Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, every one, and welcome to Forward Thinking.
Speaker 1: The podcast it looks at the future, says, come fly
Speaker 1: with me, Let's fly, Let's fly away. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick and Jonathan. No, I don't want
Speaker 1: to fly. I'm perfectly happy here on the ground. Well,
Speaker 1: you're one of the few. We should also mention before
Speaker 1: we jump into this podcast, our beloved co host Lauren
Speaker 1: is under the weather today, so she will not be here.
Speaker 1: Well we will hope she's feeling better soon. Yes, we
Speaker 1: will carry on and uh and and do her proud.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk today about this idea of everything
Speaker 1: from what really it's about defying gravity and not in
Speaker 1: the you know, Idina Menzel Wicked kind of way, or
Speaker 1: maybe in the idea when Menzel wicked kind of way.
Speaker 1: That's obviously the musical Wicked. She has this big song
Speaker 1: defying graph. Okay, I'm not cool enough to get that
Speaker 1: refer Okay, well that's okay the people out there who do.
Speaker 1: But if you reference Huey Lewis, I'm I'm right there
Speaker 1: with you. Got you. Well, we're doing it all for
Speaker 1: never mind. We're talking now about everything from hoverboards to
Speaker 1: to flying cities, to to anything in between. Really and
Speaker 1: and our inspiration here largely comes from the world of
Speaker 1: science fiction. Yeah, so, Jonathan, what's your favorite sci fi
Speaker 1: hover thing? You know, I mean it's cliche to say
Speaker 1: the Back to the Future hoverboard, but it's the Back
Speaker 1: to the Future hoverboard. I remember when I say it
Speaker 1: was one of those things where when you saw it
Speaker 1: for the first time. In Back to the Future Too,
Speaker 1: it's into not one it was in the second one. Yes,
Speaker 1: it really well for the you know, of course, they're
Speaker 1: mirroring a scene that happened in the first film, right
Speaker 1: he he goes up to a kid who has a
Speaker 1: wooden scooter and he rips the top of the scooter
Speaker 1: off and turns it into a skateboard and skates around
Speaker 1: while running from bullies, right and then of course the
Speaker 1: bullies get there, come up and via uh manure truck.
Speaker 1: And then in Back the Future Too, it's kind of
Speaker 1: a mirror of that scene, only this time the Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's so really not that far in the future
Speaker 1: today anyway. Year. But yeah, so that by then uh,
Speaker 1: and it's I think made by Mattel if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1: It actually has like the logo of the company on
Speaker 1: the branding. Yeah, but it's a a floating a hoverboard.
Speaker 1: It has no wheels, it hovers above the ground. Anyone
Speaker 1: has seeing this movie knows immediately what I'm talking about here.
Speaker 1: And um even at the time when the movie was released,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever saw any of the
Speaker 1: interviews or anything that came out around the same time
Speaker 1: as this. I mean, there was a long time ago
Speaker 1: for you, not so long for me. Um. The but
Speaker 1: they actually kind of played up this idea that the
Speaker 1: hoverboards were real, that these things had really been made,
Speaker 1: and the only reason they weren't everywhere in in stores
Speaker 1: is because parent teacher routs were up in arms saying
Speaker 1: that it would be too unsafe and kids couldnot use them.
Speaker 1: And so there was this kind of a interesting rumor
Speaker 1: that was being perpetuated. And keep in mind, this is
Speaker 1: really before you know, the internet could allow these rumors
Speaker 1: to spread like wildfire. But there was a pretty widely
Speaker 1: held belief that in fact, those hoverboards were not special effects.
Speaker 1: They weren't being you know, supported by rigs of any kind.
Speaker 1: They were really real, but they totally weren't really real.
Speaker 1: You know. I feel like even if I had heard
Speaker 1: that as a kid, I don't want to toot my
Speaker 1: own horn, but I think I would have thought that
Speaker 1: sounds not true. I mean, look at this thing. It's
Speaker 1: this little flat piece of plastic. How could it float
Speaker 1: like that? But it turns out a lot of people
Speaker 1: still want to go for this idea because I believe
Speaker 1: it was just last week when a video went viral
Speaker 1: on the internet Tony Hawk wasn't It wasn't Yeah Tony.
Speaker 1: A bunch of celebrities there. There were some professional athletes
Speaker 1: and uh some I think Christopher Lloyd was in it
Speaker 1: from UM and it had a hoverboard. It was h
Speaker 1: u v R. However, it's like promoting this as if
Speaker 1: it were a technology that's coming out this year. Get
Speaker 1: your hoverboard, and and they were filming people using it
Speaker 1: and talking about how cool it was, and all these
Speaker 1: people on the internet were like, whoa, it's finally real.
Speaker 1: Uh sad fact here um not not real. Still there
Speaker 1: there are some good breakdowns on YouTube. I hate to
Speaker 1: spoil the fun, but if you go look them up,
Speaker 1: just look up, you know, hoverboard hoax videos, and you
Speaker 1: can see where people have slowed down frames in particular
Speaker 1: parts of the video where you can see the shadow
Speaker 1: of the crane that's holding these people up moving behind. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's a that's a giveaway right there. Obviously, it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where if you are a filmmaker
Speaker 1: or making a video or whatever, Uh, it's very easy
Speaker 1: to to overlook something like that that you need to
Speaker 1: have a control over, or to hope that perhaps whatever,
Speaker 1: however you edit the video, that you hide those well
Speaker 1: enough that no one really spoils the fun too early,
Speaker 1: depending upon your point of view, whether it's spoiling fun
Speaker 1: or or just perpetuating a hoax. But well then again,
Speaker 1: figuring it out might have been part of the fund
Speaker 1: they planned. Yeah, and these days, you know, it's people
Speaker 1: have lots of of abilities to really comb over things
Speaker 1: thoroughly when they go up online. And so it's it's
Speaker 1: harder and harder to get a hoax to pass, you know,
Speaker 1: a truly skeptical I it's not impossible, but it is.
