Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff Works dot com
Speaker 1: where smart Happens. Hi, I'm Marshall Brain and this is
Speaker 1: episode two of Friday's science and tech news round up.
Speaker 1: As you may recall, last Friday was the first time
Speaker 1: I did this, and I asked you for your comments,
Speaker 1: and wow, did I get a lot of comments. There were.
Speaker 1: There were hundreds of them. It was. It was really
Speaker 1: pretty amazing and I did try to respond to as
Speaker 1: many of them as I could, but after the first
Speaker 1: hundred or so, I just ran out of time. And
Speaker 1: I apologize if I wasn't able to personally respond to you,
Speaker 1: but thanks so much for sending them in, and I
Speaker 1: will try to use several of the suggestions I got
Speaker 1: today in doing this. If you'd like to comment more,
Speaker 1: i'd welcome that, And you can go to how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com using the using my email address m
Speaker 1: bur Ane at how stuff works dot com and send
Speaker 1: me comments, or the Facebook page is uh facebook dot
Speaker 1: com slash brain stuff. Feel free um, and I will
Speaker 1: try to respond and and thank you again. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. So let's look at the news what happened
Speaker 1: this week. If I had to pick the most interesting thing,
Speaker 1: I saw on the web this week. Keeping in mind
Speaker 1: that I'm a robotics kind of guy, it's the fact
Speaker 1: that the I Tripoli Magazines I Tripoli Spectrum did an
Speaker 1: article on David Hansen's robot heads. Now, Hanson has been
Speaker 1: working on these things for for maybe as much as
Speaker 1: a decade. I know, back in like two thousand three
Speaker 1: or something, Popular Science did a big article on it.
Speaker 1: So he's been working at this for a long time,
Speaker 1: and they are getting so realistic. It really is amazing. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, if you want to look at one of
Speaker 1: these heads, you can go to Google right now and
Speaker 1: you can type in interest reading number six eight four
Speaker 1: and the top link will be my article that contains
Speaker 1: a link to the video, and you look at it,
Speaker 1: and like I said, Hansen's heads are getting very very close.
Speaker 1: The blinking isn't quite there yet, but otherwise just wow.
Speaker 1: I envision one day walking into like a favorite restaurant
Speaker 1: chain with Lee and this very attractive man or woman
Speaker 1: comes up, acting as a Greater and says like, hi, Marshall,
Speaker 1: it's great to have you here. How are the kids?
Speaker 1: And she will be a robot. I'll be able to
Speaker 1: walk into any restaurant in the chain, and I will
Speaker 1: be recognized because all these robots will share the same database,
Speaker 1: and they'll use facial recognition and they'll be able to talk.
Speaker 1: And you know, when you look at the heads that
Speaker 1: that Hanson is creating, it's not that hard to imagine
Speaker 1: it happening in the not too distant future. We got
Speaker 1: to get the natural language processing figure year doubt, and
Speaker 1: we have to get some of the mechanics of walking
Speaker 1: and stuff made more fluid. But it's coming. It's coming,
Speaker 1: and it just wasn't It was really interesting to look
Speaker 1: at how realistic the heads are. So a lot of
Speaker 1: you commented that I need to do some kind of
Speaker 1: separator between stories because it was a little confusing last time.
