WEBVTT - Shkadov Thrusters: Moving the Solar System 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.240 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:15.320 Forward Thinking. Hello, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:17.720 that looks at the future and says, but it's the 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:21.160 scatter of thrust that really drives you insane. I'm Joe 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:24.040 McCormick and I'm Lauren bulk Obama, and our regular host 0:00:24.120 --> 0:00:26.639 Jonathan Strickland is not with us today because he is 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:29.720 out in the field on assignment. Yes, doing things that 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:32.760 we cannot tell you about yet. No. I would say 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:36.519 that he's out discovering the amazing technology of tomorrow. But 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:39.720 really what he's probably doing is posing for selfies with 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:44.040 very muscular men. Yes, that is entirely likely. You can 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:47.520 watch the House Stuff Works dot Com channel on YouTube 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:52.960 to find out more about that in a few weeks. Yeah, 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:56.639 so today we wanted to address a listener request episode. 0:00:57.000 --> 0:01:00.560 Our listener, Keith on Facebook, has asked us to talk 0:01:00.600 --> 0:01:03.480 about all kinds of topics and we can't do them 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:06.200 all at once, so we decided to pick the coolest, 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:11.240 weirdest one of the bunch, being Stellar Engines. Stellar Engines. 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:14.119 Now I know what the gearheads and the audience are thinking. 0:01:14.880 --> 0:01:19.679 Cadillac V eight right, the classic Cadillac V eight Stellar 0:01:19.800 --> 0:01:22.600 out of this world? Right? Yeah? Oh man, they don't 0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:24.240 make them like that anymore, or I don't know, they 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:27.199 might still make those spoiler alert, I don't know anything 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:30.759 about cars, um, But no, the use of the word 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:34.560 stellar here actually refers to the more classical sense, as 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:39.560 in stars. Yes, stars turned into engines. Put to our 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:46.600 own devious uses, what would a star based engine even be? Um? 0:01:46.640 --> 0:01:50.640 As it turns out, it's real complicated, y'all, And it's 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:53.880 really weird and really really cool. This is one of 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:56.400 the coolest ideas I think we've looked at in a while. 0:01:56.480 --> 0:02:00.720 And it's also kind of cool because it's not even 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:03.000 close to reality. So this is going to be one 0:02:03.040 --> 0:02:06.320 of our more on the speculative end. So yeah, this 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:08.760 is not one of those like twenty to forty year 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:11.360 kind of things that we usually wind up talking about 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:15.680 on the show. This is so far out there thousand 0:02:15.800 --> 0:02:21.080 years in the optimistic sense. So, okay, let us talk 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:25.440 about interstellar travel. Sure, well, we all know that one 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:28.760 day we may want or even need to travel to 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:32.720 another solar system. And what's wrong with our solar system? Joe? Well, 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:34.839 you know, it's just in our Solar system. You get 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:37.640 board being in the same place for a long time. 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:41.080 I know, after a while, just seeing the same planets 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:43.600 going around and around over and over. Don't you ever 0:02:43.680 --> 0:02:46.640 get tired of Mars? Yeah? Yeah, you get that interstellar 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:50.800 wonder lust. Well, it's not just boredom and uh and 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:53.600 discontent that might make us want to look to another 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:58.000 solar system in our galaxy solar on we over time, 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:01.200 our son is going to get into some trouble. Have 0:03:01.280 --> 0:03:03.560 you heard about this? H Well, I mean it's pretty 0:03:03.639 --> 0:03:06.440 much a bad seed. Yeah. Well, okay, so today we 0:03:06.520 --> 0:03:08.919 have our our healthy yellow son, the one that makes 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:12.680 Superman as powerful as he is. Not all sons are 0:03:12.720 --> 0:03:16.280 like this, and in fact, sons have a lifetime, just 0:03:16.440 --> 0:03:20.799 like living organisms do. They sort of increase and decrease 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:24.440 in luminosity at different periods of their life, and eventually 0:03:24.520 --> 