Speaker 1: It's a vast, cold, and mostly empty universe, and as
Speaker 1: lucky as we've been to live in a time when
Speaker 1: we are discovering planets around other stars, we still have
Speaker 1: no evidence that there is anyone out there living on
Speaker 1: any of them. The prospect that we are the only
Speaker 1: life in the universe, or the only intelligent life, still
Speaker 1: haunts us. Of course, people say the aliens could be
Speaker 1: out there even if we haven't found them. So let's
Speaker 1: flip the script and think about it from the aliens
Speaker 1: point of view. Why haven't they found us? Could they
Speaker 1: find us? There are lots of planets in the galaxy,
Speaker 1: after all, and we're only on one of them. Today
Speaker 1: in the podcast, we're going to explore the prospects for
Speaker 1: a technology that promises to unleash vast exploratory power, one
Speaker 1: that might allow us to visit any planet in the
Speaker 1: galaxy and to look for aliens in a reasonable amount
Speaker 1: of time, or to allow aliens to have come and
Speaker 1: visited our planet. That technology is self replicating probes spacecraft
Speaker 1: that build more of themselves, growing our fleet exponentially. Because
Speaker 1: if we can do it, we probably will do it,
Speaker 1: and if we can do it, aliens likely could also
Speaker 1: welcome to Daniel and Kelly's extraordinary and so far barren universe.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 3: I'm Kelly Reader Smith.
Speaker 4: I study parasites and space, and I had so much
Speaker 4: fun in today's conversation.
Speaker 3: But also I'm not going to sleep tonight.
Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and though I'm
Speaker 1: technically self replicating, I haven't made any exact copies of myself.
Speaker 4: Oh, I guess no human has made an exact copy
Speaker 4: of themselves.
Speaker 1: Yet, although you know so my two children are both blonde,
Speaker 1: and my wife is blonde and I'm not, and so
Speaker 1: people joked occasionally, since she is a biochemist, that maybe
Speaker 1: she had just cloned herself in the lab.
Speaker 3: Hazel does look very Katrina issue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they both. Do you know those dominant Viking genes.
Speaker 3: I guess they wiped out your genes.
Speaker 1: I'm not unhappy about that. They both look great.
Speaker 4: So my question for you today, you are super excited
Speaker 4: about aliens.
Speaker 3: Yes, no news to anyone there.
Speaker 4: If you could make self replicating probes and release them
Speaker 4: into the universe so that you could communicate with aliens,
Speaker 4: would you do that?
Speaker 1: M Oh my gosh, Well, you know, I'm on the
Speaker 1: record for being willing to invite aliens to come visit
Speaker 1: Earth as long as they share the secrets of the universe,
Speaker 1: even if they send us to the hydrogen minds and
Speaker 1: enslave us. That's how badly I want to meet aliens
Speaker 1: and learn how the universe works.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad academics have like zero hour over anything.
Speaker 1: Well, that's what makes me free to say these ridiculous stus,
Speaker 1: because I'll never ever be around that table where we
Speaker 1: make these decisions. So I mean, if you're asking me,
Speaker 1: like Daniel, would you launch self replicating probes that could
Speaker 1: put us in touch with aliens that might be able
Speaker 1: to tell us the secrets of the universe, even if
Speaker 1: it risks like wiping out all matter in the galaxy
Speaker 1: because the probes go crazy and convert everything into paper
Speaker 1: clips essentially, Then yes, I think I still would because
Speaker 1: the other alternative is too disappointing, Like we are stuck
Speaker 1: on this planet and the aliens are stuck on that planet,
Speaker 1: and we can't talk to each other because we're afraid
Speaker 1: that our technology is going to run amok. I don't know.
Speaker 1: That just seems too dark.
Speaker 4: That's more dark than all of us getting to still
Speaker 4: exist but not talking to each other.
Speaker 3: You're warped, man.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I'm warped. I will totally admit I'm warped.
Speaker 1: But I want to know who's out there. I want
Speaker 1: to know if our other civilizations, and the idea that
Speaker 1: there could be out there and we never find them,
Speaker 1: that's to me just too difficult to accept. So any
Speaker 1: technology that's going to help us make contact with other civilizations. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm a booster. I'm an investor, all right, So.
Speaker 4: If you are anything like me, you might be thinking, one,
Speaker 4: I hope Daniel never runs for public office, and if so,
Speaker 4: he does not have my vote. And two, I want
Speaker 4: to know how likely is it that we could build
Speaker 4: these self replicating robots so that if some Daniel Ooyd
Speaker 4: individual gets a position in Congress, do they have a
Speaker 4: chance at wiping this all out with these self replicating robots?
Speaker 1: And by self replicating robots, Kelly is referring to not
Speaker 1: just probes that NASA builds here on Earth, bespoke things
Speaker 1: that take ten years, and we send out one of
Speaker 1: them and we cross our fingers and hope that it survives,
Speaker 1: or even two or ten of those. We're talking about
Speaker 1: probes that can make more probes, Probes that are not
Speaker 1: birthed here on Earth, but out somewhere in the galaxy,
Speaker 1: maybe five ten generations down, that let us tap into
Speaker 1: the power of exponential growth so that we can effectively
Speaker 1: explore the entire galaxy without ever leaving our rock.
Speaker 4: Amazing, and so we asked our extraordinaries, what do they
Speaker 4: think can we even build self replicating probes to explore
Speaker 4: the galaxy?
Speaker 1: Is this actual technology that's around the corner, maybe a
Speaker 1: few hundred years from now, or is this just Daniel's fantasy?
Speaker 1: Thanks very much to everybody who answered these questions. Think
Speaker 1: about it for a moment. Do you think we are
Speaker 1: around the corner to building self replicating probes? Here's what
Speaker 1: our listeners had to.
Speaker 2: Say, Yes, we can.
Speaker 1: It will take a while until we can, and they
Speaker 1: might eat us afterwards.
Speaker 3: It's plausible that we are somebody else's self replicating probe in.
Speaker 2: Terms of practicality, I mean, you know, the short answer
Speaker 2: is no. The long answer is well, no, I.
Speaker 5: Don't think our current engineering precision is up to the
Speaker 5: tech of making probes that would in turn make probes
Speaker 5: with equally good precision. And so on all the way down.
Speaker 6: You know what would happen if this w a ry
Speaker 6: and we had bands of world destroying robots roaming the galaxy.
Speaker 6: That seems like, if it's not already the plot of
Speaker 6: a sci fi novel, it should be.
Speaker 2: You know what, we don't know. We really just don't
Speaker 2: know yet.
Speaker 5: So I feel like, yeah, maybe in the next twenty
Speaker 5: thirty fifty hundred years.
Speaker 2: We can't write now, but we won't be able to later.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can do anything if we.
Speaker 6: Try once we have sufficiently advanced AI.
Speaker 7: I can't see what the point is unless we also
Speaker 7: invent near to speed of life travel. Once they got
Speaker 7: to another solar system, we'd be long gone. So who
Speaker 7: would they actually be exploring for.
Speaker 2: We can't even build self replicating robots that'll do our
Speaker 2: dishes and our laundry, Yet in a near future dish
Speaker 2: might very well be pushable.
Speaker 3: Okay. I absolutely loved these answers.
Speaker 4: There was a lot of diversity in these answers, and
Speaker 4: as always, there was some like hilarity in there too.
Speaker 4: I liked the short answer is no, long answer is.
Speaker 3: Correct me up.
Speaker 4: But yeah, lots of people thinking we could do it,
Speaker 4: some people saying why should we do it? Some people
Speaker 4: say we could do anything. I loved it.
Speaker 1: Some people on the Kelly whipb blanket side saying they
Speaker 1: might eat us afterwards. You know, that's fair, that's fair.
Speaker 4: I think it's important to point out the possible pitfall
Speaker 4: so we can make decisions with clear eyes.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's just me.
Speaker 1: That's good for when we have that Oppenheimer moment. You know,
Speaker 1: are we going to push signs forward at risk of
Speaker 1: destroying everybody? Or are we going to cower in the darkness?
