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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 2: is Robert.

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Speaker 3: Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And hey, if you're watching

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Speaker 3: on video, obviously we are not in our normal places,

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Speaker 3: not coming to you from the Gray Matt underworld or

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Speaker 3: the other world, I can't remember what we decided to

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Speaker 3: call it, the places we usually come from. Today we

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Speaker 3: are recording remotely at the studio at Baja Mar because

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Speaker 3: they are a sponsor of this episode.

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Speaker 4: That's right, we're in the Bahamas. I made a point

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Speaker 4: of walking in the sand on the beach before I

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Speaker 4: came in here today because we are going to be

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Speaker 4: talking about sand. I kind of like to tie these

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Speaker 4: kind of things together when there's some travel involved. I'm

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Speaker 4: also you can't see it, but I am wearing flip flops.

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Speaker 4: It felt appropriate. It felt like Jimmy Buffett would want

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Speaker 4: me to wear flip flops for this recording, so I

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Speaker 4: honor his spirit in doing so.

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Speaker 3: Stuff on a pop top.

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Speaker 4: Yet fortunately not and you don't want to engineer that.

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Speaker 4: That's you know, it ruins the magic of it, of course. Yeah,

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Speaker 4: So yeah, we're going to talk about sand here today,

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Speaker 4: and I think sand is a great topicause in in general,

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Speaker 4: I think a lot of people have certain feelings about it,

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Speaker 4: you know, in the imagination, but also very personal opinions

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Speaker 4: about sand. I don't know about you, Joe. I enjoy

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Speaker 4: the sand. I don't like sand where it's not supposed

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Speaker 4: to be. But I like going into a region of sand,

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Speaker 4: experiencing the sand. I like the feeling of walking on

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Speaker 4: a beach and feeling it, you know, move beneath my toes,

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Speaker 4: getting the different consistencies of sand. I like digging in

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Speaker 4: the sand. But I also know plenty of people who

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Speaker 4: are like an absolute no to beach time because they

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Speaker 4: just don't like sand. I mean, Star Wars memes aside,

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Speaker 4: They just they just don't like it.

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Speaker 3: And it goes everywhere I feel about the sand the

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Speaker 3: way I feel about sweat, which is I like being

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Speaker 3: sweaty when you're supposed to be sweaty, and I hate

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Speaker 3: being sweaty when you're not supposed to be sweaty. There

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Speaker 3: you go, you know, working up a sweat when you're

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Speaker 3: exercising feels great. Working up a sweat when you're like

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Speaker 3: getting dressed ready to go out somewhere is like the

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Speaker 3: worst feeling. Yeah, and sand. Yeah, it's like when you're

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Speaker 3: at the beach, there's nothing better. Actually, I like, literally

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Speaker 3: I love the feeling. Most of what I do at

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Speaker 3: the beach when I go is just like walk around

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Speaker 3: and feel the sand.

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Speaker 2: On my feet.

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Speaker 3: Yeah that's you know. I'm not a huge swimmer, but

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Speaker 3: I do love that. But yeah, getting like sand in

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Speaker 3: your shoes or sand in your underwear when you're not

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Speaker 3: at the beach, that's not so great.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, where the bed is one of the reasons I've

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Speaker 4: never even much of a sand camper. I've done a

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Speaker 4: little of it, but it's not really my cup of tea,

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Speaker 4: just because I have a harder time maintaining that that

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Speaker 4: line between the sand world and mine, a non sandy world.

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Speaker 4: But still I've had some great times camping on the

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Speaker 4: beach as well.

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Speaker 3: You know, I was just thinking about how in Dune

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Speaker 3: there is so much about the absence and preciousness of water.

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Speaker 3: But I was struggling to remember, are there equivalent sentiments

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Speaker 3: the characters express about the abundance or over abundance of sand.

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Speaker 4: Hmmm, well, I'm trying to remember you've been reading Herbert

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Speaker 4: more recently than I have.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, though, so now I'm reading Dune Messiah, which I've

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Speaker 3: actually never read before, So I'm finally getting into the sequels.

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Speaker 3: I'm enjoying it, though I'm aware there are diminishing returns

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Speaker 3: as you continue, but.

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Speaker 4: It depends if you open your whole heart to it.

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Speaker 4: I'm of the opinion there there are gems to be

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Speaker 4: found in each of the books, but those the first

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Speaker 4: two books are special in my opinion. Well, I I've

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Speaker 4: enjoyed them all, but but yeah, there's it's it's different

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Speaker 4: once you get into the later books.

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Speaker 3: The second book, I've noticed so far there is significantly

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Speaker 3: less ecology in it and it is more politics and conspiracy.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's a dark read in its own right. Yeah,

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Speaker 4: we will be talking a little bit about done as

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Speaker 4: we proceed here. We'll talk a little bit about some technology,

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Speaker 4: some FRIM and technology from the frimkit. But yeah, this

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Speaker 4: is where I guess we get more into the imagination

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Speaker 4: sphere for sand because it does bring up a lot

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Speaker 4: of ideas, and so I was thinking, like, what are

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Speaker 4: some of the core ideas I keep coming back to

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Speaker 4: and I keep seeing and in my readings and things

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Speaker 4: I'm watching things I'm thinking about. I think one of

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Speaker 4: the big ones that everyone's probably thinking of is, of course,

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Speaker 4: sand as the infinite, you know, uncountable grains of sand

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Speaker 4: and deserts that stretch beyond sight or on beaches that

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Speaker 4: just you know, vanish into the ocean unseen. I think

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Speaker 4: of sand through the hour glass. I think of the

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Speaker 4: excellent short story The Book of Sand from Hory Lewis

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Speaker 4: Borges about a tone of infinite random numbered pages. So

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Speaker 4: anytime you you open the book, you'll find different numbers,

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Speaker 4: and they might be it might be just a small number,

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Speaker 4: colossal number. I think at one point it's like a

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Speaker 4: number to the ninth power that the reader finds. And

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Speaker 4: and then the script itself is written in some language

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Speaker 4: that he can't decipher, and sometimes with a crude image,

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Speaker 4: but it is infinite, and you'll never find the same

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Speaker 4: page twice. And he fears that if he burns the book,

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Speaker 4: it will an infinite book will burn infinitely and just

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Speaker 4: you know, cloak the world and smoke smoke. Yeah, so

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Speaker 4: you know, I think about stuff like that.

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Speaker 3: I read this story last night. Actually, oh you were

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Speaker 3: telling me about Yeah.

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Speaker 4: It's like three pages long, it's it's it's great. One

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Speaker 4: of the things I love about Borhees, He's deep, he's

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Speaker 4: often very brief.

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Speaker 3: One thing I like about that story is that it begins,

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Speaker 3: as with so many Borhees stories, with a traveler arriving

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Speaker 3: strange traveler who has an artifact to share with you,

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Speaker 3: and then the protagonist greatly desires to acquire the artifact,

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Speaker 3: and so in this case, yeah, he becomes entranced because

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Speaker 3: he finds a page in the book that has a

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Speaker 3: tiny illustration of an anchor on it, and then he

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Speaker 3: like turns the pages and then can't ever find the

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Speaker 3: anchor again. But yeah, it describes like trying to get

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Speaker 3: to the first page and it's impossible because pages just

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Speaker 3: keep multiplying towards the covers. You know, it's gotten an

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Speaker 3: epigraph to a poem by George Herbert that refers to

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Speaker 3: the idea of ropes of sand, you know, a common

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Speaker 3: metaphor for something that is like unstable or not substantial.

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Speaker 3: But the other metaphor with sand in the story is

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Speaker 3: like you're saying the idea of the infinite, that sands

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Speaker 3: are infinite, and therefore you know they could they could

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Speaker 3: just multiply forever, like the pages of this book. The

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Speaker 3: funny thing is, of course, grains of sand are not

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Speaker 3: actually infinite. Grains of sand are I perfectly finite. That

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Speaker 3: is a countable thing. It's not practically accountable by human beings,

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Speaker 3: but in theory is countable. And in fact, you know,

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Speaker 3: mathematically speaking, any finite number is infinitely small than infinity.

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Speaker 3: So the number of grains of sand in the universe

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Speaker 3: is infinitely less than an actual infinity.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, some of you may be thinking of this.

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Speaker 4: We're not really going to get into this concept in

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Speaker 4: this episode, but Archimedes of course famously tried to figure

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Speaker 4: out what was the upper bound for the number of

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Speaker 4: sand grains in the universe, So it's you know, he

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Speaker 4: was of the mind it can be counted, or at

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Speaker 4: least estimated, Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Which, you know, and whole like methods of estimation of

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Speaker 3: substances like that, I think are a really interesting topic.

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Speaker 3: We've talked about on the show before. Long ago we

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Speaker 3: did an episode on fermi estimation, remember that, which is

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Speaker 3: just like a sort of orders of magnitude based system

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Speaker 3: for estimating numbers of uncountable things.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Absolutely, And you mentioned sand falling through the fingers passing

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Speaker 4: through the fingers. The ephemeral nature of things made out

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Speaker 4: of sand, that is I think another major theme you

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Speaker 4: see over and over again. Of course, you see it

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Speaker 4: in things like sand mondolas or sand castles, you know,

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Speaker 4: where you can create this thing of beauty out of

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Speaker 4: the sand, but it will not last, and it's not

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Speaker 4: supposed to last, and of course neither do we. Let's

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Speaker 4: see other ideas. Sand is a varied substance. Of course,

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Speaker 4: not all sand is the same. Some of the things

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Speaker 4: we call sand, especially when we get off of our planet,

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Speaker 4: you get into various discussions about is.

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Speaker 2: It sand, is it soil? Is it soil?

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Speaker 4: Is it really sand? And you kind of go back

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Speaker 4: and forth, and then sometimes people just call it sand.

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Speaker 3: Am I correct in understanding that sand is not a

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Speaker 3: name for a substance. It's a name for a size

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Speaker 3: of particle. Sand is a grit size, right.

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Speaker 4: But people can get a little particular, like, for instance,

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Speaker 4: we're not really going to get into the hourglass here.

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Speaker 4: We might come back and do a full episode in

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Speaker 4: the hour glass in the future, but some people will

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Speaker 4: point out, well, actually it's not sand in an hour glass,

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Speaker 4: it's this particular recipe of particles that works well with

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Speaker 4: an hour glass.

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Speaker 3: And I guess there are things that might fit the

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Speaker 3: definition if you just go by grain size, but nobody

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Speaker 3: would call them sand, like would sugar be sand by

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Speaker 3: If you just go particles.

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Speaker 4: You would get you would get weird looks. If you

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Speaker 4: ask for it's like, give me the sweet sand, the

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Speaker 4: sand that goes in my coffee. People would ask, who

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Speaker 4: is this space aly? But uh, yeah, I mean the

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Speaker 4: other thing is, yeah, you have different colors of sand,

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Speaker 4: different sistencies of sand, Like digging in the beach. I

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Speaker 4: know that like sometimes you have that sand it is

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Speaker 4: like a powder, or when it's compacted it's like a

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Speaker 4: it's almost like a clay that you can mold. And

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Speaker 4: then other times the bits of like shell in the

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Speaker 4: sand that it's so like coarse and rough that you

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Speaker 4: just like scrape your hands up digging in it, you know,

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Speaker 4: but you can't stop because it's what you do at

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Speaker 4: the beach. Likewise, digging in the sand, you quickly often realize, well,

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Speaker 4: this is this is a thing, this is a world

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Speaker 4: that creatures live in as well. You know, you might

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Speaker 4: encounter things like periwinkles or sand hoppers. Sand fleas whatever

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Speaker 4: you want to call them, or of course the mighty

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Speaker 4: sand crabs darting in and out of their little layers,

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Speaker 4: and then yeah, and then just back to sand castles

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Speaker 4: as well. It's kind of like a very early experiment

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Speaker 4: with the idea of what large scale things can I

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Speaker 4: make out of the smallest visible pieces, you know, so

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Speaker 4: you're not really you know, I'm dealing with things in

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Speaker 4: an atomic level obviously, but especially as a child, like

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Speaker 4: the sand seems like the boundary of smallness, and it's like,

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Speaker 4: you bring these together, you make a clump, you make

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Speaker 4: a ball that becomes a tower. Towers are bridged together,

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Speaker 4: becomes a castle, and yeah, I think there's there's something

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Speaker 4: insightful there, Like we begin to sort of gaze into

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Speaker 4: these mysteries of sand at an early age. All right,

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Speaker 4: So for the majority of the section I'm taking in

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Speaker 4: this episode, I wanted to talk about a couple of

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Speaker 4: ideas from science fiction concerning sand. And these are little

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Speaker 4: ideas that are in neither in either neither case or

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Speaker 4: they particularly key to the work. You could take them

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Speaker 4: out of each work and it would it would be fine.