Speaker 1: It's challenging. So what's your favorite implementation of this flying
Speaker 1: hovering stuff? Well, I would probably go with the video
Speaker 1: game BioShock Infinite. There's only a few things that fly
Speaker 1: on that like everything everything flies. Okay, so a lot
Speaker 1: of these things seem to be some kind of aircraft
Speaker 1: or whatever. But the city itself, the city where the
Speaker 1: game takes place, is a floating city called Columbia. Called Columbia,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a dystopia, you know, full of evil
Speaker 1: and maybe it's utopia. When it starts, Yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: so nice until it's not until you go into the
Speaker 1: wrong part of town, until everyone in charge of it
Speaker 1: is totally evil. Well there they were evil to start with,
Speaker 1: it's just everyone was going along with it until okay.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you get on this floating city and and well,
Speaker 1: if you know the game, you know the game. But
Speaker 1: if you don't, what happens is there are these like
Speaker 1: glowing discs on the bottoms of the city platforms you
Speaker 1: can see and they basically explain, oh these the city
Speaker 1: is held in the air by quantum levitation, which is
Speaker 1: controlled by a lutess field named after a scientist in
Speaker 1: the game. Uh. And basically this goes along with the
Speaker 1: standard sci fi convention of inventing fake technologies that sound
Speaker 1: realistic because you put the quantum in there. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very much like in Star Trek. You can you can
Speaker 1: solve any problem by reversing the polarity. It sounds it
Speaker 1: sounds scientific enough where the average person watching is just
Speaker 1: going to accept that as, oh, this is what they
Speaker 1: do to fix whatever it is. And it's only when
Speaker 1: you start paying attention to you start telling up how
Speaker 1: many times they reverse the polarity for different things that
Speaker 1: you think they don't Really, that's just that's just magical
Speaker 1: speak for saying, flip the switch to make it stop beeping,
Speaker 1: you know. But well, yeah, well it's totally true. I mean,
Speaker 1: if I say I've got a debigulator to shrink you
Speaker 1: down to a pocket size, that sounds ridiculous. But if
Speaker 1: I have a quantum debigulator, it's like, oh okay, it's quantum.
Speaker 1: It uses the power of the atom. So uh, what's
Speaker 1: interesting is that in this implementation, according to some of
Speaker 1: the deeper lore within BioShock infinite, Uh, this quantum levitation
Speaker 1: field allows you to suspend particles in a physical location
Speaker 1: in whatever orient ation you want, which is going to
Speaker 1: be interesting when we talk about a real science a
Speaker 1: little bit later, on. Now, this is this is not
Speaker 1: a real scientific application of the of what we'll be
Speaker 1: talking about later. Believe it or not, BioShock Infinite failed
Speaker 1: to create real anti gravity technology, right. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: we've also got a couple of other ones that we're
Speaker 1: going to mention, Like the Avengers they have their Hellic Harrier.
Speaker 1: As far as I can tell, this is just a
Speaker 1: huge quad rotor kind of thing, yeah, which or I
Speaker 1: don't know how many rotors it has, but it's it's
Speaker 1: not like something crazy magical. It's just like pretend you
Speaker 1: had unlimited energy, right, and that you were able to
Speaker 1: spend these things, these rotors with enough enough speed, and
Speaker 1: you had enough of them to generate the lift necessary
Speaker 1: to lift up this this aircraft carrier, which I would question. Uh.
Speaker 1: The other one I would go with is uh Lando
Speaker 1: Calarisians home, well, wud City star Wars. I don't think
Speaker 1: it was his home. He technically one cloud city I
Speaker 1: think in a gambling I'm sure that is a cloud
Speaker 1: city is where he laid his head at night. That's
Speaker 1: didn't else, gotcha, gotcha. It's not not his not his
Speaker 1: point of origin, but it was where he spent all
Speaker 1: his time. Yeah, I think it's explained just in terms
Speaker 1: of general anti gravity magic. Yeah, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: even explained so much as it just is an interesting visual. However,
Speaker 1: we'll have something more to say about that in this
Speaker 1: episode too. Yeah, okay, So why is it that we
Speaker 1: don't have stuff like this? What makes gravity such? In
Speaker 1: your words in the notes here, I must quote such
Speaker 1: a harsh mistress. Well, as it turns out, gravity is
Speaker 1: a really interesting stuff, and we don't necessarily understand everything
Speaker 1: about it. In fact, you know, one of the things
Speaker 1: that we we one of the bits of information we lack,
Speaker 1: is what is the actual mechanism of gravity? We have
Speaker 1: the placeholder of gravitons, which are the particles, the hypothetical
Speaker 1: particles that made ray work, but we don't you know,
Speaker 1: they're hypothetical. We haven't had any direct observation of them
Speaker 1: or been able to prove their existence in any definitive way. Now,
Speaker 1: mathematically it totally makes sense because and we have to
Speaker 1: have a placeholder there. So that's kind of why we
Speaker 1: we have this thing we call gravitons. I think they're
Speaker 1: in that category where they're consistent with what we know,
Speaker 1: but there's no evidence for them directly right. So, according
Speaker 1: to lots of theories, including the general relativity of theory,
Speaker 1: that a certain Einstein way to go. Einstein came up
Speaker 1: with UH talks about space time and curvature of space
Speaker 1: time and how mass causes a warping of space time.
Speaker 1: So if you have a mass in spacetime, it causes
Speaker 1: space time to warp around it, and that the typical
Speaker 1: example people give is a much simpler one for us
Speaker 1: to understand. So Joe, you and I, let's imagine we're
Speaker 1: holding a rubber sheet, and we're standing far enough apart
Speaker 1: where we're holding that sheet as as tightly as tautly
Speaker 1: as we can. Why are we holding a rubber sheet?
Speaker 1: Because we love science? Joe, Okay, Well, you know it's
Speaker 1: gonna get weirder before he gets less weird. So then
Speaker 1: then Lauren, who has recovered from her being under the weather,
Speaker 1: comes up and rolls a tennis ball across this, uh,
Speaker 1: this rubber sheet which we're holding taught and the rubber
Speaker 1: sheet is taught enough where the tennis ball pretty much
Speaker 1: rolls in straight line from you to me. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: But then Lauren decides that she's you know, wants to
Speaker 1: get a little impish, and she puts a bowling ball
Speaker 1: in the center of this rubber sheet, which then causes
Speaker 1: the rubber sheet to deform around it. It dips down.
Speaker 1: The weight of the bowling ball is pulling down too
Speaker 1: hard for the rubber sheet to remain taught. Of course,
Speaker 1: you know what else would happen is that the tennis
Speaker 1: ball would roll toward the bowling ball, exactly like if
Speaker 1: you were to try and roll that tennis ball second time,
Speaker 1: instead of going in a straight line, it would immediately
Speaker 1: start to deviate towards the bowling ball, which has deformed
Speaker 1: that that straight plastic sheet. The same thing happen and
Speaker 1: in space time with bodies of large enough mass, I mean,
Speaker 1: any mass is going to warp it a little bit,
Speaker 1: but for you to really significantly warped spacetime, you have
Speaker 1: to have pretty large amounts of mass uh. And so
Speaker 1: that's kind of the the idea behind this whole gravity thing.
Speaker 1: It's also can we can also express it as saying
Speaker 1: that gravity UH is the attraction that two bodies have,
Speaker 1: two bodies of mass have UH, and the amount, like
Speaker 1: the significance of that gravity depends upon two things. The
Speaker 1: size of the mass is involved, and how near or
Speaker 1: far apart they are from one another. Okay, so when
Speaker 1: we're talking about the Earth, the Earth has a pretty
Speaker 1: good hold on us. We're kind of stuck um without
Speaker 1: you know, using some pretty extraordinary means to get our
Speaker 1: feet off the ground for more than a couple of
Speaker 1: you know, more than a second or two, depending upon
Speaker 1: how you're how you're managing to do this trampoline or not.