0:03:28.560 they use up all of their stellar stuff. Right, the 0:03:28.560 --> 0:03:31.800 fuel that they that they fuse, the hydrogen that they're 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:34.800 fusing to be that healthy yellow star. You know, it's 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:39.120 not infinite, so this can be bad for planets orbiting 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:43.080 the star. In October, there was a NASA blog post 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:46.040 that was explaining that a team of astronomers had recently 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:50.040 discovered evidence through a ground based telescope that there was 0:03:50.120 --> 0:03:53.840 this red giant star called beat plus forty eight seven 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:58.720 forty and it was swelling to completely engulf a planet 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:01.880 formerly in its or it So how did they figure 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:05.080 this out? I thought this was really interesting. They realized 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:08.960 the star had quote the fumes of a scorched planet 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:13.680 in its atmosphere unquote, So the star aida planet. And 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:17.400 we figured it out by smelling the star's breath, uh 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:21.600 telescopically nonetheless, right, So yeah, they smelled its breath with 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:25.440 spectroscopic analysis, so that you know, looked at the colors, uh, 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:28.040 the luminosity coming off of the Sun, and they can 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:31.919 look at what materials are in that based on that data, 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:34.280 and they found that the star contained lots of the 0:04:34.320 --> 0:04:37.159 element lithium. Oh yeah, that's not something that you usually 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:39.359 find in a red giant, right that That would be 0:04:39.400 --> 0:04:41.560 a very weird thing to find a bunch of in 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:44.239 a in a star like that, because typically lithium gets 0:04:44.279 --> 0:04:47.560 destroyed inside stars over a long period of time, and 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:51.320 red giants tend to be old. But you might find 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:56.320 lithium in a star if it's if it's being produced 0:04:56.360 --> 0:05:02.280 by the consumption of another big chunk of matter, and 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:04.680 that's what they figured out happened. There had been another 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:09.039 planet there that probably spiraled into this red giant as 0:05:09.040 --> 0:05:12.640 it heated and swoll on up, and it was like 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:15.960 oh no, no, no no, and it ate the planet. 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:21.600 It it quote ingested the planet. Okay, so this is 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:25.440 eventually going to happen to our son and our planet. 0:05:25.800 --> 0:05:28.200 And I'm not talking about like in the next twenty 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:30.640 to forty years that this is. This is a few 0:05:30.880 --> 0:05:33.560 billion years down the line, yes, right. One of the 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:36.240 researchers who found the evidence of this said that the 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:39.800 same kind of fate could be in line for the 0:05:39.800 --> 0:05:43.839 inner planets of our Solar system within about five billion years. 0:05:44.400 --> 0:05:46.920 Now five billion years. It's it's hard to get two 0:05:46.960 --> 0:05:50.240 worked up about five billion years. Personally, I worry a lot, 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:53.480 but yeah, I'm not. I can't actually be worried about that. 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:56.360 But at least we we may worry for you know, 0:05:56.480 --> 0:05:59.880 our descendants or the or our you know, the robots 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:02.640 built by our descendants that take over the planet, or 0:06:02.720 --> 0:06:08.120 the distant future progeny of zebras. I care about future zebras, 0:06:09.160 --> 0:06:15.000 Zebra babies of the future, right, right, well, unfortunately for 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:17.760 the zebra babies, they won't be able to wait for 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:21.839 the Sun to all out eat the Earth started. That 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:26.800 bad stuff will happen way before that actual consumption, right. So, yeah, 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:30.640 as the intensity of solar radiation bombarding the Earth slowly 0:06:30.680 --> 0:06:34.440 gets stronger, and it just will steadily over time, Earth 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:38.080 will at some point become unable to sustain life. So 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:43.360 in there was a three dimensional climate model devised by 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:46.159 the and I apologize to French speakers out there, but 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:48.520 I'm going to try to say it the Laboratoire day 