Speaker 1: Those are really the only two options available.
Speaker 3: Okay, do not run for Senate.
Speaker 4: So so today we got super lucky because we have
Speaker 4: an amazing guest on the show we do.
Speaker 1: We got to speak to Phil Metzger, who actually has
Speaker 1: a patent for space concrete. He knows what he's talking about.
Speaker 1: He's really thought about building industry off the Earth, and
Speaker 1: he disagrees with Kelly about stuff in space. So we
Speaker 1: thought who better to come on the podcast.
Speaker 4: I think our disagreements aren't about like the facts. I
Speaker 4: think our disagreements are about optimism. And he is a
Speaker 4: more optimistic human being that I am, and he's probably
Speaker 4: happier for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think disagrees with Kelly describes like a
Speaker 1: vast swath of the space industry community.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep. And that's a okay, all.
Speaker 1: Right, So let's jump into our interview with Phil. It's
Speaker 1: my pleasure to introduce to the podcast Professor Phil Metzger.
Speaker 1: He's a planetary physicist with the Florida Space Institute. He
Speaker 1: has the distinction that he has designed spacecraft. He also
Speaker 1: has a three mile wide asteroid named after himself, and
Speaker 1: he has strong opinions on the definition of a planet.
Speaker 1: Plus he has studied the issue of building industry in space,
Speaker 1: so he actually knows what he's talking about. Phil, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast.
Speaker 2: Hi glad to be here.
Speaker 3: So can I dig into one of those things?
Speaker 4: So I know Phil pretty well for his work on
Speaker 4: like you know, regolith on the Moon and stuff like that,
Speaker 4: but I don't know about Phil's strong opinions about the
Speaker 4: definition of a planet. So is Pluto a planet or
Speaker 4: not a planet? What am I missing?
Speaker 2: I'm going to say it's a planet. And that's because
Speaker 2: the definition of a planet, going back to the Copernican
Speaker 2: Revolution was not based on orbits. It was based on
Speaker 2: the geophysical nature of the objects. And that was really
Speaker 2: a crucial part of the Copernican argument.
Speaker 1: What do you mean the geophysical nature? You mean, like,
Speaker 1: is it mostly spherical?
Speaker 2: Well before the Copernican Revolution, they thought that the majority
Speaker 2: of view is that planets were made out of unchanging
Speaker 2: ether and they were perfect spheres. They followed heavenly physics,
Speaker 2: not earthly physics, and so the Copernican Revolution said, no,
Speaker 2: Earth is in the heavens, and these objects are geological bodies,
Speaker 2: just like the Earth is. And the primary example they
Speaker 2: had was the Moon because they could see it with telescopes.
Speaker 2: Galileo saw mountains and those the existence of mountains and
Speaker 2: the existence of earth shine reflecting off the Moon allowed
Speaker 2: him to create arguments about this category of objects called planets.
Speaker 2: And the category he was arguing for was all the
Speaker 2: geological bodies in our Solar system, including the moons of
Speaker 2: Jupiter which he called planets, and our moon, and it
Speaker 2: was all based on the fact that they are geological
Speaker 2: bodies like the Earth. It was not broken into what
Speaker 2: they orbit. Now. Kepler introduced the category of secondary planets,
Speaker 2: meaning a planet that orbits another planet, and that was
Speaker 2: the primary term, the technical term we had for that
Speaker 2: subcategory of planets all the way until well as early
Speaker 2: in the nineteen hundreds that this taxonomy got lost, and
Speaker 2: it was for non scientific reasons. We ended up with
Speaker 2: the terminology that's most commonly used today.
Speaker 4: If it were up to you, we would have like
Speaker 4: hundreds of planets then, because every moon would be a planet.
Speaker 3: Is that right?
Speaker 2: Well if there, we've refined upon Galileo's definition since then,
Speaker 2: and we now understand that there are small bodies that
Speaker 2: wasn't known at the time, and we need to have
Speaker 2: a lower size limit because they become dissimilar and the
Speaker 2: category is not useful if we include everything down to
Speaker 2: a dustpec. And so it was Kuiper in the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties who proposed the lower limit based on gravitational rounding.
Speaker 2: He didn't understand the planet formation exactly. And since then
Speaker 2: we've refined our understanding of planet formation, and so Alan
Speaker 2: Stern and well Alan I think first proposed a refinement
Speaker 2: to Kuiper's definition where he said it didn't matter the
Speaker 2: formation process, if it ended up large enough to become
Speaker 2: gravitationally rounded, then it should be a planet. So that's
Speaker 2: the history in a nutshell.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe the solution is buried in your previous comment,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe this category is just not useful.
Speaker 1: It's sort of historical and archaic and reflects our feelings
Speaker 1: about the importance of the Earth, and that now we're
Speaker 1: doing all this like layers upon layers upon layers to
Speaker 1: try to preserve it as a thing. Maybe we should
Speaker 1: just give up on it and accept the fact that
Speaker 1: the Solar System is filled with all sorts of stuff,
Speaker 1: from tiny specks to huge blobs.
Speaker 2: Well, you bring up a great point, and I've heard
Speaker 2: Neil de grass Tyson say the same thing, that maybe
Speaker 2: we should say that planet is not a useful category.
Speaker 2: But you know that's really the outcome of the way
Speaker 2: it's currently defined. It's not useful. But if you went
Speaker 2: back to the Galileo and you know, the refinements to
Speaker 2: the Galileo definition, then it actually is useful again. And
Speaker 2: the idea is that planets are unique in the cosmos
Speaker 2: because those are the locations where chemical complexity develops and
Speaker 2: geological complexity and biology emerges, and civilizations emerge. And that's
Speaker 2: an important concept in understanding our place in the cosmos,
Speaker 2: And in fact, I would argue that might even be
Speaker 2: the most important concept I think planets not only is
Speaker 2: it a useful concept if you go back to Galileo's definition,
Speaker 2: but it might be the most important concept in physics
Speaker 2: and understanding why we're here in the cosmos.
Speaker 1: And incredibly that actually provides a transition to the topic
Speaker 1: of the episode. So this whole thing wasn't just a digression,
Speaker 1: because imagine that we wanted to explore the galaxy and
Speaker 1: to look for other civilizations. Where should we look, right,
Speaker 1: should we look in the hearts of stars, should we
Speaker 1: look in stellar atmospheres, or should we look on planetary surfaces?
Speaker 1: So from that point of view, it's helpful to define
Speaker 1: like our target locations in the galaxy. So, Phil, if
Speaker 1: you could look anywhere, is that where you would look?
Speaker 1: You'd look for things we currently call planets or the
Speaker 1: field definition of planets, and look on their surfaces for civilizations.
Speaker 2: Sure, and that is what we've been doing. We've been
Speaker 2: looking for exoplanets, looking for biosignatures. There's also a lot
Speaker 2: of interest in the large moons of our own solar system,
Speaker 2: like is there life under the ice on Europa? Even
Speaker 2: people talk about on Pluto Deep under the surface of Pluto.
Speaker 2: It's believed that there may be a liquid ocean still liquid, surprisingly,
Speaker 2: and maybe there's life because there's organic material on Pluto,
Speaker 2: and there's energy that it's kept at liquid this long
Speaker 2: energy from nuclear decay apparently. And the literature uses the
Speaker 2: word planet including those types of objects. So the people
Speaker 2: that are actually looking for life and looking at geological
Speaker 2: complexity do use the Galilean definition of a planet just
Speaker 2: by default.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's say we want to explore all
Speaker 1: the quote unquote planets around all the stars in the
Speaker 1: Milky Way and look for civilizations we can chat with.