Speaker 1: So here's the separator flip. You might remember the Icelandic
Speaker 1: volcano that erupted last year. It became famous because it
Speaker 1: totally shut down the airlines in Europe. You may remember
Speaker 1: nothing was flying. They couldn't fly in Europe and they
Speaker 1: couldn't fly between Europe and the United States because of
Speaker 1: the ash that that volcano threw up. The ash would
Speaker 1: get into jet engines and destroy them. So now there's
Speaker 1: evidence in the form of a swarm of earthquakes, that
Speaker 1: there may be another eruption coming up, and it could
Speaker 1: be a lot bigger than the last one. Uh. That
Speaker 1: article is linked in Interesting Reading them or six eighty
Speaker 1: four as well, and it contains this cool quote. The
Speaker 1: last recorded eruption of whatever the name of this volcano is,
Speaker 1: because I can't pronounce it, but let's say it's Barta
Speaker 1: Bunga was in nineteen ten, although volcanologists believe its last
Speaker 1: major eruption occurred in fourteen seventy seven, when it produced
Speaker 1: a large ash and plumas fallout. It also produced the
Speaker 1: largest known lava flow during the past ten thousand years
Speaker 1: on Earth. That's a lot of lava, especially if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen the volcano that's been erupting on Hawaii for
Speaker 1: you know forever, it's produced a lot of lava. And
Speaker 1: to think that this was the largest known lava flow
Speaker 1: in ten thousand years is an incredible amount of lava.
Speaker 1: So if that volcano blows, we may never fly to
Speaker 1: Europe again. For all I know. That article was published
Speaker 1: by the Telegraph. Blip. We now know how fleas are
Speaker 1: able to jump so far. Now. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've ever experienced fleas, or if you've even ever seen
Speaker 1: a flea jump, and it may not seem like such
Speaker 1: a big deal if you never have, but the jumping
Speaker 1: ability of fleas is utterly amazing when you consider their size.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna admit that I haven't seen a flea in years,
Speaker 1: but that's only because someone invented those flea drops that
Speaker 1: you put on the back of the dog, and they work.
Speaker 1: Those flea drops work incredibly well and they get rid
Speaker 1: of all fleas. But before those drops were invented, I
Speaker 1: used to live on a farm in Zebula, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: and I had eight dogs and they would bring fleas
Speaker 1: into the house, obviously, especially in the summer. And you've
Speaker 1: got a lot of experience with fleas and they really
Speaker 1: are amazing. Or if you've ever seen um some of
Speaker 1: the studies on fleas and flea circuses and stuff, that
Speaker 1: they're they're cool bugs if you don't mind the fact
Speaker 1: that they suck your blood. Anyway, the way these fleas
Speaker 1: jump is that they have what's essentially a spring mechanism,
Speaker 1: and the leg muscle doesn't drive the leg directly, It
Speaker 1: loads up the spring and then releases it. And that
Speaker 1: springs release is what drives the leg and lets the
Speaker 1: fleas jump so far, and the leg has this cool
Speaker 1: kind of multipart lever system that makes the most of
Speaker 1: that spring. So they figured all this out by taking
Speaker 1: these really nice high speed slow motion movies of fleas
Speaker 1: jumping and kind of reverse engineering what was going on.
Speaker 1: So again, if you google interesting reading numbers six eight four,
Speaker 1: you can find an article that has a video showing
Speaker 1: fleas jumping. And you know, I guess you could go
Speaker 1: out and this summer get your dog to bring you
Speaker 1: some fleas and you can watch them do their thing.
Speaker 1: It truly is amazing. Blip. You may have heard that
Speaker 1: Russian scientists have been down in Antarctica this summer, and yes,
Speaker 1: it's summer in Antarctica right now, because that's the Southern Hemisphere,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to drill a borehole through the ice
Speaker 1: to reach an ancient ice entombed lake that's underneath Antarctica,
Speaker 1: and they're hoping to find cool new life forms there
Speaker 1: because this lake has been cut off from everything else
Speaker 1: they think for something like fourteen million years. So they've
Speaker 1: been drilling through the ice more than two miles now
Speaker 1: all summer long, trying to get down into the water
Speaker 1: of this lake, and they're like a hundred feet from
Speaker 1: breaking through and getting to the lake. And they ran
Speaker 1: out of time because summer's ending, and if they were
Speaker 1: to stay there too long, it gets so cold you
Speaker 1: can't take off and land airplanes anymore because it freezes
Speaker 1: up the hydraulic fluid and stuff. And so they had
Speaker 1: to get out. So before they left, they filled this
Speaker 1: two mile deep borehole with kerosene, hopped on their plane
Speaker 1: and took off. The rasine was put there to keep
Speaker 1: the whole from closing back up, so that, you know,
Speaker 1: they don't have to go and redrill the whole thing
Speaker 1: next year, because it took the whole summer to drill it,
Speaker 1: so they need to be able to start with with
Speaker 1: a partially done whole. But as you can imagine, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people who just are not happy about
Speaker 1: the kerosene. What if the kerosene contaminates the lake, what
Speaker 1: if you know, who knows what else. So you know,
Speaker 1: there are international bodies that worry about this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and we'll see how this plays out over the next year.