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:56.679 meteorology dynamic. Dynamic, Yeah, I don't. Yeah. So this climate 0:06:56.680 --> 0:07:01.080 model that they came up with predicted that the solar 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:05.480 radiation will increase the Earth's surface temperature enough to boil 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:09.520 the oceans and cause Earth to lose all its liquid 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:12.920 water in about one billion years. That is a much 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:17.960 tighter deadline of Sun eating us. Okay, so before then, 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:21.640 I gotta find a plan. B We we can't just 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:25.320 wait it out. So a pretty straightforward one would be 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:28.240 to move to move to a nicer neighborhood, find a 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:31.320 new planet in another solar system, and get all of 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:34.160 the humans there or all of the zebra people of 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:40.360 the future grandchildren. But moving all of these organisms to 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:44.320 a new planet might not be so easy. So we've 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:48.000 talked about the problems with interstellar travel unless you've got 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:51.040 a spaceship that goes the speed of light or faster, 0:07:51.280 --> 0:07:53.360 and we all know the problems with that. You know, 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:57.600 Einstein's special relativity says you can't go faster than the 0:07:57.600 --> 0:08:01.040 speed of light. We may someday come up with some 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:03.960 crazy way to bind that rule, but we shouldn't bank 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:05.840 on it right now. It seems kind of like a 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:10.280 law of physics. So unless you can get pretty near 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:15.120 the speed of light, the journey between stars becomes prohibitively long, 0:08:15.200 --> 0:08:18.840 like probably thousands of years. Uh. The nearest star to 0:08:18.880 --> 0:08:22.560 Earth is the tiny red dwarf star Proximus Centauri, which 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:26.520 is in the Alpha Centauri system. It's about four point 0:08:26.520 --> 0:08:29.800 two light years or about thirty nine point nine trillion 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:34.679 kilometers away. At the speed Voyager left the Solar System, 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:37.599 which is around thirty seven thousand miles per hour, I 0:08:37.640 --> 0:08:40.240 see slight variations on that would be about you know, 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:44.720 almost sixty thousand kilometers per hour, which is the quickest 0:08:44.800 --> 0:08:48.200 that anything that has survived its a journey thus far 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:51.120 has ever moved, right, Yeah, and so at that rate 0:08:51.160 --> 0:08:54.280 it would take Yeah, it would take about eighty thousand 0:08:54.400 --> 0:08:59.360 years to reach Proximus Centauri. Uh, that's I mean, I 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:01.520 guess if you're talking in the scheme of of a 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:05.440 billion years, that's not so long. But tightening that up 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:09.080 would be preferable, especially if that's just the journey to 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:12.840 a kind of crappy star up, if we're being really honest, Yeah, 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:14.839 it's this little red dwarf. I mean, you've got to 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:17.920 you can't just go to any star with the spaceship. 0:09:18.200 --> 0:09:20.800 You need to find a planet to sustain life, right, 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:23.760 and not all planets are suitable for habitation. In fact, 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:27.760 most probably aren't. It could be too hot, too cold, 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:30.880 just in a constant bath of radiation. There might be 0:09:30.920 --> 0:09:33.880 a gas giant that's full of radiation itself, and of 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:36.760 course you can't walk around on it. A good Earth 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:40.000 is really hard to find. There's the other problem of 0:09:40.120 --> 0:09:43.000 once you're on the way, how do you keep yourself alive? 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:46.080 How do you keep supplying yourself with food, energy, air, 0:09:46.320 --> 0:09:51.480 protection from radiation? In interstellar space, you could work on 0:09:51.559 --> 0:09:56.800 building sort of generation sustaining starships with ways of continuously 0:09:56.880 --> 0:10:01.040 creating new energy, maintaining an earthlike environment, etcetera. But then 0:10:01.120 --> 0:10:04.880 you're almost talking about having to build a second Earth 0:10:04.960 --> 0:10:08.120 to travel with you, and we're already on this perfectly 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:12.400 good Earth. If the problem is the Sun, why not 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:14.400 find a new son, Why not find a new Sun. 