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Speaker 4: But they've always stuck in my mind because they were

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Speaker 4: neat uses of sand, and so I'm kind of using

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Speaker 4: those as a place to jump off to briefly talk

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Speaker 4: about some other mostly space related topics, but also some

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Speaker 4: kind of like military world and infrastructure type topics.

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Speaker 2: So the first before.

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Speaker 4: I get to Doon, the one I want to mention

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Speaker 4: is a nineteen eighty four novel that fewer people have read,

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Speaker 4: but it still has quite a following.

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Speaker 2: It's called Armor.

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Speaker 4: It's by an author by the name of John Stakley

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Speaker 4: st A. K. L. E. Y. If you're looking him up.

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Speaker 4: This is the same guy who wrote Vampires with a

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Speaker 4: Dollar Sign, which John Carpenter. Well, John Carpenter directed the

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Speaker 4: adaptation of it. As we've discussed before, probably not at

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Speaker 4: anybody like the top of anybody's Carpenter list.

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Speaker 2: Still has some great moments in it.

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Speaker 3: Uh, they're seeing the whole thing.

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Speaker 2: Actual, Oh you haven't.

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Speaker 3: I was not able to finish it at the time

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Speaker 3: I tried to watch it. I can't remember a huge

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Speaker 3: Carpenter fan, but I just didn't love this one.

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Speaker 2: It it has its moments, but the book, the book

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Speaker 2: was better in my memory.

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Speaker 3: Arm the Dollar Sign.

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Speaker 2: The dollar Sign was cool. Uh is it about money?

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Speaker 3: Yeah?

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Speaker 4: You know, the business of slaying vampires. I'm a little

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Speaker 4: foggy on that. The main thing that I that sticks

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Speaker 4: with me out of that book is just how scary

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Speaker 4: the vampires were, Like, they were just scary and nasty

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Speaker 4: in a way that they touched on a little bit

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Speaker 4: in the movie. But they're just really awful. You just

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Speaker 4: hate vampires in this book. Armor, however, is more in

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Speaker 4: keeping with like your Starship Troopers sort of world where

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Speaker 4: it's humans in power armor, like crazy powerful power armor,

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Speaker 4: and they're battling insect aliens on the surface of a

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Speaker 4: distant desert world called Bansheet. And there are a lot

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Speaker 4: of interests twist and turns in this, and the writing's

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Speaker 4: really bombastic, and you know, you really feel the action.

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Speaker 4: But at one point, the human faction here with their

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Speaker 4: power armored soldiers, they use a large high tech, you know,

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Speaker 4: sci fi machine and a sand clotter called a Siliconite eighteen,

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Speaker 4: and they use this this combination to suck sand in

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Speaker 4: through the front of this machine and then it like

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Speaker 4: leaves behind it essentially prints a trail of five meter tall,

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Speaker 4: perfectly smooth stone wall to fortify their makeshift base out

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Speaker 4: on this desert world.

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Speaker 3: Okay, so it sucks in sand and it adheres it

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Speaker 3: into a solid substance.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it creates like a solid sand brick wall, which

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Speaker 4: I always thought was pretty cool. And I'm kind of

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Speaker 4: surprised I haven't seen that used in media elsewhere, in

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Speaker 4: video games or something.

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Speaker 2: Maybe it is, but.

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Speaker 4: This is this is really interesting because yes, we're talking

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Speaker 4: about sci fi far future warfare here, but of course

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Speaker 4: humans have been doing this in the real world for

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Speaker 4: quite a while, often in the form of sandbags.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, funny story. So this podcast started a lot of

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Speaker 3: people who listen probably don't even know this. This podcast

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Speaker 3: started originally when we were writers and editors for the

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Speaker 3: website HowStuffWorks dot com many many years ago, which was

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Speaker 3: like a encyclopedic informational website that had articles like, you know,

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Speaker 3: how a car engine works and stuff. So I was

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Speaker 3: hired on you were a writer at that website when

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Speaker 3: I joined as an editor and I don't know what

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Speaker 3: in twenty ten.

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Speaker 2: Or something, and then be four times.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that long long ago, and one of the first

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Speaker 3: articles I edited for the website was how sand bags work. Now,

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Speaker 3: you wouldn't think that there's that much to say about

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Speaker 3: how a sandbag works, But I remember it being a

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Speaker 3: surprisingly rich and interesting topic. But all the things sandbags

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Speaker 3: can do and in fact to do better than other

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Speaker 3: more high tech solutions exactly.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it's pretty fascinating. Like I grew up in a

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Speaker 4: household my dad was always into a lot of like

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Speaker 4: World War II stuff and did models of tanks, and

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Speaker 4: so I was familiar with pictures of tanks, and in

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Speaker 4: reading about sandbags here, I had to go back and

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Speaker 4: remind myself, Oh, yeah, they would off. You see all

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Speaker 4: these images of World War two tanks with sandbags layered

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Speaker 4: on top of the metal armor of the tank to

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Speaker 4: add like additional in the field protection against ballistics. So

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Speaker 4: I was reading a bit more about this out like

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Speaker 4: why are sandbags good for this twenty sixteen study from

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Speaker 4: chin at all from the National University of Singapore, and

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Speaker 4: this was published by ASM International, and they conducted a

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Speaker 4: study and in the study pointed out that, yeah, of

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Speaker 4: course sand has been used in fortifications for a long time,

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Speaker 4: and we've known that it's great at absorbing energy. But

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Speaker 4: they looked into it a little bit more and they

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Speaker 4: found that sand can absorb more than eighty five percent

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Speaker 4: of the energy exerted against it, and its resistance actually

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Speaker 4: increases with the speed of the projectile, even at high velocities.

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Speaker 4: So they experimented by firing various projectiles at silica sand blocks,

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Speaker 4: and one of the really interesting things they point out

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Speaker 4: is that when a projectile hits a block of compacted sand,

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Speaker 4: such as I believe like in a compacted military sand

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Speaker 4: bag or a hesco bastion, which is a collapsible wire

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Speaker 4: mesh container that then gets filled up with sand or

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Speaker 4: soil or gravel. But the extreme frictional force of the

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Speaker 4: sand particles against the projectile passing through it can potentially

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Speaker 4: break that projectile into pieces. So think to your childhood,

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Speaker 4: perhaps if you were a beach going child digging in

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Speaker 4: the sand and eventually feeling your hands becoming raw from

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Speaker 4: all those sand particles, you know, because it's sand. Now,

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Speaker 4: imagine a projectile passing through compacted sand and high speed

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Speaker 4: and the friction of that. It's pretty fascinating like that

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Speaker 4: this could essentially destroy the projectile as it passes through.

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Speaker 2: Meanwhile, the same.

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Speaker 4: Projectile, if it is powerful enough to pass through a

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Speaker 4: metal barrier, it will just pass through and can continue

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Speaker 4: to you know, decimate somebody or something on the other side.

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Speaker 4: So one of the things they end up arguing in

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Speaker 4: this paper is like we should be looking at more

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Speaker 4: ways to use sand, either in place of substances like

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Speaker 4: steel or figuring out how the best layer them with

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Speaker 4: steel or other materials. Like I guess it's it's just

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Speaker 4: fascinating to think. You know, we think about the armor

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Speaker 4: of the future. We think about things like power armor

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Speaker 4: and suits and steel and plate. Powerful plates are energy, yeah,

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Speaker 4: or plastic plastic steel, you know, some sort of crazy

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Speaker 4: plastic that's as strong as steel. But at the end

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Speaker 4: of the day, there's a strong case to be made

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Speaker 4: like that we should not forget sand, because sand again

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Speaker 4: is just an amazing you know, absorbent substance for these

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Speaker 4: sorts of projectiles and the sorts of this sort of energy.

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Speaker 3: Well, I know you were already talking about this. I

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Speaker 3: think maybe this came up when we were talking last night,

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Speaker 3: But you know, I recall seeing plenty of examples through

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Speaker 3: you know, world history, military history of like metal, plate,

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Speaker 3: armor and sand used in combination, like one one against

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Speaker 3: the other.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, certainly you see a

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Speaker 4: lot of like makeshift you can pack up the sand

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Speaker 4: bags and you create a little wall. And then there's

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Speaker 4: the example of the tanks. But I don't know, there's

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Speaker 4: something about like I don't recall ever really putting it

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Speaker 4: together too much that oh yeah, I'm looking at sandbags

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Speaker 4: on those tanks. You know, it's one of those things

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Speaker 4: that's so mundane. You know, you see sand bags a lot,

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Speaker 4: you can kind of become blind to what's going on.

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Speaker 3: There, to the beauty of the sand bag.

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Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, all right, Now, moving from the sandbag back

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Speaker 4: into the science fiction future, let's come at last to done. Okay,

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Speaker 4: Frank Herbert's nineteen sixty five novel, and then the same

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Speaker 4: technology does come up a little bit at least in

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Speaker 4: one of the other books, but it does make it.

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Speaker 4: It does hit in the first one as well. So

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Speaker 4: the Friemen make use of a sand compactor as part

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Speaker 4: of the standard frim kit. You know, the frimekit is

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Speaker 4: the thing, like you know, it's hidden away for Paul

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Speaker 4: and his mother, and you know, then they have to

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Speaker 4: use it on their own surviving out in the sands

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Speaker 4: of Aracus.

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Speaker 3: So that's also going to have still suit yep, still suit.

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Speaker 3: It goes on your body, it protects you it keeps

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Speaker 3: you from losing moisture to the environment. Does it have

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Speaker 3: a thumper the thumper, yeah, around kit it either is

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Speaker 3: it either a tract or it distracts the worm? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, both.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a yeah, depending on how you're using it.

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Speaker 4: There's the tent, I believe, and then there are probably

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Speaker 4: some things that aren't mentioned. There's probably I'm thinking there's

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Speaker 4: a mint in there, maybe a piece of gum.

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Speaker 2: I don't know why not.

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Speaker 4: But the sand compact, Yeah, you want a little moisturizer,

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Speaker 4: you know, maybe a nice note. Oh there was a note,

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Speaker 4: but I don't know how nice it was. It's like, hey, sorry,

390
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Speaker 4: but I had to do this. But yeah, the sand

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Speaker 4: compactor is probably one of the weirder ones. And I

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Speaker 4: remember like thinking it was really cool when I first

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Speaker 4: read Dune, because it is described as a sand compaction

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Speaker 4: tool that realigns sand grains and allows you allows you

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Speaker 4: to effortlessly burrow out of a sand buried tint, and

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Speaker 4: presumably has other purposes. I think it's used slightly differently

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Speaker 4: in a later book, but I'm assuming you could also

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Speaker 4: use it to maybe blast the sand off of your feet,

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Speaker 4: And it seemingly involves binding sand grains together with an

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Speaker 4: electromagnetic charge.

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Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah.

402
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Speaker 4: Now, as I understand it, the cool thing about this

403
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Speaker 4: is that this particular gadget, of course, remains a tool

404
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Speaker 4: of the far future imperium we see in dune, but

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Speaker 4: we do have electrostatic gadgets that can clean up sand.

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Speaker 4: There's something called an EDS electrodynamic screen, which is kind

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Speaker 4: of an electrostatic cleaning system for removal of sand particles

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Speaker 4: from solar panels. Because you know, you have a bunch

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Speaker 4: of sand accumulate, you know, even in just little bits

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Speaker 4: of it on solar panels, that's going to get in

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Speaker 4: the way of how effective they are. So this technology

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Speaker 4: exerts an electrostatic force to remove sand from that screen. Okay,

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Speaker 4: So in a sense, yeah, there's a connection to be

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Speaker 4: made between these two different technologies.

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Speaker 3: Like an electromagnetic vacuum.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, But again, this is the kind of thing I

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Speaker 4: feel like would make me more of a beach camper

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Speaker 4: if I could like point a flashlight sort of shaped

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Speaker 4: object at my feet and just kind of like hose

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Speaker 4: them off with pure dry electrostatic charge or something. Now,

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Speaker 4: coming back to the idea of sand constructions on other worlds,

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Speaker 4: So kind of coming back to that armor example of

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Speaker 4: printing out fortresses is on Banshee. There are actually a

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Speaker 4: number of proposals to do a certain amount of manipulation

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Speaker 4: of the regulith on our moon as well as on Mars.

