Speaker 1: M Hey everybody, it's your old pal Josh, and for
Speaker 1: this week's Select, I invite you to listen to our
Speaker 1: ridiculously interesting episode on Dyson's Fears. It's a really cool
Speaker 1: look at how we'll start harnessing energy in the solar
Speaker 1: system in the future and eventually from the universe as
Speaker 1: a whole. And when we do stand back. I hope
Speaker 1: you find this one as interesting as Chuck and I did,
Speaker 1: so getty up and enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant,
Speaker 1: Jerry's over there. Their foot on the button, and that
Speaker 1: means this is stuff you should know the podcast. The
Speaker 1: foot on the button, just waiting to cut us off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what no one knows. But Jerry has a kill
Speaker 1: switch at her foot for all of our profane tirades. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would kill us if she ever pressed it. That's right,
Speaker 1: That's why they call it that. But she's not very
Speaker 1: good at it. I've noticed I've noticed some stuff slips by. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I told her she's like Keith Richards of podcast producers,
Speaker 1: because he can't use guitar pedals, So he's known for that.
Speaker 1: Is that a thing? Well, I mean I don't know
Speaker 1: how known he is maybe among guitar players, but he uh,
Speaker 1: he just plugs right into the amp. That's pretty great. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see. And his he was on Mark Maron's podcast.
Speaker 1: It was a great interview in maren he you know,
Speaker 1: it's pure Keith Richards and he was just basically like,
Speaker 1: you know, I have a hard time standing upright, like
Speaker 1: I can't mess with trying to press foot pedals. Right,
Speaker 1: that's Keith Man. Yep. Very pure. Yeah. And by pure,
Speaker 1: I mean pure heroine, pure China. He's clean now, But
Speaker 1: is he really? That's astounding? Well, I mean no, I
Speaker 1: mean he doesn't do like hard drugs anymore. I got you,
Speaker 1: And I think he drinks and smokes weed. I got you.
Speaker 1: Come on, yeah, like Christine. Actually, Maron smoked his first
Speaker 1: cigarette in a decade in that show with him. Oh
Speaker 1: that was smart, a good decision. He was like, I
Speaker 1: have to how can I not? Yeah, he easily could
Speaker 1: not have done that. I'm disappointed, did he really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Keith Richards offered him a smoke and he's like sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I see that, but at the same time
Speaker 1: I was assos to not smoking. Listen to you. I
Speaker 1: know I'm being judge wagging your finger, so Chuck, Yes,
Speaker 1: have you ever used energy? Yes? Well, you know, when
Speaker 1: you're using energy, most likely you're using something like a
Speaker 1: fossil fuel, right, yeah, right, like gasoline or natural gas
Speaker 1: or something like that, stuff that comes from decomposing dinosaurs. Yes, Okay.
Speaker 1: The problem with using decomposing dinosaurs, as most people know,
Speaker 1: is that it's essentially a non renewable resource. There's no
Speaker 1: more dinosaurs decomposed any longer, and even if there were,
Speaker 1: it would take tens of millions of years for them
Speaker 1: to decompose into fossil fuels for us, right, right, even
Speaker 1: if we could, even if we had dino d n
Speaker 1: A and we could make new dinosaurs just to kill
Speaker 1: them and watch them decompose, which is something we would
Speaker 1: do if we had the capability, I guarantee you, right, Um,
Speaker 1: But we don't have that capability as far as I know, Like,
Speaker 1: no one's working on that track right now. I don't
Speaker 1: think just uh Steven Spielberg, right, maybe someone at Rutgers. So, um,
Speaker 1: we we have to come up with energy sources that
Speaker 1: we won't eventually run out of. And obviously there's like
Speaker 1: wind and solar and as far as solar power goes,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, we're actually doing pretty well right now.
Speaker 1: Like right now, we use something like point zero one
Speaker 1: percent of the sunlight that reaches Earth to to power
Speaker 1: our our world, So there's a lot of room for
Speaker 1: growth potential. The thing is is, I also saw that
Speaker 1: if we keep growing and our energy consumption keeps growing
Speaker 1: uh at something like one percent a year, within a
Speaker 1: thousand years will be using more than the entire amount
Speaker 1: of sunlight that hits the Earth UM can provide. So
Speaker 1: we really need to come up with something else. Yes,
Speaker 1: The problem is is even if we harnessed all of
Speaker 1: the energy here on Earth, we would very quickly outgrow
Speaker 1: whatever energy it provided. So some people have said, well,
Speaker 1: why don't we just go straight to the source. If
Speaker 1: the Sun is such a great source of energy, but
Speaker 1: it's shooting that energy out in directions other than the Earth, UM,
Speaker 1: the stuff that is starting towards the Earth doesn't make
Speaker 1: it very frequently. Well, let's just go to the sun
Speaker 1: and and basically strangle the life out of it to
Speaker 1: get energy from it right, great idea and one of
Speaker 1: the first proposals of it. I don't want to say
Speaker 1: a serious proposal, because although it's been taken seriously over
Speaker 1: the years and almost been interpreted like scripture. Um, it
Speaker 1: was a thought experiment to begin with. It's something called
Speaker 1: the Dyson's fear. Yes, um, well, I guess we should
Speaker 1: introduce the man. Not that we have him here, that'd
Speaker 1: be awesome. He's he's still around. Yeah, I know, he's
Speaker 1: an old dude. But we're talking about Freeman Dyson, not
Speaker 1: to the maker of the vacuum cleaner or the bladeless
Speaker 1: fan or the bladeless hair dryer. Is that really a thing?