Speaker 1: So uh, you know, we have to find ways to
Speaker 1: counteract that force of gravity, that that downward accelerating force
Speaker 1: that's constantly pulling upon us. And uh. And so it's
Speaker 1: it's tricky because to do that means that you have
Speaker 1: to expend energy or you have to find some other
Speaker 1: means of counteracting the force of the succeloring force pulling
Speaker 1: you downward. Of course, it's not like flying or even
Speaker 1: floating is a total mystery to us. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: come up with quite a few ways of flying. I mean,
Speaker 1: there is the balloon lighter than air. Uh, and so
Speaker 1: that works by having a material within the balloon that
Speaker 1: is of a of less density than the atmosphere around it,
Speaker 1: So it floats up right. It's it's it's technically called
Speaker 1: lighter than air, tends to be called that. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you were to if you were to take a a
Speaker 1: ziploc bag or just a sandwich bag of whatever brand
Speaker 1: you like, and it has that little sealable edge, and
Speaker 1: you fill it with air and you seal it, and
Speaker 1: you put that on a pool, it's gonna float on
Speaker 1: top of the pool because that air is less dense
Speaker 1: than the water around it. Yeah. Of course, what makes
Speaker 1: a boat or something float on top of the water
Speaker 1: is the same principle that allows a balloon to float
Speaker 1: in the air. It's this buoyancy issue. So if you
Speaker 1: get some gas that is less dense than our atmosphere
Speaker 1: is particularly no our atmosphere at the altitudes that which
Speaker 1: we can operate without uh encountering some significant difficulties, then
Speaker 1: you can, if you have enough of it, you can
Speaker 1: have enough lifting force to lift a you know, something
Speaker 1: like whether it's a balloon or a blamp or whatever.
Speaker 1: Hydrogen and helium tend to be used the most. Hydrogen
Speaker 1: was used quite a bit until the Hindenburg disaster. And
Speaker 1: the thing about hydrogen is it has a lot of
Speaker 1: lifting power. I mean, it's that's the first element, right
Speaker 1: so you've got this ability to uh, it's it's gonna
Speaker 1: be the least dense, it's gonna be the lightest just
Speaker 1: by definition. Um. And it has a one point one
Speaker 1: kilogram for every cubic meter of gas lifting power. So
Speaker 1: if you have a cubic meter of of hydrogen, uh,
Speaker 1: then it can lift one point one Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: also has one point one million units of fire. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's flammable. That's the that's the big issue. So after
Speaker 1: the Hindenburg disaster, most lighter than air vehicles now rely
Speaker 1: on helium, which is not flammable. It is not volatile
Speaker 1: at all, but it has uh, it doesn't it's not
Speaker 1: as strong either. Has one point oh two kilograms of
Speaker 1: lifting power per cubic meter of helium is. It also
Speaker 1: still more expensive. I know at the time of the
Speaker 1: Hindenburg that hydrogen was cheaper and easier to get your hands.
Speaker 1: Definitely expensive because if you look at scientific papers, they
Speaker 1: talk a lot about how the getting enough helium to
Speaker 1: do things like super cool your particle accelerators is getting
Speaker 1: harder and harder, particularly as people use it for things
Speaker 1: like balloons and stuff. Not that. Not that if you
Speaker 1: get a not that if you get your kid, you know,
Speaker 1: a balloon for or his or her birthday that you
Speaker 1: have just robbed the large Hadron collider of finding the
Speaker 1: next you know, hypothetical particle. But it is an issue.
Speaker 1: It's not something that's easy to get at. Hydrogen. We could,
Speaker 1: you know, by pouring a little energy into water, we
Speaker 1: can get hydrogen. He can't do that with helium. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say the idea of creating something like a
Speaker 1: city like Columbia floating on the basis of helium or hydrogen,
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem all that feasible. You would you would
Speaker 1: need so much because I mean, remember that's that's the
Speaker 1: lifting power of a cubic meter of that gas. So
Speaker 1: you would need so many cubic meters to to be
Speaker 1: able to lift something as heavy as a city. Uh,
Speaker 1: it would be pretty ridiculous. But then, um, we can
Speaker 1: look at maybe something like a heavier than air aircraft
Speaker 1: because we do have plenty of examples of those two.
Speaker 1: All right, Yeah, I've flown in one of those things.
Speaker 1: It has wings instead of balloons. Yeah, that's another Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is all about generating lift, and this is one
Speaker 1: of those things that often gets miscommunicated one of the
Speaker 1: the way that I always heard about lift being generated,
Speaker 1: it turns out is not entirely correct. The thing I
Speaker 1: always heard was that, let's say you've got a wing
Speaker 1: going through the air, and it's angled in such a way,
Speaker 1: or the wing is molded in such a way that
Speaker 1: the air over the top of the wing has further
Speaker 1: to travel than the air going beneath the wing, and
Speaker 1: the differences in pressure are what generate lift. That's a
Speaker 1: very common explanation for lift. Is also not technically correct. Well,
Speaker 1: I would think it would have to create upward uh
Speaker 1: force by throwing air down. That's pretty much it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it turns out that an object moving through a solid
Speaker 1: object moving through a fluid is going to displace that
Speaker 1: fluid the flow of fluid. Now, when we say fluid flow,
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily mean that the fluid itself is moving.
Speaker 1: It can be perfectly stationary. If the object is moving
Speaker 1: through the fluid, that can end up interrupting the quote
Speaker 1: quote flow of the fluid that actually makes it move around.
Speaker 1: Or you could have a stationary object and move the
Speaker 1: fluid past it and and have the same thing, or
Speaker 1: you could have a combination of the two. So anyway,
Speaker 1: if your wing is designed in such a way so
Speaker 1: that it's deflecting the flow more of the flow of
Speaker 1: air downward than upward, then you're going to get a
Speaker 1: perpendicular to the surface I guess of whatever. I if
Speaker 1: it's a fluid container, would be the surface of that
Speaker 1: fluid container. You'll get a perpendicular force called lift. And
Speaker 1: so as you're going forward with great speed, you're trying
Speaker 1: to just slam tons of air down below the bottom
Speaker 1: body of the plane, right, you have to displace enough
Speaker 1: so that it can counteract the weight. So, yeah, thrust
Speaker 1: is very important, like the speed is very important, both
Speaker 1: for a an airplane or jet. You know, it has
Speaker 1: to go fast enough to to to generate this lift
Speaker 1: in order to uh to fly, or a helicopter in
Speaker 1: which case you're talking about the speed of the rotors turning.
