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Speaker 1: Are we at the mercy of our cosmic fates or

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Speaker 1: are we masters of our domain. We've been lucky so far,

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Speaker 1: living on this tiny spinning rock at just the right

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Speaker 1: distance from an enormous ball of plasma. It keeps us

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Speaker 1: warm but not too warm, and it's been stable enough

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Speaker 1: to give us time to evolve, to develop technology in

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Speaker 1: science and understand our fragile place in the universe. And

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Speaker 1: is there also time for us to intervene in the

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Speaker 1: Sun's eventual demise? Can we develop the technology and massive

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Speaker 1: engineering capacity to keep the Sun from going red giant

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Speaker 1: and frying the whole planet? That's the cosmic question we're

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Speaker 1: tackling today. Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's extraordinarily engineered Universe.

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Speaker 2: Hello, I'm Kelly Windersmith. I study parasites and space, and

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Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to putting on my skeptical face today.

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Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm going

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Speaker 1: to be optimistic about our ability to preserve the future

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Speaker 1: of humanity today.

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Speaker 2: Ah, why are you going to make me sound like

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Speaker 2: such a wet blanket?

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Speaker 1: Because you love it, Kelly, you love it.

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Speaker 2: It's the most comfortable feeling for me. I guess all right,

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Speaker 2: So let's start with another amazing engineering project for our

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Speaker 2: intro question here, So do you think we should terraform Mars?

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Speaker 1: Wow, that feels like a trap to me.

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Speaker 2: You brought up this amazing geo engineering.

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Speaker 1: That's true. No, you're right. Compared to what we're talking

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Speaker 1: about today, terraforming Mars is like just a warm up exercise.

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Speaker 2: There you go.

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Speaker 1: I think that we should first figure out if Mars

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Speaker 1: has life on it before we go in and muck

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Speaker 1: it up with our kind of life. Because wouldn't it

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Speaker 1: be incredible to discover Martian life that evolved independently, that

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Speaker 1: started from nothing independently, or if it weirdly has like

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Speaker 1: something in common with Earth life, so we could have

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Speaker 1: some sort of like mini pan spermia. I feel like

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Speaker 1: the scientific consequences would be amazing and be ashamed to

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Speaker 1: muck that all up by just dropping a million people

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Speaker 1: on Mars too soon. But that's a pretty extensive project.

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Speaker 1: Once we're done with that, though, then yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: if we have the capacity and the resources and we've

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Speaker 1: thought it through, then I do think it's a reasonable

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Speaker 1: place to extend humanity. What do you think where am

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Speaker 1: I wrong.

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Speaker 2: Oh, I don't think you're wrong in any of the

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Speaker 2: things that you just said. I guess I'm more thinking

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Speaker 2: about how we would go about terraforming Mars. One of

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Speaker 2: the things that surprised me when A City on Mars

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Speaker 2: came out, which available in paperback now, was that the

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Speaker 2: geology community felt like we hadn't spent enough time talking

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Speaker 2: about how Mars is a like unique geological treasure and

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Speaker 2: we shouldn't be going out there and mucking it.

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Speaker 1: Up from a scientific perspective, like answering geological questions.

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Speaker 2: I think that was part of it, but I think

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Speaker 2: there was also a bit of a thread of a like, well,

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Speaker 2: we've messed up a lot of stuff about our planet.

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Speaker 2: We shouldn't let people go out and mess up another planet.

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Speaker 2: And you know, I see their point, and I particularly

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Speaker 2: see their point when you hear about terraforming arguments that

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Speaker 2: go something along the lines of let's dump a bunch

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Speaker 2: of nuclear weapons on the poles at Mars to release

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Speaker 2: a bunch of water vapor, which will then create a

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Speaker 2: greenhouse effect and will warm up the planet and will

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Speaker 2: create an atmosphere that would be more hospitable to human life.

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Speaker 2: Blah blah, blah. I think I'm not super excited about

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Speaker 2: dropping nuclear weapons on Mars, is what I'm saying.

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Speaker 1: Especially because to get n FCO two to warm with

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Speaker 1: the planet, you'll create an atmosphere which is toxic to

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Speaker 1: humans anyway, And so like, yeah, there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: challenges there, And so I guess my answer is like

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Speaker 1: assuming we can solve a lot of these really big

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Speaker 1: engineering challenges, because in today's episode, we're going to think

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Speaker 1: really big and really broad about like mega engineering, engineering

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Speaker 1: that would impress visiting aliens. That's what we're talking about today. WHOA.

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Speaker 2: Well, I guess if you're an alien civilization that made

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Speaker 2: it all the way to Earth, you maybe wouldn't be

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Speaker 2: impressed with what we've done. But I am personally impressed

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Speaker 2: with the extent to which we have molded the planet

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Speaker 2: to meet our needs.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, there are lots of moments of awe. You know,

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Speaker 1: every time I like drive across the Golden gate Bridge,

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Speaker 1: I'm like, Wow, humans built this and it's still here

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Speaker 1: like decades later. It's pretty impressive. Or every skyscraper, or

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Speaker 1: frankly the COVID vaccine, I'm like, wow, we can do Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, humanity has done a lot of impressive stuff,

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Speaker 1: but it's just the beginning, you know. The kinds of

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Speaker 1: things that we might do, the challenges we might take on,

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Speaker 1: the solutions we might engineer, really are almost limitless.

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Speaker 2: We are only getting started, which is why we need

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Speaker 2: to make sure that our species persists for a very

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Speaker 2: long time. So today we're gonna be talking about how

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Speaker 2: we can engineer the Sun to keep our species going

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Speaker 2: for much longer.

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Speaker 1: That's right, because one of Mars terraforming proponents is always

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Speaker 1: saying that Earth is going to get fried in a

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Speaker 1: few billion years anyway, when the Sun expands and goes

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Speaker 1: red giant, and so not only do we need to

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Speaker 1: have outposts on Mars, but we got to get interstellar.

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Speaker 1: And so today we're gonna talking about exactly that scenario.

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Speaker 1: Is it possible to engineer the Sun using a technique

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Speaker 1: called starlifting to prolong our time in the habitable zone? So,

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Speaker 1: as usual, I went out there to ask our audience

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Speaker 1: if they knew something about starlifting. Here's what they had

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Speaker 1: to say.

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Speaker 3: What is starlifting is that when you go to the

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Speaker 3: gym and you see someone famous and you pick them up. No,

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Speaker 3: that can't be it. Maybe it's something to do when

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Speaker 3: a star's about to go supernova and the core is

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Speaker 3: starting to burn carbon and getting into iron. Maybe the

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Speaker 3: layers start to lift off and that's starlifting. I have

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Speaker 3: no idea.

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Speaker 4: Well, that is that new show that is airing on

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Speaker 4: NBC at seven o'clock on Thursday nights where big movie

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Speaker 4: stars compete in weightlifting competition, and it's intense and I'm ready.

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Speaker 4: I'm really looking forward to seeing it.

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Speaker 3: I have not heard of starlifting, but a star lift

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Speaker 3: sounds like it could be a fun. Right at the

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Speaker 3: amusement park.

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Speaker 2: Amazing answers as always, and if you want to contribute

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Speaker 2: your amazing answers, write us at questions at Daniel and

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Speaker 2: Kelly dot org and we'll add you to the list

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Speaker 2: of folks who get these questions ahead of time. I

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Speaker 2: love the when you go to the gym and see

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Speaker 2: someone famous response. I live in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I

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Speaker 2: heard that Dwayne the Rock Johnson also lives in Charlottesville.

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Speaker 2: And sometimes if you go to the gym, what you

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Speaker 2: will see the Rock.

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Speaker 1: How often has that happened to you, Kelly, Oh.

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Speaker 2: Zero times, zero times. I don't think you go to

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Speaker 2: the YMCA. It probably goes to a better gym than

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Speaker 2: I go to. But you know, another good reason to

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Speaker 2: work out. I guess why.

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Speaker 1: Doesn't he live in La. I thought he would be

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Speaker 1: in La Dude.

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Speaker 2: I think that he's probably part time La, part time

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Speaker 2: the better coast, you know, like you're in You're in

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Speaker 2: California when you have to be, but in Virginia when

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Speaker 2: you have a choice, that sort of thing.

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Speaker 1: Virginia is for lovers of Virginia. So there you go.

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Speaker 2: Oh oh, Virginia is for everyone.

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Speaker 1: All right. So starlifting is an engineering technique to solve

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Speaker 1: a very particular problem. So before we get into the solution,

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Speaker 1: I thought it'd be helpful to introduce what is the

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Speaker 1: problem we're solving.

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Speaker 2: Anyway, that's right, and fortunately for me, I won't get

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Speaker 2: too mired in existential dread because the timeline here is

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Speaker 2: way off in the future. But let's go ahead. Tell

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Speaker 2: us about the future of the sun. Why won't the

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Speaker 2: sun last forever?

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Speaker 1: The sun won't last forever because it's in frankly, a

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Speaker 1: delicate balance. It's amazing to me that stars last as

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Speaker 1: long as they do. I mean, there's this incredible balancing

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Speaker 1: act between gravity, which is pulling the star together and

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Speaker 1: trying to collapse it down, and fusion, which is creating

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Speaker 1: heat and energy and pushing the star out. And these

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Speaker 1: two forces, which are fundamentally very very different, right, Fusion

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Speaker 1: uses the quantum mechanical strong nuclear force. Gravity, of course,

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Speaker 1: uses the curvature of space. We don't even know how

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Speaker 1: to unify these things. Conceptionally they're very different pillars of physics.

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Speaker 1: But here they come together and they dance together nicely

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Speaker 1: for billions and billions of years. Right in the heart

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Speaker 1: of the star, you have incredible pressure and temperature, and

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Speaker 1: so hydrogen gets squeezed together to form helium, which releases heat.

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Speaker 1: When light elements fuse together, you release heat, and when

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Speaker 1: heavy elements break apart, that's fission that also releases heat.

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Speaker 1: So in the heart of a star, it's sort of

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Speaker 1: like a constantly exploding nuclear bomb that's generating all of

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Speaker 1: this energy to prevent the star from collapsing.

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Speaker 2: I think that's where your beautiful dance metaphor kind of

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Speaker 2: falls apart, and I don't usually think of beautiful dance involving

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Speaker 2: explosions of nuclear type.

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Speaker 1: Well, that's why it's so incredible imagine a constantly exploding

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Speaker 1: nuclear bomb that you're keeping in a gravitational bubble, right,

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Speaker 1: and if you compress it too much, it's going to

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Speaker 1: go out, it's going to turn into a black hole.