Speaker 1: They have a dice in hair dryer? Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: what that. I was so disappointed when I found out
Speaker 1: what the bladeless fan was. Why have you seen those? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can stick your and through it. It's amazing. Well
Speaker 1: I know, and I was like it is it magic? Like,
Speaker 1: how in the world isn't doing this? But it's got
Speaker 1: a stupid blade. It's just housed in a in a casing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's a terrible name for it. And then it
Speaker 1: just channels it up and you know, squirts it out
Speaker 1: the front that they're The Dyson invention that always got
Speaker 1: me was the air blade hand dryer. I think we've
Speaker 1: talked about this before, where you stick your hand down
Speaker 1: in there. Those Yeah, but they're so filled with germs
Speaker 1: that Actually I was in a bathroom the other day
Speaker 1: and they have an air blade now that just blows
Speaker 1: downward onto your hands, and it's actually I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: now I'm satisfied with this invention. Well, you know, you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to rub your hand on the air blade itself, no,
Speaker 1: but it's so close. It's like you're playing operation like
Speaker 1: I'm trying to remove a funny bone or something like that.
Speaker 1: It's almost impossible not to hit the sides of the thing,
Speaker 1: you know, your big meat hooks or just rubbing all
Speaker 1: over every gross. Yeah, it is gross, believe me, because
Speaker 1: I walk out is crying with my hands held in
Speaker 1: the air every time I'm to go to the bathroom. Well,
Speaker 1: you and I have a very big thing about airport bathrooms. Um,
Speaker 1: and I think I had the worst one of my
Speaker 1: life at a Boston Logan on our last tour. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: what happened? It was just not up to snuff, Like
Speaker 1: the first of all the door and this might have
Speaker 1: been just this one bathroom, but the doors to the
Speaker 1: stalls none of them secured, they've been ripped clean off.
Speaker 1: Well they were there, but you couldn't you know, the
Speaker 1: locks didn't work. It was just yeah, basically had to
Speaker 1: push my hand against it, which grossed me out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not okay. And then the gap when the door
Speaker 1: was shut was like two or three inches big, like
Speaker 1: you could fully just look in and say, how you doing,
Speaker 1: how's your poop? Yeah, that's the Mr. Peeper's model. It's
Speaker 1: just not acceptable, you know, in this day and age,
Speaker 1: to not have complete privacy in there. I mean, I
Speaker 1: agree with you. I again, I'm going to reiterate. I
Speaker 1: think there should be one stall for an entire bathroom
Speaker 1: so that no one could possibly sit down next you.
Speaker 1: But barring that, them all exactly. But barring that, though,
Speaker 1: like the place, like what we have in our office
Speaker 1: is acceptable. It's a good second. There's like a complete
Speaker 1: wall in between you. There's a complete wall in front
Speaker 1: of you and a door. It's a securely shut it's
Speaker 1: a water closet. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess I
Speaker 1: guess it is. The man I knew we were going
Speaker 1: to get distracted by poop. Yeah, this isn't even the
Speaker 1: porta potty I know, all right, So sorry. Back to
Speaker 1: Freeman Dyson. Uh, not the vacuum maker. He was born
Speaker 1: in England. He worked most of his career he's retired now,
Speaker 1: but work most of his career as a physics professor
Speaker 1: at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, not Rutgers. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was a civilian scientist with the r EF and
Speaker 1: World War Two. I went to Cambridge, then Cornell for
Speaker 1: grad school. This guy's got some bona fides. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then he's been in news recently by being a big
Speaker 1: I mean, brilliant, brilliant man. But he's been in the
Speaker 1: news recently by being one of the more prominent scientists
Speaker 1: that on as a climate change skeptic. Oh is that right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and not like a complete skeptic, like he does believe
Speaker 1: that it's I believe, Whereas what his stance is that
Speaker 1: he does believe that it's man made, but he doesn't
Speaker 1: think we have enough detail about all the variables for
Speaker 1: these computer generated models to be accurate. So he's he's
Speaker 1: basically saying like this is not the end of the world,
Speaker 1: and in fact, he thinks that increasing levels of CEO
Speaker 1: two can be a good thing for humanity. Ultimately, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I didn't get that far. He's like, it
Speaker 1: gives it gives you a pretty good buzz. Maybe, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's pretty interesting though. He's like, I think
Speaker 1: starting about, you know, six to ten years ago, really
Speaker 1: started making the news with his somewhat controversial because he's
Speaker 1: a brilliant man, and all these other scientists are like, wow,
Speaker 1: he's such a smart guy, but he's so wrong on this.
Speaker 1: But then other people are like, no, he's totally right.
Speaker 1: That's pretty interesting anyway. Um, so that's who he is.
Speaker 1: And he in nineteen thirty seven, well not n seven.
Speaker 1: He in the nineteen sixties was reading a book from
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven called Starmaker from uh, science fiction author
Speaker 1: Olaf Stapledon, and uh, he saw this thing called a
Speaker 1: light trap from this book. Uh. And this book also
Speaker 1: had predicted things like virtual reality, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: a pretty much a landmark sci fi science book. And um,
Speaker 1: he said, hey, this light trap sounds like a good idea.