Speaker 1: But either way, you know, or if you are sen
Speaker 1: you tell me that the way a helicopter flies is
Speaker 1: by beating the air into submission. Just I guess, kind
Speaker 1: of true. Uh So, that's that's another example of being
Speaker 1: able to defy gravity in a way, but again not
Speaker 1: necessarily something that would work for the city. Uh So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it works like something the size of an airplane. I mean,
Speaker 1: here's one question they ask, like, why don't they make
Speaker 1: airplane bodies stronger? You know, airplanes can crash and disintegrate
Speaker 1: and have all these problems that kill people on board
Speaker 1: when when there's a malfunction, Why don't they just really
Speaker 1: reinforce them. Well, as you keep adding mass to the airplane,
Speaker 1: you're reducing its ability to fly. Yeah, you actually have
Speaker 1: to you know, again, you have to make lift that
Speaker 1: can counteract that weight, and so you have to make
Speaker 1: the aircraft progressively more powerful in order to do that.
Speaker 1: And that's a real and to use more fuel and
Speaker 1: that That kind of brings us to the next one,
Speaker 1: which is rockets. Very similar in that you know, in rockets,
Speaker 1: you're trying to generate thrust. You're generating us that has
Speaker 1: aimed toward the surface of whatever. You know, with a
Speaker 1: rocket that we're trying to send something into space, it's
Speaker 1: directing it down towards the ground. Uh, you're essentially creating
Speaker 1: something that's throwing out mass um at a rate that
Speaker 1: is a greater than the weight of the or the
Speaker 1: mass of the object that there's that's containing the fuel
Speaker 1: and has the spacecraft on it, so uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you could be using you know, when you think about it,
Speaker 1: with a rocket trying to send a spacecraft up, you
Speaker 1: have to first account for, all right, how heavy is
Speaker 1: the spacecraft? How much fuel are we going to need
Speaker 1: in order to generate the thrust necessary for the spacecraft
Speaker 1: to go up? All right, but that fuel weighs something
Speaker 1: that actually adds mass to this. So now we have
Speaker 1: to figure out how much fuel do we need to
Speaker 1: take care of both the spacecraft and the weight And
Speaker 1: wait a minute, that fuel has to go in something.
Speaker 1: How much how much fuel do we now need to
Speaker 1: make the spacecraft and the fuel and the fuel's container
Speaker 1: all go up and launch into orbit. And that's why
Speaker 1: we need such a massive amount of fuel to escape
Speaker 1: Earth and and send stuff up into orbit, and why
Speaker 1: it's so important, or at least it's why why so
Speaker 1: many people are interested in finding an alternative means of
Speaker 1: getting stuff from the ground into space, right because it
Speaker 1: would dramatically cut down on cost, It cuts down and
Speaker 1: risk um uh and it you know, you don't end
Speaker 1: up having to uh burn through millions of gallons of
Speaker 1: fuel each time. So it's or if you're talking about
Speaker 1: solid fuel, million tons of fuel. Um, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's definitely one of those things that is a
Speaker 1: driving force. No no pun intended in the space industry.
Speaker 1: But yeah, again, if you wanted to have rockets on
Speaker 1: your city to keep your city afloat, you would need
Speaker 1: lots and lots of fuel, which would of course add
Speaker 1: to the amount of fuel you would need to keep
Speaker 1: the city afloat. It's not really If you watch how
Speaker 1: most rockets go up, they have a multi stage launch,
Speaker 1: so they have to throw off fuel containers that they've expended.
Speaker 1: I don't know how that would work in something that's
Speaker 1: supposed to be permanently floating, like you've got fuel containers
Speaker 1: that maybe you've got like ten billion fuel containers that
Speaker 1: you're constantly launching off a bunch of them. I guess
Speaker 1: you would have to have some sort of weird, crazy
Speaker 1: fusion reactor thing that's just superheating gas that shooting it
Speaker 1: straight down or I don't know. I mean, there's enough.
Speaker 1: I can't think of any practical, like not even practical
Speaker 1: like like quasi plausible ways of doing it. It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of it defies my imagination. But there's one other
Speaker 1: one we can talk about about, you know, making just
Speaker 1: you know, defying gravity, rather than my imagination, which is
Speaker 1: a magnetic levitation. This one is actually pretty cool and
Speaker 1: might be I mean, if we're talking about floating a
Speaker 1: city side thing. None of these are particularly plausible, but
Speaker 1: this one might be the most plausible, at least at
Speaker 1: least this one would. You know, we have examples of
Speaker 1: this being used in transportation right now, and in fact,
Speaker 1: there is at least one way where you could, in
Speaker 1: theory create a hoverboard that would work under these principles,
Speaker 1: but under very specific circumstances. Yeah, we'll talk about that
Speaker 1: in a minute. Okay, So mag love is using a
Speaker 1: combination of electromagnets and maybe sometimes permanent magnets um and
Speaker 1: the way you usually see this used as say on
Speaker 1: a train, Why does it help to float a train
Speaker 1: above the track with magnets, Well, it reduces friction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it almost completely removes it. I mean, you still get
Speaker 1: wind resistant unless you're gonna put it in a tunnel
Speaker 1: that's got all the atmosphere sucked out of it, similar
Speaker 1: to something. Yeah, then you can really cut down on
Speaker 1: friction to almost zero and you can go at super
Speaker 1: speeds and just it's magic almost almost magic. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: too too two we meror mortals, it seems as as such,
Speaker 1: it's um Yeah. Essentially, if you've ever played with magnets,
Speaker 1: then you know the basics of how this works. Because
Speaker 1: if you have two magnets and you try and put
Speaker 1: both north ends of the magnets together, they push apart
Speaker 1: from one another. Yeah, and that that's because of electric charge, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's magnetic charge. But yeah, magnetic calls magnetic, So opposite
Speaker 1: signals will attract a plus and minus that would if
Speaker 1: they were polarized, it would suck your train to the track. Right.
Speaker 1: So what you could do is you can have the
Speaker 1: you can have the magnetic fields aligned in such a
Speaker 1: way where they're repelling one another, and thus, by repelling
Speaker 1: one another, if you have enough of a magnetic force there,
Speaker 1: you can lift an entire vehicle like a train, off
Speaker 1: the tracks. Now, these tracks they all have guards on
Speaker 1: them so that the train doesn't you know, fly off
Speaker 1: or anything or or get uh you know, the wump us,
Speaker 1: and then immediately there's some terrible accident. They have safety
Speaker 1: guides there. Uh. And usually what in most implementations I've
Speaker 1: seen not all but most the track has some very
Speaker 1: powerful electro magnets and it sometimes they're even created by
Speaker 1: a super cooled semiconductors. And the thing about semiconductor is
Speaker 1: the colder you get it, the more you cut down
Speaker 1: on resistance, which means you lose less energy in the
Speaker 1: form of heat. So you know, when you run electricity
Speaker 1: through a circuit, one of the by products is heat, right,
Speaker 1: and we talk about this all the time. It's the
Speaker 1: resistance of whatever material you're running electricity through. That resistance
Speaker 1: kind of represents how much energy you're going to lose
Speaker 1: in the processes. When you super cool semiconductors, you really
Speaker 1: cut down that resistance. You make them very efficient. So
Speaker 1: imagine that you've got a track of these super cold semiconductors.