Speaker 1: Blip Reuters published an article that says that Facebook and
Speaker 1: Google are considering the idea of buying Twitter. The thing
Speaker 1: that's most amazing about the article is the price. It's
Speaker 1: as high as ten billion dollars for Twitter. Just to
Speaker 1: put that into perspective, that's like what that's like two
Speaker 1: hours of the Iraqi war. Okay, that's a bad analogy,
Speaker 1: but let's put it in a different perspective. Think about
Speaker 1: all of the factories and all of the employees and
Speaker 1: all the stuff that General Motors has to have in
Speaker 1: order to be a worldwide company making, you know, millions
Speaker 1: of automobiles. It's a huge, unbelievable, complicated, a massive company.
Speaker 1: That company, if they were to sell a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: Chevy Vaults at forty tho dollars each, that transaction alone,
Speaker 1: that one model alone, that's four billion dollars. GM is
Speaker 1: a massive company. That company is only worth fifty billion
Speaker 1: dollars in market cap, and Forward is about the same.
Speaker 1: So you have Twitter, which is little hundred and forty
Speaker 1: character messages that people randomly flip off to each other,
Speaker 1: and you have GM, which forges cars and trucks out
Speaker 1: of steel and aluminum to drive the nation or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yet GM is worth not that much more than Twitter.
Speaker 1: It's just it's amazing. So what does this mean? Think
Speaker 1: about it? What does this mean? This means that we
Speaker 1: need to get out there and start us some websites. Wow,
Speaker 1: we we need to be creating websites because who knows
Speaker 1: what the next Twitter like idea will be or where
Speaker 1: it will come from. You know, it's just not that
Speaker 1: complicated an idea to be worth that kind of money,
Speaker 1: and it indicates that we should be creating websites. Blip
Speaker 1: I did a podcast about this a couple of months ago,
Speaker 1: but it broke into the mainstream news this week. So
Speaker 1: let me let me just mention it again. A scientist
Speaker 1: has developed what is being called a thinking cap or
Speaker 1: a creativity cap that can enhance your creative abilities by
Speaker 1: disrupting your left hemisphere. So think about some of the
Speaker 1: things savants can do. Like, you know, you've probably seen
Speaker 1: this with certain autistic people. You can, you know, drop
Speaker 1: a box of matches on the floor, or and they
Speaker 1: can instantly count all the matches just by looking at
Speaker 1: it one time. Or they can draw incredibly well, or
Speaker 1: they have photographic memories, or they can solve complex math
Speaker 1: problems in their head. Most normal people can't do this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, But it turns out maybe we actually can.
Speaker 1: And what this thinking cap or creativity cap does is
Speaker 1: it gets in and disrupts part of the left hemisphere
Speaker 1: for a period of time like an hour, and these
Speaker 1: abilities get uncovered in normal people. It's almost like the
Speaker 1: left hemisphere is masking them or or making these abilities,
Speaker 1: uh be suppressed. And once you get the left hemisphere
Speaker 1: out of the picture, prestoh, these magical abilities become available
Speaker 1: to normal people. So one professor who's working on this
Speaker 1: project calls it the biggest cognitive enhancement we are aware of.
Speaker 1: And you know, this could become a commercial product in
Speaker 1: the not too distant future because this isn't like you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't require a machine the size of a skyscraper
Speaker 1: or anything like that. It's a really pretty simple device.