Speaker 1: I'm going to rip it off. Yeah he did, And
Speaker 1: he actually It was I think a paper that was
Speaker 1: published in Science and the General Science in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: and it's really short. Did you read it? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like I think it took up two pages in Science, um,
Speaker 1: out of like a thousand or something like that in
Speaker 1: that volume. But um, he basically said, this would be
Speaker 1: a great thing, as you say, to rip off, for
Speaker 1: a thought experiment I'm working on. Right, because just very
Speaker 1: recently something called Project OSMA had been created, and that
Speaker 1: was they started to search the sky for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Speaker 1: It was the first cit um and they were looking
Speaker 1: for radio signals still are. But Dyson was saying, well,
Speaker 1: hold on a second, if you're gonna start looking for
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial beings like signs of intelligent civilizations, you should maybe
Speaker 1: start looking for these and and they came to be
Speaker 1: called Dyson's fears because he was the first one to
Speaker 1: popularize it, even though he got the idea from old Off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he actually said, um, he thought a staple in sphere
Speaker 1: was a better name, but I guess not good enough
Speaker 1: to actually use it, right, right, Yeah, he said it
Speaker 1: once very quietly. Yeah, But so this dysons he it
Speaker 1: was originally created as a again a thought experiment. He
Speaker 1: wasn't He didn't talk about how to construct it necessarily
Speaker 1: or anything like that, although there were some follow up
Speaker 1: correspondence UM after the letter first came out, but almost
Speaker 1: immediately people started thinking about how you would create one
Speaker 1: of these things, this this Dicen sphere, and the whole point,
Speaker 1: we should say, basically, at its at its basis, a
Speaker 1: Dicen sphere is UM an engineering project, a megastructure that
Speaker 1: initially was thought to be basically a hollow sphere that
Speaker 1: you built around a star, for example, we would build
Speaker 1: it around our sun. And the whole point of this
Speaker 1: thing is on the inside of this sphere are solar arrays,
Speaker 1: so that all of that sunlight, like we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier, that gets wasted as far as we're concerned,
Speaker 1: is captured and converted into usable energy for us. And
Speaker 1: and in Freeman Dyson's point was, if you build one
Speaker 1: of these things, you're going to capture light. Light won't
Speaker 1: get out, but infrared radiation heat, thermal heat will escape.
Speaker 1: And so if you're looking around the skies for aliens,
Speaker 1: look for something that has a tremendous amount of like
Speaker 1: the infrared radiation of a star, but isn't putting any
Speaker 1: light out? And maybe you just found an alien civilization.
Speaker 1: That's how it began. But people started trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to make one of these things almost as
Speaker 1: soon as he published that letter. So the one thing
Speaker 1: I don't get was he saying that look for this
Speaker 1: because other civilizations out there are using a dycen spear.
Speaker 1: He he said that it would be likely that they
Speaker 1: that this would be an invention they came up. Got you, Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, well, um let's go should we go to
Speaker 1: uh this U Nikolai kardas Chef question. I think we
Speaker 1: can't put it off any longer. It's pretty interesting. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties there was an astrophysicist named Nikolai karda
Speaker 1: chef and um he was a Bond villain and actually
Speaker 1: he wasn't, but he should have been. Um. He had
Speaker 1: this idea that there were three classifications of civilization, uh
Speaker 1: type one, which is basically, we have learned how to
Speaker 1: harness all the energy on the home planet, like everything
Speaker 1: you can possibly harness here on Earth. And you would think, well,
Speaker 1: that's probably us. We're not quite there yet. Uh. Really
Speaker 1: smart dude name Michio Kaku um not a bond villain either.
Speaker 1: He said, uh, in the next hundred years or so,
Speaker 1: maybe two hundred years, we might actually be a Type
Speaker 1: one civilization. Yeah, And like you said, that's where every
Speaker 1: bit of Judeo thermal energy, every drop of sunlight, every
Speaker 1: um um, every bit of hydroelectric power, all that stuff,
Speaker 1: every potential bit of energy is being harnessed by us.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, We're nowhere near that right now. I
Speaker 1: think Cocu's assessments a little rosie. Oh well, and I
Speaker 1: can say that because he was on our TV show
Speaker 1: sort of well he was he yes, he appeared on,
Speaker 1: but we didn't interact with us in a real way exactly.
Speaker 1: He has no idea who we are, no none. Uh
Speaker 1: So Type two is the next, of course, and they
Speaker 1: that kind of civilization would understand how to harness all
Speaker 1: of the energy not only on your own home planet,
Speaker 1: but the energy of a star in its own solar system. Right,
Speaker 1: that's where the that's where the Dyson's fear comes in,
Speaker 1: and that's what we aspire to do one day, right,
Speaker 1: maybe a million or so years from now. And then
Speaker 1: Type three is just kind of like following this logical progression, right,
Speaker 1: and that's harnessing all the energy of all the galaxies,
Speaker 1: or of entire galaxies, not necessarily all of them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that the second, the second age, the type
Speaker 1: to civilization, would be um the either the hardest to
Speaker 1: get to or take the longest to get to. And
Speaker 1: that's because when you build that first dicense fear, your
Speaker 1: technology and your energy efficiency and your productivity is going
Speaker 1: to just shoot forward exponentially from that point on. So
Speaker 1: so once you build that first one, you can start
Speaker 1: building more and more and more much more quickly. So
Speaker 1: you jump from a Type two to a Type three
Speaker 1: civilization pretty pretty fast compared to how long it took
Speaker 1: you to go from a Type one to a Type
Speaker 1: to civilization. Yeah. I think it's like any any product,
Speaker 1: even that that first one is tough, and then you
Speaker 1: can scale it and uh, but well we'll get to
Speaker 1: the robots here. So okay, in fact, let's take a break.