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:19.520 So the idea here becomes that we could take everything 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:21.959 we have with us when we travel to a new 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:27.760 new solar system, literally every single thing we have, including 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:32.120 the Earth, and for the journey at least including the Sun, 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:37.080 because we are using it as an engine. An engine. 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:40.040 You say, and engine, and I say, actually, I didn't 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:43.040 say it at all. Well, no, this idea comes from 0:10:43.080 --> 0:10:45.320 others who have come before us. Who I mean, Yeah, 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:47.360 I literally just said it out loud. But it wasn't 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:52.040 my idea. Who were physicists who had incredibly strange and 0:10:52.200 --> 0:10:55.360 very cool ideas. So where does this idea of a 0:10:55.400 --> 0:10:58.920 stellar engine come from? Well, the original paper we want 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:02.840 to look at is something from October of nine, and 0:11:02.880 --> 0:11:08.400 it was when the Russian physicist Leonage Skodov proposed a 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:14.480 really interesting idea atty Congress of the International Astronomical Federation 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:18.320 meeting in Brighton in the UK. And he said, what 0:11:18.440 --> 0:11:20.880 if you could turn an entire solar system into a 0:11:21.000 --> 0:11:25.040 vehicle or in his own words, quote a thruster for 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:31.480 solar system motion control? How on Earth would that work? 0:11:31.760 --> 0:11:35.400 Or how on the galactic plane would that work? Yeah, 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:38.959 we don't even have words for this context. It's really strange. 0:11:39.000 --> 0:11:42.160 So to clarify, the solar system is not motionless now, 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:44.240 oh no, of course not. It's moving all over the place. 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:46.040 We're not all over the place. I mean, there's there's 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:49.319 a system of movement which it follows. Yeah. Well, just 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:52.480 like the planets in our solar system or in orbit 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:55.720 around the Sun. Our solar system is in orbit around 0:11:55.760 --> 0:11:58.480 the center of gravity of the Milky Way Galaxy, and 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:01.400 of course the Milky Way Galaxy self is moving. But 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:07.040 we're talking about controlling the trajectory of motion within the galaxy. 0:12:07.080 --> 0:12:10.880 So what did he have in mind. Here's the basic 0:12:10.960 --> 0:12:16.560 setup that Shadow envisioned. So you create a spherical arc mirror, 0:12:16.960 --> 0:12:22.800 basically a giant curved mirror that's a concave one facing 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:25.520 our Sun on the inside. So imagine sort of a 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:30.400 giant contact lens with the inside of it the curved 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:35.240 inner side being a reflective mirror surface and that's pointed 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:38.439 toward the star, in this case, our sun, like like 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:40.840 like putting a like putting a big bowl of a 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:44.400 few feet away from a grape. Yeah, yeah, sure. So 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:47.240 this mirror would have a couple of forces acting on it. 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:50.360 If you have gravity pulling it towards the sun, the 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:53.520 Sun's gravity pulling it towards the Sun, right, and since 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:55.960 it would be a very large structure, it would also 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:59.160 have some gravitational force of its own. Uh. Then it 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:02.760 would also have radiation pressure pushing it away like a 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:06.120 solar sale. We've talked about solar sales before. Yeah. Yeah, 0:13:06.160 --> 0:13:10.800 because the radiation, the electromagnetic radiation from the Sun does 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:13.800 have a pushing force. Yeah, we don't really feel it 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:17.000 normally because it's a very relatively tiny force, but on 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:20.240 a huge reflective surface in space, it makes a difference. 0:13:20.760 --> 0:13:24.560 The sunlight pushes, so the mirror would become settled in 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:28.880 a place where these forces equalize, the solar radiation pushing 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:32.880 the mirror out and the gravity pulling it in. But 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:36.680 solar radiation would reflect off of the mirror instead of 0:13:36.800 --> 0:13:40.800 radiating out into space like it normally does, and it 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:43.960 reflects back in the direction it came from towards the Sun. 