Speaker 1: Why can't we just scale up what NASA is doing
Speaker 1: and do a lot more of it. Why do we
Speaker 1: need to consider self replicating probes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question, I think. And the reason
Speaker 2: why I would argue is because the people or the
Speaker 2: civilizations out there that we might detect that might be
Speaker 2: communicating may not be biological. It may be that they
Speaker 2: have transitioned so that there's now machine life in the cosmos,
Speaker 2: and machines are can be designed to be more inherently
Speaker 2: capable of long distance travel within the galaxy. They could
Speaker 2: be designed to withstand the environment. They could also be immortal,
Speaker 2: live for a very long time. Not get bored. Just
Speaker 2: program yourself to not be bored. It's hard, and.
Speaker 1: So I've tried that for myself. It just doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so it gets back to when Kardishov Alexei
Speaker 2: Kardashev was looking for signs of life and the cosmos.
Speaker 2: He defined type one, type two, and type three civilizations
Speaker 2: because he was pointing out that what we're looking for
Speaker 2: might not be similar to what we have here, and
Speaker 2: self replicating probes is one of the common channels people
Speaker 2: have discussed of how civilization might go at a larger
Speaker 2: scale and end up colonizing the galaxy.
Speaker 1: I think you're saying that what we should be looking
Speaker 1: for is aliens self replicating probes. Is that the comment
Speaker 1: you're making. Are you saying that it's important for us
Speaker 1: to send us self replicating probes because they're more likely
Speaker 1: to have a fun conversation with alien self replicating probes.
Speaker 2: All of the above, I think that it's important for
Speaker 2: us to get beyond the limits of our biosphere here
Speaker 2: on this planet and take life, not just human life,
Speaker 2: but take other species with us beyond Earth. And I
Speaker 2: think the only economically viable way to do that as well,
Speaker 2: self replication, industrial self replication off the planet. And you
Speaker 2: also raise another interesting question, would would advance civilizations even
Speaker 2: bother to talk to us if we saw that we're
Speaker 2: primitive biologicals when they are much more advanced machine intelligence,
Speaker 2: And you know, maybe that's a factor too.
Speaker 4: And just to make sure I'm understanding, are we saying
Speaker 4: that the life in the universe is no longer squishy
Speaker 4: it's actually machines, or that they're still squishy life somewhere
Speaker 4: and they're sending machines out to do the exploring and
Speaker 4: that's what we would be communicating with or both of
Speaker 4: those options.
Speaker 2: Yeah, both of them. I had in mind the idea
Speaker 2: that eventually machine intelligence may replace biological intelligence. Out there
Speaker 2: in the cosmos. People have talked about dice and minds,
Speaker 2: where you build a dice sphere and use all the
Speaker 2: energy of a star to support one mind, one gigantic compute.
Speaker 2: And so maybe there are dice in minds scattered across
Speaker 2: the cosmos, and they're so far above us that they
Speaker 2: were not their peers, so they don't bother talking to us.
Speaker 2: But maybe they're out there, maybe they're watching and they're
Speaker 2: aware of us.
Speaker 4: I feel like I could personally benefit from a more
Speaker 4: broader look at self replicating probes, and so, like you know,
Speaker 4: we've talked about how they can have this exponential growth,
Speaker 4: but I'm not quite sure what they're growing from or
Speaker 4: how they're growing, And so can you give me a
Speaker 4: bigger picture look at what these probes do and what
Speaker 4: they are and why we want these probes?
Speaker 2: Sure? So the first person I know who talked about
Speaker 2: this concept was I think as Robert frietas Free to Us,
Speaker 2: writing in the nineteen eighties. He was associated with a
Speaker 2: NASA Ames Research Center study in nineteen eighty he talked
Speaker 2: about where you send a probe to a star. That
Speaker 2: probe will then mine the gas giants. Maybe it'll set
Speaker 2: up factories on the moons of the gas giants. But
Speaker 2: he looked at all the elements that you could get
Speaker 2: from a belief to be nominal star system, and could
Speaker 2: you create a complete industry using those resources? And you can,
Speaker 2: and you could have this factory start small. He called
Speaker 2: it a seed factor, and the seed would be planted
Speaker 2: on this icy moon at a giant planet, and it
Speaker 2: would start to build larger factories and it would all
Speaker 2: be robotic with autonomous labor and eventually it would start
Speaker 2: to build other seed spacecraft, and then those seed spacecraft
Speaker 2: would be launched from there and go to other star systems.
Speaker 2: And so he tried to do some scaling of the
Speaker 2: economics of autonomous labor on outer icy moon planets and
Speaker 2: colonize in the entire galaxy. Since then, we've started to
Speaker 2: develop some of these technologies in order to support NASA.
Speaker 2: We've been working on mining the soil on the Moon
Speaker 2: or Mars, getting resources making metal, and as we've started
Speaker 2: to do this, it got us excited. We started thinking, wow,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe this idea from FreeDOS is possible. And
Speaker 2: so we've done a little bit more recent work trying
Speaker 2: to bring Freetus's ideas into a more concrete instantiation where
Speaker 2: we talk about what exact types of robots would be
Speaker 2: at these factories, what would be their metabolic throughput, so
Speaker 2: how fast can they self replicate and start to build
Speaker 2: other spacecraft. So that's the general idea.
Speaker 1: Doesn't it go back a little bit further. Wasn't it
Speaker 1: von Neuman who introduced this concept of a von Neuman
Speaker 1: probe and the universal constructor or something which can build itself.
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right. Yeah, I forgot about von Neuman. So
Speaker 2: he was before freed us.
Speaker 1: He's always before everybody and everything. He's got his fingers
Speaker 1: and every time he's like Euler.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Right, Let's go through the exercise of thinking about the
Speaker 1: exponential factor of self replicating probes, because I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people are like, why can't we just get
Speaker 1: Elon to do his SpaceX multiplication on our current thing?
Speaker 1: You know, why is it really necessary to have the
Speaker 1: probes build more probes?
Speaker 2: Well, it's a matter of scale scaling up if you
Speaker 2: want to explore the entire galaxy, and maybe you don't,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe you don't care about that, But if there's.
Speaker 1: A civili I do, if there's a want to overlook something.
Speaker 2: So if there are any civilizations out there that have
Speaker 2: had the same motive that you have, then it's an
Speaker 2: economic question. How do you how do you explore ten
Speaker 2: to the twenty star systems, and if your labor force
Speaker 2: is only ten to the nine biological creatures you know,
Speaker 2: in the order of billions, how do you have an
Speaker 2: industry that can explore on such a vast scale. And
Speaker 2: so you need to have more autonomy and you need
Speaker 2: to have a lot of industry with that autonomy in
Speaker 2: order to build all the assets, all the capital necessary
Speaker 2: to go out into that gigantic cosmos. So it's a
Speaker 2: scaling question.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So if I do a simple calculation, you know,
Speaker 1: if you start out with like five self replicating ships
Speaker 1: and each one can make fine more than it's only
Speaker 1: twelve generations before you have a billion ships out there
Speaker 1: in the galaxy exploring for you, the power of exponential
Speaker 1: functions is just really amazing.
Speaker 2: That's correct. Yeah, And we do see exponential growth like that.
Speaker 2: If you put bacteria into sugar water, their population will double, double,
Speaker 2: double until it uses up all the sugar and then
Speaker 2: of course you get population collapse at that point. But
Speaker 2: we do see the exponential scaling occur in some systems.
Speaker 2: We also see it in technology Moore's law, for example.
Speaker 2: There's been some discussion why does Moore's law exist. Some
Speaker 2: people have argued that it's a self fulfilling prophecy that
Speaker 2: companies try to meet that metric, But for it to
Speaker 2: persist over so many orders of magnitude, I have to
Speaker 2: believe it's there's something fundamental that's more than just a
Speaker 2: self fulfilling prophecy because all of industry has to scale
Speaker 2: up so that each piece of equipment can meet that
Speaker 2: exponential growth rate. And so I think that technology does
Speaker 2: have an inherent exponentiality to it, where technology builds technology
Speaker 2: and because of that feedback loop, it scales up exponentially.