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Speaker 4: The lunar regulith isn't quite sand by many definitions. It's

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Speaker 4: sometimes referred to as such, and sometimes it's called soil,

429
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Speaker 4: though plenty of people will point out, well, it's not soil.

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Speaker 2: Earth. Soil is of.

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Speaker 4: Course essentially a living, thriving, organically active thing, and that.

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Speaker 2: Is not what you get on the moon.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, we've gone into more depth than this sort of

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Speaker 4: thing before when we talked about like like what is

435
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Speaker 4: like lunar dust, and often dust is a is a

436
00:22:38,520 --> 00:22:42,440
Speaker 4: is good or a better descriptor as well. But there

437
00:22:42,480 --> 00:22:45,359
Speaker 4: is the idea that we could create various sort of

438
00:22:45,600 --> 00:22:51,280
Speaker 4: sometimes called lunar crets or astrocrets, that are essentially there

439
00:22:51,320 --> 00:22:53,959
Speaker 4: are a lot basically there are a lot like terrestrial concretes.

440
00:22:54,920 --> 00:22:57,600
Speaker 4: They would they would still be complicated to carry out.

441
00:22:57,880 --> 00:23:00,239
Speaker 4: Like it's not just a matter of like well them

442
00:23:00,320 --> 00:23:01,960
Speaker 4: up to the Moon or send them to Mars with

443
00:23:02,240 --> 00:23:06,119
Speaker 4: just a bag of mix that you buy at the store.

444
00:23:06,440 --> 00:23:09,760
Speaker 4: You're still dealing with something that would be difficult to

445
00:23:09,760 --> 00:23:13,760
Speaker 4: carry out, especially in such an environment. And you know,

446
00:23:13,840 --> 00:23:15,760
Speaker 4: essentially in some of these cases might have to be

447
00:23:15,800 --> 00:23:18,679
Speaker 4: like three D printed as well. But it's a It

448
00:23:18,720 --> 00:23:22,080
Speaker 4: means that you wouldn't have to bring everything as a

449
00:23:22,160 --> 00:23:25,520
Speaker 4: module up from Earth and then send it over. You

450
00:23:25,520 --> 00:23:29,520
Speaker 4: could create some amount of your infrastructure, you know, foundations,

451
00:23:29,920 --> 00:23:34,040
Speaker 4: you know, even whole buildings or tunnel systems by transforming

452
00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:37,199
Speaker 4: you know, the sand if you will, that you have

453
00:23:37,359 --> 00:23:43,480
Speaker 4: there into some sort of concrete, AstroCrete or lunar crete substance. Now,

454
00:23:43,640 --> 00:23:47,280
Speaker 4: this next example is fascinating because it also it makes

455
00:23:47,520 --> 00:23:51,240
Speaker 4: perfect sense once it's rolled out, but it also feels

456
00:23:51,320 --> 00:23:54,200
Speaker 4: like even more sci fi than some of these cases,

457
00:23:54,240 --> 00:23:58,080
Speaker 4: Like it sounds like a little more grim dark than

458
00:23:58,480 --> 00:24:01,879
Speaker 4: than anything that is actually rolled out in the book Armor,

459
00:24:02,920 --> 00:24:07,200
Speaker 4: but it's really cool. So AstroCrete, as proposed by scientists

460
00:24:07,240 --> 00:24:10,560
Speaker 4: from the University of Manchester, this calls for the use

461
00:24:10,600 --> 00:24:15,359
Speaker 4: of human urea and other excretions to strengthen the regalith concrete,

462
00:24:15,800 --> 00:24:20,479
Speaker 4: essentially making a kind of biocomposite out of it, and

463
00:24:20,680 --> 00:24:25,600
Speaker 4: is plenty of science has bricks PP bricks. But as

464
00:24:25,640 --> 00:24:28,200
Speaker 4: I think, one of the main things that the headlines

465
00:24:28,200 --> 00:24:34,000
Speaker 4: and even the authors of the proponents of this plan,

466
00:24:35,400 --> 00:24:37,760
Speaker 4: the way that they put it is blood, saying like

467
00:24:37,960 --> 00:24:41,960
Speaker 4: this would be like the blood of astronauts. So there's

468
00:24:41,960 --> 00:24:45,960
Speaker 4: a twenty twenty one study here published in Materials Today

469
00:24:45,960 --> 00:24:49,760
Speaker 4: Bio and the title is Blood, Sweat and Tears Extraterrestrial

470
00:24:49,960 --> 00:24:54,960
Speaker 4: regalith Biocomposits with in vivo Binders by Roberts at All

471
00:24:55,600 --> 00:24:59,399
Speaker 4: And yeah, they get into it and discuss how a

472
00:24:59,480 --> 00:25:02,679
Speaker 4: protein from human blood, the proteins from human blood can

473
00:25:02,720 --> 00:25:06,760
Speaker 4: form this biocomposite material with the moon, the Moon's dust

474
00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:10,440
Speaker 4: or the Mars dust, you know, the sand of either world,

475
00:25:10,520 --> 00:25:13,760
Speaker 4: if you will, And that the compressive strength of the

476
00:25:13,760 --> 00:25:18,880
Speaker 4: biocomposite materials is ultimately on par with concrete and by

477
00:25:18,920 --> 00:25:23,359
Speaker 4: incorporating incorporating urea from urine, they can actually increase the

478
00:25:23,480 --> 00:25:27,720
Speaker 4: compressive strength by over three hundred percent. So there's power

479
00:25:27,760 --> 00:25:32,440
Speaker 4: EMPP bricks, blood, MPP bricks, blood and MPP bricks. Yeah,

480
00:25:32,480 --> 00:25:35,040
Speaker 4: and this would be something that would be potentially then

481
00:25:35,080 --> 00:25:39,840
Speaker 4: three D printed on site, so something actually not unlike

482
00:25:39,960 --> 00:25:44,480
Speaker 4: the wall printers in the novel Armor at least in spirit.

483
00:25:45,560 --> 00:25:47,800
Speaker 4: And one thing that they do stress and this is,

484
00:25:48,160 --> 00:25:50,120
Speaker 4: you know, you get into the logistics of this, you'd

485
00:25:50,119 --> 00:25:58,280
Speaker 4: have to have your astronauts essentially continuously donating plasma, you know,

486
00:25:58,359 --> 00:26:00,440
Speaker 4: on top of their waste products, which are going to

487
00:26:00,480 --> 00:26:03,600
Speaker 4: have to shed anyway, but donating plasma for the purposes

488
00:26:04,080 --> 00:26:06,800
Speaker 4: of them later three D printing these bricks.

489
00:26:07,160 --> 00:26:08,840
Speaker 3: So I think that's they're not going to be under

490
00:26:08,840 --> 00:26:10,000
Speaker 3: any stress or anything.

491
00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:13,959
Speaker 4: Yeah, but the authors here do make a point of

492
00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:17,080
Speaker 4: saying you would need to figure out exactly what the

493
00:26:17,160 --> 00:26:21,080
Speaker 4: right regiment for this would be, you know, because I

494
00:26:21,280 --> 00:26:24,720
Speaker 4: guess on the way over, maybe they were to a

495
00:26:24,760 --> 00:26:27,960
Speaker 4: certain extent more be more downtalent downtime, and you could

496
00:26:28,000 --> 00:26:31,480
Speaker 4: kind of like put your astronauts on drip and get

497
00:26:31,480 --> 00:26:36,080
Speaker 4: some fluids from them. But we know that journeys between

498
00:26:37,000 --> 00:26:40,480
Speaker 4: planets and journeys between our world and its moon, these

499
00:26:40,480 --> 00:26:45,520
Speaker 4: are not stress free environments either, so you can't you

500
00:26:45,600 --> 00:26:48,040
Speaker 4: have to. Basically, their point is like you don't want

501
00:26:48,080 --> 00:26:52,359
Speaker 4: to in any way incapacitate or decrease the effectiveness of

502
00:26:52,400 --> 00:26:56,480
Speaker 4: your astronauts, while at the same time, you know, putting

503
00:26:56,480 --> 00:26:58,760
Speaker 4: them on drip a little bit in order to build

504
00:26:58,800 --> 00:26:59,920
Speaker 4: your bricks in the future.

505
00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:03,520
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so I don't know, I really really like

506
00:27:03,600 --> 00:27:04,000
Speaker 2: this idea.

507
00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:05,280
Speaker 4: It's been out for a few years, so I can

508
00:27:05,359 --> 00:27:08,879
Speaker 4: only imagine that somebody's latched onto it. In science fiction,

509
00:27:10,280 --> 00:27:15,040
Speaker 4: certainly some of the more recent Mars colony Lunar colony visions, well,

510
00:27:15,080 --> 00:27:15,320
Speaker 4: you know.

511
00:27:15,320 --> 00:27:18,679
Speaker 3: You could imagine that if if the stress on the

512
00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:22,400
Speaker 3: astronaut's body is too much, you could have a kind

513
00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:25,000
Speaker 3: of separate classes of people going to other planets. So

514
00:27:25,040 --> 00:27:27,480
Speaker 3: you'd have you'd have the astronauts who were there to work,

515
00:27:27,520 --> 00:27:28,919
Speaker 3: and then the ones who were there to be a

516
00:27:29,040 --> 00:27:31,560
Speaker 3: to be a blood and peepye bag. Oh you know.

517
00:27:32,280 --> 00:27:34,199
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that's interesting.

518
00:27:34,280 --> 00:27:36,240
Speaker 4: That certainly, that's the kind of idea you could explore

519
00:27:36,240 --> 00:27:38,240
Speaker 4: in some of these and some of them have talking

520
00:27:38,240 --> 00:27:42,080
Speaker 4: about different caste systems for far future humans on other worlds.

521
00:27:42,160 --> 00:27:43,880
Speaker 3: But a Mars blood boy.

522
00:27:43,880 --> 00:27:48,639
Speaker 4: Yeah, Mary, yeah, I ad read it all right. I

523
00:27:48,680 --> 00:27:52,679
Speaker 4: have one more one last spacesand topic I want to

524
00:27:52,680 --> 00:27:57,119
Speaker 4: discuss here, and it involves the electric sand of Titan,

525
00:27:58,160 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 4: which I have to admit, so it's pretty metal. It

526
00:28:01,520 --> 00:28:02,920
Speaker 4: is ultimately pretty metal.

527
00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:06,600
Speaker 3: So we've covered tight song by Sleep I think.

528
00:28:07,720 --> 00:28:11,400
Speaker 4: It could very much be a sleep song or an

529
00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:16,040
Speaker 4: early electric Wizard song from some of their spacier material. Yeah,

530
00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:20,639
Speaker 4: basically could fit just about any like seventies dim sound.

531
00:28:20,800 --> 00:28:22,840
Speaker 3: Drop out of Life on a rope of sand.

532
00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:26,480
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that kind of vibe. Yeah, So we're going

533
00:28:26,480 --> 00:28:29,080
Speaker 4: to tighten for this topic. We've covered Titan on the

534
00:28:29,080 --> 00:28:32,639
Speaker 4: show before. This is Saturn's largest moon. It has a

535
00:28:32,720 --> 00:28:36,120
Speaker 4: thick atmosphere and earth like systems of flowing liquid only

536
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:39,760
Speaker 4: instead of water. It has liquid hydrocarbons such as methane

537
00:28:39,800 --> 00:28:43,280
Speaker 4: and ethane. However, it may have a subsurface ocean of water,

538
00:28:43,440 --> 00:28:46,600
Speaker 4: and in many ways it is very earth like. But

539
00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:50,920
Speaker 4: with that caveat caveat of don't go anywhere beyond Earth

540
00:28:51,160 --> 00:28:55,440
Speaker 4: and expect to easily find something exactly like Earth. So

541
00:28:55,480 --> 00:28:58,680
Speaker 4: it's still very extreme. It's very cold, it has ice

542
00:28:58,800 --> 00:29:02,120
Speaker 4: like rocks and possible believe volcanoes that spout liquid water.

543
00:29:03,240 --> 00:29:06,000
Speaker 4: It's it's a rough place if we were to imagine

544
00:29:06,000 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 4: ourselves physically being there. It's the second largest moon in

545
00:29:09,720 --> 00:29:13,160
Speaker 4: our Solar system, trailing the Jovian moon of Ganymede. It's

546
00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:17,640
Speaker 4: larger than both Earth's moon and the planet mercury, and

547
00:29:18,120 --> 00:29:19,360
Speaker 4: it does have sand.

548
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:21,520
Speaker 3: I think that comes with an asterisk though.

549
00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:21,960
Speaker 2: Yeah.