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Speaker 1: If you don't compress it enough, it's going to blow

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Speaker 1: itself apart. And so it's really amazing. And the outcome

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Speaker 1: for these stars depends almost entirely on how much mass

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Speaker 1: you have, Like if you don't have a lot of mass,

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Speaker 1: you end up with a red dwarf, a smaller star,

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Speaker 1: and the heart of it is lower temperature and lower pressure,

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Speaker 1: and so the rate of fusion is lower, and so

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Speaker 1: these stars are dimmer and cooler, which is why they're

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Speaker 1: called red dwarfs. Or a much bigger stars like a

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Speaker 1: blue giant, and these are hotter at their core, and

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Speaker 1: they fuse a lot faster, and the peak of their

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Speaker 1: glow is at a higher frequency, which is why they're

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Speaker 1: called blue giants. But those stars, the bigger, more massive stars,

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Speaker 1: fusion happens much more rapidly, and so they burn through

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Speaker 1: their fuel. So this is this really tight relationship between

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Speaker 1: the mass of the star and how long it's to

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Speaker 1: expected to live. Smaller stars are cooler, and they can

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Speaker 1: burn for billions, maybe even trillions of years. Red dwarfs

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Speaker 1: are very very long lasting, whereas bigger stars don't burn

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Speaker 1: for very long because they burn so hot and so fast.

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Speaker 1: Like if you look at a population of stars, you

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Speaker 1: can tell how old the population is by how many

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Speaker 1: big blue stars there are. It's got a bunch of

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Speaker 1: big blue stars, you know, it's got to be pretty young,

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Speaker 1: because they don't last very long. As galaxies aid, they

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Speaker 1: turn redder and redder because all the blue stars burn out.

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Speaker 2: And where is our Sun on the gradient from any

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Speaker 2: bitty stars to big stars.

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Speaker 1: Our star is not one of the biggest stars in

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Speaker 1: the universe. The limit is around three hundred times the

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Speaker 1: mass of the Sun. A star bigger than that will

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Speaker 1: have fusion so terrifyingly powerful it'll tear itself apart and

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Speaker 1: it'll become smaller. But our star is bigger than the

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Speaker 1: average star. So the most common star is a red

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Speaker 1: dwarf that's like the median star in the universe. Our

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Speaker 1: star is bigger than that, so it's a bigger, hotter

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Speaker 1: star than it's typical, and its lifetime is expected to

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Speaker 1: be about ten billion years, and we're halfway through that.

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Speaker 1: So we've got another five billion years.

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Speaker 2: Oh man, what do you think of midlife crisis looks like?

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Speaker 2: For a Sun?

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Speaker 1: It's talking to all the other stars. It's wondering, like, hey,

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Speaker 1: do I have the right number of planets? It should

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Speaker 1: I have accomplished more by this point. Have I dealt

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Speaker 1: with that nacking infection on my third planet? You know?

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Speaker 1: I really should snuff that out? Oh gosh before it

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Speaker 1: takes over.

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Speaker 2: No, no, let us go, Let us go. We're gonna

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Speaker 2: save you in the long run, baby, we'll see, or

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Speaker 2: at least we're gonna tinker with you. Okay, So we're

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Speaker 2: halfway through.

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Speaker 1: We're halfway through, and the future, the second half of

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Speaker 1: the Sun's life is going to be quite different from

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Speaker 1: the first half. What's going to happen is that as

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Speaker 1: fusion progresses, it forms helium, and that helium is heavier

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Speaker 1: than hydrogen, so it sinks to the core. So instead

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Speaker 1: of just being like basically a huge ball of hydrogen,

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Speaker 1: you're gonna get a helium core. Like the ash from

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Speaker 1: the fusion sinks and goes to the core. But our

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Speaker 1: star is not hot enough to fuse that helium, like

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Speaker 1: if it was hotter and denser. You could fuse helium together,

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Speaker 1: three them together to get carbon, but we can't do that.

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Speaker 1: Our star is just not hot enough, so the helium

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Speaker 1: is sort of inert and it blocks fusion from happening.

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Speaker 1: But before that, because it's denser, it increases the temperature

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Speaker 1: at the core of the star, which makes the Sun hotter.

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Speaker 1: So our sun is gradually getting hotter and hotter as

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Speaker 1: its core gets denser and denser because of the helium

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Speaker 1: that sinks there. Roughly every one hundred million years, the

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Speaker 1: Sun gets one percent brighter.

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Speaker 2: So I guess it. It's the same with this is

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Speaker 2: gonna be one of the things that like ends are

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Speaker 2: species that's not funny. Helium's supposed to be funny.

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Speaker 1: I know, if it makes you sound like a chipmugget

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Speaker 1: should be funny. But also chipmunks can be quite deadly,

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Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, they could take over the whole planet.

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Speaker 2: They carry the bubonic platey.

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Speaker 1: You go, well do yeah in New Mexico actually home

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Speaker 1: with the flea land of the plague, we call it

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Speaker 1: all right, there's some New Mexico pride for you. So, yeah,

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Speaker 1: the sun is gradually getting brighter, and in a few

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Speaker 1: billion years, the Sun will be forty percent brighter. This

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Speaker 1: is why people say like the Sun is going to

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Speaker 1: boil off the oceans, because in a couple of billion years,

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Speaker 1: the global average temperature is going to rise to one

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Speaker 1: hundred degrees sea, right where the oceans will boil. And

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Speaker 1: so this is just a natural progression of the Sun.

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Speaker 1: It's gonna get brighter and brighter and brighter. The Sun

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Speaker 1: itself is not getting that much hotter, but it is

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Speaker 1: getting brighter, and the outer layers are going to grow

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Speaker 1: because as the core accumulates helium, then fusion moves further

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Speaker 1: out right, you can't have fusion at the ash helium core,

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Speaker 1: so you start getting fusion in the outer layers and

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Speaker 1: that puffs up the Sun and that's what makes it

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Speaker 1: become a red giant and does just puff it up

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Speaker 1: a little bit. We're talking about the radius of the

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Speaker 1: Sun growing from its current radius to two hundred times

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Speaker 1: its current radius.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so I'm starting to feel the existential dread bubble up.

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Speaker 2: I didn't think this was going to happen. But we

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Speaker 2: only have one to two billion years even though Earth

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Speaker 2: is middle aged before our oceans boil. But I'm betting

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Speaker 2: that we all die long before the oceans boil, because

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Speaker 2: it takes a lot of hate to get the oceans

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Speaker 2: to boil.

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Speaker 1: You mean me and you? Are you talking about? Like

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Speaker 1: me and you and all of.

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Speaker 2: Our descendants, it would be our descendants at that point. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: So how long before Earth becomes uninhabitable?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. That's just a few hundred

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Speaker 1: million years, right, because the temperature on the surface of

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Speaker 1: one hundred sea is intolerable obvious there, Right, It's a

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Speaker 1: pretty good approximation that every hundred million years you get

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Speaker 1: one percent brighter. It's roughly linear, and so yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: going to be a few hundred million years. It's going

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Speaker 1: to be much hotter than it is now. Definitely, we're

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Speaker 1: talking climate change for sure. So this is something we're

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Speaker 1: going to have to adapt to well before the oceans

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Speaker 1: boil or the outer layers of the Sun consume the Earth.

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Speaker 2: All right, we've got time to figure this out. But

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Speaker 2: I'm still not loving it. Not cool sun.

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Speaker 1: And so the crucial things to understand there for our

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Speaker 1: later conversation is what's driving the Sun to get hotter

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Speaker 1: and to get bigger, and that's the mass of the Sun. Right,

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Speaker 1: If the sun were smaller, then it wouldn't do this

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Speaker 1: as quickly. It would burn a lot lot longer, right,

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Speaker 1: because the core would be cooler, and it wouldn't fuse

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Speaker 1: as fast, and it wouldn't accumulate as much helium, and

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Speaker 1: it wouldn't push the layers out, and it wouldn't get

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Speaker 1: hotter and brighter. And so that's the thing that's driving

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Speaker 1: the Sun to basically vanish our habitable zone.

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Speaker 2: All right. So mostly I care about what happens to me,

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Speaker 2: and I'm going to die before the Earth. Well, my

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Speaker 2: ancestors will die before the Earth gets consumed by the Sun.

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Speaker 2: But let's say I still care about the Earth even

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Speaker 2: when there's no humans there anymore. Is it going to

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Speaker 2: actually get engulfed by the Sun like swallowed up?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this is something you hear in pops eye all

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Speaker 1: the time, and it's not clear because there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of small effects here that could change the answer. So,

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Speaker 1: for example, as the Sun in its last little bit

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Speaker 1: is blowing out and its redias is really growing rapidly,

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Speaker 1: it's also losing some mass because it's puffing out so much,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't contain all that A lot of this plasma

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Speaker 1: just shoots off into space, and because it loses mass,

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Speaker 1: it loses gravity, and so the Sun's pull on the

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Speaker 1: Earth gets weaker. So the Earth's orbit is going to

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Speaker 1: drift further out, and so rather than just staying at

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Speaker 1: the same place, it's going to drift out as the

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Speaker 1: Sun grows and loses some of its mass. And so

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Speaker 1: people have done modeling to answer the question, are we

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Speaker 1: going to escape the outer layers of the Sun. It's

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Speaker 1: sort of a silly question because like it doesn't really

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Speaker 1: matter if you're in the Sun or right next to

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Speaker 1: the Sun, like neither way can you survive. But you know,

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Speaker 1: just from a sort of like academic question, it's fascinating.

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Speaker 1: You don't want to be even like a little bit engulfed.

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Speaker 1: But it looks like the Earth might just sort of

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Speaker 1: like skip over the outer atmosphere of the Sun, the

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Speaker 1: radius of its orbit growing with the radius of the Sun.

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Speaker 2: Could we keep ourselves in good shape by just sort

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Speaker 2: of like nudging Earth farther away and closer to state

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Speaker 2: exactly the right temperature throughout this whole process.