Speaker 2: And so extrapolating that idea, you eventually fill up your planet,
Speaker 2: you end up ruining your planet and you have population collapse,
Speaker 2: just like the bacteria and the sugar water. So I
Speaker 2: think it's important to get life outside of the planet
Speaker 2: so that we don't ruin this for biology, and then
Speaker 2: we could do greater things as well. Of course, that
Speaker 2: also raises questions about the ethics of self replicating probes
Speaker 2: unleashing them in the cosmos, which you hinted at at
Speaker 2: the beginning of.
Speaker 1: This podcast, letting them tap into that galactic Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's the second element of the industrial aspect, which
Speaker 1: is not just the exponential growth, but also starting from space. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily want to build everything on the service
Speaker 1: and then have to lift it up out of our gravity. Well,
Speaker 1: if you can have industry in space, then you never
Speaker 1: have to overcome that, right. Isn't that a big factor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is. And there are ways we can benefit
Speaker 2: Earth by putting industry in space. They're not always obvious,
Speaker 2: Like Jeff Bezos talks about moving all of heavy industry
Speaker 2: off the planet and only keeping light industry on the Earth.
Speaker 2: But the problem you get into is how do you
Speaker 2: transport all the mass of manufactured goods down through the
Speaker 2: atmosphere to the surface, because re entry physics does damage
Speaker 2: the atmosphere, and you know, ablation of materials puts tiny
Speaker 2: particles in the atmosphere which contribute to the greenhouse effect
Speaker 2: and driving chemistry, and the heating of the atmosphere drives chemistry.
Speaker 1: And if I buy dog chew toys on Amazon, I
Speaker 1: don't want them melted from re entry in the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: even if they were manufactured on the Moon.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, right, But despite these problems, there are ways
Speaker 2: we can move industry, at least parts of industry into
Speaker 2: space to do a great benefit to our planet. I
Speaker 2: think by the end of the century we could have
Speaker 2: fifty percent of our industrial footprint in space.
Speaker 3: That's a lot, all right.
Speaker 1: So I'm fascinated the technical questions you raised about whether
Speaker 1: we could actually put this thing together and make it happen,
Speaker 1: build a factory that can make factories to make factories.
Speaker 1: But let's take a break and come back and then
Speaker 1: dive into those technical details. All right, we're back, and
Speaker 1: we're talking to Phil Metzger about building self replicating probes
Speaker 1: that go out and explore the galaxy and maybe get
Speaker 1: the attention of those crazy dice in minds so we
Speaker 1: can learn what they know about the universe.
Speaker 3: That would be pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: So this sounds like a pretty daunting task to build
Speaker 1: a machine that could build machines to make more machines.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the first piece of it. How you
Speaker 1: get the materials, how you mine it? Because if our
Speaker 1: machine is like landing on some alien moon or orbiting
Speaker 1: some gas giant, it's got to find the bits to
Speaker 1: make more of itself, right, so it needs whatever it's
Speaker 1: made out of. It's got to find all of those
Speaker 1: bits locally. How does that work? How do you build
Speaker 1: a machine which is capable of like mining pieces for itself.
Speaker 1: Can we build autonomous mining devices?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no new physics required, but the technologies are
Speaker 2: very immature. Some of them are only conceptual as we
Speaker 2: have conceived of these. They are all very doable. It's
Speaker 2: just going to take some time and some industrial engineering
Speaker 2: to develop them.
Speaker 1: I love your optimism.
Speaker 2: Fil Yeah, it's just going to take a few trillion
Speaker 2: dollars and you know exactly whatever.
Speaker 1: It's just we know how to do it. It's just
Speaker 1: an engineering problem. We just got to get it done right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So here on the Earth we do it using
Speaker 2: human intelligence, human labor, and we've scoured this planet for
Speaker 2: thousands of years looking for all the best resources, and
Speaker 2: we've discovered there are special metals. We've discovered certain types
Speaker 2: of rock, certain type of ore that we can extract
Speaker 2: these metals out of. And so we don't just grab
Speaker 2: any material off the ground and start trying to build
Speaker 2: robots out of it. We have this gigantic logistical network
Speaker 2: on the Earth, transportation hubs and giant container ships, and
Speaker 2: we have mining is distributed all over the planet bringing
Speaker 2: together the materials we need to build this industry. So
Speaker 2: if you wanted to set up an industry on the Moon,
Speaker 2: the first problem we have is that we don't have
Speaker 2: that logistical We don't have thousands of years of developing
Speaker 2: that logistics, nor do we have all the deep understanding
Speaker 2: of where the resources are in the Moon. The second
Speaker 2: problem we have is that the Moon lacks a lot
Speaker 2: of the geological processes that the Earth has had. So,
Speaker 2: going back to what we said at the start of
Speaker 2: this conversation, Galileo argued that it was a planet because
Speaker 2: it has the same geological processes. But now we know
Speaker 2: that it doesn't have all the same geological processes and
Speaker 2: Earth is pretty special. So if we want to build
Speaker 2: industry on the Moon or other simpler objects, we're going
Speaker 2: to have to develop tech to extract the resources out
Speaker 2: of minerals that we would normally pass over. It can
Speaker 2: be done, but it's not as efficient. It takes a
Speaker 2: lot more energy, and the chemical processes to do that
Speaker 2: haven't been developed yet. So people have conceived of how
Speaker 2: to use sodium hydroxide to break down rock to get
Speaker 2: all the different atoms out of the rock, or how
Speaker 2: to use fluorine to do that processing, but we've never
Speaker 2: had anybody get funding to go build a fluorine metal
Speaker 2: extraction device, which would be very dangerous. Working with fluorine
Speaker 2: is hazardous, and so it's going to take a lot
Speaker 2: of money and there's not really a market for it.
Speaker 2: Nobody wants to go build it because you're not going
Speaker 2: to make any money off doing it. So this is
Speaker 2: the problem we get into that the technologies that we
Speaker 2: need to live and operate beyond Earth are pre economic.
Speaker 2: We think that eventually they will have a very important
Speaker 2: role in our civilization, but not yet.
Speaker 4: We had a question from a listener where they said
Speaker 4: they really wanted to hear about how engineering on the
Speaker 4: Moon would differ from engineering here on Earth. Tell me
Speaker 4: if this is too far afield, but could we talk
Speaker 4: a little bit about how the Moon environment differs from
Speaker 4: the Earth environment in ways that would make engineering interesting
Speaker 4: but also perhaps more complicated.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's extremely challenging to try to build hardware
Speaker 2: to operate outside of Planet Earth because the environments are
Speaker 2: so radically different. On the Moon, you're dealing with a
Speaker 2: temperature swing of I forget the number, but it's like
Speaker 2: four hundred degrees difference between day and night. We're dealing
Speaker 2: with hard vacuum materials like plastics will outgas and lose
Speaker 2: their flexibility, and therefore washers and O rings will start
Speaker 2: to fail. We're dealing with this tremendously abrasive dust, which
Speaker 2: comprises between twenty and up to fifty percent of the
Speaker 2: mass of the soil in some locations, because the Moon
Speaker 2: lacks a water cycle to wash the dust out of
Speaker 2: the soil and to turn it into mud and then mudstone,
Speaker 2: and so the dust just builds up over geological time scales,
Speaker 2: and working in that extremely abrasive dust is maybe the
Speaker 2: biggest challenge. That You've also got low gravity, and then
Speaker 2: you've got the radiation environment. We don't have Earth's atmosphere
Speaker 2: to shield us from these high energy particles coming down
Speaker 2: from space. It doesn't have a magnetic field to also
Speaker 2: deflect particles away. The ultraviolet light ruins materials, the space
Speaker 2: plasma effects. So we can go on and on listing
Speaker 2: the challenges of working in space, and we don't even
Speaker 2: understand all the physics of some of that. We don't
Speaker 2: understand the space plasma environment and how it interacts with
Speaker 2: the lunar surface. So it's a really interesting field to
Speaker 2: be in. I've always worked in groups that typically have
Speaker 2: a ratio of one third physicists two thirds engineers, and
Speaker 2: it's a really cool working environment because the scientists are
Speaker 2: trying to understand the basic physics, and then the engineers
Speaker 2: are taking that knowledge and creating the technology and then
Speaker 2: we need the technology to go learn the physics, so
Speaker 2: it's a feedback. They're both supporting each other, which makes
Speaker 2: it a really interesting field. It's also a really hard
Speaker 2: field to work in because you can't do the tests
Speaker 2: that you want to do on your hardware. You just
Speaker 2: cannot replicate the lunar environment or even the Martian environment
Speaker 2: well enough. Here on Earth, even in the Giant Chamber.