550
00:29:22,000 --> 00:29:24,680
Speaker 4: Yeah, anytime we're talking about sand in other worlds, we

551
00:29:25,520 --> 00:29:29,440
Speaker 4: have to add the caveat that we scientists will disagree

552
00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:32,640
Speaker 4: on terminology from time to time, but scientists will often

553
00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:35,320
Speaker 4: use the term sand when talking about it, at least,

554
00:29:35,360 --> 00:29:39,520
Speaker 4: you know, with the public. So, as described on the

555
00:29:39,640 --> 00:29:43,120
Speaker 4: NASA fact sheet for Titan, dark earth like sand dunes

556
00:29:43,160 --> 00:29:46,840
Speaker 4: stretch across the cross parts of Titan, and the sand

557
00:29:46,880 --> 00:29:51,520
Speaker 4: is composed of dark hydrocarbon grains, often described as probably

558
00:29:51,520 --> 00:29:55,480
Speaker 4: looking like coffee grounds. Interesting, So again, you know, it

559
00:29:55,480 --> 00:29:59,360
Speaker 4: feels very doom metal, you know, black deserts of weird sand.

560
00:30:00,720 --> 00:30:03,640
Speaker 4: And I included an image here in our notes, Joe,

561
00:30:03,880 --> 00:30:07,160
Speaker 4: maybe we can even splash this up for video to see,

562
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:11,760
Speaker 4: since it's a NASA JPL image. But what I'm looking

563
00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:17,120
Speaker 4: at here is an image of sand dunes on the

564
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:22,240
Speaker 4: moon of Titan. And this is detected via Cassini's radar.

565
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:26,520
Speaker 3: So like just long, long, parallel dunes like you might

566
00:30:26,560 --> 00:30:29,160
Speaker 3: see in some deserts on Earth.

567
00:30:29,240 --> 00:30:29,880
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.

568
00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:32,880
Speaker 4: So it's frequently compared to deserts on Earth and people

569
00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:36,240
Speaker 4: pointing out, yeah, yeah, this is kind of like an

570
00:30:36,320 --> 00:30:40,360
Speaker 4: Earth desert, except very different in other ways. But where

571
00:30:40,400 --> 00:30:43,120
Speaker 4: this gets really cool? I thought, I mean, it's already

572
00:30:43,120 --> 00:30:47,400
Speaker 4: really cool. But in twenty seventeen, Joshua Mendez, a granular

573
00:30:47,560 --> 00:30:52,440
Speaker 4: dynamicist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, proposed

574
00:30:52,440 --> 00:30:56,800
Speaker 4: in a paper published in Nature Geoscience titled Electrification of

575
00:30:56,880 --> 00:31:00,560
Speaker 4: Sand on Titan and its Influence on Sediment Transport that

576
00:31:00,600 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 4: the sands might become electrically charged via the tribal electric effect.

577
00:31:06,640 --> 00:31:09,480
Speaker 4: This is something we experience all the time, like say,

578
00:31:09,520 --> 00:31:12,440
Speaker 4: when you have static electricity that causes packing peanuts to

579
00:31:12,440 --> 00:31:16,320
Speaker 4: clean to your fingers. You know, the grains of sand

580
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:19,800
Speaker 4: on Titan might do something similar in a very unique

581
00:31:19,840 --> 00:31:23,520
Speaker 4: way for a number of reasons. So the sand grains

582
00:31:23,560 --> 00:31:27,320
Speaker 4: on Titan there are fluffier than sand on Earth, and

583
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:30,480
Speaker 4: the gravity there is seven times weaker than our own,

584
00:31:30,600 --> 00:31:33,920
Speaker 4: meaning that the sand particles can potentially stick together in

585
00:31:33,960 --> 00:31:36,479
Speaker 4: ways that we just do not see on Earth. So

586
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:39,920
Speaker 4: we have the same you know, the trivial electric effect

587
00:31:40,080 --> 00:31:42,200
Speaker 4: is going to be in play here on Earth with sand,

588
00:31:42,200 --> 00:31:44,760
Speaker 4: but we have a different gravity situation and different consistency

589
00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:49,240
Speaker 4: of our sand grains. But The headline grabbing take home here,

590
00:31:49,720 --> 00:31:52,160
Speaker 4: as the researchers discuss, is that you could make a

591
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:56,600
Speaker 4: sand castle on Titan out of this crazy goth black

592
00:31:56,680 --> 00:31:59,560
Speaker 4: sand and it might stay up for weeks without the

593
00:31:59,560 --> 00:32:02,280
Speaker 4: need of or anything to It would just be the

594
00:32:02,320 --> 00:32:04,600
Speaker 4: electric charge holding everything together.

595
00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:05,560
Speaker 3: Interesting.

596
00:32:05,680 --> 00:32:07,600
Speaker 2: Okay, so I'm imagining not.

597
00:32:07,640 --> 00:32:12,640
Speaker 4: Sand castle's, but like weird, like Wayne Barlow esque alien

598
00:32:13,000 --> 00:32:17,719
Speaker 4: sculptures on Titan out of this stuff. The deeper application

599
00:32:18,280 --> 00:32:22,160
Speaker 4: here is that, you know, beyond the flashy headlines, is

600
00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:24,800
Speaker 4: that it might explain the shape and formation of these

601
00:32:24,800 --> 00:32:28,200
Speaker 4: sand dunes we just explained that can't as easily be

602
00:32:28,280 --> 00:32:31,600
Speaker 4: accounted for by the wind. So, you know, we look

603
00:32:31,640 --> 00:32:33,959
Speaker 4: at the way sand dunes form on Earth and then

604
00:32:34,000 --> 00:32:35,800
Speaker 4: we look at this example on Titan. We're like, oh,

605
00:32:35,840 --> 00:32:37,880
Speaker 4: it's like we have here, except we're not going to

606
00:32:37,920 --> 00:32:40,360
Speaker 4: have the same wind scenario on Titan to form them.

607
00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:43,360
Speaker 4: This may be what's key to the formation of these

608
00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:44,560
Speaker 4: dunes on Titan.

609
00:32:44,880 --> 00:32:48,520
Speaker 3: That's really interesting. Yeah, reminds me of something we've talked

610
00:32:48,560 --> 00:32:51,480
Speaker 3: about on the surface of Jupiter's moon Io, where there

611
00:32:51,520 --> 00:32:56,400
Speaker 3: was a similar question about has shifting sand dunes sand

612
00:32:56,480 --> 00:32:58,800
Speaker 3: dunes that move over time and we can see that

613
00:32:58,920 --> 00:33:03,080
Speaker 3: through like orbit imagery, and so the question is how

614
00:33:03,120 --> 00:33:07,560
Speaker 3: do they move because Io basically has no appreciable atmosphere.

615
00:33:07,600 --> 00:33:09,959
Speaker 3: You know, it's not going to have winds like our

616
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:14,280
Speaker 3: atmosphere does. And I remember the main hypothesis we looked

617
00:33:14,280 --> 00:33:16,560
Speaker 3: at for that was a paper that was talking about

618
00:33:16,600 --> 00:33:19,920
Speaker 3: sort of explosive gusts of gas that I think are

619
00:33:19,960 --> 00:33:25,440
Speaker 3: related to volcanic activity on Io, essentially creating temporary transient

620
00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:28,600
Speaker 3: winds even though though there's not really much of an atmosphere,

621
00:33:28,840 --> 00:33:30,640
Speaker 3: right right, Yeah.

622
00:33:30,280 --> 00:33:31,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, fascinating.

623
00:33:41,160 --> 00:33:43,520
Speaker 4: All right, we're going to move on to another section

624
00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:47,560
Speaker 4: here and this this is your angle. And I think

625
00:33:47,560 --> 00:33:49,680
Speaker 4: this is a great selection, in part because it gets

626
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:52,760
Speaker 4: into some other like major things that come to our mind.

627
00:33:52,800 --> 00:33:55,400
Speaker 4: When we think about sand, things that sand can be

628
00:33:55,440 --> 00:33:59,120
Speaker 4: turned into. They go well beyond just making it into

629
00:33:59,160 --> 00:33:59,800
Speaker 4: a brick or a.

630
00:33:59,760 --> 00:34:00,440
Speaker 2: Bag of sand.

631
00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:02,800
Speaker 3: It's not just for sand bags. So yeah, we've talked

632
00:34:02,800 --> 00:34:06,080
Speaker 3: about sand in its loose form, and of course I

633
00:34:06,080 --> 00:34:11,040
Speaker 3: think everybody knows that melting sand is how you make glass,

634
00:34:11,520 --> 00:34:15,320
Speaker 3: but when it comes to making glass, not all sand

635
00:34:15,440 --> 00:34:18,520
Speaker 3: is the same. To make industrial glass with a high

636
00:34:18,600 --> 00:34:23,400
Speaker 3: level of transparency, modern glass makers usually select high purity

637
00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:28,319
Speaker 3: quartz sand, which consists of almost pure silicon dioxide or

638
00:34:28,320 --> 00:34:31,480
Speaker 3: silica and some other additives, usually to aid in the

639
00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:34,560
Speaker 3: manufacturing process, like they introduce stuff to lower the melting

640
00:34:34,600 --> 00:34:37,880
Speaker 3: point of the silica and make it easier to produce

641
00:34:38,520 --> 00:34:41,719
Speaker 3: or to produce desired characteristics in the final product. Is.

642
00:34:41,880 --> 00:34:46,320
Speaker 3: One example of this is introducing boron to the glass

643
00:34:46,520 --> 00:34:51,799
Speaker 3: boron trioxide to make what's called borosilicate glass. This kind

644
00:34:51,840 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 3: of glass has the benefit of being more resistant to

645
00:34:55,440 --> 00:34:59,440
Speaker 3: thermal shock due to a low coefficient of thermal expansion.

646
00:35:00,160 --> 00:35:02,760
Speaker 3: Rob And if you ever shattered something made of glass

647
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:05,319
Speaker 3: due to heat mismanagement of heat and.

648
00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:08,760
Speaker 4: Cold, ooh maybe I haven't.

649
00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:10,440
Speaker 3: Well you're lucky.

650
00:35:10,480 --> 00:35:15,759
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, generally it's just the fingers to blame. Yeah, poor,

651
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:19,200
Speaker 4: poor guesswork on how much of the table I have

652
00:35:19,280 --> 00:35:20,120
Speaker 4: set the glass on.

653
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:21,680
Speaker 2: That sort of thing that can do it too.

654
00:35:21,719 --> 00:35:26,200
Speaker 3: But so, yeah, normal glass expands and contracts a lot,

655
00:35:27,040 --> 00:35:31,399
Speaker 3: relatively a lot. You know, it expands and contracts due

656
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:34,960
Speaker 3: to changes in temperature. And so if you've got you know,

657
00:35:35,040 --> 00:35:38,000
Speaker 3: a glass or a glass baking you know, a glass container,

658
00:35:38,040 --> 00:35:41,960
Speaker 3: and you you change the temperatures on it too rapidly.

659
00:35:42,600 --> 00:35:45,960
Speaker 3: It creates stress on the brittle structure of the glass

660
00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:48,520
Speaker 3: because like in one part of it, it's getting hotter

661
00:35:48,680 --> 00:35:51,840
Speaker 3: faster than the other part and expanding faster or vice versa,

662
00:35:52,480 --> 00:35:55,680
Speaker 3: and this can cause it to shatter. Borosilicate glass is

663
00:35:55,719 --> 00:35:58,560
Speaker 3: better about this, which is why it is often used

664
00:35:58,600 --> 00:36:01,319
Speaker 3: to make glass bake where it's not. They do also

665
00:36:01,440 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 3: use sodaline glass to make glass bake bakeware, but borisilicate

666
00:36:06,600 --> 00:36:11,160
Speaker 3: glass is less vulnerable to thermal shocks, though not invulnerable.

667
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:13,800
Speaker 3: I know people who have made baking you know, baking

668
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:17,960
Speaker 3: dishes made of glass designed for that purpose still explode

669
00:36:18,200 --> 00:36:20,839
Speaker 3: due to mismanagement of hot and cold. You don't want

670
00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:24,080
Speaker 3: to like get a hot dish out of the oven,

671
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:25,760
Speaker 3: you know, you've just had it in a four hundred

672
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:27,840
Speaker 3: degree oven and then put it on like a puddle

673
00:36:27,880 --> 00:36:31,880
Speaker 3: of cold water or oh, kettle or something that'll that's dangerous.