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Speaker 1: You could try to do that to move further out,

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Speaker 1: And you know, you want to stay far enough away

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Speaker 1: from the Sun for sure, not just because it's going

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Speaker 1: to be hot, but because if you are anywhere near

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Speaker 1: the atmosphere of the Sun, then you're going to be

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Speaker 1: losing kinetic energy because you're flying through the atmosphere, there's

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Speaker 1: gonna be friction. You're gonna fall into the Sun. Bad bad.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, if you've wanted to engineer just the Earth,

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Speaker 1: the simpler thing is to move the Earth's orbit. There

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Speaker 1: are things you could do to like build a huge

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Speaker 1: planet rocket to move the Earth out this kind of stuff,

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Speaker 1: but it's a bit of a crap shot because the

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Speaker 1: whole Solar system is going to be very chaotic. Like

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Speaker 1: when you lose mass of the Sun, you're also weakening

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Speaker 1: the Sun's grip on Jupiter. Jubiter is going to drift

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Speaker 1: further out, it's going to interact with Saturn. That's going

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Speaker 1: to be a chaotic mess. And the chances that we

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Speaker 1: can like predict that and navigate through Jupiter and Saturn

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Speaker 1: like having a big argument and cluttering up the whole

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Speaker 1: Solar system very unlikely. We think that that happened in

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Speaker 1: the past, that Jupiter and Saturn went into the inner

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Speaker 1: Solar System and then back out again and maybe ejected

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Speaker 1: another gas giant from the Solar System, So there could

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Speaker 1: be like a lost sibling planet out there and frozen

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Speaker 1: in space, feeling rejected, having been literally rejected. And so

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Speaker 1: the Solar System is going to get very chaotic if

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Speaker 1: we let the Sun do this. And I think it'd

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Speaker 1: be pretty hard not just to move the planet, but

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Speaker 1: to figure out how to move it and how to

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Speaker 1: protect it against Jupiter's craziness.

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Speaker 2: I wish I had felt more optimistic during our episodes

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Speaker 2: on interstellar Travel. I think I'd like to just skip

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Speaker 2: all of this, just leave town. What all of this

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Speaker 2: problem starts? All right, So let's take a break, and

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Speaker 2: when we get back, let's talk about how we can

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Speaker 2: engineer the Sun so we can avoid this situation altogether.

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Speaker 2: All Right, we're back. Daniel has scared the pants off

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Speaker 2: of all of us. We're going to burn up where

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Speaker 2: we're going to fall into the Sun, but we're probably

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Speaker 2: not going to actually fall into the Sun. We're just

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Speaker 2: going to be in its hot atmosphere layers. Anyway, we're dead.

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Speaker 2: So Daniel, how do we avoid this whole we die

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Speaker 2: in billions of years.

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Speaker 1: Thing we turn to the engineers and we ask them, hey,

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Speaker 1: can you solve this problem. We think we understand enough

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Speaker 1: of the physics of the Sun to figure out when

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Speaker 1: it's going to grow and get hotter, and so in

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Speaker 1: principle we should be able to engineer a solution. And

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Speaker 1: there was a paper in the eighties by a guy

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Speaker 1: named David Criswell coined this phrase star lifting to imagine

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Speaker 1: that maybe we could prevent the Sun from getting so

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Speaker 1: big and so hot by making it more like longer

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Speaker 1: lasting stars, by making it smaller. That's why it's called

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Speaker 1: star lifting. It's like take stuff off of the Sun. Essentially,

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Speaker 1: could we go in and take a big scoop off

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Speaker 1: of the Sun. And this is a little bit delicate

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Speaker 1: because you don't want to turn the Sun like into

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Speaker 1: a red dwarf. A red dwarf is cooler, and then

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Speaker 1: the Earth wouldn't be in the habitable zone anymore. I

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Speaker 1: want to do is scoop off just enough to keep

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Speaker 1: the Sun from getting too big and too hot, so

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Speaker 1: it sort of like maintains the same temperature throughout its

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Speaker 1: lifetime and lasts a lot longer. Removing some mass would

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Speaker 1: lower the pressure at the center as the helium accumulates,

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Speaker 1: and so that's the sort of basic idea. It was

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Speaker 1: revived in twenty seventeen in a paper by Greg Mattloff,

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Speaker 1: and then a couple of years ago a really interesting

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Speaker 1: paper by Matt Scoggins and David Kipping dug into the

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Speaker 1: details of exactly how you would do this, And so

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Speaker 1: I thought it'd be fun to talk about this engineering

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Speaker 1: task and whether it's possible at all.

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Speaker 2: First of all, this is fascinating. I will note that

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Speaker 2: when you started introducing the topic, you said a lot

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Speaker 2: of we think and presumably, and I feel like before

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Speaker 2: we start tinkering with the sun, we should be like

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Speaker 2: we are sure about And it is absolutely the case

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Speaker 2: that but presumably these papers had all the right qualifiers

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Speaker 2: in them, and this is just getting the conversation started.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this is definitely let's have a first conversation about

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Speaker 1: whether this is possible all and not let's have a

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Speaker 1: policy discussion about whether we understand the risks and decide

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Speaker 1: whether the balance of risk and reward is a good one,

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Speaker 1: which we definitely should have before we do anything like this,

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Speaker 1: the same way that we should before we do any geoengineering.

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Speaker 1: But it's still reasonable to say, hey, what is possible?

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Speaker 1: And these papers are just like the very first steps

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Speaker 1: towards what is possible. As you'll hear, like, the solutions

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Speaker 1: are so outrageously expensive and elaborate that they aren't anything

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Speaker 1: we could hope to imagine doing in the next few centuries.

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Speaker 1: But you know, scientists and engineers a few centuries from

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Speaker 1: that will be glad that we thought through some of

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Speaker 1: the details here to make their work easier. But you're right,

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Speaker 1: the policy question is separate.

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Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, I don't know. That sounds like whimp talk

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Speaker 2: to me. Let's just.

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Speaker 1: And so, yeah, I'm not advocating for any of these things, right,

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Speaker 1: I just I think it's fun to think so big

435
00:21:54,920 --> 00:21:58,280
Speaker 1: and to imagine what's possible. And you know, the same way,

436
00:21:58,359 --> 00:22:01,400
Speaker 1: I'm like awestruck by what humans have built. I'm obstruck

437
00:22:01,480 --> 00:22:04,040
Speaker 1: to imagine what we might build. But of course, yes,

438
00:22:04,080 --> 00:22:06,439
Speaker 1: we do have to do it carefully. Just because you

439
00:22:06,480 --> 00:22:07,879
Speaker 1: want to drill a hole through the scent of the

440
00:22:07,920 --> 00:22:09,719
Speaker 1: earth to drop a ball through and see what happens

441
00:22:09,760 --> 00:22:10,720
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that you should.

442
00:22:11,040 --> 00:22:14,679
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I really like your approach to engineering.

443
00:22:14,880 --> 00:22:17,160
Speaker 2: Think it through first, all right, So let's talk about

444
00:22:17,160 --> 00:22:18,959
Speaker 2: the first proposal for how you would do this.

445
00:22:19,560 --> 00:22:22,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, there's a few ideas. One is called the

446
00:22:22,320 --> 00:22:26,280
Speaker 1: thermal driven method, and the idea is to tap into

447
00:22:26,280 --> 00:22:29,600
Speaker 1: something that's already happening, which is the solar wind. The

448
00:22:29,600 --> 00:22:32,800
Speaker 1: Sun is already shedding mass. It's a huge ball of

449
00:22:32,800 --> 00:22:36,359
Speaker 1: plasma in space and it's mostly confined by gravity, but

450
00:22:36,440 --> 00:22:38,720
Speaker 1: the atmosphere is one of the hottest parts of the Sun,

451
00:22:39,280 --> 00:22:42,680
Speaker 1: and so it's constantly shooting off particles. You know, yes,

452
00:22:42,760 --> 00:22:45,440
Speaker 1: photons obviously, and we're absorbing those and we enjoy those

453
00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:49,480
Speaker 1: on a sunny day, but also protons and electrons. That's

454
00:22:49,480 --> 00:22:51,480
Speaker 1: what we call the solar wind. And if you're out

455
00:22:51,480 --> 00:22:53,639
Speaker 1: there in space as an astronaut, this is the kind

456
00:22:53,640 --> 00:22:55,399
Speaker 1: of thing you have to be wary of because for you,

457
00:22:55,520 --> 00:22:59,000
Speaker 1: it's radiation, very high speed particles shooting out from the

458
00:22:59,040 --> 00:23:03,480
Speaker 1: Sun of space. So don't imagine space as empty. One

459
00:23:03,480 --> 00:23:06,720
Speaker 1: of our episodes about interstellar travel talks about the dangers

460
00:23:06,760 --> 00:23:09,359
Speaker 1: of radiation in space and it's serious, and this is

461
00:23:09,400 --> 00:23:11,040
Speaker 1: where it comes from. It comes from the Sun, and

462
00:23:11,040 --> 00:23:13,199
Speaker 1: then of course other suns and black holes and all

463
00:23:13,280 --> 00:23:16,120
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff out there in space generate wind. And

464
00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:18,760
Speaker 1: by wind, we don't mean air molecules, we mean high

465
00:23:18,800 --> 00:23:22,520
Speaker 1: speed particles. So one idea is, can we enhance that,

466
00:23:22,720 --> 00:23:24,640
Speaker 1: Can we get the Sun to shed more of its

467
00:23:24,680 --> 00:23:26,480
Speaker 1: mass to crank up the solar wind?

468
00:23:26,720 --> 00:23:28,960
Speaker 2: Okay, wow, So the fact that we're proposing that we're

469
00:23:28,960 --> 00:23:32,520
Speaker 2: going to heat up the Sun sounds incredible to me.

470
00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:35,480
Speaker 2: How can we make a dent in the hottest thing

471
00:23:35,480 --> 00:23:38,520
Speaker 2: that we know about? But go ahead, let's see how

472
00:23:38,560 --> 00:23:41,399
Speaker 2: what are proposals for making the Sun even hotter?

473
00:23:41,720 --> 00:23:43,160
Speaker 1: And it doesn't sound like the kind of thing you'd

474
00:23:43,160 --> 00:23:44,960
Speaker 1: want to do, right. The whole problem we're trying to

475
00:23:45,000 --> 00:23:46,880
Speaker 1: solve is that the Sun is going to get too hot.

476
00:23:46,960 --> 00:23:49,159
Speaker 1: So something comes along and says, the solution making it

477
00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:52,639
Speaker 1: too hot is to make it hotter. A a second

478
00:23:53,200 --> 00:23:55,520
Speaker 1: am I in a solar engineering conference or an insane

479
00:23:55,520 --> 00:23:56,840
Speaker 1: asylum or both.

480
00:23:58,040 --> 00:23:59,800
Speaker 2: Could be some overlap in those communities.

481
00:24:01,800 --> 00:24:05,479
Speaker 1: Exactly choose your venue carefully. The idea is not to

482
00:24:05,520 --> 00:24:08,359
Speaker 1: heat the core of the Sun, but to heat the atmosphere.

483
00:24:08,560 --> 00:24:10,800
Speaker 1: This is where the solar wind happens. Right, It's the

484
00:24:10,840 --> 00:24:13,440
Speaker 1: outer layers of the Sun that are super crazy hot,

485
00:24:13,600 --> 00:24:17,040
Speaker 1: super high energy particle that rech escape velocity from the Sun.