Speaker 1: And this is just one implementation. Not all of them
Speaker 1: use super cold semiconductors, but you've got a whole track
Speaker 1: of this. And part of this is creating the the
Speaker 1: magnetic field that suspends the train rain that actually keeps
Speaker 1: the train above the tracks. And then another signal makes
Speaker 1: a an opposite charge to the front of the train,
Speaker 1: so it starts to pull the train forward and you
Speaker 1: just run you change that signal down the track and
Speaker 1: the train just follows it. Meanwhile, in the rear of
Speaker 1: the train, you create a signal that is the same
Speaker 1: as the back of the train, so that pushes the
Speaker 1: train forward, and you've got this pull push thing. You
Speaker 1: were pulling the front and pushing the back. And that's
Speaker 1: how you can get these trains up to amazing speeds
Speaker 1: because you're really only limited ultimately by wind resistance and
Speaker 1: how quickly you can change that that UM, that charge
Speaker 1: also possibly whatever you know, safety regulations you want to
Speaker 1: put in place so you don't turn everyone into a slushy.
Speaker 1: I would love to be a slushy. I would love
Speaker 1: a slushy actually, But um, yeah, so it's it's pretty
Speaker 1: cool stuff. Like I said, there's a lot of different implementations.
Speaker 1: There are several examples in UM in Asia and Europe,
Speaker 1: not so many in United States. UM. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things I would love to see adopted more widely.
Speaker 1: And of course hyperloop is one of the examples of
Speaker 1: something similar to this. Yeah, okay, So one of the
Speaker 1: interesting things about mag love technology is that you don't
Speaker 1: necessarily have to have some kind of huge, powerful device
Speaker 1: on the floating object itself. I mean, you can invest
Speaker 1: the power into the base that the object is floating above, right,
Speaker 1: so that whatever right. This might enable you to have
Speaker 1: something that's reasonably sized to float. Yeah, this is where
Speaker 1: we could get into this idea of a hoverboard potentially
Speaker 1: being possible. It would be a very particular implementation. You
Speaker 1: would have to have essentially a floor that would be
Speaker 1: lined with these these electro magnets that could generate a
Speaker 1: magnetic field, and then you could have permanent magnets on
Speaker 1: the hoverboard, uh, that are aligned so that the they
Speaker 1: will oppose whatever is on the floor are so when
Speaker 1: you turn on the electro magnets, the hoverboards spring up
Speaker 1: into the air and then if it's strong enough, it
Speaker 1: could even hold you, although I don't know how stable
Speaker 1: it would be. Yeah, that's a problem you see with
Speaker 1: a lot of these floating magnets is that they wobble them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they do. There's a lot of wobble in them. And
Speaker 1: it's also kind of uh uh. I mean, just imagine
Speaker 1: what would happen if you accidentally put your hoverboard upside
Speaker 1: down on the floor. You would never be able to
Speaker 1: pick it up. It would just be stuck there. You like,
Speaker 1: can you turn the floor off again, or if you
Speaker 1: set your cell phone down on the floor, or yeah,
Speaker 1: all your magn all your credit cards get demagnetized or yea.
Speaker 1: But I can see it. Okay, so you might not
Speaker 1: be able to use this hoverboard out on the street
Speaker 1: around the neighborhood, but I mean I can see it
Speaker 1: being worth it two kids to drive out to the
Speaker 1: play space. You know, Mom, please take me. I want
Speaker 1: to do hoverboard. Yeah, I could see it. I mean
Speaker 1: maybe on your birthday, if you could figure out a
Speaker 1: way of making it very stable, then I could see
Speaker 1: it working. I'm not sure. I mean, I'm certain that
Speaker 1: you'll end up seeing examples of this in various kinds
Speaker 1: of attractions, particularly at a place where you know, they've
Speaker 1: got a lot of money where they can show the
Speaker 1: sort of stuff off. It would be kind of similar
Speaker 1: to the the hovercraft that we used to see all
Speaker 1: the time and still do in some places that use
Speaker 1: air as thrust to try and and hover above a surface.
Speaker 1: I could see that kind of happening to. Let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about anti gravity, so you know that's
Speaker 1: a big thing in science fiction too. Yeah, that's uh,
Speaker 1: the basic magic that holds cloud city. Up. I guess
Speaker 1: it's some kind of anti gravity anti gravity. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So the thing about anti gravity is it's pretty much pseudoscience.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the thing people think that scientists are
Speaker 1: working on out there. I don't know about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk a little bit about some of the
Speaker 1: things where we try to simulate micro gravity here on Earth,
Speaker 1: because clearly, I mean that would be really useful if
Speaker 1: we could truly simulate it, because it means that we
Speaker 1: could do a lot of ex experiments that otherwise we
Speaker 1: would need to shoot up into space, and that, like
Speaker 1: we just said, is really expensive. Well, I mean, you
Speaker 1: can simulate the experience of it like you can fall.
Speaker 1: So you can get on a parabolic flight, right and
Speaker 1: within the enclosed environment where you are, you will seem
Speaker 1: to float. I mean you will actually be floated. It
Speaker 1: will be like a thirty second or so experience, sometimes
Speaker 1: up to ninety seconds depending upon the flight. But uh,
Speaker 1: an experience where you can you know, you're simulating a
Speaker 1: microgravity environment because you're all in free fall essentially, um,
Speaker 1: and allows you to kind of float around as if
Speaker 1: you were on board the International Space Station. Uh. Then UM,
Speaker 1: there's also I didn't mention this in my notes, but
Speaker 1: there's also the the method we talked about for the
Speaker 1: scientists used to test certain types of of drugs and
Speaker 1: stuff that's not truly simulating micro gravity. What it really
Speaker 1: does is it keeps rotating a specimen very slowly through
Speaker 1: all different axes so that every single part of that, uh,
Speaker 1: that sub that whatever that subject is, is under an
Speaker 1: equal influence of gravity. So it's as if no gravity
Speaker 1: is affecting it, you know what I'm talking about. We
Speaker 1: mentioned one of the ones about mice. Yes, you can
Speaker 1: mice breed in anti graph or not in micrograph, right,
Speaker 1: So it's one of those things where, uh, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's really more negating the effect of gravity on a
Speaker 1: particular orientation of whatever it is you're testing. So that's
Speaker 1: not that that doesn't really fit either. There's also gyroscopic procession,
Speaker 1: So this is what lets you stay upright on a bicycle.