674
00:36:31,880 --> 00:36:33,840
Speaker 4: Okay, that's that's good to know, because that is the

675
00:36:33,880 --> 00:36:36,959
Speaker 4: sort of thing I could conceivably do, and I will

676
00:36:37,000 --> 00:36:38,080
Speaker 4: I will make a point of not doing.

677
00:36:38,200 --> 00:36:40,160
Speaker 3: Don't don't do that. Yeah, that's how to make your

678
00:36:40,200 --> 00:36:44,799
Speaker 3: your baking dish explode anyway, that's industrial glass. But of

679
00:36:44,840 --> 00:36:48,200
Speaker 3: course there are also natural forms of glass made from

680
00:36:48,239 --> 00:36:50,720
Speaker 3: melted sand, and I want to talk about one type

681
00:36:50,719 --> 00:36:56,399
Speaker 3: of naturally occurring sand based glass called folgurite. So fulgurite

682
00:36:56,719 --> 00:37:01,560
Speaker 3: is a mineral made of silica or elicon dioxide that

683
00:37:01,680 --> 00:37:05,640
Speaker 3: has been fused by the heat of a bolt of lightning.

684
00:37:06,840 --> 00:37:09,480
Speaker 3: I thought that's pretty cool. So the name comes from

685
00:37:09,640 --> 00:37:12,440
Speaker 3: the Latin word for lightning, and it can be formed

686
00:37:12,440 --> 00:37:16,319
Speaker 3: when lightning hits multiple kinds of substrate. It can form

687
00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:19,560
Speaker 3: in clay or soil, or in solid rock, but the

688
00:37:19,560 --> 00:37:23,920
Speaker 3: most common type of folgarite is made when lightning strikes sand,

689
00:37:24,080 --> 00:37:28,239
Speaker 3: and for this reason you can often find folgiarites in beaches,

690
00:37:28,239 --> 00:37:32,800
Speaker 3: on beaches or in the desert. So a common recognizable

691
00:37:32,840 --> 00:37:38,040
Speaker 3: form of folgiarite is a partially buried, crusty looking tube.

692
00:37:38,200 --> 00:37:40,520
Speaker 3: But that's going to be hollow in the middle, and

693
00:37:40,560 --> 00:37:44,600
Speaker 3: then on the inner surface it will be glassy but

694
00:37:44,800 --> 00:37:48,440
Speaker 3: not usually smooth on the outside, so the outsides often

695
00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:51,360
Speaker 3: look very rough and gnobbily. And I was thinking they

696
00:37:51,440 --> 00:37:55,600
Speaker 3: look like a flute that orcs would play something of

697
00:37:55,960 --> 00:37:59,480
Speaker 3: mordor technology about them, or like that effect you get

698
00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:01,759
Speaker 3: when you earn a candle many times in a row,

699
00:38:01,840 --> 00:38:04,640
Speaker 3: and it creates this multi wax structure on the outside.

700
00:38:04,640 --> 00:38:06,840
Speaker 3: A lot of folgiarites look like that on the outside

701
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:09,239
Speaker 3: due to I guess some kind of melting and then

702
00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:12,840
Speaker 3: partial melting around the outer surface, which is going to

703
00:38:12,920 --> 00:38:16,759
Speaker 3: mean that like unmelted sand, grains end up adhering to it,

704
00:38:16,920 --> 00:38:19,799
Speaker 3: so you get this rough outer surface. They vary in

705
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:23,959
Speaker 3: thickness in length, somewhere between one and several centimeters thick,

706
00:38:24,480 --> 00:38:28,320
Speaker 3: and they sometimes have these branching or forked shapes, which

707
00:38:28,440 --> 00:38:31,759
Speaker 3: indicates the path the lightning took as it was conducted

708
00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:35,240
Speaker 3: into the ground through the soil or the rock. Around

709
00:38:35,280 --> 00:38:38,760
Speaker 3: the outside, again, they're usually covered with like rough sand

710
00:38:38,800 --> 00:38:42,880
Speaker 3: particles or pebbles. And the cool thing is that extremely

711
00:38:43,239 --> 00:38:47,080
Speaker 3: long fulgierites have been discovered, some sources say up to

712
00:38:47,160 --> 00:38:50,719
Speaker 3: twenty meters in length, though that doesn't necessarily mean you

713
00:38:50,760 --> 00:38:53,880
Speaker 3: can get it out intact, because as you can imagine,

714
00:38:54,400 --> 00:38:58,200
Speaker 3: it's like hard to extract a whole delicate glass tube

715
00:38:58,239 --> 00:38:59,920
Speaker 3: of that length from the ground intact.

716
00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:02,120
Speaker 4: Like I'm thinking, I mean, it's kind of like the

717
00:39:02,200 --> 00:39:05,239
Speaker 4: lightning has just cooked the sand, and so you could

718
00:39:05,280 --> 00:39:09,440
Speaker 4: imagine something like I don't know a cake that is,

719
00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:12,240
Speaker 4: the cake is on the whole not all that well cooked,

720
00:39:12,239 --> 00:39:15,000
Speaker 4: but you have like this thread going through it that

721
00:39:15,120 --> 00:39:16,439
Speaker 4: is really cooked.

722
00:39:16,320 --> 00:39:18,719
Speaker 3: Through thread going through the middle where part of the

723
00:39:18,719 --> 00:39:21,640
Speaker 3: cake has been vaporized and left as a hollow, and

724
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:25,040
Speaker 3: then a section around that has been liquefied and then

725
00:39:25,120 --> 00:39:29,319
Speaker 3: re solidified, and this glassy, smooth inner channel, and then

726
00:39:29,480 --> 00:39:33,560
Speaker 3: a rougher surface around the outside. There are other types

727
00:39:33,600 --> 00:39:36,800
Speaker 3: of fulgarite, though it's not just sand. There are rock fulgarites.

728
00:39:36,920 --> 00:39:40,080
Speaker 3: These are a bit different. They usually appear as glassy

729
00:39:40,160 --> 00:39:44,120
Speaker 3: layers or glassy crusts on top of a rock, often

730
00:39:44,280 --> 00:39:46,719
Speaker 3: on mountain summits. So this is a really cool thing.

731
00:39:46,719 --> 00:39:48,200
Speaker 3: If you go to the top of a mountain, you

732
00:39:48,280 --> 00:39:51,880
Speaker 3: might find rocks near the very top have these little

733
00:39:51,880 --> 00:39:54,839
Speaker 3: places that are like a dark glassy patch on the rock.

734
00:39:54,920 --> 00:39:57,640
Speaker 3: What is that This is the place where the mountain

735
00:39:57,640 --> 00:40:01,160
Speaker 3: has formed a natural lightning rod is striking the rock

736
00:40:01,280 --> 00:40:04,160
Speaker 3: and melting it and turning it into this glassy surface.

737
00:40:05,360 --> 00:40:08,080
Speaker 3: Another thing is that when you see good examples of

738
00:40:08,120 --> 00:40:12,080
Speaker 3: these really forked or branching fulgiarites, sometimes they look like

739
00:40:12,120 --> 00:40:16,759
Speaker 3: a cross between a ginger root and ET's hand, but

740
00:40:16,880 --> 00:40:21,640
Speaker 3: more gray and crusty, usually also worth mentioning. Sometimes artificial

741
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:26,080
Speaker 3: fulgarites can be formed by artificial injections of extreme heat

742
00:40:26,120 --> 00:40:29,760
Speaker 3: and energy into sand or rock, for example, by downed

743
00:40:29,800 --> 00:40:32,920
Speaker 3: power lines or by arc welders. You can make human

744
00:40:32,920 --> 00:40:37,279
Speaker 3: made folgiarites that way, and Charles Darwin actually talks at

745
00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:40,600
Speaker 3: length about fulgiarites in the Voyage of the Beagle. I

746
00:40:40,640 --> 00:40:43,880
Speaker 3: was trying to remember when I was making the notes

747
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:47,120
Speaker 3: if this came up in our episode on ice Formations,

748
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:50,160
Speaker 3: because in that one we were talking about Darwin's travels

749
00:40:50,200 --> 00:40:53,560
Speaker 3: in South America where he's going through a pass going

750
00:40:53,600 --> 00:40:57,520
Speaker 3: through what is today Chile and Argentina. But I don't

751
00:40:57,520 --> 00:41:00,200
Speaker 3: think this came up. You remember in that passage he

752
00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:03,600
Speaker 3: has these misadventures going through the very high mountain pass

753
00:41:03,640 --> 00:41:07,080
Speaker 3: where they tried he and his companions try to boil potatoes,

754
00:41:07,080 --> 00:41:08,320
Speaker 3: but the potatoes won't cook.

755
00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:10,040
Speaker 2: Oh yes, yes, they're at very.

756
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:12,680
Speaker 3: High altitude, so the boiling point of water is lowered,

757
00:41:12,719 --> 00:41:15,319
Speaker 3: so the potatoes won't get hot enough moman boiling them.

758
00:41:16,080 --> 00:41:20,040
Speaker 3: But that's also the episode where he found the upside

759
00:41:20,080 --> 00:41:24,960
Speaker 3: down frozen horse in the Pinnacles of Ice yes, but anyway,

760
00:41:25,320 --> 00:41:28,520
Speaker 3: the part where he talks about finding Folgierites is in

761
00:41:28,640 --> 00:41:31,680
Speaker 3: chapter three of the Voyage of the Beagle called Maldonado,

762
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:35,680
Speaker 3: where Darwin is traveling in what is I think modern

763
00:41:35,760 --> 00:41:39,120
Speaker 3: day Uruguay. But I'm just going to read from Darwin

764
00:41:39,160 --> 00:41:42,480
Speaker 3: here where he describes this find quote in a broad

765
00:41:42,600 --> 00:41:46,400
Speaker 3: band of sand hillocks which separate the Laguna de Potrero

766
00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:49,359
Speaker 3: from the shores of the Plata. At the distance of

767
00:41:49,440 --> 00:41:52,319
Speaker 3: a few miles from Maldonado, I found a group of

768
00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:57,640
Speaker 3: those vitrified silicious tubes which are formed by lightning entering

769
00:41:57,760 --> 00:42:01,640
Speaker 3: loose sand. These tubes resemble in every particular those from

770
00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:06,160
Speaker 3: drig In Cumberland described in the Geological Transactions. He's referring

771
00:42:06,200 --> 00:42:09,000
Speaker 3: to these other things that have been in the literature.

772
00:42:09,760 --> 00:42:13,480
Speaker 3: The sand hillocks of Maldonado, not being protected by vegetation,

773
00:42:14,080 --> 00:42:18,280
Speaker 3: are constantly changing their position. From this cause. The tubes

774
00:42:18,520 --> 00:42:24,080
Speaker 3: projected above the surface, and numerous fragments lying near showed

775
00:42:24,160 --> 00:42:27,160
Speaker 3: that they had formerly been buried to a greater depth.

776
00:42:27,600 --> 00:42:31,720
Speaker 3: Four sets entered the sand perpendicularly. By working with my hands,

777
00:42:31,760 --> 00:42:34,719
Speaker 3: I traced one of them two feet deep, and some

778
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:38,000
Speaker 3: fragments which evidently had belonged to the same tube. When

779
00:42:38,040 --> 00:42:41,120
Speaker 3: added to the other part measured five feet three inches,

780
00:42:41,480 --> 00:42:44,239
Speaker 3: the diameter of the whole tube was nearly equal, and

781
00:42:44,280 --> 00:42:48,319
Speaker 3: therefore we must suppose that originally it extended to a

782
00:42:48,400 --> 00:42:52,560
Speaker 3: much greater depth. These dimensions are, however, small compared to

783
00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:55,759
Speaker 3: those of the tubes from drig one of which was

784
00:42:55,840 --> 00:42:58,919
Speaker 3: traced to a depth of not less than thirty feet. Again,

785
00:42:59,000 --> 00:43:03,480
Speaker 3: those incredibly deep. So after this he goes on describing

786
00:43:03,520 --> 00:43:06,799
Speaker 3: them a little bit more. He talks about how they're vitrified,

787
00:43:06,880 --> 00:43:09,759
Speaker 3: glossy and smooth on the inside, and then rough on

788
00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:14,480
Speaker 3: the outside. He compares the outside to a shriveled vegetable stalk,

789
00:43:14,640 --> 00:43:19,040
Speaker 3: or to the bark of an elm tree. And then

790
00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:21,440
Speaker 3: also he goes on to talk about some experiments that

791
00:43:21,520 --> 00:43:25,040
Speaker 3: have been conducted in Paris where they made artificial folgiarites

792
00:43:25,040 --> 00:43:29,000
Speaker 3: by passing a very strong shock of galvanism into a

793
00:43:29,040 --> 00:43:32,680
Speaker 3: finely powdered glass, and they managed to recreate some of

794
00:43:32,719 --> 00:43:37,120
Speaker 3: this effect. And let's see, there's one funny passage here.