Speaker 1: I'm getting a little psych chuck, and we'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the sun right after this. All right,
Speaker 1: So I went when I said the word sun, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought that was odd. No, it's not, you know,
Speaker 1: I honestly had no idea where you're going with this?
Speaker 1: Well you do, you're being coy. Uh. Most people out there,
Speaker 1: most long time listeners, know that our son podcast was
Speaker 1: one of our our biggest struggles and would have been
Speaker 1: our biggest achievements had we uh done it right. It's
Speaker 1: it's the biggest pity applause. We get yeah for this son, No, No,
Speaker 1: it was it was fine. Get you tried, Yeah, good
Speaker 1: for you for trying. But let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: of about the sun. This stuff I can deal with,
Speaker 1: at least as far as its immense power and energy. Um,
Speaker 1: and I love that our own article has some of
Speaker 1: these comparisons. Um, the sun can generate five times one
Speaker 1: zero to three horsepower. I think that that is a TYPEO.
Speaker 1: I think that it's supposed to be five times ten
Speaker 1: to the twenty three power. You think that's the only
Speaker 1: explanation I have for that. That doesn't make sense. That's
Speaker 1: a really small number. Actually, yeah, I agree, it would
Speaker 1: be like about horse power. Yeah, that's five times tinted.
Speaker 1: It's got to be someone just got lazy there. Serious.
Speaker 1: They're like, I don't know how to do the little
Speaker 1: twenty three thing, right, I don't I don't know how
Speaker 1: to use superscript. What am I like a great editor?
Speaker 1: Superscript that's what it is, right, superscript and subscript. Uh so,
Speaker 1: let's put it this way, and this one is the
Speaker 1: one that cracks me up. Um, the sun has enough
Speaker 1: energy eat to melt an ice bridge two miles wide
Speaker 1: and a mile thick from Earth to the Sun in
Speaker 1: a single second. In a single second. That's pretty good.
Speaker 1: This is the only article I think I've ever seen
Speaker 1: an ellipse in like like the author was like, wait
Speaker 1: for it in a single second. Yeah, I don't even
Speaker 1: think they did the ellipse right. And the ellips supposed
Speaker 1: to be right after the letter or is it their space?
Speaker 1: I think there's supposed to be a space on either side.
Speaker 1: Really technically, yeah, I've been doing these wrong. Then, well,
Speaker 1: don't feel bad. This thing says five times one thousand
Speaker 1: three horsepowers. It's all good, all right? What else? One
Speaker 1: trillion one megatson bombs going off every second if your
Speaker 1: war like, and then finally, one single second of sun
Speaker 1: action whatever that is is enough to power our earth
Speaker 1: for half a million years. That drives it home. It does,
Speaker 1: but it also gives you an idea of just how
Speaker 1: primitive we are energy consumption wise, Like, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's crazy because you know, we're really worried about running
Speaker 1: out of our non renewable resources, but we use such
Speaker 1: a minute amount of energy that that the Sun could
Speaker 1: power the energy use we use currently for half a
Speaker 1: million years in one second. Yeah, that's nuts, right, So
Speaker 1: that also kind of takes your mind though too. Um,
Speaker 1: And this is I think one of the things one
Speaker 1: of the buttons that Freeman Dyson um pushed. It makes
Speaker 1: you realize, like, holy cow, we could do some really
Speaker 1: amazing stuff if we could capture a significant amount of
Speaker 1: that power that the Sun puts out, even an insignificant amount. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd keep Iggy Pop going for like another hundred years.
Speaker 1: Uh So, like you said, the idea behind the Dicen
Speaker 1: sphere is this structure originally proposed a hollow sphere and
Speaker 1: kind of referred to it as a shell. Um, but
Speaker 1: I think now or I think he went on to
Speaker 1: to make it a solid sphere. He so he actually
Speaker 1: said he was really, um, what's the opposite of clear? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess a little convoluted. He he didn't really go
Speaker 1: to the trouble of spelling it out, because again, remember
Speaker 1: this is a thought experiment that had to do with
Speaker 1: finding aliens, not an engineering schematic. So he used some
Speaker 1: very it was vague. That was the word I was
Speaker 1: looking for. He was using some vague words, and we're like, wait,
Speaker 1: what what what are you talking about? What is this sphere?
Speaker 1: Is it? Is it cohesive? Is it like a solid body?
Speaker 1: Is it hollow in the middle? What's going on? And
Speaker 1: he came back and said in a letter a follow up,
Speaker 1: he said, no, no, no, like there's there's no way
Speaker 1: you could build something that would go around our sun
Speaker 1: that would be a solid body that was hollow in
Speaker 1: the middle, Like it couldn't be a cohesive whole because
Speaker 1: the rotational forces, the sheer forces, and the gravitational forces
Speaker 1: acting on it would just obliterate it immediately. Like it's
Speaker 1: it just be mechanically impossible to make it like that.
Speaker 1: So he said, so maybe you would make something like
Speaker 1: a bubble or a swarm or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And he said in the letter, I've been closed some
Speaker 1: blotter acid. Put it on your tongue. You're gonna love this.