486
00:24:17,640 --> 00:24:19,240
Speaker 1: So instead of heating up the core, you want to

487
00:24:19,280 --> 00:24:22,120
Speaker 1: heat up the atmosphere, which will help strip the Sun

488
00:24:22,200 --> 00:24:24,879
Speaker 1: of some of these particles. So all you got to

489
00:24:24,960 --> 00:24:28,000
Speaker 1: do in this case is basically reflect the Sun back

490
00:24:28,080 --> 00:24:32,240
Speaker 1: at itself. So imagine building a bunch of mirrors which

491
00:24:32,440 --> 00:24:35,080
Speaker 1: just reflect the Sun's light back to the Sun. Now,

492
00:24:35,080 --> 00:24:38,000
Speaker 1: it will heat up the Sun's atmosphere. You know. It's

493
00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:40,760
Speaker 1: sort of like putting a fire in an insulated box

494
00:24:40,800 --> 00:24:43,640
Speaker 1: will help make the fire hotter, whereas if you don't,

495
00:24:43,760 --> 00:24:46,840
Speaker 1: then the heat from the fire bleeds out into the atmosphere.

496
00:24:47,400 --> 00:24:50,199
Speaker 1: And so if you have these mirrors, or you like

497
00:24:50,400 --> 00:24:52,960
Speaker 1: have solar panels which gather the energy and then beam

498
00:24:53,000 --> 00:24:56,080
Speaker 1: it back, you could heat up spots on the Sun's atmosphere.

499
00:24:56,119 --> 00:24:58,560
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, And I think I'm just being too picky,

500
00:24:58,560 --> 00:25:01,560
Speaker 2: because if you put a fire in an insulated box,

501
00:25:01,600 --> 00:25:04,359
Speaker 2: it's going to run out of oxygen and burn out, right, No,

502
00:25:04,440 --> 00:25:07,199
Speaker 2: you're right, yeah, but we understand what's happening with the

503
00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:10,480
Speaker 2: sun better. We're not going to snuff out the sun accidentally.

504
00:25:13,440 --> 00:25:18,280
Speaker 1: I'm not impressing you with my level of detail here, Daniel.

505
00:25:18,320 --> 00:25:19,160
Speaker 1: Please don't put.

506
00:25:18,960 --> 00:25:22,320
Speaker 2: Out the Come on, engineers, do better.

507
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:24,560
Speaker 1: You don't want to wake up one morning, get an

508
00:25:24,600 --> 00:25:28,239
Speaker 1: email from Daniel bad news, I accidentally put out the

509
00:25:28,280 --> 00:25:29,240
Speaker 1: sun last night.

510
00:25:29,560 --> 00:25:31,800
Speaker 2: Well, as we discussed in a prior email, that would

511
00:25:31,800 --> 00:25:33,399
Speaker 2: be a high information email.

512
00:25:33,520 --> 00:25:36,119
Speaker 1: Yes, that would be surprising, that would be surprising. It

513
00:25:36,160 --> 00:25:38,199
Speaker 1: would be a good lesson in Shannon entropy. So at

514
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:39,920
Speaker 1: least you gained something, right.

515
00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:41,560
Speaker 2: That's right. I'm sure everybody would be through.

516
00:25:43,119 --> 00:25:45,960
Speaker 1: No, you're right that analogy is not perfect for that reason.

517
00:25:46,320 --> 00:25:49,080
Speaker 1: But in this case, you're either just having huge mirrors

518
00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:50,960
Speaker 1: to reflect energy back from the Sun to heat up

519
00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:54,480
Speaker 1: spots on its atmosphere, or you have some more complicated

520
00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:57,479
Speaker 1: system where you're absorbing the energy using like footo wal

521
00:25:57,520 --> 00:26:00,800
Speaker 1: take cells, and then you're beaming the energy back using

522
00:26:00,880 --> 00:26:03,320
Speaker 1: like microwaves. Do you remember we once had a conversation

523
00:26:03,359 --> 00:26:07,000
Speaker 1: about solar power in space. This is basically that same system.

524
00:26:07,240 --> 00:26:09,919
Speaker 1: You have solar power. You generate energy and then you

525
00:26:09,920 --> 00:26:12,280
Speaker 1: build a beam. Instead of beaming it to the Earth's

526
00:26:12,280 --> 00:26:14,440
Speaker 1: surface where you're going to use it to charge your phone,

527
00:26:14,760 --> 00:26:16,640
Speaker 1: you're just beaming it to the surface of the Sun

528
00:26:16,720 --> 00:26:18,520
Speaker 1: to heat it up to make these hot spots.

529
00:26:18,880 --> 00:26:21,600
Speaker 2: Okay, and this is going to buy us more time.

530
00:26:21,720 --> 00:26:23,320
Speaker 1: This is going to buy us more time, because it's

531
00:26:23,320 --> 00:26:27,000
Speaker 1: going to create more solar flares, like solar flares, or

532
00:26:27,080 --> 00:26:30,200
Speaker 1: we call solar weather right our moments when the Sun

533
00:26:30,280 --> 00:26:33,040
Speaker 1: has like a huge eruption of plasma which then floats

534
00:26:33,080 --> 00:26:36,280
Speaker 1: out into space and sometimes it washes over the Earth

535
00:26:36,280 --> 00:26:39,280
Speaker 1: and causes incredible damage. There was this Carrington event in

536
00:26:39,320 --> 00:26:42,680
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds where huge solar flare flashed out and

537
00:26:42,720 --> 00:26:45,080
Speaker 1: the Earth basically went through a plasma plume and it

538
00:26:45,119 --> 00:26:47,600
Speaker 1: like fried all the electronics on the Earth, which at

539
00:26:47,640 --> 00:26:50,199
Speaker 1: the time, fortunately were pretty simple. So we have some

540
00:26:50,320 --> 00:26:53,639
Speaker 1: fires from like telegraph wires going haywire. But if it

541
00:26:53,680 --> 00:26:56,639
Speaker 1: happened now, it would be very, very bad. But what

542
00:26:56,640 --> 00:26:59,399
Speaker 1: we're talking about now is creating hotspots on the surface

543
00:26:59,440 --> 00:27:02,040
Speaker 1: of the Sun which would generate solar flare, so like

544
00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:06,640
Speaker 1: huge strands of plasma floating out into space, and obviously

545
00:27:06,720 --> 00:27:09,600
Speaker 1: you don't want that happening in the direction of the Earth. Right,

546
00:27:09,680 --> 00:27:12,560
Speaker 1: you might be thinking, Daniel again, Now you're creating like

547
00:27:12,880 --> 00:27:15,920
Speaker 1: bad things, right, bad solar weather. It's bad for satellites,

548
00:27:15,920 --> 00:27:17,639
Speaker 1: it's bad for the Earth, it's bad for all these things.

549
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:20,640
Speaker 1: Why would you risk this? So the idea is, yes,

550
00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:23,720
Speaker 1: you create these hotspots, and those hotspots create solar flares

551
00:27:23,920 --> 00:27:26,480
Speaker 1: and you get this plasma ejected. But then you try

552
00:27:26,520 --> 00:27:30,040
Speaker 1: to guide it. So plasma is electrically charged, right, it's

553
00:27:30,080 --> 00:27:32,680
Speaker 1: positive and negative. There are protons and there are electrons there.

554
00:27:33,080 --> 00:27:37,040
Speaker 1: So you build a huge magnetic field around the Sun

555
00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:39,760
Speaker 1: to guide all this stuff so it doesn't go along

556
00:27:39,800 --> 00:27:42,960
Speaker 1: the ecliptic where the planets are like the Sun's equator,

557
00:27:43,160 --> 00:27:44,640
Speaker 1: but it goes up to the poles.

558
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:46,520
Speaker 2: Okay, And so then are we going to be in

559
00:27:46,520 --> 00:27:49,520
Speaker 2: any trouble if we're not getting that stuff, Like will

560
00:27:49,560 --> 00:27:51,359
Speaker 2: we cool down or will we just not get hit

561
00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:51,960
Speaker 2: with radiation?

562
00:27:52,359 --> 00:27:54,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, that stuff would be bad, and so it will

563
00:27:54,800 --> 00:27:56,920
Speaker 1: cool the Sun a little bit. But that's the goal, right,

564
00:27:57,119 --> 00:27:58,960
Speaker 1: We want to keep the Sun from getting too hot.

565
00:27:58,960 --> 00:28:00,920
Speaker 1: So if we pull this stuff out of the Sun

566
00:28:01,000 --> 00:28:03,680
Speaker 1: by creating these hotspots, having it spew it, and then

567
00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:06,120
Speaker 1: shepherd it up to the North and South poles, we're

568
00:28:06,200 --> 00:28:09,959
Speaker 1: safe because we're not being blasted by these huge plasma strands,

569
00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:13,560
Speaker 1: and we're slowly reducing the mass of the Sun, which

570
00:28:13,600 --> 00:28:15,280
Speaker 1: is the whole goal, right. The goal is to take

571
00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:16,919
Speaker 1: mass off of the Sun.

572
00:28:16,720 --> 00:28:18,600
Speaker 2: All right, So it seems pretty important that you get

573
00:28:18,600 --> 00:28:21,000
Speaker 2: all of this stuff heading in the right direction, because

574
00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:23,520
Speaker 2: you don't want to accidentally spew a lot more radiation

575
00:28:23,680 --> 00:28:26,000
Speaker 2: towards the Earth or a more settlement if we ever

576
00:28:26,080 --> 00:28:29,320
Speaker 2: get one. How do we control where this stuff goes?

577
00:28:29,600 --> 00:28:32,360
Speaker 1: So this is my favorite part because it involves building

578
00:28:32,560 --> 00:28:37,280
Speaker 1: a particle accelerator that goes all the way around the Sun.

579
00:28:38,320 --> 00:28:40,760
Speaker 1: So essentially you need to build a magnetic field that

580
00:28:40,840 --> 00:28:43,240
Speaker 1: pushes stuff towards the Sun. And so to build a

581
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:45,480
Speaker 1: magnetic field, as we talked about in a recent episode,

582
00:28:45,560 --> 00:28:48,560
Speaker 1: you need currents, you need moving electric charges, and so

583
00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:51,320
Speaker 1: good to do this is to build a particle accelerator

584
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:54,440
Speaker 1: which shoots particles around the equator of the Sun. Or

585
00:28:54,480 --> 00:28:57,320
Speaker 1: you have a few of these things stacked on top

586
00:28:57,360 --> 00:29:00,200
Speaker 1: of each other, which basically shepherds this stuff up to

587
00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:03,160
Speaker 1: the polls. And at the same time you can answer

588
00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:05,840
Speaker 1: a bunch of really important fundamental physics questions because now

589
00:29:05,840 --> 00:29:09,200
Speaker 1: you have a particle accelerator with an enormous radius and

590
00:29:09,320 --> 00:29:11,800
Speaker 1: super high energy. And boy, wouldn't that be awesome.