795
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:40,680
Speaker 3: He says, when we hear that the strongest battery in

796
00:43:40,760 --> 00:43:43,640
Speaker 3: Paris was used, and that its power on a substance

797
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:46,880
Speaker 3: of such easy fusibility as glass was to form tubes

798
00:43:46,960 --> 00:43:50,560
Speaker 3: so diminutive, we must feel greatly astonished at the force

799
00:43:50,719 --> 00:43:53,440
Speaker 3: of a shock of lightning, which, striking the sand in

800
00:43:53,480 --> 00:43:56,759
Speaker 3: several places, has formed cylinders in one instance of at

801
00:43:56,840 --> 00:44:01,600
Speaker 3: least thirty feet long and having an internal when not compressed,

802
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:04,880
Speaker 3: of full an inch and a half. And this in

803
00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:08,520
Speaker 3: a material so extraordinarily refractory as quartz.

804
00:44:09,080 --> 00:44:09,480
Speaker 2: Wow.

805
00:44:09,960 --> 00:44:13,120
Speaker 3: So Darwin was not confused about what these things were.

806
00:44:13,160 --> 00:44:16,360
Speaker 3: He already knew what they are, that they're made by lightning.

807
00:44:16,400 --> 00:44:18,960
Speaker 3: But I'm trying to imagine how interesting it would be

808
00:44:19,040 --> 00:44:22,160
Speaker 3: to go out like he did and find these in

809
00:44:22,239 --> 00:44:25,120
Speaker 3: the wild, protruding, like you said, in an area without

810
00:44:25,200 --> 00:44:28,640
Speaker 3: much vegetation, and these sand hillocks where you're going out,

811
00:44:28,680 --> 00:44:33,480
Speaker 3: and because the sand shifts and moves, these glass formations

812
00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:36,160
Speaker 3: are now sticking up into the air, exposed, and you

813
00:44:36,239 --> 00:44:38,319
Speaker 3: look at them, I'd imagine and say, like, what is

814
00:44:38,320 --> 00:44:40,800
Speaker 3: is that some kind of stalk or cactus or something,

815
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:43,760
Speaker 3: and then you come upon it and realize it is glass?

816
00:44:44,040 --> 00:44:44,400
Speaker 1: Wow?

817
00:44:44,600 --> 00:44:48,600
Speaker 4: Yeah, just like alien formations growing up out of the sand.

818
00:44:48,719 --> 00:44:48,959
Speaker 2: Yeah.

819
00:44:49,239 --> 00:44:52,879
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I guess they eventually get broken off by

820
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:55,279
Speaker 3: the weather, but sometimes they're just just having a good

821
00:44:55,320 --> 00:44:56,080
Speaker 3: old poke up there.

822
00:44:56,239 --> 00:44:56,560
Speaker 2: Wow.

823
00:44:57,760 --> 00:45:00,440
Speaker 3: So I wanted to also mention one scientific paper I

824
00:45:00,480 --> 00:45:02,920
Speaker 3: came across because the authors of this paper did an

825
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:06,960
Speaker 3: interesting bit of calculation in their background section to estimate

826
00:45:07,040 --> 00:45:10,359
Speaker 3: the rate of Fulgiar right formation on Earth. So this

827
00:45:10,480 --> 00:45:13,920
Speaker 3: was a paper called a Fossilized Energy Distribution of Lightning.

828
00:45:14,000 --> 00:45:17,040
Speaker 3: This is by Matthew Passick and Mark Hurst, published in

829
00:45:17,080 --> 00:45:20,600
Speaker 3: Scientific Reports in twenty sixteen. I looked up the author

830
00:45:20,680 --> 00:45:23,319
Speaker 3: is Matthew Passick is a geochemist who was at the

831
00:45:23,360 --> 00:45:27,000
Speaker 3: time affiliated with the University of South Florida, and mark

832
00:45:27,040 --> 00:45:30,920
Speaker 3: Hurst is an independent geologist. But the authors of this

833
00:45:30,960 --> 00:45:33,920
Speaker 3: paper just start off by talking about how powerful lightning is,

834
00:45:33,960 --> 00:45:36,440
Speaker 3: and of course you know Darwin makes the same observation.

835
00:45:36,520 --> 00:45:39,360
Speaker 3: He's looking at this fused glass and then saying like

836
00:45:39,400 --> 00:45:42,719
Speaker 3: the most powerful battery in Paris could barely do you

837
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:45,840
Speaker 3: know anything close to this, or imagine how powerful lightning

838
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:50,640
Speaker 3: is to fuse all the sand in this way. The

839
00:45:50,680 --> 00:45:54,400
Speaker 3: authors here talk about the total energy of a lightning

840
00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:57,120
Speaker 3: strike might be up to ten to the nine jewels,

841
00:45:57,520 --> 00:46:00,520
Speaker 3: and that lightning can heat the air around it to

842
00:46:00,560 --> 00:46:05,200
Speaker 3: a temperature above thirty thousand kelvin. And of course, you know,

843
00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:09,800
Speaker 3: we think of lightning and its vast discharge of energy

844
00:46:09,880 --> 00:46:13,520
Speaker 3: as primarily destructive. When you imagine what lightning can do,

845
00:46:13,600 --> 00:46:15,640
Speaker 3: we think about things that it can hurt. You've got

846
00:46:15,680 --> 00:46:18,960
Speaker 3: your standard bolt of vengeance from Jupiter. You know, it

847
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:21,400
Speaker 3: strikes a person dead, and then you know, the ancient

848
00:46:21,480 --> 00:46:23,920
Speaker 3: Romans might look at that in awe and like build

849
00:46:23,920 --> 00:46:27,320
Speaker 3: a shrine around that area, as a Jupiter has interacted

850
00:46:27,320 --> 00:46:29,000
Speaker 3: with this place, best not mess with it.

851
00:46:29,239 --> 00:46:31,200
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, when we think of putting it to use,

852
00:46:31,239 --> 00:46:34,360
Speaker 4: it's generally going to be bringing of Frankenstein's monster to

853
00:46:34,440 --> 00:46:37,239
Speaker 4: life or powering a time traveling glorean, and that that's

854
00:46:37,239 --> 00:46:39,680
Speaker 4: pretty much it. Those are the only applications.

855
00:46:39,160 --> 00:46:40,720
Speaker 2: Bold of lightning. Yeah.

856
00:46:40,760 --> 00:46:42,680
Speaker 3: But yeah, so it can do that. We know also

857
00:46:42,719 --> 00:46:47,040
Speaker 3: it can start fires, natural forest fires, and it causes

858
00:46:47,080 --> 00:46:50,759
Speaker 3: destruction and damage to buildings. But the authors here just

859
00:46:50,880 --> 00:46:53,960
Speaker 3: mentioned briefly a couple of things people might not appreciate

860
00:46:54,000 --> 00:46:58,200
Speaker 3: about how lightning is also somewhat ecologically important, like it

861
00:46:58,239 --> 00:47:01,360
Speaker 3: does good things for us. This is a detour, but

862
00:47:01,400 --> 00:47:03,040
Speaker 3: I thought it was interesting, so I just wanted to

863
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:05,960
Speaker 3: mention it. One thing that has come up on the

864
00:47:05,960 --> 00:47:09,520
Speaker 3: show before, of course, is the ecological importance of lightning

865
00:47:09,719 --> 00:47:13,080
Speaker 3: in starting forest fires. Like some amount of forest fires

866
00:47:13,160 --> 00:47:17,960
Speaker 3: are necessary, right like, there are life forms that depend

867
00:47:18,120 --> 00:47:22,680
Speaker 3: on occasional or periodic forest fires. There are plant seeds

868
00:47:22,680 --> 00:47:25,600
Speaker 3: that are only activated in the presence of fire or smoke,

869
00:47:26,280 --> 00:47:29,160
Speaker 3: so you know, the life cycle of forests to some

870
00:47:29,280 --> 00:47:34,320
Speaker 3: degree depends on occasional forest fires. But also the authors

871
00:47:34,600 --> 00:47:36,520
Speaker 3: here bring up something that I don't think i'd ever

872
00:47:36,560 --> 00:47:40,239
Speaker 3: read about before, that lightning plays a small role in

873
00:47:40,440 --> 00:47:46,040
Speaker 3: nitrogen fixation on Earth, which nitrogen fixation is a process

874
00:47:46,040 --> 00:47:49,160
Speaker 3: that we absolutely depend on for life. You know, nitrogen

875
00:47:49,280 --> 00:47:53,239
Speaker 3: is a key component of amino acids and proteins. Without it,

876
00:47:53,239 --> 00:47:56,000
Speaker 3: we could not make DNA or RNA or the proteins

877
00:47:56,040 --> 00:47:59,160
Speaker 3: that build our cells. Plants couldn't make chlorophyll. So all

878
00:47:59,239 --> 00:48:02,800
Speaker 3: life on Earth pins on nitrogen. And you might think, well,

879
00:48:02,920 --> 00:48:05,280
Speaker 3: that's fine, because there's plenty of nitrogen in the atmosphere,

880
00:48:05,320 --> 00:48:08,719
Speaker 3: right like, nitrogen is the main constituent of our atmosphere,

881
00:48:09,040 --> 00:48:12,560
Speaker 3: But the form of nitrogen available in our atmosphere is

882
00:48:12,560 --> 00:48:17,799
Speaker 3: actually not biologically usable. Atmospheric nitrogen exists mostly in the

883
00:48:17,840 --> 00:48:22,680
Speaker 3: form of two nitrogen atoms bonded together called di nitrogen,

884
00:48:23,320 --> 00:48:26,360
Speaker 3: and these two atoms are held together by an extremely

885
00:48:26,400 --> 00:48:29,640
Speaker 3: strong chemical bond, so in order to be usable to life,

886
00:48:30,400 --> 00:48:33,279
Speaker 3: you have to break that bond. Dihydrogen needs to be

887
00:48:33,320 --> 00:48:36,640
Speaker 3: broken apart and converted into other compounds like nitrates which

888
00:48:36,640 --> 00:48:41,520
Speaker 3: are nitrogen oxygen compounds, or converted into ammonia, which is

889
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:45,120
Speaker 3: made of nitrogen and hydrogen. So what can break apart

890
00:48:45,160 --> 00:48:50,520
Speaker 3: the di nitrogen the two nitrogen atoms. The vast majority

891
00:48:50,560 --> 00:48:55,320
Speaker 3: of the world's natural nitrogen fixation is done by microorganisms,

892
00:48:55,360 --> 00:48:58,640
Speaker 3: so you have single celled life forms like bacteria and

893
00:48:58,800 --> 00:49:04,360
Speaker 3: archaea called diazotrophs, which have special enzymes called nitrogenases that

894
00:49:04,400 --> 00:49:08,440
Speaker 3: are able to break the dinitrogen bonds and generate derivative compounds.

895
00:49:09,040 --> 00:49:11,840
Speaker 3: So one example of this is Rhizobia, which is a

896
00:49:11,880 --> 00:49:16,200
Speaker 3: type of bacteria that exists symbiotically in legume roots like

897
00:49:16,239 --> 00:49:19,520
Speaker 3: the roots of bean plants, and together with the plant,

898
00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:22,520
Speaker 3: the bacterium and the plant are able to convert atmospheric

899
00:49:22,600 --> 00:49:26,360
Speaker 3: nitrogen into ammonia or in H three. So most natural

900
00:49:26,440 --> 00:49:30,080
Speaker 3: nitrogen fixation happens like that, but some small amount of

901
00:49:30,120 --> 00:49:33,640
Speaker 3: the world's nitrogen fixation is also done by lightning. So

902
00:49:34,080 --> 00:49:38,360
Speaker 3: lightning is hot enough to break apart dinitrogen in the

903
00:49:38,400 --> 00:49:41,480
Speaker 3: atmosphere as it cuts a path to the ground, so

904
00:49:41,560 --> 00:49:45,719
Speaker 3: it breaks apart the dinitrogen and makes it react with

905
00:49:45,960 --> 00:49:50,520
Speaker 3: oxygen other elements in the atmosphere, primarily oxygen, and then

906
00:49:50,800 --> 00:49:54,200
Speaker 3: these nitrogen oxygen compounds are carried down to the ground

907
00:49:54,239 --> 00:49:56,480
Speaker 3: by rain and then they can be absorbed and used

908
00:49:56,480 --> 00:49:59,360
Speaker 3: by plants in the form of nitrate. So lightning helps.