Speaker 1: It's dynamite, and call me in an hour. Might make
Speaker 1: a little more sense. Uh yeah. Our own article points
Speaker 1: out that one of the first downsides, obviously, if you
Speaker 1: surround the Sun completely, is that sunlight has I mean,
Speaker 1: I know we'd be harnessing that energy, but sunlight provides
Speaker 1: a lot more than just energy. Oh yeah, like it
Speaker 1: makes us happy. Yeah, people write entire songs about how
Speaker 1: sunshine makes you happy, like John Denver, did you know?
Speaker 1: And that was just on the shoulders. It would be
Speaker 1: a global bummer if somebody enclosed the Sun. That's like
Speaker 1: super villain kind of stuff, right, Okay, so that's a problem.
Speaker 1: Another problem, though, is that if you're going to build
Speaker 1: something like this, and and Dyson even suggested the size
Speaker 1: of it. He was saying it would need to have
Speaker 1: a radius, so a radius not even a diameter half
Speaker 1: of the diameter, a radius that was two times the
Speaker 1: distance of the Earth to the Sun. So this thing
Speaker 1: would be massive, which means that it would also enclose
Speaker 1: the Earth too, right, Like he wasn't proposing you just
Speaker 1: go up and create this tight ball around the Sun,
Speaker 1: Like it would be much further spread out and it
Speaker 1: would actually encompass the Earth's orbit within it. Oh, so
Speaker 1: it would be like this, this is mine. It belongs.
Speaker 1: It belongs to the Earth and no one else and
Speaker 1: can get any sun. Yeah, it would. It would block
Speaker 1: off the stuff outside of two times the distance of
Speaker 1: the Earth's orbit. So there's a couple of planets out
Speaker 1: there that would would get the old screw job. But
Speaker 1: but but the ones inside twice the distance of Earth's
Speaker 1: orbit would really benefit from it. It's very selfish. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the other problem is to chuck is I imagine
Speaker 1: it would. Things would get pretty hot pretty quickly inside
Speaker 1: this thing, So the Earth would be destroyed. Yes, he
Speaker 1: and to get around this, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: I don't think got it immediately. He said, well, you
Speaker 1: just live inside the Dyson's fear like like in the
Speaker 1: outer shell of it. Oh, sure, make it habitable. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: well that makes sense. Yeah, but what you were saying
Speaker 1: about just the sheer size of it there. There literally
Speaker 1: aren't enough raw materials on our entire planet to make
Speaker 1: something this big. In fact, in our in our entire
Speaker 1: solar system, there probably aren't enough raw materials to make
Speaker 1: a structure like this and not and not still try
Speaker 1: to inhabit it. There's just no way. Um. Some people
Speaker 1: say though, and in Freeman himself. I keep waying to
Speaker 1: call him Freeman, like that's his last name, but I
Speaker 1: just end up sounding like I know him on a
Speaker 1: first name. He he was saying, Um, you might be
Speaker 1: able to build something like this by disassembling Jupiter. Well
Speaker 1: that was his suggestion. Yeah, he said, disassembled Jupiter and uh,
Speaker 1: put it back together, and you could build a Dyson
Speaker 1: sphere um that had the radius twice the distance from
Speaker 1: the Earth to the Sun and make a solar array
Speaker 1: of it. Must have been some good acid. Yeah, good
Speaker 1: for him. All right, So I think we're both in agreement,
Speaker 1: and most people are in agreement that this severe idea
Speaker 1: is not at all tangible, not as like a cohesive whole. No,
Speaker 1: like it just remains in the realm of thought experiment.
Speaker 1: So why bother. Oh well, that's the interesting thing to me.
Speaker 1: It basically is kind of like he meant it as
Speaker 1: a thought experiment. It's been brought out of the realm
Speaker 1: of thought experiments. And yeah, we're in no way, shape
Speaker 1: or form capable of doing this, but a lot of
Speaker 1: people have tried to figure out how to do it,
Speaker 1: and I think it's it's one of those things that
Speaker 1: it's like yeah, it's theoretically possible. Um, but we're just
Speaker 1: it's not at our We're nowhere near that that level
Speaker 1: of capability right now. Well, I think his other ideas
Speaker 1: that he came up with, though, are are decent. Oh,
Speaker 1: like the swarm and stuff. Well, yeah, I mean, let's
Speaker 1: let's get to that. He uh he himself even said
Speaker 1: the sphere is probably not very realistic at all, So
Speaker 1: why don't we do this, Why don't we think of
Speaker 1: different machines maybe that are independent of one another, that
Speaker 1: actually circle the Sun, collect this energy and then beam
Speaker 1: it back to Earth. Right, So, so to him, his
Speaker 1: initial idea was that sphere, and then what it came
Speaker 1: to be was that the sphere was like the umbrella
Speaker 1: term for these different slightly more realistic ideas, like the
Speaker 1: swarm or the bubble. So like like, what's the swarm? Uh, well,
Speaker 1: the swarm maybe they they are in different orbits and
Speaker 1: they like the swarming likens it to bees, like instead
Speaker 1: of gathering pollen, they're just around the Sun, moving around,
Speaker 1: gathering energy and power, and so those might be habitable too, right,
Speaker 1: And they're like they're there's solar rays that are satellites
Speaker 1: that are moving around on independent orbits of one another.