591
00:29:11,880 --> 00:29:14,960
Speaker 2: For other reasons, I wouldn't want to have to write

592
00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:18,520
Speaker 2: that grant because I bet the money for the LHC

593
00:29:18,760 --> 00:29:20,800
Speaker 2: was a tough sell. I mean, it's awesome, but I'm

594
00:29:20,840 --> 00:29:23,520
Speaker 2: sure it was expensive. I can't imagine the price of this.

595
00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:26,200
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna try to put dollars on this.

596
00:29:26,240 --> 00:29:28,640
Speaker 1: I mean, the price of the next collider on Earth

597
00:29:28,840 --> 00:29:30,680
Speaker 1: is going to be something like fifty to one hundred

598
00:29:30,800 --> 00:29:31,760
Speaker 1: billion dollars.

599
00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:32,320
Speaker 2: Wow.

600
00:29:32,360 --> 00:29:36,040
Speaker 1: They're also crazy out there proposals for a collider that

601
00:29:36,120 --> 00:29:39,640
Speaker 1: runs along the equator of the Moon, which would be

602
00:29:39,800 --> 00:29:42,520
Speaker 1: awesome for some reasons and not so awesome for other reasons,

603
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:46,720
Speaker 1: but fun to think about, and also absurdly expensive. So yeah,

604
00:29:46,800 --> 00:29:50,120
Speaker 1: collider that runs along the equator of the Sun. I mean,

605
00:29:50,200 --> 00:29:53,200
Speaker 1: I don't even know what the scientific prefix is for

606
00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:57,440
Speaker 1: those dollars. It's beyond trillions and quadrillions and quintillions, I'm sure.

607
00:29:57,920 --> 00:29:59,880
Speaker 1: But you know, we're talking about the future of humanity here.

608
00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:01,640
Speaker 1: Finally particle physics will be useful.

609
00:30:01,760 --> 00:30:03,840
Speaker 2: Oh oh, well, we talked the other day about how

610
00:30:03,840 --> 00:30:06,680
Speaker 2: particle physics gave us a new treatment for cancer, so

611
00:30:06,720 --> 00:30:10,840
Speaker 2: it will be useful for a second time. Only those

612
00:30:10,840 --> 00:30:12,920
Speaker 2: two though, So this.

613
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:15,880
Speaker 1: Is one scheme to try to slurp some stuff off

614
00:30:15,880 --> 00:30:18,080
Speaker 1: the Sun, and then at the North and South poles

615
00:30:18,280 --> 00:30:21,320
Speaker 1: you have these like magnetic nozzles which focus the stuff

616
00:30:21,320 --> 00:30:23,320
Speaker 1: and gather it and then you could actually like use

617
00:30:23,360 --> 00:30:26,400
Speaker 1: it for something. This is raw material or if your

618
00:30:26,520 --> 00:30:29,960
Speaker 1: goal is to like build megastructures, a dice in sphere

619
00:30:30,080 --> 00:30:33,880
Speaker 1: or other crazy engineering projects in your solar system, elimiting

620
00:30:33,880 --> 00:30:36,920
Speaker 1: factors having enough stuff. Like you might say, I want

621
00:30:36,920 --> 00:30:38,680
Speaker 1: to take Jupiter apart and use it to build a

622
00:30:38,720 --> 00:30:41,640
Speaker 1: Dyson sphere, it might not be enough. And so just

623
00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:44,640
Speaker 1: having raw material is important. And the Sun is the

624
00:30:44,640 --> 00:30:47,080
Speaker 1: biggest source of raw material in the Solar system. I mean,

625
00:30:47,160 --> 00:30:50,600
Speaker 1: the Solar system is basically the Sun plus right, and

626
00:30:50,600 --> 00:30:53,920
Speaker 1: we're like those little extra bits. So gathering that stuff

627
00:30:53,960 --> 00:30:56,200
Speaker 1: off the Sun gives you an enormous amount of mass

628
00:30:56,240 --> 00:30:58,200
Speaker 1: to play with to build other stuff.

629
00:30:58,240 --> 00:31:00,960
Speaker 2: But it's in the form of gas when you right.

630
00:31:00,920 --> 00:31:03,080
Speaker 1: It's in the form of plasma mostly, And you might

631
00:31:03,080 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 1: think it's mostly hydrogen. Who really cares, well, hydrogen's good

632
00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:09,480
Speaker 1: for building stuff, and the Sun has lots of other

633
00:31:09,480 --> 00:31:12,480
Speaker 1: stuff in it that's not just hydrogen. Like it's mostly hydrogen,

634
00:31:12,480 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 1: it's two percent metals or something, but it still has

635
00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:18,520
Speaker 1: Most of the iron in the Solar system is in

636
00:31:18,560 --> 00:31:21,040
Speaker 1: the Sun. Most of the oxygen, most of the nickel,

637
00:31:21,160 --> 00:31:23,720
Speaker 1: most of the basic building blocks of silicon are in

638
00:31:23,760 --> 00:31:27,240
Speaker 1: the Sun. Like the Sun has twenty times as much

639
00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:30,720
Speaker 1: of all those basic elements as Jupiter does, and it's

640
00:31:30,760 --> 00:31:33,280
Speaker 1: distributed all through the Sun because of convection, you know,

641
00:31:33,320 --> 00:31:37,000
Speaker 1: the plasma currents, and so if you are funneling mass

642
00:31:37,040 --> 00:31:40,160
Speaker 1: off of the Sun, then yeah, you could slurp off

643
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:44,040
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of pretty useful basic ingredients for your

644
00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:46,960
Speaker 1: other insanely expensive engineering projects.

645
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:50,280
Speaker 2: Yay, it's crazy all the way down.

646
00:31:51,040 --> 00:31:52,760
Speaker 1: Crazy enables crazy.

647
00:31:52,840 --> 00:31:57,440
Speaker 2: Thank goodness. So iron is getting ejected in the solar flares,

648
00:31:57,440 --> 00:31:58,520
Speaker 2: in the solar wind.

649
00:31:58,480 --> 00:32:01,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's mostly hydrogen, but it's a

650
00:32:01,600 --> 00:32:03,960
Speaker 1: good mixture. I mean, iron is not being made in

651
00:32:04,040 --> 00:32:06,440
Speaker 1: our sun, right, so it's not like it's only at

652
00:32:06,480 --> 00:32:09,640
Speaker 1: the core. And if there is iron there from previous

653
00:32:09,760 --> 00:32:12,880
Speaker 1: rounds of stellar nucleosynthesis, and a lot of it does

654
00:32:12,920 --> 00:32:14,960
Speaker 1: sink to the core because it's heavier. But also the

655
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 1: Sun is a big churning ball of plasma, and this

656
00:32:17,400 --> 00:32:20,920
Speaker 1: convection that brings stuff up right also the way that

657
00:32:20,960 --> 00:32:23,320
Speaker 1: you know, like diamonds are made inside the Earth, but

658
00:32:23,360 --> 00:32:25,720
Speaker 1: then convection brings stuff up to the mantle and to

659
00:32:25,840 --> 00:32:28,840
Speaker 1: the surface. So yeah, we could definitely get iron out

660
00:32:28,840 --> 00:32:31,920
Speaker 1: of the sun. I mean definitely. You can't say definitely

661
00:32:31,920 --> 00:32:35,840
Speaker 1: about anything about this project. It's ridiculous upon ridiculous upon ridiculous.

662
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:39,520
Speaker 1: In theory, one could get iron out of the sun

663
00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:41,880
Speaker 1: to build your other absurd projects.

664
00:32:41,920 --> 00:32:44,000
Speaker 2: All right, So we're gonna talk about at least one

665
00:32:44,080 --> 00:32:46,920
Speaker 2: other proposal. Is this proposal that you just explained to

666
00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:49,520
Speaker 2: us more or less crazy than the next one we're

667
00:32:49,560 --> 00:32:50,160
Speaker 2: going to talk about.

668
00:32:52,280 --> 00:32:56,640
Speaker 1: Oh boy, that's a tough question. I think it's differently crazy.

669
00:32:57,040 --> 00:33:00,520
Speaker 1: I mean, none of these are very realistic and all

670
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:03,440
Speaker 1: require all sorts of engineering problems that we don't know

671
00:33:03,480 --> 00:33:05,600
Speaker 1: how to solve. But they are also fun to think

672
00:33:05,640 --> 00:33:07,840
Speaker 1: about because you know, they just make you think big.

673
00:33:08,040 --> 00:33:10,080
Speaker 2: That's right, And when we get back, we will think

674
00:33:10,120 --> 00:33:31,760
Speaker 2: big in a different way. All right, we're back and

675
00:33:31,800 --> 00:33:35,360
Speaker 2: we're thinking big about engineering projects. We are engineering the

676
00:33:35,480 --> 00:33:39,720
Speaker 2: sun today. On Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe, we talked

677
00:33:39,720 --> 00:33:43,560
Speaker 2: about one kind of Nutsoe method. What method are we

678
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:44,760
Speaker 2: going to talk about next? Daniel?

679
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:47,960
Speaker 1: So the next method is called the huff and puff method.

680
00:33:48,240 --> 00:33:50,960
Speaker 1: So that everybody takes it very very seriously, no doubt,

681
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:53,840
Speaker 1: and they do hear similar to what we talked about

682
00:33:53,880 --> 00:33:56,880
Speaker 1: a minute ago. But earlier we were heating of specific

683
00:33:56,960 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 1: spots on the Sun to get it to eject mass.

684
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:02,200
Speaker 1: We're going to basically try to pump the whole sun

685
00:34:02,640 --> 00:34:07,360
Speaker 1: like bellows. And so you still build your particle accelerator

686
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:09,839
Speaker 1: around the equator. I mean you gotta have that, right,

687
00:34:09,880 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 1: that's non negotiable.