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:49.600 Shadow's idea was that you could use this system to 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:53.360 control or at least help direct the motion of the 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:56.400 Sun and with the Sun, the rest of the Solar system. Now, 0:13:57.040 --> 0:13:58.920 Lauren and I spent a lot of time staring at 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:02.640 some math we toe really didn't understand ch time. We're 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:04.960 not We're not astrophysicists, y'all. Yeah, let to see if 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:06.560 we could say a little bit more about the way 0:14:06.559 --> 0:14:10.680 this thrust is generated. But if it is not abundantly clear, 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:14.880 we are not astrophysicists. And suffice to say, the experts 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:18.160 know what they're talking about. You could, in theory, use 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:21.000 one of these things they say to perturb the motion 0:14:21.040 --> 0:14:23.320 of a star within the galaxy. Yes, and that is 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:27.920 the official terminology that I've seen people use, perturb, which 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:29.840 I think is just a really great verb to to 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:33.080 apply to the Sun. Like you're annoying. I could perturb 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:36.240 the Sun, turb the heck out of that Sun. Well, 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:38.640 the Sun started it, I mean, we didn't tell it 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:40.880 to swell into a red giant and eat the Earth, 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:44.840 all right, So so so so we've got these this 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:48.360 this dish and this this mirror and all of this 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:52.360 is creating thrust in a direction to move the Sun, 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:54.320 to move the Sun in the Solar system with it. Right, 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:57.920 So we would call this a class a stellar engine 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:01.920 or a scatterw thruster, and it would be sort of 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:05.280 like a giant steering wheel for the Solar System, driving 0:15:05.320 --> 0:15:08.200 it where in the galaxy we wanted to go, and 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:12.480 the movement would be really slow. We need to stipulate that, Yeah, 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:15.880 very very slow. The obvious advantage though, would be that 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:19.640 we wouldn't have to leave the Earth our home, or 0:15:19.680 --> 0:15:23.440 the Sun our energy source until we arrived at our 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:27.400 destination in another Solar system. And then the final idea 0:15:27.440 --> 0:15:30.800 of this, the sort of ultimate conclusion, is that we 0:15:30.800 --> 0:15:34.560 could plan the movement of our Scotov thruster just so 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:38.760 that Earth could be deposited into a circular orbit around 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:42.760 another star. Yeah, once you get the Solar system close 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:46.640 enough to a new solar system, you just kind of 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:49.320 let it get nudged in, right, You line it up 0:15:49.360 --> 0:15:51.880 just so that the Earth gets captured by the gravity 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:55.040 of the new star. And then we're back in business 0:15:55.240 --> 0:16:00.000 and we can keep making new Zebra children cities. Yeah, 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:06.240 Zebra robot children cities. Indeed, now I know this sounds 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:09.040 super sci fi, and to be honest, it really is. 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:12.040 I mean, we don't have the capability of building anything 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:15.280 like this right now, but it is an idea worth 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:19.480 taking seriously, even just for the very long view of 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:22.720 the survival of our species or maybe you know, our 0:16:22.520 --> 0:16:28.760 our our terrestrial organic form, whatever that might be. There 0:16:28.920 --> 0:16:31.160 is a great article that we were looking at in 0:16:31.240 --> 0:16:34.640 Popular Mechanics from July of last year that actually examines 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:38.160 how you would build a scatter of thruster. That was 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:41.080 really helpful. Yeah, yeah, because there's so much that you 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:44.400 have to take into consideration here, um, like like where 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:47.360 do we get the material for creating a mirror of 0:16:47.560 --> 0:16:51.040 this size and capacity? Right? Because exactly how big is 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:54.400 the mirror we're