Speaker 2: You can't get the gravity right and you know, etc.
Speaker 2: So we have to rely on simulations. But we can't
Speaker 2: write computer simulations that are good enough because we don't
Speaker 2: understand the physics yet. So we really have to get
Speaker 2: data from those objects. We got to do more mission
Speaker 2: through the Moon, more missions to Mars to learn the science.
Speaker 4: But it also sounds fun, like a fun challenge to
Speaker 4: have all of those pieces.
Speaker 3: I like a good challenge.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's tremendous fun. It is tremendous fun. And when
Speaker 2: I speak to students, undergraduates or high school students, I'll
Speaker 2: show them pictures of the amazing things that humans have
Speaker 2: done already, like these fabulous skyscrapers or these unbelievable bridges,
Speaker 2: and you know, when I drew Gopher Bridge, I'll look
Speaker 2: at it and like, I think, how did we get
Speaker 2: all this mass up here in the sky before there
Speaker 2: was a bridge? You know? And these are really daunting problems,
Speaker 2: but we've managed to solve them by doing straightforward engineering.
Speaker 2: Break it down into smaller problems, get the funding, do
Speaker 2: the engineering. But it needs to be done for space still.
Speaker 2: We need to have young people working on these problems.
Speaker 2: And there's so much work to be done, so much
Speaker 2: discovery still ahead of us, that I think is a
Speaker 2: great for young people to be getting into these fields.
Speaker 1: I have that same feeling when I see like the
Speaker 1: Golden gate Bridge, like look upon my works, E mighty right,
Speaker 1: it is awesome, And I like how you describe the
Speaker 1: scope of this challenge. I mean, here on Earth we're
Speaker 1: not capable of building robots that can do very much
Speaker 1: yet certainly not capable of building robots that can make
Speaker 1: more robots. And it's supported by this incredibly vast mining industry,
Speaker 1: which requires a lot of human work, you know, many
Speaker 1: cases like terrible labor conditions. Right, so we're so far
Speaker 1: from being able to do this. Give us a little
Speaker 1: bit of that fill optimism. What are we capable of
Speaker 1: doing or what do you think is the first thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've studied like actual lunar industry, you know,
Speaker 1: processing regolith etc. What do you think is going to
Speaker 1: be the first thing we accomplish down the road towards
Speaker 1: being able to do this well.
Speaker 2: We we're currently seeing a lot of progress in robotics
Speaker 2: and in automation. And there's one company, for example, that
Speaker 2: has robots. They typically will post on social media pictures
Speaker 2: of their robots folding the laundry and able to pick
Speaker 2: up these cloth pieces and fold them very carefully. So
Speaker 2: the dexterity and the machine vision, the autonomy to be
Speaker 2: able to do task like that is making tremendous progress.
Speaker 2: And again it comes down to an economic question. Is
Speaker 2: there a consumer need for these technologies because there's not
Speaker 2: a lot of funding going into them unless they can
Speaker 2: make a profit. People aren't going to put their retirement
Speaker 2: money into something unless it's going to help them retire.
Speaker 2: So we're seeing a lot of advancement. I think the
Speaker 2: big killer app is going to end up being AI.
Speaker 2: I truly believe AI servers are going to have to
Speaker 2: go to space because the environmental costs are greatly increasing.
Speaker 2: The pushback to building servers is growing for good reason,
Speaker 2: And already servers could be profitable if they went to space,
Speaker 2: just not as profitable if they build them on the ground.
Speaker 2: But I think that the tipping point's going to come
Speaker 2: where they start going into space. There are already people
Speaker 2: like Eric Schmidt and Sam Altman in the AI world
Speaker 2: talking about how there is inevitable we're going to build
Speaker 2: servers in space.
Speaker 1: Do you mean service in space to support space industry
Speaker 1: or do you mean service in space to support like
Speaker 1: people who want help organizing their day through JATGBT on Earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that that all the AI servers that
Speaker 2: are supporting people on the Earth are eventually going to
Speaker 2: be in orbit around the Earth, maybe distant orbit, because
Speaker 2: the latency doesn't matter that much for most compute and
Speaker 2: so Eric Schmidt and Sam Altman that's what they're talking about.
Speaker 2: They're talking about putting the AI servers that we would
Speaker 2: have built on the Earth putting them in space instead
Speaker 2: because of the environmental impact costs of excessively building data
Speaker 2: servers on the Earth.
Speaker 1: But how do you balance that against the issues of
Speaker 1: like cooling, right, because in space you have to cool
Speaker 1: everything radiatively, and you know, technical support, how do you
Speaker 1: go reboot those servers if they're in distant orbit, is
Speaker 1: that really going to be economically feasible.
Speaker 3: Harden them against radiation?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, those are good questions. And as far as
Speaker 2: the radiative cooling, the energy in has to equal the
Speaker 2: energy out, and that's the same for every spacecraft. So
Speaker 2: the scale of solar panels and radiators, that ratio will
Speaker 2: be the same on servers that it is on any
Speaker 2: other spacecraft. It's just a matter of scaling it up
Speaker 2: to an unbelievably gigantic scale, which is, you know, super ambitious,
Speaker 2: but nonetheless that's where people are talking about going. And
Speaker 2: as far as being able to have radiation hardening, yes,
Speaker 2: that's going to require additional mass around the servers to
Speaker 2: harden them against radiation. And as far as being able
Speaker 2: to repair it, yes, that's going to require better robotics
Speaker 2: and more autonomy. But this is I think is going
Speaker 2: to be an economic driver that will push those technologies
Speaker 2: forward because I don't believe there's ever going to be
Speaker 2: an upper limit of demand on intelligence. I think the
Speaker 2: intelligence will become the customer for more intelligence, and it'll
Speaker 2: create that feedback loop which will have exponential growth which
Speaker 2: would destroy our planet if we don't push it off
Speaker 2: into space.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to invest in Fill's Space Optimism company
Speaker 1: at this point.
Speaker 4: All right, so we've talked a little bit about the
Speaker 4: resources that you would need to find in space and
Speaker 4: then extract and why that might be difficult. So say
Speaker 4: you have those resources, what's the next step?
Speaker 2: Yes, so the next step is well, beneficiation. That's where
Speaker 2: you improve the quality of your resources before actually doing
Speaker 2: the extraction process. I have some patents in beneficiation. My
Speaker 2: university owns them, but they were inventions that I had,
Speaker 2: and I like to tell people. If you go to
Speaker 2: the patent search and look on patents on concrete, there's
Speaker 2: literally over a million patents on concrete. Look at concrete
Speaker 2: for off the planet, there's only two and I have
Speaker 2: one of those too, And so there's still room for
Speaker 2: nine and ninety nine thousand more patents on concrete. And
Speaker 2: that's why it's such a great field to go into.
Speaker 2: We've only just begun developing these technologies.
