1: this is how he responds to those critics, he says,
Speaker 1: and he has some wonderful vinegar here to his response.
Speaker 1: He says, I am open to someone demonstrating this sort
Speaker 1: of non fire based material science. But where these components,
Speaker 1: elements and alloys will originally come from without fire somewhere
Speaker 1: down the road remains a complete puzzle to me. It
Speaker 1: is in the breakage, manipulation and recombination of materials that
Speaker 1: one achieves achieves metallurgy, much of chemistry, glass technology, polymers, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Without fire leading to metals technology, there is no control electricity,
Speaker 1: no electric age, and certainly no nuclear age. Yeah. That
Speaker 1: that's a totally different thing here too. Uh. Nuclear age
Speaker 1: makes me think about the energy we use to power
Speaker 1: our society, not just the creation of tools, but we
Speaker 1: depend on on free access to two easy energy for
Speaker 1: everything that makes modern life, you know, easily livable and
Speaker 1: modern science easy to do with all the equipment and
Speaker 1: electronics and stuff like that we have. Uh, in a
Speaker 1: world without that, what would your energy source be? I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you could have I don't know, hydroelectric dams.
Speaker 1: But if you don't have metals to conduct, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I'm I'm I'm at a loss. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He kind of summarizes this all by saying, all technology
Speaker 1: on a fireless world would be the simple utilization of
Speaker 1: what nature gives one, an almost passive interaction. Fire is
Speaker 1: the gate to the possibility of high technology, the only gate.
Speaker 1: So so the idea is that certainly you could have
Speaker 1: individuals finding stuff, exploiting natural environments, boiling their fish and
Speaker 1: event or what have you. But can they actually make anything?
Speaker 1: Can they actually achieve high technology? Can they build a
Speaker 1: spaceship or say even a toaster? Uh? The argument Swords
Speaker 1: would make is no, and he sort of And he
Speaker 1: also goes on to sort of challenge anyone out there
Speaker 1: show me an idea that's not complete, like fantasy, fantasy
Speaker 1: sci fi. Uh, and I will accept it, but I
Speaker 1: haven't seen it yet. Well, I guess for me, the
Speaker 1: question would be looking at chemistry. I mean, I was
Speaker 1: trying to find is there an example of something else
Speaker 1: like fire? Again, with fire not being a substance so
Speaker 1: much as a chemical reaction and interaction or process, is
Speaker 1: there another universal exother chemical reaction you could come up
Speaker 1: with where well, if you mix heat and these other
Speaker 1: two readily available types of substances, you will get an
Speaker 1: easy to produce chemical reaction that heats things up, and
Speaker 1: you can do it almost anytime anywhere on the planet.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know of any evidence of
Speaker 1: what that would be, but perhaps there is such a thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he he goes on in his paper to say, I mean, basically,
Speaker 1: you need to have that free oxygen um. You know
Speaker 1: you can. You can. There their arguments for other combustion supporters,
Speaker 1: chlorine and other halogens, mainly, he says, but but really
Speaker 1: you keep coming back to the necessity for oxygen. Now.
Speaker 1: He also brings up we mentioned sea worlds earlier, the
Speaker 1: other water world or whatever you want to call them, um,
Speaker 1: And in the past episode we tried to imagine this too.
Speaker 1: If you had like a dolphin race on a on
Speaker 1: a on a water world, would they be capable of
Speaker 1: achieving technology? Would mermaids be able to build your soul
Speaker 1: like a like a race of intelligent dolphin creatures, not
Speaker 1: like a dolphin race, like they're trying to get to
Speaker 1: the finish. No, no, not not a not not a
Speaker 1: race in that sense, but but powerful civilization, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: would that be possible? Or mermaids or deep ones or
Speaker 1: whatever a vision of undersea life you want to toy
Speaker 1: with here, Cathulhu has no technology. Yeah, I mean that
Speaker 1: would be the argument here, because this is what what
Speaker 1: old Mike Swords has to say. He says, for those
Speaker 1: who suggest that an alternative world not caring about such
Speaker 1: wildfires because it was all oceanic is a possibility for
Speaker 1: a high oxygen atmosphere, I say the idea is clever,
Speaker 1: but all wet. The technological life form needs to control
Speaker 1: fire where it lives. Underwater seems a poor combustion environment.
Speaker 1: Occasional fire seeking dog paddling at the surface seems worse.
Speaker 1: We need a land animal, and we therefore need a
Speaker 1: well behaving atmosphere with oxygen in a controlled fire zone.
Speaker 1: So that kind of that that kind of underlines it
Speaker 1: rather well, I think. Okay, Well, so it seems like
Speaker 1: doctor Swords here is agreeing with our intuitions about the
Speaker 1: necessity of fire for the development of technological civilization. But
Speaker 1: I still I would like to hear arguments to the contrary.
Speaker 1: I haven't found any. I don't know if you did
Speaker 1: not run across any other in any other voices on this.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if y'all out there have any have any
Speaker 1: great ideas about how no, here's the way they could
Speaker 1: do it, Here's how you could make metal tools without fire,
Speaker 1: I would love to hear them. Yeah, I'm fascinated, and
Speaker 1: I don't think uh Swords has necessarily dropped the final
Speaker 1: word here, But but so far I remained with my
Speaker 1: mind unchanged. Uh. And certainly there have to be some
Speaker 1: great examples from sci fi out there as well, varying
Speaker 1: levels of you know, scientific authenticity, But I'd love to
Speaker 1: love to hear those models. Okay, I mentioned this earlier
Speaker 1: in the episode, I think, but this is actually going
Speaker 1: to be part one of a two part episode we're
Speaker 1: doing about the scientific history of fire, where this time
Speaker 1: we tried to look at a little bit more at
Speaker 1: the chemistry of the world, the atmosphere, possibilities on a
Speaker 1: on a no oxygen planet, and how fires shaped life.
Speaker 1: But next time we are going to be turning our
Speaker 1: eye to the world of the human, the divine spark,
Speaker 1: and what fire means for human life. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: be sure to check out stuff to blow your mind
Speaker 1: dot com. That's where we'll find all the podcast episodes,
Speaker 1: blog post videos, links out to our various social media
Speaker 1: accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram, and more. And
Speaker 1: as always, if you want to get in touch with
Speaker 1: us directly with feedback about this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: or with a great idea about how aliens on an
Speaker 1: oxygen free, fireproof world can make some exothermic reactions and
Speaker 1: get some swords maybe or other metal metal tools, you
Speaker 1: can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and bathands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com. Y
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