Speaker 1: You might think that you have amazing balance and that
Speaker 1: you can ride a bike with no hands, and it's
Speaker 1: because you were just incredible. But uh, and I'm not
Speaker 1: saying you're not incredible, but the reason why you're able
Speaker 1: to do that is because of gyroscopic procession. It's this
Speaker 1: idea that a a spinning wheel along an access when
Speaker 1: you apply torque to it, it generates these kind of
Speaker 1: other forces along it. In one way of seeing this,
Speaker 1: I used to see this, uh, displayed at a science
Speaker 1: museum that used to be here in Atlanta called Sidetrack.
Speaker 1: And Uh, the way they did it was they had
Speaker 1: a bicycle wheel suspended like they they had a little
Speaker 1: axle attached to it. On one side of the axle,
Speaker 1: they had a a rope tied from the ceiling to
Speaker 1: that axle. So if you were to let go of
Speaker 1: the wheel, it would just kind of hang flat, like
Speaker 1: you know, horizontally. But if you aligned it vertically and
Speaker 1: then started spinning the bicycle wheel and then let go,
Speaker 1: the bicycle wheel would remain upright and it would start
Speaker 1: to turn around and around on like the It would
Speaker 1: spin around on this rope, so the wheel wouldn't go
Speaker 1: back down flat. This is the same sort of thing
Speaker 1: that allows tops to stay upright when they're spinning. Uh.
Speaker 1: We see it all the time. There's actually some great
Speaker 1: videos out there that display this this principle and explain
Speaker 1: what's going on from a basic physics perspective, and it's
Speaker 1: pretty interesting stuff. But again, it's not really anti gravity.
Speaker 1: It just kind of it seems to defy what we
Speaker 1: think of as gravity because of our everyday experience with it.
Speaker 1: But it's not truly anti gravity. You're not gonna be
Speaker 1: able to ride a bike so fast that you're gonna
Speaker 1: lift off the ground unless you happen to have et
Speaker 1: sitting in your basket in front of you. I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, I hope you believe in love the idea,
Speaker 1: of course I do. Uh. Then there's we've covered the
Speaker 1: hoverboard hoax, the fact that you know, you can look
Speaker 1: at the the frame by frame breakdowns and see where
Speaker 1: how they they managed to create the illusion of hovering.
Speaker 1: That that's yeah, that's anti gravity by power of trick photography. Right.
Speaker 1: There's also liquid mountaineering. Now this is what you have
Speaker 1: never seen this video, So this is not exactly anti gravity,
Speaker 1: but it is kind of similar to the idea of
Speaker 1: defying certain laws of physics. So liquid mountaineering there was
Speaker 1: there were these viral videos that came out a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, and it was a bunch of people
Speaker 1: who were hanging out next to a body of water.
Speaker 1: I think it was like a lake or something, and um,
Speaker 1: they were talking about how they were pioneers of a
Speaker 1: new sport called liquid mountaineering, and the way the sport
Speaker 1: worked is that you had to get up a really
Speaker 1: good speed running speed, and you typically would run down
Speaker 1: a bank and then hit the water. And if you're
Speaker 1: hitting the water fast enough, you could run so fast
Speaker 1: as to be able to run across the surface of
Speaker 1: the water without breaking the surface tension and falling through
Speaker 1: for at least a few steps. And the video showed
Speaker 1: them running, you know, maybe three or four feet into
Speaker 1: the water, like getting two or three good steps going
Speaker 1: and then falling through. Sense it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you know about how service tension and
Speaker 1: all that can really mess you up if you hit
Speaker 1: water going really fast, maybe on that level you're thinking
Speaker 1: it makes sense, but ultimately we don't have enough surface
Speaker 1: area on our feet to be able to take advantage
Speaker 1: of any of those properties. But the other people eventually
Speaker 1: proved that what was going on was that this group
Speaker 1: was using transparent platforms just under the surface of the water.
Speaker 1: So because it was just under the water, you couldn't
Speaker 1: even tell they were there. So people were actually running
Speaker 1: on solid platforms that were extended out maybe three or
Speaker 1: four feet into the water and then dropped off to
Speaker 1: try and create this effect. I guess they figured that
Speaker 1: if they made it longer than that that it would
Speaker 1: press people's like it would challenge people's credulous nature too much.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so it's not truly anti gravity either. It's
Speaker 1: also yet it's not kind of sort of fits in
Speaker 1: with it. I just wanted to include it because it
Speaker 1: was another viral video where hoaxers were and I think
Speaker 1: it was ultimately um like part of a marketing campaign
Speaker 1: for a line of running shoes. I want to say
Speaker 1: that's what it ultimately ended up being. But then, what
Speaker 1: about what does science have to say about anti gravity? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask this because everything we've said so
Speaker 1: far is a not really. Yeah, it turns out pretty
Speaker 1: much all the claims have either turned out to be
Speaker 1: a hoax or if they weren't a hoax, no one
Speaker 1: has been able to replicate the results being claimed, and
Speaker 1: as we know with science, that's a bad sign, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially when the claim itself is something very cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if it's if it's an extraordinary claim, then it definitely
Speaker 1: needs to have uh, you know, independent corroborating evidence. Otherwise
Speaker 1: it's just you can't really believe in it. You can't
Speaker 1: put you can't put any faith in it. So that was,
Speaker 1: you know, when it comes to to science, the word
Speaker 1: anti gravity is kind of a uh I mean, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a four letter word in science circles. But
Speaker 1: I do think we should talk about something that's sort
Speaker 1: of related to what we already discussed, which was maglev.
Speaker 1: What's the deal with quantum locking? It is the coolest
Speaker 1: thing ever. This is a video that looks like a
Speaker 1: hoax but isn't quantum locking. If you've ever seen and
Speaker 1: there are a few different videos, there's a Ted talk
Speaker 1: on YouTube. This is awesome. It's one of the things
Speaker 1: the first time you see it, your brain says, Okay,
Speaker 1: how are they pulling this trick off? Like this is
Speaker 1: obviously some sort of magic trick or something. So quantum
Speaker 1: locking involves using a superconductor, super cooled superconductor, So it's
Speaker 1: very much like I was talking about earlier. When you
Speaker 1: cool semiconductors and you start to lower resistance, A super
Speaker 1: cooled superconductor has no resistance. It perfect conductor of electricity.
Speaker 1: Which is pretty incredible, but you have to really cool
Speaker 1: it down with like liquid nitrogen. You know, it it's
Speaker 1: super cold, and then it's like the cold fog coming off.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. It's usually got a good crust of
Speaker 1: of some sort of ice type stuff all around the outside.