Speaker 1: Would you call that exo concrete or astro concrete or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. We didn't come up with a name
Speaker 2: for it, but but our idea was that if you're
Speaker 2: going to be making concrete by absorbing microwaves, microwaving the
Speaker 2: lunar soil until melts. Some minerals are better at absorbing
Speaker 2: microwaves than others, and so using magnetic fields, we can
Speaker 2: sort the minerals out and improve the microwave absorption by
Speaker 2: something like seventy percent, which results in a dramatic reduction
Speaker 2: in the energy and a much greater efficiency. So that's
Speaker 2: an example of beneficiation. Let me just mention the reason
Speaker 2: we need beneficiation is because we're not going to be
Speaker 2: able to go all over the moon and find these
Speaker 2: native ore bodies of each mineral. Instead, we're going to
Speaker 2: be scooping up the dirt off the ground, which is
Speaker 2: a mixture of minerals, and so sorting the grains is
Speaker 2: an early step. After that, then you have chemical processing,
Speaker 2: and there has been some work on this. One of
Speaker 2: the processes is called molten regular electrolysis. That's where you
Speaker 2: melt the soil. They have an anode and a cathode,
Speaker 2: and you run an electrical current through the molten well
Speaker 2: basically lava, and that electric field breaks down some of
Speaker 2: the minerals so that the oxygen is released, and then
Speaker 2: the metals will sink to the bottom and you get
Speaker 2: two melted materials. One is the oxides on the top,
Speaker 2: which you can use to make ceramic, and the other
Speaker 2: one are the pure metals. Now we call that a
Speaker 2: mongrel alloy because it's going to be a mixture of iron, magnesium, aluminum, calcium,
Speaker 2: and even some silicon, and so it's an iron silicon
Speaker 2: mongrel alloy. It's very heavy. It's weaker than steel, but
Speaker 2: it's pretty good. You know, it's stronger than iron, and
Speaker 2: so there's a very rudimentary building material. But if you
Speaker 2: want to do better than that, now you need to
Speaker 2: have metallurgy. You need to further refine the metals to
Speaker 2: separate them from each other using the standard processes we
Speaker 2: here on the Earth, but adapted for lower gravity. And
Speaker 2: so it'll just be hardcore industrial engineering doing electrochemical processes
Speaker 2: to break down the atoms and then separating the different
Speaker 2: material streams into making feedstock, and then it's just standard industry.
Speaker 2: After that, it's casting forging parts. You could do three
Speaker 2: D printing, although the throughput may not be as high
Speaker 2: on three D printing. Three D printing is very automatable,
Speaker 2: so making parts. Then you have to have a set
Speaker 2: robots they can put all the parts together. Typically we
Speaker 2: envision these being humanoid robots so that they have they
Speaker 2: have flexibility analogous to a human, but they needn't be humanoid.
Speaker 2: They could be any kind of robots that can build things. Now,
Speaker 2: one of the challenges we get into is that here
Speaker 2: on Earth, our industrial supply chain includes something like twenty
Speaker 2: thousand different types of screws, and you don't want to
Speaker 2: have enough machines on the Moon to make twenty thousand
Speaker 2: types of screws if you can get by with three
Speaker 2: types of screws, and so we need to do a
Speaker 2: lot of industrial ecology to figure out how to create
Speaker 2: a self replicating or a closed ecosystem of machines using
Speaker 2: fewer parts and fewer machines. So there's a gigantic field
Speaker 2: of work that hasn't even started yet for industrial engineers, architects,
Speaker 2: computer programmers, mathematicians. The math on writing an industrial economy
Speaker 2: is really complex and fascinating math and has really fabulous
Speaker 2: theoretical approaches, but it hasn't been applied far enough yet
Speaker 2: to look at doing this on the Moon. So there's
Speaker 2: a lot of work ahead.
Speaker 4: Still, would we need to get to the point where
Speaker 4: we're making like computer chips for our humanoid robots in space?
Speaker 4: Is that like how far we need to get before
Speaker 4: they can replicate?
Speaker 2: Not at first, but I think eventually you will need that.
Speaker 2: In the modeling that I've done, we assumed that you
Speaker 2: would start making simple things like metal, and then you
Speaker 2: would go through a series of generations of hardware to
Speaker 2: and it's all a material science question. It's what material
Speaker 2: can we make next, and then what material after that?
Speaker 2: And the goal is to make an increasing fraction of
Speaker 2: the parts for your industry. And during that interim time
Speaker 2: you're continuing to bring things from the Earth, and then
Speaker 2: the assembly robots are putting your parts together with the
Speaker 2: ones that were brought from Earth, and over time you
Speaker 2: wean yourself off of the earth made parts. Now, the
Speaker 2: very last thing that we assumed is that you're making
Speaker 2: computer chips or I've done some modeling for Mars where
Speaker 2: humans would be on Mars, and so in that model,
Speaker 2: the very last thing you would make would be the pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 2: And it's a question of the mass of product divided
Speaker 2: by the mass of capital. You want that ratio to
Speaker 2: be sequenced. You want to make the industries that have
Speaker 2: the highest ratio first, and then work your way down
Speaker 2: through all the sectors of the economy and do the
Speaker 2: ones that produce the least mass last, which would be
Speaker 2: pharmaceuticals and computer chips.
Speaker 1: So the things that are the least mass you want
Speaker 1: to do last, because so they're cheapest to bring from
Speaker 1: Earth because they're low mass.
Speaker 2: Exactly nice yep, but yet very expensive to stand up
Speaker 2: those industries on the new planetary body.
Speaker 1: I mean even here on Earth, Like to make computer
Speaker 1: chips is like one company that can make them, and
Speaker 1: they rely on several single source manufacturers of like devices
Speaker 1: and lenses and stuff like that. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: replicating that entire supply chain in a robot that can
Speaker 1: replicate that entire supply chain, It just it seems sort
Speaker 1: of fantastical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think we should get away from the
Speaker 2: idea of self replicating robots and talk about self replicating
Speaker 2: industry or self replicating factories because it will be a
Speaker 2: whole family of robots at these factories on this icy
Speaker 2: moon around a Jupiter like object. Yeah, so trying to
Speaker 2: do this in one robot, I just don't see that happening.
Speaker 2: I mean, we have self replicating biology. We call it
Speaker 2: self replicating, Like raccoons can make other raccoons, but they're
Speaker 2: not independent. They are part of a biosphere and they
Speaker 2: depend on other species.
Speaker 1: Are you suggesting we send raccoons to space to explore
Speaker 1: the galaxy eventually?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would love to see that.
Speaker 1: I think I've seen that movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean Guardians of the Galaxy. Yeah, But
Speaker 2: even self replicating biology is not really standalone. Maybe some
Speaker 2: simple bacteria can go live off of rocks and self replicate,
Speaker 2: but if you want to produce anything economically useful for civilization,
Speaker 2: then I think it has to be EcoSpheres of robots
Speaker 2: and EcoSpheres of factories.
Speaker 1: But you still have to have the initial thing which
Speaker 1: lands for the first time on that planet and begins replicating.
Speaker 1: I think I'm getting that you're saying, it's not just
Speaker 1: a robot which makes other robots that look like it's
Speaker 1: going to make like a foundry, and it's going to
Speaker 1: make like helper robots that it's going to make the
Speaker 1: whole industry. But you still need the thing which lands
Speaker 1: and starts everything off, like the seed. As you were saying, earlier.
Speaker 2: Right. One way you could think about it is you're
Speaker 2: going to have to relive the entire industrial revolution that
Speaker 2: we went through on Earth on this new planet. And
Speaker 2: so you're going to have a box, and that box
Speaker 2: is going to contain computers that know the whole process.
Speaker 2: You know, it knows where it's going. But in the
Speaker 2: first generation, it's not going to make everything. It's going
Speaker 2: to have some supplies. Even a seed, you know, a
Speaker 2: seed has food in the seed so that it can
Speaker 2: live off of what it has stored until it can
Speaker 2: make its own food. And so you're going to need
Speaker 2: some supplies in that box to live off of until
Speaker 2: it creates the ability to you know, to replicate everything.
Speaker 1: So we're going to have like a coal powered steampunk
Speaker 1: era on every planet we land on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I used to say something like that, and somebody
Speaker 2: once pointed out that that's probably not how it's going
Speaker 2: to happen, because maybe we'll invent nanotech, and maybe nanotech
Speaker 2: can be smaller scale and support the self replication as
Speaker 2: a smoother process. But you know, that's something we're just
Speaker 2: speculating about at this point.