688
00:34:11,320 --> 00:34:14,040
Speaker 2: What is science without a particle accelerator? That's have you

689
00:34:14,080 --> 00:34:16,840
Speaker 2: heard of this? This this concept called the Overton window,

690
00:34:16,880 --> 00:34:19,879
Speaker 2: where like someone does something super extreme. Yeah, to make

691
00:34:20,040 --> 00:34:23,680
Speaker 2: what you're proposing seem less crazy, you're probably having some

692
00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:26,040
Speaker 2: people pitch these ideas to the funder so that when

693
00:34:26,040 --> 00:34:28,520
Speaker 2: you just have something that's like one hundred trillion dollars

694
00:34:28,600 --> 00:34:31,200
Speaker 2: or something, they'll be like, oh, the particle physicists are

695
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:32,320
Speaker 2: being less crazy today.

696
00:34:32,840 --> 00:34:36,839
Speaker 1: You have revealed my secret scheme here, Kelly, I am

697
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:38,320
Speaker 1: shifting the Overton window.

698
00:34:38,640 --> 00:34:40,360
Speaker 2: Well, I study animal behavior.

699
00:34:41,280 --> 00:34:43,560
Speaker 1: This is a This is basically the Combin and Hobbs method,

700
00:34:43,600 --> 00:34:44,960
Speaker 1: you know, where he asks his mom if you can

701
00:34:45,040 --> 00:34:46,960
Speaker 1: have a flamethrower. She says no, and he says, can

702
00:34:47,040 --> 00:34:49,560
Speaker 1: have a cookie. She's like sure, yeah, that's right, that's right,

703
00:34:50,760 --> 00:34:53,480
Speaker 1: all right. So here you build a particle accelerator around

704
00:34:53,520 --> 00:34:55,920
Speaker 1: the core, and you know, this thing is kept in

705
00:34:56,000 --> 00:34:59,560
Speaker 1: place by the magnetic field that it generates, which floats

706
00:34:59,560 --> 00:35:02,399
Speaker 1: over the Sun. But in this case, you can turn

707
00:35:02,440 --> 00:35:04,520
Speaker 1: it on and off. So you turn it off, and

708
00:35:04,560 --> 00:35:07,280
Speaker 1: all the components of the particle accelerator, which you're not connected,

709
00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:10,240
Speaker 1: it's a big ring. It's just components which shoot particles

710
00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:14,160
Speaker 1: between them. All these components then fall towards the Sun

711
00:35:14,200 --> 00:35:16,360
Speaker 1: because of its gravity. Then you turn it back on

712
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:20,200
Speaker 1: and it rises back up again and pushes against the star.

713
00:35:20,840 --> 00:35:24,279
Speaker 1: And so essentially this is like massaging the star. You

714
00:35:24,400 --> 00:35:26,880
Speaker 1: like drop a magnetic ring around the star and then

715
00:35:26,920 --> 00:35:30,000
Speaker 1: turn it back on and it pushes itself back out,

716
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:33,480
Speaker 1: squeezing the star. So you do this over and over again,

717
00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:37,560
Speaker 1: and it like pumps the star's atmosphere, moving mass up

718
00:35:37,560 --> 00:35:40,600
Speaker 1: to the pole. So it's sort of like squeezing it,

719
00:35:40,640 --> 00:35:43,560
Speaker 1: like massaging it, kind of like bellows on the sun.

720
00:35:43,960 --> 00:35:47,160
Speaker 2: And for anyone who didn't grow up in the Victorian

721
00:35:47,200 --> 00:35:51,799
Speaker 2: era using bellows on their fireplace, what would you like

722
00:35:51,840 --> 00:35:53,040
Speaker 2: to explain what a bellow is?

723
00:35:53,480 --> 00:35:56,400
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah, it's basically like a big fan, right, you

724
00:35:56,440 --> 00:35:59,280
Speaker 1: squeeze it and it shoots a stream of air towards

725
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:01,799
Speaker 1: a useful spot on your fire to help blow. It's

726
00:36:01,840 --> 00:36:06,000
Speaker 1: sort of like leaning over the campfire and going you know,

727
00:36:06,080 --> 00:36:09,240
Speaker 1: but mechanically, how is that for an explanation of bellows?

728
00:36:09,320 --> 00:36:12,600
Speaker 2: I think people are following us. You're good. I wish

729
00:36:12,640 --> 00:36:15,399
Speaker 2: people could could watch the video because you are particularly

730
00:36:15,480 --> 00:36:19,160
Speaker 2: animated in this episode, like you've hit your microphone at

731
00:36:19,239 --> 00:36:24,000
Speaker 2: least once as you gesticulate in enjoy at this engineering idea.

732
00:36:24,080 --> 00:36:26,480
Speaker 1: Well, you know, sometimes we dig deep into like real

733
00:36:26,520 --> 00:36:28,880
Speaker 1: physics and what we're learning about the universe, and sometimes

734
00:36:28,880 --> 00:36:29,600
Speaker 1: we just have fun.

735
00:36:29,840 --> 00:36:31,880
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well I think we always just have fun. But

736
00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:34,279
Speaker 2: we're having a lot of fun today. Okay, So the

737
00:36:34,320 --> 00:36:38,240
Speaker 2: idea is that you squeeze, and when you squeeze, how

738
00:36:38,280 --> 00:36:41,040
Speaker 2: do you control when you squeeze where the stuff goes.

739
00:36:41,440 --> 00:36:43,959
Speaker 1: Yeah, so if you're squeezing at the equator, there's only

740
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:46,759
Speaker 1: one way it can go towards the poles. So then

741
00:36:46,800 --> 00:36:49,120
Speaker 1: you've got to build another acceleratory of like a stack

742
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:51,560
Speaker 1: of these things. That's sort of like massage the mass

743
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:54,520
Speaker 1: as it goes up. So you squeeze the equator and

744
00:36:54,520 --> 00:36:56,279
Speaker 1: then you squeeze just above it, and you squeeze just

745
00:36:56,280 --> 00:36:59,120
Speaker 1: above it. You know, like a coordinated action here to

746
00:36:59,160 --> 00:37:02,600
Speaker 1: sort of push the Sun's atmosphere towards the poles. I mean,

747
00:37:02,640 --> 00:37:05,400
Speaker 1: the whole thing sounds like, boy, how would you know

748
00:37:05,520 --> 00:37:07,440
Speaker 1: that that works before you build it and try it?

749
00:37:07,480 --> 00:37:11,680
Speaker 1: And what if it goes wrong? You know, that's the

750
00:37:11,800 --> 00:37:14,480
Speaker 1: joy of like being the first person to think about

751
00:37:14,480 --> 00:37:16,440
Speaker 1: something is you just get to think about the big

752
00:37:16,480 --> 00:37:19,040
Speaker 1: picture and don't worry about details like is this going

753
00:37:19,120 --> 00:37:21,000
Speaker 1: to destroy everything in this solar system?

754
00:37:21,200 --> 00:37:23,680
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, that's a pretty important detail. But so how

755
00:37:23,719 --> 00:37:25,680
Speaker 2: do you know you're not just moving around stuff the

756
00:37:25,719 --> 00:37:29,280
Speaker 2: sun was going to make anyway, and you're actually increasing

757
00:37:29,280 --> 00:37:31,560
Speaker 2: the amount of stuff that gets ejected or heating up

758
00:37:31,600 --> 00:37:33,520
Speaker 2: the sun or whatever. How do you know you're accomplishing

759
00:37:33,560 --> 00:37:35,400
Speaker 2: your goal instead of just moving stuff around?

760
00:37:36,239 --> 00:37:38,440
Speaker 1: Yeah? Great question. And you know they've done some simple

761
00:37:38,480 --> 00:37:41,439
Speaker 1: modeling and it really does suggest that either of these

762
00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:45,200
Speaker 1: methods could eject more mass than you normally would, that

763
00:37:45,239 --> 00:37:48,520
Speaker 1: a sun left to its own devices would burn hotter

764
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:52,319
Speaker 1: and more briefly than a sun that's engineered in this way.

765
00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:55,400
Speaker 1: And they did some calculations also to wonder like, well,

766
00:37:55,520 --> 00:37:57,399
Speaker 1: how much could you do, Like are we talking about

767
00:37:57,440 --> 00:38:01,080
Speaker 1: ejecting ten protons or really a significant amount of stuff?

768
00:38:01,680 --> 00:38:04,719
Speaker 1: And according to these calculations, you can reject about an

769
00:38:04,719 --> 00:38:08,960
Speaker 1: earth's worth of mass every hundred years. So that's not

770
00:38:09,040 --> 00:38:10,759
Speaker 1: a tiny amount of stuff, like the Earth is a

771
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:13,800
Speaker 1: tiny fraction of the Sun. But you know, a century

772
00:38:13,920 --> 00:38:16,719
Speaker 1: is a long time, and we're talking about timelines of

773
00:38:16,719 --> 00:38:20,160
Speaker 1: millions or tens of millions of years. So that's a

774
00:38:20,200 --> 00:38:23,400
Speaker 1: significant amount of stuff. And if you just did it

775
00:38:23,480 --> 00:38:26,279
Speaker 1: naively and extrapolated linearly, it could take apart the Sun

776
00:38:26,760 --> 00:38:29,480
Speaker 1: in you know, fifty to one hundred million years, like

777
00:38:29,560 --> 00:38:32,600
Speaker 1: the whole mass of the Sun eventually could be extracted.

778
00:38:32,640 --> 00:38:34,480
Speaker 1: Of course, once you get to like ten percent of

779
00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:36,800
Speaker 1: the mass of the Sun being ejected, the whole system

780
00:38:36,840 --> 00:38:38,520
Speaker 1: is going to change and everything is going to be cooler,

781
00:38:38,520 --> 00:38:40,839
Speaker 1: and so you can't extrapolate linearly. But just to give

782
00:38:40,880 --> 00:38:43,319
Speaker 1: you a sense of scale of how effective this is,

783
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:46,200
Speaker 1: it's not a tiny amount of mass that you're rejecting

784
00:38:46,280 --> 00:38:47,479
Speaker 1: relative to the mass of the Sun.

785
00:38:47,760 --> 00:38:49,920
Speaker 2: All right, So this is the amount of time it

786
00:38:49,920 --> 00:38:53,120
Speaker 2: would take to take the Sun apart. But I didn't

787
00:38:53,160 --> 00:38:55,280
Speaker 2: know that that was our goal. I thought our goal

788
00:38:55,440 --> 00:38:59,480
Speaker 2: was slowing down the destruction of the Earth. So how

789
00:38:59,560 --> 00:39:01,480
Speaker 2: much time this by humans?