Speaker 1: It looks like something from Mr. Freeze's labe. So the
Speaker 1: superconductive material, if it were absolutely uniform and molecular nature,
Speaker 1: if it was a perfectly formed super conductor material, it
Speaker 1: would simply repel all magnetic fields. You mean, if it
Speaker 1: had no impurity exactly, if it were absolutely structurally sound
Speaker 1: from a molecular standpoint, it would just it would repel
Speaker 1: all magnetic fields and you would end up getting like
Speaker 1: the super wobbly kind of levitation. But if you introduce
Speaker 1: impurities very methodically, you know, it's called doping. If you
Speaker 1: were to do this very very specifically, it creates these
Speaker 1: things called flex tubes, which allow you to lock in
Speaker 1: position over a magnet magnetic field along three axes the superconductor.
Speaker 1: So if the superconductor is small and you have say
Speaker 1: a permanent magnet that's in a base, and you put
Speaker 1: this over top of it, it can lock into place
Speaker 1: and then you can even change the orientation and it'll
Speaker 1: stay there. If you were to pick the magnet up,
Speaker 1: the superconductor would move in the same way as you
Speaker 1: move the magnet. Even if you turn the magnet upside down,
Speaker 1: the superconductor will stay exactly locked in that same orientation
Speaker 1: and apparently define the laws of gravity. It just seems
Speaker 1: to be, you know, hovering there, not even hovering, just
Speaker 1: stuck in the air. When you think of hovering, you
Speaker 1: think of hovering ships from sci fi, where there's a
Speaker 1: kind of vibration or there is a jitteriness, something that
Speaker 1: looks like a vehicle that's powered. This just looks like
Speaker 1: it is frozen in the air. It's pretty phenomenal right there.
Speaker 1: The first time you see it, like I said, you
Speaker 1: just think this has got to be some sort of trickery.
Speaker 1: What sorcery is this? And uh And they're also great
Speaker 1: examples on YouTube where people have created a magnetic track.
Speaker 1: It's usually like just a simple circle that you can
Speaker 1: lock one of these super cool superconductors on top of
Speaker 1: the track, uh, you know, hovering above all stuck above it,
Speaker 1: and then give it a little push and because there's
Speaker 1: no real friction apart from air resistance. It'll just go
Speaker 1: right along that. It will follow that track perfectly, and
Speaker 1: it will still maintain its orientation. So if you said
Speaker 1: it so it was perfectly level, it'll be perfectly level.
Speaker 1: If you can't it at an angle, it will remain
Speaker 1: at that angle all the way around. It's really really,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's one of the coolest things I've
Speaker 1: seen on YouTube in a few years. I really enjoy
Speaker 1: those videos. So if you're working on hoverboard technology, take
Speaker 1: a look at quantum locking. I think that's where you
Speaker 1: want to put your money. So, yeah, you have to
Speaker 1: have you have to have magnets beneath the floor and
Speaker 1: a super cool hoverboard. So so, kids, where where your socks?
Speaker 1: Where your winter socks? Uh? This is where we tell
Speaker 1: you don't play with liquid nitrogen or help us, don't
Speaker 1: touch liquid helium. All right. So that moves us on
Speaker 1: to the what I when you originally you would think
Speaker 1: of as probably the least plausible method, just the floating city,
Speaker 1: just a city that floats on its own, because you
Speaker 1: think of Star Wars. There's nothing in that I recall
Speaker 1: and Empire strikes Back that shows those cities using propulsion
Speaker 1: of any sorts to float where they are. They're just
Speaker 1: they're just there. No, they might as well. Cloud City
Speaker 1: might as well be a big balloon, And turns out
Speaker 1: you might actually be able to create something like that,
Speaker 1: just probably not here on Earth, right, um. I want
Speaker 1: to talk about the idea of floating planetary colonies that
Speaker 1: humans could inhabit because they would be full of Earth atmosphere. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, when we talked earlier about balloons with
Speaker 1: hydrogen and helium, and the reason those work is because
Speaker 1: hydrogen and helium are less dense than our atmosphere is,
Speaker 1: and if you get enough of it together, it has
Speaker 1: lifting power. In this case, the air that we breathe,
Speaker 1: the mix of of breathable oxygen that we could survive on,
Speaker 1: is less dense than what you might find on some
Speaker 1: other planets and would have that same sort of lifting ability. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this isn't just might like maybe out there there's some
Speaker 1: kind of planet we could look at, the planet Venus.
Speaker 1: It happens to be not very far away. No, it's
Speaker 1: right there. And while most colonization efforts are focused on Mars,
Speaker 1: there are some people who think Venus might be just
Speaker 1: as good a place to look. Yeah, uh. So, the
Speaker 1: NASA scientist Jeffrey landis proposed to floating Venus colony, and
Speaker 1: this he's been talking about this for years or a
Speaker 1: paper he presented to the a I P In two
Speaker 1: thousand three, So this is not a new idea, um,
Speaker 1: but he's been trying to promote this. So on Venus,
Speaker 1: the atmosphere is mostly carbon dioxide CO two, and breathable
Speaker 1: air is lighter than carbon dioxide. So a colony inside
Speaker 1: a bubble full of breathable earth atmosphere, which should be
Speaker 1: a nitrogen and oxygen mixture, could float at about fifty
Speaker 1: kilometers above the surface of Venus. And actually that would
Speaker 1: be a pretty happy place for humans because pressure there
Speaker 1: and he would be totally tolerable, unlike on the surface
Speaker 1: of Venus. Now they would not be no on the
Speaker 1: surface of Venus would be literally like being in a
Speaker 1: pressure code. Yeah, we we've sent, We've sent the human
Speaker 1: beings have sent multiple probes to Venus and most of
Speaker 1: them don't survive very long. The Soviets put landers down
Speaker 1: on the surface of Venus. That actually sent a couple
Speaker 1: of photos back, which if you get a chance to
Speaker 1: look at them, they are creepy. Looking. They're these weird
Speaker 1: yellow kind of hell scapes that are I don't know.
Speaker 1: They make it look so cool, but like a place
Speaker 1: you would not want to go. So the atmosphere is
Speaker 1: so heavy it will crush you, and the heat is
Speaker 1: enough to melt lead at some points on the surface.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, being above that in a place where
Speaker 1: you would actually have tolerable temperatures and pressures obviously very important. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you wouldn't want to fall down, but yeah.