909
00:50:00,160 --> 00:50:01,799
Speaker 4: Yeah, something to keep in mind the next time we

910
00:50:01,840 --> 00:50:05,640
Speaker 4: see some electrical activity in the storms, like we're looking

911
00:50:05,680 --> 00:50:08,640
Speaker 4: at a factory of sorts.

912
00:50:08,840 --> 00:50:09,120
Speaker 2: Yeah.

913
00:50:09,200 --> 00:50:13,560
Speaker 3: Yeah. So anyway, coming to the part about fulgurites, the

914
00:50:13,600 --> 00:50:17,560
Speaker 3: authors do some interesting mass to calculate how often folgiarites

915
00:50:17,680 --> 00:50:20,960
Speaker 3: around the world might be formed, and they I just

916
00:50:21,040 --> 00:50:23,239
Speaker 3: want to read this section. They say, quote, lightning is

917
00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:26,480
Speaker 3: a ubiquitous phenomenon on Earth, with a global flash rate

918
00:50:26,520 --> 00:50:30,360
Speaker 3: of about forty five times per second, a majority seventy

919
00:50:30,360 --> 00:50:33,960
Speaker 3: five to ninety percent of which occur over continental land mass.

920
00:50:34,280 --> 00:50:37,000
Speaker 3: About a quarter of these strikes occur from a cloud

921
00:50:37,080 --> 00:50:40,680
Speaker 3: to the ground, and hence the number of potential fulgiarit

922
00:50:40,800 --> 00:50:44,800
Speaker 3: forming events is significant. With up to ten folgarites formed

923
00:50:44,840 --> 00:50:46,200
Speaker 3: globally per second.

924
00:50:46,360 --> 00:50:46,840
Speaker 2: WHOA.

925
00:50:46,880 --> 00:50:50,600
Speaker 3: This estimate depends on the efficiency of fulgarite formation by lightning,

926
00:50:50,840 --> 00:50:54,520
Speaker 3: which is highest when striking barren sand, soil or rock.

927
00:50:54,640 --> 00:50:56,920
Speaker 3: So obviously there's going to be less formation when it's

928
00:50:56,920 --> 00:50:58,800
Speaker 3: striking like a forested area.

929
00:51:00,080 --> 00:51:03,000
Speaker 4: Still that is significantly more than I would have guessed.

930
00:51:03,120 --> 00:51:05,799
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, one last thing I wanted to mention about

931
00:51:05,800 --> 00:51:09,040
Speaker 3: folgier ites is actually not about folgiar rights in sand.

932
00:51:09,160 --> 00:51:11,920
Speaker 3: This is about rock fulgiarites. But I thought this was

933
00:51:11,960 --> 00:51:14,120
Speaker 3: interesting too, so I wanted to get into it. Robin

934
00:51:14,160 --> 00:51:15,960
Speaker 3: the outline. I've got a picture you can look at

935
00:51:16,480 --> 00:51:20,319
Speaker 3: of the peak of Mount Shasta in California, and you

936
00:51:20,360 --> 00:51:23,400
Speaker 3: can see these dark scars in the rock. What's going

937
00:51:23,440 --> 00:51:27,280
Speaker 3: on there? That's rock fulgiarites. The mountain is a lightning

938
00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:29,560
Speaker 3: rod and the peak is being going to be struck

939
00:51:29,600 --> 00:51:33,040
Speaker 3: by lightning and it makes these glassy crusts in the rock.

940
00:51:33,280 --> 00:51:33,799
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah.

941
00:51:33,880 --> 00:51:35,920
Speaker 4: To the untrained eye, you might just think it's like

942
00:51:36,000 --> 00:51:39,319
Speaker 4: deposits of something some sort of like mineral vein in

943
00:51:39,360 --> 00:51:39,759
Speaker 4: the rock.

944
00:51:39,800 --> 00:51:43,160
Speaker 2: But wow, that's fulgrit. Wow.

945
00:51:51,640 --> 00:51:53,359
Speaker 3: So the last thing I want to talk about here

946
00:51:53,440 --> 00:51:56,600
Speaker 3: is This news article in the journal Science from December

947
00:51:56,640 --> 00:52:00,680
Speaker 3: twenty twenty by Nick Ogassa called fossilized lightning to reveal

948
00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:06,280
Speaker 3: when ancient storms struck. So, when lightning strikes a mountaintop

949
00:52:06,360 --> 00:52:08,560
Speaker 3: like this, like when it hits the peak of Mount Shasta,

950
00:52:08,680 --> 00:52:11,680
Speaker 3: it leaves this glassy residue, And you can think of

951
00:52:11,719 --> 00:52:14,920
Speaker 3: this in a way as fossilized lightning. It is a

952
00:52:15,080 --> 00:52:18,840
Speaker 3: record in the rock of lightning hitting. So in a

953
00:52:18,880 --> 00:52:22,719
Speaker 3: way it is a record of weather projected into the

954
00:52:22,840 --> 00:52:25,879
Speaker 3: rock or into the soil and the sand. And these

955
00:52:25,920 --> 00:52:31,640
Speaker 3: fossilized signatures of thunderbolts can play an interesting role helping

956
00:52:31,680 --> 00:52:36,560
Speaker 3: scientists understand past climate patterns by allowing them to date thunderstorms.

957
00:52:36,719 --> 00:52:40,120
Speaker 3: So how does that work well? The article explains, citing

958
00:52:40,200 --> 00:52:43,360
Speaker 3: the work of Jonathan Castro, who's a volcanologist at the

959
00:52:43,719 --> 00:52:49,880
Speaker 3: Johannes Gutenberg University of Mines, that when naturally formed glasses

960
00:52:49,880 --> 00:52:54,040
Speaker 3: like fulgiarite and others like obsidian are exposed to the

961
00:52:54,080 --> 00:52:56,719
Speaker 3: outside air and to the elements, they slowly begin to

962
00:52:56,880 --> 00:53:02,360
Speaker 3: absorb water. And by measuring the amount of water they've absorbed,

963
00:53:02,400 --> 00:53:05,680
Speaker 3: and I think how deeply it's been absorbed in theory,

964
00:53:05,719 --> 00:53:08,439
Speaker 3: you should be able to measure the age of these

965
00:53:08,480 --> 00:53:11,879
Speaker 3: glasses because they absorbed slowly, and so you can measure that,

966
00:53:12,840 --> 00:53:15,120
Speaker 3: or at least you can measure not necessarily the age

967
00:53:15,160 --> 00:53:17,799
Speaker 3: since they're formed, but the age since they've been exposed

968
00:53:17,800 --> 00:53:21,480
Speaker 3: to the elements. So, for example, this has been considered

969
00:53:21,480 --> 00:53:25,080
Speaker 3: as a method for dating artifacts like obsidian arrowheads. But

970
00:53:25,280 --> 00:53:27,840
Speaker 3: there's a problem. They figured out there are problems with

971
00:53:27,880 --> 00:53:31,399
Speaker 3: the method because quote, many of these glasses come from

972
00:53:31,600 --> 00:53:36,240
Speaker 3: volcanoes and already contain water from the time they were forged,

973
00:53:37,480 --> 00:53:41,880
Speaker 3: so that water interferes with this potential dating method. But

974
00:53:42,160 --> 00:53:47,200
Speaker 3: Castro and colleagues reasoned that, unlike volcanically forged obsidian, fulgurites

975
00:53:47,239 --> 00:53:50,560
Speaker 3: could be free of this problem because the extremely high

976
00:53:50,680 --> 00:53:54,440
Speaker 3: energy of the lightning strike that creates the folgarite actually

977
00:53:54,600 --> 00:53:57,799
Speaker 3: vaporizes any water that's hiding out in there because it's

978
00:53:57,840 --> 00:54:02,200
Speaker 3: so hot, So fulurite last might be a more reliable

979
00:54:02,239 --> 00:54:06,560
Speaker 3: target for this moisture absorption based dating method. So Castro

980
00:54:06,680 --> 00:54:11,040
Speaker 3: and colleagues tested this out by making artificial rock fulgurite

981
00:54:11,520 --> 00:54:14,399
Speaker 3: by shocking samples of rock with an arc welder. Again,

982
00:54:14,440 --> 00:54:17,480
Speaker 3: these artificial things, like when you have a down to

983
00:54:17,520 --> 00:54:20,080
Speaker 3: power line and it makes folgiurite in the sand. They

984
00:54:20,160 --> 00:54:24,000
Speaker 3: shocked rock with an arc welder, reaching temperatures above ten

985
00:54:24,000 --> 00:54:28,200
Speaker 3: thousand degrees celsius, which is what's required to make the folgiarite,

986
00:54:28,760 --> 00:54:31,920
Speaker 3: and these temperatures did indeed boil away almost all of

987
00:54:31,920 --> 00:54:34,680
Speaker 3: the moisture, meaning that the fulgarite should serve as a

988
00:54:34,719 --> 00:54:37,759
Speaker 3: reliable time piece allowing you to measure the time since

989
00:54:37,760 --> 00:54:41,960
Speaker 3: its creation. And after this, the researchers decided to test

990
00:54:42,000 --> 00:54:46,000
Speaker 3: the dating system on natural rock fulgurites, which they harvested

991
00:54:46,000 --> 00:54:48,920
Speaker 3: from some volcanic mountain peaks in Oregon in the US

992
00:54:48,960 --> 00:54:52,360
Speaker 3: state of Oregon, because again mountain peaks are these lightning rods.

993
00:54:52,880 --> 00:54:55,880
Speaker 3: And some of the folgiarites they sampled turned out to

994
00:54:55,880 --> 00:54:58,480
Speaker 3: be hundreds of years old, and they argued that this

995
00:54:58,560 --> 00:55:01,759
Speaker 3: method could be used to date fulgarite glass with a

996
00:55:01,840 --> 00:55:05,600
Speaker 3: relatively high level of accuracy compared to other methods. Other

997
00:55:05,640 --> 00:55:09,360
Speaker 3: methods you might have like measuring bombardment by cosmic rays.

998
00:55:10,480 --> 00:55:13,120
Speaker 3: So in a paper published in twenty twenty in the

999
00:55:13,200 --> 00:55:16,800
Speaker 3: journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Castro and co authors

1000
00:55:16,840 --> 00:55:21,359
Speaker 3: wrote that quote because the lightning strike is in and

1001
00:55:21,440 --> 00:55:26,239
Speaker 3: of itself so effective at devolatilizing melts in an instant.

1002
00:55:26,560 --> 00:55:29,840
Speaker 3: The resultant folgiarites are a unique earth material that record

1003
00:55:30,000 --> 00:55:34,560
Speaker 3: individual weather events i e. A thunderstorm and also longer

1004
00:55:34,640 --> 00:55:39,480
Speaker 3: term paleo weather intervals. And they talk about one interesting

1005
00:55:39,520 --> 00:55:42,160
Speaker 3: example of how this could be used. It could reveal

1006
00:55:42,280 --> 00:55:48,359
Speaker 3: when in history particular rocks or mountaintops became exposed and

1007
00:55:48,400 --> 00:55:52,480
Speaker 3: thus vulnerable to lightning strikes, for example, to identify wind

1008
00:55:52,600 --> 00:55:56,000
Speaker 3: glaciers began to retreat from specific areas with a high

1009
00:55:56,040 --> 00:55:56,920
Speaker 3: degree of precision.

1010
00:55:57,480 --> 00:55:59,560
Speaker 2: Fascinating. Yeah, huh.

1011
00:56:00,120 --> 00:56:03,200
Speaker 3: I'm not a crystal guy. And if you start googling

1012
00:56:03,239 --> 00:56:04,880
Speaker 3: Fulgar rightes, a lot of the people who want to

1013
00:56:04,920 --> 00:56:08,800
Speaker 3: talk about these things have thoughts about the powers of crystals.

1014
00:56:08,920 --> 00:56:12,120
Speaker 4: Oh, okay, there are certain powers attributed to Folgar rights

1015
00:56:12,200 --> 00:56:13,160
Speaker 4: in particular.

1016
00:56:12,920 --> 00:56:14,560
Speaker 3: I think some people I don't know. I didn't go

1017
00:56:14,600 --> 00:56:16,160
Speaker 3: deep in that world. I just saw a bunch of

1018
00:56:16,160 --> 00:56:18,120
Speaker 3: Google hits and I'm like, Okay, I don't have time

1019
00:56:18,160 --> 00:56:18,400
Speaker 3: for that.