Speaker 1: So it's something you know, maybe we can buy it
Speaker 1: at Best Buy in in two years or something like that. Blip.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of stuff about tablet computers this week.
Speaker 1: The biggest announcement probably is from HP, which released its
Speaker 1: new touch pad tablet. So last week there were only
Speaker 1: three major tablet operating systems. There was Apples, there was Android,
Speaker 1: and there was Windows seven. So this week the hp
Speaker 1: product makes a completely new operating system available, and this
Speaker 1: one is called web os, which was developed by Palm
Speaker 1: and hp bot. Palm last year in order to get
Speaker 1: web os the demos that you can find on YouTube
Speaker 1: or you know, on on the brain stuff blog. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of videos out. They look pretty interesting and
Speaker 1: will know probably in a year whether this operating system
Speaker 1: is able to get any traction and take off. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the iPad two has apparently gone into production in preparation
Speaker 1: for its announcements sometime this spring. Apple has sold something
Speaker 1: like fifteen million of the original iPads, or more than
Speaker 1: a million a month, so it needs to start production
Speaker 1: long before the announcement in order to get enough new
Speaker 1: iPads into the pipeline to meet demand. Once the announcement happens,
Speaker 1: of course, the new one's thinner, and it'll have a
Speaker 1: camera for FaceTime on the front of it, and the
Speaker 1: CPU gets upgraded. But you know, it's not that much
Speaker 1: different from the existing iPad. It certainly can't jump as
Speaker 1: far as a flea can or anything like that. Blip
Speaker 1: Wired wrote about a piece of performance art that is
Speaker 1: really pretty original. Two people donate their white blood cells
Speaker 1: and then those white blood cells battle it out in
Speaker 1: an arena under a my groscope to see who has
Speaker 1: the stronger immune system. This is not quite as easy
Speaker 1: as it sounds, because you have to have somebody draw blood,
Speaker 1: and then the white blood cells need to be isolated
Speaker 1: from the red blood cells and and put aside, and
Speaker 1: then they need to be stained with a color so
Speaker 1: you know which team is winning and which team is losing.
Speaker 1: But you have to admit that it's a pretty interesting
Speaker 1: way for two people to have a competition, and then
Speaker 1: you know the winner can go on and and fight
Speaker 1: with somebody else. You can imagine Obama versus Putin or
Speaker 1: something coming up in the future. Blip. NASA is getting
Speaker 1: ready to design another new rocket, but it's arguing with
Speaker 1: Congress right now about the cost of that new rocket.
Speaker 1: And as you may recall, NASA is about to have
Speaker 1: its last Shuttle flight, and last year NASA had its
Speaker 1: first test flight of its Constellation rocket that was going
Speaker 1: to replace the Shuttle in terms of getting people into orbit,
Speaker 1: but the Constellation program was cut with the hope that
Speaker 1: private companies can pick up the slack. The other rocket
Speaker 1: that NASA needs to build is a heavy lift vehicle
Speaker 1: because the Shuttle was good at getting big stuff into orbit.