790
00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:03,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, we do not want to take apart the Sun,

791
00:39:03,719 --> 00:39:07,760
Speaker 1: absolutely not. What we want to do is gradually cool

792
00:39:07,800 --> 00:39:10,560
Speaker 1: the Sun so that it stays at the same temperature,

793
00:39:10,600 --> 00:39:12,600
Speaker 1: because remember, its natural progression is going to be to

794
00:39:12,600 --> 00:39:15,839
Speaker 1: get hotter and hotter as the core gets denser, and

795
00:39:15,880 --> 00:39:18,960
Speaker 1: then fusion moves to the outer layers. So that's where

796
00:39:18,960 --> 00:39:21,440
Speaker 1: this paper from twenty twenty came in by Mas Goggins

797
00:39:21,440 --> 00:39:24,759
Speaker 1: and David Kipping. They calculated how much mass would you

798
00:39:24,920 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 1: have to remove from the Sun every year in order

799
00:39:28,200 --> 00:39:31,120
Speaker 1: to maintain that temperature to essentially move the Sun from

800
00:39:31,160 --> 00:39:34,920
Speaker 1: its natural arc at this mass down gradually to the

801
00:39:35,040 --> 00:39:37,400
Speaker 1: arc you would expect for lower mass stars. You can

802
00:39:37,440 --> 00:39:41,480
Speaker 1: imagine like the temperature progressions for individual stars which started

803
00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:44,000
Speaker 1: a certain mass and red dwarfs last a long time

804
00:39:44,040 --> 00:39:46,279
Speaker 1: and stay at a lower temperature. Essentially you want to

805
00:39:46,320 --> 00:39:49,560
Speaker 1: step down from one progression to another. So they did

806
00:39:49,600 --> 00:39:52,120
Speaker 1: this cool calculation which suggested that what you want to

807
00:39:52,160 --> 00:39:55,680
Speaker 1: do is remove about two to three percent of the

808
00:39:55,719 --> 00:39:58,880
Speaker 1: mass of series series is a dwarf planet in our

809
00:39:58,920 --> 00:40:01,800
Speaker 1: solar system. It's the largest thing in the asteroid belt.

810
00:40:02,200 --> 00:40:04,280
Speaker 1: It's like a big chunk of stuff. It's much smaller

811
00:40:04,320 --> 00:40:06,600
Speaker 1: than the Earth. So like two to three percent of

812
00:40:06,640 --> 00:40:11,080
Speaker 1: the massive series every century would accomplish this, So you

813
00:40:11,120 --> 00:40:12,839
Speaker 1: don't have to take the Sun apart. You don't want

814
00:40:12,880 --> 00:40:15,560
Speaker 1: to take the Sun apart. The point of this calculation is,

815
00:40:15,920 --> 00:40:20,000
Speaker 1: in principle, this technique has the capacity to remove plenty

816
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:23,000
Speaker 1: of mass, much more than we would need if we

817
00:40:23,040 --> 00:40:25,920
Speaker 1: wanted to engineer the star for our safety, and to

818
00:40:25,960 --> 00:40:27,759
Speaker 1: engineer the Star for our safety, we only need to

819
00:40:27,800 --> 00:40:30,680
Speaker 1: skim off a little bit of mass every hundred years

820
00:40:30,760 --> 00:40:33,919
Speaker 1: or so to avoid the Sun going red giant and

821
00:40:33,960 --> 00:40:34,560
Speaker 1: frying us.

822
00:40:34,760 --> 00:40:37,960
Speaker 2: So this paper wasn't necessarily advocating for either of the

823
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:41,200
Speaker 2: two methods we talked about. It's just saying, whatever method

824
00:40:41,280 --> 00:40:43,959
Speaker 2: you use, you got to get two and a half

825
00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:47,560
Speaker 2: percent the massive series every one hundred years off the Sun.

826
00:40:47,640 --> 00:40:48,040
Speaker 2: Is that right?

827
00:40:48,160 --> 00:40:51,399
Speaker 1: Yeah? Okay, yeah exactly, And if you do that successfully,

828
00:40:51,440 --> 00:40:54,480
Speaker 1: and there's lots of problems to solve between here and there,

829
00:40:54,880 --> 00:40:57,920
Speaker 1: but in principle, you can have our Sun last a

830
00:40:57,960 --> 00:41:00,160
Speaker 1: lot longer. So instead of having a ten billion in

831
00:41:00,200 --> 00:41:02,520
Speaker 1: your life cycle. It could have a twenty billion year

832
00:41:02,560 --> 00:41:05,719
Speaker 1: life cycle. Oh wow, so you're adding ten billion years

833
00:41:05,760 --> 00:41:09,320
Speaker 1: to civilization, giving us a lot more time to find

834
00:41:09,360 --> 00:41:10,880
Speaker 1: an alternative home for the Earth.

835
00:41:11,040 --> 00:41:14,080
Speaker 2: Wow. Can we can we adjust this method so that

836
00:41:14,120 --> 00:41:16,080
Speaker 2: we can get humans to live twice as long? This

837
00:41:16,520 --> 00:41:17,480
Speaker 2: is pretty exciting.

838
00:41:19,800 --> 00:41:21,840
Speaker 1: Yeah. I need to build a big particle accelerator to

839
00:41:21,880 --> 00:41:24,080
Speaker 1: remove mass from Daniel. That's what I need to do.

840
00:41:24,520 --> 00:41:27,400
Speaker 2: Always asking for money, Daniel, always asking for money.

841
00:41:29,080 --> 00:41:31,680
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's interesting to think about the alternatives, like

842
00:41:31,719 --> 00:41:35,440
Speaker 1: if we lived around a red dwarf, then already the

843
00:41:35,520 --> 00:41:37,960
Speaker 1: star would be lasting a long long time, you know,

844
00:41:38,440 --> 00:41:41,200
Speaker 1: much longer than us. Hundreds of billions of years, maybe trillions.

845
00:41:41,280 --> 00:41:43,800
Speaker 1: It's not really certain because the universe isn't old enough

846
00:41:43,960 --> 00:41:46,080
Speaker 1: to have like a red dwarf cool and become a

847
00:41:46,080 --> 00:41:48,719
Speaker 1: black dwarf. We've never seen that happen. But you can

848
00:41:48,800 --> 00:41:52,160
Speaker 1: imagine having an even longer lived star. If you started,

849
00:41:52,200 --> 00:41:55,239
Speaker 1: for example, from like an orange dwarf, which is something

850
00:41:55,239 --> 00:41:57,920
Speaker 1: that has the mass of half of the Sun, then

851
00:41:58,000 --> 00:42:00,440
Speaker 1: there's enough mass there to play with because it can

852
00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:03,480
Speaker 1: be hot enough to create a nice environment and have

853
00:42:03,680 --> 00:42:06,520
Speaker 1: enough mass to lose so it'll keep burning. Like if

854
00:42:06,520 --> 00:42:09,239
Speaker 1: you try to starlift a red dwarf, there's not really

855
00:42:09,239 --> 00:42:11,360
Speaker 1: a whole lot of extra masks there. It'll just like

856
00:42:11,440 --> 00:42:14,759
Speaker 1: go out. It's just above the threshold for fusion. But

857
00:42:14,800 --> 00:42:17,280
Speaker 1: if you start with like a nice toasty orange dwarf

858
00:42:17,560 --> 00:42:20,200
Speaker 1: and then star lift it, the calculations in this paper

859
00:42:20,239 --> 00:42:22,640
Speaker 1: suggest it might go for like a trillion years.

860
00:42:22,920 --> 00:42:25,759
Speaker 2: So we're already making plans for what happens when we

861
00:42:25,800 --> 00:42:28,960
Speaker 2: go to different like solar systems and start tickering with

862
00:42:29,040 --> 00:42:33,799
Speaker 2: their stars. We are a very self confidence species.

863
00:42:34,880 --> 00:42:37,400
Speaker 1: Yeah this really is Project Icarus, right, Yeah.

864
00:42:37,120 --> 00:42:40,160
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. Okay, so we've talked about how

865
00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:42,720
Speaker 2: you're going to be like channeling all of this stuff

866
00:42:42,760 --> 00:42:45,840
Speaker 2: to the poles. But does making it go to the

867
00:42:45,880 --> 00:42:49,360
Speaker 2: poles instead of shooting directly at us solve all of

868
00:42:49,400 --> 00:42:51,840
Speaker 2: the problems we might experience from all of this extra

869
00:42:52,000 --> 00:42:54,240
Speaker 2: like sun mask getting shot out into space.

870
00:42:54,560 --> 00:42:57,560
Speaker 1: Not necessarily, because number one, we can't guarantee that all

871
00:42:57,560 --> 00:42:59,560
Speaker 1: of it's going to go to the poles, right and

872
00:42:59,640 --> 00:43:01,600
Speaker 1: on the whole. What you're going to do is increase

873
00:43:01,719 --> 00:43:05,000
Speaker 1: the solar wind everywhere, right, Like if you have hot

874
00:43:05,040 --> 00:43:07,080
Speaker 1: spots on the surface of the Sun. You can channel

875
00:43:07,120 --> 00:43:09,200
Speaker 1: a lot of it up, but magnetic fields are not perfect,

876
00:43:09,239 --> 00:43:11,279
Speaker 1: and some of it's going to escape, and so you're

877
00:43:11,360 --> 00:43:16,480
Speaker 1: risking more radiation in space for our burgeoning solar system industry. Right,

878
00:43:16,719 --> 00:43:19,000
Speaker 1: this whole context assumes we have like a lot of

879
00:43:19,040 --> 00:43:22,160
Speaker 1: space based economy and people moving through space, and so

880
00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:24,560
Speaker 1: increased stellar wind for that is going to be bad.

881
00:43:24,640 --> 00:43:28,920
Speaker 1: And unless, of course, we develop some awesome radiation shielding technology,

882
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:31,800
Speaker 1: which maybe we could. Maybe that's a small problem compared

883
00:43:31,800 --> 00:43:34,040
Speaker 1: to like lifting mass off of the Sun, but you know,

884
00:43:34,520 --> 00:43:37,759
Speaker 1: it's not easy. And remember, we don't really understand the Sun.

885
00:43:38,080 --> 00:43:40,080
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot we do know about the Sun,

886
00:43:40,160 --> 00:43:42,239
Speaker 1: but also a lot we don't. We don't even understand

887
00:43:42,360 --> 00:43:45,879
Speaker 1: why it's magnetic field flips every eleven years. So there

888
00:43:45,880 --> 00:43:47,640
Speaker 1: can be a lot of surprises here, a lot of

889
00:43:47,640 --> 00:43:49,640
Speaker 1: things that don't go the way that we expect. And

890
00:43:49,680 --> 00:43:51,600
Speaker 1: when things don't go the way we expect on the

891
00:43:51,600 --> 00:43:54,200
Speaker 1: scale of a star, then it can be very bad.