talking about here? Um? Yeah, you know, 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:59.400 just hundreds of millions of miles across. It would have 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.720 to be in in diameter greater than the distance from 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:05.680 the Earth to the Sun. Um, and it would which 0:17:05.680 --> 0:17:08.280 would probably mean that would have to weigh some sextillion 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:13.040 or septillion, like even up to septillion pounds. And if 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:16.199 you need a concept of what that's like, I'm crossing 0:17:16.200 --> 0:17:19.119 concepts a little bit here, but that's that's roughly the 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:24.080 mass uh of like Pluto or the Moon, or Mercury 0:17:24.280 --> 0:17:26.760 or Mars. It's a little bit, it's a little bit. 0:17:26.800 --> 0:17:29.920 It weighs a little bit less than Earth itself. So 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:33.560 so we we don't really have like a factory that 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:36.240 could build this. We do not have a spare Earth 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:40.720 to to to to create this mirror out of. But hey, 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:44.439 we do have those other planets just mentioned. Oh no, 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:48.320 are you talking about dismantling a planet and making a 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:51.720 megastructure out of it? I'm not talking about that, but 0:17:51.880 --> 0:17:55.240 scientists certainly are. Yeah. Yeah, you'd you'd have to build 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:57.919 it out of something um kind of light and and 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:00.520 foil like relatively on the on the scale of metals, 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:04.520 something like chematite would be really good for that. That's 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:06.600 sort of like an iron ore. Yeah. Yeah, and you 0:18:06.640 --> 0:18:09.520 could mind something like that out of the planet Mercury. 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:14.040 And so if you basically disassembled Mercury and and I 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:16.200 can still not hear that word without just thinking, let 0:18:16.240 --> 0:18:21.680 no disassemble, Stephanie um. But but yeah, if you took 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:26.200 apart Mercury and used the entire planet to build this, 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:30.520 this sale this mirror, then you could make it work. Wow, 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:34.600 I mean that is crazy, But then again, we are 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:37.760 we are talking about sort of a a multi generational 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:41.200 project that would have to be pretty far in the future. Yeah, 0:18:41.240 --> 0:18:43.320 and we would miss mercury. I'm sure it would mess 0:18:43.400 --> 0:18:47.000 up astrology a whole lot. I know, right, but wait 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:49.359 a minute, no, no, no, no more mercury and retrograde. 0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:51.679 That's a bad thing, right, the thing people don't like. 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:53.919 You know, it's terrible. It's like I lost my keys 0:18:54.040 --> 0:19:00.520 mercury did it something to that extent. Yeah, and and 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:02.720 so so it sounds crazy, but um, it's actually a 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:05.000 lot less crazy than trying to catch a lot of 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:07.920 asteroids or something like that to do the same job. 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:13.200 And and of course, by when I said that you 0:19:13.600 --> 0:19:16.879 would be disassembling mercury, I did not mean Joe, and 0:19:16.920 --> 0:19:19.040 I didn't mean that the Royal you. This would probably 0:19:19.080 --> 0:19:21.040 be a job for robots. Yeah. Yeah, I would have 0:19:21.040 --> 0:19:24.280 to be some kind of a massive fleet of robots 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:27.040 doing this autonomously. I mean, it just really wouldn't make 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:29.240 sense to go try to put people on mercury to 0:19:29.320 --> 0:19:32.840 mind its surface. Uh No, that would go poorly for people. 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:37.919 So we're talking now essentially about mining mercury to create 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:40.800 all this, or to turn into a thin sheet of 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:45.520 reflective foil to put in space in a static position 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:49.680 at the Sun to reflect all this radiation to generate 0:19:49.840 --> 0:19:53.800 thrust to move the Sun. Yeah, okay, okay, I'm with 0:19:53.840 --> 0:19:57.399 you so far. What are some things we might have 0:19:57.480 --> 0:20:00.280 to worry about when doing this, just to you know, 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:03.639 concerns we should keep in mind while building a giant 0:20:03.640 --> 0:20:07.320 space mirror. Um. Well, I would want to make sure 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:11.040 that we take pains to to not you know, either 0:20:11.240 --> 0:20:14.879 freeze or fry the Earth with this mirror thing, because 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:17.720 the these that the mirror would probably be somewhere near 0:20:17.760 --> 0:20:20.080 the orbit of the Earth in order to make the 0:20:20.160 --> 0:20:24.119 materials stable. Um, we wouldn't want to melt the mirror either. 