Speaker 1: And if you and the way that they would make
Speaker 1: a dicense fear is, yeah, there's a lot of space
Speaker 1: in between them, but if you step back a few
Speaker 1: orders of magnitude further back into the other parts of
Speaker 1: the galaxy or the universe, it would appear is basically
Speaker 1: a whole sphere around the Sun. So it still falls
Speaker 1: under that category, right. He had to keep that sphere
Speaker 1: think because of branding. He didn't want to lose that.
Speaker 1: He's like the genies out of the bottle. They're like,
Speaker 1: you really don't need it to be a sphere. He's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's got to be a sphere. Uh. So those satellites
Speaker 1: are actually they would be called statites. Well, no, if
Speaker 1: they were the bubble, they would be statites. This guy's
Speaker 1: got it wrong. Oh really, I thought the solar sales
Speaker 1: could be the statites. Now, So the what I saw
Speaker 1: the difference between the swarm and the bubble was that
Speaker 1: the swarm has the satellites in orbit around the star
Speaker 1: and they're they're in their own orbits, not interacting with
Speaker 1: each other. A bubble is where the satellites are in
Speaker 1: a fixed position relative to the star. So those are
Speaker 1: the statites, right, so they're just kind of hovering outside
Speaker 1: of the star um, not in orbit, just kind of
Speaker 1: hovering instead. And then those are the two and then
Speaker 1: the third are the solar sales. Correct, Well, you can
Speaker 1: make a solar sale, or you can make any of
Speaker 1: them with solar sales. And I don't know where that
Speaker 1: guy got that. Yeah, do we do a whole episode
Speaker 1: on solar sales? Yeah? So, I mean it makes sense
Speaker 1: if you get a bunch of these solar sales orbiting
Speaker 1: the Sun, uh, you might think that you could harness
Speaker 1: the power and send it back to Earth some way,
Speaker 1: right exactly, And like that's that's like you could use
Speaker 1: that with with with any of these like whether it's
Speaker 1: a bubble, whether it's a swarm, whatever you're doing. Um,
Speaker 1: And if you, like you said, a second ago made
Speaker 1: them habitable, then all of a sudden you have a
Speaker 1: recipe for survival for the human race if Earth ever
Speaker 1: becomes untenable. Right, we can't tear a four mars. We
Speaker 1: can go live on these things. And and when we
Speaker 1: think about living out in space, my brain immediately goes
Speaker 1: to like the cramped tiny tin can conditions of the
Speaker 1: I s s these things don't need to be like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, if we're creating dicens fears, we're going to
Speaker 1: be advanced enough that we could build some really looks
Speaker 1: um satellites and stat heights as solar race to go
Speaker 1: hover or orbit around the Sun. Right, so they could
Speaker 1: be huge, so so big in fact, that that Dyson
Speaker 1: was saying this, this doesn't have to be an engineering
Speaker 1: project that's carried out by a central global government that's
Speaker 1: directing the whole thing. That as our energy consumption and
Speaker 1: energy needs continue, nations could take it upon themselves individually
Speaker 1: to create these solar sales that are habitable, put them
Speaker 1: into orbit independently, and just through the desire to preserve
Speaker 1: one's own life, would make sure that their orbit wasn't
Speaker 1: going to intersect with somebody else's orbit. He was already
Speaker 1: up there, and just organically a dycen spear in the
Speaker 1: form of a swarm or a bubble could form on
Speaker 1: its own, just by self interested nations developing this technology
Speaker 1: basically independent of one another. I don't know, I was
Speaker 1: he had some far far thinking the far thinking, alright, uh,
Speaker 1: should we take another break? I think so, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll do that, and we'll wrap it up a little
Speaker 1: bit with how to get this energy back to the
Speaker 1: home planet star. Alright, so earlier you talked about dismantling
Speaker 1: Jupiter with a socket set a couple of screwdrivers. Mercury
Speaker 1: is another planet that people have talked about as potentially harvesting. Um.
Speaker 1: The good thing about Mercury couple of things. One is
Speaker 1: that it is near the Sun. Yeah, so who needs
Speaker 1: it already? Yeah, so it would make it um proximity wise,
Speaker 1: it makes a little bit of sense. And uh, I
Speaker 1: think this. Oxford University physicists Stewart Armstrong is who proposed this.
Speaker 1: And um. One of the other great things about Mercury
Speaker 1: is it has a lot of great raw materials, namely iron,
Speaker 1: that we could use. And he he actually suggested that
Speaker 1: we could disassemble Mercury fully in basically what amounted to
Speaker 1: a forty year stretch thirty days. I could do it right, exactly,
Speaker 1: if a contractor tells you you can take Mercury apart
Speaker 1: in thirty days, don't trust him, agreed. Um, No, this
Speaker 1: was this was in basically four ten year stretches combined
Speaker 1: equals forty years. Obviously, but um, I think his point.
Speaker 1: Armstrong's point was that you don't have to disassemble mercury
Speaker 1: as a whole and and wait until it's fully disassembled
Speaker 1: to put it together into dice and to start creating
Speaker 1: a dicensphere. You can disassemble and then start reassembling as
Speaker 1: you go. And once you start getting one bit of
Speaker 1: it online, it's going to help power and create better
Speaker 1: efficiency to harvest and reassemble mercury the rest of mercury,
Speaker 1: you know, like we were talking about earlier, And not
Speaker 1: only that, but you could use that energy all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you could. That would be super computing like
Speaker 1: you've never seen. Uh, space travel would get faster, um
Speaker 1: like all these technologies that we can't even like think
Speaker 1: about yet would be growing at exponential rates, right, And
Speaker 1: I mean that's the point, like when you're like, well,
Speaker 1: what would we do with with you know, all of
Speaker 1: this energy every second coming off of the sun. Who knows?