1020
00:56:18,560 --> 00:56:21,840
Speaker 4: I'll research it the next time I'm in Asheville going

1021
00:56:21,840 --> 00:56:23,160
Speaker 4: to the various crystal stores.

1022
00:56:23,280 --> 00:56:26,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm not that kind of crystal guy. But

1023
00:56:26,280 --> 00:56:29,520
Speaker 3: now I'm kind of like I want some vulgarite very

1024
00:56:29,560 --> 00:56:30,880
Speaker 3: interested in this it.

1025
00:56:31,239 --> 00:56:33,560
Speaker 4: You know, I didn't get a chance to reread Armor

1026
00:56:33,920 --> 00:56:37,040
Speaker 4: in full for this episode. It's just like zeroing in

1027
00:56:37,080 --> 00:56:40,600
Speaker 4: on the part that I referenced earlier. But this makes

1028
00:56:40,640 --> 00:56:44,000
Speaker 4: me wonder if there's an example in that book, maybe

1029
00:56:44,040 --> 00:56:47,000
Speaker 4: examples even in Dune, or certainly any book where you

1030
00:56:47,120 --> 00:56:50,480
Speaker 4: have any fictional setting where you have an interaction of

1031
00:56:50,520 --> 00:56:56,520
Speaker 4: some sort of energy weapon or dragon breath or Godzilla breath,

1032
00:56:56,880 --> 00:57:00,400
Speaker 4: where you could potentially have like fulgar right scar of

1033
00:57:00,400 --> 00:57:03,480
Speaker 4: the battle, you know, like I'm imagining like there was

1034
00:57:03,480 --> 00:57:06,120
Speaker 4: some sort of interaction here, we had last guns, you know,

1035
00:57:06,200 --> 00:57:08,640
Speaker 4: going off, or some sort of energy weapons, and then

1036
00:57:08,719 --> 00:57:12,320
Speaker 4: later it could almost leave like a forest of fulgar

1037
00:57:12,360 --> 00:57:15,720
Speaker 4: rite columns from where those like those missed laser beams

1038
00:57:15,800 --> 00:57:18,120
Speaker 4: or what have you, impacted the sand and then the

1039
00:57:18,120 --> 00:57:19,400
Speaker 4: rest of the sand blew away.

1040
00:57:20,040 --> 00:57:23,920
Speaker 3: There are whole passages in Doing Messiah where Paul is

1041
00:57:23,960 --> 00:57:27,200
Speaker 3: like looking out over the planes where Fremen fought the

1042
00:57:27,200 --> 00:57:31,120
Speaker 3: Sarto car and he talks about the landscape and even

1043
00:57:31,160 --> 00:57:33,720
Speaker 3: the rocks and the scarps and all that. But I

1044
00:57:33,720 --> 00:57:35,480
Speaker 3: don't think he ever mentions anything like that.

1045
00:57:35,520 --> 00:57:37,600
Speaker 4: I mean, it would be temporary, you know, because the

1046
00:57:38,480 --> 00:57:43,080
Speaker 4: elements would be we was over. Yeah, and you know,

1047
00:57:43,400 --> 00:57:45,320
Speaker 4: you can also imagine a scenario where things like this

1048
00:57:45,400 --> 00:57:49,440
Speaker 4: might be collected because they're essentially you know, the mentos

1049
00:57:49,600 --> 00:57:52,440
Speaker 4: of the battle, that sort of thing. But it's one

1050
00:57:52,440 --> 00:57:53,640
Speaker 4: of those things I kind of want to look out

1051
00:57:53,640 --> 00:57:57,480
Speaker 4: for now, and certainly listeners if you were like, oh, yeah,

1052
00:57:57,560 --> 00:57:59,640
Speaker 4: there's a you know place in Game of Thrones where

1053
00:57:59,720 --> 00:58:02,480
Speaker 4: this is reference towards reference. Again, it might actually be

1054
00:58:02,520 --> 00:58:05,800
Speaker 4: referenced elsewhere in Herbert's Riding or in any of the

1055
00:58:06,000 --> 00:58:09,320
Speaker 4: sources we've mentioned already, But it seems like there's some

1056
00:58:09,320 --> 00:58:13,520
Speaker 4: some great potential there for fulgar ride battle scars.

1057
00:58:13,600 --> 00:58:16,120
Speaker 3: I like it, are there energy weapons in Game of Thrones?

1058
00:58:16,280 --> 00:58:19,720
Speaker 2: Well, you have dragons, Oh okay, I'm thinking of breath

1059
00:58:19,760 --> 00:58:21,280
Speaker 2: weapon or.

1060
00:58:22,920 --> 00:58:25,280
Speaker 4: You know, some sort of magical effects or or you know,

1061
00:58:26,120 --> 00:58:30,520
Speaker 4: you know, other like high potency explosives. I don't know,

1062
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:33,000
Speaker 4: but certainly dragon fire it seems like that might be

1063
00:58:33,000 --> 00:58:36,040
Speaker 4: the kind of thing that could produce fulgar rides in

1064
00:58:36,080 --> 00:58:36,640
Speaker 4: some cases.

1065
00:58:36,680 --> 00:58:37,120
Speaker 2: I don't know.

1066
00:58:37,640 --> 00:58:41,600
Speaker 3: In D and D what level of electricity spells like

1067
00:58:41,720 --> 00:58:43,920
Speaker 3: lightning or thunderbolt spells you have to get to to

1068
00:58:43,960 --> 00:58:44,800
Speaker 3: make fulgar ride.

1069
00:58:45,040 --> 00:58:47,400
Speaker 4: I think it would happen right away. I mean, just

1070
00:58:47,480 --> 00:58:49,680
Speaker 4: your as soon as you're able to forget off the

1071
00:58:49,720 --> 00:58:51,200
Speaker 4: top of my head, I don't have make character sheet

1072
00:58:51,200 --> 00:58:51,640
Speaker 4: in front of me.

1073
00:58:51,920 --> 00:58:52,440
Speaker 2: I can't remember.

1074
00:58:52,640 --> 00:58:54,760
Speaker 4: You know, you get the lightning bolt spell and then

1075
00:58:54,760 --> 00:58:58,080
Speaker 4: you can like really ramp it up depending on what

1076
00:58:58,080 --> 00:59:00,880
Speaker 4: what spell over you're casting at. But right out the gate,

1077
00:59:00,880 --> 00:59:02,880
Speaker 4: it's pretty strong spell, especially if you can get your

1078
00:59:02,960 --> 00:59:03,920
Speaker 4: enemies to line up.

1079
00:59:04,280 --> 00:59:05,360
Speaker 2: That's my favorite part.

1080
00:59:05,200 --> 00:59:06,120
Speaker 3: Get them wet right.

1081
00:59:06,400 --> 00:59:08,120
Speaker 4: Yeah, but sometimes that's where you have to like make

1082
00:59:08,160 --> 00:59:09,800
Speaker 4: a case for it with your dungeon master. But if

1083
00:59:09,840 --> 00:59:13,240
Speaker 4: your dungeon master makes a mistake of lining up all

1084
00:59:13,280 --> 00:59:15,560
Speaker 4: of the villains, all of the bad guys, all the

1085
00:59:15,560 --> 00:59:17,840
Speaker 4: monsters in us in a row, and you're able to

1086
00:59:17,880 --> 00:59:21,440
Speaker 4: move your your player to the side of them, you're

1087
00:59:21,440 --> 00:59:23,280
Speaker 4: able to flank them, then you can just like shoot

1088
00:59:23,280 --> 00:59:26,520
Speaker 4: that lightning bolt straight down the middle. And if they're

1089
00:59:27,080 --> 00:59:30,040
Speaker 4: you know, made up of land, you create fulgar rides.

1090
00:59:30,160 --> 00:59:31,880
Speaker 3: Oh yeah based enemies.

1091
00:59:31,920 --> 00:59:34,680
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, there's some sand based creatures. Yeah, for sure.

1092
00:59:35,880 --> 00:59:38,920
Speaker 3: There's some sort of lightning spells on like a rock elemental.

1093
00:59:39,080 --> 00:59:42,160
Speaker 4: Yeah, have some sort of sand golm that sort of thing. Yeah,

1094
00:59:42,320 --> 00:59:44,000
Speaker 4: then you have a fulgar ride golum and that's a

1095
00:59:44,040 --> 00:59:45,400
Speaker 4: whole new thing you have to contend with.

1096
00:59:46,960 --> 00:59:48,440
Speaker 3: Okay, does that do it for today?

1097
00:59:49,040 --> 00:59:50,360
Speaker 2: I think so. Yeah.

1098
00:59:50,400 --> 00:59:52,800
Speaker 4: This has been a blast. You know, this is not

1099
00:59:52,880 --> 00:59:56,200
Speaker 4: our normal recording scenario, but I had a lot of

1100
00:59:56,200 --> 00:59:59,479
Speaker 4: fun doing it. Thanks to the studio here at Baja Mar,

1101
01:00:00,200 --> 01:00:04,880
Speaker 4: great staff, great facilities. This has been a lot of fun, totally. Yeah,

1102
01:00:04,920 --> 01:00:06,560
Speaker 4: it's good seeing you in person, Rob.

1103
01:00:06,720 --> 01:00:06,919
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1104
01:00:07,000 --> 01:00:09,480
Speaker 4: Yeah, Normally we're still doing the zoom thing, so we

1105
01:00:09,600 --> 01:00:11,800
Speaker 4: were not in the same space when we do it.

1106
01:00:13,120 --> 01:00:14,480
Speaker 2: So yeah, this has been a lot of fun.

1107
01:00:14,520 --> 01:00:16,960
Speaker 4: As always, we put the call out to listeners though

1108
01:00:16,960 --> 01:00:19,520
Speaker 4: if you have things you want to add to the

1109
01:00:19,560 --> 01:00:22,640
Speaker 4: topics we discussed here, certainly you know, getting into the

1110
01:00:22,680 --> 01:00:25,480
Speaker 4: sci fi visions, but also your own experience with sand

1111
01:00:25,800 --> 01:00:28,000
Speaker 4: and even just where you fall on the whole love

1112
01:00:28,040 --> 01:00:29,960
Speaker 4: hate relationship with beach Sand.

1113
01:00:30,160 --> 01:00:32,240
Speaker 2: Write in. We would love to hear from you.

1114
01:00:33,160 --> 01:00:35,480
Speaker 4: Just a reminder to everyone out there that Stuff to

1115
01:00:35,480 --> 01:00:38,200
Speaker 4: Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast.

1116
01:00:39,040 --> 01:00:41,480
Speaker 4: We have core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form

1117
01:00:41,520 --> 01:00:44,640
Speaker 4: episodes on Wednesdays and then on Fridays we set aside

1118
01:00:44,680 --> 01:00:46,840
Speaker 4: most serious concerns, so just talk about a weird film

1119
01:00:47,120 --> 01:00:49,640
Speaker 4: on Weird House Cinema. We've been doing this for a

1120
01:00:49,640 --> 01:00:52,000
Speaker 4: long time. At this point, you can find a pretty

1121
01:00:52,040 --> 01:00:55,040
Speaker 4: deep archive of Stuff to Blow Your Mind wherever you

1122
01:00:55,120 --> 01:00:58,360
Speaker 4: get your audio podcasts, and some of you out there

1123
01:00:58,400 --> 01:01:00,479
Speaker 4: are watching this in video from on.

1124
01:01:00,400 --> 01:01:05,000
Speaker 2: Netflix and you can find more recent.

1125
01:01:04,680 --> 01:01:07,520
Speaker 4: Episodes there, and we're going to continue to roll out

1126
01:01:07,760 --> 01:01:10,560
Speaker 4: that video content moving forward for the foreseeable future.

1127
01:01:10,880 --> 01:01:14,440
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway,

1128
01:01:14,480 --> 01:01:17,160
Speaker 3: and big thanks to our guest producer today, Carlisle.

1129
01:01:17,400 --> 01:01:18,160
Speaker 2: Yes, Carlisle.

1130
01:01:19,120 --> 01:01:20,760
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1131
01:01:20,760 --> 01:01:23,240
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1132
01:01:23,280 --> 01:01:25,200
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1133
01:01:25,320 --> 01:01:27,959
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow

1134
01:01:27,960 --> 01:01:36,160
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

1135
01:01:36,280 --> 01:01:39,200
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1136
01:01:39,320 --> 01:01:43,120
Speaker 1: more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1137
01:01:43,200 --> 01:01:59,480
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

1138
01:02:01,600 --> 01:02:02,480
Speaker 2: The BacT