892
00:43:54,360 --> 00:43:57,839
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, high cost to human hubris in this case, I.

893
00:43:57,760 --> 00:44:01,680
Speaker 1: Think, and even getting it a little bit wrong could

894
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:04,879
Speaker 1: increase bad solar weather in the Solar system. We could

895
00:44:04,880 --> 00:44:07,800
Speaker 1: basically make it impossible to move around the Solar system.

896
00:44:08,160 --> 00:44:10,359
Speaker 1: We just like get the star grumpy and it like

897
00:44:10,440 --> 00:44:12,719
Speaker 1: takes a billion years to calm down, you know, like,

898
00:44:12,800 --> 00:44:16,080
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, that's you know, maybe unrecoverable.

899
00:44:16,360 --> 00:44:18,400
Speaker 2: Okay, so I def first of all, I absolutely want

900
00:44:18,440 --> 00:44:21,080
Speaker 2: to read the sci fi novel written about this idea.

901
00:44:21,160 --> 00:44:23,920
Speaker 2: But second, so it really seems to me that if

902
00:44:23,960 --> 00:44:26,560
Speaker 2: you're going to take this task on, like first you

903
00:44:26,640 --> 00:44:30,600
Speaker 2: send out the interstellar ships and then then you start

904
00:44:30,640 --> 00:44:34,160
Speaker 2: tickering like we might kill everyone. So let's make sure

905
00:44:34,200 --> 00:44:37,320
Speaker 2: that we send some human seed out into the universe.

906
00:44:37,200 --> 00:44:39,720
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, make a backup copy before you start playing

907
00:44:39,719 --> 00:44:40,439
Speaker 1: with things at work.

908
00:44:40,600 --> 00:44:44,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Yes, it's a good spaceic tenet of computer programming,

909
00:44:44,560 --> 00:44:47,000
Speaker 2: I'm guessing exactly.

910
00:44:47,719 --> 00:44:49,680
Speaker 1: And you know, the energy required to do this kind

911
00:44:49,680 --> 00:44:52,440
Speaker 1: of stuff is vast, not just to build the particle

912
00:44:52,480 --> 00:44:57,120
Speaker 1: accelerator or these solar powered stations and beam energy back

913
00:44:57,160 --> 00:44:59,840
Speaker 1: of the Sun, but you know, just like the energy

914
00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:04,440
Speaker 1: involved in lifting material out of the Sun's gravitational well

915
00:45:04,680 --> 00:45:07,240
Speaker 1: is huge because the gravity of the Sun is huge,

916
00:45:07,280 --> 00:45:11,440
Speaker 1: and the Earth is already almost too massive to launch

917
00:45:11,480 --> 00:45:15,000
Speaker 1: off of using chemical rockets, And so we're talking about

918
00:45:15,040 --> 00:45:18,440
Speaker 1: incredible scales of energy here. The good news is the

919
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:21,640
Speaker 1: Sun has incredible scales of energy. So yes, you need

920
00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:24,040
Speaker 1: enormous amounts of energy to beam back to the Sun

921
00:45:24,080 --> 00:45:27,080
Speaker 1: to heat it up and to run this particle accelerator.

922
00:45:27,080 --> 00:45:29,440
Speaker 1: But we're talking about the Sun, so it outputs a

923
00:45:29,480 --> 00:45:32,799
Speaker 1: lot of energy you can just grab. But you know,

924
00:45:33,080 --> 00:45:35,920
Speaker 1: we're playing with enormous quantities here, and so again, like

925
00:45:36,040 --> 00:45:41,120
Speaker 1: mistakes and miscalculations, the consequences of getting things wrong are

926
00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:41,880
Speaker 1: just much bigger.

927
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:45,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's probably not enough material on Earth to build

928
00:45:45,680 --> 00:45:48,759
Speaker 2: these things that you're talking about. Would we have to

929
00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:53,279
Speaker 2: collect the material for these devices from other planets or

930
00:45:53,320 --> 00:45:55,520
Speaker 2: from the asteroid belt or is there enough stuff on Earth?

931
00:45:55,560 --> 00:45:56,640
Speaker 2: Am I totally wrong about this?

932
00:45:57,080 --> 00:45:59,040
Speaker 1: You definitely need a lot of material to solve this

933
00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:02,040
Speaker 1: problem because you're, for example, and gathering all this energy

934
00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:04,160
Speaker 1: to shoot the back of the Sun. Then you're building

935
00:46:04,320 --> 00:46:08,080
Speaker 1: huge solar power collectors, not as massive as a dice

936
00:46:08,120 --> 00:46:10,520
Speaker 1: in sphere or even like a sphere people would want

937
00:46:10,560 --> 00:46:13,280
Speaker 1: to live on, but still it's a huge engineering project.

938
00:46:14,040 --> 00:46:16,240
Speaker 1: I don't think you'd want to take chunks off the Earth.

939
00:46:16,280 --> 00:46:18,920
Speaker 1: But like, you know, what is mercury good? For anyway.

940
00:46:20,120 --> 00:46:23,080
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. I'm sure every culture on Earth

941
00:46:23,120 --> 00:46:26,040
Speaker 2: would be fine if you just disassembled Mercury, although maybe

942
00:46:26,040 --> 00:46:28,120
Speaker 2: if they were facing their own demise, they would be fine.

943
00:46:28,239 --> 00:46:30,520
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you know, we just launched like an AI

944
00:46:30,640 --> 00:46:33,200
Speaker 1: probe to Mercury. We tell it to build a factory

945
00:46:33,239 --> 00:46:36,000
Speaker 1: to make more of itself, to make solar power plants,

946
00:46:36,120 --> 00:46:39,360
Speaker 1: which then power itself, and like hope that it continues

947
00:46:39,360 --> 00:46:42,480
Speaker 1: following our instructions to build the sunlift or rather than launching,

948
00:46:42,600 --> 00:46:44,680
Speaker 1: you know, an armada against Earth to take over.

949
00:46:44,920 --> 00:46:47,920
Speaker 2: That is the start to the sci fi novel that

950
00:46:48,080 --> 00:46:50,520
Speaker 2: I want to read about this, because I can absolutely

951
00:46:50,520 --> 00:46:51,640
Speaker 2: imagine that going wrong.

952
00:46:52,080 --> 00:46:54,200
Speaker 1: But you know, I think the bigger picture here is

953
00:46:54,239 --> 00:46:58,080
Speaker 1: that we often think about the cosmos as fixed. You know.

954
00:46:58,520 --> 00:47:01,040
Speaker 1: Number one, we think about the Solar system as always

955
00:47:01,120 --> 00:47:02,960
Speaker 1: being the way that it is because it has been

956
00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:06,680
Speaker 1: this way for a long time according to human timelines.

957
00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:09,120
Speaker 1: You know, humans have always looked up at the stars

958
00:47:09,120 --> 00:47:11,200
Speaker 1: and seen the same thing over the last tens of

959
00:47:11,280 --> 00:47:15,280
Speaker 1: thousands of years. But on cosmic timelines, the story is different.

960
00:47:15,640 --> 00:47:18,160
Speaker 1: The Solar system has looked different, and the Sun will

961
00:47:18,160 --> 00:47:20,879
Speaker 1: not last forever, and we don't have to think about

962
00:47:20,880 --> 00:47:23,400
Speaker 1: it as fixed. It is possible for us to intervene

963
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:25,680
Speaker 1: to change our fate. We don't just have to lay

964
00:47:25,680 --> 00:47:28,200
Speaker 1: down and take it. We can blow ourselves up instead.

965
00:47:28,760 --> 00:47:31,000
Speaker 2: Oh great, I mean at least you've got a little

966
00:47:31,040 --> 00:47:34,080
Speaker 2: bit more control over the situation. And that feels good.

967
00:47:34,200 --> 00:47:34,879
Speaker 2: That feels good.

968
00:47:35,000 --> 00:47:36,600
Speaker 1: Yeah. Would that make you feel better if we off

969
00:47:36,600 --> 00:47:39,160
Speaker 1: fry up due to an engineering mistake rather than just

970
00:47:39,280 --> 00:47:42,160
Speaker 1: like getting crisped naturally, No, No, it.

971
00:47:42,080 --> 00:47:44,840
Speaker 2: Wouldn't, especially if it's sped the process up. But the

972
00:47:44,880 --> 00:47:46,920
Speaker 2: good news is we have a lot of time, and

973
00:47:47,200 --> 00:47:50,520
Speaker 2: if you invest in science, we can increase our certainty

974
00:47:50,719 --> 00:47:53,680
Speaker 2: in these technologies. And I'd better understand how the sun

975
00:47:53,719 --> 00:47:55,680
Speaker 2: works so that we can all save ourselves.

976
00:47:55,400 --> 00:47:57,880
Speaker 1: One day exactly. So thank you for coming along on

977
00:47:57,960 --> 00:48:01,440
Speaker 1: this ride where we stretch the window for science funding

978
00:48:01,480 --> 00:48:03,320
Speaker 1: out to trillions of dollars.

979
00:48:05,239 --> 00:48:08,520
Speaker 2: I'm sure this is going to change everything for science funding. Bravo,

980
00:48:08,640 --> 00:48:09,480
Speaker 2: Daniel and Kelly.

981
00:48:09,680 --> 00:48:11,560
Speaker 1: I'm probably my best to be optimistic today.

982
00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:14,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, I like that. All right, let's take

983
00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:17,880
Speaker 2: that optimism with us outside the podcast. Hope everybody has

984
00:48:17,920 --> 00:48:28,240
Speaker 2: a fantastic day. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced

985
00:48:28,280 --> 00:48:30,959
Speaker 2: by iHeartRadio. We would love to hear from you.

986
00:48:31,080 --> 00:48:34,040
Speaker 1: We really would. We want to know what questions you

987
00:48:34,239 --> 00:48:36,880
Speaker 1: have about this Extraordinary Universe.

988
00:48:36,960 --> 00:48:39,920
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989
00:48:39,920 --> 00:48:42,919
Speaker 2: for future shows. If you contact us, we will get

990
00:48:42,960 --> 00:48:43,360
Speaker 2: back to you.

991
00:48:43,640 --> 00:48:47,160
Speaker 1: We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us

992
00:48:47,200 --> 00:48:50,400
Speaker 1: at Questions at Danielankelly.

993
00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:51,560
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994
00:48:51,640 --> 00:48:55,440
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995
00:48:55,520 --> 00:48:57,480
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996
00:48:57,920 --> 00:48:59,440
Speaker 2: and K Universe.

997
00:48:59,600 --> 00:49:01,200
Speaker 1: Don't be shy right to us