Speaker 1: Well, do you know anything about this argument between Eric Drexler,
Speaker 1: who wrote Engines of Creation, who is a big proponent
Speaker 1: of nanotech. And Richard Smalley, the guy who won the
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize for buckminster Fullerene, who argues essentially that you
Speaker 1: can't have nanotech self replication because the pieces need to
Speaker 1: be nanotech and they can't they just like force the
Speaker 1: chemistry together. Have you followed that conversation, No, I have not. Well.
Speaker 1: Smally essentially says you don't make a girl and a
Speaker 1: boy fall in love by pushing them together. He's essentially
Speaker 1: saying that, you know, you can't just manage chemistry by
Speaker 1: squishing things together at a nanotech level. They had some
Speaker 1: like two years of open letters where they were arguing
Speaker 1: with each other about whether this is ever going to
Speaker 1: be possible.
Speaker 4: But what you're not just smooshing them together, right like?
Speaker 4: You know, you know, we know you can smoosh things
Speaker 4: together and expect certain chemical reactions depending on what you're
Speaker 4: smoohing together.
Speaker 3: I'm going to weigh in an argument I don't know
Speaker 3: anything about.
Speaker 4: But it seems like like probably people had more complicated
Speaker 4: opinions than just we're going to smoosh things together, right.
Speaker 1: Well, I think this series of letters which people should
Speaker 1: go out and check out is not an example of
Speaker 1: good faith arguing as we often see online.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, got it?
Speaker 4: All right, Well, let's take a break and when we
Speaker 4: get back we'll talk about energy sources and autonomy.
Speaker 3: All right, we're back.
Speaker 4: So we're talking about self replicating robots and all of
Speaker 4: the steps that would go into making them, and I
Speaker 4: feel like maybe we want to have an energy discussion
Speaker 4: at two different scales here. Phil was talking about like
Speaker 4: smelting and things that would require very high temperatures, and
Speaker 4: so I'm wondering what would be the source of power
Speaker 4: for that? And then I also, on a tinier scale,
Speaker 4: want to know what would be our source of power
Speaker 4: for the robots that are building everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So in the paper I wrote on this topic,
Speaker 2: we assumed everything would be solar powered, and so the
Speaker 2: question came down to can a self replicating set of
Speaker 2: robots create solar panels that will create enough energy for
Speaker 2: that process? In other words, does the metabolism close? And
Speaker 2: there's a lot of hand waving in that paper. In fact,
Speaker 2: I didn't expect the paper to get as much attention
Speaker 2: as it did. In the opening of the paper, we said,
Speaker 2: this is a preliminary study, which is just designed to
Speaker 2: get more people interested so that then later we can
Speaker 2: do a proper study. But everybody got real interested and
Speaker 2: it took off, and we never did the proper study.
Speaker 2: There's never been funding for it. So in our hand
Speaker 2: waving arguments, we used the evidence we had available on
Speaker 2: how much energy will it take to make metal? And
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of handwaving. And then for a
Speaker 2: safety factor, I said, well, let's assume that in every
Speaker 2: generation we create thirty times more solar panels than we
Speaker 2: think we're going to need in the next generation. So
Speaker 2: I had a factor of thirty uncertainty. And even with
Speaker 2: a factor of thirty uncertainty, the metabolism closed. So solar
Speaker 2: alone should be enough to do it. But you will
Speaker 2: be making a lot of solar panels. And we know
Speaker 2: that you can make solar panels out of lunar soil.
Speaker 2: They're already there are already two companies doing it. Blue
Speaker 2: Origin has a technology for making solar panels out of
Speaker 2: lunar soil. And there's another company called Mana Electric MAA
Speaker 2: and A. They're in Europe and they also have technology
Speaker 2: to do this, and they claim they can make solar
Speaker 2: panels using something like ninety nine point eight percent lunar
Speaker 2: soil and only zero point two percent brought from Earth.
Speaker 3: Wow, Okay, so how are they doing that?
Speaker 4: So are they are they doing it from like they're
Speaker 4: extracting the resources, they're manufacturing them in space. They're doing
Speaker 4: all of that stuff just using like equipment that they
Speaker 4: shift from Earth.
Speaker 2: So I haven't seen the details from either of the
Speaker 2: to companies, but the press announcements tell us that they
Speaker 2: have made solar panels out of simulated lunar soil. And
Speaker 2: the way you do it is use a process like
Speaker 2: molten regular electrolysis, or fluorine or sodium hydroxide, or you know,
Speaker 2: some method to break apart the molecular bonds in these minerals.
Speaker 2: So we're dealing with minerals like basalt and ilminite, and
Speaker 2: a NORTHO site. You know types of rock and mineral
Speaker 2: that are in the lunar soil, and we know the
Speaker 2: composition of these minerals, so we know there's iron and aluminum,
Speaker 2: and we know there's calcium. Typically you're gonna have a
Speaker 2: hard time finding hydrogen on the Moon unless you go
Speaker 2: to the polar regions. But I don't know if these
Speaker 2: companies process requires hydrogen. Carbon is another one that's hard
Speaker 2: to get On the Moon. We know there's some carbon
Speaker 2: in the ice of the poles of the Moon, but
Speaker 2: not much and it's only the poles. But maybe you
Speaker 2: don't need carbon in these processes. So anyways, apparently they're
Speaker 2: doing the chemical reactions, they're producing these materials, and they're
Speaker 2: laying them down in a wafer so that you have
Speaker 2: p N junctions so that they are electronic devices and
Speaker 2: are photosensitive so that they can convert photons of energy
Speaker 2: into voltage. And they claim that they've made it work.
Speaker 1: But why try to do solar power? I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're landing on some random surface, you don't know how
Speaker 1: far away that planet is from its star, how bright
Speaker 1: that star is. Isn't nuclear power something that's going to
Speaker 1: be more robust. We already know how to build those
Speaker 1: things fairly miniaturized for stuff here on Earth. Why not
Speaker 1: nuclear powered probes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so for the actual self replicating probes, I think
Speaker 2: Free just did talk about nuclear and that's part of
Speaker 2: the reason why he wanted it at a gas giant planet,
Speaker 2: so that you would have a lot of hydrogen and
Speaker 2: you would have helium so that you can do fusion
Speaker 2: for example. I don't remember if he was using fusion
Speaker 2: or fission in his analysis, but yeah, that is the
Speaker 2: goal to eventually have nuclear power so that you're not
Speaker 2: bound to being too close to a star. It's a
Speaker 2: crawl walk run type situation. So the technologies we're actually
Speaker 2: developing right now are ones that we think will be
Speaker 2: useful for NASA and useful for commercial companies in the
Speaker 2: near term. And it'll be a while before you can
Speaker 2: get your whole supply chain up to making nuclear reactors.
Speaker 4: All right, So let's imagine we've got we've got the
Speaker 4: power figured out, we make we're replicating these robots we're
Speaker 4: scaling up. Let's start talking about like the ethics and
Speaker 4: some of the other bigger problems we might encounter. So,
Speaker 4: first of all, how do you make sure you don't
Speaker 4: get like bad copies? This is like humanities ambassadors that
Speaker 4: we're sending out into the solar system. How do we
Speaker 4: make sure that they remain good ambassadors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a big problem. So I'm not actually working
Speaker 2: on that problem because it's still pretty far down the road,
Speaker 2: but it is something that we need to consider. We
Speaker 2: need to have ethesis and philosophers thinking about these things,
Speaker 2: and they're surprisingly there are people working on these problems.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons that we're thinking about it is
Speaker 2: because we're trying to detect is there already life in
Speaker 2: the cosmos outside of Earth? And we're asking the question,
Speaker 2: why don't we see radio signals coming from all the
Speaker 2: other stars? You know, why is it not a star
Speaker 2: wars galaxy? So this is the question of the Fermi
Speaker 2: paradox or the great silence? Why is it so silent
Speaker 2: out there? And there's a number of theories. One of
Speaker 2: the theories is the dark forest hypothesis, where in game
Speaker 2: theory you have to consider the possibility that there are
Speaker 2: bad actors that if they discover your presence, they're going
Speaker 2: to come and wipe you out because they know that
Speaker 2: you might develop self replicating probes, and the probes you
Speaker 2: develop could take over the galaxy and wipe them out.