Speaker 1: We we we just cannot conceive of the stuff we
Speaker 1: could do with that amount of energy yet. But I
Speaker 1: guarantee it's not going to be you know, using a
Speaker 1: few like charging our smartphones. It should be for some
Speaker 1: pretty neat stuff. I guess. Uh. So the other cool
Speaker 1: idea is that, um, holy cow, how many people would
Speaker 1: have to to take part in this kind of a project,
Speaker 1: just literally the labor force you would need. And um,
Speaker 1: I think Armstrong is the one who said, well you
Speaker 1: could use robots actually, uh, and with the same idea
Speaker 1: that once you get some of these robots going, uh,
Speaker 1: if they could self replicate and build themselves, then you
Speaker 1: can just kind of sit back and watch the paint
Speaker 1: dry on earth and all these robots are up there
Speaker 1: just building themselves and working and working, uh and doing
Speaker 1: everything for you exactly. And that's why that was his
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was his point. Someone's point
Speaker 1: along the way is that when you start that, when
Speaker 1: you build that first license fear, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it's just going to keep going and going and going faster.
Speaker 1: It's going to spread at an exponential rate. So you
Speaker 1: would go from a type two civilization to a Type
Speaker 1: three civilization pretty quickly. And as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: you would also if if this project was carried up
Speaker 1: by a centralized government, it would spread so quickly and
Speaker 1: so far h in such a relatively short amount of time.
Speaker 1: Something like going from that first dicense fhere to um
Speaker 1: colonizing an entire galaxy in something like a million years,
Speaker 1: that even if it was a centralized government involved at
Speaker 1: the beginning, they would very quickly lose control of the
Speaker 1: colonies because they'd be so spread out and there'll be
Speaker 1: so many of them that they would just basically become
Speaker 1: self sufficient and spread over the galaxy. So the reason
Speaker 1: this is noteworthy is that if you found one dicens fear,
Speaker 1: you would probably find millions or billions or trillions of
Speaker 1: them in in just an one section of the universe.
Speaker 1: Right You're not you You probably are not going to
Speaker 1: find just one dicense fear. You're going to find a
Speaker 1: dison galaxy, a type three civilization. And that's what they're
Speaker 1: looking for by sifting through UM some of these old
Speaker 1: sky surveys, and they found a couple of of candidates.
Speaker 1: Actually in the last year or so, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a couple of surveys that have found
Speaker 1: stars and they have like typical star names. One is
Speaker 1: A K I C eight four six to eight five two,
Speaker 1: which is a sexy name, and then the other is
Speaker 1: E P I C, which I'm pretty sure they call
Speaker 1: Epic two oh four to nine one six right, and
Speaker 1: Epic was discovered by the Kepler spacecraft in two fourteen.
Speaker 1: And the reason these things are noteworthy is because, um,
Speaker 1: there is some sort of weird transit uh pattern where
Speaker 1: the light dims um I guess randomly or not necessarily
Speaker 1: on some sort of set schedule UM around these stars.
Speaker 1: And you would say, well, that's probably just a planet
Speaker 1: or something coming in between. Well, yes, they thought about
Speaker 1: that already um. And normally a star will dim by
Speaker 1: about one percent when a planet sized object comes in
Speaker 1: between you, the observer and that planet. These things are
Speaker 1: dipping on the in the case of k I C
Speaker 1: Star and in the case of the epics star sixty five. Right. Okay,
Speaker 1: they have no idea what could be massive enough to
Speaker 1: dim those two stars that much. They haven't encountered it before.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of theories. One of them said a
Speaker 1: swarm of comets. Somebody else said, well, you could very
Speaker 1: easily go from a swarm of comets to a swarm
Speaker 1: of solar arrays. So maybe these are evidence of Dyson's fears. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's possible. Well, you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: fun to talk about robot robots building themselves and them
Speaker 1: doing all this work up there. Uh. One of the
Speaker 1: big problems is we're not nearly I mean, we have
Speaker 1: robot technology now, but nothing close to that at the present. Um.