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:28.680 That would be pretty bad. Um uh. And and having 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:34.919 it relatively near by could potentially cause problems with um. 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:38.919 The the amount of solar radiation that continues to hit 0:20:38.960 --> 0:20:41.200 the Earth, which we want, you know, we enjoy having 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:45.119 sunlight here. It kind of drives the entire life cycle 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:49.160 on this planet or can Conversely, we wouldn't want kind 0:20:49.160 --> 0:20:52.040 of extra radiation from the mirror to start hitting the 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:57.480 Earth and fries completely. Yeah. I've seen some different considerations 0:20:57.560 --> 0:20:59.960 that different thinkers have had on what sort of the 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:03.359 final heat situation would be with one of these in place, 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:05.520 because there are different ideas about where you can put 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:09.720 it relative to the Sun and the Another thing I 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:13.640 think we should consider is how fast could this thing 0:21:13.720 --> 0:21:16.560 actually go and what are the conditions that would control 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:21.160 its its speed capabilities? Yeah, we we mentioned this earlier, 0:21:21.240 --> 0:21:24.360 and and I wanted to put into into actual numbers 0:21:24.440 --> 0:21:30.040 exactly how slow this thing would be going UM because okay, okay, 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:32.760 if the Sun is already moving at some five hundred 0:21:32.800 --> 0:21:36.600 thousand miles per hour UM, that's an incredibly rough estimate, 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:42.520 you guys, Um, the first few million years of UM 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:46.920 scoutof thrust could only change our trajectory a little bit. UM. 0:21:47.080 --> 0:21:51.600 One thermodynamicist by the name of Virile bad Askew or 0:21:51.720 --> 0:21:53.919 something to that extent. I'm sorry I didn't look this 0:21:54.000 --> 0:21:57.400 up before the podcast. Um. He's he's from the Polytechnic 0:21:57.520 --> 0:22:02.160 University of in Romania says it could take two hundred 0:22:02.480 --> 0:22:05.520 million years for us to change the trajectory of the 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:08.200 Sun by as much as a hundred and thirty light years. 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:11.160 And that's that's on the generous end. He He also 0:22:11.200 --> 0:22:13.240 said that it might be by as little as thirty 0:22:13.400 --> 0:22:17.919 light years. That's I mean, that's a big window. But 0:22:18.000 --> 0:22:20.600 then again, thirty light years is a long way. I 0:22:20.640 --> 0:22:22.680 saw that note you made, and then I was trying 0:22:22.720 --> 0:22:25.959 to figure out, well, what's within thirty light years? Uh? 0:22:26.160 --> 0:22:30.080 I found a website called soul Station. I'm not familiar 0:22:30.080 --> 0:22:32.280 with the source, so I don't know if it's entirely accurate, 0:22:32.280 --> 0:22:35.440 but at least based on what they say, there are 0:22:35.560 --> 0:22:39.040 a hundred and fifty celestial objects within a twenty light 0:22:39.119 --> 0:22:41.800 year radius of Earth. So a lot of these are 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:44.760 brown dwarfs and stuff that really wouldn't be useful to us. 0:22:44.760 --> 0:22:48.520 But it listed at least to a sequence and seven 0:22:48.600 --> 0:22:52.200 G sequence stars, so I don't know. I mean, I 0:22:52.560 --> 0:22:54.760 could see even within thirty years, you could get to 0:22:54.840 --> 0:22:58.960 a reasonable number of objects out there. Thirty light years yeah, yeah, 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:01.280 um over there. I mean, it's just just that number 0:23:01.280 --> 0:23:04.800 two hundred million years is a number that I have 0:23:04.880 --> 0:23:09.280 a hard time comprehending. Yeah, it's also worth thinking about 0:23:09.320 --> 0:23:11.639 it in the context of one billion years until the 0:23:11.680 --> 0:23:18.160 oceans boil. So sure, you know it's zebra children. Got 0:23:18.160 --> 0:23:21.359 to keep him in mind. We can't forget the zebra 0:23:21.440 --> 0:23:25.280 children of the future children Okay, alright, have such huge eyes. 0:23:26.680 --> 0:23:31.119 They will they'll be adorable. Um. Okay, so so, so 0:23:31.160 --> 0:23:33.040 all of these problems are kind of sad news for 0:23:33.040 --> 0:23:36.199 anyone who is hoping to build one of these mirrors 0:23:36.359 --> 0:23:40.520 like next week. Um. But they also do offer a 0:23:40.560 --> 0:23:45.200 really promising implication, and that is that any alien civilization 0:23:45.600 --> 0:23:48.119 that could have possibly created one of these could be 0:23:48.119 --> 0:23:51.200 pretty easy for us to spot. That's right. So there 0:23:51.280 --> 0:23:55.720 was a recent paper by Duncan h For again of 0:23:55.760 --> 0:23:58.960 the University of St. Andrew's, and he talked about the 0:23:59.000 --> 0:24:03.080 possibility of king for alien stellar engines as evidence of 0:24:03.119 --> 0:24:05.760