Speaker 1: Um but anyway, what Landis himself said in the paper
Speaker 1: he presented to the i P was that, at about
Speaker 1: fifty kilometers above Venus, it's the most earthlike environment other
Speaker 1: than the Earth It's self that you will find in
Speaker 1: the Solar system. That's a quote. The only thing is
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to breathe the air outside, but
Speaker 1: otherwise it'd be fairly tolerable. Um. Now, of course it's
Speaker 1: not like that. Oh okay, well, totally easy. No, this
Speaker 1: would actually be really difficult and expensive, But it is
Speaker 1: really interesting that it's it seems quite plausible. It would
Speaker 1: just be a very expensive undertaking. It would be an
Speaker 1: engineering project because you'd have to design the bubble such
Speaker 1: that one, it doesn't leak obviously, and the bigger your
Speaker 1: structure is, I think, the harder it is to design
Speaker 1: something that doesn't leak. I don't know if you remember, um,
Speaker 1: when we were talking about what is it called biosphere
Speaker 1: to the control closed ecosystem that they tried to create
Speaker 1: in the United States. But it had a problem with
Speaker 1: you know, like with leaking the internal gas mixture. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think that that had to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that, well, you're getting big. Once your scale keeps increasing,
Speaker 1: it's harder and harder to engineer that that perfect kind
Speaker 1: of airtight system. Also, you have trouble with corrosion because
Speaker 1: venus is surrounded by clouds of sulfuric acid, which can
Speaker 1: be a little corrosive. No, if you put a drop
Speaker 1: of sulfuric acid on, say like a cotton T shirt,
Speaker 1: just watch what happens. Kids, don't put sulfuric acid. To
Speaker 1: put sulfuric acid on your warm winter socks before you
Speaker 1: go glide around on quantum locking hupperboards, Um, no, it'll
Speaker 1: it'll burn it up. The stuff is really really corrosive,
Speaker 1: So you would need a special kind of material that's
Speaker 1: resistant to this kind of chemical corrosion, and maybe something
Speaker 1: like ceramics could do it. I don't really know, but
Speaker 1: I think it is doable. Yeah. You would also want
Speaker 1: to make sure that whatever material material you were using
Speaker 1: wasn't too heavy, because the heavier it is, the more
Speaker 1: of the gas you're going to need to counteract that weight.
Speaker 1: And of course some of that is going to be
Speaker 1: necessary just because that's the stuff we breathe to live of.
Speaker 1: But you know, you also would have to make a
Speaker 1: larger structure to hold that volume of gas without you know,
Speaker 1: making it too highly pressured. Right, I mean, it would
Speaker 1: just require good engineering in the same way that say,
Speaker 1: designing a ship would require good engineering. Needs to displace
Speaker 1: enough water and be the right shape and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I mean this is this is a certainly a possibility.
Speaker 1: I don't know how plausible it is in the long run,
Speaker 1: because a lot of attention is still on Mars, right right.
Speaker 1: And I would say one of the biggest questions is
Speaker 1: it's not so much whether we could do this, because
Speaker 1: it seems like it is doable. The question is is
Speaker 1: anybody going to pay to do this? I mean, there's
Speaker 1: obviously going to be hugely expensive. Um, would there be
Speaker 1: enough research interest in Venus and enough possibility for a
Speaker 1: return on investment that people would want to go there
Speaker 1: and spend this much money to build something like this,
Speaker 1: and the I don't of the answer to that question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but uh, you know, maybe just pure scientific curiosity will
Speaker 1: win the day in the future. Suddenly, you know, in
Speaker 1: the next ten years, everybody will be like, oh, let's
Speaker 1: let's spend all our money on learning. Uh maybe that
Speaker 1: or maybe that there is some kind of material resource
Speaker 1: on Venus that could be exploited to great effect, the
Speaker 1: same way that asteroid mining, while it's definitely going to
Speaker 1: be a huge investment, offers such a great return that
Speaker 1: people are taking it very seriously. It's not just a
Speaker 1: pie in the sky thing. People are like, all right,
Speaker 1: let's get let's get going. I think the uh, I
Speaker 1: think the really interesting thing here is that the technology
Speaker 1: found in Star Wars is the one that seems like
Speaker 1: it's the of course, we have to point out like
Speaker 1: the Star Wars implementation clearly is not scientifically accurate all
Speaker 1: it wasn't meant to be scientifically accurate. There's it's not
Speaker 1: It's not a slam against the movie Star Wars is fantasy.
Speaker 1: It's a hard sci fi, yeah, because I mean, who
Speaker 1: ends up being suspended upside down underneath Cloud City for
Speaker 1: a little while before the Millennium falcon comes around and
Speaker 1: he can clearly breathe, So obviously it's not the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Yea. Also beyond Venus, I mean, you
Speaker 1: could think about there are other places where maybe something
Speaker 1: like this could take place. I don't I don't know
Speaker 1: the specifics, but I'd wonder about Saturn's moon Titan, you know,
Speaker 1: that has a dense atmosphere. Maybe something like this could
Speaker 1: happen there too. Or it may even be that perhaps
Speaker 1: when we're looking outside of our own solar system, that's
Speaker 1: still a possibility. It's one of those interesting things that, uh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that that eventually we will explore in one
Speaker 1: way or another. It may I'm guessing it will probably
Speaker 1: not be in an implementation that involves actual human beings
Speaker 1: for the first few times. I don't know that anyone
Speaker 1: we want to risk it that, you know that. I
Speaker 1: also don't know exactly how you would get back from
Speaker 1: Venus to Earth if you wanted to travel back. I mean,
Speaker 1: you would have to have some sort of platform to
Speaker 1: launch from that would allow you to uh to withstand
Speaker 1: the forces of a rocket taking often pushing down against
Speaker 1: that platform. Well, I don't know. I mean I wonder
Speaker 1: if you could uh take off, say suspended by balloon.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, or you could have some sort of hybrid
Speaker 1: aircraft rocket type thing. I guess, uh, you know, we're
Speaker 1: talking pure speculation here anyway, So pies the pie in
Speaker 1: the sky type stuff. Anyway, Well, this was really fun
Speaker 1: to talk about. It was one of those things that
Speaker 1: you know, it was we knew we wanted to to
Speaker 1: eventually chat about hover boards and that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: because a lot of people who are into science I
Speaker 1: think also at some point we're into science fiction. They
Speaker 1: may still very well be into science fiction quite a bit.
Speaker 1: And it's these sort of things that spark our interest
Speaker 1: that you know, when we see something that's implemented in
Speaker 1: real life that mirrors something we saw on film, it's
Speaker 1: really exciting. So we wanted to definitely, you know, talk
Speaker 1: about that. But hey, if you know anybody out there
Speaker 1: claiming a cool anti gravity technology that we don't know about,
Speaker 1: we'd be happy to take a look you even though
Speaker 1: it may very likely be total bunk. Go ahead and
Speaker 1: send it to us, So, I mean, we'd love to
Speaker 1: see it. Yeah, we we'd love to see it. Of
Speaker 1: course we are not uh, physicists or anything along, but
Speaker 1: we can we can certainly look at something and go
Speaker 1: ah interesting. Uh yeah. Our addresses f W Thinking at
Speaker 1: discovery dot com. You can also write us if you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future topics that do you think
Speaker 1: we should cover, or if you have any questions let's know.
Speaker 1: And also you can get in touch with us on
Speaker 1: the social media that we frequent which include Google Plus, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Facebook. Are handling all of those is f W
Speaker 1: Thinking and Joe and I and probably Lauren too. We'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. For more on this
Speaker 1: topic and the future of technology, visit forward thinking dot com,
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