Speaker 1: And as this article points out, that you would need
Speaker 1: like it would have to be so advanced these these
Speaker 1: robots would have to be operating without fail up there,
Speaker 1: because they would be by themselves or be able to
Speaker 1: fix themselves and fix problems like the intelligence would need
Speaker 1: to be so far advanced, Like we can't even imagine
Speaker 1: what that would be like. No, but I mean, even
Speaker 1: if Michio Kaku is off by a hundred or two
Speaker 1: hundred or five hundred years, that's not that far off. Like,
Speaker 1: if we can harness all the energy on Earth, we
Speaker 1: should very quickly and improve as far as our technology
Speaker 1: is concerned. So who knows, Maybe maybe those robots aren't
Speaker 1: that far off, you know. Um. One other thing that
Speaker 1: that I saw from this though, was when H. Freeman
Speaker 1: Dyson was talking about disassembling Jupiter Chuck. He said that
Speaker 1: it should take I don't know, roughly eight hundred years
Speaker 1: worth of the Sun's energy output to disassemble and reassemble
Speaker 1: Jupiter well, that's not bad, but do you remember how
Speaker 1: much comes out of the sun in a second. We're like, whoa,
Speaker 1: you know, that's so much. We would need eight hundred
Speaker 1: years worth of that to disassemble and reassemble Jupiter. So
Speaker 1: we we like, not only do we not have the
Speaker 1: capability of building as Dicens fear, we don't even have
Speaker 1: the capability of disassembling Jupiter. We just don't have any
Speaker 1: way to harness that energy, which creates this kind of
Speaker 1: um chicken or egg dilemma, like the way almost need
Speaker 1: a Dicens fear to create a Dicens fear. At this point,
Speaker 1: somewhere Freeman Dison is laughing on acid somewhere in New Jersey. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the other big issues is, okay, let's say
Speaker 1: that you could even do something like this and harness
Speaker 1: this energy. UM to get it to Earth is another
Speaker 1: big problem, um um. If we want to make it
Speaker 1: actually actually usable. Um. Some people said we could laser
Speaker 1: it over, but the problems with laser beams is after
Speaker 1: about a mile you're gonna lose a lot of uh
Speaker 1: if efficiency with it. So good luck with that. Microwaves
Speaker 1: have been floated out there, but microwaves. Even though they're
Speaker 1: more effective, longer farther out than lasers. Um, you're still
Speaker 1: limited to about a hundred miles, which will do us
Speaker 1: no good. Right, So what's the answer. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't have one either. I mean, I guess one
Speaker 1: of the easy ones is, well, just inhabit the solar rays.
Speaker 1: Go inhabit the Dyson sphere. Stop being so precious about
Speaker 1: living on Earth. Yea um, which makes sense. But I
Speaker 1: like living on Earth. Yeah, but would an Earth eight
Speaker 1: hundred years from now be worth living on? Uh? It depends, Chuck,
Speaker 1: will it be skipping skipping to school and skinning knees
Speaker 1: and spelling bees and all that still? Because if so, yes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about. It's another Simpsons reference.
Speaker 1: He's it's a one where Principal Skinner came back, the
Speaker 1: real Principal Skinner, and he's like, he goes, if if
Speaker 1: you think skinning knees and spelling bees or corny, well,
Speaker 1: then mr corn me up. That's right. That's when they
Speaker 1: introduced Uh, I would like to introduce the Principal Skinner,
Speaker 1: Principal ski Moore Skinner. Armontain's Ariane that's a great one. Um,
Speaker 1: there's one other thing. You've got anything else? I got
Speaker 1: nothing else. I got one more thing. So there's that
Speaker 1: whole idea that Dyson came up with to search the
Speaker 1: skies for this this imprint where there's a lot of
Speaker 1: infrared radiation but no visible light. There's a problem with
Speaker 1: that because this guy came along. His name was Robert
Speaker 1: Bradberry's a futurist, I think maybe a science fiction writer. No, Robert,
Speaker 1: his little little brother. Um Robert Bradberry said, well, you
Speaker 1: know what, if you really wanted to um make these
Speaker 1: dicense fears efficient, you'd make them in like the same
Speaker 1: manner that those Russian nesting dolls are made Troishka, right,
Speaker 1: So you'd have the the internal sphere and then outer
Speaker 1: spheres going around and catching all that lost heat energy
Speaker 1: and turning it into usable power, which is awesome because
Speaker 1: you'd have basically a hundred percent efficiency as far as
Speaker 1: the dicense fear was concerned. But if you're looking at
Speaker 1: the stars, you would see nothing because not only would
Speaker 1: there not be visible light, there also wouldn't be any
Speaker 1: infrared radiation. And Freeman Dyson just hung his head, went
Speaker 1: into his room and shut the door and laid down
Speaker 1: on his bed for a while. The end. Yeah. Uh, Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about dicens fears, you
Speaker 1: can start with this article on how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com by typing dicens fear into the search bar how
Speaker 1: stuff works. As I said, and since I said how
Speaker 1: stuff works twice, that means it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this. Uh we helped a lady out. Um. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: hope this email finds you. Well. Been listening for only
Speaker 1: a short time, but it becomes so addicted. I've already
Speaker 1: being about half of your episodes offered on Spotify. I
Speaker 1: think she meant changed. We were on Spotify, by the way,
Speaker 1: and you can being us all you want from that platform. Um,
Speaker 1: like many others, I absolutely adore your show. I came
Speaker 1: across the podcast after a very upsetting event in my
Speaker 1: life save you the SOB story, and just say I
Speaker 1: was going through intense grief. There was something about your
Speaker 1: kind voice, is strong intellect, and raunchy humor that gave
Speaker 1: me a thirst for learning and a new purpose in life.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, Wait a minute, wait a minute, do
Speaker 1: we have raunchy humor. I didn't realize that. I think
Speaker 1: she picks up on the that's like Cheach and Chong,
Speaker 1: the sideways comments. We're like the new Cheech and Chong.
Speaker 1: Thank you a billion times over for just being who
Speaker 1: you are. The podcast was a large factor in saving
Speaker 1: my life. Don't ever underestimate or doubt what you do
Speaker 1: and know that there are people like me out there
Speaker 1: soaking up every word. Sincerely, Cheery B. Thanks a lot, Cherry.
Speaker 1: That's nice and I like hearing that we help people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes me feel good in my belly. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: appreciate the compliment. That's very nice of you to take
Speaker 1: the time to write in to let us know. Uh.
Speaker 1: And if you want to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: to correct us or call us out for something or whatever,
Speaker 1: um lay it on us. Send us an email to
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should
Speaker 1: Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.