Speaker 1: This heavy lift rocket would use many of the parts
Speaker 1: from the Shuttle, including the solid rocket boosters and the
Speaker 1: Shuttle's main engines, in order to cut the costs. But
Speaker 1: NASA still isn't sure that it has enough money to
Speaker 1: bring this thing into into flight status. We should be
Speaker 1: able to see the results of their calculations by this summer,
Speaker 1: and if the money is available, the new rocket is
Speaker 1: supposed to have test flights in five years. Speaking of
Speaker 1: the Shuttle, there's been some discussion of letting a private
Speaker 1: company take over the Shuttle after it retires so that
Speaker 1: it can keep flying. A company called United Space Alliance
Speaker 1: already is in charge of the thousands of people who
Speaker 1: process shuttles for flight and launch them. This company would
Speaker 1: take over and fly the Shuttle as a private enterprise,
Speaker 1: rather than seeing it of balled. It might be a
Speaker 1: win win for both the employees of that company and
Speaker 1: NASA if they can pull this off. Blip, a new
Speaker 1: drone for the Navy that is a pilot less aircraft,
Speaker 1: took its first flight this week. This one's unique because
Speaker 1: it's stealthy, and it also should be able to replace
Speaker 1: manned fighters, and if things work out as planned, it
Speaker 1: will be able to take off and land on aircraft carriers,
Speaker 1: which would be a first. It has a longer range
Speaker 1: than manned fighters, over two thousand miles, meaning that an
Speaker 1: aircraft carrier could sit hundreds of miles away from the
Speaker 1: target and launch these drones at enemy targets, particularly at
Speaker 1: any aircraft installations where you don't want to be flying
Speaker 1: people near them anyway. So if things work out in
Speaker 1: the next couple of years, those things will start landing
Speaker 1: and taking off from carriers and that will begin, you know,
Speaker 1: that will be the start of the beginning of the
Speaker 1: end of manned flight, probably because once you get drones
Speaker 1: that can replay fighters, robots are going to take over
Speaker 1: that whole business. Probably. Blip pharmacies in the United States
Speaker 1: have a problem. People who are addicted to pain killers
Speaker 1: have started robbing pharmacies to get the drugs in the
Speaker 1: same way that people rob banks. You know, like a
Speaker 1: guy with a mask or a you know, pantyhose over
Speaker 1: his face comes in with a gun or a machete
Speaker 1: or a knife for something like that and demands, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not give me all your money. It's give me
Speaker 1: your pain killers. And this is happening more and more
Speaker 1: at local drug stores. There are now hundreds of pharmacy
Speaker 1: robberies every year. It's getting so bad that we may
Speaker 1: have to start buying our prescriptions through cages or through
Speaker 1: bulletproof glass dividers to keep robbers away from the drugs.
Speaker 1: If you go to how stuff works and read how
Speaker 1: OxyContin works, you can understand why this is happening. Blip.
Speaker 1: And finally I saw this this morning and it it
Speaker 1: just well, let me say that someone suggested that I
Speaker 1: end on something that was particularly interesting and funny to be,
Speaker 1: so this is it. I saw an article in Fast
Speaker 1: Company magazine talking about the death of Dig. If you've
Speaker 1: been following social media sites, Dig started imploding last year
Speaker 1: when they did a redesign that that absolutely ticked off
Speaker 1: their audience. So they haven't recovered from that, and so
Speaker 1: the article is called why dig may never find its
Speaker 1: way back. So I was reading this article and way
Speaker 1: down at the bottom of it, there is this amazing
Speaker 1: little paragraph that says, and I quote, most would be
Speaker 1: shocked to learn that some of Dig's competitors actually pay
Speaker 1: people to generate interesting, witty and intellectual comments. It's not
Speaker 1: discussed in many circles, but nobody really worries if it
Speaker 1: makes us laugh, smile or think? Who cares if it's artificial?
Speaker 1: End quote? Now is that true? Like when you go
Speaker 1: to Reddit or slash dot or farc are you you know,
Speaker 1: are a lot of the comments being produced by ringers
Speaker 1: who have been paid to put those comments in there?
Speaker 1: And if it is true, how much do you get
Speaker 1: paid to put artificial comments into a website? Like? Think
Speaker 1: about it? If you're addicted to a site like dig
Speaker 1: or Reddit, how easy would a job like that be you?
Speaker 1: What do you do for a living? Well? I read
Speaker 1: articles on websites and I write witty comments and get
Speaker 1: paid for it. That would be it, you know, that
Speaker 1: would be a pretty nice way to make a living
Speaker 1: if it pays anything. Anyway, That's it for today. I'm
Speaker 1: Marshall brain and until next time, have a good weekend
Speaker 1: for moralns and thousands of other topics. Doesn't how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com and don't forget to check out the
Speaker 1: brain stuff blog on the house stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: home page. You can also follow brain stuff on Facebook
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