Speaker 2: And so in the game theory it becomes a part
Speaker 2: of the puzzle like how does self replicating probes fit
Speaker 2: into the dark forest hypothesis? Also, if self replicating probes
Speaker 2: are possible, why are they not already here? Because we
Speaker 2: think we can get there in you know, a few
Speaker 2: hundred years or less. I honestly think that we could
Speaker 2: get there by the end of the century or maybe
Speaker 2: within one hundred years. And so I think there are
Speaker 2: people alive today that can see this happening.
Speaker 1: That's my biggest question, right, Like, if this really is possible,
Speaker 1: if we're close to it, then surely aliens have been
Speaker 1: close to it. And if it doesn't take more than
Speaker 1: fifty thousand or on hundred thousand years to explore the
Speaker 1: whole galaxy with these probes, then why haven't we been visited?
Speaker 1: So what's your personal answer to that? Film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's I think there's three or four really
Speaker 2: interesting hypotheses. One is the dark forest one. Another one
Speaker 2: is that life is just incredibly improbable and so Earth
Speaker 2: might be alone within the visible universe.
Speaker 1: And just to underscore that this is such a powerful
Speaker 1: technology that it would allow any alien civilization in the
Speaker 1: entire galaxy to visit us in a fairly small amount
Speaker 1: of time. And we're talking one hundred thousand years or so,
Speaker 1: So you're suggesting that the lack of visiting self replicating
Speaker 1: probe suggests that we might be alone in the milky
Speaker 1: and not just like rare, but like literally alone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in terms of advanced intelligent life technological species. In fact,
Speaker 2: it's worse than that. There was a paper done by
Speaker 2: a philosopher at Oxford a few years ago. His name
Speaker 2: is slipping my mind. It might have been Stuart Anderson,
Speaker 2: where he showed that one civilization in another galaxy could
Speaker 2: set up a linear accelerator and dismantle one planet the
Speaker 2: size of Mercury, turning all that mass into self replicating probes.
Speaker 2: And if they did that a billion years ago, then ever,
Speaker 2: every single galaxy in the entire visible universe would already
Speaker 2: have every single star colonized. And so it's not just
Speaker 2: the galaxy, it's all the galaxies that are involved in
Speaker 2: this question. Okay, So yeah, it's a great and very
Speaker 2: important question. There's also the theory that civilizations always go
Speaker 2: extinct and they don't get that far. I don't think
Speaker 2: that's very plausible anymore, because we're already close to that point.
Speaker 2: You know. That's the great filter hypothesis. The other hypothesis
Speaker 2: is that it's the transcendence hypothesis, and I like this
Speaker 2: one a lot. And the idea is that civilizations go
Speaker 2: so intelligent that they actually figure out that self replicating
Speaker 2: probes are dangerous, so then they don't set them loose,
Speaker 2: and they don't really need the material of the rest
Speaker 2: of the galaxy, and they're more interested in just watching
Speaker 2: and seeing how other star systems develop rather than colonizing.
Speaker 2: And so they're not our peers. They're far above us.
Speaker 2: If that's possible, maybe that window of danger where you
Speaker 2: unleash self replicating probes is a very narrow window, and
Speaker 2: maybe they're watching out for that, you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: if we're going to get contacted by aliens, I think
Speaker 2: we're close to the point where it would happen, because
Speaker 2: we're just about to transition to having superintelligence and self
Speaker 2: replicating probes, and we're just about to become a danger
Speaker 2: to our part of the cosmos.
Speaker 3: And you're trying to hasten that.
Speaker 7: We all know.
Speaker 4: I'm a what blanked, right, And so you said this
Speaker 4: is your favorite hypothesis. That feels to me like you
Speaker 4: wouldn't want to be working as self replicating probes. Then
Speaker 4: what am I missing?
Speaker 1: He wants to get us to the place where we're
Speaker 1: responsible with our self replicating probes. Is that the idea?
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the problems I have in life is
Speaker 2: I always try to take a very nuanced approach to everything,
Speaker 2: and it's really hard to describe a nuanced position. And
Speaker 2: so the nuance in this one is that I think
Speaker 2: we need to have industry outside of planet Earth in
Speaker 2: order to save the Earth. But there is a danger.
Speaker 2: In fact, there's multiple dangers. So as we're going forward
Speaker 2: towards this right future, we're going to have to solve
Speaker 2: major ethical problems along the way, and so preventing runaway
Speaker 2: destroyer probes from setting out from our planet destroying our
Speaker 2: planet and then all the other ones, you know, that's
Speaker 2: one of the one of the big concerns. There's other
Speaker 2: concerns even before then, like if you've got self replicating
Speaker 2: industry in space, whoever owns that industry is not going
Speaker 2: to need to dilute their equity. They won't need any labor,
Speaker 2: they won't need anybody's property on planet Earth. They can
Speaker 2: just go out there and replicate, and within twenty years
Speaker 2: they can have more industry than our entire planet. And therefore,
Speaker 2: even if the whole planet pooled all of our resource together,
Speaker 2: we would not be able to buy a signif figant
Speaker 2: share of that industry. Even if the owner wanted to sell,
Speaker 2: And so there's the potential for more wealth concentration once
Speaker 2: we've removed labor from the equation, and once we've removed
Speaker 2: the planetary scale limits from the resource equation, And so
Speaker 2: that major sociological and ethical problem has to be solved,
Speaker 2: and we only have about forty years to solve it
Speaker 2: in my opinion, So yeah, there are major issues we
Speaker 2: got to solve. But still, nonetheless, I think that we're
Speaker 2: not going to be able to slow down industrial growth
Speaker 2: on our planet. We're not going to be able to
Speaker 2: slow down demand for intelligence because it's geopolitical, and if
Speaker 2: we want to save our planet, we're going to have
Speaker 2: to start developing these technologies off of the planet.
Speaker 1: So then the phil's optimistic view of the future is
Speaker 1: that over the next few decades or centuries, we develop
Speaker 1: these off planet resources as a way to salvage Earth
Speaker 1: and stop putting such a great environmental burden on it
Speaker 1: and to expand out to the rest of the Solar System.
Speaker 1: But that once we develop self replicating industry, we are
Speaker 1: wise about it and we don't release it out into
Speaker 1: the universe to run like a crazy virus and take
Speaker 1: over the rest of the universe and we're still here
Speaker 1: because aliens have also been responsible with their technology.
Speaker 2: Well, either they don't exist, or yes, they became smart
Speaker 2: along the way they underwent this crisis. This point of
Speaker 2: crisis where your technology becomes truly dangerous, you know you
Speaker 2: have AI that exceeds the sum of human capability, and
Speaker 2: you know that at that level of danger, at that
Speaker 2: crisis time, either you come through it or you don't.
Speaker 2: I think inevitably we're going to get there. Honestly, I'm not.
Speaker 2: I don't feel like I need to push for industry
Speaker 2: to happen off the planet. I think it's going to
Speaker 2: happen no matter what. And so what I'm trying to
Speaker 2: push for is to democratize it so that people all
Speaker 2: over the world are involved in the process and owners
Speaker 2: developing equity as we go to try to improve the
Speaker 2: odds that we will solve those societal problems.
Speaker 4: Well, this conversation has given me a lot of things
Speaker 4: to be optimistic about and a lot of things to
Speaker 4: panic about.
Speaker 3: Tonight when I'm trying to fall asleep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just hope that if there are aliens listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast, that they take Phil's comments to Heart
Speaker 1: and that they are wise and responsible with the use
Speaker 1: of their self replicating technology.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for being on the show.
Speaker 2: Phil, my pleasure, Thanks for having me.
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